Category Uncategorized

This Morning

Dusty Leave a comment

PART II: Time for the crazy shit.

ClearImage result for crazy pirate

(Have you all told everyone about me? Image taken from here, and it’s for sale.)

(Here’s Part I.)

So all right: we’ve got our floating garbage-land, called Spirit of Trump (Trumpia? Trump-As-Fuck-Land? We’ll discuss. There will be a meeting. One awesome thing about pirates is that they were members of an essentially egalitarian and democratic society.). Now it’s time to talk about our long-term goals. I mean, sure, we can just float around on our trash-berg, but how long will that satisfy us? For my own self, I feel I will need a purpose greater than snickering at Trump while living on a giant mound of waste.

So here’s the plan.

First of all, we’re going to become Lords of Plastic. I’m hopeful that we will have some science-minded people aboard, and they will be willing to experiment with the plastic that makes up our proud island; maybe they can find ways to manipulate it, better than we can now. Specifically I’d like to make plastic that is impervious to bullets and rockets and torpedoes and the like, as I plan to go to war and it would be swell if our plasticontinent didn’t get wiped out by the first salvo. Though really, the main protection from assault would be the sheer size of our rubbishy Nautilus: I want this thing to be so big that the U.S. Navy could blast away at the edges for days and do nothing more than break off a whole lot of plastic confetti. But I figure, once word gets out that we’re creating a free society, with Trump’s blessing and outside of his control, and also helping clean up the oceans? I mean, imagine the brain drain on the United States of Trump: imagine all the brilliant minds who can’t stand to turn on the news every day and see that straw-haired Nazi Cheeto in the White House. Think how many of them would rather live on a giant pile of floating trash rather than a country filled with MAGA hats. I mean, really, which honestly seems more like worthless garbage? So I’m pretty sure we’ll  have all of the greatest minds in America on our team.

Just imagine what they could do, what America’s best minds could do, given free rein and a cause to fight for.

To that end, in addition to plastic shielding, I’m looking for some intriguing plastic-based weapon systems: I want plastic netting that could tangle motors and machines, and maybe trap attacking ships; and I would love some plastic that could adhere to people and sort of cocoon them in a plastic shell. You know what else would be awesome? Sentient plastic. Ooo — and maybe Flubber!

Once we can turn the plastic into our weapons of war, then it’s time to become Lords of Plastic for real. We’re taking all the plastic. All the garbage. All the recycling, too, since 91% of plastic produced ends up in landfills, which means recycling is just another pile of bullshit. Like Trump and his goddamn slogans. I figure we can reach an agreement with the nations of the world — certainly with Trump and his ilk, the megalomaniacal idiots — to take all of their plastic garbage off their hands. They’ll pay us to do it, so long as the plastic doesn’t end up in their landfills, in their rivers and streams, making them look bad for their people; no, indeed, we don’t want that. So we’ll take it all, and we’ll earn some hefty fees, too — garbage is lucrative. Just ask the Sopranos. But what’s even better is that the more plastic we collect, the larger our island will be. Considering the sheer quantity of plastic we produce now, worldwide, I figure we’ll overtake Australia in no time.

But the goal is not to make the largest plastic island in the world. The goal is not even to escape Trump’s America. I want those things, I want fame and fortune, and freedom. But you know what I really want?

I want my fucking country back.

I don’t mind losing a political fight. I don’t mind being wrong; it intrigues me, actually, when I finally shed the blinders and actually understand an argument from the other side; and when I see, just for instance, the economy improving in a lot of ways, even in the last two years under Trump, I have to recognize that there’s something to the idea of lowering taxes and decreasing regulation in order to give businesses a boost. That makes sense, even though my liberal soul says that we need the money from taxes in order to help people who need it. But the truth is somewhere in the middle: taking too much from those who produce wealth really does make it harder to produce wealth, and there are problems with that, including that it makes it harder to collect money that we want to spend on good causes. Things like that make me recognize that Republicans have a point. They’re not inherently wrong. The pull from the right, to draw back the government and keep it small, and to ensure that it is not involved in every aspect of our lives, is a valuable influence on our society. We shouldn’t go all the way to that side, I don’t think, because frequently the government is the best way to ensure a level playing field, and to protect people from injustice. But government unchecked is not any better than capitalism unchecked. I know that. I know that because of conservatives who have won arguments, who have made good points, who have done things when in power that are actually good for all of us. Fiscal conservatives keep us from overspending. Small-government conservatives are a good check on large government, because large government institutions are inefficient and wasteful, and occasionally corrupt; just look at the Senate under Mitch McConnell, the evil fucker with his hand up the dummy-Trump’s backside. I don’t even see that son of a bitch as a Republican, not now after he’s repudiated everything the GOP is supposed to stand for in his naked grab for power. He’s a kleptocrat, just like Trump. Just like 90% of the current Republicans in power, who have given everything up in order to support Trump, just so they can maintain power.

I won’t leave my country in their hands. I won’t.

So once we have our floating continent of filth, we’re going to come back and fight for this giant pile of waste we call home.

What we do is, we go after the oil, first. I’d love to start subtly, by taking all the plastic we can steal: we pirate all the cargo ships carrying plastic goods, and steal them all; shred it and add it to our island, or maybe provide any useful material wealth to the “shithole” countries, and all the ones that Trump cut off aid to because they’re not white. The more plastic we can steal, the more oil they’ll have to produce in order to replace the stolen plastic. Then we go after the offshore oil rigs: it would be great if we could have two garbage islands, one in the Atlantic to go into the Gulf of Mexico, and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to hit the coast of California, and/or Alaska. I sorta think all we have to do is float into them, and let our island crush the oil rigs underneath our neverending plasticine bulk; but if not, we’ll use the plastic weapons, nets to foul the drills and to capture the tankers, plastic cocoons to freeze the workers and float them back to shore. Once we stop the oil production, and/or push up the price of crude so high that America’s overheated economy can’t afford to import it, then the economy will crash. (Obviously renewable energy would be the other option, but all of the best minds, and the most liberal ones, will be dancing on a giant ice-shelf of shredded water bottles and Chinese-made toys, flipping off everyone in a MAGA hat.) Once the economy crashes, Trump will not only lose his support, but his only reason for being President, which is his own enrichment and aggrandization; he’s not going to want to be the leader of a poor nation that got beaten by a floating pile of garbage.

A floating pile of garbage with an Ultimate Weapon.

My idea for the ultimate weapon is this: the island has a volcano cone, but obviously no volcano under it. I figure it would just be a hole down into the ocean below. So we make huge balls of plastic, big enough to fill the volcano completely, like ping-pong balls in a giant Nerf gun: then we push down on the whole island with enough force to make the water shoot up through the volcano and launch that plastic boulder for miles. I don’t know how we aim it; that’s why we have all the brilliant scientists. But I know this part: know how we push the island down? That’s easy: when we clear all the plastic out of the oceans, we’ll win the undying friendship of all the whales. So we get them to leap out of the water, and land on the island, all at once. It’ll shove the whole island down, fast and hard, and BOOM! Plastic volcano launches plastic boulder. The whales will be fine; the island’s just plastic, so it won’t hurt them, and we will quickly help them back into the water, so they can swim around and do it again, as soon as we can reload the volcano with another giant plastic pellet. It’s foolproof! And maybe we can make the plastic pellets hollow, and fill them with — I dunno, something good, something that will dissuade anyone from fighting us. Eight tons of butterscotch pudding or something. Radioactive waste (I bet we could get a good deal on that if we agreed to take it off America’s hands when we get all the plastic.). Maybe sewage? That’s be poetic, wouldn’t it? If we dropped a giant plastic ball filled with slimy, festering shit  right on top of Mar-a-Lago?

Anyway, between all of our piratey scalawags, our continent of plastic, the geniuses who were pushed out of Trump’s America, and the allegiance of all the whales, and probably all the dolphins and porpoises, and definitely the sea turtles once we clear out all those straws, I’m pretty sure we can win this fight. Really, I bet all we’d have to do is threaten to destroy every building and golf course named after Trump, and he’d resign in no time.

