Moonset After Sunset

Tonight just after dark the Moon was like Robin Hood's bow suspended in the black sky above where the orange glow of the sunset above the mountains trickles off into darkness. It was pointed downward, towards the sunset, as it should do, by the laws of geometry, straight and true the arrow flies toward the Sun, even if it takes a Great Circle across the sky.

I learned that from an old female physicist in graduate school---Cecile. She had gotten her Ph.D. in Normandy during World War, although I didn't know that until just recently. 

In Phase

 The darkness of the early morning upon first waking is a refuge into which thought trickle slowly at first, and fill up my mind like the gurgling of water poured into a glass. My attention turns to a rotating litany of topics--agendas, expectations, sadnesses, anxieties before I remind myself of the presence of God, and my mind soothes again. Perhaps someday the lag time will be zero.

Is it time for the Moon to come back? Not yet it is too soon. It is only a day past the New Moon. I laugh at myself thinking how now the lunar cycle draws my attention again, as it has at time in my past, and then disappears from my attention for long periods.

I push the button to start the kettle and stare out at the black featureless sky.  Is it my imagination that times in my life when I was aware of the Moon are much richer, more poetic? Perhaps so by I decide that it is true. Such is the power of the Moon, even a new one.

Mountains Like Cocoa Powder

The day stayed dim all morning. When I went out the air was just warming up. A lingering chilly breeze made me glad I had dressed in layers. 

 The clouds were an even blanket of washboard dark grey, like an Oregon winter instead of an Arizona one. No sunlight made it through to the McDowells. Instead they were uniformly dark brown, like jagged heaps of cocoa powder. 

I peaked into the free library. The city put an entire selection of new books into it a couple days ago. Gone were the Clive Cussler spy novel and the romance paperbacks that had lingered. In place were new books in both the adult and children's sections. Two novels by someone named Jodi Picoult.

Lately I have begun adding calisthenics to my daily sorties to Bell Road and around the soccer fields. I have started and used the same set of "bodyweight" exercises since 2014 in Portland. There tremendous for building underlying muscle and I still have retained some of the strength I built in various connective tissues ten years ago by doing them on and off.

On the way back towards the park I looked down at the sidewalk and notices the tiny dark spots on the pavement. Was that rain. As I walked I kept looking down, trying to notice if the number of spots was growing. After twenty steps I confirmed that they were indeed growing, and at that point I could feel the spritz on my uncovered hair in the form of little specks of wet on my scalp.. It continued as I walked through the park, and back past the free library. I stopped again, looked inside again (because why not), and then noticed the curved red metal canopy over the wooden library box was mottled with wet drops that has begun to coalesce together, and in the refraction of the water droplets on the meal I saw the scrub trees beyond. I stood next to it and let it fill my vision space, savoring the sight of the water and the optical effect it made.

An Arizona winter downpour!

The Hidden Mountain Landscape of a Cloudy Day

 "Looks like we might get rain," said Jessica, looking out the kitchen window to the west. There  one can see all the way to the mountains on the west side of the valley. I took a glance out of the double window where the kitchen table sits. I could see the dark grey bulbous forms in the distance. "Awesome," I said. We hadn't gotten any rain all winter,.

As I've mentioned here many times, there are few things I relish here more than a rainy day---not just. passing storm but a day of soaking rain .

At mid day I went for my walk. Outside the front door I felt the kiss of cool air. My nostrils caught the faint hint of possible rain approaching. It was barely noticeable, but it was detectable. Trying to gather as much of the sweet delicious, I took a series of long deep breathes in my nostrils as I descended the outdoor stairs. Breathing it, and smelling it even slightly, my mind pivoted through a series of scent memories in my library of recollections. 

Once I was out in the park, one could see the sky above was filled the dark grey bulbous clouds that had been off to the west earlier in the day. I loved how they dark. The sun was completely blocked, although the clouds were not continuous, but isolated grey loaves above me.

A lifetime of watching clouds and weather from when I was a boy told me that my hopes of a true soaking rain would not come to pass today. The clouds above me were the thickest and darkest, yet they were not producing any rain above me. The clouds above would pass without a downpour. Already the ones off to the west were less dark and less robust in form. The aroma I had taken in on the stairs would apparently be the reward of the day. It was grateful for what I had gotten.

Then I walked past the pond heading south I looked off to the east to the nearby McDowell Mountains. The dark clouds going west to east had almost reached the McDowells. Delightfully this resulted in a a visual effect which one sees from time to time here and elsewhere, which is that the thick clouds, nevertheless with gaps, mean that the sun came through and illuminated the mountains only in sporadic patches. 

As a result, the crest of the dusty brown ridge, which would otherwise be the most prominent feature, was darkened and suppressed to the eyes. 

instead my eyes  were drawn downward toward the flank of the ridge, where the sun hit the mountain like a spotlight, illuminating the sub-ridges and valleys of the mountain, drawing out its three-dimensionality in a way that would never occur to the eye on a brilliant sunlit day. My mind projected the trails I knew that were up in these valleys, from my maps and also my own hiking. It was like a magic door had opened in my mind, revealing a little secret world that had been before my eyes but which I had forgot about through neglect.

I savored this particular view. By the time I came back on the path, even if the dark clouds were still present, they would have shifted, casting the spotlight elsewhere. The view I was seeing of the mountain was as fleeting as the clouds themselves.

Emotional Weather Forecast Warning

Today I snapped at Jessica out of the blue when she was trying to show me a funny X.com meme on her laptop.  

Never in my life have I felt such ambient emotion running through our society. Long ago I learned that often when I feeling strong emotions, the source is outside of me. I realized this is probably why I went off the rails emotionally in my freshman dorm---I was feeling the ambient anxieties of people around me. I am like a barometer of the social milieu in which I'm placed. This perspective has allowed me, to some degree, to separate my own emotions from those outside of me. 

My emotional weather forecast right now is a strong warning, like a hurricane. Emotions are raging all around the country. We have entered very choppy waters. Take care. This is necessary. We will make it through it. So much of it is healing, I believe. We let things get way out of control and this is the therapy. But it is about as stressful as anything in our lifetime.  9/11 had nothing on this feeling.

So much is not what it is appears and be wary of falling for emotions driven by events in headlines. A few select facts may change one's entire perspective.

Right now I am trying my best to stay ahead of the curve in my understanding of what appears to the sudden, almost instantaneous implosion of the "AI Boom," which was supposed to be the basis of the entire U.S. economy going forward. All of a sudden, all the AI investments are worthless because of this development last week. I'm going to be covering it on my show this week, because I think I can help my audience understand it. 

Many of us are very happy about this implosion. Basically the idea was the AI would be the next thing like the Internet and Social Media, which would inflate the wealth of Silicon Valley to new stratospheric heights while simultaneously importing lots of lots foreigners to replace all the American jobs.  All of that is ending, almost apocalyptically so. It means a lot of rich people will lose a lot of their money. The basic issue is that whatever they were planning to make trillions of dollars is now essentially free.  There is no putting the genie in the bottle. A lot of people are panicking about this right now---very wealthy people, and the people who work for them, who expected to be multi-millionaires in a year or two. All of that has gone poof almost overnight. No one knows what to do about it, and if the Great Tech Boom is over. 

It is becoming so clear to me and others that America was essentially transformed into a giant open air work camp, where we all work for a oligarchical class as peons.  We are supposed to accept this downgrade. 

America became an economic zone and almost ceased to be a nation---of a people who call this place home. Both political parties became the handmaidens of this. Republicans who believed in corporate goodness were for it (like the now reviled Vivek Ramaswamy). It made lots of money for investors and it kept wages of workers very low. The corporate overlords did not believe in nations but only in the the global investor class. The Democrats, for their part, molded themselves into even better servants of the billionaire class than Republicans. They led half the nation to supporting this grift just by promising people gender and diversity progress. It the biggest con job in history.

I spend a good chunk of my life after 2005 figuring out the story of how America had fallen as far as did even by then. I lost my mind in 2003-2004 because I saw American being destroyed that war, with the Iraq War being the final turning point of evil and decadence. My opinion of that hasn't changed at all, and I hear so many people who supported Bush back then saying the same thing as me. Listening to George W. Bush today in his inauguration address on C-SPANN was almost unbearable. How I loathe the man even today. Likewise Obama, whom I actually supported at first.  Their day is done. But what is now coming?

It will be a painful process, becoming a nation again, in any way like we used to be, even as late as 15 years ago. I don't know how it's going to happen. It may be too simple to say that I trust Trump, but that is about the truth. That's where I am. I know many people who do not trust him who also hate the Democrats. They think Trump is going to betray us and lead us right back into the hands of the globalists. I can only pray for discernment that we are not being led down a bad path.

Watching C-SPAN

Historical presidential inaugurations, one right after another, from 1933 onward and shown several times. It was like living the story of America in the 20th century several times. So many cool takeaways. It even had me taking notes.

