In my life. . .

there are so many things and not one of them is there for any reason but by my own choice. So terrifying to be trapped in a hell of your own making that resembles so much at first glance your idea of heaven. So terrifying to look around and see nothing that causes displeasure, to enjoy even the mild disarray and vague settling of dust, yet feel utterly trapped and nauseated by the whole affair of living. To look in the mirror and know that without time seeming to pass at all, I will slip into a long and hazy life throughout which I will decay and curl and crumble into something dry and broken in some probable future.

I have my health, to spite everything, I think. My round belly is so comfortingly solid under my hands.

Bad things simply don't happen to me.

But there's something wrong when I seem to always see walls before walls, something before the something that is there, a sort of idle claustrophobia that is absurd in this huge room, but no less real. Beneath the ceiling there hangs a ceiling and before the wall there stands a wall. To pass through one door, I first have to pass through an imaginary door, a door that I have to pry open in my own mind before I can even begin to go through the real one. Always some impediment.

To sound, too. I find myself squinting at people when they talk to me, wondering what they're saying without listening to them and wondering when it will become evident that I cannot hear them. Probably never. Most people are less interested in the responses to their problems than in voicing their. . .their concern? their. . .their upset? annoyance? awareness? I don't know. I'm not that interested in their problems either, but sometimes I think it would be nice to know what was going on, to know how people are doing, well, with whatever. I'd like to help.

I like to help, but not when I can't believe in what's being done. Is it admirable to believe in something? Anything? Is it just to do something? Anything? Is is admirable or desirable to try to be just? Should we ask more of ourselves than honesty? Should we ask courtesy? Either? Both? Should we act in our own interest or in the general interest? Should we act without thinking? What's a person supposed to be like? I'd like to be a person, to do things properly, but I've never been quite sure what that means. Some days I try to say only what I mean and other days I try not to say anything I mean. It doesn't seem to matter and people never seem to mind too much what I say. I'm not trying to hurt anyone.

Usually, when I say what I think, people laugh so I think I must have a pretty good sense of humor. When I make jokes, people laugh, too, but they also say things like, "I shouldn't be laughing" or "That's bad" or "Ohhhhhhhhhh. . .I never want to hear that again." What's a person to do except disregard it all and go on. Because without answers we'll go on and even if we never find any we'll go on.

Because we have to.

Book Review: The Easy Chain

I reviewed, vaguely, Evan Dara's The Easy Chain for the Front Table.

From Monsieur by Jean-Philippe Toussaint

"And, that evening in his new apartment, Monsieur remained quite simply in his position for hours, where the absence of pain was a pleasure, and the absence of pleasure a pain, bearable in its presence."

From the Calque newsletter:

In the news: The New York Times throws a bone with this piece about the Frankfurt Book Fair. The brilliant takeaway quote from this piece: when Anne-Solange Noble, the foreign-rights director at Gallimard, describes American publishing as "the poverty of the rich." Exactement.

Steve at Calque agreed in French: "Exactement."

In American I'll also concur: Word.

On Ska (and the proper care of the Brain Stem)

It is my firm belief that those people who claim not to enjoy ska are denying something fundamental about their hearts, about their souls, about themselves, and about their brain stems.

Sure, tell me that all of the songs sound the same. It's not true, but it's basically true and that's all the more reason to like every ska song. Each ska song can then speak to that most crucial chakra, that region of the body that defines the rhythm of the fluid that feeds the brain stem.

Yes, the brain stem, that frequently disregarded, but absolutely critical element of human being. Where would any of us be without our brain stems? Proper brain stem maintenance necessitates music with a hard 4/4, blaring horns, a firm guitar upstroke, and also apples. Without the natural elements found in apples (and in apple juice, cider, hard cider, sauce, etc.) the brain stem ceases to function and becomes desiccated. As any doctor or orchard owner will tell you, a person can scarcely function without a properly irrigated brain stem set primarily to the 4/4 rhythm.

What more can you do to ensure proper brain stem performance? In addition to the daily consumption of apple beverages, one could expose themselves to any of the following invigorating sounds: the shofar, throat singing, jazz violin, didgeridoo, well-played horns (especially as played by Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Freddie Hubbard). Remember, some people haven't the temperament for horns and their stems require something milder and more versatile like a Bix Biederbeck clarinet. Avoid, for obvious reasons, the french horn, and also vodka and television as these stimuli will twist your brain stem into painful contortions.

Above all, however, avoid hitting your head on the pipes in your local basement bookstore.

Book Review: The Taker & Other Stories by Rubem Fonseca

I expressed enthusiasm, briefly, here.

Blurb

I said things about Rubem Fonseca's upcoming book The Taker & Other Stories at Publishers Weekly. I meant them.

The Rules

There's no point in chasing experience; experience is always upon you, like gravity and as a result of time. Life is not a game or an adventure, but an endurance trial with a predictable end. And there are rules, but they're not imposed by God, by your local government, by your mother, or by nature.

They are, in fact, imposed by my mother.

The rules are composed mostly of immutable facts, but the final rule is both breakable and the hardest one not to break.

1. You cannot stop.
2. You cannot go back.
3. You will always go forward.
4. You cannot expect happiness, joy, pleasure, or anything at all positive.
5. Life is not its own reward.
6. You may not quit.


The only penalty to breaking them is losing. And when you've lost, you no longer care that you've lost because you're dead.

From Nobody's Home by Dubravka Ugresic

I am not a historian of ideas, so I can't actually say how personal happiness has rated at other times. The history of the idea is a long one: eudaimonia was a preoccupation of the Greeks; Aristotle interpreted happiness as the realization of human potential. The "pursuit of happiness" shows up in the American Declaration of Independence. Before their right to pursue happiness was legitimized, people were caught up in meeting their obligations, their duties to God and people, for centuries. The questiom of happiness was something left to the elite: the gods, philosophers, poets and sovereigns.