Thoughts from listening to John Foxx’s “My Lost City” this morning

My copy of “My Lost City” arrived from Townsend Records yesterday, and I was anxious to listen to it this morning. I don’t make a habit of writing about my experiences with music. I feel that most reviews are pretentious, and I don’t really consider this a review per se—more my own mental ramblings after listening to the album. I think that music serves a religious function. When I say “religious”, I am referring to the Latin word “religare”—to link back or tie back. I find myself talking about this album because I think it serves that function very well.

I would say that many of the songs on this album have a hymn-like quality to them, if not somewhat fragmented. Reading Foxx’s liner notes on this does help put the album in context. It’s actually meant to be an album of fragments. Pictures made from the bones of old experiences. A tapestry of ghosts.

Why ghosts, though? What is the need of going back over the past, over things that are done and gone, and rehashing them? But that is how one makes sense of life. All of us ponder our ghosts at some point, no matter where they come from—places, people, events. The ones that haunt us are often the ones that reflect what we consider to be a failure—a memory of something wonderful lost, a sense of regret over the handling of a situation, something we wish we could go back to and do again, or fix. There is a sense of wanting “perficere”—to finish, to complete the situation as wished.

There is also the sense of “lost-ness”. The sense of being lost is ghostly in itself, because it is always a past or future thing—one is either experiencing a void where something was before, or they don’t know where they’re headed. Neither is “real”.

Regardless of where I am—I could be in my own neighborhood, in New York City, in Los Angeles, in London—people always seek me out to ask me things. And they’re not selling anything. They are lost. I commented aloud once after my input had been solicited by strangers for the third time in a 2 hour period. The person I was speaking to said, “Well, of course people ask you. You look like you know where you’re going.” He was right. I do know where I’m going. Nowhere. There isn’t anywhere to go. Life isn’t about rushing from one milestone to the next. As to past lost-ness, I’ve never believed in that. Everything is borrowed, and if it’s really yours, then it will find its way back to you, even if you appear to have lost it. Most of the time the only thing we lose are illusions. Clarity is a starkly beautiful bitch.

Fundamentally, we are fragmented. Our external experiences are only reflections of that, reminders that we are split in some fashion. Religion is supposed to provide a tool for integration, for linking those fragments back together in a way that is whole and harmonious. Sadly, religion today often fails at this—the tool is broken. Art and music are the only tools we have in this day and age for providing that link.

What I love about this album is how you really get the sense of harmonizing chaotic fragments, the bits that don’t seem to go together, the always imperfect attempts to bring some unity or order to those fragments. One gets the sense of going through the attic, finding things, dusting them off, deciding what to do with them, where they fit in. And like any good allegory—it’s not just a sense of old buildings, old memories. It also disturbs the deeper sense of separation.

If I take a step back and look at a lot of Foxx’s work, this is a continuation of a similar theme—the Quiet Man, Cathedral Oceans—the sense of looking back, putting fragments together, the sense of being lost, invisible, somehow all mashed up together in a collage, either visual or audio (or both). I consider it great art because it reflects something larger than the artist, a fact about the culture that we live in.

What fact? People are lost and they are broken, and haven’t a clue as to how to put their shattered selves together again—does anyone remember what it’s like to be whole? Brokenness is everywhere. People do different things with it. Some people collapse, some move through life ignoring the pain of brokenness, others try to build new structures out of the broken ones—or leave them behind for new structures entirely.

But brokenness is not something to despair; rather, it is to be celebrated. One should not be broken by their brokenness. To be broken is to be alive, to have been shaped in some way, not simply left untouched. What challenge is there in never being broken? I think one of the things I really like about this album is that it presents the pieces without judgment. They are simply there, for you to make what you will of the fragments. There is no aura of victimization here.

Enough said. I think this album is tremendous. In the sense of “tremendum”.

Snow Day Randomness: 2009 edition

Welcome to the third edition of Snow-Day Randomness. This has become an un-intentional tradition, which may or may not be a good thing. It does, however, have the benefit of quasi-meaningful distraction, otherwise known as "keeping me out of trouble". When it snows and I'm stuck inside, there is always potential for trouble. I get strange ideas when I'm alone in the house for too long. Having the cats here does not help that.

Today's snowstorm is particularly heinous in many ways. For one thing, it is bitterly cold and windy. The plus side is that shoveling ought to be a breeze, as the snow will not be thick, wet, and icy. But the drifts! I opened my door at 5:00 this morning to feed the basement cats, and could not believe how the snow had drifted against my door, and my basement door. And did I mention that it's fucking cold? I cannot help but think about the fact that it was about 60 degrees Farenheit in London the weekend before this last one. Why did I ever come back?

This weekend I have been on a tear to go through the mounds of books sitting in my stairwell for the last 5 and a half years, dust them off, and get rid of the ones I don't want. I accomplished this yesterday, with a price to pay today--my body is absolutely killing me. I still have a few more things to do, and another part of the house to tackle; "later" is sounding like a very good time for that (never mind shoveling snow), maybe after the Advil has kicked in.

I have been reading through the taglines on Fark this morning. Fark is a website run by Drew Curtis, and it is dedicated to news that is not news. Curtis has an entire book dedicated to the various categories of non-news, which is highly amusing, and somewhat scary. The proliferation of things out there in newspapers and in the news online and on TV that is just a lot of made-up garbage, or advertising posing as news is mind-boggling. The Fark site allows users to submit these articles with an appropriate tagline that summarizes the article. The best taglines/articles actually make it onto the Fark site. The non-news is divided into various categories: scary, obvious, asinine, dumbass, interesting, hero, and Florida, to name a few. If you're wondering about that last one, then you've never been to Florida.

Here are some examples from today's Fark:

Filed under "Stupid" : Headline: "U.S. airlines losing less luggage." Actual point of article: people aren't checking as many bags due to bag fees

Filed under "Florida": Woman arrested for aggravated battery with deadly weapon after stabbing boyfriend in face with her stiletto shoe

Filed under "Scary" : War brewing on the US-Mexico border. This is not a repeat from 1846

Filed under "Silly": LA County to proclaim "No Cussing Week." Yeah, good farking luck with that shiat

(California is going bankrupt, and someone is worried about swearing. The person leading this should talk to Lewis Black.)

I don't watch the news and barely read the papers anymore, precisely because of the phenomenon demonstrated by the Fark site. I can't tell you how many times my mother has come trooping over to visit me, handing me an article about some study that proves that something I am doing is going to kill me one day. (File that under "obvious"). Yet, if you read the fine print, a lot of these are sensational-sounding propaganda masquerading as a serious scientific study. Yet, people like her, who already worry too much about nothing, don't realize this and get even more worked up about nothing. There must have been a time when you could rely on a newspaper to provide sound journalism that had integrity. Those days are long gone, not even part of memory, so it's best not to assume that anyone in journalism has anything useful or true to tell you.

Before my thoughts get too well organized, and in the interest of the "randomness" tradition, I present to you:

15 Random Things I Have Learned Over the Years

1. The desire to clean everything in your house with a Q-Tip is a sure sign of one of 3 possible things: PMS, pregnancy, or a meth addiction. I'm sure someone will do a study that will correlate the 3.

2. Tequila is bottled evil. Not the good kind of evil.

3. Something kills everyone someday. If you think this is obvious, speak to the folks who continually admonish me for not getting an annual flu shot, not eating vegetables, and for drinking copious amounts of diet soda.

4. The fastest way to drive a bunch of unwanted and hung over twenty-somethings from your house after a night of partying is to play some early Pink Floyd singles. Say, "Apples and Oranges." Or, "It Would Be So Nice." (This is a leftover from my days of being married)

5. It is actually OK to be physically sick once in awhile. Never convenient, but you'll live.

6. If your job sucks so badly that you have to call and dump on all of your friends almost daily about how terrible your day was...time to get another job. Same goes for your marriage (though I wouldn't recommend running into another one of those.) It's not nice to bleed your friends dry of any pleasure they might have experienced during the day.

7. Beware of what Scott Adams calls "the rolling disaster." This is the person who is besieged daily by major catastrophes, usually self-created. When you encounter such a person--run, don't walk.

8. You do not have any more brains at 40 than you did at 20. Being older does not necessarily make you smarter.

9. If you find yourself tripping down the escalators at Penn Station at midnight because you are so wasted, it's probably not a good idea to drive home once you get to the train station.

10. If you are so attached to your job, your friends, your position in life, that you would completely fall apart if there was a big change--then you need to rethink your priorities.

11. Toyotas are difficult to break into, so try not to lock your keys in the car if you own one.

12. Everything is absurd, and should not be taken too seriously.

13. Never answer the phone, unless you really do want a new mortgage or want to order satellite TV.

14. You won't find real news in a newspaper or an online/televised news network. You need to go to a comedy show, or satirical newspaper like The Onion.

15. Work, politics, and day-to-day interactions are not logical. You can save yourself a lot of grief if you realize this.

I guess I should go shovel some snow.