So Much Depends on a Red Volkswagen

 With the auto auction in full swing this weekend, I am struck by the beauty of these old automobiles and how many of them, despite their age, are so well kept up, and so lovingly cared for by their owners. My father would have loved it. A couple. years ago when I went in person, I was overcome with emotion while inspecting an old Volkswagen bus that someone had brought for auction. Just leaning into it my nostrils will filled with the pungent smell that only an old VW has. Anyone who has experienced it knows it, and although it is impossible to describe in words, anyone who knows old VWs would recognize it blindfolded. Given all the time I spent in VWs when I was a child the smell tends to bring. back a huge salad bowl of emotions, especially ones related to my father, who loved and worked on VWs even into the 1980s when we lived in Fort Collins. When I was 15, he taught me how to drive on gravel roads outside of town on our later model VW bus.

Some of those came swelling back today not at the auto auction but while driving to the office supply store today. I navigated down past the 101 and was driving down the wide avenue when I saw the lights ahead of several police cruisers in the street. As I got nearer I could see it was a car accident. Growing even closer I could see a VW bus, painted dark red. Although I can never match my father's knowledge on this subject, I knew it was a mid 1960s model because of the divided front windshield. It had been converted into a "pick up truck" style by chopping off part of the back, a not uncommon modification.  

It was crossways in the intersection next to one of the police cruisers and there were orange cones placed around it. I could see the front end of it was smashed in and crumbled. The dual windshield panels were both cracked into spider web of the safety glass, and fragments of glass were all over the pavement in front of it. I heard it crunch under my tires as I drove round the orange cone placed the police. On the far side I could see the driver's side door was swung open. There was no person visible. I immediately said. prayer for whoever had been inside. 

I decided to park and take a look at it. I walked over to the nearest corner where a second police cruiser was parked next to a late model Honda sedan that looked to have minor damage in the front end. The VW had gotten the worst of it by far. I hoped no one was hurt and prayed for them again.

The emotion of it hit me hard. Just an automobile, yes. But at once I could almost see the whole history of the vehicle, driven over so many miles by different owners over the years, and now cared for by its current owner to keep it in good condition. Now after sixty years and so many hundreds of thousands of miles probably, it had reached the end of its road. 

Is it weird to say that it was like experiencing my father's death over again? The hardest things I have had to mourn in my life is when I feel like an entire era of the past has slipped away.  My Uncle Dick's death in 2021 was like that. because he was the last of that generation, and with him gone, there was no one left to talk with about the people I loved who were gone, whom he knew so well. 

There are many class VW buses still around, in good running condition. But now there is one less. The one I saw could be salvaged by the right person with dedication to restore the frame, but that is a big "if". Most likely will provide valuable spare parts for collectors restoring other vehicles, perhaps one of the ones at Barret-Jackson right now. Moreover, I know that the engine---undamaged in the back---could be dropped as-is into another vehicle. I once knew how to do that with my own hands.

I've noticed at Barrett-Jackson that the optimum years for classic cars right now is definitely the mid 1960s. There seems to be a universal acknowledgement among afficianods of classic America vehicles that the aesthetic of, say, 1964-1966 was the peak of American car design. 

Of course I myself am a "model" from that time period, and somehow even as a young child, I had the same intuition that collectors of cars have today about that era. It is one of the many reasons that sometime in my youth, I decided that I had been born at the peak of history, and that I needed to live myself with that knowledge, as a burden, knowing that if I wasted my life's potential, it was somehow a tragedy for all of western civilization.  

All those generations, all that history, just to produce me and others born of the same time, the boys and girls in my school in the same grade. Civilization had conquered disease and hunger, and perhaps even war. The world was opening up to new ideas and progress, unbound by the past. We were carrying all the hopes of the people before us, our ancestors who had fought to make the world we were born into. I went through my childhood feeling those hopes that had been placed on me, implicitly by everyone older than me. I wanted to live up to these hopes. I wanted to fulfill them. With everything that was still happening in the world to make it unsafe, unjust, and chaotic, and with all of that being linked to America itself, I wanted to justify America by my own life. 

I could tell myself rationally that everything I said is just constructions in my own mind, part of the oldest and most durable layer of the mythopoetic story I invented for myself when I was a child, and which kept growing as I got older. How silly to carry such burdens in one's childhood. But I wanted those burdens. They gave my life meaning, and I was sure I was up to fulfilling them. I wander if others my age felt anything like that. We were born thinking we were to be the last best hope for America, if all else failed and America stumbled. Even if there were only a few of us, we would be enough. In case of emergency, break glass. I spent my life preparing to be exactly that. Such a conceit of ego!  Yet this is how I imagined my life's mission for myself for the first half of my life, and it has never gone away completely.

There was a reason I was given all the things I was given in my life--to love and serve God, and to do His will. Amen

So much depends on a red Volkswagen.

Welcoming Grey Skies

 In Arizona I get happy when I wake up and see the skies are grey. Grey skies are interesting because it is out of the ordinary here. Bright sunny days are the norm here, and when the sky is grey I know it will be, at least on the level of the elements, a special day. 

As I look outside the window, I see the sun shining strong but opaque in the layer of clouds. Even as I write these words, the light grows stronger as the clouds disperse around it. Probably in a few hours the sky will be perfectly blue, but for the moment we are in a soft "lightbox" sky. It means that when going out of for a walk---which I've yet to do today---will be different than yesterday, and different from tomorrow. Even the slight shift of light has the power to make the world feel like a different place, an alternate reality in which different imaginative thoughts will spring forth. Different animals may be out moving around.

The winter has been very dry. Clouds but no winter rains yet. How wonderful it would be, to go outside in my rain shell, and feel the elements pounding against my back as I walk.  

Solidarity with Gen Z

This morning I woke up with my soul in turmoil--about worldly things. Perhaps it was the dust yesterday, both outside, and that encountered while poking around the garage, awakening old memories through the touch of handling possessions. 

Outside today it was a much nicer day than yesterday. Just a light breeze. On the edge between cool and warm. 

It was, however, noisy. As I walked, I could hear the emergency beepers of trucks from far away, and the rumble and grinding of the engines clearing more of the land for a warehouses and, on the other side of 94th street, a pod of new luxury homes (which around here means 10 million and up).

The extremes of wealth here are obscene. Where do people get all this money? From filing lawsuits against each other? (I say this just as the famous luxury car auction is going on across Bell Road).

I can live with my own relative poverty compared to them. I personally don't need a lot of money beyond the basics. It is nice to be comfortable buying things you need, and providing for others.

Yet one thing I've learned in my life is that if I am having a strong emotion, about myself or the world, then probably a lot of other people are having the same emotion. That gives a great peace in feeling connected to the struggles of others.

Lately I think so much about young people---the Zoomers and the ones even younger. I see in them so many of the thoughts and emotions I myself had when I was that age, about my place in the world, and how my life would work out. My predominant emotion was one of envy. I wanted what others had. I felt left out (even as, at the same time, I paradoxically felt like the luckiest person in the world. Go figure).

For a long time in my thirties and forties I compared myself to my peers and to older men of previous generations and found myself wanting in regard to the things of the world. I beat myself up a lot about this.

It is not as if I have solved all these issues in my head, but I evaluate them in a much different manner.  

Yet now I see these same emotions expressed in giant letters and in grand scale by an entire generation of young people. It is as they are living my life collectively, in a way that I felt isolated in doing in the 1980s and 1990s. It is both deeply gratifying and horrifying to see this. It is gratifying to see that youth are picking up on something deeply wrong in our country, and I don't mean the same old list of "isms". I mean that many young people have given up on the idea that they will ever lead what they call a "normal life", of getting married, having a family, buying a house, living in a community where you feel at home, working at profession that fulfills one's soul, seeing your kids grow up, and so on. 

Some of these things are explicitly masculine in nature. For young men to feel as if they will never have such things can feel like life is hell on earth and that there is no reason to pretend to pursue it. I truly think this has the possibility to destroy civilization if not addressed in some way. 

Meanwhile young women can get all the ego-attention they want in the world, and get showered with money, by showing their bodies and having sex with strangers on camera.  Well, at least some will get money and attention, and all of them will wind up broken in some way, but there will little hope in making them see this until it too late. 

This cannot last.

How is the 21st century not a technological dystopia?

I love telling young people that it was much easier when I was young. Nearly all my own problems were the result of my own bad decisions, indifference, and laziness.  Had I played it "straight" in following the rules then it probably would have worked out well.  

Yet compared to me, my dad and mom had it even easier. Somehow they managed to raise a family and live to a ripe age, seeing their grandchildren, while living in the most idyllic, perfect, prosperous place in history, which is Northern Colorado in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.  

Like I said, most of the time I feel like the luckiest person who ever lived, one who spent most of his life making trouble for himself and reaping the consequences. 

But Generation Z? They are, despite all the additional creature comforts and entertaining distractions given to them, ostensibly living through a collective dark night of the soul.

I would tell them: I don't know how I myself would even do it, were I the same age as them now.  I know that's not a great pep talk, but at least they would know that someone understands what they are going through. I had the kind of life many of them can only dream of having now, even in my own degraded state.

When I was young I felt so incompetent in dealing with the world. I didn't know how anything worked. I thought everyone else did know, or at least they had parents with enough money to let them engage with the world with a safety net. I did have that safety net too, but not with money, so I felt envy over that. I felt like a fraud among my high school friends, and at Georgetown. There were some fantastically rich kids living on my dorm floor. Ironically the rich kids I knew were always gracious and never assumed others had the advantages they had. Back then in the 1980s we have a much more democratic society anymore. Everyone felt equal.

