Showing posts with label Another Thing You Take For Granted. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Another Thing You Take For Granted. Show all posts

Thursday, December 28, 2023

Reprint Heaven: What Art Is Worth

 Charlie

(Charlie Chaplin passed away forty-six years ago, on December 25, 1977. 

(Given the toxicity, violence, and hate being pumped into the world as fast as the Murdochs and Leos, Mercers and Kochs; the IDF, Hamas and Hezbollah can manifest it -- it's worth remembering what art can bring into the world, and its real value.)

Charlie Chaplin, 1914

Some spiritual traditions believe in additional dimensions of existence; that the world most of us see as the only reality is one place where thought can be transformed into physicality.

Everywhere we look, there's an idea translated into concrete form -- speeches, laws and regulations; social agreements around money, sexuality, role and status; value. And most obviously, images, novels, poetry; music. Even the simplest transaction between strangers, a word or a look or a tone of voice, carries some form of energy, and all of it associated with a positive or negative reference.

Following that idea, the world might be viewed as the collective energy in all ideas, actions and objects in it at any given moment. So, reality is defined by what we, individually and collectively, put into it.
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When a playlist of music you're listening to on Soundcloud runs out, an algorithm in the service continues providing a shuffle of tunes with similar themes or instrumentation. In that way, I found myself listening to a melody composed by Charlie Chaplin for his film, A King In New York (in your streaming platform, look for Charlie Chaplin film music - "Mandolin Serenade").

Hearing that brought up a stream of images of Chaplin that I carry around in long-term memory -- mostly, his iconic 'Little Tramp' character. His acting and films were so influential that for generations almost any adult, nearly anywhere in the world, might see a drawing of a figure with a postage-stamp moustache, wearing a bowler hat, and say, "Oh, that's Chaplin!" and smile.

Early Little Tramp: Mack Sennett's Caught In The Rain, 1914
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Chaplin started as a 24-year-old immigrant from Britain in 1914, a contract actor for Mack Sennett's film company. He looked like the photo at the top of this post; almost like any Dude you might pass on the street today. His 'Little Tramp' routine caught Sennett's eye -- initially a burlesque on an "affable drunkard", a bit loutish and inconsiderate and sloppily boozed. Chaplin's humor was physical, perfect for the trademark slapstick of Sennett's short films, and his comic timing was amazing.

Within four years, Chaplin had refined the Tramp into a more sober, sharper, plucky 'Everyman'. The Tramp became one of Sennett's most popular short-film characters -- and whenever a new Chaplin 'flick appeared in local movie-houses, people paid to see him. Lots of people: Chaplin 'packed them in'. 

Try and remember that paying 5 Cents at the "Nickelodeon" to see a film was no small thing for some people. In 1914-18, that five Cents would buy a modest breakfast, tea or coffee, or a pound of beans.

Kid Auto Races, Venice, California (1914); Chaplin's First Film Appearance
As The Tramp, Then Still The Affable Drunk

Like any artist, Chaplin was all about having as much creative control as possible; eventually, he convinced Sennett he could create better films (with the Tramp, of course) for Sennett's company. When a better financial and creative deal became available with another studio, Chaplin jumped at the chance -- and within four years of landing in America, by 1918, Chaplin was one of the most popular 'stars' in moving pictures, and possibly the most highly paid.

In the years immediately after the First World War, he became a founding partner of United Artists, a film company founded to allow film 'artists' more freedom to experiment with the medium, in contrast to what was becoming the Hollywood studio system.

UA allowed Chaplin the control he wanted over his work, and in less than a decade he had created some of the best  American silent films (arguably, some of the best motion pictures) ever made: The Kid, "The Gold Rush"; The Circus; "A Dog's Life", Pay Day, and more.

Arguing With The Boss: Pay Day (1922)

Sound motion pictures appeared in 1927. Four years later, Chaplin released City Lights, a film without dialog, only a music soundtrack he had composed, after Talkies had all but buried silent films. He continued in 1936 with another classic, Modern Times, again accompanied only by a soundtrack of Chaplin's music. As an art form, it wouldn't be used again for forty years, until Mel Brooks' Silent Movie.

The western press mocked Hitler in his early days as dictator by referring to him as "the politician with the Chaplin moustache". True to form, Charlie used the humor in that comparison to create a parody of Adolf and his Reich in The Great Dictator (released in 1940) not long after the Second World War began. After 1945, Chaplin made only four other films: "Monsieur Verdoux" (1947), Limelight (1952); "A King In New York" (1957), and A Countess From Hong Kong (1967).
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Chaplin's work showcased poor and working people in the early Twentieth century, easily shoved about by authority and manipulated by wealth. His films made clear he was no fan of unbridled capitalism, industrialism or the dehumanizing, assembly-line exploitation of labor.

In 1947, when anti-communist hysteria spawned House Un-American Activities Committee investigations of Red influence in Hollywood, Chaplin was tailor-made to become a target. It didn't help that he had unwittingly made an enemy out of J. Edgar Hoover, whom Chaplin had met in the mid 1920's. 

Chaplin had apparently been The Jokester when they met, socially; some of his humor made fun of the Director. He'd already heard and read newspaper gossip about Chaplin as a wealthy actor and director who liked young women -- of his four wives, two were sixteen, and another just 18, when they married. Chaplin's anti-authoritarian political views were clear. Hoover didn't like any of it.

Hoover's agents collected gossip on thousands of Americans, which Hoover was happy to use for personal and political ends during his 70-year reign. To him, Chaplin was just another foreign national, poisoning American society. Hoover believed Chaplin was Jewish (he wasn't), with loose morals and radical political sympathies, forcing his propaganda down the throats of innocent Americans through his films. 

Hoover's interest in Chaplin amounted to obsession: the actor / director was a target of FBI surveillance from the mid-1920's until his death in 1977, and his FBI file may be the largest publicly known of any prominent public figure in the FBI archives: released under Freedom Of Information Act requests, it runs to over 2,000 pages.
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As Chaplin left the U.S. in 1952 to attend the London premiere of his film, Limelight, the Justice Department revoked the re-entry permit on his resident alien visa. To be allowed to return, he would have to "submit to an interview concerning his political views and moral behavior". Hoover was behind the move; he had asked England's own Bureau, MI-5, to provide confirmation of Chaplin's communist connections, and for proof that his real name was 'Israel Thornstein'. MI-5 found no proof that Chaplin was a Red, and didn't respond to Hoover's antisemitism.

