Beanfields

I am not exactly certain what was the itch that needed scratching that led to my again picking up John Nichols’s novel The Milagro Beanfield War. The last time I had read and studied the book was in the late 1980s when I wrote my dissertation on the radical novel in America. I was attempting then to redefine the radical novel that had last been formally studied in the 1950s by Walter Rideout in his book, The Radical Novel in America, 1900-1954: Some Interrelations of Literature and Society. He had defined the genre, sometimes referred to as the proletarian/socialist novel, as constrained in scope and complexity by a politics that was philosophically steeped in Marxist and socialist ideas. By reputable critics these novels had been soon dismissed as naively propagandist and they relegated them to the remaindered shelves. Then, at a Leonard Cohen concert I had attended at Town Hall in New York City during the years of the Reagan administration, as Cohen sang “First We Take Manhattan” I wondered by some oblique connection what had happened to the political novel now that in the present moment some resistance movement seemed so necessary. In the dissertation subsequently published as Anonymous Toil, I offered a theory that addressed the 20^th century concerns then permeating modernist writings narrated the development of individual consciousness occurring within a social environment that the protagonists struggled to resist and overcome in order to achieve individual autonomy and personal freedom. The literature the critics valued portrayed the effort of the self to achieve maturity and independence in rebellion from that society. Individual growth occurred in isolation and in the singular personal consciousness. I argued in my study, however, that the radical novel explored how individual consciousness developed the individual joined with the community and its social struggle. Or, as Woody Guthrie sang, “You can’t scare me, I’m sticking to the union.” Hence, the radical novel as I interpreted it concerned the coming to consciousness as a result of joining community in the struggle. In union there was the opportunity for political and personal strength. I believed my work had a new perspective on literature; I thought my thesis possessed validity and its theory was sound.  Alas, Walter Rideout’s book is still very much in print, but I believe I and a few dear friends yet own the last few available copies of Anonymous Toil that sit awaiting lonely on my bookshelf. 
            It was back then that I studied The Milagro Bean Field War and identified it as a radical novel. Through the presence of that tiny beanfield belonging to Joe Mandragón the town of Milagro united and declared war on Ladd Devine and company and the entire governmental apparatus that enabled the greedy, money-making schemes organized by Devine and company that was busy destroying their homes and livelihood to satisfy their greed. the beanfield united the often quarrelsome community of Milagro. Actually, it had been on impulse that Joe Mandragón had decided to irrigate the little field in front of his dead parents’ west side home to “grow himself some beans.” Irrigating his field required that he cut a ditch and divert water that had been made unavailable by the Company’s ownership of water rights. Originally, as the community gathered to protect the beanfield, Joe sulked, “Just leave me in peace about my beanfield. People start helping me, sure as hell it’ll get screwed up.” But some of the old timers remembered that in the old days “people were more together.” Joe had something to learn from his beanfield. Amarante Cordova, who refused to die despite recurrent announcements sent out by his daughter Sally to his family members announcing his imminent death and requiring their immediate presence, demanded of his daughter to “tell all the family” of Joe’s beanfield and the help that required their immediate presence. But upon hearing this last request Sally burst into tears crying she would not send out one more notice of Amarante’s impending death that would not occur! But Amarante said to her, “But we have to tell everyone what José has done. They must see this thing and take part in it before they die. Tell them the shooting is about to start—" That tiny beanfield required a large community to protect. Even without Joe’s encouragement, the town began to unite around the beanfield. One day when Joe had come to stand guard of his field he found Amarante already on duty. seated by it carrying his ancient rifle. Joe Mandragón suspiciously asked Amarante what he was doing at Joe’s beanfield bearing a loaded rifle, and Amarante winked and laid a hand on Joe’s shoulder. Handing over the guard, Amarante left and said to Joe, “I’ll be back soon . . . I’ll take care of you. I’ll take care of this field.’ And Joe responded, ’You and me together, friend, we’ll keep those bastards at bay, qué no?’ Joe was learning. In the course of the novel he will come to understand that it was the whole community of Milagro that protected him and his beanfield. “I love these people,” Joe exclaimed. Though at the beginning Joe thought “it was his field, his bunch of crummy beans; he loved them, he loved enchiladas and burritos, and he would fart a lot because of these purebred Milagro beans.” But when he’d planted them he had not really known what he was doing, and he had certainly not anticipated the particular consequences that had occurred . . . now that this officially was not his beanfield anymore.”