Really, I think this is the best plan. It certainly seems more realistic than trusting our democratic institutions and trying to heal all the damage that partisan fighting has done to this country.

So who’s with me?

This Morning

Dusty 4 Comments

This morning I am formulating a plan.

I know it’s early to be thinking of contingencies, and I don’t mean to be negative or imply that I won’t do my damnedest to see that this doesn’t happen, but: in case everything does go wrong, and Trump wins a second term in 2020, I know what I’m going to do.

I’m going full pirate.

Image result for skull and crossbones

I like this one because the skull has an eyepatch. Perfect. Though I wish the skull and crossbones on his hat was also wearing a hat with a skull and crossbones, which was also wearing a hat, so we could have an infinite regression. But this will do. Image taken from here.

 

I’m going to take my family and head to the high seas. I have several friends who are both enamored of the pirate life and also as disgusted as I am by Donald Trump’s presidency; I hope they will be willing to join my crew. Some of them are boat lovers, sailors, mechanically inclined, which is good as I am none of those things — I love tall ships and like boats of all kinds, but I know nothing about them, nor about sailing. I’m also uncomfortable with the ocean, as I have a morbid fear of drowning. But that’s okay! Because I know a lot about pirates: such as the fact that most pirates were terrible seamen, as they were often drunk and sailed the ships they could steal, which were never the fastest nor the most seaworthy; also, the pirates of the Caribbean, particularly, couldn’t keep a ship in the water more than about two years before it was eaten by teredo worms (Actually, they weren’t worms, they were long clams: their shells were tiny, attached only at one end, and were what the clam-worms — clorms? — used to burrow into the wood of the ship. And if that doesn’t fucking terrify you, you’re not allowed in my crew.). The pirates didn’t win their prizes with fast or clever sailing; they used knowledge of the local waters to set traps, floating like giant inebriated jellyfish in the shipping lanes and attacking ships that came too close, or else they would fill a ship with so many men that when they managed to get close to a merchant vessel, the mere sight of so many drunken violent filthy scalawags was enough to make the ship surrender. Point is, you don’t  need to sail well to be a good pirate. So I’m in. Also, there is a long tradition of sailors being unable to swim, since the ocean is a bad place to have to walk home from if your ship sinks; most people would rather just go down quickly. I’m not one of them: but I also don’t plan to run that risk.

Now we  get to the good part. Ready? I’m going to create a pirate nation. Because I can’t swim well and I can’t sail at all — and I have no ability nor instinct nor interest in anything violent — but by gum, I can think up insane ideas as well as anyone else here, and better than most of y’all.

Here’s my plan. We will get some of the large booms that have been proposed to help clean the ocean of floating plastic debris and use them to collect as much plastic as we can. We will then sail to one of the five “garbage islands” — preferably the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — and push all the additional plastic we can into the 100,000 metric tons already there. We’ll surround the GPGP with booms, and shove everything together, until it is dense enough to walk on.

That’s where we’ll live.

We’ll establish ourselves as environmentalists (though we’ll let the actual environmentalists in on our plan, so they’ll help us gather the plastic and won’t oppose us) and we’ll also tell Trump that we’re going to help him. It shouldn’t be hard; the man only understands sycophancy and animosity, so if we suck up to him, that means we aren’t enemies, we’re “very fine people.” And we’ll keep working to bring in all of the plastic we can, to extend the size of our garbage island, piling it higher and higher until we can actually have a stable land base — hopefully with a volcano and a lagoon, like a proper pirate island — and hopefully getting some assistance from Trump. We’ll name the island after him. It’ll be perfect.

Not piratey enough? I see you’ve never heard of the privateers. They were pirates who were granted a letter of marque from the government of a European country, which gave them permission to attack the ships of that country’s enemies. A license to pirate, as it were. Captain Henry Morgan himself was as much a loyal soldier of England as he was a pirate; he was made the Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica after he retired from pillaging the Spanish colonies in the New World.

So once we’re got the sanction to build up our island, and we’ve cleared the oceans of all of the plastic we can find, then the time comes to put Part II of the plan into motion.

But I think Part II will have to wait for tomorrow’s post.

Looking Up

Dusty Leave a comment

I woke up this morning about 5am. I usually do. The alarm is set for 5:20, and I often get up before the alarm so that I can take my shower and then have a few minutes to relax, browse the internet, eat breakfast, make even more coffee; though my morning timing is more dependent on my wife, who gets up after I do, and then has to finish her morning so we can go to work together around 7:45. First thing I do when I wake up every morning is take the dog outside, since he hasn’t had a whiz since the night before. Usually I take my phone, look at Twitter; he’s only out there for thirty seconds, maybe a minute. No big deal.

This morning when I opened my eyes, I saw light coming through the windowshade, and I thought, “Oh, right – blue moon, supermoon, blood moon, right? Cool.” So when I went outside with the dog, I looked up at the moon.

It was eclipsing.

It threw me off, at first; I had a student tell me that the eclipse would happen between 5 and 7 pm, the evening before (Though at this point, I realized he had probably seen the times and not realized that they were am, and this is why I don’t trust student recommendations of things.), so when I saw the moon looking less than full, I was confused. But I quickly realized that it was shadow that I was seeing, not a different phase of the moon.

I tried to take a picture: didn’t work. I only had my phone, and it isn’t set up to take precision images of celestial events. So I just looked at it for a minute while the dog trotted around the yard, and then I went inside to take my shower. I glanced out the bathroom window, and I could still see the moon, so I checked on its progress, which was much faster than I would have thought; so I hurried. I went back out to look at the moon before I brushed my teeth, because I wanted to catch a glimpse of the almost-but-not-complete eclipse.

Here’s the thing: I have a telescope. A pretty nice one, not an observatory telescope, but a step up from the Junior Astronomer telescope that grandparents buy their science-y grandkids. I never really use it, sadly, but I do have it sitting in the corner of the living room. But clearly now is the time to bust it out, right? So I take it outside, fumble off the lens caps in the pitch black cold, and then I swivel it around in the general direction (After trying to use the spotter sight on the side of the telescope, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t set that thing up right, as it never shows what the main eyepiece sees.). And it takes a minute, because my dumb luck is actually pretty dumb, but eventually, there it is! The lunar eclipse.

I mean, it’s a gray-white blob, part of it darker than another part of it. I focused the telescope better, and now it is – a gray-white blob with some dark patches. Those are craters. I think: they might be mountain ranges. The most interesting thing is actually a tiny point of light that zips around the edge of the moon’s disk, and is either an interesting effect of the sun’s light, or some imperfection between my eye and the telescope. I am not riveted, is what I am saying. And I’m cold.

20180131_051518

My best camera photo of the eclipse. SEE HOW IT’S NOT ROUND?!? COOL, HUH?!?

So I went inside to brush my teeth, and then wake up my wife. This is when I would be sitting down on the couch, petting the dog while I look at the internet, starting with social media and then moving to the New York Times. (Hey – there was a State of the Union speech last night. Another craggy, reddish-white object that I didn’t watch as it turned slowly darker and more shady. Fancy that.) But instead, I went back out to look at the moon, which was now fully eclipsed, and starting to turn reddish: the Blood Moon.
Now, I love the idea of a blood moon. I’m a fantasy/horror fan, and a writer of same; the blood moon is vampires and werewolves and things that go bump in the night. It’s awesome. I’m also a longtime collector and player of Magic: The Gathering, and I have a card called Blood Moon, which I’ve used to good effect in the past. (If you don’t know the card but do know the game, it’s a red enchantment that turns non-standard lands into mountains. I had it in a goblin/mountainwalking deck with two Goblin Kings – who give all goblins mountainwalking. Mwahaha. If you don’t know anything about Magic, sorry for the delay: back to the actual moon now.) So I am psyched for this blood moon. I’m happy that I have a little free time in my mornings, so that I can do some gazing. I’m happy that I have a telescope so I can see it close up.

