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NEW ORLEANS - 9 April, 2003: For my birthday, my pal Matt brought me a copy of Henry Miller's Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. It is a very tame book by the standards of Miller's early career, full of stories of walks in Nature, sunsets, raising children, serial children's tales, family. It is mellower Henry Miller than that one wandering Paris, though his financial circumstances have improved but little - in the Big Sur days he had made a name for himself. Reading that book these two days has been a sort of Return for me. Listen:
... One has to establish, or re-establish, a unity which has been broken and which is felt just as keenly by the reader, who is a potential artist, as by the writer, who believes himself to be an artist. The theme of separation and isolation - "atomization", it's now called - has as many facets to it as there are unique individuals. And we are all unique. The longing to be reunited, with a common purpose and an all-embracing significance, is now universal. The writer who wants to communicate with his fellow-man, and thereby establish communion with him, has only to speak with sincerity and directness ...And later in the same passage Miller proclaims:
...No, the man who is about to blow his top does not have to fix his eye on the Illiad, the Divine Comedy or any other great model; he has only to give us, in his own language, the saga of his woes and tribulations, the saga of his non-existentialism. In this mirror of not-ness everyone will recognize himself for what he is as well as what he is not. He will no longer be able to hold his head up either before his children or before his neighbors; he will have to admit that he - not the other fellow - is that terrible person who is contributing, wittingly or unwittingly, to the speedy downfall and disintegration of his own people. He will know, when he resumes work in the morning, that everything he does, everything he says, everything he touches, pertains to the invisible poisonous web which holds us all in its mesh and which is slowly but surely crushing the life out of us. It does not matter what high office the reader may hold - he is as much a villain and a victim as the outlaw and the outcast.Reading Miller's courageous vision I am reminded how I have (O, poor backslider!) tried once again to subsume my artist temperament in favor of my mere utilitarian needs. It never works for long. Rod the Bartender and Rod the Writer were actively at war toward the end of my time at The Cat. It was inevitable, of course, that the latter should regain the upper hand. I am not a practical person; I'm an artist. That can only be changed as easily as the proverbial leopard can change its spots.
H.L. Mencken once observed that no true artist could love his own country. He provides us with copious examples from Shakespeare (don't be surprised) to Goethe. I take some comfort in that sentiment and am reminded that Miller was first to describe the United States of American as The Air-conditioned Nightmare.
But now I must find some means of finding some semblance of "work" that does not take me away too long or leave me too exhausted for this actual work I do here.
LONGTIME READERS KNOW THAT I HAVE A CLOSE BRANCH OF MY FAMILY IN CUBA. So I am saddened to report that there was the biggest crackdown on independent journalists, human rights activists and other dissidents in Cuba in decades on the day that the United States began its massacre of civilians in Iraq. Paranoia strikes deep. Sixty (60) Cuban dissidents were arrested. Independent journalists were sentenced, in summary trials, to over twenty years in prison.Not a lot about that, which is NOT a typically "liberal" cause by the way, in the Mouthpiece Media (MM) here in the States. It's been wall-to-wall "Operation Iraqi Liberation" (OIL) so that you don't read about the tax cuts Mr. Bush is trying to force through Congress, the plans to move on to Syria and Iran next, how your schools are being neglected, how Medicare is being cut so the elderly are left out to dry or any international news of significance like this Cuba story.
The worst part of being a "retired" journalist is that I still follow all these stories every day and hope-upon-hope that my writers will bring them to you, as I cannot. I am only a diarist now. (Are you listening G21 Writers?)
As I said over two years ago, it's ludicrous to let the MM set the agenda if we mean to get any information beyond propaganda or engage on important issues. But a prophet is never appreciated in his own country, is he? When has anything good come out of ... ?
10 April, 2003: WHAT IS LOVE? The easy answer is that I have just gotten off the telephone with you, my darling, and I immediately put on the iTunes copy of The Propellerheads "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" that Tino and I once danced to, years ago, in Sal and Mardi's living room. We danced like Bantus or Hutus or Patagonians or Aztecs. We danced like nobody was watching and danced like the whole Universe was dancing with us because that is the beauty of Tino's soul and the abandon still harbored in my own.