Still it wasn't until I got to Oregon and met some other offbeat "nontraditional" folk that I began to feel I was somewhat normal after all. Oregon was a great place to do that back then. 

Now it feels like winner-take-all across all levels of societal. There is no longer a "normal life path" that one can follow, almost by default, staying out of certain trouble, and winding up with a happy liveable life as our grandparents expected to able to do. 

The wiping out of the software engineering profession by offshoring, H1B, and emergent AI is probably the last straw for this. It was, for thirty years running, the last sure fire way a capable smart young man could go to college, get a degree, and then graduate and find work with a salary that could support a family and buy a house.  

What path do you tell a young man to follow at this point? 

In my day, even the value of a college degree was degraded from what it had been. Now one needed specific applied degrees or graduate degrees to gain a sure-fire professional career. The big thing was "go to law school", which I refused to do, as too many of my friends were doing that and it just seemed boring to me. I never would have been happy doing that. I would have never felt challenged enough. I would have yearned to have done something else, like study physics.  

With some exceptions, the best thing a young man can do in the bloom of his youth (early 20s) is to go out into the world by himself if necessary, throwing himself into situations that would frighten the wits out of his mother if she knew about them. This is the natural order of the world. If there a war going on, historically he would join the armed services, or go to sea.  

My own era was so peaceful and prosperous that to escape the confines of my own boyish self-image, I had to take the drastic step of dropping out of college, then working a job to earn just enough money to fly buy a backpack, some shoes, and plane ticket to Europe, and then spending the summer crossing from the Scottish isles to the ruins of Troy.  It was interesting to find out which of my family members were rooting for me in this absurd endeavor, and which ones were trying to stop me, even by discouragement.

One of the great gifts I got a couple years ago happened during the last time I saw my Great Uncle Dick in Reno, just after the 2020 election, about a year before he died. His daughter, my cousin, bless her heart, almost wouldn't let me see him because of COVID, but I was already underway and calling from the Cathedral of the Guardian Angels on the Las Vegas strip. I asked if I could just wave to him at least from the curb, and by the time I got to Reno they said that it would be ok for me to come inside and see him.

In his old place he had memorabilia on the walls from his experiences in World War II. He was a gunner aboard a B-17 bomber aircraft, flying missions from southern Italy over Eastern Europe.  He was very young to be in the war and it almost ended before he could get in the service.

He didn't always have that memorabilia on his wall. Probably it was put up only recently, as people discovered his war career and wrote articles and books using his recollections. He now had displayed a photograph of his flight crew with their plane, which was given to him by a researcher. Like most men of his day, he downplays his war experiences as being just what he had to do.

At one point in our conversation I was confessing to him the feeling of inferiority compared to his generation of men, and he waved it off.  I told him the closest thing I ever did was my ridiculous trip to Europe in the summer of 1985, and I wound up staying on a Hungarian farm and then went camping and mountain climbing in the Transylvania Alps and got stuck sick behind the Iron Curtain, but that I persevered and made it to Istanbul, and went on to walk on the ruins of Troy, on day when I had the place to myself.

It felt so decadent to me now, to describe, some I some kind of fragile manlet who got by in life on easy mode like that, not having to get shot at by enemy aircraft as he did.

Dick just sat there with his mouth open, looking at me with amazement. He was blown away at what I did and told me so. "You did that all by yourself?" 

"Yes", I said, awkward at being lifted out of my shame. It's not that he had possessed such a low opinion of me that he was befuddled I could accomplish the logistics a plane flight, etc.  He was not of that spirit. Rather something in the way I described it to him deeply impressed him, in part I think because his own son, who is around my age, had given him grief throughout his life in part by not being able to establish a certain stability as a man. He never said as much about his son, but he implied it at times over the years I knew him in his later life. Perhaps I restored his faith in our entire generation with my story. He passed away the next fall and I'm very glad I insisted on that last visit with him.

My Old Gear

Standing in the garage, my eyes were drawn to the first of the many work shelves erected along the wall stacked with possessions. This one was the most ordered of shelves. It contained my gear. It was nicely arranged, as if waiting for an upcoming camping trip. It was fun to organize. But no camping trips have followed. It has remained as a reminder of a phase of my life that has passed.

Most of it I acquired during 2010-2012, and mostly from REI. These were the years I was doing lots of camping and I collected good-quality gear that allowed me to drive around the country and camp. I used it heavily until about September 2011 when I got a job that allowed me to work from the road, and after that when I traveled again I mostly stayed in motels, except or one last burst of road camping in the summer of 2012. The last time I used the gear was 2014 when we went to Burning Man.

This period of my life seems so far away to me. I will never use this gear again,  Even if I traveled on a camping voyage again I would want new gear. Except for possibly a few pieces, I am going to give it away or throw it away. Tomorrow I will probably start doing that. It will free up the shelf at the front of the garae, which will be very useful going forward. 

Dust

When Jessica came back from her walk early this morning she said that it was cold, but not bitterly so. Later when I went out, it was sunny and bright but with a definite chill. I was wrapped in my parka and with a knit cap. Passing through the park, the wind was strong, blowing crosswise to my path coming down off the McDowell Mountains. In the park the wind kicked up dust blowing away from me thankfully. 

When I got to the north end of the parking lot, I could see far down to the south, past Bell Road. I saw the brows low clouds over the rooftops of the dust blowing down from the mountains. Dust storms around here are nothign to mess around with, because of Valley Fever.

The wind was ferociously strong. I looked upwind and saw no dust hanging over the rooftops, so I figured I would be ok. I decided I could reach Bell Road before I got anywhere near the dust, which is what I did

It turned into an emotional day. I had decided to tackle to the cleaning out and reorganization of my office room, following the rearrangement.I just did to make myself a permanent podcasting studio. It wound up triggering a flood of memories to when I did such a thing before at times in my life, like when I was moving my things out of my parents house. Then I went down to the garage, which I have been tackling as well. I need to clear out space there in order to make room for things I want to move down from office. It's a complete mess right now, but it has been worse. I spent the first couple years here clearning up and getting ride of things in order to make a usable space, and I even worked out of it on my laptop during COVID in 2020, just so I could get out of the house.

For a while it was a nice space, but now it's a mess again. I had began sorting through it, in order to throw out things I no loner need. As I doing this today, the emotion of it overcame. I felt great sorrow because of he emotions that were triggered in examining old possessions, many of which must go. The sorrow was not actually of the present moment so much as I was remembering and reliving the sorrow I felt at the time.

I managed to make a decent dent in carting things to the dumpster. I know from experience, even with this garage, that it seems like an impossible task at first but if you keep persisting, order begins to take form and things get cleaned up. 

Lovely, Dark, and Deep

It has been quite a ride, my whole life, following politics and current events. Sometimes I think it is the only real talent I have, that of watching the passing parade of history and keeping track of the changes. If I have second talent it is talking and writing about myself and my own life.

There were the long years of my youth when I was a liberal Democrat and railed against conservatives and Republicans. They were selfish and unintelligent. The world would be so much better if liberals ran everything. It annoyed me that people did not see this, but could only see the narrow confines of the small world they lived in. A global perspective would make people smarter, more compassionate, and more wise in how they voted. 

What I typed in the previous paragraph is pretty close to a monologue given by Ralph Bellamy as Franklin Roosevelt in the 1960 movie Sunrise at Campobello. The screenplay was written by Dory Schary based on his stage play from two years before. In that scene, if I remember correctly, Roosevelt is explaining to members of family why it is that the country lurches back and forth between enlightened eras of doing the right thing (liberal) and ones where fear and bigotry overcome them, and conservatives take power, leading to a contraction of the national spirit until sun of liberal warmth returns..

This interpretation was decidedly was not a universal sentiment among Democrats at the time it was written. For one thing, there were plenty of "reactionary" conservative Democrats back then and they feuded for control of the party.  Now, however, the parties are much more fixed in ideology (at least on the Left) and Schary's description pretty close to an article of faith of among Democrats today. 

Today I am apt to label myself an archconservative, at least in cultural matters. On economic matters I am much more middle-of-the-road and open to "liberal" solutions. Like many I flirted with Libertarianism for a season years ago, when I first started breaking away from the Left (which was a long journey. Oh how that vexed my late father! "Your idea of freedom," he would say, "means freedom to starve!" For the record, he was right about the capital-L. I am decidedly not in the camp anymore. 

But who cares what I think, really? I am just one man with a life of experiences that have led me to where I am. Why is my point of view more valid than anyone else's? Yet I espouse certain trends in politics and have voted with passionate conviction up to the most recent election. What do I gain by this other than the opprobrium of friends and relatives with whom I once agreed?

Yet if I don't stand on my convictions, then what I am worth as a man? If I do not defend what I think is right and just, then I am truly a man at all? 

A great part of me yearns to disconnect from it all, from being the witness to the passing parade of history, which of course now happens by social media consumption. It is not through disgust, but rather exhaustion, and even a sense of completion, as if I've done my part, played the role I was supposed to play and can now retire from the battlefield. Others can take it from here. Like many I fantasize at times about disconnecting entirely from the world, but that is not a realistic option right now.