Except now I can’t see the moon in the telescope. It moved in the intervening ten minutes while I was brushing my teeth and getting coffee, and now I can’t find it. I also can’t work the controls that make the telescope move, because though I learned how to do this, it’s been too long since I have done it, and it’s too dark outside to see what the various dials and gadgets do. I keep trying, fidgeting with the fine adjustment wheels, unsure if they’re actually doing anything because all I can see in the field is blurry darkness and occasional stars. And sometimes the very edge of what appears to be a very large circle of light, which is either light pollution zipping across the lens, or the end of the world, I don’t know which. Finally I tip the whole telescope, lifting one of the tripod legs, and the moon shoots across the field. Success! I hold it there and try to find a way to move the controls to make it point at that exact spot without me holding it up.

I can’t do it. I don’t know which levers to loosen, which wheels to turn; when I find something that can turn, I can’t tell if it’s working, or whether or not it’s going in the right direction, so do I keep turning it, or do I turn it back the other way? I picture my students laughing at my telescopic incompetence. I get more and more pissed as I spend more time trying, and still failing, to center the telescope. Goddammit – my morning is ticking away; the blood moon won’t last forever; I’m getting cold – WHY CAN’T I TURN THIS FUCKING TELESCOPE?! WHY?? WH – Oh. There it is. I finally get the moon in the field, and I see –

A gray-white blob. Somewhat reddish. Mostly blobby. I focus, and I see – a gray-white blob with dark spots. Still somewhat reddish. Those are craters. I think.

I lift my head and look up into the sky, and I see: a blood moon. Big, fairly bright, definitely red, quite clear. It’s excellent. I look back through the telescope, having to adjust it again to center the moon in the field; it looks – I mean, it’s a little larger, a little clearer. But without the whole sky to frame it, to make it into the moon I have looked to all of my life, it’s . . . boring.

So I spent a few minutes looking at the moon, this morning, while I drank my coffee. I put the telescope back inside, and when Toni was done with her morning shower and all, I called her out to look at the blood moon, and I just pointed at the sky. “Wow,” she said. “Beautiful!”

So it was. When you just looked up at the sky.

 

You know what I thought about today? I thought about how often I try to look very, very closely at things – particularly literature, since that’s my job; but also my life and what I’ve accomplished and what I’m worth; my reflection in the mirror and how my hairline is changing, and my jawline, and the shape of my eyes; my career, what I can do, what I have done, what I should do – and how, when I try to look really closely, I take away the bigger picture. Often I am looking through a lens that I am not using correctly: when I decide to write a blog about politics, for instance (as this one was going to be when I first thought of it), I’m setting myself up to have a hard time, because I just don’t know enough about politics to really see clearly. I know there are people who can use telescopes and could have used mine to see far finer detail of the eclipse and the blood moon than I could see with my naked eyes; I know there are people who can see far more nuance and historical significance in political events than I can see. For me, I just sort of fidget around for a while, turning things and twisting things, getting more and more frustrated, and nothing gets any clearer.

When that happens, I should step away, and just – look at the sky. It’s worth seeing, all by itself, even without a telescope.

This morning, I saw a blood moon. It was wonderful.

Dusty 3 Comments

This is hard.

I wanted to explain why I haven’t been blogging very often, and why I haven’t been talking about the effort to publish my book. Why I don’t  write about writing. As a writer, I should — shouldn’t I? If I’m a writer? And even now, while I am trying to find the words for this, I immediately want to start apologizing for it. I want to say that I know this is a cliché, that everyone who writes, and everyone who makes art, we all have this same problem: that things have been said before, and why would I think that my way of saying them would be any better? I want to say that I know this isn’t interesting to anyone, but I felt a need to write it, so I’m just going to go ahead and do it: unapologetically apologizing. I feel like I’m lost in a fog, and I keep bumping into things, into people; I’m clumsy, and blind, and — sorry. Sorry! Oh, that was your foot. Sorry about that.

I want to apologize a lot. I’ve done a lot of things wrong, as a writer: I’ve made a lot of clumsy mistakes, often fallen on my face. I want to apologize for my first book being too long, which kept it from being published; I want to apologize for giving up on seeking an agent to represent me, and I want to apologize for taking so long to get into self-publishing. I want to apologize for being a teacher, and for being good enough at it, and believing in it enough, to take time away from my writing; clearly I should have taken a shit job so I could focus entirely on accomplishing my dreams. I want to apologize for wasting my years being happily married and not having kids; because even though I never wanted kids, the best reason that I can give anyone who asks me why not is that I wanted to focus on my career; and after all this time, I haven’t done enough to earn justification for that decision. I’m sorry. (Still not sorry I didn’t have kids. Absolutely not sorry about my marriage.) I want to apologize every time I write on this blog, because my book reviews aren’t good enough, because I don’t socialize with other bloggers enough, don’t follow enough, don’t comment and Like enough. I want to apologize for my essay/rant/blogs because I’m sure I’m offending someone, either because what I say is offensive or because it isn’t offensive enough. I want to apologize for not having enough expertise to really teach a general audience something they didn’t know before, and therefore wasting their time with my mediocre insights and tired, angry humor. I want to apologize for not writing short stories and poems, for not getting published in literary journals, for constantly shifting my blogging style and my intent with this blog.

Basically, I want to apologize for being me, at least the me that I think I am, though I’m probably wrong, probably indulging in some ridiculous fantasy so as not to face the truth of my mediocrity. I’m sorry. All I can say is, this is hard.

I’m pretty well lost in the dark out here; I don’t know where I am, or the right way to go, or what’s at the end of the path — or even what’s the path. I think I know what it takes to be a writer, but it’s hard to remember what I think I know, and it’s hard to believe, still, in what I think is true, no matter how many times people, including people I respect and admire, say the same things: never give up. Write every day. Write what you know, and write what you want; don’t try to chase the latest trend or the hottest thing: just don’t give up. I want to hold onto those touchstones, follow that map laid out for me by those I would be honored to follow, whose footsteps I dream of walking in.

But see, those are great writers who say that. People who have found success, who have published books, who have sold books. Not me. They have an audience: people want to read what they have to say. They have interesting and useful thoughts, crafted from the perfect words. They know what they’re doing, they can see the way to go; they can see it all so well that they notice the tiny details, they see little moments of beauty, or oddness, or even horror. I can’t even see the ground under my feet, can’t even see my feet, when I start writing: what makes me think that my thoughts, my words, are the right words? And if they’re not the right words, what the hell am I doing? I could be getting ahead on my school paperwork, and I could be playing video games and binge watching all the shows I haven’t seen. I’d be more comfortable at my day job, and I could participate in the conversations about pop culture. I’d know where I was, and I’d know what I was doing. I’d know what was right.

But when I decide to write, I step away from that comfortable, familiar assurance, that life like an easy walk through a mall. Air conditioning, clear lighting, You Are Here maps. And I step into confusion. Every time I write, I have to wonder: What is the right thing to write?

Who is the right me to be?

Figuring that out is hard. Not that actual figuring: I think that’s pretty simple. I mean, I think I am a writer. But I don’t really know why I think it. Every reason I can think of to support the assertion that I’m a writer, I can instantly, with no trouble at all, think of a counterclaim to disprove it. I’m good with words: but I don’t do enough drafts, don’t spend enough time on the work. And . . .

Oops. Turns out I can’t even think of a second reason to call myself a writer. I can keep going with reasons why I’m not a writer: I haven’t had any success, never sold a story, never got accepted for anything, been blogging for ten years and never broke 100 followers. I have never written a way out of the darkness where I go when I try to find the words. Never reached the light.

