Everything I Tell You is Hearsay

and that is not a euphemism.

This fact does explain why I have been having an extra real lot of trouble breathing lately. When I went to investigate the plunking noise, and I looked up, there was an all-too-familiar patch of yuck on the ceiling. This yuck makes my lungs shut down entirely. Suddenly how sick I’ve been lately makes more sense.

So now I have to get the landlord in here. Which means I have to clean my room. This is not my ideal birthday weekend plan, combating mold and suchlike.

Ah well.

“There’s always a siren, singing you to shipwreck…”

Yet, I am my own siren. I seduce myself more fully than anyone else could ever hope to do.

 Also worth remembering:

“Just ’cause you feel it, doesn’t mean it’s there”

It’s 5 days early and I am a spoiled brat but I have been without a camera since June and so I don’t care.

Happy Birthday to me!

Meta-Photography!!

Many thanks; you know who you are.

Poor Irulan.

Being an intergalactic pawn must be awful. She is never allowed to have her own destiny, it was hijacked at birth by the Bene Gesserit breeding program. Her husband sees her as a necessary evil and won’t lay a finger on her. Her father never valued her as anything more than a political tool. Really, I pity her. She does little to endear herself to anybody, I’ll admit, but I still think she deserved better than she got.

But I digress…

Frank Herbert created a universe unto itself. There are echoes of Earth, but they are distant indeed. The feudal rule enacted across galaxies is perhaps the most romantic, but the Orange Catholics also hearken back quite clearly. An enthralling admixture of politics, mysticism, social commentary, and psychedelic journey, Dune manages to touch some of the most deeply meaningful aspects of human reality all while offering a thrilling adventure story in the offing.

This book is, however, a challenge. It is dense and byzantine in the truest sense of the word; the political maneuvering and machinations of various clans, houses, factions, and religious orders is dizzying at times. Herbert manages to stay flawlesslyconsistent in his details, and this alone could stand as a mark of his genius. Even the most determined reader might occasionally balk at the laberinthine course of this tale.

For all of that, it is nevertheless compelling enough to make one press on. Reading this book never feels like a chore so much as a complete departure from reality. The details are rich and engage all the senses. The way Herbert describes the arid landscape of Arrakkis, our Dune planet, surpasses anything a human from our gloriously hydrated world could ever truly relate to. It makes one conscious of the tongue sent out to wet the lips; we are parched by proxy. I am profoundly aware of the luxury of submerging my bare flesh in a substance so precious, the Fremen would kill for the portion of it left inside my skin.

This book has fans who are not only devoted, but in some cases, rabid. Just as easily (perhaps even more so) as L. Ron Hubbard turned Dianetics into a cult, so too could have Herbert. His own ethics caused him to dismiss this notion as rightfully absurd (though someone once pointed out that we could easily call them the Bene Jesuits) but it was by no means because there was insufficient passion for the notion, or fodder for the purpose to be gleaned from the novel. 

It’s capacity to do so marks it out as a true classic of literature. Science fiction is often sidelined as trivial and not worthy of status equal to Dickens or Austen. However, in the best examples of the genre, the human imagination is unhampered by the bounds of reality, yet can reveal more truth about the universe we can see as well as what we can only imagine. It is liberating and deserves as much reverence as any other form of truth revealed upon the page.

I’m dealing with some stuff lately. And I keep wondering how to handle it. And so I ask the oracle and it keeps saying the same thing: you are facing obstacles. So there.

More eloquently:

Have temporary obstacles been blocking your way? In the course of trying to fulfill ambitions, obstructions inevitably present themselves. This is not always a bad thing. Obstacles, difficulties and even setbacks that are eventually overcome often become assets. Without irritating grains of sand, oysters would never make pearls.

The obstacles here are not permanent, yet they are in the way. As when a large boulder falls in the road, the best course of action is usually to go around it, rather than to try to move it out of the way. Temporary obstacles must be seen for what they are — temporary — and should not be allowed to take on too much significance.

A positive aspect of even the most difficult obstacle is that it may cause a person to turn inward, and gain greater depth and character. While the ignorant bemoan their fate and seek to blame their problems on others, the wise seek the cause of the problem within themselves. Through this type of introspection, obstacles become a means for personal growth and self-discovery.