The FBI's files on Chaplin show the U.S. government had no serious evidence to prevent his return to America if he applied for re-entry. While Limelight received praise and success in Europe, Chaplin was smeared as a communist sympathizer in the U.S., and the film boycotted. Frightened and disgusted, after living and working in America for thirty years, Chaplin decided not to go back -- and he didn't, for twenty years.

In 1972 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (which had done little to stand up to Hoover, McCarthy or the HUAC) tried to make amends by voting to award a Lifetime Achievement Oscar to Chaplin "for the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of [the 20th] century."

Chaplin was 83, having had a series of small strokes and other health issues, and unsure how he would be received in a country he believed had rejected and then forgotten him and his work, But, Charlie came to Hollywood, and was visibly moved when the attending crowd gave him a twelve-minute standing ovation -- the longest tribute of that kind by the Academy in its history.
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Easy Street, 1917

Chaplin's Tramp, and other main characters in his films, were ordinary 'folks' -- mostly poor, or at the mercy of Fate and Chance. The world of his films was familiar to the people who could find a nickel to see them, and populated by easily-recognizable archetypes: regular, working-class Joes and Janes; office workers; the bullies and bosses; streetwise kids, shopkeepers and beat cops.

And, they're funny. They're funny today, a hundred years or more after they were released. The inventive, physical humor is timeless (remember Depp's character in Benny and Joon, doing the repeat of Chaplin's 'potato dance' from "The Gold Rush"?). I watched a DVD of Chaplin shorts recently, expecting the humor would be dated, less funny that when I saw them on TV as a child; I was wrong. They are funny.

In his major films, the Tramp -- at the bottom of the social ladder -- has to make a tremendous effort to overcome his circumstances, just to achieve some happiness or justice. He hopes for something better than what he had, where -- for once -- the Everyman gets his fair share, the Good Ending.

The 'Gilded Age' was allegedly over, but the majority of Americans barely had two pennies to rub together. Most of the people watching Chaplin on screen didn't expect a life with a Good Ending. They understood so often the outcome was bad: the person suffering because no one could afford medicine; the mistaken arrest; the lost job; the eviction; the beaten wife or child. To see Chaplin's Tramp win through by helping an Other -- the Girl; the Child; the Friend -- resonated.

The Kid, 1921

In The Kid, the Tramp finds and raises a little orphaned boy -- whom he had initially wanted nothing to do with -- then rescues him from the clutches of a brutal County Orphan Commissioner, using the Tramp's poverty as the excuse to take the child away. You know when he embraces the boy that the Tramp loves him, will protect and care for the Kid as if he were his own. They're still dirt poor, but the little boy is safe -- and in a world where anything can happen, that's the point. It's everything.

City Lights (1931)

In City Lights, possibly Chaplin's best film (it was his favorite work), the Tramp is poor and homeless, ignored by most people, teased by a pair of wiseass newsboys -- but meets, becomes friends with (and almost immediately falls for) a beautiful blind girl, reduced to selling flowers on the street to help support herself and her grandmother. Whenever they meet, she gives him a small, white rose.

Though the film is silent, when Chaplin's Tramp speaks, she mistakes his voice for that of a wealthy millionaire she's heard in the neighborhood where she sells her flowers, and (more out of embarrassment) the Tramp allows her to believe it's true.

Later, the Girl falls ill. The Tramp learns she might recover her sight through an expensive medical procedure. He works to save the money; after more plot twists, the operation is paid for and a success. Her vision restored, the Girl is able to open a flower shop with her grandma -- where she hopes the 'wealthy millionaire' who helped her will appear one day and sweep her off her feet.

Meanwhile, The Tramp, having been tossed in jail after the usual comic misunderstandings, is now even shabbier than when we first met him (1930-31 was the worst year of the Great Depression in the U.S.). He shuffles along the street, mocked and teased by the same pair of newsboys -- and suddenly sees a small white rose in the gutter -- the same flower the blind Girl used to give him. 

He turns, and is standing in front of the Girl's flower shop. She's sitting in the front window, and with her grandmother has been watching the antics of the newsboys with this ... street person. They share a laugh, think it's funny.

When he sees her, The Tramp is overjoyed; she's whole and healthy, but suddenly he's ashamed: she's now a respectable shop owner, and he's not.


The Last Scene Of City Lights; Critic James Agee Described It As
"The greatest piece of acting ever committed to celluloid"
(You'll Need To Click Through To UTub To View)

The Girl comes out of the shop to offer him a new rose, and a half-dollar. He slowly accepts the flower; she takes his hand -- and from the feel of it, the texture of his coat, all familiar to her when she was blind -- she suddenly realizes who he is. "You?" she asks; the Tramp nods. 

As he looks back at The Girl, the Tramp smiles. In his expression is every person who ever hoped for good luck in a hard world, a chance to care deeply about someone and have them care about you -- and barely able to believe, after everything, it's come true. The screen fades to black.
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We can't know the sum of the actions of Chaplin, the man. We do know more about the effect of his artistic output on the world -- and it's much greater than "making motion pictures the art form of the [Twentieth] century".

From the perspective of the world being the sum of what is put into it -- even though they drew on earlier forms of storytelling, Chaplin's movies helped define what the motion picture medium could be. His films were moral, in the same way as Dickens' serialized novels: they showcased human folly and the absurd nature of life; they reminded us how we ought to treat each other. How our societies should reflect that, not just to serve as vehicles for commerce and acquisition, avarice, and domination.

Chaplin's films weren't meant to portray a perfect world, no matter that some of their plot resolutions might seem like fairy-tale-magic. They presented hopes human beings have for how life might be, how things might turn out if the Fates were kind -- and that on occasion, our hopes can be made concrete and real, in this world. His movies affected people, first; he made us laugh. He still does.

In These Times, it might seem that Chaplin's work is outdated, less recognizable, but something tells me that's not the case: Chaplin is still iconic. And if we have an opportunity to add to the world even a fraction of what he left behind in his art, we'll have done something important -- if only because we need so much more of that now.
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MEHR, Mit einer offensichtlichen Sache, die ich vermisst habe:  I was adding this 'Mehr', when something happened, and the entire post was deleted. No hope of recovery. Just - gone. It was like hiking for miles to get to the truck to take you home, and it just pulls away; you're eating dust, screaming at the top of your lungs, and know nothing can help. 

JEDOCH, Es Ist So: The post was open in the browser on my smarter-than-me phone -- and if I wanted to Man Up and transcribe retype it, from scratch, it would be remade.  

UND So Wurde Es Gemacht War: But Dear Fucking God Jesus and the Yeti, I never want to go through that again.

UND SO WEITER: The Girl Who Refused To Be Mrs Mongo said, "You write about Chaplin and his politics, and you miss the final speech from The Great Dictator? Shame!"