I wanted so much, tonight, to explain to you why you DON'T have to suffer in order to achieve something in this life. I wanted to talk about Pan and his pipes. I wanted to say anything that would make you laugh even more. But I was distracted.
I was distracted by my poverty, my precarious life - I'd never tell you how precarious - my idea that prospects must materialize this time,
What distracts me most is that we are so connected (at last!) after decades of separation. (Decades in which I fruitlessly searched for you, against your will, as you now know.) I have always seen much more in you than you ever did in yourself. I have always felt that you are striving to achieve something unnecessary. You don't need to accomplish anything.
What have I accomplished with all my foolhardy bravado and insanity? The best definition I have heard, the most flattering, is that I have taken my life and turned it into art. (Dragana's description of this "Glass House".) I was stunned by the concept.
"Don't you see?" she asked me. "You are your own best character! You have taken what could be just a simple human life and made it your project, your quest, your object."
Makes all my failures, woes and tribulations sound noble, doesn't it? But that gives me a question: IF this is art, why can't I sell it?
Forgive the digression.
I wanted to talk about us, didn't I? I always do, of course, don't I?
What I wanted to say was that you can make your own life your art project. You don't have to do it in the foolhardy way that I do, just think of yourself as a painting, a concerto, a ballet, a bowl. Words are too often superfluous. YOU are art. I know that you know what I mean.
Art brings joy to us all and keeps us from "blowing [our] top" - as St. Henry says above ...
[This reflection ended with Sinead O'Connor's version of Prince' "Nothing Compares 2 U".]
YOU WILL NOTICE MAJOR CHANGES here as far as our cover design goes. I have entered into two partnerships. One, with Electronic Iraq, gives us an automatic newsfeed of events in that country (see right side of cover page.) The other is a deal to trade stories for publication and develop eventual syndication for our writers with Dhamaka News, and award-winning news Web site, in India. I believe both these resources will enrich the international perspective we have tried to foster here, my dear, and also create wonderful new opportunities for The World's Magazine's current and future contributors.Wish us luck.
THE BREAKING NEWS STORY of how a Chinese double-agent and Republican Party activist has been sleeping with two FBI agents for many, many , many years now, carrying on concurrent affairs, and allegedly passing on United States technology secrets to Beijing makes hash of all the claims of security laxity against Dollar Bill Clinton by the Republican right, doesn't it? I'm chuckling.Any story with a zipper gets big play in the MM. I'm going to enjoy watching them spread this one to every paper in the country. I can be cussed that way.
ONE DOOR CLOSES, ANOTHER DOOR OPENS. No sooner than I had finally freed myself of the hateful atmosphere that had developed at The Cat, the inconsistency, the theft and duplicity of my co-workers, than people were coming up to me with not only congratulations but also asking me if I could help them with what I know most intimately: computer technology. One guy and I had coffee on Friday and talked about starting a computer consulting venture, a very popular local band asked if I would re-design their Web site before JazzFest (two weeks away), another friend asked if I'd be interested in some contract for Entergy, our local power utility.I am casting the net widely this time. It's about time I got back on the horse and began to use my resources again. I think I'm tired of retreating from "the real world". I'm ready to re-engage. I've even considered going back into that treaded territory I know so well, political advocacy. This country needs new, intelligent people at the helm instead of the criminals currently in power. Unless they cancel the next election with some fraudulent pretense of ("Code Red!!!") national emergency, I'm ready to get back out on the streets to help take our country back. I'm already sniffing around a couple Presidential candidates... Don't be surprised, darling, if one of them is a future G21 Interview subject.
13 April, 2003: I need to get something off my chest tonight, Darling. What gets me steamed, now and again, is all the people out there who assume that I'm so damned saintly that I should bend over backwards to make things better for them while I perfect the art of living on nothing. Are these people NUTS, GREEDY, or just the kind of imbeciles who "mistake kindness for weakness," as an Ethiopian friend of mine once put it?I won't go into what put this burr under my saddle. I'll just say that some people assume that because I have high standards for this Web site and it's highly popular that I must be rolling in enough dough to carry them like kittens. Whenever that happens, I get angry. Very angry... But I'll get over it. I always do.
I didn't want to end by venting spleen. So I shan't. I'm going to take a walk now and come back and tell you what I meant to say.