But if it was a spontaneous act of frustration that originally led Joe to illegally cutting a ditch and redirecting water to irrigate his beanfield on the little more than seven-tenths of an acre of land that he owned from his family, then “soon after the initial euphoria wore off, he had begun to wonder if his beanfield might be such a great thing after all,” There was a great deal of fighting and contention arising over it, sometimes with lethal weapons. These ongoing and escalating encounters, like the battle at Concord Bridge, were the opening skirmishes of the Milagro beanfield war. As the community gathered around Joe and his beanfield that beanfield became the focus for resistance to the community. The coyote angel said to Amarante guarding Joe’s beanfield, “Listen cousin, the way things are supposed to work out, one day the struggles of all you little screwed -up underdogs will forge a permanent rainbow that’ll encircle this entire earth, I should live so long.” There would be freedom and an end to oppression. But first Joe Mandragón and other Milagro citizens had first to understand themselves as members of that community, had to realize that his beanfield had united the citizens of Milagro against the powers that had stolen from them their land and water rights. Ruby Archuleta produced a petition that would organize the town into an association protesting the land appropriation and the grasp of water rights by the capitalists and government officials who stood to profit from these robberies and veritable enslavements of the citizens. Slowly as community formed around the beanfield more citizens signed the petition. Ruby recognized that the whole town “would have to harvest his beans in a symbolic manner, every person who signed the petition picking a handful of beans. They would harvest them the same way churches had been built in the old ways, with every family contributing some adobe bricks and pitching in with labor so that it was a symbolic labor of all with a part of everyone’s earth in it.” For a brief moment Milagro had become united and the war of the small against the large was won. Joe and his beanfield had created a united and committed community to improve the lives of all citizens of Milagro. The war had been won.

Beanfields and my dissertation had been on my mind because down here in Lotus Land I had been rereading Thoreau’s Walden, and again been drawn to the chapter “The Beanfield.” I wondered about my own beanfields. Down here I considered writing a book entitled tentatively Walden on the Pacific and which would be structured mirroring the chapters in Thoreau’s book. The beanfield was for me an important chapter. Thoreau’s cultivated his bean-field, albeit one a great deal more extensive than that of Joe Mandragón. Thoreau wrote, “Meanwhile, my beans, the length of whose rows, added together, was seven miles already planted, were impatient to be hoed . . .” I believe that seven miles would produce a great many beans, though ironically, unlike Joe, Thoreau did not eat beans! Thoreau commented, “Not that I wanted beans to eat, for I am by nature a Pythagorean, so far as beans are concerned, whether they mean porridge or voting, and exchanged them for rice . . .” So, the question arises: why did he grow beans in the first place?  Indeed, he ponders this question himself: he wonders, “But why should I raise them? Only Heaven knows . . . What should I learn of beans or beans of me.” In the effort to care for his beans he would learn something though of course at the beginning he did not know exactly what that might be. He insists, “I was determined to know beans,” 

I wondered why beans and not rose bushes? And in one sense I do not believe that there is an exact answer to this question, why beans? And I recognized that if not beans, then it would have been something else. The effort was all part of the experiment that his life at Walden was meant to try. Thoreau wrote, “We may try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earth like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes.” I think that the care he took to grow his beans must have taught him a great deal about beans and gardening and himself. It was the process and not the product that drove Thoreau to his rows of beans. If he were to realize a crop, then he had to make the effort. Of course, by the time these lines were first written in his journal in 1845 and then as part of Walden, Thoreau had long left his cabin and no longer planted beans and probably still had not taken to eating them. But that is one answer to the question “Why plant them?” Every activity became part of his experiment at Walden Pond, to assess what exactly he needed to live—life is so dear—and what he could do without. In “Economy,” Thoreau had written, “I have thought that Walden Pond would be a good place for business, not solely on account of the railroad and ice trade; it offers advantages which it may not be good policy to divulge . . . “ Beans were part of his personal experiment: “to make the earth say beans instead of grass—this was my daily work.” 

But after that first summer Thoreau did not ever return to planting beans. There was something else he sought that he could not realize from his effort in the garden. This was the conclusion at which he had arrived from his experiment: “This further experience I gained. I said to myself I will not plant beans and corn with so much industry another summer, but such seeds, if the seed is not lost, as sincerity, truth, simplicity, faith, innocence, and the like, and see if they will grow in this soil, even with less toil and manurance, and sustain me . . .” Feeding the body was important but it was not enough; his life needed more. Those virtues more than the beans and the corn must be the yield from his morning’s work. If he had wanted his beans to grow, then he had had to make the effort: it was his morning work! But those other seeds were not as easily nurtured as were the beans and corn; mistakes were made and the virtues did not grow. “Alas! I said this to myself; but now another summer is gone, and another, and another, and I am obliged to say to you, Reader, that the seeds which I planted, if indeed they were the seeds of those virtues, were wormeaten or had lost their vitality, and so did not come up.” We are not all we hoped to be and sometimes it would seem we are too subject to the gravity of another object and we crash into it and sometimes break apart. To the gravity of what object had Thoreau gotten too close? Down here in Lotus Land I think I believed I might be safe from the fierce pull of another’s gravity, but I was a fool to think so. I have to acknowledge that wherever I go I have to take me with me. “By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free (italics added), of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed . . .” I believe that in this way our seeds are made barren, have lost their vitality, and will not yield any crop. Beans brought Thoreau not merely into contact with history but with a universality of which he was a part. “As I drew still fresher soil about the rows with my hoe, I disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in primeval years lived under these heavens, and their small implements of war and hunting were brought to the light of the modern day.”  Though he loved his solitude, the beans suggested continuity and community. 