It is very hard to keep thinking that I should in fact keep writing at all, let alone finish this blog, let alone keep writing books that I don’t believe anyone will want to read. I mean, really, what’s special about these words? I didn’t create anything new with them. I didn’t describe anything that’s never been described before; in fact, I don’t think I described anything. They’re just words, and they’re just from me. Who cares?

I’m sorry for wasting all of our time.

I’m trying to come up with a final epiphany, an affirmation that can sustain me, keep me writing, make people understand why I do this, and why every other creative should continue to do it, too. (But then the voice in my head says, I’m not that creative. My book concepts are entirely derivative: a vampire story? Really? You wrote a book about a pirate? TWO books? Oh, good Lord. Let me guess: your blogs are about you being an angry progressive who doesn’t understand why our country is so stupid, right?

Have you ever considered that maybe it isn’t the country that’s stupid?)

Sorry. It’s hard to keep that voice silent. Hard to think that all of that isn’t the simple truth.

It’s hard to think.

I also get afraid, sometimes. I don’t deal with depression, myself, but so many artists and writers do. Today is Virginia Woolf’s birthday, and she’d think everything I’ve ever written is absolute shit. She was one of the best writers who ever lived. She killed herself. So that means either that I can’t be a good writer because I don’t have the same problems that the good writers have and had; or if I ever get to be a successful writer, I’ll hate every second of it, and want to get back to where life was simple. I’ll want to walk away from writing, from the place I worked so hard to get into. I’ll get there, and I’ll want to run away.

Why the hell do I do this, again?

I’m sorry. I shouldn’t keep repeating myself. It’s a bad habit. I think I’m looking for something familiar. Safe. Known. Which writing is not. Really, I shouldn’t be writing at all: I have way too many bad habits, and I don’t spend enough time taking extra classes, and studying exactly what my favorite writers do,  and carefully scrutinizing every line of prose I’ve ever written to determine how it could be improved. That’s why I’m not a good writer, which is why I’m not a successful writer. Because writing is hard, and I’m too lazy, and too cowardly, to actually do it right. I’m also too old: all the great writers publish their first great books much younger than me. I’m 43: clearly time to get to work on finding some other hobby that would be better for me, that wouldn’t cause me as much consternation, that wouldn’t be so hard. I can’t keep doing this one. I can’t.

But I’m still writing. Doesn’t that show that I am, in fact, a writer? Maybe even a good one, because I don’t give up? Because I try to be honest? Share what I feel and what I see in the world?

Sure, if what I shared and felt wasn’t shit. But if it is, then people are just rolling their eyes and laughing at me. I mean, I guess I don’t care if people are laughing at me, but I also don’t see any reason to keep going if people aren’t appreciating and enjoying my work.

And yet I’m still writing. Still trying to find a way to finish this, to make a point. I think I may have written myself into a corner with this whole “I should stop doing this” thing. I think I already contradicted myself pretty badly, and I’ve probably confused the shit out of anyone who is reading this. I’m pretty lost, myself.

This is hard.

I don’t want to give up. I don’t want to need readers: I want to write for the sheer joy of writing. I feel that sometimes. I get excited about stories. There have been some moments when I’ve looked back over what I’ve written, and I’ve impressed myself. I want to feel that the thousands upon thousands of words that I have put together are an accomplishment, that they mean — I don’t know, something.

And in my best moments, I do think that. I do think that anyone who has written four books — Jesus, four books! And hundreds of blogs, book reviews, essays, along with two-thirds of two other books — I mean, that person has to be a writer. Right? I don’t know where the line is between writer and non-writer, but I’m pretty damned sure that nothing else I’ve done in my life compares to what I’ve accomplished as a writer. (Not counting the things that matter, but aren’t really accomplishments, like being happily married and taking good care of my pets and such. If those are accomplishments, I’m proud of myself for them. If those define me, I’m proud to be those things.)

Actually, that’s not an if. I am proud of the husband I am, of the marriage I have helped to build and keep. Toni and I have been together for 23 years, and she is still the one thing in the world that makes me happiest. She is my world. I have given a home to an iguana, a dog, and a bunny who have all passed on after long healthy happy years; I am currently taking care of a dog, a cockatiel, and a Sulcata tortoise who are also living happy, healthy lives. I am absolutely and unequivocally proud of that. I am happy to be defined as that man, that husband, that father of many pets. I have no doubt of that: knowing that is not hard. This is where I am comfortable, where I am — mostly — sure of myself, and of the ground on which I stand.

I wish writing was the same way. That art was the same way. Comfortable. Sure. Easy.

But the truth is, it isn’t. Art isn’t easy. Art is never sure. Art is never comfortable. We live on mostly solid ground, and we can see all around us; but art is off the edge of the map. It has to be, because it is created. It could be created out of familiar pieces, it may be shaped to resemble something that we’ve known, but — it’s not something we’ve known. It’s something new. To make something new, you have to go away from solid ground. Where everything floats, and nothing is clear. You can’t see where you are, can’t see where you’re going. That’s the only place you can make art: can make a new place to stand.

Art is too big, too impossible to define, too hard to understand. It’s larger than we are, you know; I mean, of course. Of course the English language, and every concept that can come from all the creative minds that have ever existed, of course that’s all larger than me. And when I compare myself to that, of course I am insignificant, a bug, a nothing. Nothing at all. Trying to find my way in that unending expanse, that eternally shifting and growing universe, that limitless world being created and re-created every day, by every artist? Of course that’s hard. It should be.

And I’m still writing. Goddamn it, I’m still writing. Not as well as some others do, maybe not even as well as I could, given the perfect circumstances: if I didn’t have to work, say, or if I had some perfect storm of idea, and passion, and time, and could burn through my own Fahrenheit 451, my own Bell Jar, my own God of Small Things. But given everything I carry with me when I go marching into this unknown, into this mysterious world where art exists, where I make art, where I am past the familiar, through the looking glass, where even the landmarks do not exist until I create them — I think I do as well as I can. I don’t know if it’s good enough. I don’t know what “good enough” means.

But I’m still writing. Maybe it’s even more impressive if it isn’t good enough, because if I can’t have enough talent to really be good, at least I can have enough courage to keep trying, to keep writing, to keep going out into that chaos of formless possibility, and deciding: choosing: determining: building; and then going back to where I was, to the real, solid, familiar world, and carrying with me the thing I made — which is never like the real world, and every time I compare it, I know that what I made is not as clear, not as solid, not as real as the real world. But still, I bring it back here with me, and I give what I write to other people, and I say, “Here, read this. Look at what I made. Tell me what you think.” That does take courage, to dive into the unknown, and try to build yourself a place to stand before you fall: and then to invite other people to stand there, too. That takes courage.

And I’m still doing it.

I’m still writing.

A Letter to My Readers

Dusty 3 Comments

Okay so here’s the thing.

I’ve been having something of a crisis of confidence. Maybe not a crisis, actually, because it’s been going on for quite a while; I’m still not out of it, in fact. But I’m realizing that it is probably more important than I’ve been giving it credit for being, and it almost certainly has to do with this blog, and what has happened to the kinds of things I post on here. I think this is the reason why I’ve reduced myself to posting only book reviews (Not that there’s anything wrong with that), and why all of my intentions to post frequently have fallen by the wayside, so that now I’m lucky if I get one post a week on here.

What happened is that I found out that I’m not actually very good at arguing. I think quickly, but I think shallowly; I tend not to do much research, I don’t argue about things that I have spent years learning; I jump in with both feet and start slinging opinions around everywhere. Then I get angry, and I start insulting my opponents – sometimes subtly, sometimes not so much – and when they insult me back, then I get huffy and leave the argument on my high horse. Though frequently, I say I’m leaving the argument but then I don’t; I just take a little longer to think up my next response, or I let other people talk for a while and then I wade back in. Basically, I’m really, really annoying, and the main reason why I always thought I was good at arguing was because I surrounded myself with people who agreed with me, and who therefore complimented me on my ability to take down my opponents. I don’t think I actually took them down very often; I just needled them into shutting up, or else I made wittier fun of them than they made of me, and so my audience applauded.