Aloneness

I went to London again this past weekend; the short trips seem to be the most fun. However, I always seem to return with odd injuries, as though I’ve been beaten by an invisible hand on the way in or out. This time, I came home to find a tremendous bruise on my left leg, just below and slightly behind my knee. Add that to my black and blue finger (managed to slam it in the iron basement door—ouch!), and the intense pain in my left arm from my allergy shot, and I’m just a mess this morning. Fortunately, this has not dampened my mood at all.

I went to Karborn’s exhibit on Marshall St. in London, and ended up buying one of his pieces, which he’s going to send to me at the end of next week. It’s really a magnificent piece, but it’s rather large, and it’s a canvas frame rather than a print under glass, so I have to find a good location for it in the house. “Good location” means not only that’s it’s visible and fits in with its surroundings, but also out of reach of kitty cats. Cats do not appreciate art, and would view a canvas frame as an extra scratching post.

This morning, I contemplated the fact that next week I am switching dashas. If you don’t know what a “dasha” is (and why would you, unless you’re from India), there is an explanation here that is less technical than anything else I have seen. In short, it’s a Vedic astrological measure that divides your dashas (cycles of years) into segments reflecting certain qualities. The dasha I am leaving behind is called Ketu dasha. It is characterized by a need to be alone and self-reflective, among other things. Which is a pretty fair characterization of the years since I left my husband (interestingly, at the start of my Ketu dasha). Like any astrological system, I take it with a grain of salt, though I must admit the Vedic system is pretty uncanny in its accuracy. But that is for another post.

Still being self-reflective for another week, I thought about the whole cycle of aloneness and where it started. It actually started in September 2001, just 12 days after the September 11 disaster in New York. I remembered being at work on 9/11, the gradual sense of awareness that something was really wrong in the city 25 miles away. No one did any work the rest of the day; most people wandered around in a daze, many were worried about spouses or children working in the city that day. I went outside with my assistant, and we looked up to see dark smoke billowing in over the otherwise wonderfully clear autumn day. Walking up the hill on the other side of the street, you could see the New York skyline, and the black smoke belching its way up into the city sky, slowly expanding into the space around it. In the aftermath, many folks commented that this kind of thing happens in war-torn countries all the time, and that the U.S. has been sheltered from such tragedies. While that is a true statement, I don’t think you can compare it exactly to what happened in New York.

New York is a very dense city, not only in terms of population, but in terms of occupied space. It’s not like any other city in the world. Skyscrapers loom at you from every city block, perhaps with the exception of places like Lincoln Center or Central Park. I didn’t really spend time in the WTC towers, though I had been there in the 1980s with my brother. I am afraid of heights, so the building was absolutely terrifying to me. Photos of people flinging themselves from the tower windows, reports of people playing pranks on family members desperately looking for their relatives working in the towers—the whole thing was just gruesome and disturbing on a level that is difficult to verbalize. After the catastrophe, the air quality was dreadful—it was at least a month before one could really walk around Manhattan below 14^th Street without worrying about breathing in something carcinogenic.

After all of this, the city was quite empty for awhile. Attendance at shows and concerts in the city went way down, as people were now too traumatized to go into Manhattan. I have to admit I was deeply disturbed by 9/11, but I didn’t really think the solution was to run away from New York. In fact, I went quite regularly—3 times a week at that point. It was an interesting time. I would get on the 7 train to Queens, and all sorts of people riding the train with you—businessmen, students, gang members—would actually make eye contact and say, “There’s some crazy shit going on in this world, isn’t there?” I had to agree.

2 weeks after September 11, my husband moved out. After he walked out the door and drove away, I remember feeling a huge void in the house, like some big presence had occupied it, and it was now gone. As much as I love my space, this void felt more like a black hole—like you could be sucked in by it and destroyed. But I quickly realized that this was more of a reaction to an Unknown, and had nothing to do with my husband. I had never lived alone in my life. I responded to the feeling by taking control of the house—cleaning, moving things around, getting packed for my own move. The following night I went out for drinks with some friends. They asked if I missed my husband. Without a second thought I said, “Hell no!” I preferred being alone to having that tension in the house.

This is all a rather roundabout way of suggesting that aloneness is not necessarily a negative. I would bet money that one of the biggest challenges facing any individual is the ability to be alone. We like all kinds of distractions and chatter around us, surround ourselves with people—but we just can’t bear to be alone. We think strange thoughts, get depressed, need something to distract ourselves. Aloneness forces you to confront the uncomfortable things in your life amid the silence.

It did not take me long to get used to living alone—the sense of joy that I felt when I moved into my first apartment without my husband was exhilarating. I did not have to worry about tiptoeing around another human being—I could make my own schedule, get up at any hour of the day or night, and be answerable to no one. I’ve learned a lot about myself being alone, that I never would have discovered if I had to be distracted by the concerns I had throughout my marriage.

Aloneness did not mean that I didn’t have a social life. I had boyfriends, and went out a lot with friends. But I liked to spend large chunks of time away from people—this is how I developed the habit of not answering my phone, which drives some people absolutely crazy.

The next “dasha” that is supposed to start next week is Shukra (Venus) dasha. Supposedly this brings an end to aloneness, and brings prosperity. I hope that’s true. I could easily handle 20 years of that.

New Jersey Driving

Lots of jokes are made about driving in New Jersey. The most famous is the tired, cliched "What exit?" joke that one hears when they say they are from New Jersey. And then there's the economic factor. A couple of years ago, the New Jersey state government hired a firm to come up with a new slogan for the state. I don't remember what they came up with, but it was so lame, Weird NJ magazine decided to hold their own contest for a new slogan. I don't remember the winner of that contest, either. I do remember my favorite slogan from it, though--"New Jersey : it's free to come here, but you have to pay to leave". Which is mostly true--there are no tolls to enter the state, but you usually have to pay at the New York, Pennsylvania, or Delaware borders. Unless you're me, and you know the free ways to get out. The exception, of course, is Manhattan--there is no free way into Manhattan. In fact, it's so expensive to get into New York City, I feel like I'm being robbed every time. I should just hand my wallet over to the toll taker as I drive through the Lincoln Tunnel.

But I digress. I have no classes to teach this semester, so I figured I was home free on really long commutes for the next few months. Now I have a digital project at our university's other campus that necessitates my driving to Hackensack multiple days during the week. Hackensack is 65 miles away. Sigh. So much for saving wear and tear on the car.

Months of driving all over New Jersey have prompted me to rethink the old jokes about New Jersey driving. While it is not true that New Jersey is just an endless loop of exits, I have been thinking that our highways may be a version of Hell a la Dante. Various highways represent different "circles" of Hell, using more modern categories. For example:

Ring of Hell: the Hopelessly Stupid.
Highway: Route 4

Route 4 runs through Bergen County, ending at Fort Lee. Not only was this highway designed by idiots, it attracts other idiots like a magnet. Specifically, idiots who clearly paid someone off to get their drivers' licenses. Have you ever been driving, see a car waiting to pull out, and imagine them doing something really stupid--and then think, "Nah, nobody could be THAT stupid." Well, on Route 4, they do all those things you could imagine. Large slow trucks pulling out across 3 lanes of cars doing 50 miles per hour. People weaving back and forth across lanes like drunks, because they are "confused" about where they need to be to get onto the Parkway. People stopping in the middle of interchanges because they clearly aren't sure where they want to go. It all happens on Route 4 daily.

To be fair, the Garden State Parkway/Route 17 interchange on Route 4 is a real act of stupidity, and if you don't already know where you need to be, you are bound to be confused. I think the engineers who set that up WANTED to see accidents. I can imagine a hidden camera on the interchange, and the joy in their faces when a pile-up stops traffic on 4, 17, AND the Parkway. These people should have their own circle of Hell.

Ring of Hell: the Relentlessly Selfish
Highway: The New Jersey Turnpike

Aside from the infamous stench that lingers in the Jersey City area, the New Jersey Turnpike has some kind of detrimental effect on your brain. All major highways leading into New York City eventually end up at the Turnpike, which also has an Extension, designed to trip up the brazen tourist who would dare to drive through this area, and punish them by landing them squarely in the center of Newark. (Driving tip: do not drive the Extension unless you are going to the Statue of Liberty, Bayonne, Hoboken, or Jersey City).

Why do I say the Turnpike attracts the selfish? Consider the following true story. An acquaintance of mine had been driving over one of the bridges on the Turnpike closer to the City, and ended up in a car accident. The accident was so bad, the emergency crews needed the jaws of life to get her out of her car. As she was being pulled out and put on a stretcher, passing motorists honked their horns, gave her the finger, and shouted, "Thanks a lot you f**king b*tch." To which she responded in her best Jersey accent, "I'm so sawry!" with the accompanying sarcastic look. Are New Jersey drivers the only ones this selfish? Massachusetts is probably neck in neck...

The Southern end of the Turnpike is less crowded, but the average driving speed is about 125 miles per hour. Everyone does it--I'm pretty sure I've done it, too. Something happens to your brain in South Jersey. It's like a Twilight Zone episode.