LATER: It was a beautiful day here today, seasonable and sunny after recent snaps of both unseasonable cold and rain. French Quarter Fest is happening, with lots of free live music. I missed it all (as usual) because I was impressed into service by my friend Scott, who has to move this weekend. As you'd expect, I was the only person to show up to begin the moving chores today. So I worked alone. I climbed the narrow staircase to his third floor apartment with box after damnable box of his hundreds of books. (I not only packed, but then unpacked my burdens.) Then came the dishes and pots and pans, clothes, shoes, pictures from the walls, candleabra, suits, utensils, years worth of impedimenta...So I'm a bit exhausted this evening.
Before I forget, here's your Weekly Reader:
- WORLD HISTORY 101 MID-TERM EXAM
This test consists of one (1) multiple-choice question (so you better get it right!)
Here's a list of the countries that the U.S. has bombed since the end of World War II, compiled by historian William Blum:
China: 1945-46
Korea: 1950-53
China: 1950-53
Guatemala: 1954
Indonesia: 1958
Cuba: 1959-60
Guatemala: 1960
Congo: 1964
Peru: 1965
Laos: 1964-73
Vietnam: 1961-73
Cambodia: 1969-70
Guatemala: 1967-69
Grenada: 1983
Libya: 1986
El Salvador: 1980s
Nicaragua: 1980s
Panama: 1989
Iraq: 1991-99
Sudan: 1998
Afghanistan: 1998
Yugoslavia: 1999QUESTION: In how many of these instances did a democratic government, respectful of human rights, occur as a direct result? Choose one of the following:
(a) 0
(b) zero
(c) noneYou Pass.
- International Correspondent Robert Fisk, of the UK's Independent on that "historic" day: http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=395707
I'm nattering on for a reason this week, my dear. People in this country are already starting to be "disappeared." While you've been watching the video-game war on Fox News, the repression has already started. Listen:
According to a report in the Oregonian by Richard L. Clinton, (8 April) Intel software contractor Maher "Mike" Hawash was dragged from his Hillsboro home and taken to an undisclosed location by federal agents. His attorneys are forbidden to discuss the case.
ITEM TWO: A Saudi doctoral candidate in Computer Science at the University of Idaho was captured by FBI agents in a "SWAT team style raid." His wife and children have been denied contact.
ITEM THREE: The Washington Post reports that in the past several weeks "at least 44 people" have been taken away without habeas corpus protections. They are being held under a variation of the "material witness law" effected by the first Patriot Act and being used to supercede "due process" rights.
Go ahead. Just tell me that you don't care because you don't know any of these people and it didn't happen to you -- yet.
YET.
Do you understand what this type of extralegal activity means for the future of this country? I hope you do. I sincerely hope you do. I have been preaching this mantra of compassion to you for umpteen years now because I felt there would come a time when it would be crucially needed if we were to triumph over the dark current developing around us. That time is no longer imminent. That time is now. If you remain silent to injustice you become complicitous with it.
If you cannot speak up for your own benefit, please, speak up for the benefit of your children. You can bequeath them a world of hope or one doomed to hopelessness by your silence and inaction.
I continue to believe that you are courageous, my loves. I always shall.
PEACE!
Things I'll Accomplish This Week
1. One change for justice.
2. Greater day-to-day involvement in civic life.
3. The roadmap to my Separate Country.
Thanks for coming back this week."Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching..."
Rod
Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine, which appeared both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.
Last year he worked as Assistant to the General Manager of a Big Easy company that does restaurants and nightclubs. (Think: The Boy.) Oh yeah, Rod's had Day Jobs working construction. Mostly renovations of old New Orleans structures, houses and a bar. Sometimes he designs Web sites for other people so that he can get his creative juices flowing the way he can't at a staid publication like this one. And he's been the instructor in Editing for Internet Publications at the Novi Sad School of Journalism in Yugoslavia. Right now our Resident Philosopher has left the pantheon of New Orleans bartenders and still doesn't know when he'll have a "permanent residence" that he likes.. He's decided that maybe it's time to be an entrepreneur again. Working with "employees" and Bosses doesn't suit his temperament. In his spare time, he chases women in the manner that a fly pursues a spider.
Rod lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. This town is eroding his normal sense of driven purpose. He wants to live somewhere civilized when he grows up. Wish him Luck.
He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.
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