(You'll Need To Click Through To UTub To View)
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Wednesday, December 13, 2023

Hoo Boy Comes The Wonderful Life

 Is It Wonderful This Life?

By I. Rabschinsky

(This is now annual reprinted Blog thing made just for you. Make enjoyment of holidays.)

George Bailey Guy Understanding How We Are To Being Completely Screwed

This is now standard hoo boy holiday good for you Internets Tradition. You should enjoy, since next time it may be costing you -- because in our Big Huge Nation there is becoming no room for opinions such as these. Peoples may go to the Gitmo for having such opinions. Ha ha ha. But, of course; if you have the money, you can move to the Canada. If you are with the huge money, you can have opinions. How fast the Freedom goes, because Freedom. Ha ha ha!

Great-Uncle Yehudi (In The Front) In The Berlin, 1945

Great-Uncle Yehudi, who is older, still, but strong enough to want to be hit by telephone book until falling down, refuses to be watching the television news. Little Rupert Fox, he never watched, but now he will not watch See Enn Enn, Big Mouse News, or Joe Scarborough network (though he has secretive desires involving the Rachel Maddow ["Nice Jewish girl -- you should find way to meet her," says Great-Uncle Yehudi] ). 

He will not even watch BBC or the PBS Very Balanced. "I am angry, Isidore," he says from the big chair which reclines. "I would spit, if I was not in my own house, sitting."

Great-Uncle Yehudi Today, Without Book Of Phones

But what if you are not watching, I say; you will be not the informed! Great-Uncle Yehudi says, "You are watching what somebodys are wanting to teach you. And their lesson is always, 'You have no power! You are betrayed! Love the Hitler! You cannot be fighting the Bosses! Obey the Cossacks! Shut your mouth and convert to be Christian kind of Gentile!' "

So what do we do? Yehudi makes a sour face. "I will be watching watch The Mister Ed." But what do we do if the Cossacks come? I ask, and Great-Uncle Yehudi laughs.

"Izzi, you are my favorite Great-Nephew (I am only great-nephew, I remind), but Cossacks are already here. You have to choose between learning the lesson They are teaching now, or not learning. And if you decide not to learn, then when time comes, be ready to fight."  
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So we make this the annual offering of the Funny for you, hoping that it can remind of the Time Before and make a smile.

I, Rabschinsky, say this say this -- to Moldavish Guy; you also.
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So always in the America there is at this time the fooding, and also the Sports Produkt on the television. Many people filling themselves with Holiday as if they about to be told, "Next year, you cannot eat!". I am thinking they are the hostage of their Hindbrain, which is still Neanderthal and wishes to fight with Mastodon. But, still.

And, I am noticing specific films which is only appearing on Amerikanyets television at these months between like maybe September and the time of your New Year.

My examples: At Passover, some of the television is showing The Ten Super Big Mitzvah Rules, with Charlton Heston Guy -- you know, movie where Moses stop making fooling around to pretend he is Big Guy of the Egypt, and decides to get real job saving People Of Israel.

This requires lots of people walking around, always saying "Oh, Moses, Moses, Moses" -- like, if they say this three times, they will be teleported by magik into better movie. Navarone Kind Of Big Guns, maybe, or Socialist-Colored Panther.

Place Which Is Gone Forever: Amerikanyets Driving To Movies:
"Moses, Moses, Moses -- What is happening with our Drive-Ins?"

At another time in year, they are showing same Heston Guy what is Moses in Big Mitzvah Rules in another movie, Ben Of Her. However this is basically film of Jewish guy who becomes like early Jesus guy, but by accident.

Movie is good; he is Number Forty-One guy in slave ship, rowing like animator for the Disney; there are becoming big boat battle, and he gets to be some kind of honorary Goyim. Later, there is an exciting thing with horses and carts -- but it is not the porn film, so too bad for you. Go to web sites where they have not blocked you.

Charlton Ben Heston Making The Ramming Speed, 1959

At finally, with the Christmas, every year since somebody discover the Secret Of Fire there is this broadcasting this movie, It Is Wonderful This Life, made by Frank Capra Guy in 1947, showing the kind of place which everybody wanted to believe was the Amerika. Small town, everybody knows everybody; values is good and everybody work hard and knows their places.

Just like village in the Moldova, except animals do not leave defecation in the street, everyone is speaking English, and most people have job. Plus concrete used in apartment buildings is better quality.

Every single year they are showing this film. It is now a classic also, like Wizard Of Odd and Potemkin Kind Of Battleship and Mister Hulot Goes To Beach Place. It is as big movie as The Tanks Know The Truth (Very popular Great Patriotic War movie made in the Russia. My Great-Uncle Yehudi claims he is in this film as Extra, but still we love him).

Big Scene From Tanks Knowing The Truth: Are They Knowing?
Well, They Are Tank; You Are Person. You Want To Be That Sure?

It Is Wonderful This Life story is maybe simple: Guy, George Bailey Guy, living in small town wants to die, because he thinks his life is shit. And there are the angels, who show us life of this Guy in the little town, and how he is The Good, and there is the Rich Guy who is The Bad. And George Bailey Guy never gets to do things in the Life because the Fate is not for him.

Then there is mistake with money (a problem made from the Rich Bad Guy), for which he is blamed, and he runs from family and goes to place of Publik Alkohol; finally he goes to bridge to jump in freezing water so his family will get small piece of Insurance money. Very Sad (There is also squirrel in another scene which is sad, but never mind). Also very Petit-Bourgeois.

So, Angel Guy comes to the Earth and shows this George Bailey Guy his life is maybe kind of okay, not so much the shit; and boom boom boom, problem with the money goes away in big scene at end when everyone gives him their money, and everyone sings. So happy, little bells on tree and big bells of church ring; America wins the World War Two and future is filled with television and freeway. The End.

But this is too simple, my friend. No way is actual life like this. So, maybe some of me thinks this is kind of the Propaganda about America, to keep us from seeing the Truth of the Things.

And, there is forbidden version of this film, which is other kind of the Propaganda. Please -- allow me to introduce.



борьбе за построение социализма во время Угнетение
(также называется "Любовь и революция" после 1991)

("Love And Revolution", Directed By Frank Kapronovich [1949]; Starring Pytor Chost, Gravnik Bolodorin, Irina Valutin. Special appearances by the Spirit Of Revolution, also Che Guevara, Samuel Beckett, and entire 12th Guards Motorized Infantry Regiment)

SO, movie opens with Guy, Georgi Edwardovich Bailey Guy, at the Bridge. He is unhappy, this Guy; boy oh boy he is like making the panic. He goes to public alkohol place and tries to think, but he only finds himself between the forces of dissent and confusion!