But I don’t mean to identify the two beanfields as identically motivated or even politically aligned, though there is certainly a politics behind Thoreau’s morning work in the beanfield. Thoreau does offer another motive for growing beans. His life, after all, was always an experiment and as in any scientific work it demanded a conclusion. “Why should I raise them,” he asks and then answers, “perchance, as some must work in fields if only for the sake of tropes and expression, to serve a parable-maker one day.” That exclamation gives meaning to the chapter that has itself become now a parable: a simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson. Here in Lotus Land far from my home during the wintry Midwest and now choosing to reside here for a considerable stay, I can often be found hoeing my beans as I write on the computer or read my Walden in my chair. But as Thoreau exclaims of his beans, “These beans have results which are not harvested by me. Do they not grow for woodchucks partly? The true husbandman (sic) will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but his last fruits also.” I sometimes hear in Thoreau’s last sentences in “The Beanfield” Marx’s utopian decree, “From each according to his ability. To each according to his needs.” Thoreau’s beanfield promised a world without regret, failure or want. 

As for those other seeds, . . . well, I am still struggling to grow them. 

Oh, yes, Joe Mandragón’s beanfield had created a community but it did not last. Maybe next summer Joe might plant such seeds as sincerity, faith, innocence and they like. However, in the present, bested by VISTA volunteer Herbie Goldfarb in breaking Charley Bloom’s bucking horse, Sunflower, that Joe had not been able to stay atop  at the rodeo, Joe walked up to the beaming rider and punched “that smart-ass East coast son of a bitch right in his prissy little nonviolent mouth.” Ah, but if the seeds be not lost . . .

 

Food, Glorious Food

In the midst of an episode of his hypos sometimes he would take himself out for a walk, not to saunter which is free and undirected but to search for himself. On one such recent walk an event from the early 1970s rose as a result of an itch. Maybe it was the weather that had begun to winter and he had pulled his coat tightly about him, but as he walked he recalled having purchased a pea coat at Canal Jeans on lower Broadway in the area called SoHo, a New York City acronym for south of Houston. That east/ west cross street is not to be pronounced Hewston, as in the Texan city, but articulated as Howston. The Texas city was named after Sam Houston, a general and statesman, but the New York City Street was named after William Houstoun, who, according to Wikipedia, served as a delegate from Georgia to the Continental Congress from 1784-1786 and then to the Constitutional Convention in 1787.  Houston married Mary Bayard in 1788 and Mary’s father, Nicholas, named the street after his new son-in-law. As his mother might have said, “I should be so lucky!” 
           In the early 1970s SoHo was crowded with factories that catered to the clothing trade; it was also an area that entertained a somewhat vibrant countercultural vibe, though perhaps that word didn’t belong on any airwave then. There were inexpensive rat-infested lofts occupied by hungry artists and writers: he aspired to be one of the latter but alas, he always he got hungry. He longed to enter the bohemian artist life, but he had neither the courage nor the skill. Instead, he worked rather dejectedly in one of the many clothing manufacturing factories in the area and looked with envy at the fogged windows in which he imagined the creative folks lived and worked. The factory floor on which he worked stretched through an entire block from Broadway west to Mercer Street. The ten rows of sewing machines at which sat mostly underpaid women of color filled the front half of the factory floor; towards the rear of the floor were the steam presses, the hanging racks, and the packing boxes and for finishing the manufactured clothes and preparing them for delivery. An extensive side room that ran about half of the size of the manufacturing floor was used for rolling out large bolsters of cloth that would be cut into patterned shapes. To him it was a dreary, odious place where the work was mind-numbing and for minimum wages. Sometimes he joined them in the deadening activities preparing products they would never be able to afford.
           It was the early 1970s and for his lunch break everyday he would put on his winter jacket, ride down what he imagined was the slowest elevator in the world and exited onto a somewhat lively Broadway where others, too, were either moving between work spaces or seeking a quick bite to eat. Usually, two slices of pizza and a soda would have satisfied him but that day he was suffering his hypos, and he chose to saunter and he set out to the north. He walked up two blocks and turned off Broadway onto Prince Street and walked west one block to Wooster where he came upon an artist run hippie restaurant simply named FOOD. He had not known this place had existed; inside he saw people whom he wanted to look like, and without hesitation he opened the door and joined with the quiet crowd. He ordered a bowl of soup that were sizzling in huge steel pots; along with the soup was included two thick slices of anadama bread and three slabs of butter. He had not before heard of this type of bread nor had he ever tasted anything so delicious. In his home Wonder Bread existed as the only baked dough. Despite the crowded floor he found a seat and in calm and comfort enjoyed this respite from the work, dirt and noise of the factory companioned here by artists and hippies who, too, had found a respite from the mundane and maybe from their hypos.  

