Fear of Wind....(Anemophobia)

Okay...I admit it...I used to be afraid of the wind (past tense).  Hasn't everyone gone through a phase like that? No? Well, I'm happy to report that I never cowered in fear because of a thunderstorm.... unless of course that same storm was accompanied by a little wind - and lightning. So how about those other, "usual-suspect" fears? Snakes? Yes. Rats? Yes. Sharks? Who isn't scared of them? Plebeians? Ick.  Radioactivity? Yes, yes. Crowded elevators? Affirmative. Is that so unwarranted? But this was a so-called irrational fear, a phobia. I used to believe that my house was going to blow over, used to imagine trees being uprooted and cars being tossed around in the sky, used to anticipate windows imploding, dishes shattering, walls collapsing,  furniture overturning, cliffs eroding, people fleeing, animals howling and my beloved basketball hoop crashing down to the ground. Every time the breeze would appear, I would begin mildly hyper-ventilating, pacing up and down, chanting my "why? why? why?" mantra. But I had cause. What the heck can you do on a windy day besides fly a kite? Well...make a long story short, the weather apocalypse never came to my hometown; but unfortunately did arrive elsewhere. It was always the midwest or the south and I used to be mesmerized by visions of tornadoes and hurricanes on the news, so what was I getting so worked up about growing up in California? We had smog, heat-waves, earthquakes, mud slides, brush fires, traffic jams, zodiac killers - a myriad of indigenous horrors to deal with! Why couldn't I cling to my neurotic clown phobia or my fear of polyester?  It was those dreaded Santa Ana storms that arrive during the late summer and continue into the fall, at the peak of fire season. 

Piano or Guitar

The ultimate dilemma: piano or guitar? What does it say about a person to choose one over the other? Granted, I neglect  to mention violin, flute, trumpet, organ, cello, tuba, French horn, oboe, clarinet, banjo, bass or ukelele  as part of this competition, but you understand. It's like cats and dogs. What does it say about a person to choose one over the other? Must decide. Serious dilemma...for some of us.

Paging Don Draper

Note: Don Draper, of "Mad Men" fame, is the fictional character whose complexity as a modern American male,  embodies the ambiguities of arete that the ancient Greeks first identified; namely the tension between "conventional goodness" (understood as respectable, law-abiding, self-controlled behavior) and "greatness of soul" (understood as courage, independence, risk-taking adventurism).  Don is not much for staying home and keeping the hearth-fires warm; he's out there in the arena, making his mark, letting his star shine bright, conniving, competing, mixing it up, going in search of dragons to slay, outwitting rivals, entangling himself in the lives of others, acquiring mistresses and proteges, complicating matters and making things really messy for himself and everyone else. Needless to say, so many of our celebrities grab our attention in a similar sort of way by displaying what the Greeks would call "greatness of soul" while violating certain conventional norms.  By not letting their moral inhibitions get in the way of a good time or another conquest, they conform to one side of the "virtue coin" while neglecting the other, because virtue (arete) is unfortunately for us mortals, two-sided. And somehow we judge THEM - these normal-rules-don't-apply-to-me types - by a different standard, we root for them, admire them, forgive them always and everywhere, cheer them on, model our day-dreams on their life-script, because they're so darn confident and charismatic. Does this ring a bell with anyone? Just think of your favorite "wild and crazy" celebrity and what you allow him or her to get away with, while the exact same behavior from a neighbor down the street would make you twitch with outrage and indignation. Ah Don, ah humanity. Well, Socrates, there's another can of worms you just happened to leave open...See prior post.

Ambiguities of Arete

Arete (definition): virtue, goodness, excellence,  greatness of soul, character

"Once more, Socrates, I will ask you to consider another way of speaking about justice and injustice, which is not confined to the poets, but is found in prose writers. The universal voice of mankind is always declaring that justice and virtue are honorable, but grievous and toilsome; and that the pleasures of vice and injustice are easy of attainment, and are only censured by law and opinion. They say also that honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty; and they are quite ready to call wicked men happy, and to honor them both in public and private when they are rich or in any other way influential, while they despise and overlook those who may be weak and poor, even though acknowledging them to be better than the others. But most extraordinary of all is their mode of speaking about virtue (arete) and the gods: they say that the gods apportion calamity and misery to many good men, and good and happiness to the wicked. And mendicant prophets go to rich men's doors and persuade them that they have a power committed to them by the gods of making an atonement for a man's own or his ancestor's sins by sacrifices or charms, with rejoicings and feasts; and they promise to harm an enemy, whether just or unjust, at a small cost; with magic arts and incantations binding heaven, as they say, to execute their will. And the poets are the authorities to whom they appeal, now smoothing the path of vice with the words of Hesiod: Vice may be had in abundance without trouble; the way is smooth and her dwelling-place is near. But before virtue the gods have set toil, and a tedious and uphill road: then citing Homer as a witness that the gods may be influenced by men; for he also says: The gods, too, may he turned from their purpose; and men pray to them and avert their wrath by sacrifices and soothing entreaties, and by libations and the odour of fat, when they have sinned and transgressed....And now when the young hear all this said about virtue and vice, and the way in which gods and men regard them, how are their minds likely to be affected, my dear Socrates, those of them, I mean, who are quickwitted, and, like bees on the wing, light on every flower, and from all that they hear are prone to draw conclusions as to what manner of persons they should be and in what way they should walk if they would make the best of life? Probably the youth will say to himself in the words of Pindar: Can I by justice or by crooked ways of deceit ascend a loftier tower which may he a fortress to me all my days? For what men say is that, if I am really just and am not also thought just profit there is none, but the pain and loss on the other hand are unmistakable. But if, though unjust, I acquire the reputation of justice, a heavenly life is promised to me." - Plato's Republic, Book 2, Jowett Translation

Alice Munro's Short Fiction

Correction by Thomas Bernhard

The art we need is the art of bearing the unbearable. - Thomas Bernhard.