Ring of Hell: the Perpetually Lost
Highway: Route 80

Route 80 is very long--it actually runs from Bogota, New Jersey to San Francisco, California. (Bogota is where 80 turns into Interstate 95, and the good ol' Turnpike). 80 itself is straightforward enough; however, its exits lead to lots of little traps. Paterson, for instance. It is very easy to get to downtown Paterson. (Why anyone would willingly go there is another question, but let's not get off topic). I actually have had to go to Paterson, mainly for events at PCCC related to my job. While getting in is easy, getting out is not so easy. It took me about 5 minutes to get to my destination--it took over an hour to get out later. Paterson is like a huge maze, designed to trip you up. Newark is another such place off of Route 80 (and several other major highways as well). Newark is like something out of that Mark Danielewski novel, "House of Leaves". Even people who live there get so lost, as one way streets suddenly change direction, streets that used to take you places are suddenly closed, and no other road takes you back in the direction you need to go--you just drift farther and farther into the heart of Newark, or into the Newark Bay, whichever comes first.

Exits aside, people drive on Route 80 in this area like they've never seen a major highway before. You can see them huddled over the steering wheel in a pose that suggests that they either cannot see where they are going, or are frantically looking for signage. I am always, always, behind someone doing 25 miles an hour on a ramp entering the highway. Note to these drivers: they don't call them "pick up ramps" because you can meet men/women there. (You can't). You are entering a 65 mile per hour highway with big trucks and scary potholes, and had better be doing more than 25 if you value your life.

Ring of Hell: the Enraged and Impatient
Highway: Route 18

When I was an MLS student, I had a professor who described Route 18 thusly: "It's the only highway designed to make you go from 0 to 60 in 2 seconds". Couple that with the massive flooding of 18 every time it rains, the traffic circles, and the construction, and you have a recipe for an Anger Management Situation. Route 18 runs right through the heart of Rutgers University (or perhaps puts a dagger through it).

I have never seen 18 in a finished state. It is ALWAYS under construction right around the Douglass Campus area and points South. Occasionally I am forced to drive down to Commercial Ave. to visit the Rutgers transportation folks, and for every driver creeping along there are several others dodging in and out of cars, jumping over large potholes, and losing their shock absorbers to raised manholes and uneven pavement. It is certainly a frustrating ride, not the only one in the state, but people really seem to get worked up here. No matter how you drive through this area, it's wrong. You will piss off somebody.

I've only named a few of the hellish highways in the Garden State--I haven't even started on Route 78, Route 31 ("improved" to include snarling traffic merges), Route 280, Route 46 or Route 1. Or the Garden State Parkway. I'm sure if you live here or drive through here you can think of others. It would take a book to cover them all.

In the meantime--good night to all, as I need to prepare for tomorrow's sojourn into driving Hell.

Tangles

I now meditate daily at 4:30am, which often helps me with clarity and focus during the day. Today is not one of those days.

Lately I have been losing track of time and space. A friend of mine commented that she could see how you could lose track of time, but didn’t know how one loses track of space. I don’t either. I just know that this is how I feel. I’ve had the urge over the last couple of months to start emptying space—getting rid of all the extras in my house that I don’t use, the things that sit gathering dust. I’m not acquiring too many new things, not even books these days. So, I don’t know where my space is going. Maybe it’s the old “nature abhors a vacuum “ syndrome.

The distance between events gets shorter, days fly by, and I walk into my home and feel more confined. It’s as though everything is in a great constriction. There are long strings between places and events, and as things constrict, it’s as if the strings get tangled and knotted up. Following this rather complicated metaphor—I wonder if it’s easier to try to unknot the tangles, or just cut everything loose. On the other hand, maybe there’s nothing wrong with things being tangled.

In the last week or so I started to re-read the stories I posted to bbfiction. I’m not happy with all of them, I see places where connections are weak, where some extra attention to detail would be beneficial, or places where I don’t think the words really convey the story. This is one of the problems of not having an editor—I just put them out there in workspace as I finish them, though they’re never quite finished. Never mind the fact that we are never fully satisfied with our creative output, anyway.

I did notice a running theme as I re-read these stories. They’re all about relationships, not only between partners, but also between family members—father and son, brother and brother, stepparents--and there’s always a warped quality to the relationship. I’m not a huge fan of Sigmund Freud, but I am fascinated by the whole Oedipal/Electra complex in action. It seems absurd, but it happens. I’m also interested in the Shiva/Shakti dynamic—the dual sexuality of all individuals, and how that is mangled in the face of social roles. Really, all of the stories are about being mangled in some fashion, about situations that start as fairly straightforward occurrences, but somehow get messy along the way—tangled, if you will. Certainly they are a mangling of the Oedipal/Electra complex. And they are very sexual in nature. Maybe I’m more Freudian than I admit. As an additional point—many of my characters try to rigidly control what is not in their control, and the results usually aren’t good.

Naturally, as I can’t resist trying to connect dots, I did sense an association between the tangled-ness of the stories and their characters and my own sense of tangled-ness these days. If I take the hilltop perspective of the situation, I’m reminded of the function of tricksters in society, particularly in religious or spiritual life. Tricksters don’t follow rules, they turn things upside down, and are meant to show us that our interpretations of everything through our senses are no more than a distortion of Reality. Whenever we think we’ve arrived at the “truth” of something, an event happens that shows us that in spite of all of our good empirical analysis, we are wrong, or at least there is an exception that leaves us scratching our heads.

But, as I’ve said before, life does not happen in nice, neat straight lines. It’s messy. All this does is underscore that point. I hate the fact that life is messy. I would like to be able to plan and execute with some predictability, to always be in control of my environment. On the other hand, life isn’t terribly interesting without some messiness. Messiness also increases possibilities. Literally anything is possible. I think I prefer that to the alternative.

Wednesday Thoughts

We had more snow in the Garden State last night—4 more inches to be exact. As I was shoveling my driveway and cleaning off my car at 5:50 this morning, I couldn’t help but reflect on the fact that 4-6 inches of snow brought London to its knees last week. One of my London friends told me that the city of London does indeed have such facilities as rock salt/sand that can be used in such cases. They choose not to use it for some reason. I wondered what this reason was as I pulled out of my driveway at 6:30, unhindered by the white stuff. I could see a foot or more of snow in an urban area that isn’t well equipped for snow creating havoc. But 4 inches? No wonder Europe is viewing it as an “embarrassment” this week.

The highways were clear and dry this morning, and I was stunned at how gorgeous Route 287 looked. Driving north, the sun was rising, and the sky was that pink/purple/orange color. The temperature was cold, about 17 degrees Farenheit (about -9 Celsius), so the snow still decorated the trees a silvery white. The sun is out fully now, and the snow is melting off the trees, so it can no longer be seen. Seeing it is one of the advantages of driving to work at an ungodly hour of the morning.

At work, I’ve been ordering books, something I don’t get to do all that often, due to my digital project commitments. A recent title from Harvard University Press caught my eye—it’s called “Burning to Read: English fundamentalism and its Reformation opponents”. I’m looking forward to reading this one. The book discusses the dissemination of the Bible in the vulgate via the printing press. While this has always been hailed as a great democratization, a tool for the ignorant masses at the mercy of a sometimes corrupt priesthood, it also represents the birth of fundamentalism. This is not difficult to see—fundamentalist thinking comes from the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy, which is a literal reading of the Bible. Uneducated folk who are not schooled in recognizing literary devices such as metaphor and allegory, and unaware of the historical context of the texts, would certainly read the Bible and take it at face value. What interests me about this book is the notion that there was opposition to this type of Biblical inerrancy at the time of the Reformation by other Protestants. I’ll write about it once I’ve had a chance to read it.

It was either Lao-Tzu or one of his contemporaries who suggested that the “masses” should not be allowed to read law or sacred documents for this very reason. I’m not sure how I feel about this assertion, as I tend to believe in the freedom of human beings to expose themselves to whatever writings they wish to discover. But it is hard to evade the point that the misreading of certain texts can be harmful. Think of a conversation entered in medias res, when one of the participants is saying something bizarre or questionable. It would probably make sense in the full context of the conversation, but is nonsensical outside of it. A better example is the reading of abnormal psychology texts or the DSM outside of the context of psychological or psychiatric expertise. Poor Sylvia Plath reading through Freud’s “Abnormal Psychology” convinced that all of it applied to her when she was a teenager. Anyone would do that, if they were anxious enough. So, almost anyone reading the “word of God” without proper context is going to be caught in the same conundrum. The interest in the “soul” (psyche) and its state relative to the greater reality, whatever you call that, is what drives us to explore both religion and psychology.

On a less heavy topic, it appears that things will start to warm up here after tomorrow. Given that late Autumn last year felt more like Winter, I think we're owed a late Winter that feels like Spring...

3 Spaces

There is a certain space that comes into my mind. It actually represents a point in time, when I was probably about 7 years old. It's an image of sunset at my parents' house. I am standing outside, in the street, facing their front yard; the red, orange, and purple sunset explodes behind my best friend's house next door. I have no idea what I was doing at that time--if I was in the street, I was more than likely riding my bike or walking home from a friend's house. It was definitely summertime--late summer, August. When I stood there, I heard music. At that time, it was likely that I'd hear music from lots of places; I was the youngest child in a family of five, and all of my siblings were teens at this point. There was hardly a time when music was NOT blaring from somewhere. But this was not that music. Over the years, I've struggled to identify it, to recapture it, but it's difficult. It's more like a song produced by Nature, something embedded in the environment--maybe a song of the fairies, if I want to be fanciful. I hear elements of it, snippets of something like it, in various places, but not enough.