I don’t like this, but it’s true. It may be a little too harsh; I have had many arguments, and some have gone well, and sometimes I do know what I’m talking about. But ever since I found this out, I’ve noticed how often I talk without thinking, how often I ignore the need for facts to support my arguments, relying on words and, y’know, “logic.” Meaning explaining my thoughts and expecting other people to agree with my thoughts, which is mostly what we mean by logic. I have noticed how often I get angry and then say something shitty. And so I’ve started deleting those nasty comments, and more importantly, I’ve started avoiding arguments. Which I think is a good thing.
Along with that, however, I’ve stopped thinking that I should be ranting about the state of the world, and then sharing those rants with the world. I no longer see myself as a natural authority on truth, justice, and the American way, because my reason for thinking that was mostly that I could win arguments, which I thought made me right. It doesn’t. And if I’m not right, what exactly am I bringing to the table when I post about politics or the state of the world?

Not much, as it turns out. I don’t have a whole lot to offer society as a whole. So I’ve stopped wanting to offer it.

But there’s good news. I still think I write well. I think I have good stories that I’ve written, that I am writing. I think I do a decent book review, though there are certainly others who do more thorough assessments of their books, and who give more useful information; but I think mine are okay, so I’ve kept writing them. But that isn’t the exciting part. The exciting part is that I have kept writing fiction, and other than the fact that I have to spend much too much of my time working and also living my life, I have been writing fiction the whole time I have been pulling away from blogging and ranting and arguing. Which, yeah, that’s good news. Because I write well.

And then this last week sometime – the days all blend together, it seems – I had another realization. While I’m going through this fiction-writing adventure: why the hell am I not blogging about it? I mean, sure, it’s a change from what I’ve done in the past, but if that stuff was not very good, maybe this is a good change. Maybe I should stop ranting for a while, and instead keep this blog as, y’know, a blog, a weblog, an online journal detailing what I’m living through right now.

So to that end, I plan to start keeping a record, as often as I can manage, about this new thing I’m doing. I may still rant sometimes (I certainly will have some ranting to do about school and the world of education, I have no doubt) and I’ll keep up with the book reviews as much as I can; but otherwise, this will be the subject of this blog. Rather than trying to be Just Dusty, I’m going to make this – just Dusty.

Oh right. So what am I going through, you ask? Those of you who are still reading this, that is? Both of you?

I’m publishing my book.

I did this before, but I did it in such a terrible way that I don’t even count it. I wrote a book, completed it in 2006, and then when it wasn’t picked up by an agency or a publishing house after fifteen or twenty query letters (I think; I don’t even remember at this point how often I sent it out, though I do remember buying at least three Writer’s Markets to look for leads), I decided to self-publish it as an ebook. I joined Amazon.com’s Kindle publishing program, followed their instructions, and uploaded my book to the Kindle Store. I made an author profile, and – that’s about it. I didn’t really edit the book — still had more than a dozen simple typos, and I don’t know how many clunky passages, because I didn’t go through and smooth them out. It didn’t have a cover; I found a pattern image on my cheap-ass graphics program, slapped the title and my name on the front, and called it good. Here, this is it:

 

The Dreamer Wakes (The Dreamer's Tale Book 1) by [Humphrey, Theoden]

Yeesh.

My plan was actually to include a plug for my book in all of my Amazon reviews, because at the time, I had something like 100 book reviews on the site which had garnered some thousands of positive votes; seemed like a good opportunity to say, at the end of my long and detailed reviews, “Hey, maybe you should go check out my book, too.” But when I added a line at the end of my reviews, Amazon pulled them from the site. Because you can’t advertise for a book in the reviews of a different book. And of course I get that – but also, why the hell not? The whole page is designed to get customers to look at other books, other books by the author, other books that people bought after looking at this book, other books that Amazon thinks are related to the one you’re checking out. My review plug clearly wasn’t Amazon’s choice for readers, only mine, so I didn’t see why they got pissy about it. Anyway, I pulled the plugs out of the reviews, and then I did nothing at all to promote the book. It’s still there, still for sale, but in the two years – three years? – that I’ve had this particular blog, I don’t believe I’ve ever mentioned it before.

Turns out I’m not only bad at arguing, I’m also bad at advertising.

But it’s okay! I’m really not trying to denigrate myself. It’s still a good book. (Though the larger problem now is that it is actually the first book in an intended trilogy or tetralogy, and I’ve never written the other books. Which is vile and wrong of me, and considering how much crap I’ve talked about George R. R. Martin for never finishing the Song of Ice and Fire series of books before he turned into a TV mogul, it’s really pretty appalling that my only work available for sale is an unfinished series.) It’s just not the story I’ve been writing.

The story I’ve been writing, which I have brought back for its second go-round as a serial blog, is The Adventures of Damnation Kane. It’s the story of an Irish pirate from the 17th century who finds himself, with his ship and his crew, in 2011. I started this story in 2013, kept it as a serial blog for about a year, and then stopped. But I love this story, and I want to finish it all the way to the end; and this time, while I’m writing it, I also want to publish it. This time, I have a real plan. This time, I’m going to do it right.

And that includes trying to talk up the book wherever and whenever I can. I want people to be as excited about the book as I am.

Which means that I should be talking about it – here. Among other places, of course, but certainly, at the least, in this space, which is supposed to be a collection of my thoughts, of the things I believe are important. If I don’t put my own book into this space, what the heck am I doing? If my own work isn’t important to me, then what is?

So here’s the deal, you two people who stuck it out through all this navel-gazing: The Adventures of Damnation Kane are currently available, from the beginning, on my other blog. But only until I get the book published, and then the chapters will come down; I will keep up a couple of the first chapters so a new reader could get an idea of what it’s all about; and I will keep posting new chapters every Saturday as I’ve been doing for ten months, now. The first volume of the Adventures will be available in trade paperback form, and also as a series of four short ebooks; my readers on this blog who review books, I will be asking you all to write me a review, if you would be so kind. And in the meantime, while I am working on getting these books out into the world, I will be writing about the process and the experience of writing and publishing books.

I hope and believe that this time, I’m on the right path. Thanks for coming along with me this far.

Yours,

Dusty Humphrey

Book Review: The Mighty Swordsmen

Dusty Leave a comment

Isn’t that beautiful? Interesting how the men are in greater detail than the women, who are graphic and one-dimensional. Maybe there’s a reason for that . . .

 

The Mighty Swordsmen

Edited by Hans Stefan Santesson

 

A collection of Mighty Warrior swords-and-sorcery stories, this was like most of its kind: a couple of good ones, some that were okay, and a couple of stinkers.

The stinkers were “Break the Door of Hell” by John Brunner and especially “The Keeper of the Emerald Flame” by Lin Carter. The Carter story was too painfully derivative of Conan stories to be worth reading – though I admit I like the name Thongor – as well as too long and plodding, and the bad guy at the end was completely lame. The John Brunner story had some good bits: the concept is Ahura Mazda, the evil deity of Zoroastrianism, wandering Earth and granting people their wishes – which immediately makes those people regret their wishes. Some of those evil wish-grantings were great. The main city that Mazda goes to torment – and he sees himself as merely acceding to people’s wishes, not in any way working evil, and he’s probably right – has a great number of noblemen who would be sorcerers; they start casting their mojo, and even though they don’t really know what they’re doing, Mazda makes it so that their spells actually work: to their unspeakable regret and torment. That part was pretty fun, but also a bit repetitive; and at the end, the twist just irritated me. Bad story, overall.

The mediocre ones were the Elric of Melnibone story, “The Flame-Bringers,” and one of the two Conan stories, “The People of the Summit” by Bjorn Nyberg. The Elric story was actually fine, but exactly like every other Elric story I’ve ever read: he goes questing with Moonglum, brings out Stormbringer even though he doesn’t want to, chops up some enemies and eats some souls, and then calls out the damn dragons to save his bacon at the end. The one Conan story was also fine – better than Thongor – but it was overshadowed by the one that finished up the collection.

