To Tweet or not to Tweet...

They tell me I should tweet...but what am I, a bird?

Television, Our Comforter

Television is now (and perhaps always was and will be) something more than just a humble babysitter, more than a plasticine friend, more than a stationary butler, more than a virtual family or a miniature menagerie, more than a strange substitute ersatz community, more than the instant cure for whatever or elusive promise of an endless club-med vacation, more than a ready-made dream-factory, even more (some would say) than a universe within a universe, the bizaro-world, mirror-image reversal of our own. Our constant comforter, it is thus, which is more than all these other descriptors combined. After having watched countless hours on the tube it finally hits me, that along with the screen itself, something else is there as well: an aura of sorts, like a person, a ghost, a shadow, a presence sent to comfort us. And what a strange subterranean message it is that this comforter brings, in new and subtle forms, with every waking show, every commercial, every news broadcast, public service announcement, weather report, cartoon, cop show, sit-com, mini-series or info-mercial. It's a weird positive sensation, a mood sent out, a gesture transmuted, a cryptic unspoken message beneath the blather and hum that tells you, tells me that everything's going to be okay, that everything is already fine (or at least, not too too bad), that what you're witnessing ladies and gentlemen at home is completely normal and shall remain normal, notwithstanding the news of the weird, the train wrecks, the car crashes, the wild animals, the natural disasters, the dysfunctional relationships, the yelling, the screaming, the broken hearts, the expletives deleted, the crowds cheering, candidates debating, the bombs exploding, the laugh-tracks, the soundbytes, the jewelry for sale, despite it ALL, the world is still turning apace... so relax, sit back and enjoy the show. The chaos is being dealt with, is being framed, stamped, indexed, numbered, packaged, programmed for your consumption, for your digestion, for your benefit, for your entertainment....so THAT you can handle it - eh? But I'm worried. I'm worried. There is something disturbing about - STOP. About the- STOP. When I see all the- STOP. Because we can't just- STOP. The comforter has spoken: relax, sit back, enjoy the show, and please, whatever else you may do, just keep on watching...We're dealing with the situation so you don't have to. Ahhhhhhhhh. ....And when television leaves the living room and becomes attached to you wherever you go, on your phone, your lap-top, in your car, following you around everywhere, not letting you rest because you need that comfort zone, because you need the warm reassurance of the mysterious comforter,  has it not become at that point something more than mere television? But here's when it- STOP. You see, I worry that - STOP. Because this can't be healthy-STOP. So I keep watching...

Tobacco Road - Rage

Reading the reviews for Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell (first published in 1932) I was struck by how many current readers were put off by the subject matter - i.e. poor white farmers in Georgia during the Depression. Many readers on Goodreads.com gave the novel only one star (*) while others recognized how the author was trying to paint a tragic portrait of a somewhat neglected class in American society. Caldwell was, if nothing else, relentlessly honest in his depiction of brutish, impulsive, desperate victims of hard times who often behaved erratically and irrationally to their own detriment.

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Billed as one of the first detective novels, this mystery about a missing/stolen diamond would be worth reading - just for the sake of sampling the narrative of the dutiful butler, Gabriel Betteridge, the always-entertaining narrator of Part 1.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities is a novel with great staying power. Aside from the hypnotic pulse of the narrative itself, we might be tempted to think of it as primarily a "plot-driven" novel, full of twists and turns, populated by a slew of memorable characters to be sure, individuals for the most part either broadly sketched or overshadowed by events. But among these personages,  the emotional centerpiece of the story remains the eminently plausible, tirelessly vindictive, relentless "settler of scores," the one and only: Madame Defarge.

So Long to April

Body, Soul and Immortality

If, in keeping with traditional metaphysics (i.e. Aristotle), the soul is the "form" of the body,  ergo, the mysterious source of all motion, growth and development within a particular body; and, if the soul also "inhabits" a body (as an "enlivening breath" of sorts) so as to provide the energy or "active principle" that accounts for whatever possible states the body can assume; or, similarly, taking the more modern understanding of "mind" (from Descartes) as a repository for thoughts/impressions which cannot be reduced entirely to mere physical responses,  then the big question becomes: what exactly would it mean for the soul to exist on its own, apart from the body, given that all "experiences" as such (thoughts, moods, feelings, sensations, memories, etc.)  either share a bodily element, make reference to a body or depend upon a body for their formation??? It's a difficult problem to be sure, for those of us who resist materialist conclusions... But can the "separated soul" go on to enjoy "new experiences" of its own apart from the body? This is where metaphysics becomes speculative to the extreme - ignoring Kant's line about "no (particular) thoughts without sense impressions." In other words, how does something happen to you apart from a bodily medium? Well....there could be other mediums I suppose but what would they "look" like - literally? Or feel like? Or sound like? Or smell like? Get the idea?  This quandary accounts for why so many people of faith speak of a resurrected body in place of a mere soul on its own - sans body.