I spent a lot of my formative years without much personal space. As I mentioned, I had 4 siblings (2 brothers, 2 sisters), and I was the youngest. All of us except for my oldest brother slept in the attic rooms upstairs. I shared a room with my 2 sisters, and it was not a big room. Frequently, being teenagers, they had their friends over, and did not really want their baby sister hanging around. I frequently complained to my mother, as their room was also my room, and I couldn't go there when I wanted. She would just tell me to go outside. I loved being outside, but these were not the times that I wanted to be outside. There was no other private space in the house. I swear that this is why I need so much space as an adult.

Over the years, this same spot, this same point in time, comes into my mind at different times. When I was at university as an undergraduate I had a dream about it. I was in the driveway of the corner house on my parents' street; a girl I went to school with called Christine lived there. I entered the house through the garage. I was looking for something in the house, and somewhat mindful that I might not be alone in the house. I was afraid of encountering anyone. Whatever I was looking for was mine, but I had a hard time finding it. As I made my way up through the house, I found myself climbing out a window and into her backyard. I took a few steps, and I was immediately back at that summer sunset--I recognized the scene immediately. I heard someone coming, and before me was something different, something not part of the original scene--it was a long rope hanging from a tree, the kind that you climb and swing on. I grabbed the rope, but instead of climbing, I was lowering myself. As it turns out, I was lowering myself back into my body in my bed, or at least that was how it seemed as I woke up at that moment.

My friend Phil told me about a Scarlet Imprint book he was reading called "Devoted". It was a collection of stories from worshippers of various deities. These were not the nice, peaceful deities--they were the tricksters, the destroyers. The story of a Loki worshipper made a particular impression on him. It raised the question of whether or not one could ever get out of worshipping these deities once they started. The answer, at least from that story, seemed to be "no".

I have been drawn to crones, hags, moon goddesses, and destroyers my whole life. I'm not entirely sure why. Hecate, Morrigan, Kali--all of them representing extremes. I was asked once by a Bengali man I knew about why I chose to be so intimately involved with Kali pujas. "Why must you choose the most extreme form of shakti?" It was a good question. Shakti is the name given to the underlying consciousness of the Universe. It can be perceived as gentle and motherly, but it can also be destructive and dangerous. Shakti is the force that runs through every person. When one's shakti operates at its peak, one is enlightened, saintly, a boon to society. Most of the time, our shakti is not at its peak, which leaves us insecure, depressed, hung up on certain phobias and ideas. But the shakti is no joke--those who try to "raise" their shakti without any guidance can fall into madness. I get nervous when I see books teaching people how to do kundalini yoga. One should never do that without guidance. Yet I always feel drawn to that extreme energy.

Which brings me to another point in time, or type of point in time. Spring and summer thunderstorms. I know I am recalling a point in time when the weather is warm outside, the clouds gather ominously, the rain comes down like daggers, and the wind is fierce. The lightning cracks the sky, and the thunder shakes the ground. At such points in time, I find myself going outside, preferably barefoot if I'm in the country. I don't get too concerned about getting hit by lightning. I just love running through the rain in my bare feet--a very primal feeling is recreated for me at these moments. It's as though I'm part of the storm.

My colleagues over the years have generally regarded me as a grounded person. I don't like to waste time when it comes to large projects, I like to break things down, organize them, and get to work as soon as possible, regardless of how I personally feel about the project. Some days I am very focused, and can work very efficiently. But sometimes everything just seems to shimmer away like a mirage, and I find myself in one of these other places. I may not literally see that place in my mind; I may just hear a sound or have a feeling that I associate with it. When I do, it's impossible for me to sit down and do anything practical. No matter how simple the task is before me, I can't focus on it, and I have a drive to get out--to go for a long walk, to go down to the river and run barefoot along its banks, to sit in the back of a quiet, old pub and allow my mind to wander. And it does wander. Sometimes I can write stories in this space, if I can discipline myself to do so. This is fine if there aren't major deadlines looming, or other restrictions. But the feeling can last for days. Sometimes it ends in a high fever, and then I'm committed to bed for a couple of days.

A third type of space that I gravitate towards at times is monastery space. I love walking through the echoing halls of a convent or monastery, I love hearing the singing of the monks or nuns. I grew up in a modernized, "folky" Catholic Church that I never liked as much as the old one--the Latin recitations and chants, the magnificent cathedrals that were grossly misunderstood by Protestant reformers. Nature has its own architecture, but some man-made attempts to create the Divine atmosphere are very impressive. The mind works in metaphors. That's the only way to approach this tremendous shakti, this terrifying thing we call "existence". Words do not describe it, so we can only wrap our minds around it by saying what it is "like" in words, or using visual or audial metaphors in art, architecture, and music. Cathedrals are full of symbols--they are everywhere that you look. And they are not simply "Christian" symbols--many are very universal, reminding you of your own connection to everything else.

We are so caught up in our mundane lives, and we get comfortable that way. I am just as guilty of this as anyone else. When I go away to a silent retreat, or some very quiet space to meditate and remember my connection, it is sometimes hard to readjust. It really should not be difficult--if one is really centered in their own stillness, what is going on externally shouldn't make a whit of difference. We draw lines where there aren't any.

While I was working as a system administrator, I had another dream. I was in the library where I was based, walking through the main atrium. It looked like a war zone. The floors had huge holes in them, as though a mine shaft had caved in, or something underneath forced its way out. The place was shaking and falling down. I picked my way through the debris and explosions, trying to find stable pieces of the floor. Underneath I heard a tremendous crunching sound, like a chewing and swallowing. I knew it was inevitable that I would fall to that thing underneath.

You might think that I would wake up terrified from such a dream. Instead, I was relieved. It was a dream of an aspect of the Goddess Kali called the Great Devourer (mahagrasa in the Sanskrit). Mahagrasa appears in myth on the field of battle against the demons of the ego. As they attack, she picks them up and devours them. This is metaphorical for the stripping away of the habits and beliefs that restrain us and make us miserable. For the devouring goddess to act in my life, I had a chance of getting rid of those restrictions and eliminating that suffering.

When I reflect on the different events, spaces, and my response to them, I realize that it's as though I'm always teetering between two worlds. One is scholarly, organized, and academic. The other is chaotic, dreamy, disturbing, and somewhere on the edge. Really, the two worlds are not separate--I separate them in my mind, but they are part of the same complex reality. Which is why choosing one over the other is inappropriate--they need to be integrated. Integration is a challenge, but I seem to gain more and more ground with that task every year.

I am always curious as to what effect this has on others.

Friday Links and Therapy

Lately I’ve had the experience of putting my hands on the computer keyboard, and having no words come out. The words are in my head, but they feel almost like a lead weight, and don’t slide easily from mind to hands. While in London, I wrote a number of short stories. But as I bring them up and try to polish them for the Web, they just appear to be all wrong. I can’t quite arrange the characters, I can’t make up my mind about the plot, I wonder if they’re all that interesting. It makes it hard to finish anything, though none of the stories are ever really finished, at least not in my mind.

I don’t like a day to go by without some kind of writing—I feel like I’ve missed something at the end of the day, and I wake up feeling depressed. It’s like driving in a windstorm—you may want to go fast, but you can’t. The wind pushes you back and forth, and you struggle to retain control of your vehicle, and are exhausted by the effort by the time you finally are able to stop again. Fortunately, when I stand back and look at these episodes, I know that things are constantly shifting outside my center, and that this too will pass. Everything seems like forever in the present moment.

In any case, I wanted to share a few interesting links:

The first is a new website called TheRumpus.net. It’s absolutely brilliant, and I recommend that you add it to your feed aggregator toute suite. Created by Stephen Elliot, it provides reviews and commentary on books, art, and music that you would probably never hear about otherwise. I heard about it through the Mental Floss blog, and I’ve been hooked ever since.

The second is the SCADshorts site, which I hope gets some updates this year. There was a SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) short that made the blogosphere rounds last year. It was the May 2008 short featuring a girl and a large scary-looking pencil with a creepy smile. That gem of a film and its rather disturbing soundtrack got me to look at some of the other bizarre shorts being produced. The work is pretty amazing.

Lastly, I recommend looking at Karborn’s website. Karborn is an artist who also happens to be John Foxx’s son. I discovered his work via that connection, and his work is really staggering in its depth. I’ve always had a great admiration for those who can put onto canvas what I try to put into words. Art is so much more fluid than writing. Words often fall short of what can be conveyed in images, and I think his work is just amazingly deep—it stirs up something different every time I look at it.

Incidentally—I would mention in this crappy economic time that if you really support an artist or musician, you should BUY their stuff. Recently I bought John Foxx’s Cinemascope, even though I have some version of all of those songs somewhere else in my collection (though it does offer some great artwork as well). I’d heard some grumbling on the Web about why we need “another” compilation, but it’s simple economics. Musicians have bills and need money, just like everyone else, and that’s a difficult business to be in. So, show some economic support if you can.