          After lunch he headed back towards the shop floor. But first, with the time yet remaining . . . Across the street from his building’s entrance was a large clothing emporium, Canal Jeans, an establishment on the east side of Broadway about two or four blocks south of Houston Street and four or so blocks north of Canal Street. Canal Jeans was a cavernous space filled as he remembered with rough-hewn, large wooden tables piled high with jeans and shirts. Along the walls were wooden shelves into which shirts and other apparels were stacked. These were not the stuff that would be found at Macy’s or smaller and fashionable clothing stores. Here on the floor and lining the walls were the outfits fit for the hip hippie set. To prolong the satisfaction he had enjoyed at dining at FOOD, he walked into the store. On the display tables he saw pairs of painter jeans in a variety of bold colors: sun-yellow, sky blue, summer green, sunrise orange. He recognized this fare as statement jeans, and he imagined what they might be saying, what he might be saying and to whom he might be speaking. He picked up two pair. Then, looking about on the rough, unfinished walls of Canal Jeans were hung outerwear,—overcoats, jackets and vest—some that had even been previously worn. The idea of second-hand clothes was certainly not something of which his mother would approve but to which he was for some reason attracted. He remembered that once at college he had exchanged with a friend a perfectly fine sweater that had been purchased recently as a gift for a different one that sported a prominent tear in the elbow and which he the wore proudly.  
            On those crowded walls was where he found the pea coat hanging and to which he was instantly attracted. It was not a traditional Navy-issued garment, though it looked like one. Down Broadway and on Canal Street an Army-Navy store did business, but it was the Vietnam War era and he would not enter a military-establishment. His hypos pulled him to the pea coat hanging; he took it off the wall and put it on. When he had entered the establishment, he didn’t even know that he was looking for an item such as this or even that he had need of one. He recognized in the mirror who he thought he was or perhaps the image was who he wanted to be. Without another thought he purchased the coat and for several years he wore that coat—until one day he didn’t. At some point that he no longer remembered he lost contact with that garment, and with that loss he lost some version of himself. But now on this walk in the present, fifty-five years later wearing a more contemporary and even fashionable winter garment he came to appreciate that in his life since he had been looking about for that coat. And perhaps reaching for that man who had worn that garment.
            Thoreau had cautioned him to beware the enterprise that required new clothes and not a new man to wear those clothes. The man knew that clothes do not make the man, but perhaps it is that clothes may fit the man. Clothes existed that were the external expression of the self, and he thought that perhaps many spend their lives seeking out those garments. Yes, he knew that the self develops and changes, and it must continue to dress itself into the world. He considered that when shopping there seemed to be at least two options: to purchase the clothes that when worn will impress the world with the image, or conversely to acquire the garments that when worn expressed the self. Alas, though he had purchased a great many outer covers, on this walk he reflected that in his shopping for clothes he had rarely found that iteration of the pea coat—or eaten his lunches at establishments such as FOOD. 

 

 

When Sleep May Come

During the greater part of my life I did not think very much about sleep. I just slept. At the close of any day, I would change—sometimes at the direction order of my parents—into nightwear, wash the day off of my face, brush my teeth, get into my bed, lay my head upon my pillow, close my eyes and sleep until morning After I learned to read I would take the book to bed, prop up some support for my body and read. My parents never entered my bedroom to tell me to put the book away and go to sleep. At some point during the reading, my eyes would dim; my mind would fog and I would gently place the bookmark at the page I had reached, turn off the bed side light, put the book atop the headboard and rest my head gently on the pillow. As if by magic it would be morning save for the occasional nightmare. No sleep aids, anxiety medications, aspirins for the day’s efforts: just sleep into which I would unthinkingly drift. I did not think about sleep, did not feel anxious regarding it; did not worry that I would not sleep. I just fell asleep. 

    Now I am old and sleep has become a more complicated event and fraught with its own anxieties. On the bedside table I place my night medications: I split the trazodone tablet in half, take the first half to let me sleep and reserve the other half for when I awaken in the middle of the night and cannot return to sleep. On the bedside table are two acetaminophen tablets for the ache of my trigeminal neuralgia and a glass of water to get the tablets down. Also by the bedside shelf sits a box of tissues, lip balm, a case for my glasses; reading material I will store in what Levenger’s refers to as a reader’s toolbox. It is filled with more than is ever necessary in the moment . . . books, periodicals, pens and my journal . . . who knows what might be required during the day or night? I keep the toolbox placed by the bed in case sleep does not come and I lay awake. I worry about tomorrow. But on a good night I drop the book or journal of the moment into the slot of the reader’s toolbox reserved for it. Then I pull a pillow which has been designated as a cushion for my knees—I am a side sleeper—to prevent a painful ache that I would suffer in the morning as a consequence of one knee having rested heavily upon the other as I sleep in a semi-fetal position. I haven’t the slightest idea what causes this discomfort but I tend to blame most of such issues to the process of aging. Somewhere I read that aging is not a tragedy; it is a farce!