Without air resistance, no plane would ever fly.

If you are facing temporary obstacles, try not to be overly concerned. Obstacles are a part of furthering every relationship. Setbacks and reverses can affect morale, but keeping up your self-confidence in the face of obstacles is part of a successful solution to many of life’s problems. Obstacles of short duration are best handled with a yielding attitude. Go around the rock; don’t put your shoulder to it.

Turns out. I am crappy at being patient and getting around obstacles. Maybe that’s the point….

Ayn Rand was kind of a crazy bitch. I do not say this to dismiss her, I say it because although I find many of the themes she champions to have a profound resonance for me, I find her sort of personally repugnant.

I read a biography called Goddess of the Market By Jennifer Burns and though it is clear the author is not much in sympathy with Ayn’s views, she turned a fairly dispassionate eye on her life and actions. Ayn was a bit of a megalomaniac, and being one myself, I can relate to that part, but her absolute certainty that her own rationale was the only evidence she needed to support her sometimes outlandish claims flies in the face of sound decision making.

All that being said, The Fountainhead is a truly engaging novel about the ways in which well-meaning people with an overdose of white guilt can undermine the efforts of genius. And also, masochism.

The female lead in this story is utterly unlike any woman I have ever met. I understand she is meant to represent Ayn’s feminine ideal, but it is a truly fascinating experience to read a female character, written by a woman who also happens to be a raging misogynist. I can relate to her feelings; some women are wretches. But her wholesale conviction of the female of the species seems, like many of her views, partially justifiable but wholly overwrought.

Dominique fails to convince as a person, let alone a woman. In almost every instance she behaves in a way the defies reason, let alone natural human feeling. When she realizes she loves our protagonist, she forces herself to marry his rival to punish herself and him, for reasons that really don’t make bunches of sense. Ayn subjects this character to a rape that she romanticizes to the point where rather than feeling violated, Dominique feels freed of her pesky virginity and liberated to abuse herself some more, if that was what her attacker thought was best.

Howard Roark is more of an archetype even than his lady love. But he manages to seem more feasible than her because Ayn invests him with some vulnerability, even if it’s hard to see at first. He truly is a genius, thwarted by circumstance and jealousy, as well as his own unwillingness to compromise.

All of the forces and folks arrayed against the protagonists are caricatures meant to make a point about what Ayn saw as the terrifying slide of our capitalist system toward a socialist/communist nightmare like the one from which she fled in the USSR. Her fear and loathing of the type of  “government” serving as a legitimizing force for the abominations that Stalin enacted on his people is understandable, but her slippery slope mentality was a classic fallacy of logic and unlikely to amount to her dire predictions. 

Now, you might be a little confused so far, as this book is listed as one of my favorites, and thusfar I’ve kinda taken it to pieces. I did this mainly because I like it to be clear that I love it in spite of it’s rather glaring flaws. I am not unaware of them, I just see the entire as worthwhile and rewarding even with all of these things in mind.

Despite the extremity of her position, and the exaggerated tendencies of her characters, Rand manages to point out some rather disturbing undercurrents in American political ans social culture. She mocks the entrenchment of the intellegensia, and their fear of  accepted wisdom being challenged in significant ways; this classically because their position is assured by the conventional wisdom, and where would they be without it? She also points out the fundamentally patronizing and frighteningly persistant attitude that government is somehow better equipped to dictate the structure of it’s citizens lives than they might do themselves. She cunningly illustrates the frightening potential of mob rule, and questions why utilitarianism has become just cause to deprive individuals of their rights and the products of their toil. 

Whatever your political bent may be, her critique of the nanny state has moments of luminous clarity, and is phrased in evocative language which has captured the imagination of generations. And though I do not agree with everything she says, I owe her a debt of gratitude for being a voice that could articulate the dignity of the human spirit in the face of oppression, and explicate the value of a reasoned struggle against political forces that serve to undermine liberty.

Sometimes it is nothing more than a few notes drifting through space that will take me entirely out of time; a stray phrase of music, lilting, evocative. Today it was only reminiscent, not even the same music. It simply recalled to mind the tune that moved me so deeply that is has taken up residence, forever, inside me in such a way that mere hints of it will slow my pace to attend the feelings it recalls.