Wordless

When I like a particular musician, I tend to immerse myself in their work for a period of time. Not only listening to music, but learning about the individual or group making the music. However, one thing I don’t tend to do is join forums. I was asked about this recently by someone, as I used to spend a lot of time in the early 2000’s on the Psychedelic Furs forum at Burned Down Days.

Enjoying the work of a particular band or individual is a bit like the religious or shamanic experience for me—I don’t really have words for it. I just have the experience. Some people are great at going into expositions about particular albums or songs or performances, but I have a hard time doing that. Sometimes I can relate the work of an artist to a particular experience—an event or a point in time, and I can say that a particular song or album reminds me of that event. Sometimes the song reminds me of an image, or series of images, or a quality (peaceful, disturbing, ecstatic, etc.).Beyond that, I only have the experience. When I’m introduced to a new song or album (new to me, anyway), there is an immediate visceral reaction—or there isn’t. Some songs do grow on you over time even if they didn’t strike you initially. And some songs infect you immediately, until you’re tired of them and have to put them down for awhile. Inevitably you will go back to them.

Back to the religious analogy—it’s often said that one shouldn’t talk too much about religious or spiritual experiences. I feel that way about music. The experience just IS what it is, I don’t really want to dissect it. The experience is crushed by too many words. My extensive participation in BDD had more to do with the people on the message board than the group itself, even though I am a Furs fan. It was more about meeting up, seeing the different (and sometimes opposite) personalities interact, and just enjoying each other’s company. When the board became more about discussing the music critically, I ended up dropping out, or at least dropping back. There was nothing wrong with anyone doing that, and it was appropriate given the forum. I just found I no longer had anything to add.

I reflect on this and find it odd in another way. I am a taxonomer by profession—Tech Services librarians are about describing and classifying. When I’m faced with a chaotic or irrational situation, I deal with it by seeking information—to do that, I have to classify it somehow, give it some kind of label, some means of sorting through it, even if that proves to be ultimately inadequate. It’s a means of regaining control at base—when we feel like we have no control of our lives, we employ tactics to protect ourselves, to feel like we have a grip again.

If I’ve learned anything through the years of spiritual experiences that I’ve had, it’s that I have little control over my life. I’m not suggesting that some external being is pulling puppet strings. Life just does not happen in a neat, orderly, planned fashion. All of the major religions talk about the idea of “surrender”. Surrender is not about giving up. It’s about recognizing that you don’t have control, and being comfortable with that. Most of us don’t surrender; however, in the moments that we do, there is an unbelievable freedom in not having to understand the what, or why, or how. It just is what it is. That is the crux of the mystical experience. The mind becomes unnecessary. The Buddhist idea of “unlearning” suddenly makes sense.

Music is like that experience. Music that is really moving is like a fountain—experiencing the piece inspires you to create, and hence more creations spring out of the same source, whether that is recognized or not. It is the same with art and literature. Hearing something, or seeing something that inspires you to create something of your own—not necessarily the same type of thing—is like an endless stream or fountain. That’s just magnificent. Too magnificent for words.

New Year's in the UK

So, I am now back from London. Given the daily visits from some of you (thanks, Google Analytics), I am guessing at least some of you are interested in knowing how it all went. So, here it goes...

First off, I do not have a daily travelogue, which is something I tend to do on trips, but was difficult on account of the fact that I had no computer while I was there. I did pop into the Internet cafes once a day, but that was just about enough time to get through messages on all of my social networks and e-mail. I did do a lot of writing on this trip, but I mostly wrote things out longhand--it's amazing how bad I've gotten at that. I am so used to just typing away; I did not bring my Macbook due to the adapter issue (there is no way my battery would have lasted 2 weeks). People tell me that I can just adapt my American plug using a converter, but I have 2 experiences of converter plugs--they either "work", or they "set the wall on fire, and your attached appliance." Given that the odds of the latter happening are rather good, I decided not to risk it.

A few general comments about London:

1. It seems smaller. The last time I spent any significant time in London was in 1993, though I have been back since that time. The whole city just doesn't seem as big. I don't know if I'm using New York as my yardstick, or maybe I'm just more used to the London streets now--but it doesn't seem like it takes very long to go from the West End to the East End on foot.

2. It doesn't have a lot of English people. I kind of knew this, but it just seemed more apparent this time around. There are people from all over the world in London, and few of them seem to be English. I heard a lot of French there this time--even from the Japanese tourists, which was kind of weird. I find it amazing that the English are branded as warm and friendly as compared to the French. Not that I have any problem with the English (my own personal space habits tend to mirror theirs, actually), but in the States they are not known for being warm and cuddly. The French are often downright rude. I was chatting with a French woman while doing my laundry out in Glastonbury, and she mentioned that the French are raised to be very competitive and individualistic, at least the Parisian French. Often they don't have any regard for you--they are competing with you. I thought that was rather interesting, and does bear out what I've observed about the French I've come in contact with overseas. Not that a sweeping generalization is fair, and I'm not making one--I just didn't meet too many French who fell outside of that way of behaving.

3. It's dirtier. Certainly the air is dirtier. I'd go back to my hotel at the end of the day, blow my nose, and there would be black, sooty stuff coming out. The underground has definitely, well, gone downhill. It's approaching New York City-subway filthy, although New York tends to be cleaning up a bit, so, maybe they're just meeting in the middle now.

By contrast, Glastonbury was a lot more open and laid back. Not much different from the last time I was there, just more expensive, and the high street is more built-up. In Glastonbury, you're more likely to strike up conversations with the locals, whereas in London it's unlikely that anyone who doesn't know you will attempt to speak to you. I met a lot of nice people in Glastonbury, hanging out in the pubs, and even just going to the shops.

So, what did I do while I was there? I visited friends and drank a lot of beer--and bought books. Yes, even on holiday, I can't stay out of the fucking bookstores. And when I'm not in the bookstores, I'm in the damn libraries. The British Library, to be exact, so not just any library. That was worth the trip, actually, since they have a lot of their national treasures on display, and nothing makes me drool like really old, valuable books. The Lindsfarne Gospels, a couple of Gutenberg Bibles, pages from Da Vinci's notebooks--and some amazing classical Hindu artwork. All in one place. Like heaven, really. The British Museum was not too shabby, either. I had never been there, and still didn't get through all of it, but it was amazing. I was partial to the Roman Britain collections, as that is something you're not likely to see too many examples of outside of the British Isles, unless there's a special exhibit.

On New Year's Eve I visited with a friend in Guildford, but ended up going back to my hotel fairly early, as I was not feeling well, and--happy new year!--I ended up with the flu and bedridden the whole next day. In a word, it was awful. I had to travel to Glastonbury the next day, so I spent the day in bed doing Reiki therapy on myself, and drinking a ton of orange juice, just to be well enough to grab the train to Bristol. Fortunately I was in much better shape by the 2nd, and being out in the country during that time was fortuitous. I stayed in a B&B overlooking the Glastonbury Abbey ruins, which was a 200% improvement over the place I stayed in London. Being able to chill out, do some writing, and chat with the locals was a good way to end the holiday. I also climbed the Tor (in spite of just getting over the flu and it being rather cold) and headed over to the Chalice Well gardens (which now costs 3.25 to get in, rather than .50, which is what it cost in 1993).

Normally the UK weather is balmier than it is here in New Jersey at this time of year, but I seem to have brought the cold weather along--it was between -5 and -10 Celsius (that's about 13 to 20 degrees Farenheit) while I was there. In Glastonbury there was also a fierce wind, which made it difficult to be out for too long. It's actually colder than that here in the States (we usually wake up to -12 Celsius on average in the winter mornings here), but I was expecting temps a little higher than that.

All in all, it was a lovely trip, but money was running low, and all good things must come to an end, so here I am again, back at home watching the cat's head move in concert with the snow flurries whizzing by outside. I still feel like I'm functioning on another planet, or maybe in another dimension, but I'm sure that feeling will subside. I did actually do quite a bit of writing on this trip, so I need to spend time making sense out of my own chicken scratch and get a few new things posted or updated.

Hope everyone had a splendid new year!

Comfort

Regardless of whether you work in a government building, a private institution, or a corporate office, all of these buildings will likely have one thing in common—a crummy HVAC system.

I am thinking about this as I sit in the library where I work. Several hours ago the Head of the Reference Department came striding around, looking at thermostats, asking if it was too hot. I went out of my office a few minutes ago to see the nighttime reference librarian wearing his coat.

In my previous job, I worked in a government building, one that was recently renovated and expanded. Before I was sucked into the black hole of administration, I was one of the union shop stewards. Almost daily I got complaints about the air quality—either it was too cold to work, or too hot to work. I spent more time filling out forms for OSHA and talking to facilities people about the HVAC system in the building. In my current job, I had to talk to our facilities staff about the HVAC for an archival grant application. Hence, I learned something about how these systems work. For the uncomfortable, here are a few things you should know:

1. Large HVAC systems have only two temperatures: f**king hot and f**king cold. There is no in-between.

2. HVAC systems are set up in “zones”, so that the temperature can be controlled in smaller areas. The main thing to remember is that the zones will never be the same temperature. So, if it is f**king hot in one zone, it will be f**king cold in the other.

