Paradise Lost

Flying too close to the sun

Then lying panting as I now

Am with broken wing, all

Thoughts of vaunting my

Gladiatorial pretensions have

Faded beneath his causing,

As though He never noticed

Me, scrunched up in 

My room reading what

Ever is left.  He may not

Notice this reconciliation

As if it stands for all the 

Flying I’ve done and 

Thinking still to do in

These inept times, and there

Is no one left to compare

Them with.  What ever boast

I might think hasn’t wind

Enough in it to be heard

Beyond the room I’ve dithered

To.  There is still some

Barking to be done, but not

By me and squawking with 

McCaws who voice their own

Version of these times as I descend

And ascend the stairs beyond

My room, as I once approached the

Sun till He wearied and sent me here.

 

Days of sand and high dreaming

        I hopped from rock to rock

Not fearing what a misstep

Might bring.  I could dance

Away from any such thought

Or eventuality.  My days

In those leaps and landings

Were the words later heard

In a daze sitting at a

Desk dreaming I might

Hold my breath forever,

Phrasing the swirls and

Surges down here

Where one must belong

To a toiling or if not

To be a fleeing,

Days pinned down by

Circumstances and books

And well toned high

Heels not suited to

Sand but well trod anyway

Keening with seabirds’ swearing.

Around campfires dancing

What inklings rise up

Round about like worms

From moist soil look

Askance as I, have 

Their work to do

And I may have mine

It sometimes seems 

Late in the day torn

Bleeding from the 

Pushing and shoves of

Medieval medicine’s 

Demands, I have hand

Cuffs some place, 

Lost, perhaps, a sign

That I’ve been and

Then forgotten save

For regular visits

Not to be missed

Lest I fall from grace

And am erased 

Before my time.

On the seeking of literary immortality

 David Pryce Jones in an article on Evelyn Waugh wrote, "About the best that most writers can expect from posterity is cultural embalming, probably in the form of a monograph written by some academic paid to read books nobody else is reading."  The prospective writer might take note of this as he evaluates, as much as he can, his future.  We learn from history that the term "immortal" was applied to a number of writers and poets, but if we examine those writers and poets we in almost all cases observe that their immortality has expired. 

Is the work of any modern writer or poet likely to be less transient than the tunes the modern teen-ager listens to?  I was once enamored of Chinese poetry before China transitioned into Maoist Communism.   I read poems about old men boating down to picturesque meeting places where they would drink wine and read recently written poetry to each other, poetry that they had written. They pretty much all seemed to write poetry.  It was enough for them if their friends liked it.  There was no thought of achieving immortality as poets.  They wrote for the joy of it and listened to each other read it in the same fashion. 

I wonder if in modern day China the poets I read (in translation) are still being read today -- perhaps only by "academics paid to read books nobody else is reading."

So if today a young person discovers he or she has writing ability, there is a great market in fiction of various genres, but perhaps, the the number of people who make a financial success of this approach isn't high.  There are several other fields that seek good writers.  In my own case, I was hired by the Chief Engineer of the Skybolt program back in 1959.  The Air Force complained that Douglas engineers couldn't write well enough to be readily understood by Air Force personnel.  I had a wife by this time who regularly spent more than I made, and since the realm of workers (not managers) at Douglas Aircraft was a meritocracy, I learned a variety of other skills and thus managed to work there as Douglas merged with McDonnell Douglas which was eventually bought out by Boeing. 

Now at age 90 I can sit in my second-story study and look out my window through the trees at mountains that were within walking distance when I retired here 25 years ago.  Now because of a damaged knee I wouldn't try to walk that far.  In any case I don't wish to.  I do still write a lot.  I keep journals, write a lot of letters, and a few articles and poems I might post on a simple blog that was set up for me by a nephew many years ago.  The stats tell me that 1,783,486 have looked at various of the articles and poetry since it was first set up. It's been convenient.  For example, I had always planned to study the American Civil War and so several years ago, did that.  I ordered probably most of the authoritative literature on that war from eBay and Amazon and joined forums discussing various matters, strategies, battles, theories about the merits of various generals, etc.  Tempers can run high on these subjects.   For many, I found, these Civil War discussions were overriding.  I was invited to stick with it and make everlasting friends with those I agreed with, but after I had enough, had written enough articles, I stopped, gave most of my Civil War books to my brother-in-law and went on to other subjects.