TROTSKYITE GUY: River not so bad, after five minutes.
EXISTENTIAL GUY: Wait, but no one comes. No one cares.

Hoo boy; Georgi is in big fix. This guy has family with SmallChilds, and tiny Policy Insuring The Life -- and he is believing everybody would be better off if he would jump and get it over with, already.

GEORGI: My life is steaming pile of animal things,
because the Rich Guy will always win. Now I am jumping.

But, Georgi is being watched at Bridge. Not by some angel Guy (none of this reliance on things which cannot be proven by good Socialist science!) -- but even better -- is Spirit Of Revolutsya!

(Spirit Of The Revolution Watches Georgi)

And, The Spirit saves Georgi! He takes him to place where they can speak of things, of the Truth -- and slowly, Georgi's eyes are opened to not only the forces of historical determinism, but the inevitability of struggle against the oppressor classes!

GEORGI: So you are saying that when the consciousness
of the People is raised sufficiently, that armed struggle
is not only necessary but inevitable?
SPIRIT: You got it, Comrade.

So, Georgi, now with eyes opened thanks to the words of the kindly Spirit, is seeing that the world is filled with inequality and criminal things so big your head feels like kicked soccer ball. It is like understanding that, not only are you living as Dog, lapping up the vomit of the Rich Guy, but you work in factory to make guns to force others to live like this (Also, the Rich Guy pays you in fake dog vomit and those X-Ray glasses which do not work).

For Georgi, this is whole bunch of dried fish to eat in one night (Like story by that Guy, Dickens Guy, Carol Burnett Christmas, or something). This is the Life? He is asking himself.

A World Of Things For Them, But Not Food For Children

Economy And Bad Fate For Peoples Means Nothing To Them


While The Many People Lose Everything To The Illegal Foreclosure

So now Georgi is filled with indignant and bad feeling for The State Of These Things. He feels the pain of the oppressed, working masses, and is being filled with Revolutionary Fervor -- and he goes to talk with the People in his little village, to tell them what the Spirit had revealed to him -- and the Spirit sends along friend, Che Guevara Guy, to help.

GEORGI: We don't have to live under the heel of Potter's boot!
He's just some, bloodsucking animal! Feeding on all of us -- and I'm
tired of living on fake dog vomit! We have to run things!
CHE GUEVARA SPIRIT GUY: Ay, Yi Yi! You listen to this guy.

The People, moved by Georgi's words, march with him to the place of the Bad Rich Guy, to demand Justice, the chance to make something other than guns, and to be paid in actual money instead of rubber dog vomit and X-Ray glasses which do not work.

BAD RICH GUY: You realize that the manufacture and sale of
weapons around the globe is the backbone of our nation's industry?
GEORGI: You don't understand -- the days of taking your rubber
dog barf are over, Potter! We're going to run things!
MOB: No fake dog barf!! No fake dog barf!!

BAD RICH GUY: My family has run this town for fifty generations.
All I have to do is close the factories. How long will it be before
your little rag-tag mob starts to starve? They'll come crawling back
to work -- and for half the rubber dog barf I gave you before!

Then, Georgi takes the Big Step -- the one which all oppressed people are taking in these movies when faced with Oppressors who pay them with rubber dog vomit: He crosses line from intellectualizing his oppression to active revolutionary.

Otherwise, we would have no resolution of all this rising action; and only ending for this film possible is that everyone would go for Pizza. This is unsatisfying from view of the Socialist imperative.

GEORGI: You're wrong, Potter -- you, and people of your
class are finished. Now you're going to face Justice for your
crimes -- because the People own the means of production!

And so The Bad Rich Guy is taken away by the People; his house later becomes hospital, day-care center, and place where revolutionary theater troupes practice before going into the streets.


And, of course, there is a proper celebration at the Georgi Bailey house, with the Revolutsia Spirit and the SmallChilds.

GEORGI: Gosh, Spirit, I don't know how we can thank you.
SMALLCHILD 01: Spirit, can't you stay and have some Fair
Trade™ coffee with homemade whiskey with us?
SPIRIT: No, SmallChild; I must go. There are so many oppressed
peoples in a world beset by unspeakable monsters of Capital.
But I will take a shot of that whiskey -- neat, please.

Finally, after long discussion between Rich Bad Guy and the Organs Of State Security, he faces Revolutionary Justice and the verdict of The People.

RICH BAD GUY: Long live International Capitalism!
PEOPLE'S MILITIA LEADER: Fire!

And, of course, Georgi and his lovely wife are pausing in their labor to build a New Socialist Future to share a moment's reflection on the plight of The Peoples, and also to suggest some hygienic sexual activity between them which may occur later.


...and in the background, The Internationale swells on the soundtrack, sung by the Sad Vlad Orphans Choir Of Greater Moscow! Please to show the credits!

This film has not been shown since its original release; big shame, also, because it is at least as good as movie with Bert Landcaster in it but of the name, just now, is escaping me.

Great-Uncle Yehudi likes Revolutionary Love. He thinks it is wonderful comedy, but still we love him. If you can find this film on DVD, then okay. If not, well then it is big world out there! Be That Guy -- go find!

I, Rabschinsky, say this -- to Moldavish Guy; you also.

Monday, October 9, 2023

John Lennon (October 9, 1940)

 Yer Birthday


John Lennon
October 9, 1940  -  December 8, 1980
You say it's yer birthday
It ain't my birthday yet, man
They say it's your birthday
We're gonna have a good time
I'm glad it's your birthday
Happy birthday to you

Yes we're going to a party party
Yes we're going to a party party
Yes we're going to a party party
I would like you to dance
(birthday)
Take a cha-cha-cha-chance
(birthday)
I would like you to dance
(birthday)
Dance
I would like you to dance
(birthday)
Take a cha-cha-cha-chance
(birthday)
I would like you to dance
(birthday)
Dance

You say it's yer birthday
It ain't my birthday yet, man
They say it's your birthday
We're gonna have a good time
I'm glad it's your birthday
Happy birthday to you

--  Lennon  /  McCartney 
     22 November 1968
     ("White Album")
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Monday, September 11, 2023

Twenty-Two

 Nine-Eleven

(Redux of a post originally published in September, 2010)


On November 22, 1963, I was outside for a 10:00AM break between classes at my Junior High School when it was announced the next class would begin prematurely. Immediately. We were told to sit quietly at our desks. When asked, our teacher told us nervously that President Kennedy had been shot.