In the dim and distant days over a decade gone, I was madly in love: with a story, wrought in film, rendered with haunting music and steeped in passion. It was like nothing I had ever seen before and it stirred something within me that has never gone to rest. I have always loved movies. They are not merely entertaining, they are important. I am limited by my sight, and thus I see the world in a particular, and perhaps even a singular way. I cannot perceive distance and depth the way that most people do, and so when stories are portrayed through a camera lens, they become level; without varying expanse, more familiar. Yet differences exist in color and shade, shape and pace which inform me about how other people see and brings me closer to them. I care about films, and I believe they can be great and beautiful lessons.

And though I might not have always been able to articulate this, I have always loved movies. But this, oh, this was the first time I was so enraptured by a film that I watched it constantly; every day, sometimes several times, for months on end. I recorded the audio of the entire film through the stereo so that when I was away from home I could listen to it and dream away…

The movie was The Piano. It captured my imagination utterly. It is visually sumptuous and emotionally engaging, but there is nothing as beautiful about it as the soundtrack. Michael Nyman wove tendrils of music seamlessly into a tale of displacement, isolation, and an unexpected ardor. He captures the mood and tenderness with such skill that it is almost as though the music was nurtured inside of one’s own heart; as though it had always lived there needing only a reminder it was there. It is haunting and solemn, lovely and dizzying.

And so I would sit at my own piano, with no training but the trail of my fingers across the keys and the attention of my ear, trying to recreate the music that had been awakened inside of me. I’d sit in front of the piano, gazing out the window and down the south slope of Cooper mountain, and drift away over the fields.
This morning, hearing a hint of something that reminded me of these songs absolutely transported me to that moment, perched on my bench, fumbling at first, then with greater confidence, recreating a feeling I was still just discovering. And it was glorious to discover it again.

If you haven’t seen The Sixth Sense, some of the ranting in this post won’t make sense. Even if you HAVE seen The Sixth Sense, it might not, but I feel like it has to be said: Somebody’s a Fuckin Thief. More on that later…

This book is actually composed of two novellas. The first is called Sabella: The Bloodstone and is a gothic sci-fi mystery romance. Sabella is the preternaturally beautiful and seductive focus of the tale. She narrates the course of her life in vignettes and outtakes slowly revealing that on her far space colony of Novo Mars, she is in fact one of the old inhabitants reborn; She’s a vampire.

It has it’s advantages, but she’s fairly paranoid all things considered. As she puts it “I’m a lady who’s past is all littered with dead gentlemen callers” She didn’t start out as a vampire, and what happened to her is part of the mystery, but she carries around a palpable sense of guilt for her feeding habits and tries in various ways to repent for her sins.

Ultimately she finds herself with a nemesis, Jace. He’s hot on her trail and seems to have a good idea of what she’s been up to. Jace is determined to make her answer for her actions. As she runs away from her pursuer, she runs toward the remnants of the Christian faith, imported from Earth. She finds herself sitting in a church whispering in Latin

De profundus clamave. Ad te domine. Domine exaude voca meam

Out of the depths oh, lord I have cried to you. Hear my voice.*

When Jace finally catches her, he does not punish her as she expects, but shows her a truth that sets her free of her guilt and teaches her a new way to live. And rather than being based on religion, it’s all about sex. I’m for it.

The second novella is Kill The Dead

In this story Parl Dro is a famous exorcist who travels the landscape leaving his legend to grow as long as his shadow at dusk. His history is melancholy and mostly solitare, but when he does come into contact with other people, his energy and seventh sense tend to impact the course of events rather profoundly.

We begin on a hillside on the outskirts of a small village. When Parl comes down out of the mountains, he can sense the presence of the undead in a leaning house by the wayside. It happens that unlike in some cases, where his services are welcome and wanted, here the ghost in residence is there due to the conjuring of her still living witch-gifted sister. She was called back from the spirit world as means to assuage the guilt the still living sister Ciddy felt after she killed her sister Cilny in the first place. She’s a charming girl, really.

When Parl sends Ciddy on her way to the next world, Cilny is incensed and driven to a mad rage that no human means of revenge could ever satisfy. She goes to the length of drowning herself to exact the particular brand of retribution she has picked out for the ghost-killer.