Among other things, I have a weekly podcast that is one of the joys of my week, as it keeps me interacting with people. It is part of a network on Rumble that is explicitly political and my audience hyper-aware of current events, far more than me, and tends to be more radical and passionate about political issues. I spend part of each broadcast making my audience aware that I know what the big stories of the week were, as people want to hear about those and discuss those. Retreating to the woods, whether literally or on some metaphorical level, remains a persistent fantasy. There is a famous poem about it, one that expresses something close to the universal-within-the-specific, which some say is the hallmark of great poetry. 

I would quote it here, but most people know it anyway, and---wouldn't you know it---the poem has been so politicized in its usage that citing it puts me in the company of people who make my skin crawl (link).

. 

Golden Age Recovery

Monday was a fun day, and historic. It was Jessica's birthday and she took the take off from work solely to watch the inauguration coverage, all the way through the inaugural balls in the evening, even as I watched the Notre Dame-Ohio State game. 

Around mid day I went for a walk in the sun. It was cool without too much of a nip of coldness in the full sunlight. I found it easy to walk down to Bell Road. It was nice to feel like it was normal to do that again.

The last couple years I've gotten used to the idea that things that are lost are permanently lost. Sometimes they are, but not always.

To say I felt a queasy disorientation during my walk might indicate I was feeling symptoms again from the vertigo, but that was not the case. Instead I am feel queasiness because of the disorientation of the historical moment. It truly does feel like something akin to a "new era" has begun, and that feels weird and unfamiliar. What are things going to be like going forward. I don't know.  I fall back on the past. When it did feel this way, if ever, in my lifetime. It will not have been the same as now, but it gives me a psychological anchoring point for my emotions and judgments at the moment.

The answer was supplied by the coverage. This was the first inauguration since Reagan's second inaugural in 1985 to be held indoors, due to weather, officially at least.

1985--yes. It feels like 1985. I can't explain fully except to say that back then I was very young and uncertain of the direction of my life, and the world felt like it was in a peaceful and prosperous era, full of promises of good things for the country in the future. But I was twenty years old and racked by the grief of being young and not knowing who I was, and what life might hold for me. I was anxious, even as the world around me seemed sweet.

It feels very awkward to me to feel that way, to remember vividly even in my body, my chest, my limbs, what it felt like to be that young. It is awkward because I am not young but old, and I see the years that have passed by. I no longer have the luxury of thinking myself immortal, as the young do, without knowing it. I'm embarrassed that I have let myself slide into whatever I have become. 

It is the awkwardness of rebirth and renewal. It is like waking and finding one's arm numb from sleeping on it, cutting off the blood flow, and one feels the pain and the blood starts flowing again. It is the soreness of using muscles one had let atrophy. It can be so much easier to stay dead than to come alive again. 

Underway

 

Yesterday I went for my longest walk in almost a year, maybe longer. I set off around noon and walked not only down to the soccer fields, but eastward all the way to the Bell Road trailhead at 104th street. I can't remember the last time I went that far.  About five miles out and back, taking over two hours.

The recovery from last spring has been slow and gradual, from what was apparently a virus-driven bout with BPPV. It hit me very hard at first, and then lingered throughout the hot summer. It was very bothersome, especially walking in the full sun while getting coffee at work. By August I began to wonder if maybe my job was killing me. In Hawaii I felt few symptoms---only up at the top of the volcano due to altitude, and I began to wonder if I'd rounded the corner. 

They laid me off on the Friday after I came back from Maui. It was inconvenient to be sure, but in many ways I am quite relieved. It gives me a chance to get out on my feet again, and I can feel myself getting slowly stronger again, and being able to go farther. The physical is important.

Defying Gravity

 Woke up yesterday morning and it hit me that I had spent the previous evening discussing theories of anti-gravity on my podcast. I was hit with a wave of morning-after awkwardness, then, as I lay in the dark, I built up in my mind that it was not such a stupid thing to have done after all. This is a daily cycle for me, and not just with physics but with just about any idea I have, or any project I am pursuing.

Wednesday night's broadcast was either among my best or perhaps my worst. I know much of my audience probably tuned it out. I had slides but I never showed them. I just talked, trying to give them my opinion of the research, and injecting my own insights based on my own experiences. I told them how shocked I was that anti-gravity was a thing, and that it was a popular topic even discussed by Joe Rogan. I told them I was a Rip Van Winkle physicist waking up to find this bizarre fringe topic, about which I knew nothing about, had consumed the imagination of a large amount of people online. Surely it was all due to the Internet and social media, where fringe speculative physics has lapped the progress of accepted mainstream science, and now people don't trust mainstream science at all. I was so out of date!

But c'mon, is it REAL????????

Writing science fiction can be fun, but that is not my role. I want to know, and now, God help me, I want to believe.*

Are we entering a Golden Age or an Age of Decline (or both depending on how you look at it)? My audience on Wednesday had brought up "Golden Age" in the chat, and also, at the same, somewhat paradoxically "getting back to normal." Normal of course is hard to pin down. In some way, normal for me would be 1969. 

I told them that for me discussing the possibly validity of a claim made by a scientific researcher in a U.S. government laboratory that they had successfully reduced the force of gravity on an object by up to 2%, and that a similar claim was made by a Russian emigre physicist in Finland is exactly how normal is supposed to operate. 

Normal physics, I told them, is that by experiment we discover new phenomena which have no explanation, and that by investigating and explaining them we advance theory but also provide practical usages for humanity in the form of new technology. 

This has not been happening in a long time, I told them. It has begun to feel like we will never again discover novel phenomena in nature that has practical use, like anti-gravity would. We have gotten very good at confirming predictions made a long time ago by theoretical insight. When I was in graduate school in the 1990s, this is what everything was about. People pushed the technology of short laser pulses to isolate atoms, all of it based on old theory. The biggest one was the development of new technologies in low temperature physics, which finally allowed people to explore things in the laboratory that had never been possible. The canonical example is probably the production (at last) of a phenomenon called a Bose-Einstein condensate at the University of Colorado in 1995.  The condensate itself is just ordinary rubidium atoms. The key is being able to cool them down to near absolute zero, and that point a bunch of strange quantum effects start to kick in.

Another strange quantum phenomena that normally arises only with very low temperatures is superconductivity, if you have ever heard that term.  Superconductivity is much easier to achieve that Bose-Einstein condensates because you don't have to make it so impossibility cold, only normal supercold like liquid nitrogen. It was actually discovered as a new and unexplainable phenomenon in 1911! It was until the late 1950s that we had a (quantum) theory of why superconductivity arises in certain materials and at certain low temperatures.  Since then the struggle has mostly been one of applied science. How can we achieve this effect without it having to be so cold in the lab? Can we see it a room temperature?

So that's what I mean by normal---physics happening like it did in 1911.

The weird part for me is how the anti-gravity lab experiments I mention were being done in the 1990s while I was in graduate school. They were being published in the normal journals (which I didn't read, but many others did). No one was talking about this. They were talking about Bose-Einstein condensates. They were talking about high-temperature superconductivity. They were talking about nonlinear dynamics and chaos, which is what I wound up doing with my advisor. 

They were not talking about anti-gravity, and this past week is the first time I heard of these papers from the 1990s.  Some of the most formative papers were published in 1991 and 1992, right when I was the most embedded among other physicists who talked about the latest trends. Then the research, at least in the original U.S. lab, stopped apparently after 1999 and the main researcher dropped out of sight after 2003 until it was reported in 2021 that she died. This has led to a lot of conspiracy theories upon which one can only speculate.

But it is certainly true to me at least that in retrospect this topic never landed on a plate in front of me during those years.

It gets even better because one of the early names in speculative anti-gravity in the mid 1950s, who even today citied in Wikipedia, was someone I know and worked with, and talked with, at the University of Texas.

*Note that this phrase was of course a catchphrase from a sci-fi television show in the 1990s that, among other things, speculated on the existence not only of anti-gravity technology, but of extraterrestrial alien life forms and other related paranormal phenomena. Here I am being a hard-ass physicist and discussing only the former and not the latter. I don't know if I care to believe in the latter.

Isaac Newton and the Moon

 Back when I was much younger and more spontaneously creative man, I had the temerity to take a studio art class. It was in the last full year of college, in the Spring of 1988. It was a course on monoprinting. I saw it in the course catalog over Christmas break, I think when I staying in Oakland with some friends, one of whom had been an art major at Berkeley. The idea of taking a studio art class seemed outrageous to me, a Physics/English double major trying to wrap up my requirements for both degrees. 

My artist friend, who still lives in Oakland to this day, explained what monoprinting was, and from this I learned the important fact that it was a real thing, a real form of visual expression, and not a term that was made up. How was I supposed to know? As I always do, I wanted to do something real.

The course, to my surprise, had no prerequisites. I assumed there would be some basic year-long art sequence required to sign up for any advanced course. That was not the case. There were no prequisites. But would it then be a meaningful coure? I was so leary of the class before I took it that I signed up as "pass/fail." 

When my art class finally met, in the printing studio of the old art building on campus, I felt like a pretender sitting beside the art majors around me.  Surely I would be exposed. 

The instructor was a youthful man of relaxed disposition.  I thad old him my story, hoping he would take pity on me as a non-artist interloping in an advanced studio course).  He had seemed amused at how jumpy I was to be in his course.