That last one, “Beyond the Black River,” along with the Roger Zelazny story “The Bells of Shoredan,” was by far the best. The Zelazny story was about his Dilvish the Damned character, who’s cool to begin with, and this was, for once, a self-contained story, with a good twist, and Zelazny’s usual beautiful prose and wonderful atmosphere. The last story was Conan as written by Robert E. Howard, and seeing that story along with a Conan by a different author, and the cruddy Thongor knock-off, really drove one point home: Robert E. Howard was a hell of a writer. That last story is the longest in the collection, but also the most exciting; Conan is the ultimate badass, and yet he is the most human and believable hero in the bunch. If you can find this collection – unlikely, as I picked up a faded copy with the cover falling off at a Goodwill in town – then it’s worth getting just for the Howard story. And the sweet 1970 pulp fantasy cover art. Good stuff.

Compromise

Dusty Leave a comment

I think I have a solution. To one problem, at least.

I don’t have a solution to most of them. The antifa started violence today in Berkeley, which is only going to increase tensions as it gives more weight to the victimization narrative that drives much of the right-wing/white supremacist movements; “Look at those violent leftists, attacking innocent Trump supporters.” I keep wanting to tone down tensions around Mr. Trump himself: the man will surely go down in history as one of our very worst presidents, but we will survive this, nevertheless; until and unless he commits an actual crime, we should not call for his impeachment, a process that should never be used for partisan purposes. But then Trump himself keeps doing the stupidest shit imaginable, and he keeps driving everyone around the bend. Why the hell is that guy holding campaign rallies? And pardoning Joe Arpaio? Are you kidding me?

So I can’t fix that. I can’t fix the eternal war in Afghanistan – not because I don’t know the solution, I do: it is GET THE HELL OUT OF AFGHANISTAN – but for some reason, that is an untenable answer to the majority of Americans, who seem to believe this bullshit about “not pulling out before we get the job done,” because doing so will leave a power vacuum which will lead to the rise of terrorist groups. Somehow we never take it to the next step in the logic, which is: that means that WE are the power in Afghanistan, and we expect to remain the power in Afghanistan because as long as we are there, nobody else can have power. I heard a former soldier on NPR today saying that he expected we would have a military presence in Afghanistan for decades to come. Decades. Decades that we will be the power in Afghanistan. Which means we are an invading, conquering force, and if you don’t think that that makes more terrorists than any power vacuum ever could, well, you’re just not thinking.

I wish I could solve that one. However, not all hope is lost, because I do have a possible solution to at least one problem: the problem of Confederate monuments.

The inspiration is this.

Can’t take down that ridiculous bull? Build another statue that makes that bull seem pathetic. Or that at least gives people an opportunity to see the bull in a new light.

Now, I realize that both sides in this debate believe they already have the perfect solution: one side thinks we should leave all of the monuments up, and the other side thinks we should tear them all down. And both sides have very simple arguments that they find convincing. I don’t want to say that either side is right or wrong; not because I don’t have an opinion, but because trying to argue that way has gotten us – here. To marches and murder in Charlottesville and fights and arrests in Berkeley; and I don’t want to know where else it will lead. We’re not going to settle this by yelling at each other. We have to find a way to compromise.

So here’s my idea. Leave up the monuments. And build more.

For every statue of Robert E. Lee, add a statue of Frederick Douglass, or Harriet Tubman, or the soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts. For every Stonewall Jackson, a Nat Turner. For every statue honoring the Confederate soldiers, add another statue honoring the victims of chattel slavery. Match Confederate tombstones with tombstones for the victims of lynchings – and state on the tombstones that the bodies that should be at rest under those tombstones are lost, thrown into unmarked graves or burned to ash or sunk in the swamps. People on the right want to remember our history? Okay, let’s remember every part of our history: let’s commemorate the four hundred years of murder and torture that this country is founded on.

How could anyone complain? I’m not suggesting we do anything to the monuments that already stand; if they have plaques that paint the Confederacy as a legion of honorable men fighting for justice, then fine, that can represent one side of the argument. We can word a plaque that shows the other side of the argument, and put it on a nice twenty-foot-tall bronze Malcolm X. White supremacists can pretend the new statues don’t exist, but they certainly can’t argue that they should be taken down; any person who feels oppressed by the presence of racist memorials can take solace in the simultaneous presence of anti-racist memorials, side by side with the racists.

Why stop there? I keep hearing arguments – mostly straw man arguments, but still – about Washington and Jefferson, who both owned slaves. I think both of those men should be commemorated for what they did for this country, but I can’t disagree that their ownership of slaves makes their legacy troubling. So how about every statue of Thomas Jefferson has a statue of Sally Hemings? Maybe a taller Sally? Looking over Jefferson’s shoulder? Or maybe a full family portrait of all of their children, all six of them lined up right in front of the President. How about we take the portraits of George Washington and add an image of every slave he owned into the background? Imagine that on the dollar bill: George’s sour puss surrounded by tiny, tiny portraits of thousands of African and African-American slaves. Think that would make the point? It would sure make a hell of a watermark, wouldn’t it?

I understand the argument that we shouldn’t try to forget our erase our country’s history. I understand the argument that remembering our history shouldn’t include commemorating it with statues and monuments and schools named for men who defended chattel slavery. But I think we need to remember that the Civil War was fought by the Union not to free the slaves, not to end slavery – but to keep this country together. This is also, I think, a pretty troubling legacy; it’s actually pretty hard to understand how defending a political entity is worth slaughtering half a million of its citizens. But I do think this country is essentially good, and that it is better if it is united, rather than a house divided against itself.

So let’s unite: the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of our history, all together, all immortalized in bronze and marble, for everyone to see, for everyone to be proud of, and also, if not ashamed, then – humbled. This is who we are, after all. We shouldn’t forget it.

Come on, think of it this way: if we do this, then everybody gets a trophy.

Contempt and Hate

Dusty Leave a comment

I don’t think most of us understand hate.

I know I don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever actually felt it.

We use the word often; I use it all the time. I hate voluntary ignorance; I hate violence and war; I hate BBQ potato chips. But we also say “love” more than, I think, we mean it: I love my dog and I love my wife, but I also say I love Ren and Stimpy (Ren more than Stimpy – though I still love Stimpy, the big goof!), and I love Cheez-Its. Obviously, the feelings aren’t the same, aren’t even similar, and I have written before about the absurdity of this language, with its incredible vocabulary and the multiple nuances and shades of meaning available in the specific words and the specific uses we can put them to, having only one or two words for a positive feeling – I “like” this, and I “love” that. Now, that actually isn’t true, we have a ton of words to describe good feelings; and it would make me ecstatic if we could start saying adore and cherish and esteem – I am fond of funny T-shirts! I hold napping in high regard! – but that’s probably not going to happen.

Considering, however, all of the talk that has been flying about regarding hate “lately,” with Charlottesville, and with the alt-right administration currently abandoning the White House like lice fleeing the comb, I think this particular word requires some serious attention. I fear we are misusing it, and therefore making a mistake in how we handle the people, the groups, and the actions to whom we apply it.

Now, as I am unsure that I’ve ever genuinely experienced the feeling of hate (which doubt makes me think that I can actually be sure that I have not, because I think if I had, I would know it), it would seem that I could not write about it; but I can speak from observation, and also from the similar emotions I have felt, as hate is on one end of a spectrum, and all of us have been somewhere on that spectrum. I also have expert testimony to draw from: because I talked to my wife about this subject, and I asked her, “Do you think you’ve ever experienced real hate?” She said “Yes” before I could even finish the question. Without hesitation, without equivocation. I don’t intend to air her dirty laundry here, but suffice to say that one of her parents is one of the best people I’ve ever known, and the other one is very much the opposite of that. (For those reading this who may actually know my wife and her family, be aware that you have never met the shitty parent; you know her step-parent, who is a fine person as well.)