Having set a conducive environment for sleep and tossed aside the pillow that has supported me while I read, I settle down under the covers with my head on the remaining pillow. I toss and turn restlessly searching for the perfect sleep position for the moment. Sometimes, I have forgotten to use the bathroom before bedtime and so I have to reverse the routine, rise up and attend to my body’s demands, then return and repeat the bedtime routine, this time without the support pillows for reading, though I may require five minutes of reading something to calm me again from the exertions resulting from the journey to the bathroom. I do this added reading in a mostly supine position holding the material up toward the ceiling. I have already swallowed my tablets of sleep aids but they are not quick acting nor always effective, but I again lay my head upon my pillow but still require something to calm my mind. I sing to myself from a repertoire of often imperfectly remembered songs. On a good night I might finish one selection and get midway through a second before I slip into unconscious sleep, certainly to dream. My dreams are consistent but this is not the venue for their narration or interpretation. 

I awaken during the night more often than I would like—from dreams and bodily needs—and at some point worried that I will not fall back asleep, I take the second half of the trazodone and pull out the playlist for my encore. I sing unvocalized a selection I might remember but hope will not complete. Eventually I fall back asleep but awaken too early when the sky is still dark and even the nearby airport is quiet. I plan the time for a nap.

Maybe the innocence of childhood renders sleep invisible; sleep just was and did not require further thought. Without consciousness of or much bother about it, sleep often lasted through the night. It required no aids or counting sheep or singing sotto voce. I know that there are children whose innocence has been stolen from them, and I don’t know how sleep appears to them. But for me now, an admittedly privileged older man, sleep is a complicated event for which complexities and evasions I had not prepared. In any case, I go to bed too early and awaken too soon. The idea of sleep rests heavy on my mind the way it never did in my childhood or my youth, but as I aged sleep became a matter I might obsess about, trouble my self and my partner about and render the event too visible and thereby less accessible. In Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead the Reverend Ames who has heard a great many confessions says, “There is a lot under the surface of life, everyone knows that. A lot of malice and dread and guilt, and so much loneliness, where you really would expect to find it either.” Life often troubles my days and keeps me up at night. 

Destroying the World to Save Himself

Here is today’s news headlined in the New York Times: “President Trump threatened to wipe out a ‘whole civilization,’ and the United States hit military targets on Iran’s main oil export hub, as Trump ramped up pressure on Tehran to fully open the Strait of Hormuz or potentially face a wave of strikes on critical infrastructure in the coming hours. Mr. Trump issued the grave warning in a post on social media on Tuesday as a new round of attacks was launched across the Middle East. The U.S. attacked Kharg Island, the export hub, Israel and Iran launched fresh attacks and Israel’s military warned Iranians to avoid traveling by train. The increasingly incendiary threats and the intense fighting reinforced the fragile state of diplomacy, with no public signs of a diplomatic breakthrough to end the war.” I am reminded of the fear that gripped the world during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 when the threat of nuclear war and world destruction seemed imminent. On Easter Sunday a president of the United States and reputed world leader wrote, “Open the fucking Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell. JUST WATCH.” The obscenity laced threat can be spoken by low-life’s and belongs in the garbage strewn gutters and dark corners and not in the delicate and crucial public forums of diplomacy and negotiation. What is obscene is not only the language but the intent. And of course, the source the obscenity laced discourse. But I recognize in his threat a textbook example of the defensive psychological disorder called projection in which an individual unconsciously assigns their own unacceptable thoughts, feelings or impulses to avoid anxiety or loss of self-esteem. I am wondering, who exactly is the crazy bastard here? Today Trump threatened to wipe out a whole civilization and prophesized that it will never recover. He threatened, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again . . .” Most of what he threatens is defined as war crimes. But his language suggests that he is already destroying civilization. 

Trump’s threats remind me of the words and events in the Hebrew bible. In Genesis God destroys humankind f with the flood for their depravity and immoral acts. In Exodus God threatens to destroy the freed slaves who have worshipped the golden calf. “I see that this is stiffnecked people. Now let Me be, that My anger may blaze forth against them and that I may destroy them . . .” In Numbers God threatens to destroy the people after the report by the spies deters the Israelites from entering the Land. And in Deuteronomy, Moses warns the people that their disobedience will lead to their destruction. By the flood God succeeds in wiping out civilization; in the latter instances Moses is able to convince God not to destroy the people, and I hold in my mind an image of God sulking back to his room and feeling that his compliance is emblem of his ultimate weakness. God accuses the Israelites of being stiffnecked that I take to be a synonym for the child’s expletive, doody-head!

            Trump is not God though he does seem in his threats to mimic God’s words and in his actions to presume God’s power. But as God in the Hebrew Bible is often petulant and petty demanding absolute submissiveness and strict obedience, threatening destruction for disobedience; so is Trump petulant and petty threatening destruction for disobedience that is only a synonym for disloyalty. I think of the Red Queen who orders “Off with their heads!” Unlike God, however, Trump actually has the power to destroy civilization to protect his megalomaniacal belief in his absolute power and indestructability. What I am saying is that Trump’s narcissism and megalomania threatens not just the Iranian civilization but that of all humanity. To save himself Trump would sacrifice the world. Trump’s narcissism is not a tragic flaw: it is a serious psychological condition that defines every act from his very limited and self-serving perspective in which he can define himself as the greatest President in American history with permission to do whatever he wants with impunity. He is mad and maddening; he is a danger to all civilization.  