After a few minutes, the school's public address system was broadcasting CBS' radio network, announcing the shooting of JFK in Dallas.  After a few minutes, someone -- probably the principal --  placed the PA system microphone next to the speaker of a television set; we heard what I now know to be the audio portion of Walter Cronkite on CBS television, announcing the President's death.

Where were you when JFK was shot? A standard question a large number of Americans (now discarded as 'Useless Boomers') have asked each other, due to the magnitude of the event and because it was shared in real-time by the primary media of the early 1960's -- radio and television.
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So, September 11th, 2001: Where were you on 9-11? I had gotten up to go to work around 5:30AM here in California, and turned on KQED-FM's NPR news. Getting out of the shower just before 6:00, I heard a report that a "plane" appeared to have crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York City.

I lived briefly in Manhattan in the late 70's and had seen just how huge those buildings were -- and to me, "a plane" meant a small aircraft; a Cessna, or something similar. I remembered: sometime after WW2, a B-25 flying through dense fog over Manhattan had ploughed directly into the Empire State Building. A similar incident at the WTC would be tragic, I thought; but an accident, and on the other side of the continent. 

NPR suddenly updated its report, using the words "jet aircraft" -- which immediately moved the entire event from a tragically wayward Cessna into the category of Well-This-Was-No-Boating-Accident.

Turning on CNN, I sat watching an image of the WTC towers from the roof of CNN's Manhattan headquarters, roughly two miles away. Both towers looked like chimneys, topped by boiling clouds of grey-black smoke drifting away at an angle into a clear, morning sky. 

Aaron Brown was reporting, taking phone calls directed from witnesses in the vicinity -- only one of whom, the doorman at the World Trade Centers Marriott, was close enough to report on anything immediate and consequential. 

A CNN-affiliate local news helicopter, hovering over the Hudson, provided an extended telephoto shot of the façade of the Tower on fire; I looked at the pattern of the cladding of the building, a huge, black gash angled across it. 

Occasionally, I saw clouds of small white shapes fluttering in the smoke, like flocks of birds, swirling -- and realized they were sheets of paper, ream after ream of it, drifting out of the building's broken windows. 

Just as that thought registered, at the extreme right-hand edge of the screen, I saw a darker object drop quickly, straight down and out of frame. It took a second; less. I didn't know then, but I had just seen one of roughly two hundred people who fell or jumped that morning from the Towers' upper floors.

The Falling Man: Photograph By Richard Drew / AP


Images Like This Were Broadcast And Published
In Europe, But Not America (Photo: UK Telegraph, 2001)

By the time I had sit down, two airliners had slammed into the WTC towers. Aside from profane shock, the only thing I recall thinking was, This is what it had been like, standing at the curb in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, watching the Archduke Franz Ferdinand being shot. This is history. 

I've seen large explosions and been in crazy environments, but the scale of what I was watching made it all seem unreal; special effects. I sat in the armchair, watching, as first the South, then the North towers collapsed (Wikipedia's timeline of the events puts that at 6:59 and 7:28 AM PDST, respectively). News of a third plane crashing into the Pentagon was broadcast; I began flipping back and forth between networks for coverage. 

Finally, I left to make my way to work on mass transit. On a BART train, I was amazed at the languid attitudes of the crowd of commuters -- reading books and newspapers, a few tapping on laptops and Blackberries -- as if it were just another Tuesday morning. People were subdued; there was literally no conversation about what had just occurred.

Work closed down at Noon. At a friend's, we sat watching CNN -- clips of the second Tower being struck, and of each one collapsing, were replayed endlessly.  I made a few phone calls, primarily to The Last Of The Old Unit ("Fuckin' glad we're not eighteen right now," one observed). 

We were all expecting more information, something to provide a larger context to everything seen that day. We also knew we weren't going to get it -- the dice had been rolled, and we wouldn't find any clarification until they had bounced off the back of the craps table and come to rest. 

The dice are still bouncing. They haven't stopped yet. They never really will -- like Gavrilo Princip, shooting the Archduke, the dice which were rolled that day haven't stopped yet, either. That's how history works. 
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That was September 11th -- a red line on the American calendar, the culmination of so many threads in our history going back to 1898 and 1917, the choices successive administrations have made since deciding to follow an Imperial course.

I remembered another image from this same period, within a day or two of the attacks: video of an Iranian soccer pre-game event, where both teams playing sang 'The Star-Spangled Banner'. I've looked for the footage, but AI sucks and Google sucks. I still know what I saw.

A gesture like that would only have been allowed with permission of the Iranian Powers That Be, and it was only a gesture -- costs nothing for forty teenagers to sing a song. But gestures can lead to actual events.

The 9-11 attacks could have been another kind of defining moment for America. Our government and institutions could have seized the opportunity to press for a solution of the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy; the long breach with Iran; our over-reliance on the House of Saud. We could have opened a dialog with others, rather than dictate to them.

Lil' Boots, 2004 Republican Convention: Feared And Bigger Than His Daddy, At Last
This photograph exudes more punk-ass cravenness than any I've ever seen.

It was a crossroads moment. Our choices mattered. But, the government was run by men who had no interest in anything except power (personal, partisan, and financial) and policies that meant the use of force in furthering that power.  

This is what America got for allowing the Scalia Court to appoint "Lil' Boots" Bush as President of the United States -- a man who surrounded himself with Project For A New American Century neo-imperialists. 

Within hours of Bush's inauguration on January 20, 2001, they were sitting in the White House, discussing how to invade Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It was a foregone conclusion. And, after 9-11, what else could we have expected from Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld? From Rove, DeLay, Limbaugh and the Murdochs?

September 11th: An Excuse

And, they believed it would be 'Roses All The Way', 'Greeted As Liberators' ... so, no one planned for occupation, or fighting an insurgency for seven years; or for the effect on individual soldiers of multiple redeployments and 'stop-loss' denials of separation. They never conceived of failure; therefore, it wouldn't happen. The arrogance behind this conceptualization is stunning.

It was an utterly unnecessary, even illegal invasion of Iraq, supported by intelligence about WMD's invented by right-wing operatives to create a causis beli, and pushed by sociopathic egos 'journalists' like Little Judy Miller, and pundits like David Brooks and William Kristol, and Little Tommy Friedman, to name only a few. How eagerly they jumped on the War bandwagon; so good for their careers.