Here is how she describes what she feels for that parent. Every time she thinks of this person, it makes her angry. Angry enough to do harm: to punch, to kick, to attack. Every single time. It follows her around, she said, this anger; it is a part of her, and it never goes away. This is partly due to the fact that the object of her hatred, as one of her biological parents, is also a part of her; she knows this, and she hates that it is so. Everything that she hates about this person, reflects in some way on her, either because of their connection, or because of how it makes her feel. Which just makes her angrier.

That is hate. Hate is anger that lasts, and that never goes away. Violent, intense anger, anger that taints everything around it, including one’s own self: to have something or someone in your life that you hate would make you upset with yourself for feeling this way, particularly in this culture that teaches forgiveness and resolution and closure. My wife cannot force this to heal, cannot close this wound; and so it festers and aches and weeps. This, of course, intensifies her negative feelings, because then she feels saddened that she has to continue dealing with this, that she can’t find a way to get over it or get past it; and then she naturally blames the source of that hate for bringing these other terrible feelings on her, as well, for being so hate-worthy that now she has to carry all the rest of it along with the hate.

(A final note: she is right. That parent is worthy of hate. It’s the closest that I feel to hate, as well, because of what my wife has had to suffer, and continues to suffer. The cultural trope that my wife should forgive and forget is nothing but nonsense. That person does not deserve forgiveness. Those of you who may feel the urge to say that she should turn the other cheek, that her feelings are only hurting her and will go away if she forgives: shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.)

I have felt anger that made me want to do violence. I have felt it several times for a single person or event, so I think I have felt some level of hate; but my hate, my anger, has always faded, and I’ve always been able to feel better afterwards. That fact has enabled me to call myself a pacifist, to say that I oppose violence in all forms at all times. Because I have always been able to escape my desire to do violence, so I have the luxury of thinking that people can always do that, can always turn the other cheek and just – calm down. (Also, I have never had to fight for my safety or my life, and so I can think that people never really need to do that.) This has made me incapable of understanding people who are members of what we blithely call hate groups: why, I think, can’t they just calm down?

There’s two answers, there, because I think there is more than one type of member in a hate group. Probably there is a spectrum as broad as the number of people in the group, but there are two categories at least we can put them into, and should. One is the group that is actually, genuinely filled with hate: every time they encounter the object of their hatred – let’s say, every time a Neo-Nazi encounters a Jewish person, or every time a Klansman meets an African-American – they are filled with a rage that brings them to violence. That rage never fades; they carry it with them, everywhere, always. It is a part of them. It is possible that they are upset with themselves, and saddened, as my wife is, that they cannot simply let that rage go; I would wager that if they lose loved ones, family members or friends that turn a cold shoulder because of the Klansman’s/Neo-Nazi’s hate, that they wish that they could just let the hate go. But they can’t: and every negative feeling that gets piled on someone who hates, gets added to the list of reasons to hate. The object of the hate receives the full blame for all of the consequences of hate. The Klansman thinks, “If those [African-Americans] wouldn’t be so awful, then my life wouldn’t be so terrible. I hate them even more for making me hate them, and for screwing up my life with that hate.”

This kind of conflict cannot be reasoned with. It cannot be cajoled away. I don’t know that it always lasts for everyone who feels it; surely some people change. But I don’t think there is a pattern to that, not a process that can be prescribed to end real, violent, hate. I think the only thing that can be done about it is my wife’s solution: separation. She never sees the person she hates, and never intends to. It doesn’t make her feel better, it doesn’t make the hate go away; but it keeps her from becoming violent. It minimizes the occasions when she has to think about it. (And I have to say: as important as I think this topic is, I feel terrible that writing this is going to drag my wife back down into everything she feels about her family. I really am sorry. She will of course read this before it is published and so it is possible, if she wishes it, that no one else will ever read it.) That’s the best we can do with the people who feel genuine hatred.

But for the rest of them – probably, I think, the majority of them – what they feel is not hatred. For them, it’s more like me saying I hate when my students ask me the same question three times in a row (“When is this due?” “Friday. It says it on the board.” “Wait – when is it due?” “Friday.” “What’s due on Friday?” “I hate you.”). That does drive me crazy; but it doesn’t make me feel violent, and it doesn’t make me feel sad. I don’t even know that it makes me angry, as such.

I think the word for what I feel at those times is: contempt. Maybe disgust, but I think disgust has a visceral, nauseous element; disgust turns one’s stomach. Students not paying attention doesn’t turn my stomach. What it does do is make me smirk at them, and think mean things about how dumb they are – after all, why can’t they read the due date on the board, right over there? Why weren’t they listening when I explained this to them not thirty seconds ago? They must be idiots. They’re not, not really: I’ve been a teacher for 17 years, and I don’t think I’ve ever had a student that I would call an actual idiot; every single one of them was either capable of doing what I asked, or had a reason (such as autism or developmental disabilities) why they couldn’t do it. The majority of them have not done the majority of what I have asked, but not because they were idiots. When I think that, it is a dismissal, a belittling, created from my contempt.

That, I think, is what most members of hate groups actually feel for the object of their “hate.” Contempt. I think their ideas are about as valid as my contempt for my students when they don’t listen, and I’d guess that every instance of contempt is similarly unfounded; it may be that their contempt is, like mine, largely projected: I get mad at my students for not listening at least in part because I know full well that I never really listened to my teachers when I was in high school. My irritation with them is certainly some irritation with my past teenaged self, seen reflected in their slack jaws and dull eyes, so like my own. It’s also true that they are most distracted when my class is most boring, and I know that when it is boring, it is mostly my fault, not theirs (though I will note that often the boring things I teach are unavoidable: somebody has to explain commas and apostrophes and the passive voice); when I taught John Knowles’s terrible novel A Separate Peace, boredom was the appropriate response. Maybe even contempt.

But I’m not all that interested in trying to understand why Neo-Nazis feel what they feel, whether it is contempt or it is hatred; I don’t really care. There isn’t a way to feel hatred for an entire race that is justified the way my wife’s hatred is justified, because an entire race of people cannot be guilty of heinous acts towards a single person. Contempt for an entire race is also moronic, as my contempt for my students would be if it lasted more than a few seconds; but after they all know what the due date is, we go back to discussion of George Orwell, and they have intelligent and interesting things to say, and I realize they’re not at all idiots, and I was being a jerk when I thought they were. I don’t understand why Neo-Nazis and Klansmen don’t have that same realization. I kinda think they’re idiots. That is the biggest difference: my contempt is only momentary, and never very serious; a Neo-Nazi feels a long-term, maybe even a permanent contempt for the contemptuous object. Enough to make him willing to join the swastika crowd. The Neo-Nazis that aren’t idiots – and of course there are some such – either feel hate, or they are those who can be turned away from their hate groups, those people who make a friend of a different race and realize they maybe shouldn’t be marching in the hate parade.

Here’s what matters. Contempt can frequently be dismissed as unimportant, because it does not incite violence. Nobody wants to hit someone they feel contempt for; the object of contempt is too pathetic, too insignificant, to go through all that trouble. You might shove them out of your way, but you would never pursue them and beat them; you would never run them down with your car, or hang them from the nearest tree. Those are acts of hate. Hate, obviously, should not be dismissed as harmless. That is not to say that everyone who hates is violent or murderous; but the emotion creates the chance of violence, where contempt does not.