            

Hobby-Horses, redux

In Anthony Powell’s third novel in his twelve novel magnus opus Dance to the Music of Time, narrator and character Nicholas Jenkins remarks “I reflected not for the first time, how mistaken it is to suppose that there exists some ‘ordinary’ world into which it is possible at will to wander. All human beings, driven as they are at different speeds by the same Furies are at close range equally extraordinary.” An interesting observation, even one with insight, I consider, though I am aware that it is not remarkably original. What Jenkins suggests—and I suppose it is important to remember that narrator Jenkins is not author Powell—is that though we are all driven by the same Furies each individual expresses their Furies in a different manner; there is no ordinary world into which one may wander but only the extraordinary world of individuals dealing differently with their Furies. This has been expressed before. For example, Tristram Shandy asserts, “have not the wisest of men in all ages, not excepting Solomon himself,—have they not had their hobby-horses; their running horses,—their coins and their cockle-shells, their drums and their trumpets, their fiddles, their pallets,—their maggots and their butterflies?” We all have our idiosyncrasies, our peccadilloes which we ride out in society and to which the rest of us will witness and hopefully give acceptance. At a minimum I might consider that we are our Hobby-Horses upon which we ride from out of our stables. Tristram is willing enough to practice a liberality and accept the extraordinariness of others, “and so long as a man rides his hobby-horse peaceably and quietly along the King’s highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him,—pray, Sir, what have either you or I do with it?” I am thinking of the song by Kris Kristofferson, “Here Comes That Rainbow Again:” the waitress sells candy to two Okie kids for less than the candies cost, and when the truck drivers note that “them candy’s not two for a penny,” she answers, “What’s it to you?” On their way out they leave a large tip and the waitress calls out, “You’ve left too much money,” and they answer, “What’s it to you?” Indeed, I tend to agree. When we observe a person riding upon their hobby-horse, well, don’t they certainly look extraordinary. Don’t we all appear so upon our steeds. Here comes that rainbow again.

            The Furies are the Greek goddesses of vengeance, retribution, and divine punishment. The Furies are best known for creatures who mercilessly pursue oath-breakers, murderers (especially familial, think Oedipus), and the wicked to inflict madness and torment. Jenkins suggests that we are all pursued by the same Furies but at different speeds and strengths. I don’t think so, however; our histories are all different and distinct. So, too, must be our particular Furies. What their ancestries might be is a personal matter—“what have either you or I to do with it?”—Tristram is more benevolent towards these peculiarities and even foibles, and so long as I do not demand anybody to ride along on mine and no one insists that I ride along on theirs then  “what’s it to you?” Jenkins suggests that from a distance everyone looks ‘ordinary,’ but on closer examination we all seem a bit mad. Of course, I comment, from a distance not much is visible; what we see is our fantasies, and so, yes, ordinary is what we see. That way illusion lies! I think I prefer madness. As D.W. Winnicott announces, “I must ask your forbearance if in the process I seem to suggest that all of us are ill, or, on the other hand, that the mentally ill are sane.” They do not attend to the strictures and customs of accepted society; they do not say please and thank-you when they really do not mean it. But that is alright, Winnicott says, for “we are poor indeed if we are only sane.” Our creativity derives from the energies of the private self as it comes into contact with objects that the world has made available for use. “What are they doing,” we wonder. “If we can accept the Hobby-Horses of others with equanimity, even an acknowledgement of our own full stables, how much more joy we might realize! As Ricardo Reis in Saramajo’s novel plaintively says, “We are all ill, with one malaise or another, a deep-rooted malaise, that is inseparable from what we are and that somehow makes us what we are, you might say that each of us is his own illness, we are so little because of it, and yet we succeed in being so much because of it.” How would we get anywhere except atop our Hobby-Horses?

Freud knew something about Hobby-Horses; he referred to them as personal neuroses upon which an individual has constructed beliefs and behaviors. They are the belief and behaviors of the individual. I own a few myself and take then out of the sable for a ride regularly. Everyone notices and some even comment; I respond, “What’s it to you?” 

There is no ordinary world, in fact, and with that I am content.