Meanwhile, back in the village, Parl has made the acquaintance of one Mayal; a minstrel who’s skills mark him as singularly gifted, but leave him generally despised. He hopes to write a song which will make his fortune, and when he sees the famous Dro, he decides to follow him about and try to make a ballad from his exploits.

Less than thrilled with this addition to his journey, Parl attempts to leave Mayal behind more than once. Somehow though, Mayal manages to find him nevertheless. After he catches Parl up a second time, it become clear that not only is Mayal following him, so too is the vengeance bent Ciddy. Dro attempts to exorcise her in the customary manner, but for some reason fail to send her away entirely.

Worried that Ciddy has latched on to Mayal as a source of ongoing energy for her weird pseudo-life Parl keeps the minstrel with him to try and rid them both of her presence once and for all.

De profundus clamave. Ad te domine. Domine exaude voca meam

Out of the depths oh, lord I have cried to you. Hear my voice.

*This will be important for the ranting

**This too.

Jeff Bridges wears a mean kimono.

And that is only one of a multitude of things to love about this film. Despite its utter failure to accurately portray any part of how computers actually function, it’s very fun to look at.

We are treated to a visual feast replete with 80′s-tastic computer graphics galore. Programs are rendered as 1/2 black and white film, 1/2 super fantastic neon suit groovyness. And I must admit, there is something very visually compelling about this combination. Coming to this movie for the first time in 2010, I can say that though I have seen lots of CGI and very sophisticated effects, it was somehow fascinating to see real human faces and forms embedded in this fantasized computer animation.

MEANWHILE BACK IN THE REAL WORLD

We get to see the ENCOM Tron-Copter! When we land, our sub-villian Dillinger/Sark enters his super sleek office wherein is contained the Master Control Program seen here as something that resembles the mutant love-child of an iPad and a dining room table (They Shared A Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name!)

Down in the circle of hell comprised entirely of blue cubicles, Alan Bradley discovers his password has been suspended and he cannot access the system!! He is flustered, but it’s hard to take him seriously since he resembles nothing so much as John Denver should he ever have decided to write a few lines of code instead strumming a few lines of Annie’s Song.

Back up in MCP’s lair, Dillinger tells Bradley not to take it personally, that EVERYBODY lost their access, cause of reasons and stuff. Whenever they talk about anything remotely computer related in this film they may as well be using the following script

Seven! Shoes, unicorn west umbrella.

Cough syrup, yesterday. Mirror catfood!

After this conversation, Bradley is vexed,  (who wouldn’t be!) but you don’t really care. He gesticulates wildly at the elevator for no apparent reason, and then you see, what I can honestly say, might just be the MOST WONDERFUL THING IN THE HISTORY OF FILM: he presses a button in the elevator that says simply “Laser Bay” Every elevator should have this button. Even if it leads to the parking lot. I am going to lobby congress.

Once we reach the laser bay, we are introduced to our token crotchety but lovable old man. And what movie is truly complete without that? When Bradley and the girl (her identity is irrelevant; she really just serves as boobs in a unitard) leave ENCOM, they do so in the slightly less glamourous than the tron-copter ENCOM chi-mo van. In which they arrive at Flynn’s Video Arcade/Nightclub.

Out of his kimono and kicking it on the gaming floor, we find Flynn SURROUNDED BY BABES who are all DEEPLY impressed with his hand-eye coordination and video gaming prowess. Because, anyone who knows anything knows, nothing draws the bitches quite like the bleep-bleep-bloop of an arcade game.

We are then treated, for no reason I can quite fathom, to the tableau of Flynn stripping off his pit-stained “Flynn’s” t-shirt so he can change into yet another (but less obviously soiled) “Flynn’s” t-shirt. I suppose the days of Jeff Bridges being a sex symbol are rather in the distant past, mostly, I was just kinda confused…

When they hatch the scheme to break back into ENCOM and redeem all the awesomeness that Flynn wrought upon their asses, they mount up in the chi-mo van and roll on back to the lab. They then encounter what has to be THE LARGEST DOOR IN THE HISTORY OF DOORS. But, it gives them no trouble and they waltz right on in.

MCP gets the gist of Flynn’s attempt to bust into the system pretty quick like (not too surprising, since MCP is a smart fucker; you can tell by his British accent) and turns on him with the best possible response to anyone messin with your shit: A laser. Presumably the one they needed a bay for.