3. Most people think they can raise or lower the temperature by messing with the thermostat. Most thermostats are “placebo” thermostats. They are only there to make you think you can do something about the temperature. They are not actually attached to anything that turns the heat on or off.

4. If you are too hot in the winter, or too cold in the summer, don’t EVER call facilities to complain. Facilities staff are not interested in your petty comfort concerns, and will punish you by turning off the heat in winter or the A/C in summer, and will ignore any pleas to turn it back on for weeks.

5. There is a myth that a new building means a new working HVAC system. In fact, everyone knows that the contract for the HVAC system will go to the lowest bidder in any new construction or renovation. Therefore, things like working temperature zones and humidity control are considered to be “luxuries” and struck from the installation requirements.

6. This doesn’t have to do with the HVAC per se—but it is a fact of Murphy’s law that a person who is always cold will inevitably share an office with a person who is always warm. Let the comfort wars begin.

So, bring a sweater, get a space heater or fan(if the fire marshal will let you), and try to ignore the fact that the HVAC vents are brimming with mold on account of the fact that they haven’t been cleaned in 40 years. And pray that Spring comes soon, when you might at least break even with the comfortable temperature outdoors.

Two topics: My impending "retirement", and the Found Footage Festival

The insanity that is my life right now should be winding down by the end of next week, but not before a spectacular flurry of activity. Finals are next week, I’m in a race to get a really tedious digitization RFP out before we close down for winter break, and I’m meeting no less than 3 sets of friends over the next 4 days. And fucking forget about Christmas—if it wasn’t for the incessant presence of holiday music and décor everywhere, I wouldn’t even know there was a holiday. I don’t have time for it.

In the middle of all this, next week, I am going to the VALE OLE workshop in New Brunswick for 2 days. The purpose is to help design a new integrated library system for New Jersey's academic libraries (i.e., VALE). From what participants in this week’s version of the workshop said, it pretty much sounds like a waste of my time. They want to discuss library departmental “workflows”. Give me a break. It’s true that the traditional workflow is probably different now, but that’s the wrong focus for a meeting like this. Most of our tech tasks have nothing to do with the ILS. Besides, integrated library systems, even the open source ones, aren’t structured for consortia. (Earth to programmers: policy matrices DON’T WORK for more than 3 libraries, and even that is dubious). They’re always designed with the ideal assumption that everyone will work together and agree on everything, when the reality is that any given library in the group is likely to storm the consortia office fully armed before they will submit to have the same loan period or fine structure as another library. Additionally, you have the libraries with really bizarre policies that were apparently created by a deranged person (“we lend DVDs for 1 week with a $1.00 fine, but if it’s a full moon and a Thursday we lend them for 8 and half days with a 50 cent fine rate”). And they will be indignant if the system doesn’t accommodate this. I am assured that VALE will not work this way. Just wait.

Anyway, all of that is boring, and I’m increasingly becoming a malcontent in this field, so you don’t really want to hear all of that. I am “retiring” after 7 years of teaching at Rutgers University in the MLIS program this week, the first step in getting away from Library and Information Science altogether. I had an earlier post on this blog on the future of cataloging, which was picked up by 2 major cataloging blogs—I think I have had more views on that post than any other. If you’ve read that one, I have more confirmation that cataloging as a profession is dying a slow, painful death on life support: I have heard that the Library of Congress has cut their cataloging staff nationally by some absurd number—54,000 to 4,000 is the figure I was given. I’m hoping I misheard that one, but it doesn’t look good in any case. Time will tell.

Moving on to stranger things—last week I got my copies of the Found Footage Festival DVDs. Currently there are 3 volumes, with a new volume due out after next summer’s show. Found Footage Festival was created by Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, two guys from Wisconsin who are now in New York. They collect old VHS tapes from estate sales, old warehouses, garage sales, etc., and then put what they consider to be the “best” of this junk together for a live show.

Some of the items featured on these DVDs—a McDonald’s custodian training video, a video by Corey Haim attempting to show everyone how he was “clean” after rehab (it was more of a case for putting him back in, actually), 2 religious “showdowns” comparing the truly fucked-up styles of two sets of television preachers, Jack Rebney (world’s angriest RV salesman), How to Seduce Women Through Hypnosis (an attempt to legitimize rape for the truly pathetic male, though the woman in this is pretty dim as well), and a variety of public access television shows and godawful music videos.

Besides the hypnosis thing, the most disturbing videos on these collections were the “Potpourri” on Volume 1 (Joe and Nick actually apologize to the audience before and after showing it), and “Disrobics” on Volume 3 (enough said about that). Nonetheless, if you like or are at least curious about the bizarre and trashy underbelly of American culture, these are amazingly funny to watch. On the downside, you will probably have the songs of Jan Terri or Harvey Sid Fisher stuck in your head. Not to mention the images from the videos that go with their songs.

Overall, these were a worthy purchase. I stayed with my friend’s teenage son and daughter last week, and showed them the DVDs. Mind you, these kids are good at locating the most bizarre videos on YouTube (I get at least 1 to my e-mail every week from one of them). They both laughed so hard that they almost couldn’t breathe. And of course, my friend Liz and her fiancé are “Found Footage groupies” by their own admission. They are looking forward to next summer’s new show, and I will probably go with them.

2 from The Onion

I haven't posted anything from the Onion in awhile, so here are two recent articles:

Long-standing Conflict Ends as Israel Returns Lawn Mower to Palestine


Area Man Holding Out Until Next Exit For Better Fast Food Options

Shani

The Thanksgiving holiday is just about over. I have been off since Wednesday, and even though I've had plenty to do, it's been a surreal few days. It goes without saying that the Christmas season is now upon us. I have barely given it a thought. I am not having a Christmas tree this year, nor am I getting involved with the usual level of hoopla, because I am going to London soon after Christmas. No sense putting up a Christmas tree and leaving my cats with a large and dangerous cat toy while I'm away.

My London plans may be changing--I'm not certain yet, but I may end up shortening my stay due to some uncertain circumstances. That's been the surreal part of this week--lots of uncertain circumstances. Everyone I talk to has been having surprises, and not good ones. I look at possibly changing my London plans as the lower end of the surprise scale--I have many friends and acquaintances right now that are dealing with much more serious uncertainties. Even when I stopped off at one of my usual breakfast haunts in Hackettstown, the waitress I know there told me that her husband was fired from his job that week--and told he could reapply if he wanted to in the Spring. Of course, this means no health benefits for her or her husband all Winter long, and if he does get re-hired, it will probably be at minimum wage; he was at the top of his pay scale for his job. There is a lot of this kind of thing going on. At the moment, I am grateful to be employed and to have a house. It's not going to be a great Christmas for a lot of people, and while this does happen to people every year, it does make things a bit sadder (Christmas or not) because these people are my friends. Certainly it's a sobering reminder that life can change at any moment.

I picked up a friend from the airport today, and we were discussing the recent attacks on Americans and British citizens in Mumbai. A mutual friend of ours from Orissa had friends staying in the hotel. The mutual friend had received a text message from that friend, saying she was hiding under the bed, and that "they were coming." They lost contact with her after that, and suspect she is now dead. The growing amount of Islamic fundamentalist attacks is frightening for many reasons. Fundamentalism in any of the religions is a reaction against modernity. While there have been a few cases of Hindu fundamentalism, it is really a monotheistic phenomenon, at least as it is appearing in the world today. We tend to hear about Christian fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism in particular. Both types of fundamentalism have a number of things in common. One is that they believe modernity is bad (though many are not opposed to the use of technology like television and the Internet). Another is that they believe there is one strict interpretation of "God's law", and that God has a specific plan that humanity must follow, and of course they know what it is. Christian fundamentalists derive their document from a literalist interpretation of the Bible (known as Biblical inerrancy). Islamic fundamentalists are working with a strict interpretation of the Qur'an and the Shar'ia law. In both cases, there is a good vs. evil dualism--either you are on God's side (i.e., you accept their worldview), or you are not. If you are not, you are in league with "Satan", and they have the right to try to force you into the right way of believing. For some of them, that means the right to kill you. Islamic fundamentalists hate modern Western countries, because they see their pluralistic influence as being directly opposed to the law of God.

Monotheistic fundamentalism is a dangerous thing. Since there is only one God, and one "right way" for those types of believers, there is no ground for conversation. Globalization has put us in a unique position--on the one hand, secularism puts religion aside, or at least into its own category. It's not the primary social mover with regard to education, law, or politics. Fundamentalists believe that religion should be central--in particular, their interpretation of religion. No one has successfully figured out how to marry these two entirely different worldviews. In fact, looking at it, it just seems well nigh impossible. Adherents of both views frequently live side by side in today's world. The results are not pretty.