 

 

 

Second time as farce, again

Sometimes the only way to calm my anxieties is to come to the computer and attempt to write something. Trump’s capture of the President of Venezuela and his claims that the United States will “run” that country until a proper transition (to what, I wonder, democracy as practiced by Trump and his minions? Ha!) has led me to the computer. I need a desert island to avoid him and Lotus land has not yet proved d sufficiently adequate. Or maybe it is I at fault here because I don’t able to cease doom-scrolling. I recognize that Trump’s braggadocio has stolen the script from the words of President Mckinley at the takeover of the Philippines at the end of the nineteenth century. President McKinley had then said, “That there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men (sic) for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed, and went to sleep, and slept soundly, and the next morning I sent for the chief engineer of the War Department (our mapmaker), and I told him to put the Philippines on the map of the United States, and there they are, and there they will stay while I am President!” Trump said, “We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country." That it will be a Christian thing to do seems for this administration de rigeur. First time as tragedy, second time as farce. It is of course no accident that 20% of the world’s oil reserves are in Venezuela and with the take-over of the country the United States will be running Venezuela and its oil fields. Stephen Miller, ha said that the United States would now exploit Venezuela oil reserves. Trump’s friends I am certain will make a killing financially while Venezuela will suffer the killing more physically and spiritually. I learn that much of China’s oil comes from Venezuela. I wonder how that might play out on the world scene. Vladimir Putin will benefit from Trump’s aggression in Russia’s war against Ukraine. And will the Chinese leadership assume that militarily taking over Taiwan is now internationally sanctioned given Trump’s takeover of Venezuela?  Recent imperialistic interventions by American presidents in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan did not go well. For Trump to declare offensively that the Donroe doctrine, now renamed from the doctrine known as the Monroe Doctrine that declared that the United States controls the Western Hemisphere gives Trump permission to accomplish whatever he pleases to assert American imperial aims. As with his golf course, his business owns it: And the man puts his name on everything. He owns the world he  declares. America First? On the one hand Trump reminds me of the agenda of Charles Lindbergh who accepted medals from the Nazis and thought that the United States ought to control the world that he flew over. First time as tragedy, second time as farce. 

            These so-called leaders act out of an absolute ignorance of history and with a braggadocio and insensitivity that continues to appall me. That is, they choose to believe that their actions justifying this invasion are for the good of the nation invaded and will be beneficial to the country that has accomplished the invasion.  These leaders claim that their actions are not motivated by a grasp for greater or selfish aggrandizement of personal gains, but the reality offers a different picture. But I think that if there is anything personal to be gained from a political action then that action must be carefully scrutinized. No one but his henchmen were consulted. Congress was not consulted. And the effronteries continue. For example, Trump’s decision to abandon leases for public golf courses in Washington D.C. enhances his own private golfing enterprises. To justify this move he claims that the golf courses have not been carefully maintained, but what exactly are his criteria except his own series of private golf courses on which only wealthy people can play!  President Trump, who spends many weekends golfing, has floated the possibility of redoing the district's courses. "If we do them, we'll do it really beautifully," Trump said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. The Trump administration, it reports, “prides itself on getting the job done for the American people and partnering with others who share that same goal," said the Interior Department, which oversees the National Park Service.  But I think that privately owned golf courses can certainly be maintained up to the owners standards but those standards ought not to be applied to public courses where exorbitant member fees control access and diversity. If Trump has anything to gain personally by his actions he should not act.

            And so  ere dining at a restaurant. In walked a couple, the man looked certainly over 60 years of age. He was wearing shorts and a white t-shirt. On the back of the shirt screenprint was a map of the United States showing the red states that voted for Trump and the blue states that voted for Harris. Under the map the caption read, “We saved America.” Ha! The economy is in serious trouble, the threats of war increase, and as Trump boasts, he is not troubled by the concept of troops on the ground. Maybe the President has no children or grandchildren to sacrifice to the wars. For this past year of his reign, the rule of law has been ignored, Congress has been neutered, and the President acts as if governing the country is not so different from running his businesses and with the same intention: to grasp power for power’s sake and to make more money for him and his friends. Despite the man’s t-shirt, the man’s vote has not saved the country, but rather aligns with Trump’s bluster that he knows exactly what must be done to Make America Great Again?) and that he asserts complete control over everything. Any fool can now see that his belief in complete knowledge and control is the cry of a fool. In this administration the popular demand, America First, translates into “As long as I can profit it’s America First, but as for everything else, well, the country be damned so long as I can gain.” The criminality of empire building went out of fashion many years ago if it ever it seemed au courant. Those people too stupid to recognize the dangers in the President’s actions or who actually support the President’s policies are not the deplorables as Hillary Clinton said but the despicables. And the incivility and nastiness of President Trump by his words and actions provides sanction for their exercise of vulgarity.

            And still remain anxious, but that is another story,

Interesting Times!

There is this phrase, often xenophobically attributed to the Chinese (not unlike the blame directed at the Chinese for the recent pandemic) but actually spoken by British politician Joseph Chamberlain. The saying goes, “May you live in interesting times.” I do not believe any definition is given for what is meant by ‘interesting times’ though it is commonly believed ir refers to times that are turbulent. Dissension, war, revolution, social unrest., those events of times. Given even a casual glance at history, I suppose the times are always turbulent, and so I wonder, when are the times not interesting! Robert F. Kennedy had used the phrase to suggest that turbulent times could lead to change! But to my thinking, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. As for me, the existence of war, violent and dissension have been ever constant during my life: I cannot begin to list the events that have rendered my times turbulent.