To be quite honest, I do not think I lack artistic talent and I have never thought that. In fact I'm pretty cocky and egotistical about my talents and believe I could have succeeded at almost anything I set my mind to do, starting early enough with the right instruction. I knew artistic talent had to be cultivated by training and good technique, refined into a personal style that connects with people's standards but also says something original and meaningful. I hadn't been doing any of that. I lacked the prerequisites---the real prerequisites, I thought. I assumed I look like a rank amateur in the class. I dreaded the embarrassment.

Of course I was completely wrong about everything. One of my first piece delighted the entire class and blew the professor away. It was a print I had made with cutting out pieces of paper and cardboard to create figures on an otherwise smooth metal plate.It was called Isaac Newton and the Moon. It was meant to represent Newton from the chest upwards looking forward. It was based on a historical lithograph or painting, I'm sure. Over his shoulder was the full moon.  I can't remember if I used oil or acrylic. The colors were blue, green, and white. The instructor had told us to be cautious with use of too many colors at first, and limiting to these three worked out well in this case.

My classmates, who were all of them art majors and had never any one of them taken a physics class, were impressed at how I had used a physics subject in a such a composition. My work was a curiosity for them, because of my background.

I really liked the print when I made it, and carried it with me after I went to graduate school, hanging it on my wall and showing it to people for four years until it and most of my other prints disappeared during a move at the end of the summer of 1992.  I felt like maybe it was for the best that it disappeared, so I could put away my interest in artistic things in favor of serious scientific work in graduate school that demanded my full concentration. 

I'm thinking about all this today because I am about to do my second podcast in a row about...anti-gravity! Outrageous!

Update: Broadcast went well. (link) For once no sound disasters but on the other hand, the lighting was the all -ime worst and I looked like an animated corpse.   You can't have everything.  No slides at all this week, so really just me talking on an audio podcast only. Experience researching the subject matter has left me a little  off-kilter, so to speak, freaked out a bit in a good way.

Lunar Oscillations

 Woke up at a normal time this morning (half past four). Lying in bed in the dark I focus on the overlapping sounds. Sometimes I think I hear rain outside, but of course it almost never is rain. The heat has come on during the night, and sound of it rushing through the vents is novel. Outside the noise of the heavy equipment raking and grooming the undeveloped desert carries from half a mile away in low rumbles that become more clear and identifiable as I focus on them. Much of the construction here is done at night like this.

Not wanting to let this precious pre-dawn serenity slip back into sleep, I force myself to rise and to go out to the kitchen in the to make coffee. To my surprise, the room is lit by the floodlight of the moon through the open blinds. 

Standing at the counter, I poke the button on the electric kettle and it comes to life with the blue led lights of its panel of buttons. I wait a few seconds until I hear the water begin to simmer.

As the simmering proceeds, I stand at the kitchen sink looking out the window to the west. I set up the paper filter in the Chemex to ready it for the pour of the water which is heating. I crane my neck to see the moon. It is apparently full or near full. Without my contacts in, I squint to see its shape.

Then as the simmering of the kettle proceeds and grows as I stare out to the west. In the far distance are the recognizable lights of the Mayo Clinic and other mid-rise buildings along the freeway.  A few cars pass along Pima Road coming too and from the interchange of the 101 Freeway.  In a few hours it will be a busy with commuters but at this moment the traffic is sporadic.

With the moon casting shadows around the sink around me, my mind is carried far way to things far beyond the little circle of my life, to people and places far away. It is as if my thoughts are going up to the moon itself and then bouncing off it, to come back to various places around the earth. 

Then my dispersed thoughts are broken by the beeping of the kettle, which has reached its rolling boil.  My concentration is yanked back, somewhat awkwardly, to the kitchen sink. Almost by rote, I lift the kettle from its holder and pour the hot water into the paper filter, following the official instructions as always, to preheat the flask with a clean pour that seals the paper filter against the glass. The immediate tactile experience of my hands in the dark feels like the opposite of the bodiless lunar reverie I was in only a few minutes before.

Prayer in the Middle of the Night

Last night I woke up in the wee small hours, just after 1:30 AM to be precise. I know because I went out into the kitchen and looked at the digital clock on the stove. 

It was early to get up, but I knew I was too awake to go immediately back to sleep. I went back to bed and lay down, staring at the ceiling in the dark. This kind of thing was happening to me quite a bit last fall, and since getting laid off from my job last month, it has only increased, adding another factor into the calculus of anxiety.

Recognizing the familiar mental state, I immediately switched into a mental recitation of the Jesus Prayer, whispering softly to myself in the darkness, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the Sinner."

The Orthodox believe that this simple recitation is the quickest and best way to pray spontaneously, such that one can do it almost constantly in one's mental background as one goes throughout the day, fulfilling Paul's direction to "pray without ceasing." The Catholics also advocate the use of the Jesus Prayer, but they are more apt to mention other repetitive prayers such as the Rosary. Protestants, well,...that's a different story. It depends on which Protestants you ask, and how they interpret Matthew 6:7. I can testify that my experience (as a Protestant) is that it is anything but "vain."

I am at the point where launching into the repetitive prayer is almost like taking a fast-acting drug that makes my anxieties fly away. I trust God implicitly and feel myself pulled more deeply into that trust. Of course my mind wanders I say the prayer, and my thoughts latch onto various things, but as long I continue with the prayer, I do not feel myself pulled into the anxiety I had felt upon waking.  It has taken years of practice to achieve this, remembering its efficacy over and over. The next thing I knew it was hours later I found myself waking a second time, still in the darkness, but the peace of the empty mind that one can sometime find when waking.

The Death of Robin Hood

In the last chapter of the book, Robin grows old and grey while living in the Green Wood. Little John and Robin remain close bosom friends until their final days. In his old age, Robin stands strong with white hair and can still shoot an arrow as straight as ever. Then one he fails ill and becomes weak. He tells Little John to take him to his cousin, who the Prioress of Kirklees, and who is skilled at bloodletting

Little John does as he asks and the Prioress receives him. Unbeknownst to them, the Prioress despises Robin and seeks to do him harm. Seeing Little John and Robin's men out of the room, she cuts him and lets him bleed without bandaging him. Little John finally bursts into the room and finds Robin dying.  In his final moments, he asks Little John to help him shoot one last arrow out of the window, telling Little John to bury him where the arrow langs. He also commands Little John and the Merry Men to seek no revenge against his cousin, and they grudgingly honor his wishes

Thus ends the story book. It feels so abrupt and unsatisfying to modern readers. One wonders what became of Marian, for example. There is no mention of her beyond the chapter devoted to her. One should expect this from a children's book. They lived happily ever after, we were told, and the children would accept that, and we will as well. We don't need to hear about any complications they encountered, as if were hearing the "real" story. Their story was perfect as it was.

This brings up the deep contrast between the children's book and the 1938 movie version.  The children's book was very satisfying in being a nice readable collection of the many stories about Robin Hood that were compiled over the centuries, as the legend grew and expanded. The book version, written over. a century ago, holds up very well today. The 1938 movie version was made at a time when many of the audience would have learned about Robin Hood from reading such children's books, and they would expect to see familiar characters and stories reflected on the screen.  I believe the movie probably succeeded at this very well, even though I was not alive at the time.. There is an element of almost all of the book chapters in the movie, to the point where I wondered if the story script of the movie was a direct adaptation of it in a some form. 

But in a Hollywood movie we need to have a strong heroine and a romance, and the skillful adaptation of the various semi-connected stories of the Robin Hood legend into a coherent romance told over the course of an hour and half, in a way that was recognizable to audiences of that time, is one of the reasons the movie is a great classic. Audiences of the time, having grown up on the storybooks, would have walked out thinking, "yes, that was Robin Hood! That was Marian!"

We live in a different era--the Postmodern Era. Most people's exposure to the Robin Hood stories probably does not come from children's storybooks but from existing media. The 1938 version would be considered outdated but most people who are not classic film buffs. Instead they probably know more recent movies.

But in Postmodernity, such movies are likely based on existing movies---cinematic adaptations of cinematic adaptations. The attempts at creativity of our age reflect that, which one reason movies today are so bad---they are not based on real life anymore but on previous existing movies. 

As such, the Robin Hood story has become a property that film makers can use in whatever way they want, without any requirement to connect to the old legends and stories beyond the names of the characters. See this recent "Robyn Hood" adaptation for example.

I only know about this last one because when it came out last year, it was discussed on a Youtube movie channel I follow as being an example of the horrible trend in moviemaking of switching the characters race/gender etc. in the name of representation and expecting something meaningful to emerge .  It was considered barely watchable and was cancelled after one short season because the ratings were so low. But during its run it gave much laughter and joy to those mocking it as an example of how bad things have gotten.

What will future ages think of this? Fifty years from now, provided people still watch movies, folks will be watching the classic 1938 version and cheering for the success of the lovers and the downfall of the villains. The only folks who will watching modern versions will be anthropologists trying to determine how things went so horribly wrong in our era.  Robin Hood will survive. Personally I hope the storybook makes a comeback. It gave me so much joy and now I have come to the end, I am a bit sad.