This topic will be the discussion of my lecture this week at university, and reminds me of a topic I discussed a couple of weeks ago: theodicy. Theodicy has to do with "the problem of evil", which includes the issue of human suffering. Going back to monotheistic dualisms (paradoxical, I know), we discussed the idea of "Satan". Technically, Satan is not a being, it is a role. In the Bible, "satan" or "shaitan" (Hebrew letters Shin, Teth, Nun) was the role played by an angel that obstructed a human. The Greek equivalent term is "diabolos", the root of the word "Devil", which means "to throw an obstruction in one's path". While we think of obstructions as causing us suffering, that is not necessarily the case. I think of the stories of friends who were stuck in traffic behind a car accident, missed their train, and consequently their job interview or other business in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Certainly these people were grateful by the end of the day to have been obstructed.

I could not help but to notice the similarity between the Hebrew word "Satan" and the word "Saturn". I don't know if they are etymologically similar (the Greek equivalent of Saturn is Kronos, or "time"; the Sanskrit equivalent is "Shani") but they are similar in meaning if you look at both Eastern and Western astrology. The role of Saturn is that of taskmaster--it limits us when we try to move ahead, according to that view. The Vedic astrologer that I visit once a year lamented recently that my mother is in "Shani dasha", or a very long phase of life ruled by Saturn, and consequently full of suffering and limitations. And yet Shani is not viewed as "evil"--Shani is supposed to disabuse you of any illusions you have about life or your identity. It fosters discipline, and keeps us from being lazy and selfish. Similar to "satan", "Shani" is not a being--it is a description of a particular state of things. Even with Hindus performing Shani puja, they are not worshipping Saturn--they are seeking to understand the "Shani" qualities in themselves and their lives.

Whatever you may believe, it is certainly a fact that suffering occurs in life. Like a lot of things, it seems to be cyclical--there are periods of expansiveness, and periods of restriction. I can only hope that those who have been hit by the latest string of sufferings will come through relatively unscathed, perhaps in a better position than they were before.

Things That Don't Go Together

Only 5 more weeks until I head back to London! I can hardly wait. I'll be there for almost 2 weeks instead of 4 days. I'm sure time will fly, too, as I still have a lot to accomplish between now and then. If anyone in London who reads this wants to catch up with me while I'm there, you can e-mail me at sororbrigid@yahoo.com. I probably won't be back in London until at least May after that, unless something big comes up (defined as: something for which I want to drop everything and high-tail it across the pond). I know there are no UK John Foxx shows coming up in 2009--in fact, I believe he's coming here to tour with Vincent Gallo, so I'll be hanging around the States for that event...

Which brings me to the topic of this post: things that don't go together, and other odd things I've observed over the last month.

First:

The Unexpected

Since I mentioned the John Foxx/Vincent Gallo match-up already, I'll talk about that first. When John asked me if I'd heard of Vincent Gallo, my dim, fuzzy mind at that point recalled the name, maybe something about him being an actor, did not recall him as a musician. So, after the show, a friend pointed me to Vincent Gallo's MySpace, where you can hear some of his music:

Vincent Gallo's MySpace Page

Regardless of what you may think of Gallo's musical offerings (and I realize that what he has on his page is a different project from what he's doing with John), you do have to admit that Gallo and Foxx are a highly--UNEXPECTED combination. Especially if you consider that they are recording an acoustic album together. One of the wonderful things about John Foxx is that he defies categorization--when I'm asked what his music is like, it's hard to pin down. I consider that one of the hallmarks of originality. With regards to this project--I must say that I am anxious to see the fruits of that creative collaboration. I can't even imagine what that's going to be like, and I'm curious as hell.

The same friend sent me another Vincent Gallo link:

Vincent Gallo Merchandise--Personal Services

It's funny how he posts this in such a way that you are not sure if he's kidding or not. Nonetheless, it occurred to me that any woman looking to get his sperm at a discount could hire him for escort services, and get him drunk enough to get knocked up that way. I'm not suggesting I have any interest in this--it just seems to be a glaring pricing loophole.

Another entry in the unexpected category came from the Religion news service this morning:

Michael Jackson Converts to Islam

I feel sorry for the Muslims. They get enough bad press. You have to wonder what the sheiks were thinking during his conversion ceremony.

A bit lower on the intellectual scale, we have this (with thanks to Nothing To Do With Arbroath):

Three-Quarters of Brits Unable to Name Great Britain's Three Countries

This is only unexpected because there seems to be this assumption that Brits are smarter than Americans. I'm not sure where this conception comes from, because frankly, people are stupid everywhere. Perhaps it is because Britain is older, and they have the benefit of the European community right in their back yard. But that rides on the erroneous assumption that people will take advantage of cultural and educational opportunities if they are right in front of them.

What's interesting about this article is how similar it is to the "American's can't identify their States on a map" articles. While there is no excuse for that either, you could argue that Americans have 50 states to identify, whereas the United Kingdom is only made up of 3 countries (sort of 4, if you count Northern Ireland). I am reminded of a the time I was at the University of Reading (UK, not Pennsylvania), and talking with a young man--mind you, he was doing his course in American Studies--who, when the American Independence Day was mentioned in conversation, wanted to know who Americans won their independence from. (And yes, he left a dangling preposition at the end of the sentence). None of this really proves anything about collective intelligence--but I don't want to go down the road of what I think about education these days in general, so...

Moving on to:

The Twisted

Another Arbroath link:

Breaking Bad News With Baby Animals

I have an aversion to the overly-cutesy and gushingly precious, especially when it comes to greeting cards, so I loved this when I saw it. On another tangent to this, there is the Cute Fuzzy Animals As Evil genre. A good example of this is Happy Kitty Bunny Pony, a graphical book with all kinds of cute kitties, doggies, etc.--and the author points out that all they really want to do is eat you or trample you to death painfully.

That's all I have for now--for those of you following bbfiction, I have about 4 things posted (7 posts total), and I'm working on 2 others right now, one will probably be posted by next week, the other is part of a larger story compilation I'm working on called Dasa Mahavidyas, so I may not post that one. I'm trying to disengage myself from a tangled plotline for the former story, hence the delay. I used to complain of writer's block, now I can't seem to stop writing. I could have worse problems...

Patterns

No less than 3 friends called or e-mailed this week to tell me about various difficulties besieging them. Other friends had similar issues, that I’d heard about through the grapevine. What is unusual is not the fact that they have difficulties—everyone does at one time or another. The interesting part is how similar things happen in “clumps”. In short, there appears to be a pattern.

I’m an observer by nature, and I can’t help but wonder what these patterns mean, if anything. There are more general patterns that are harder to pin down—the sense that things are being shaken up, or the sense that things are stuck and slowing down, in a more “global” sense. Other patterns are more specific—they may be events and other “symbols” tied together. For instance—I was out with a friend over the weekend, and while chatting over lunch, we noticed that a drinking glass she received was perfectly cracked in the middle, but did not break or leak. In the course of 24 hours, I learned from several friends about cracked relationships, cracked-up cars, and emotional crack-ups at work. No one was completely broken from any of these things, but everyone was “cracked” in some fashion.

Perhaps this is the way my mind organizes experiences in an attempt to find meaning in them. I have the belief that people and experiences are connected in some unconscious way that we will never fully understand, but that we may be able to find meaningful patterns if we look for them.

On the other hand—sometimes the point of the pattern is to show us that there is no pattern, or may as well not be one. My guru’s visits to New York from India are a good example of this. It’s almost guaranteed that no matter what is planned for the day, it will be completely screwed up by the time I leave. And yet, everything still happens at these times that needs to happen. Amma did say once, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.” As humans, we would like to find order in uncertainty, so we are great believers in causality. While you can generally find logical causes for things, sometimes you just can’t analyze and evaluate experiences in that way, so you just accept it. It lies somewhere between faith and reason—or maybe outside of both. In the end, I’ve learned it’s better to observe the pattern, and not to discount it, but not to place too much meaning on it, either.

Myth

Recently I had a discussion with my Religion students about the concept of a myth. Myths are metaphors for intangible, un-expressible experiences that impact us profoundly. In preparing these discussions, I considered the late, great Joseph Campbell’s views on myth. In one of his discussions with Bill Moyers, Campbell states that modern society does not have myths—the only mythmakers are artists, which includes musicians, poets, filmmakers, and others who work with metaphorical images. He proposes that things change too rapidly in this day and age for society to create new myths.

I was thinking about this the other day, and it occurs to me that myths are actually everywhere, though they are less socially organized and more individualized. We succeed or fail in life with respect to our myths. A myth could have to do with the profound mystery of existence, or it could be as mundane as believing that one has to focus on something practical like business or finance to succeed in life. Unconsciously, we stick to the script of the myth. This can help us through troubled times, and it can also wreak havoc, especially when we assume that our myths are the same as everyone else’s. There may be similarities, but we all have our own spin on the story.

Cultures that still have shamans as part of their religion see the shaman as the interpreter of their social myths. After all, the shaman has seen the Mystery firsthand. It also follows that the magic of the magician is nothing more than a rewriting of the script. You identify the story that you’re telling yourself, and then you change it. Artists of all types are like shamans, because they are expressing and reinterpreting myths all the time through images; they do so because they have touched on the Mystery. This is also the key to psychotherapy; the therapist helps you identify your myths, to see what lies you might be telling yourself that keep you from progressing in your life.