Palettes Of $100 Bills, Baghdad, 2003 (Photo: UK Guardian)

And let's not forget the $12 Billion in cash (at least; no one really knows), piles of U.S. currency shrink-wrapped and paletted and airlifted to Iraq. 363 tons of it. Some $9 billion of that cash simply can't be accounted for.  But, there was plenty of money to be made from the war, and tax breaks to the wealthy. It was a good time to be part of the Carlyle Group -- a founder of which was George H. W. Bush, who gave the Group its intimate connection to the House of Saud.

But, Lil' Boots kept talking about cutting Medicare, privatizing Social Security; cut any social programs which made real the pact between government and citizens that was at the heart of FDR's New Deal... because, Bush claimed, there was just no money to pay for that. Because of the war, you see.

And there was Guantanamo, CIA 'black airlines' flying suspected terrorists to secret prisons, and the extra-legal, secret program of 'renditions'. Let's not forget Abu Ghirab. Let's not forget people like John Woo, whose written opinions created what he still claims is a "legal" basis for torture as national policy.

Civilian Casualty Of Baghdad Suicide Car Bomb, 2007

And what followed wasn't just secret prisons and a lack of due process for terrorist suspects, but a matrix of information based on unprecedented data-mining of domestic email and cellular telephone traffic, banking records and public record databases. It became a government/corporate State surveillance and intelligence apparatus that outstrips the wildest dreams of the Gestapo and the KGB.

And, if it was all about defeating Al-Qaeda, capturing or killing Bin Laden and Al-Zwahiri, then Iraq would never have mattered. We would have kept promises to the Afghans about rebuilding their country, instead of ignoring it -- at least half the reason the Taliban were able to come roaring back.

The 'Go-Go', Lil' Boots Bush years were about leveraging the war to enact a larger Rightist agenda. It was a cover for deregulation, defense contractors, profits. It was about Fat Karl's dream of rigging elections for permanent Republican rule.

Victory, to these assclowns, had a very different meaning. The military portion of it was just a backdrop banner for Bush and his cronies: Mission Accomplished. The cynicism in that perspective is an obscenity; Yeah, a lot of that going around.
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We had an economic collapse in 2008, then eight years of neoliberal nothing, followed by four years of proto-Fascism. After a three-year pandemic, an attempted coup -- roughly 37% of America's adult population claim to believe that 4chan posts by an anonymous fraudster are more real than mathematics, science, or common sense. That over 60% of those on the Right trust what Trump says over and above their own family members.

The blessed 37%  refuse to accept the vaccines for SARS-CoV2. They refuse to wear masks. They do this to "Own The Libs". They injected themselves with special magic pony blessed horse juice, or screech that the Blood Of The Jezus is all they need. 

And they died choking on their own phlegm in hospital ICU wards, wheezing that Covid was all a hoax. Incidentally -- if you want to gauge how likely it is a hot civil war will happen here, just remember that image: cult members, fanatics, behave that way. Not rational, normal people.
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Since September 11th, 2001, a quote by Bush (whom we are supposed to think well of, now; let the healing begin) comes back to me:
We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions -- by abandoning every value except the will to power -- they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: In history's unmarked grave of discarded lies. (Applause)

-- George W. Bush, Address To Joint Session Of Congress
Is that appropriate as an epitaph for those who wish to do America harm? Or, does it speak to how we have allowed ourselves to be lied to, and led; will it end up being our epitaph, a closing quote for the United States Of America?
There is no ‘populist’ version of a world where some few are born booted and spurred, and the many are born saddled, and ready to ride, and that's precisely the world which conservatism is trying to preserve.

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Friday, September 8, 2023

Your Thanatological Vacation Guide

The Existential Question
(Much Shorter Barking. Okay; Maybe Not.)

Russ Chole / Marty Hart (Matthew McConaughey; Woody Harrelson)
   True Detective, Season 1 (2014)

This is a topic never far from my mind in These Days. Not only am I chronologically closer to death, it seems the circumstances in life I've taken for granted may be changing to include a higher level of risk; a lot more rapidly than I'd thought.

I've been in immediate danger of dying, of death right in my fucking face, four times. In each case, it was only clear immediately after: Holy Shit; that almost took me out. I didn't have time, in the moment things were going down, to realize, this is Last Day.  I checked in with the Last Of The Old Unit about this and their experiences are roughly the same. So: I not crazy.

In terms of death as loss, I've had my share. Only one or two had coincidental events, what I think of as 'echoes', after, which might appear to some like a message or a parting word. But I'm not sure -- so I use the word 'coincidental' as a hedge, a cheat; an out. Because there isn't any way to know.

The short, sharp shock -- out of the Blue; into the Black -- is how death happens for so many people around the world, in These Days. It's only by the luck of the draw that I've lived more than seven decades and have the capability to contemplate my physical end from a smallish apartment in a major Blue city at the western edge of the North American continent, beside the broad Pacific, now heating up like oceans everywhere.
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And when I think about life, all our lives, how brief some of them are (and, let's face it: It's always going to seem too brief) I remind myself about the Iceman.

In 1991, the preserved, effectively mummified physical remains of a Bronze-Age human were found on a glacier. He was dubbed "Ötzi The Iceman".  Ötzi. It sounds friendly, like a nickname for some your slightly daffy uncle, if you come from a German family; an attempt to turn this fellow -- preserved by chance and climate -- into a mascot for tourists, a name to print on tee-shirts and mugs and lunch boxes.

Ötzi died 5,300 years ago (about 3,300 BC) in the mountain pass where his body was found, between current-day Italy and Austria, shot with an arrow by an unknown assailant. He was found with possessions and clothing. His body was found with intact genitalia, but at some point between discovery and transport to a climate-controlled environment, some modern-day fuckwad stole his penis; of course they did.

Eventually, his facial features were reconstructed -- as forensic anthropologists do with modern-day murder victims -- and we found he looked, more or less, like Charles Bukowski:

Ötzi (Not His Real Name)

The man with this face lived and died Five Thousand, Three Hundred Years Ago. This places him in the Prehistoric era (from ~3 million years BC until 1,200 BC). Specifically, in the Bronze Age.

He died 3,000 years before Greek civilization developed, or the Roman empire -- and hundreds of years before the 'Old Kingdom' Egyptian civilization began and the first Pyramids built.

He died four thousand years before the Buddha. At least 2,300 years before either Jesus or Mohammed are reported to have lived. 

When Ötzi was alive, the earliest human written languages had just begun to appear.
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My Dog Trainer advises that packs of Ibex meat were found in Ötzi's carrying bag -- and, while he was in excellent physical shape, his arteries showed significant Atherosclerosis. Some Vegans have said this is evidence that a presumably meat-based, Prehistoric 'Paleo' diet, eaten by an actual Bronze Age human, is a bad idea.