What remains? My mind is now awakened to a desire to learn about the development of the legend based on actual historical individuals from the 12th century. I barely had a chance to explore this, and perhaps I will do that at some point, when the ocassion arises to revisit the Green Wood. 

The Book is Back!

 

Color plate from a real edition of H.E. Marhsall's Stories of Robin Hood, showing Richard revealing himself as king to Robin and his men.

Yesterday I made sure to go out to the park, to maintain my habit of walking. When I came up towards the little free library kiosk, I was rueing the loss of my book before I could finish it, but as I walked towards it, I thought to myself, "well, maybe it will be back."

It seemed like a longshot, but nevertheless I would look. So I opened the door and I didn't see the book. But then I began rummaging through the books, just to double check, and lo and behold, there was the copy of Stories of Robin Hood Told to Children sitting between two larger children's books on the bottom shelf.  I pulled it out with joy. It the same copy, to be sure, with its creased cover and yellow highlights. Now it felt like a treasure. I was filled with a wave to joy to be able to continue.

I immediately walked it over to the picnic table where I sat with it, reading the next chapter, which was Chapter 8 about the return of King Richard.

Richard has now heard much of Robin Hood and wants to meet this interesting fellow. He travels to Nottingham and goes into the Green Wood with his men hoping to meet Robin. But Robin always sees him coming and hides from him, as he respects the king and does not want to harm him or menace him in any way.

The frustrates the king, who does not want to harm Robin, or to meet him.  The Sheriff of Nottingham advises him that in the king and men were to dress as monks, then surely Robin would intercept them. So the king does that, and now we have the king and his men all in disguises.  Yet another twist on the disguise theme.

The ruse works. Robin and his men intercept them, but upon discovering the monks are loyal to the king, Robin affirms his loyalty as well and says he would gladly serve the king if he could. At that point the king removes his disguise and reveals himself as Richard.  Robin and his men kneel and swear him allegiance, and to serve him. Then they have dinner together and the king sees the wonderful forest society that is flourishing under Robin. Then everyone marches out of the Green Wood together. Robin and his men go to London. 

The story says that unfortunately Richard later dies, and his tyrannical brother assumes the throne for real, and that Robin and men are forced back into the Green Wood as outlaws. Nevertheless for a brief moment, there was justice in England.

When I finished reading the chapter, I closed the book and looked at the copy I was holding. Could I possibly have missed it yesterday. I had thought I had meticulously looked through all the books, twice in fact. But who knows? Or was it returned? I'll never know.

I felt such happiness to have it back. I decided at once that the original intention I had made for my secret book club, to leave the book in the kiosk each night, was no longer binding. The book had been set free but it had come back. I decided that I would take the copy home with me, at least for one night until I was finished with it, and now the little yellow highlighted book is by my side in my room. Maybe it will stay with me, and be part of my library permanently. Tomorrow I go out and read the final chapter.

Holding on by our Fingernails

Sadness around the household today. After waking up, Jessica told me Fred's son has passed away during the night. He had been diagnosed with metastatic cancer last year. They were in the process of moving him into hospice.

Jessica asked me if I would call Fred this afternoon, and I said gladly. I had been praying in my room for his son's soul, saying the Rosary several times. Fred is going to fly up to Cincinnati later today.

I love Fred tremendously. He was one of the few people I can talk to. He worked for many years as a Ford engineer in Ohio before retiring. He is a congenial man and gruff in his conservative look on life. He married Jessica's mother some time in the 1980s. He and Jessica's mother live down in Mesa at an RV park, where they own a permanent pre-fab home. We have breakfast with them pretty much every Sunday morning up here in Scottsdale. 

I generally get along with men of his generation more than my own. There is something that happened to Americans right around the time I was born in the mid 1960s. We can't make friends and connect to people in a genuine way like older generations could do. I've known this my entire life. At one time I realized that the parents of my high school friends were much dependable as "friends" than the people my age, for whom friendship is something that comes and goes, and can be discarded. It was one of the things that made me realize early in my life, from childhood, that the world was a broken and lonely place, and for much of my life it has felt like that. I don't get how people just let friendships die, but they do, as if you can just order new friends online and have them delivered. Human relationship are commodified.

I guess I'm a little off topic, but since I didn't know Fred's son, I can't speak about him. I know he led a troubled life and had a difficult time taking care of himself, going through one addiction rehab program after another, and living in squalor. 

Some days I cannot bear feeling the pain of people out in the world---all the pain and suffering, and the isolation and abandonment. Some days I can look out the window and almost see it out there, the desperation of lost souls, and in between them, the people who seem to be able to not care about it all, and how weird that seems. Some days every human contact feels like a gift of mercy. Some days it feels like we are all just holding on by our fingernails. 

The Lost Kingdom of the Undeveloped Desert

By the end of yesterday, I had gotten over the loss of "my" book, and the attendant routine I had come to enjoy since New Year's Day, of walking out to the park and reading a chapter while sitting at the picnic table in the shelter. Of course, I could have taken the book for my own and then walked out with it to the park, but somehow it didn't feel like the right thing to do. In that sense, it was a test of my character, to cope with losing it. It felt like it was meant to happen.

It had all begun only last week as a way of getting me to take more walks outside in the New Year, after a year and half of feeling cooped up. Perhaps that is what I missed immediately, the motivation to follow this new routine, and also the feeling of it being the New Year. I love New Year's Day. It may be my favorite holiday. I love that it is an arbitrary date on the calendar, but everyone gives themselves permission to feel like the world is, fleetingly, brand new again. I love the low-number single-digit days of January and always feel a little sad to see the world settle into the everyday calendar again. Seeing the book missing yesterday was like being rudely jolted out of my extended New Year's dream, like an alarm clock going off rudely while one is in the midst of a pleasant dream (note I almost never use alarm clocks, and when I do I invariably wake up before it goes off.).

The other subtext in this drama is that last year, going for walks in the little park had become painful. This is because, as I mentioned, they finally got around to clearing out the rest of the undeveloped desert that I have cherished so much since we moved here. The building of the park itself had been the first step in that, back in 2021, but it left the vast majority of the remaining land untouched for the time being, and it remained my almost private wandering area where I could get "lost". I done this kind of things since I was boy, making a piece of woods or a vacant field into my little of kingdom. 

I know it makes me "weird" and few understand this about me, that I can turn a bit of scrub desert into my own palace grounds and give names and character to each part of it, like Adam naming the features of the newly created Earth. So rare is it to find someone who understands this too. There have been so few people in life who understand how I am constantly driven into some form of "magical thinking", where I am compelled to interpret my life in some kind of mythopoetic storyline, even on the smallest everyday level. If I take you into my confidence as a friend, then I begin to share these things with you, and share the sources of magic around me, if I sense you think me mad, that it is ok until you call me mad, but then we must part and I must go on my way. There is no sadder moment than when a shared magical journey stops, and one is left alone, the mourn with the confort of the trees and the landscape that once was the text of a fairy tale before one's eyes.

This kingdom of the undeveloped desert was not my property. .Except for a small rump section, has been scraped to a flat brown plain, and what remains will taken soon as well.  It's like a nuclear exposion to destroy the magic terrain. I could turn away from the sight of it and mourn the loss of my kingdom in private, but as I walk up the path of the park around the pond, I am confronted by the vision of this featureless plain stretching all the way down a half mile to the highway. Soon they will begin paving it over no doubt. My mind wants to see where the dirt road once went under the power lines, where I could pace out my thoughts and draw together ideas into a creative whole. All of that is behind. work fence now. The little draw that wound down towards the highway, flanked by delightful brush where animals played, is totally gone, replaced by a chain link fence that feels like a prison.

All of that was too much to bear last fall as it was happening, which is why I stopped going to the park. It was too painful. Somehow the library and my book club allowed me to pretend all of that wasn't happening. I often go walking without my contact lenses or glasses, and so it was easier just to cope with things that way, and not see the blankness of terrain, awaiting the asphalt, that was once such a joyful bit of discovery each day. I could focus entirely on the little library.

Thankfully, amidst it all, there still remains the little bit of paradise that was my original private sanctuary---the Sandy Bottom, as I have called. That part of the draw still remains because it is just inside of the original dedicated park, but was never developed. The draw will never be filled with water again, due to the re-engineering of the drainage in the park, but the Ironwood lives on, as does the Saguaro and the Palo Verde nearby, although I rarely go and sit there as I did, because there is no longer the same privacy in doing so. One feels rather "on display" there to people in the park walk on the road that passes nearby, that did not exist before. 

And thankfully the "Chapel" is still there---a spot along the old draw just downstream from the Ironwood but upstream from the draw where several trees hang over the channel of the draw to create an interior space that is private but from which one can see out. The Chapel barely survived. Alas just downstream from it, the channel is now cutoff by the chain link fence and where the full scraping of the land begins. The delighful row of trees there have been uprooted and removed. 

The pain in my heart remains for the other places in my kingdom that I cherished that are now permanently gone, a victim of zoning plans made decades ago now being undertaken, despite the change of character of this part of Scottsdale. 

It by no means the first time in my life that I have carved out a private kingdom for myself like this, that only I seem to know about but which is ignored by everyone else. Over and over I have seen such places taken away. That's the way of the world. I will get over this as well. The destruction of it will make it easier to leave this place when we go, whenever that is, hopefully to a place where I can wander along forest paths again. I miss that a lot. Perhaps it is a blessing to be able to detach from it in that way.