I think a lot of our treatment of Neo-Nazis and Klansmen and other white supremacists is contemptuous. We make fun of them, we belittle them, we dismiss them. We feel contempt for them, because we think that all they feel for their victims is also contempt, so we don’t really worry about them doing harm. (Also: they’re idiots. I think.) By contrast, our treatment of terrorists is fearful: because we know that they feel hate, and therefore are they very dangerous. People who would set off a bomb in a crowded place are full of hate. People who would drive a car, or a plane, into innocents, are full of hate. And if and when we see white supremacists marching, at night, carrying torches, chanting “BLOOD AND SOIL!” we recognize that as more than contempt: that is hate. You watch video of police officers setting attack dogs on civil rights protesters, it is clear: that is hate. Hate, genuine hate, must be treated as something dangerous, because it is. Treating a person filled with hate as if they only felt contempt would make us vulnerable; we can turn our backs on people who feel contempt. We can get up in their faces during a rally, we can yell at them, we can follow them playing “Ride of the Valkyries” on a tuba. We can laugh at people who feel contempt. It is dangerous to treat those who hate as if they only feel contempt. That is the first mistake we have made in the past, and hopefully, the events of Charlottesville will remind us that ignoring, dismissing, belittling those who actually hate is never going to make them go away. For them, we must make them go away: we must enforce separation. Which probably means law enforcement.

But here’s the thing. When we treat those who only feel contempt as if they actually feel hate, that is ineffective, too. Because it isn’t justified: a guy who makes racist jokes doesn’t need to be on an FBI terror watch list. Some putz who hangs a Nazi flag on his house, or a Confederate flag on his truck, doesn’t need to be treated as if he is about to explode into violence. And if you confront that person and say, “You’re full of hate!” in whatever way you say that, they will say, “No, I’m not. I don’t hate anybody. I just think racist jokes are funny, and the Confederacy fought for Southern pride and state’s rights.” They may say, “I have plenty of [black/Jewish/female] friends.” And maybe they do, though I think it is hard to be friendly with someone for whom you also feel contempt. But regardless, they do not feel hate. They can reasonably deny any label that they are members of a hate group, or that they are a violent threat to a civil society. If you try to force that label on them, they can turn it around and call you intolerant, and a bigot; they can call you Communist or antifa or the alt-left. They can claim that you are limiting their freedom of speech by keeping them from speaking on your college campus. They can take the moral high ground. Then they can argue for greater freedom for their groups and their causes – and then that means greater freedom for the members of those groups and causes who actually feel hate, who are genuinely dangerous.

Then you get Charlottesville.

So the issue is, we have to make a distinction between those who feel contempt, and those who feel hate. And we have to treat them differently. The hateful must be watched, and prevented from doing harm; the contemptuous we should ignore.

Unfortunately, that’s as far as I’ve gotten in my plans for how to fix all of this. I do not know how to discern hate from contempt; they probably blend together for the observer, they may both be present in the same person. No reason why a Neo-Nazi couldn’t feel contemptuous of Jews and hate African-Americans, for instance. Or feel contempt for African-Americans and hate black policemen, specifically. A contemptuous person may get angry and sound just like someone full of hate, even if that feeling fades quickly, where it wouldn’t in someone who genuinely hates. But I do think that we will make more progress, and have better results, if we treat the two categories differently when it is clear which is which. That crying Nazi who got banned from OKCupid, for instance? That dude is not full of hate. A man who hated non-whites would hate them more after they got him banned from Tinder. He might lie about it, of course; but I think he probably would not cry.

Though maybe that thought is coming from my own contempt.

I hate that.

Book Review: The Naked Ape

Dusty Leave a comment

The Naked Ape

by Desmond Morris

I’ve been carrying this one around for a while, never sure how much I actually wanted to read it; the cover talks about how explosive and controversial the book is, and that’s cool, but it was published in 1967, so it’s unlikely the controversy would still feel controversial, and might not even feel interesting. I had no idea what to expect from a book about human sexuality and interpersonal relationships from an evolutionary standpoint.

Turns out it was what I should have expected: this book (I’m sure it’s not the only source) was where the ideas were codified that people still repeat in terms of the evolution of humanity. This is where you can read about how men are hunters, while women are caregivers, so that humans have created pair-bonds of unusual strength so that the men can go out and hunt while the women stay home and care for the children, and both can trust that the other won’t go out pair-bonding with some tramp or the hunter next door.

This is where you can read about everything about humans is designed specifically for sex: we have tiny hair (Despite the title, we actually aren’t less hairy than other apes; it’s just that our hairs are mostly really tiny – at least for Caucasians like me. Africans, Asians, and Native Americans are indeed less hairy than monkeys. Maybe instead of Honkies, we should be Hairies. Heh.) so that we can enjoy touching each other more; we have earlobes so that we can enjoy more variety of erogenous zones; women have breasts because men can’t see their butts from the front, and poofy red lips because – never mind. He also comments (and this little factoid is repeated in the Wikipedia article on the book —  can’t imagine why this one should be the one people pick out in describing the book) that humans have the biggest penises out of all the primates. Fancy that.

This book explains everything. Unfortunately, almost every single word of it is speculative. It’s funny, because there’s a point in the beginning when Morris scoffs at one particular theory which was made without direct evidence; and then he proceeds to spin theory after theory without even a scrap of direct evidence for any of them. (Because I thought it was interesting: the theory Morris scoffs at is the explanation that we lost our coarse body hair because in between the fruit-eating monkey we once were and the savannah-living hunter/gatherer hominid we became, there might have been a coastal/aquatic stage, when the monkeys discovered the abundance of rich food at the seashore. This might explain the evolution of hairlessness, as a means of streamlining in the water; this fits because the body hair that remains actually mimics the pattern of water flowing over a swimming body. It also explains our hands being wide and flat and paddle-like. It’s an interesting theory. It’s a better one than “We have earlobes so we don’t cheat on each other when we’re out hunting!”) Morris has a fair amount of negative evidence that he derives from the animals he knows so well (Morris was a zoologist and zookeeper); so the explanation that human women’s breasts don’t need to be large for the sake of nursing, because chimpanzees breastfeed but have essentially flat chests, makes sense; but the idea that they are therefore specifically erogenous because breasts, nipples, and areolae swell during sexual excitement, and particularly the idea that they are meant to imitate the buttocks because humans mate face-to-face, are entirely speculative and really pretty ridiculous. (I have to recommend this song, particularly the last verse; beware, it is not safe for work.)

Probably the most amusing thing in reading this book – other than the smutty dirty parts, which are always fun to read (and this book talks A LOT about sex) – was the glib way Morris plays up his own ethnocentrism. He mocks other ethnologists and anthropologists who study small, extraordinary populations, claiming that the real information should come from a study of the mainstream, “most successful” version of humanity – which, he assures us, is clearly the Western European and American culture. Just look how many of us there are! Obviously we’re the best and most normal human. (And again there is a remarkably oblivious hypocrisy in this, because Morris goes on to talk several times about rare and unusual ape behavior or traits as analogous explanations of human behavior; the breasts-as-front-facing-buttocks thing comes partly from one particular type of baboon that has a similar adaptation. One type of one species of ape. “Who would think it was a good idea to study small and atypical populations to understand a whole species? Ridiculous!”) It was fascinating because I know that at the time, the book was seen as incredibly radical and liberal and offensive, arguing as it did that our tendency to pick a single mate for life is evolved, not set down as right and good by Almighty God, et cetera; but now, the stances it espouses are become almost entirely conservative: American is the best kind of human; the family should stay as a single unit; the man should work outside the home (modern version of hunting, Morris tells us several times — and describes how men are always competitive, seeking “the kill” in their business lives because we don’t hunt mammoths any more. Not sure what “the kill” is for a high school teacher…) while the woman raises the children; the best sexual position is face-to-face, probably missionary style – “Good old-fashioned, man-on-top-get-it-over-with-quick,” to quote George Carlin. I wonder what Morris would have made of the current ideas about gender. Since he talks about how homosexuality is an evolutionary failure and therefore anomalous, I have a guess.

Overall, it was more interesting in terms of what it said about the author and the culture he was writing in, than in what the book actually purports to explain. As an ethnologic artifact, it’s not bad; as an explanation of humanity, I wasn’t impressed.