Another reason it does not seem wise to seek literary immortality is that our language is rapidly changing, and has been for a great many years.  No one will understand what we write in a thousand years.  Anthropologists and geneticists estimate that our species has existed for about 200,000 years.  We have had written languages of any sophistication for less than 12,000 years. 

One of our "immortal" authors, Geoffrey Chaucer lived from 1342 to 1400.  His famous work is the Canterbury Tales.  I've read them several times and took an upper division (elective) course in Chaucer where we were given to read him in the original to get the rhythm of his poetry correctly, but we weren't required to read him in the original for understanding.  And, unless one becomes a scholar and specializes in Chaucer and Middle English literature, one isn't going to be able to read this literature in the original with any degree of confidence.  Was Chaucer concerned about his "immortality?"  It has been only 625 years since Chaucer died and no one today is reading him in the original except for academics paid to read authors no one else is reading.  Even if we count translations, I wonder how many read Chaucer in translation today.  

A Brush with Fury

 Ancestry.com says I don’t have the gene for remembering dreams, but sometimes I do, and sometimes I wake up remembering something from long ago and not just remembering it but working on it as though I was rewriting it; so, I’m pretty sure I had been dreaming about it.  A couple of days ago I woke with a stiff-neck headache as though I had been writing or reading something that had me worked up, but what I was thinking about, was a girl I met just one time when I was about fourteen.

My stepfather, Welk, was in the habit of taking me with him when on some of his business trips and took me with him on this occasion to meet with a business associate.  We went into the man’s house and Welk and the man walked off some place to talk.  The man’s daughter stood there looking at me.  She was obviously a tomboy, dressed in jeans and a sloppy shirt. 

I don’t recall how old I was back then, but I was younger than sixteen, because I tried to enlist in the Marine Corps at age sixteen, and I was too old by then to want to go with Welk on any of his business trips.  I was younger than fifteen, because I knew I was going to enlist in the Marine Corps so every spare moment I was working out.  I knew boot camp would be tough, and I didn’t want to take any chances.  And I didn’t think I was as young as thirteen, because Welk bought me a bike right before I was thirteen, and I rode it everywhere as often as I good.  So, I was probably fourteen.  

I don’t recall how old the girl was, but she knew a lot of interesting stuff and did a lot of interesting things in the land behind her house; so she was probably fourteen as well.  She said, “do you want to see some really interesting things?”  She had a bit of a smirk on her face.  Maybe it was her job to keep me amused while Welk and her father talked business.

“Sure,” and off we went out the back door, and she really did have some interesting things to do back there, trees to climb, ropes to swing on, weird half-standing structures to explore, and she was talking a mile a minute the whole time.  

Once we seemed to have seen everything I said, “shouldn’t we be getting back?”

“Yeah, I suppose,” she said; so back we went through the back door and into the house where her father confronted me in a rage.  “What could possess you to take my daughter off like that?”

“Whoa.  She just wanted to show me some of the interesting things she played with out back.”  

“You had no business to take my daughter off like that ,” he yelled, his rage undiminished.  I looked over at Welk.  He said, “you really shouldn’t have.”

I said, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but we didn’t do anything wrong.”  She just took me out back to show me some interesting things.”  I was really worked up by then.  I looked over at the girl.  She stood ramrod straight and was staring with a furious look at her father.   

I repeated, “we didn’t do anything wrong,” and her father looked me in the eye to see if I was going guiltily look away, but I didn’t.  He was a huge man, and I was a long way from being big or tough enough to make it through boot camp, but I knew we hadn’t done anything wrong.  

Welk hustled me toward the front door.  I gave the girl one last look, and she was still staring at her father with a look of fury and outrage. 

I thought of this event many times over the years, but only just the other day after probably having dreamed about it again, did I realize that the girl’s father had probably paid for his bad behavior.  His daughter, and I think she was an only child, wasn’t going to let him get away with the embarrassment he caused her.

