The Ghost of George Carlin

What can you say about George Carlin, the still-recently-deceased (2008 was it?) larger than life presence whose spirit lingers on with us in so many ways...a brilliant quick-witted, lover of language (and de-constructor of curse words in particular), a social commentator and former hippie who pressed the envelope back in the day after many stints on the Ed Sullivan show; in recent years, a misanthrope and much-needed curmudgeonly sort of fellow, the "old guy" with a chip on his shoulder, someone prone to go apoplectic at a moment's notice if someone allowed logic and reason to slide out of the conversation, someone not prone to leaps of faith of any kind, a critic of politics who thought America was owned by greedy corporate mandarins, a radical skeptic, non-believer, non-participant, atheist/agnostic with regard to God and religion, a quintessentially lapsed Catholic, embittered but with a heart of gold...George was "scary funny" in a lot of ways...he wanted to lead us to the edge of the cliff and make us take a look at the abyss...I couldn't always follow him as far as he wanted us to go...He was "out there" on a number of levels, a definite gadfly, but apparently loving life in the midst of all his comical muckraking and shooting arrows at the overlords of the cave...it's hard not to admire him for being an original...

Flying Under the Radar...

Every once in a while, I begin to wonder about all the people and places that never get mentioned on the evening news, which takes on an even more surreal irony when we consider how few people still obtain their daily dose of headlines from the traditional television outlets. Whether it's the nightly new summaries or the morning shows, I can't help but notice a vast reservoir of missing stories, vast regions and populations that the anchors have nothing to tell us about. How can that be so? You'd think that after five minutes of national politics, five minutes of random international news and the latest round-up of celebrity gossip and that much-anticipated, hourly health tip, there would be time for something more - not just a cloying, glib, feel-good puff piece to balance out the tabloid fodder. You'd think. But hey - the formula brings in ratings and the formula's only been like that for the past 40 years or so. And besides, oh most loyal drone-like traditional news junkie, do you ever remember anything "big" or "officially noteworthy" ever happening - aside from unforeseen weather events - in states like South Dakota, Nebraska, Montana, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Delaware, Rhode Island, North Dakota, Kentucky, West Texas, Mississippi, Maine, Vermont, Idaho, Ohio, Oregon, Nevada or Kansas? Having lived in certain remote locales myself, I know the feeling of being overlooked or at best, referred to "in passing" and it occurs to me that this neglect is a major factor in the polarization that is currently crippling our politics... Because believe me, people in the "fly-over states" feel it - that sense of being overlooked, marginalized, forgotten, ignored, ridiculed, condescended to... Sure, the news is great at covering a hard-times economy in various places (when plants close down, when towns go bust), but there are many other pieces to the puzzle that go under-reported: i.e. outsourcing, shifts in demographics and employment, job training or lack thereof, the state of our schools, health care, hospitals, outpatient care, medicine and the elderly, mental health, prisons, youth crime, the justice system, the ongoing housing crisis, the silent traumas faced by military families,  marriage and courtship, divorce, child-rearing, daycare, today's teenagers, science, the arts, guns, religion, nutrition, the state of Main Street U.S.A....

A Final Soliloquy of Wallace Stevens...

"Light the first light of evening, as in a room

In which we rest and, for small reason, think

The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.

It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,

Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl

Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,

A light, a power, the miraculous influence..."

- from "Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour"

The Castle by Franz Kafka

The greatness of this unfinished novel continues to amaze me. This is a book with the strangest of ripple effects, generally positive, although I don't know of any imitator who is up to par with Kafka.

September is Here...

While Walking About These Quiet Streets...

While walking about these quiet streets of north Deering much in the vein of W.G. Sebald in his famous trek around the east coast of England, aimlessly strolling,  flaneur-like, mindful of summer's end, with August-fading, brooding upon fleeting dusky images of houses and yards,  thoughts merging with scenery, the curve of the road, the overwrought oaks, front porches, mailboxes, cracked sidewalks, frayed lawns, familiar street signs, eluding the occasional traffic on Summit, taking the path down off of Sumac near Lyseth, traversing the school grounds, cutting across toward the CVS or going the "long way" around...on that same walk I have taken day in and day out, knowing in advance what will happen before it arrives; trudging past the same trees and shrubs and parked cars until reaching my destination at the shopping center where Shaw's grocery and Starbuck's hold sway; yet somehow connected with this secure sense of a predictable outcome is an inkling of weird alternative scenarios, of what might have happened if sudden rage or hysteria or impulsiveness or crazed emotion had taken over or if all inhibition fell by the wayside. Would I have simply wandered off somewhere else? Or commandeered a random bicycle to abscond with? Or shop-lifted bubblegum for no apparent reason? Or chased squirrels into the woods? Or staged a very real emotional melt-down? Or feigned a panic attack just for fun? Or pretended to be my favorite super-hero undergoing sudden metamorphosis?Surely none of this could-have ever really happened...in all likelihood...except as a glaringly remote "logical possibility"...And yet...this sense of foreboding over the odd and extreme "what-might-have-occurred,"  the infinite bizarro-world possibilities, hiding behind the average-everyday, is, I believe, at the root of our late-historical, romantic consciousness whereby mundane reality is infused and inflated with all manner of free-floating subjectivity in the form of fantasy, whimsy, day-dreams, reveries, supernatural happenings, comic-book heroics - that is to say - wild scenarios that hide about within the mundane, haunting us...those events that could perhaps, by-a-long-shot, in the extreme rare case almost happen, but never do - or should I say - rarely do since when they break into reality - the destruction and insanity and chaos factor is always immense...

Paintings by Maurice de Vlaminck