            Turbulence begins as a small irregularity and to my unscientific mind this irregularity suddenly transforms unpredictably into something dangerous. Tornadoes are highly localised, extremely small and spontaneous systems. It is practically impossible to forecast their formation and path. They are, however, turbulent! As with tornados, a small personal or cultural irregularity suddenly transforms into a violent and dangerous turbulence. Airplane pilots recommend to passengers to fasten seatbelts when seated in case of unexpected turbulence. Turbulence is always unexpected, unpredictable and potentially very dangerous. Nobel laurate Richard Feynman says, “if water falls over a dam, it splashes. It we stand nearby, every now and then a drop will land on our nose. This appears to be completely random . . . The tiniest irregularities are magnified in falling so that we get randomness.” Personal and social order follows this pattern. “[G]iven an arbitrary accuracy, no matter how precise, one can find a time long enough that we cannot make predictions valid for that long a time. Now the point is that the length of time is not very large . . . It turns out that in only a very, very tiny time we lose all our information . . .  We can no longer predict what is going to happen!” A smoothly running classroom turns turbulent suddenly from some minor disturbance. Turbulence is inevitable and highly unpredictable. That is why pilots caution passenger to fasten their seatbelts. 

But there are those who disdainfully yet ignorantly deny the existence of turbulence and that neither they or any one else require seat belts; these are individuals and governments who foolishly assert their capacity to command control over everything. Their narcissism threatens everyone aboard the plane. Such leaders are fools. Tolstoy writes in War and Peace, “It is understandable that as long as the historical sea is calm, it must seem to the ruler-administrator in his fragile little bark, resting his pole against the ship of the people and moving along with it, that his efforts are moving the ship. But once a storm arises, the sea churns up, and the ship begins to move itself, and then the delusion is not long possible . . . the ruler suddenly, from his position of power, from being a source of strength, becomes an insignificant, useless, and feeble human being.” Oblivious to their own ultimate helplessness they construct homes out of sticks and straw. Such unwise leaders refuse to acknowledge that we cannot predict irregularity with very much accuracy, that we always must be prepared for unexpected turbulence, and that we mere mortals would be foolish to think that we are in full and inviolable control at all times.

There are, at least, two aspects to this ignorance: that of the one who behaves as if they are in complete control over everything and so denies the possibility of turbulence; and there are those who ought to fasten their seat belts but do not do so because they believe the swagger of their irrational leader. In 1834 Orestes Brownson delivered an address on the 58^th anniversary of American Independence. Brownson warned, “There is a worm gnawing into the very heart of the tree of liberty which our fathers have planted . . . a large portion of our community lies at the mercy of any political demagogue who knows how to veil his liberticide designs under a pretended love of the dear people.” And those dear people foolishly believe this solipsistic leader. I wonder . . . Make America Great Again? When was the United States ever great? During the religious persecutions of the 17^th century? At the advent and perpetuation of slavery? During the massacre of the Native indigenous populations? At the attempt by the Southern states to destroy the Union by seceding from it? The rapaciousness of the Gilded Age? During the Cold War Arms race? The Vietnam and Iraq Wars? The preent oligarchical takeover of the government by sycophants and incompetent officers? The incidences of turbulence continue to pile up. When wasn’t the nation beset by turbulence? Brownson knew that American democracy was an experiment and that it could fail if not nurtured and watched over. I think that any leader that assumes absolute control over events ignores the reality of turbulence and the responsibilities that attach to the offices they serve. But then that leader must be protected from the reality of turbulence by his minions and his secret services. They ignore the reality that they cannot protect him from someone who has greater accuracy with a rifle or from foreign leaders with less bravura and more skill. To declare a complete knowledge of and control over things and events and to confidently predict a future becomes evidence of stupidity. It denies the existence of turbulence. Such a position does not acknowledge the world as it exists. The narrator of George Eliot’s Middlemarch says, “to most mortals there is a stupidity which is unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable—else, indeed, what would become of social bonds?” Of the latter I might offer this: we teach a child to say please and thank you even though the child doesn’t really mean it. We demand that elementary school students recite the pledge of allegiance though they don’t understand one word of it, not even the word ‘I.’ The demands and niceties in the maintenance of social bonds are numerous, strong and sometimes even important. We must be guided to a sense of restraint. 

I think we live in interesting, turbulent times. We are led by stupid, self-centered individuals who believe that they can assert absolute control over everything and who deny the existence of turbulence. Of social bonds they care not a whit and so assume the right to do whtever they please and the rest be damned. Such stupidities are dangerous even as faith in these stupidities is equally troublesome. No one is that knowledgeable or powerful to ignore turbulence.

I have been thinking of the Schooner Fare song “We the People.” They sing,

We know the time has come
To take our heads out of the sand
'Cause if we don't the chance might never come again

If we do not fasten our seat belts and attend to the already present turbulences, the chance may never come again.