Before I actually gave up going back to sleep, I found myself examining the idea of seeing that girl later on or perhaps writing to her because we seemed to get along better than some of the girls I really did go out with later on, but her father was an impenetrable obstacle, unless she had subjected him to some painful instruction.  But even if she had, I had no plans to have a girlfriend when I was only14, but rewriting my history as I sometimes do, I thought about it.   Could I have found occasion to give her my address and asked her to write?  But could she carry on such a correspondence?  Could I?  But no.  Had I thought of that while we were out back looking at all the neat things she had to play on, I could never later on have looked her father in the eye.

On the rewriting of Huckleberry Finn

 

Having been raised in the Los Angeles harbor and further educated in the Marine Corps, I grappled with several majors in college and perhaps mostly because of my grandmother ended up majoring in English.  She herself had gone deaf for a while as a girl but made up for her lack of education by reading.  She became an evangelist for reading and for one of my birthdays or perhaps Christmas she gave me the complete works of Mark Twain.  That set wouldn't be considered complete today, but I read the whole thing, parts of it more than once.  However, when the question arose, as it often did back then, about a major American novelist whose work could match the likes of Thomas Hardy, Henry James (who at heart was more British than American), or Joseph Conrad who was perhaps as much Polish in his writings as British.  But regardless of however much British James and Conrad were, they along with Hardy were the novelists I admired back then and didn't think the U.S. had produced anyone comparable, certainly not Mark Twain; although I read him with great attention -- but not in a long time.

I was surprised, and a bit appalled, that so few seem to have difficulty with what Percival Everett has done in his James.   I am prejudiced against the rewriting works of the past.   If this were done with a modern work, I suspect the previous writer or his estate would be suing the rewriter. 

Pretty much any classic can be rewritten to make it more politically and scientifically correct, but historians would urge such writers to leave the non-politically correct writings alone. You may not like Hitler's Mein Kampf, but it just isn't something someone interested in truth and accuracy would want to see rewritten. Someone might conclude that the revised version makes them happier and less offended, but historians will be offended unless they are interested in papers at some point that discuss the extremes writers who take up political causes are willing to go.

Back in the day when I thought I would continue on with my education, I thought I might examine the muckrakers. I read quite a few of them, even got a letter from someone related to the IWW, International Workers of the World. The left wing of today has no interest in rewriting the writings of Big Bill Haywood who spent his last days in Moscow, nor, in my opinion, should they.

An old man thinking about his political future in San Jacinto

 

Ian Kershaw (who wrote a highly acclaimed biography of Hitler) is quoted in Wikipedia as saying that defining Fascism is like nailing jelly to the wall, and yet modern critics of modern Republican politicians apply that term with aplomb.  It has in effect become a modern curse-word, plucked out of history, without serious modern meaning.  The safest definition involves leaving it in its historical setting and applying it to the political practices of Hitler and Mussolini, and time has rolled them both up and placed them in the historical waste basket.   Hitler with his remarkable intelligence and political power had nevertheless received little formal education.  His desire to conquer Europe would have been understandable by many of the powerful monarch of the middle-ages, but no practical modern politician would seek such a goal.  We see the weakness of something similar in Putin's desire to restore the Russian empire.  The leaders of various of the former national entities that had broken away from the USSR after its collapse have for the most part no desire to abandon their own political interests and allow Putin to incorporate them back into a moribund Russia.

The invention of the printing press altered or undercut all the old ways.   Wars had historically been fought over matters of religion.  One had to adhere to the religion of one's monarch or potentially be declared a heretic and executed.  But once copies of the Bible were printed by Gutenberg, any intellectual who was interested could read the language and have an opinion that might well be counter to the official teachings of Rome, and as time went on, Protestant intellectuals countered the teachings of both Calvin and Luther as well.  So fragmented has Christian doctrine become that the declaring of a single teaching has become so impracticable that it has been determined to be against the law in the West.  A Western state can no longer establish an official religion. 