Today, however, while we still live here, even though we are leaving behind the magic single-digit days of the year, I intend to go walking again into the park, and I will bring my own book to read, and it perhaps become my own book club again. I think I already have the book in mind.

As for the.yellow-highlighted copy of Robin Hood, my mythopoetic impulse drives me t to interpret the fact that yesterday I found the door of the little library flung open when I arrived to mean that the book, like a bird, escaped from its cage and was set free. A copy will come back to me when I am ready to finish it.  Patience. King Richard shall return yet.

Book Club is Canceled

 The day's walk to the park found me in my usual high spirits. It had become part of my routine that lifted me up. I passed the pond, which was sparkling like shower of gold was laid over it. Then as I approached the little free library box I got a sinking feeling. The door was flung open and something didn't feel right. My dread I looked inside. It seemed like the same books were on the shelves, but when I looked for the familiar copy of Stories of Robin Hood, I found it was no longer there.

I had told myself I would be happy if someone else took it, for it meant sharing it with someone, but when it finally happened, it greatly saddened me. Such is life. I was just up to the 8th of the 10 chapters. "Why couldn't it have waited a couple days?" Hopefully whoever has taken it is enjoying it as much as I did.

Of course I could get another copy and finish the story, Perhaps I will do that, but some part of the magic of it all feels interrupted. 

Disguises, Disguises, Disguises.

 

Map of Medieval Nottingham, the site of the Silver Arrow contest.

Disguises. Disguises. Disguises. The usage of disguises grows as the Robin Hood story goes on. In Chapter 7, "The Silver Arrow", we see the hero go from the bliss of finding his long-lost friend of his heart and taking her as his forest bride, to facing peril of death with all of his men. This time it is directly under the gaze of the Sheriff of Nottingham, and Robin brings it about deliberately.

Where the story picks up in this chapter, King Richard has returned to England from the Crusades explicitly to put aside the tyrannical rein of his brother Prince John. Meanwhile the Sheriff of Nottingham has grown apoplectic over his failure to capture Robin. He (painfully) spends a great deal of money to travel to London under heavy armed escort to plead with the king for more resources to capture the rascal, who has been abusing the king's own forests. Unimpressed, the king dismisses him and sends him home. The Sheriff is humiliated and very angry.

He devises a plan to lure Robin into his clutches---an open archery contest in Nottingham. Being a man obsessed with wealth, he thinks in terms of silver and gold. The prize of the contest is a silver arrow with a gold tip as a prize. Robin will surely want to win the prize. He is sure this will work. 

On this, he is correct. The plan might well have worked but for the fact that one of Robin's men, David of Doncaster, has a sister who works as a maid in the household of the Sheriff. David visits his sister clandestinely and she tells him of the plan, in order to warn Robin that the contest is a trap. When David returns to the forest, he finds Robin has already heard of the contest and is planing to go. At first he brushes aside the warning from his own man, mocking his caution and cowardice. Then he hears about the details, and the thoroughness of the Sheriff's plan. So he adjusts his own plan. All of his men will go, each one in separate disguises.  

They make their way into town and blend in, in groups of two or three, and the Sheriff never suspects them. All the while he is looking for a group of men in Lincoln green, but none ever materialize.

Of course Robin wins the contest and is presented the arrow by the wife of the Sheriff. Afterwards she tells the Sheriff how much the contest winner resembled the charming butcher who once came to dinner. To seal the victory, Robin later delivers a letter to the Sheriff by means of an arrow that he shoots into the castle. The Sheriff now realizes his own idiocy and rages, vowing revenge. 

Marian does not make an appearance in this chapter. In the version presented in the 1938 Warner Brothers movie (which is itself based on other narrative-space variations of the story), it is Marian who takes the role of presenting the arrow to the winner.  The contest in the movie is being held by Prince John who has not yet been deposed (Claude Rains makes a superb villain in the movie). 

Sitting next to Marian, and knowing she is in love with Robin, the Prince watches her like a hawk for her reactions to the various contestants, and by this he discerns Robin's disguised identity even before he wins the contest. He savors the moment of letting Robin advance to the podium where he can spring the trap right in front of Marian.

According to classical Hollywood poetics, it is to Marian's virtue that she cannot hide her love for Robin. A woman in love can never truly hide it, and when pressed, she cannot deny it (but only a cad or a villain would press her on such an issue). Had she been able to conceal her feelings completely, she would not be worthy of being the true love of such a noble soul as Robin. Even if she must verbally deny her love for him, for example to save his life, her face and her voice cannot conceal her true feelings. This is, in fact, the glory of woman that she cannot hide her true love. A man who loves her may know this about her, and he conveys to her I can see right through you, and I like what I see.

A sociopathic villain, however, will also see right through her, in a coldblooded way, as does Prince John in the film (but not the Sheriff in the book, as this is much easier to convey with the camera than in print). Thankfully, in story terms at least, her virtue will save her. As a woman, she is vulnerable and in need of masculine protection, but also her love ultimately makes her invulnerable to the villain, even as he thinks he can read her like a book and anticipate her every move. He cannot see in her the depth of feminine power that comes from true love (otherwise he wouldn't be the villain). He cannot account for the power of the Spirit of Love to act in a spontaneous chaotic way that will foil his plans. It is the feminine submission of the heroine that invokes this Spirit to act to protect her. I love the way classic movies invariably brought out this theme.

In the book version, the Sheriff literally has everything he wants right in front of him, but is blinded by greed and hate. Ironically the Sheriff himself has a splendid wife who had effectively saved his life in the first encounter with Robin, and then, after the arrow contest, unknowingly provides the the service of telling the Sheriff he was duped.  Is it implied subtly that the Sheriff's wife saved his life a second time? 

Consider Robin's arrow message to him at his residence is seemingly superfluous in story terms. Why have it? The Sheriff already knows, because his wife told him. Of course, Robin himself doesn't know the Sheriff knows, but we do. Robin could have found out by other means that the Sheriff figured it out. Why have the whole episode of Robin going in to shoot the arrow? For closure purposes with a second arrow shot? Maybe.

If nothing else, the wife's informing him after the context told him how easily Robin was able to penetrate a high-security setting and to approach the Sheriff in person so brazenly. The Sheriff henceforth would be more on guard, fearing the next appearance of Robin. Robin does in fact go to the Sheriff's house, to shoot the arrow message. It serves Robin's ego to do this. He's rubbing it in, and only asking for trouble. 

By putting the Sheriff on guard as she did, the wife perhaps prevented Robin from ambushing the Sheriff and doing harm to him, perhaps killing him. This would have been bad for all involved in the story. Among other things, it would have prevented King Richard from coming to Nottinghamshire (as he is about to do) and fairly judge the conflict between the Sheriff and Robin. The King would been forced into an antagonistic position against Robin from the beginning. What a disaster.  Justice would not be restored to he kingdom.

I admit I sort of made all this last part up by speculation. I see no indication in the story that what I described in overtly implied. Rather I would argue it is a possible interpretive variation of the story. The continued vitality of the Robin Hood narrative in Anglo-American culture, however, means it is still possible to generate variations in the narrative space such as this, in a way that appeals to the curiosity of audiences. Sadly Hollywood has mostly forgotten how to do this, and instead it relies on cheap surface variations like changing a character from straight to gay, or white to black. It would all be so funny if it weren't depriving entire generations of the power of story to inform people of how to construct somewhat happy lives and avoid ones that are shitty and soul-killing. 

When shall Love flourish again, without disguise or guile? When at least shall the King return and restore Justice to the benighted land? 

An Anti-Feminist Reading of Lady Marian Fitzwalter

In the 1938 Warner Brothers film, Marian is played by the late Olivia de Havilland (1916--2020). She was one of the last living links to an entire era of movie history. I have seen this film at least a dozen times on TCM. It was one of Robert Osbourne's favorites. Like him, I absolutely love this movie and easily place it in my all time top ten. Among other things, it could be Exhibit A in a contemporary college film course on how movies inform our knowledge of male-female roles, and we learn to conform to such roles, and come together as men and women, through this viewership in a postmodern way. In fact I took exactly such a course in Salem, Oregon in 1988 but we didn't see this movie. I only saw it years later.  In this version Marian and Robin have a different origin story than they do in the book I am reading. They don't meet until Robin is well established in the forest as an outlaw. Marian is aware of Robin's outlaw reputation before she meets him and predisposed to like him, as she is aware that England has fallen into tyranny, but as a woman, she remains unaware of the deeper implications of this until her eyes are opened by a man. The director Michael Curtiz (who also directed Casablanca) lets us see Marian fall in love with Robin when he meets him. The screenplay calls for her to be less overtly masculine than the 1912 children's book where she wears a suit of armor in the woods. As per the usual classical Hollywood poetics, her power remains overtly feminine in nature as a character, and we see her in scenes that reflect her domesticity. She stays as the "fixed point" in the castle, attempting to manipulate events on behalf of Robin, who is the active masculine out in the world.  Robin (active, masculine) can communicate with her, but she (passive, feminine) cannot communicate back to him (when she is finally forced to do so, she almost gets herself killed). She never betrays him, even to the point of bringing upon herself a death sentence for treason. They are the perfect masculine-feminine balance in the perfect love story. De Havilland's performance here was no doubt a huge reason she was cast the following year as the iconic Melanie in M-G-M's Gone With the Wind. 