So, Flynn’s warped through pixelated space, in a sequence that was made for people on hallucinogens, and he ends up having to “game for his life” a scenario that millions of nerds are constantly preparing themselves for just in case.

Then we enjoy what is perhaps the cardinal scene in the whole movie: the lightcycle race. Frankly, based on all the trailers, tidbits, and snippets I’ve seen referring to this movie over the years, I always thought this part was much longer, and had a lot more to do with the plot. I thought the WHOLE DIGITAL SEQUENCE was composed of races of ever-increasing intensity and ever rising stakes. Turns out, not.

When they manage to foil their digital captors, all hell breaks loose. Somehow Flynn ends up separated from his two program counterparts, and flying what I decided to call the “One-Footed Chinese Gate of Doooooooom” around the land, apparently at random. He meets up with a bit, which is kinda cute, but totally pointless.

Yes. No. Yes. Yes. No.

Kinda like a woman, but not as good a filling out that jumpsuit.

His pals, meanwhile have visited a wise pancake pile with the token crotchety but lovable old man head. He provides Tron a conduit to talk to his “user” (WARE! psuedo-religious allegory!! RUN!) who thereafter tells him exactly what he needs to do to save the world. (Ah! The allegory crumbles! No religion ever functioned by issuing clear and precise instructions!) Which basically amounts to thwarting the Over-Villain MCP and kicking the brains out of the Sub-Villain Sark while he’s at it.

Which he does. Basically, with a frisbee.

End Of Line.

It is hard to be both heartfelt and earnest, while also being world-wise and wry. They usually cancel each other out in a battle-royale style cage match of competing ideals, but somehow in this novel, they coexist. And the comfortable peace they have made with each other results in an excellent read.

This is Alex Shakar’s first novel, but you’d never know it. He is deft and confident in his storytelling. He handles having a protagonist of the opposite gender with great finesse and utter believability, which is rare enough generally, but more so for a man writing in a woman’s voice. There is almost always something missing, or added that should not be. Shakar speaks as Ursula with complete veracity, and I admire that.

Ursula is a character that is altogether easily liked. She is smart and determined, though it isn’t always clear to her just what she is determined to do. She is picking her way through the aftermath of a dramatic family crisis, and trying to build a world around herself that makes sense. She lives in a large city perched on the side of a volcano, and you get the sense that this very clearly demonstrates the volatile energy that both she and the city are possessed by.

For in addition to her own struggle to decide who she is, her younger sister Ivy is engaged in a much more literal struggle to determine this. She’s suffered a psychotic break and is suffering from intense schizophrenia. Somehow the mental and emotional arc of these sisters is remarkably similar, and appears to vary mostly in terms of intensity, rather than content.

The portrayal of mental illness in this book is different than any i have ever encountered. It seeks to discuss it in terms that are immediately relateable and easy for people who’ve never dealt with it to take in. Catatonia is described, rather than being a lack of awareness, as a response to stimulus overload. The body and mind cannot function with all of the input currently in play, and so in self-defense, all systems lock in place to allow processing to take place. Likewise the way Shakar describes Ivy’s paranoia makes it all too easy to see that, she might be crazy, but she also has a point.

At least, Ursula does. She has taken a job in marketing and finds herself trying to absorb all the countless ways in which we are manipulated every moment of our lives, without losing a grip on a kinder gentler version of reality.Her job has essentially become to watch and observe people so as to use the information to compel them to act in a particular way. Not too far from Ivy’s version of the truth, after all…

Throughout the book Shakar drops in little mini-lectures on advertising and the marketing mindset. Having read this novel several years before Mad Men came out, I recognized many of the compelling themes in that excellent show to have been touched upon here. One of the characters Chas delivers a speech to his clients not unlike the one Don Draper gives to his cohorts. How, not only to exploit desire, but how to create it where none currently exists. It is almost a treatise on consumerism, and it is compelling and deeply though provoking.

As is, to my mind, this whole book. It creates a world where there is a serious push toward and market for diet water. Finding the means to sell this absurdity become Ursula’s job, and though she is appalled at the notion of doing so on some core level, she is also seduced by the notion that she might have the skills to do so. The capacity to enchant a whole population into doing her will. Into traveling lite.