And: He was discovered because the glacier which had held his body over thousands of years was melting.
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Thanatology:
Study of death and practices and beliefs attached to it

1.  Life is finite. Every single one of us will die.

The Population Reference Bureau estimates the current population at 7 billion humans.  They estimate only 107 billion people have ever lived -- meaning, some 15 humans have died for every person currently living.

2.  We have no idea if, as individual consciousnesses, humans continue in any form after death.

Some people have beliefs, or faith, in specific outcomes. But (all the YouTubes about NDEs aside) feelings are not facts. No human being alive knows what happens to us. Anyone who says they do is comfortingly deluded.

This existential problem -- what is this, why are we, and what happens to us when we die is the Ur-question of human existence. 
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3.  There is a cave system in South Africa, showing proof of its use as a burial site by an ancestor species, Homo Naledi. Designs were also found scratched into the rock near the burials. We have no idea what they mean. 

But it appears that 300,000 years ago, Naledi buried their dead, laying them out in a specific way, with stone tools and other items. It suggests the Naledi had concepts of Self / Something Else, and Self / Here; that they believed being somewhere else after death. We don't know. There was no written language three hundred thousand years ago.
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Neolithic Homo Sapiens buried their dead with possessions, with food, weapons and utensils, which would seem to indicate a belief that the deceased existed after death, going somewhere, though the body decayed. We don't know. There was no written language in the Neolithic.
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If This Is Friday, It Must Be The Afterlife
         
          A.  It isn't clear where the idea of an afterlife first appeared in human religion. Humans began organizing in villages, towns and cities, around 10,000 BC.  Per Wikipedia, The earliest undercurrents of Mesopotamian religion developed in ~6,000 BC, coinciding with the region being permanently settled -- and the earliest real evidence of organized religion dates to roughly 4,000 BC, coinciding with the invention of writing. 

The forces of nature were worshiped as providers of sustenance. About 3,000 BC, the forces and objects of worship which used to be essentially nameless were given names and personalities. Multiple divinities, each with particular functions, appeared.

Around ~2,000 - 1,000 BC, the last stages of Mesopotamian polytheism developed. It showed greater emphasis on personal religion, with the gods structured into a hierarchy; the national god of whichever  (Babylonian, Akkadian) being the head of the pantheon.

Walk Like An Egyptian

          B.  By 2,000 BCE (or, 1,300 years after Ötzi died), the Egyptians had developed their own polytheistic religion around the notion that humans possessed a soul and, at death, that soul's place on a spectrum of good and evil would be judged.

Per Wikipedia, "Upon death, one entered the underworld, where Anubis, God of the dead, weighed the person's heart on a scale against a feather... of order, truth, and righteousness." If the heart weighed more than the feather (like the 'Witches weigh as much as a Duck' scene in Monty Python's Holy Grail), then the heart would be devoured by a waiting demon. You "would die a second death and be eliminated from existence", forever.  

If your heart weighs as much as, or less than, the feather, you are allowed to pass into the Land of the Sun. This was someplace else, mythic or extra-dimensional, not a physical place on Earth. A comfortable, abundant land -- essentially, the best aspects of life as experienced in the Kingdom of Egypt.

Tewaret, Hippo Moon Goddess You Bet, Guides The Departed. Or, You Know, Not.

This Eschatology was supported by a complex set of beliefs, involving prayers and rites. At the height of ancient Egyptian culture -- the Middle Kingdom -- after death, funerary rites lasted over a month. There was an elaborate process of embalming and mummification; tombs filled with decorations and hieroglyphic ritual prayers, and items for the deceased's existence in the afterlife -- possessions, food, weapons; statuary representing servants.

Surviving family members performed regular ancestor rites to pray and make offerings to the gods on behalf of their deceased. When a Pharaoh died, they had attained status as a god; all Egyptians could pray and make offerings at their temples in the necropolis of the Valley of the Kings.

Egypt had developed all this at least a thousand years before the rise of ancient Greece, and Rome.

Grecian Afterlife Thirst Trap

          C.  In Greek Eschatology, Hermes, the Messenger, delivered departed souls to the banks of the river Styx, where they waited until a boat operated by Charon the Ferryman appeared to take them across and into Hades -- which, to the Greeks, was another physical place on earth; the land of the dead. Charon demanded compensation; Greek funerary rites included putting a coin under the deceased's tongue so they could pay that last passage.


In Hades, three legendary kings judged a soul's conduct in life. Those who had lived pure lives, or were relatives of the gods (who always seeming to be having sex with humans), went to The Elysian Fields -- green valleys and mountains, where all was peaceful, and the Sun always shone for the guiltless and connected.

The majority of Greeks, their good and evil deeds essentially in balance, or who were indecisive in life, went to The Asphodel Fields -- a sort of low-rent version of Elysium; something like Hooterville, the location of the action in TV's Green Acres, but without a laugh track.

Finally, those who had blasphemed against the gods or been consciously evil were sent to Tartarus, a place foul and stygian where they would be burned in lava or stretched on racks (definitely without a laugh track). 

When In Rome, Do As The Greeks Do

          D.  After Rome invaded Macedonia and southern Greece in 146 BC, it absorbed Greek art and culture, the Pantheon of Greek deities and their afterlife cosmology -- with its Egyptian flavor of souls being judged, and specific levels of afterlife experience based on that judgement. 

Virgil, the Roman author who created the three most important Latin poems in antiquity, described the afterlife as the Romans adopted it in his epic, the Aeneid, written around 24 BC. Virgil makes a tour of Hades, guided by his recently dead father (as Dante would later have Virgil guiding him).

(Just a note: Virgil's poetry was a Big Deal in that long-gone Roman world. The UK Guardian recently reported that a shard of pottery found at an archeological site in Spain had lines from a poem by Virgil inscribed in Latin into the clay before firing. This was in an age where poetry actually meant something.)

Because You Never Know

          E.  Sheol, the Jewish concept of an afterlife, began as the universal destination of the dead, a place of darkness to which both the righteous and the unrighteous, regardless of their moral choices in life, will go. 

It wasn't a place of active punishment, but a land as far removed from Paradise -- from God -- as possible. And in Judaism, being separated from God (the most perfect expression of existence) is a terrible thing.

In 500 BC, Sheol was being portrayed in some Jewish texts as the place where the righteous and the wicked were separated into different afterlife regions. In other texts, it was described as a place of punishment, meant for the wicked dead alone. 

In 200 BC -- roughly the same time Rome was absorbing Greece into its empire -- Hebrew scriptures were being translated into Greek in ancient Alexandria. Scribes substituted the 'Sheol' in Judaism with the Greek word, "Hades" -- and the Greek concept of an afterlife along with it. 