This is not to say that myths are lies; they are only lies inasmuch as what we perceive and interpret as reality has an illusory quality. This is also not to say that we have total control over everything. I spoke to a Muslim man once who expressed it best—if I raise one leg, I cannot also raise the other leg at the same time without falling down. We have inherent limitations. At the same time, we have more control than we often believe that we do. Probably 80% of what we tell ourselves is bullshit. The idea of using “affirmations” to change our thinking is based on the idea that we can change our stories. The problem with affirmations is that we never believe them. They are too weak to effect any real change.

Matthew Arnold wrote an essay called “Hellenism vs. Hebraism” in which he talks about the conundrum of the Victorians and the disintegration of their cultural myths. In essence, he points out that society will force its myths on you if you don’t create your own. In order to effect real change, people have to be aware of the stories they’re telling themselves—and how seriously they take those stories. In the end, they’re just stories—they’re theories and interpretations of life. If you take them too seriously, you risk being totally shattered if something comes along to challenge that story.

When I was first married to my now ex-husband, he was very into the works of Carlos Catstaneda. He firmly believed that Don Juan (the shaman in these stories) was pointing out that the day to day world we live in was unreal, and that the reality we should be focusing on is entirely hidden. He would use this as a justification for avoiding things like getting a job, or any of the mundane realities of shared living. I was fortunate enough to find and buy for him the one book he’d missed in Castaneda’s series, “The Power of Silence.” He sat home and read it cover to cover, and it totally shattered him. In that book, Don Juan tells Carlos that this “other reality” was no more real than the one he came from.

Those challenges are always good ones—if we’ve gotten ourselves on the wrong track by taking the story too seriously, it needs to be torn apart. Truth is sometimes painful. But that is how we tear down, reinvent, or re-establish our myths. In short, that is how we grow as human beings.

New fiction blog at Wordpress

Today I have rolled out a new blog featuring my short fictional works:

http://bbfiction.wordpress.com

As many of you know, I have been writing for a number of years. My hellish work schedule has made it difficult to keep up, but I keep plugging along. Check out the blog, and be sure to read the introduction before delving into the first story.

I will continue to maintain this blog for my other random ramblings. Eventually I may migrate this blog to Wordpress, but the thought of more XML exports just makes me nauseated, so I'll put that off for awhile.

I hope you enjoy the new blog as much as this one (assuming that you do read this because you like to, not because you're doing penance), and your thoughts are always welcome.

What's in a Name

There has been much talk about names, particularly the changing of names, among my friends this past week. I have personally changed names just enough times that people from my past look at my name and say, "Who"? I don't look enough like I did when I was a child for people to make the connection. I consider this a blessing.

Recently one of my blog postings about my profession was picked up by another library blog. I was a bit amused to see myself referred to as "Ms. Nischala", as I use the name "Brigid Nischala" on this blog. Similarly, when I co-wrote an article for Weird NJ with editor Mark Sceurman, he billed me as "Brigid Nischala Burke."

Only my Hindu friends ever call me "Nischala", as it is the Sanskrit name given to me by Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi. It's not part of my legal name, but I use it after all the trouble she took to give it to me. Like most things in my life, there is a story attached to the name. Since I've had a number of friends ask me about the story, I'll relay it for you here.

I met Mata Amritanandamayi (or Amma, as she is often called) in New York City in 2002. My friend and former colleague Sulekha had been pressuring me to see Amma when she arrived on her summer tour. As a religion postgrad who spent a lot of time studying new religious movements, I'm pretty skeptical of claims to holiness or guru status. However, some of my own personal experiences made me curious enough about Amma to at least see what she was about. She had the marks of a genuine guru, particularly humility and charity. She usually brushes off any claims to greatness, and in spite of what news reports say, she does not own a single thing except the clothes on her back. By all appearances at least, she had potential.

So, with this and other things in mind, I went to meet her, and was more than impressed. I'm not going to delve into my experiences with her here, but it should suffice to say that I have no doubts about her credibility. I received a mantra from her that November in Michigan, and during her tour the following July, I asked her for a name.

The naming process is something that Westerners usually go through, as most Indian devotees already go through their own traditional naming process. The name is supposed to reflect the greatest potential divine quality seen in the person by the guru. It doesn't mean the person always acts according to the quality of the name, but they will have the most success if they develop that quality.

Amma never seems to handle the naming process the same way with each person. For some devotees, she just looks at them and a name immediately comes to her lips; for others, a book is consulted. After asking her for a name, I went to talk to the person in charge of the "naming" line--if you've ever been to one of these programs, you know it can be utter chaos with lines everywhere. Whether or not there is a naming line depends on whether or not Amma intends to give names that day. As it turned out, I was one of 5 people allowed to be on the naming line.

I waited almost 3 hours before Amma started giving names. There was one woman in front of me. Two brahmacharis behind Amma opened a book of Sanskrit names to a particular page, and held the book out to her. Amma was still receiving those who came for her darshan. She glanced over her shoulder, looked at the woman, and pointed to a name in the book. The brahmacharis then wrote the name on a slip of paper. A few minutes later, Amma took the slip of paper and held it to her ajna chakra ("third eye"), and handed it back without looking at the woman. One of the brahmacharis then gave the woman the slip of paper, told her what the name was, and what it meant. Then it was my turn.

Once again, the brahmacharis opened the book, and held it to Amma. She glanced at the book, and then at me. "No, no, no!" she exclaimed, pushing the book away. She then turned to the brahmacharis and started talking very fast in Malayalam, counting something off on her fingers, and pointing at me. She then smiled at me, and went back to giving her darshan. The two men were now frantically turning the pages of the book, and wrote down at least 5 different names on slips of paper. They held the slips out to Amma, who waited a good 20 minutes before she would look at them. In between "darshans", she would look at me, smile, and stroke my face.

Finally she glanced at the papers, and said, more softly this time, "No, no"--and then began to explain something to them again. Towards the end of her explanation, she started to say "Nischala, Nischala, Nischala", and pointing at me very directly. She saw me looking at her, smiled broadly, put her hands on my face, and said, "Nischala!" So, the brahmacharis wrote down the name. One of them said, "Nischala--it means--not moving."

So, I left with this name, not before I spoke to Upasana, the devotee who was running the naming line. "What was THAT about?" she asked me. She then explained that Amma was not satisfied with the names presented to her--the name had to have certain qualities, and she came up with Nischala on her own.

After talking to other Hindu friends much better versed in Sanskrit names than myself, I found out that Nischala means "stillness" (literally not moving--the opposite of chanchala, which is restlessness). It's one of the 1,000 names of the goddess Kali. It appears to be a good fit for a name, as I function best when I remain still and not get caught up in the pressures of life. That doesn't mean that I avoid life, but rather than getting dizzy on the wheel of ups and downs, I prefer to watch movement from the center. When I don't do this, I have trouble.

I've been restless all day today, so perhaps I should take a page from my own book here...

John Foxx and Louis Gordon at Cargo, 10/16/08 (Yes, I really made it...)

Well, I’m finally back from London after a trip that was too short. As I mentioned in my earlier posting, I really wanted to go to the John Foxx/Louis Gordon show in London. I finally just took the plunge and went, in spite of having to re-arrange my life for that week (not an easy feat this semester). It was well worth it.
Cargo is a very small venue, just the size I like for a show, actually. They started letting people in for the show around 8:00, and there was a VJ set for the first hour that was pretty intense, though the video loop starting to get tiring after about the 10th time. John and Louis finally came on a little after 9:00, and they were absolutely spectacular. The setlist follows:
Walk This Way
A Million Cars
Dislocation
The Man Who Dies Every Day
Camera
Uptown/Downtown
Underpass
No-one Driving
Burning Car
Shadow Man

The Garden
Travel
Broken Furniture
Young Savage
My Sex
Endlessly
Shifting City

I had grabbed quite a few pictures at this show, which I’ve posted to Flickr. John is a really amazing performer. While the whole show was brilliant, there were a few things that stood out—“Underpass”, “The Garden”, “Burning Car”. I was thrilled that he did 2 Ultravox tunes, “Young Savage” and “My Sex”; the former had a few mistakes, but it didn’t really take away from the song. The only annoying part of the show was one video loop of this woman wearing what looked like a feather boa spreading her arms behind her—my friend Sherri had commented on that as well. It was too repetitive. The rest of the video was fine without that particular film loop.

After the show I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with John. Sherri said it was for about 20 minutes. I didn’t notice how much time had elapsed, as I think I was mostly delirious from little food and sleep at that point. I certainly looked tired in the pictures! But I did learn from John that he is working on an album with Vincent Gallo (!?) in New York, and should be doing a few gigs in New York, Boston, and Detroit, though he wasn’t sure when. I am definitely looking forward to that!
Overall, I met a lot of really cool people, finally hooked up with Ms. Sherri after chatting with her online forever, and had a great time at the show. 4 days in London went way too fast, and I can’t believe I went to work today. But not to worry, back to London again in about 9 weeks...