Let us revisit the Green Wood. 

Imagine a scene deep in the forest, along path two strangers approach each other--two knights in armor one large and one smaller and thinner. They dismount and engage in mortal combat, hacking at each with swords for an hour, with the bigger one getting the best of the smaller one. The smaller one suffers a severe injury and appears on the edge of defeat, maybe death.

This is the story in chapter 6--except the knights we see are not actually knights. The armor of both of them is a disguise. Moreover, one of them, the smaller one, is revealed, to the astonishment of the larger knight, to be a woman.

Moreover, it so happens that the two parties know each other. They have known each other for a long time, since before the start of the events of the book. Moreover, they were deeply in love with each other, and planned to marry. But due the circumstances of the world, they were parted and have not laid eyes on each other in a long time.

Yet when they are revealed to each other, they fall upon each with kisses, as if day not passed. So deep is their friendship, much do they love each other, and so happy they are to see each other again, and hold each other in their arms. 

Of course the man is Robin Hood and the woman is Maid Marian, the daughter of the Earl of Fitzwalter, who lived nearby to Robin's father's castle, before it was burned and Robin was forced into the exile of the wood.  Because Robin truly loved here, he had to cut off contact with her and go on without her. But it is clear he never stopped loving her. Who could replace Marian?

Yet he almost loses her again, after the happy reunion in the Green Wood. She wants to stay with him.  When a woman loves a man, she wants to be with him always. Robin tells her it is too dangerous, and the forest is no place for her. This is despite that she put up a good hour's fight against him while wearing armor.  We know Robin is underestimating her hardiness, but that is what a gentleman is supposed to do. He is supposed to tell her to go home, and she will have none of it. A woman who is truly in love will tolerate the most extraordinary circumstances of living to remain with her beloved. Just never leave me behind.

All of this important because it proves Marian is worthy of being Robin's bride. He is an extraordinary person himself and much justice depends on him, as well as the lives of many others. We need him to be with a woman who can match his masculine energy with a feminine form of it. 

Modern audiences and criticism would make much about the gender-bending of having her fight as a knight. A modern "girl power" Hollywood movie would require her to get the best of him, to prove girls are better than boys.  Nobody wants to see that except disturbed people who hate real women.  Everyone is else is just pretending to like that because it makes the right statement "for the benefit others." The Medieval version is the correct one, pushing the masculine energy of Marian as far it could possibly go,in actual combat. Ultimately she surrenders, and because she is pure, in surrendering she get everything she ever could want, and will live happily ever after.

Of course they did the correct thing for the day and got formally married by Friar Tuck by nightfall.  But no! says the modern audience. This is too rash! Don't they need some time to think it over?

The truth is they could have been married much earlier, had Robin believed that Marian was up to being the bride of a forest outlaw (which she always was). 

Nevertheless, at this point in the story, the good masculine and good feminine are in harmony and operating in their high registers. We know nothing truly bad can happen to them in the rest of the story. They will face trials, no doubt, even ones that threaten their lives, but we know they will triumph over them and remain together. We already know they will live happily ever after. 

So now we understand why Robin sent the old woman to Marian, when they were still in exile. 

Imagine that forest scene, when Robin takes the visor over his vanquished competitor and sees his beloved looking back at him. Imagine how the world must have sang for him some incredible hymn. A man truly in love with woman does not worship her like a goddess. Such a thing is repulsive to a woman. Instead he sees in her, and through her, all the things she cannot see about herself. The missing part of him has been found, re-found, and given back to him. That's what good stories do, either in children's books or in Hollywood movies. Ah, youth!

Ironically in the children's story we see the situations faced by modern would-be lovers trying to find each other. Having to put on armor, and disguise ourselves as ferocious and scary warriors to each other. Is there a better metaphor for the way mean and women try to find each other today? So few people ever get the opportunity to look into another's eyes and recognize their beloved. Such a thing requires, for both sexes, a vulnerability that is either (for women) considered to be a manifestation of oppression, or (for men) cultivated in an effeminate register out of an inability to connect to a true masculine ability to lead the woman. Everyone loses out.  

A Structuralist Take on Robin Hood

 

I went online and found this older edition of the book I've been reading on my walks out to the park. I have not purchased it but I might when I finish the version I h ave. The author H.E. Marshall is actually "Henrietta" (I had been picturing the classic movie actor Herbert Marshall!). The original edition was published in 1912. The one above is no doubt a later edition. The version I'm reading in the park is a cheap paperback reprint with black and white reproductions of the color plates from the original, no doubt published as such because the book is out of copyright at this point.  All of this has gotten me interested in the actual history of the Robin Hood legend--what are the "original" sources and how they evolve over the centuries. 

Robin Hood is about defying corrupt authority, both secular and religious. His deceit of the greedy Sheriff of Nottingham in Chapter 4 is followed in the next chapter, Chapter 5 "Robin Hood and the Bishop, by a similar but anti-parallel encounter with the malevolent Bishop of Hereford. 

The Bishop of Hereford has a hatred for Robin because of the humiliation he suffered at Christabel's wedding. He also knows he can collect a reward from the Sheriff if he captures Robin. He is as corrupt as Church authority can get. 

I saw anti-parallel here because it follow the rule I noticed in Hollywood movies---nothing is ever repeated exactly. There must always be at least one prominent variation of a story element. There is always a switch of polarity on some axis within the narrative. For example, the Sheriff follows Robin foolishly into the forest alone, without guards believing himself safe when he was not.  He has the Sheriff in his control the entire time and is never in danger.

In a structuralist sense, these elements switch polarities in the next chapter, which has the Bishop entering the forest on is own initiative, and accompanied by heavy guard of soldiers. He is under no delusions about his situation. He is seeking Robin explicitly, attempting to draw Robin out to capture him. With him he carries a large sum of gold which does not belong to him but to a monastery to which he is headed. It is pointed out that the monasteries at that time were corrupt as well.

In fact, the Bishop's men do spot Robin, who is alone and vulnerable, and barely escapes their hot pursuit, all the while knowing he will be executed if caught. 

Instead of calling his bowmen to come to him, he has to seek refuge out, in the cottage of an old hermit woman, for whom he has provided goods to her. 

With the Sheriff, he went into town in disguise. Here is flees from his pursuers and dons a disguise in order to escape. He does this by asking the old woman for a dress and cap, so he can pretend to be her, in order to evade the Bishop's men. Meanwhile she will wear his Lincoln green suit and cap and pretend to be Robin when the soldier's arrive. Robin promises to come to her rescue with his men.

Pretty much everything goes according to his new plan, and he intercepts the Sheriff and disarms his soldiers. Of course he confiscates the Bishop's gold, but instead of the stated reason being a meal that the Sheriff will get to experience later that day, it is as payment for the services Robin has already rendered. 

This is the way stories generally were constructed---by variations. I went through a Yale course on literary theory a few years back that turned me onto this.. Claude Levi-Strauss and Roland Barthes wrote much about this kind of thing in exploring what is known as structuralism. 

In a simple variation story, we might have only one alteration on the narrative axis each time leads someone into the Green Wood. For example a soldier of the Sheriff, then a captain, then the Sheriff himself. Instead we get an almost complete variation of the narrative between Sheriff and Bishop on many different axes of the narrative, as mentioned above. That means that in two passes, we have essentially filled out the entire "space" of narrative variation in a Levi-Strauss sense. There is hardly any room for a third such incident with further variation of the story. That tells me that the third time it happens---for there must be a third time---will be radically different than the first two. It must be in a whole new "story space". I can hardly wait.

Also in this chapter we finally hear of Maid Marian, who will finally make an appearance in the next chapter. In the meantime Robin sends the old woman of the forest off to Marian in order to be fitted with finer dress, and be placed in her protection. One thus knows of Marian's goodness before we meet her. We know she is a very important person for Robin.

Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009), the godfather of structuralism, which dominated literary criticism in the mid 1960s until the rise of deconstruction.  At first it was hard to grasp what he meant by the narrative space of a story, until I listened this lecture from 1984 in which he talks about the myths and legends of various isolated tribes in British Columbia as recorded by an anthropologist in the early 20th century. Every possible variation of the myth comes into being over time, as varies within certain constraints. He first noticed this about Oedipus and concluded that in regard to myths and legends, there is never a definitive version. All of the versions and variations contribute to a "story space" that builds over time. I think about this a lot in regard to the contemporary switching theace, sex, sexuality, etc. of well-known story characters, say in Disney or Star Wars or in comics.  Doing so is almost a trope at this point. It think it is well explained by the ideas of Levi-Strauss in regard to the need for the culture to fill out the expanded "DEI" story space of existing narratives. I've never heard anyone else say this, probably because no one cares about structuralism anyone, and my thesis here would probably be seen as reactionary/racist/homophobic/transphobic/misogynist but the numb-brained academics who know only "critical race theory." That is basically the only tool in their toolbox.  Even my late grandfather, who was a Marxist academic and professor of French literature, could not stand them. How far we have fallen since the 1960s.