"Roithamer is one of four children raised at Altensam, a palace which ruled over the area of the Aurach Gorge in Austria's mountainous northwest. Both the narrator and Hoeller were working class kids in the village below the palace and close friends of Roithamer when growing up. The narrator is also a Cambridge don in the sciences. Hoeller, who has never left the area, is a taxidermist and has built his own home in the gorge. Roithamer has had an extremely unhappy childhood, or at least this is his memory and construction of it, and he has fixated on his sister, deciding he will "save" her by building the most incredible building in the world, a gigantic cone in the very center of the local forest, in which she will live. It is a home for Rapunsel if ever there was one. The home, in some strange way we don't actually know, kills her and Roithamer's grief and defeat lead to his suicide. The time line action of the narration, in the sense that one can say there is one,  is that the narrator has come back to Hoeller's garret, where Roithamer lived when in Austria, and from where he designed and oversaw the building of the cone, in order to sort through Roithamer's papers. It is from both the narrator's tale in the first paragraph, and from Roithamer's papers which the narrator studies in the second paragraph (entitled Sifting and Sorting) that we learn the above and much, much more. The form is simply astonishing. I've already pointed out that this 271 page book of quite tiny print is only two paragraphs long. In some of the earliest pages it was not unusual for sentences to run well over 2 pages, so at first I had the sense there were more pages than sentences. Overall, however, I suspect the book must average about 3 sentences a page, perhaps fewer, I didn't count. The novel is 100% the narrator's first person story with a very few remembered conversations and a few quoted passages from Roithamer's papers (normally identified by "so Roithamer" at the end of the sentence). The seeming time line of the novel itself is probably two to three days at the most, all of which the narrator spends in Hoeller's garret (Roithamer's garret?) except for one brief meal with the Hoeller family spent mainly in silence." - from "Comments" on Correction  by Bob Corbett, January, 2001

Florida

If you wanted to find a single word able to kindle my imagination concerning a place I have never been to, and get it racing out of control, down a dusty backroad somewhere in the panhandle (driving my imaginary orange trans-am), past the party-all-night beaches on the eastern strand, to a forlorn stretch near the glades (?) where who knows what kind of "good ol' boys" might be "hangin' out" at the local gas station, counting their (extra) fingers and toes, playing their fiddles, adjustin' their baseball caps, cussing 'bout their low bowling averages, chugging cheap beer while lamenting the deteriorating (pronounced "dee-teeeeeeer-rio-ray-tin") state of the economy, that word would have to be: Florida.   I can just hear someone asking (as they always seem to do): haven't you ever been to Florida? No, actually I haven't. Don't you have any family down there? No, I'm sorry but I don't. But you're going there for spring break - right? Uh....no. Spring training, then? Baseball anyone? No. Catch the Superbowl next time it comes around? Nein. Nyet. But you know someone who owns a condo down there? Nope. But there must be some elderly person you know who will be moving there before next winter? Negative. But surely you play golf, you must play golf; everyone with tired bones and sore joints plays golf, don't they? Uh.....not exactly. But you are at least curious about alligators and other reptilian life forms lurking in soggy marshlands - right? Am I? Do you not love palm trees? Do you never go in search of exotic birds? You mean like those chickens, peacocks, turkeys, crows, flying pigs, oxen - who roam the streets in that tropical resort town where Jimmy Buffet lives? Don't you ever wish to go boating on some idyllic stretch of ocean where you might hope to bump into one of the Estefans? As in Gloria and Emilio? Don't you at least want go on a literary pilgrimage of sorts to scope out the haunts of Hemingway, Hiassen  and Hurston, to see where Dave Barry sleeps or where Wallace Stevens hung his hat? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz....... Demographics, sir...you must have some interest in wacky demographics - people who never should go within 100 miles of one another all forced to get along within their early retirement enclaves? No answer. And do you shun sunlight? No answer. And do you abhor recreation? No answer. And Cuban cigars? No answer. And do you have have anything against transient sociopaths hiding out from the law for years at a time or roaming the streets unsupervised on a daily basis? Uhm, actually I DO have an issue with that! But surely, you can appreciate the need for sunny weather, for pure relaxation, for walking about in Bermuda shorts, showing off your new "bod," your chiseled physique, your iron "glutes" with an entourage of body guards in tow on roller blades? Well, perhaps... In dark sun glasses with matching sandals, you've got your "bro-bag" out, you're window-shopping, name-dropping, people watching, sauntering along, dressed to the nines, in the groove with your peeps - ever been there, ever done that? Answer: As you must know, Mainers don't typically do "stuff" like that - that's too much "chillin'" for our uptight souls to handle. Never been to Disney World? No. Disney Planet? What. Disney Galaxy? Oh. Disney Cult? Yikes. Disney Fraud? Sure. Disney Empire? Help. Disney Mind-meld? Whoa, there. Disney Walmart? No way! Disney Voldemort? Arrrhhhhhhhhhhh! Stop. Stop. But you'd still like to see Miami, right? Or Key West? Tampa? Tampa Bay? Ft. Lauderdale? Daytona Beach? St. Augustine (the town not the saint)? C'mon....Palm Beach at least! Okay, alright. Sure. Put me down for Palm Beach, but could I just show up there without an invitation? Sign on the dotted line...