Politics is sort of moving in the same direction as religion.  But whereas it is possible for an individual to declare that he or she is an atheist, it is not possible for an individual to declare that he does not believe in politics -- or is it?  Well, it sort of seems so.  At various times small groups opt out of society in some form as (sort of) happened during the Vietnam War when people were urged to make love and not war.  The actual political forces that made actual decisions (both Democrat and Republican) made war anyway.  But again, Gutenberg's press (in its modern iteration in the Internet and rapid world communication) is making war less convenient, and in the midst of turmoil that in earlier times (as happened in fairly recent times when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor) there was the opera Nixon in China.  Forget about the precise motivations which shifted and still shift about regarding that opera.  Its words, and in this case also its music altered (or was a symbol of the alteration) of the relationship between the U.S. and China, and even today when it seems the two nations are at serious odds with each other (and China no longer officially appreciates that opera) war between the two, given their economic involvement with each other, seems almost untenable.   Will China invade Taiwan?  Perhaps it wants to, but it is almost certainly trying to figure out a way to do it without going to war against America, and most likely America's current allies, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia and perhaps a few more in Southeast Asia.

Francis Fukuyama perhaps over-enthusiastically after the collapse of the Soviet Union, saw Liberal Democracy as having a clear path to becoming the dominate economy practiced by the rest of the world.  Fukuyama has been written off as being wrong since wars continue, but he didn't say wars would stop.  The opponents of Liberal Democracy are autocrats that are examples of Fukuyama's Last Man, leaders Thomas Carlyle would have recognized with more approval than most in the West now do -- people whose ambitions override the practicality of becoming a Liberal Democracy.  Putin, for example, isn't willing to abandon the glory that the Russian Empire once achieved.  Will a resurgent Russian Empire gather up many of the elements lost after the 1989 collapse of Communism?  We will see.  Russia may well impoverish itself in its war with Ukraine, and even if it wins some part of Ukraine at the end, it may be a Pyrrhic victory.  Other parts of the former USSR are gearing up to resist Putin, and NATO a previously paper tiger, is taking Russia's ambitions seriously and even if Russia takes back most of the Russian speaking part of the Ukraine as Samuel P. Huntington assumed in his Clash of Civilizations, they probably won't get most of those who speak Ukrainian. 

Back in China, the war with Chiang Kai-Shek is still sharp in the memory of many Chinese still alive today.  When Chiang moved his army to Formosa, Mao's forces weren't able to do anything to dislodge him.  Can Mao's political descendants now accomplish the task?  Not without something like suicidal results, results something like Putin is risking in his Quixotic quest to restore a Russia Empire. 

Meanwhile here in the U.S., can we afford to oppose all the autocrats that defy Fukuyama's prediction that Liberal Democracy is sure to win out over all the other superseded forms of government in the world?   Samuel Huntington, if he were alive today might be surprised at many of our modern choices.  I don't think he would have approved of our siding with Ukraine militarily.  He thought the Russian speaking part of Ukraine might logically become part of Russia, but the Ukrainian-speaking part would probably ally itself to the West.  Whatever happened, Huntington didn't, in my opinion, envision our going to war in opposition to Russia over Ukraine.  He saw Russia as being the Core nation in the Slavic world, and believed we should not interfere with Russia's choices, just as Russia shouldn't interfere with the core nation in the West, namely the U.S. in matters within the Western enclave of nations.   And, he would have said the same thing about our commitment to Taiwan, because China is the core nation in the Asian enclave of nations.

I am still fond of Samuel P. Huntington.  He wrote about the ongoing clashes of civilization, and now, living in the later results of such clashes, I wonder if we can afford to clash as much as some politicians would like.  Oh, I'm sure we can do it by printing more money to pay for our military expenditures (if China continues to like such an investment).   However, back here in San Jacinto, I recently turned 90 and my doctors seem to think I'm going to live several years longer, so I'm wondering if my retirement package, which seemed more than adequate in 1999 when after 39 years in aerospace I retired, will last as long as I do.  Should I look forward to making it to 100 as my doctors are encouraging me to anticipate, or should I take stock of our commitment as world policeman and decide I can't afford it?