Make The Baby Jesus Cry And Go To Hell

          F.  Christian Eschatology focuses on the divinity of one person -- who supposedly taught about life both physical and spiritual, and was put to death for bucking the authority of the Jewish religious order and Roman occupation -- an apostate and a terrorist. They were raised from the dead, ascended to heaven... and at our death, if we had followed their teachings, kept our noses and our hands clean and believed in their divinity, then we could, too.

By 325 AD, Christianity had become the state religion of the Roman empire. Emperor Constantine I called a council of Christian heavyweights, in Nicaea -- and over two months of arguing, agreed on what the doctrine of their now official state religion would be. This was followed in 390 AD by another council, in Hippo, to determine what official scripture would support that previously-agreed doctrine. There was editing, exclusion; other texts, like the 'Gnostic Gospels', were suppressed. The result was the Bible.

At these two councils, the streams of Mediterranean / Middle Eastern religious belief and tradition which had encountered and cross-pollinated each other -- The Babylonian and Akkadian informing the Egyptian, flowing into the Greek and then Roman; the long Jewish traditions --all came together.
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One of the most influential writings, not part of the Bible, which influenced Christian ideas about an afterlife was Dante di Alighiero degli Alighier's Inferno (Hell), one part of his 'Divine Comedy' -- a long, three-part narrative poem, published through the early 1300's. 

Dante's great unrequited love, Beatrice Portinari, had died in 1290. His love for her was his north star for the remainder of his life -- and he tells his readers her death was the reason for the poem. It was a chronicle of his search for her soul, to lead her out of the Inferno, to Paradise, guided by the ghost of Virgil on the journey. 

Dante took Virgil's description of the Roman Hades, borrowed from the Greek, influenced by Judaism and the Egyptians, and expanded on it. In Dante's artistic imagination,  Hell was a funnel of nine descending 'Circles', each of which providing horrifying punishments for classes of sin and transgression, narrowing down to the final Circle at the bottom -- a plain of ice, where Lucifer, a titanic being with multiple faces, stood bound with chains and buried to the waist.

Dante was a deeply involved Player in the 14th century politics of Florence, his city-state birthplace -- and, he was no punk artist, but a first-wave fighter, rapier and blade, in open wars between factions. As a political person, his 'Divine Comedy' was as much subtle commentary on contemporary politics as an artistic expression, full of  'inside baseball' references -- some of those getting roasted in the hell he invented were easily recognizable to a sophisticated audience.

This is one of the most important aspects of Dante's work: His notions of Heaven and Hell were his invention, his artistic imagination. For seven hundred years, they have profoundly shaped the popular, public and secular notions in the Western world of what happens after death. And, dig it: He did that with a work of fiction! 

In 1321, Dante contracted malaria and died. No one knows what happened to him after that, if anything.

(Side Note:  I recommend two utterly different novels featuring the Dantesque vision as a setting -- Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Inferno [1976], and Hell, by Robert Olen Butler [2009]. 

(The long-time Sci-Fi duo ['Mote In God's Eye', and Niven's Ringworld saga, are still popular] produced an underworld that is a bit dated but very readable.  Butler's book involves a former mega-star news anchor, now broadcasting The Nightly News From Hell, on his search for A Way Out. Butler writes well; it's worth the trip.)

Dante's Big Vacation Guide:
Click To Enlarge -- It's Easy And Fun!

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Songs From The Bardo

          G.  The structure of Buddhist belief is too complicated to articulate here in detail. But: after death, a person enters a non-physical realm, the Bardo, where they encounter the essence of their own mind, locked by habit into a series of karmic imprints. As Ram Das once described the human mind, it behaves "like a drunken monkey bitten by a scorpion". 

A person is presented an opportunity for awareness that all things are part of the great form / formlessness, all and nothing at once; are simply projections of one's own mind; and in that moment of realization attain enlightenment and become part of a greater cosmology.

Most of us, however, blow that opportunity and have to enter the Bardo of Becoming -- where we encounter our own minds: whatever we conceptualize, will be so. Basically, that scene from 'Ghostbusters', on steroids:

Stantz: What do you mean, choose? We don't understand.
Gozer: Choose; choose the form of the Destructor!
Venkman: Oh, I get it! I get it. Ohhh; very cute. Whatever we think of!  If we think of J.Edgar Hoover, then J.Edgar Hoover will appear and destroy us, okay? So empty your heads... Don't think of anything. We've only got one shot at this.
Gozer: The choice is made; the Traveller has come! 
Venkman: Woah, woah woah; nobody 'choosed' anything! ... what did you do, Ray?
Stanz: I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something I loved from my childhood, something that could never, ever destroy us... It's Mr. Stay-Puft, the Marshmallow Man.
Venkman: Aw; Mother Pus-Bucket... Good goin', Ray.
Buddhists spend much effort on meditation to discipline and focus the mind in preparation for death -- first, to have the best chance of not missing one of the opportunities the Bardo presents for enlightenment, and so step off the Great Wheel of death and rebirth. Second, to withstand the terrifying, anything-goes capabilities of our own minds.


Then (after one last opportunity to Get It; at almost each stage in this process of The Bardo, there seem to be multiple chances to obtain enlightenment), we may be reincarnated through rebirth. No one remembers their time in the Bardo -- as long as 49 days on Earth, so the traditions say.  And, Big Wheel keeps on turnin'.

There is also a chance that you may be attracted to any of the five Realms of Samsara, illusion, and so wander in self-projection forever. Or you may continue on the cycle of birth, life, death, reincarnation, until you obtain enlightenment and step off the wheel, or perhaps if you can't will be seen as a defective part by the universe and discarded. But no one really knows.
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You Never Know

And, this is the point: No one knows what actually happens. No one.  Whenever a notable person, an acquaintance, an enemy dies, I always think: Now they know what we do not -- even if what they found was Nothing, which is a possibility. And, Detective Chole speaks for many: Sure hope that old lady's wrong...

It remains my belief that, because no one knows what happens, this Great Mystery is behind almost every aspect of human existence; we simply work hard to put it as far in the background as possible. Death is the reference point by which all other experiences are measured, considered and qualified. 

None of this is news. I'm just saying the quiet part, the real quiet part, out loud. 

But at some point, we have to stop thinking about death, and live our lives. Savor the truth that we are alive, for the moment, and hopefully in the moment. It may even be possible (as a cab driver in Germany once said to Kurt Vonnegut, "If the accident will") to accept and experience death as an answer, as adventure. It will be our last choice in living -- how to experience our end -- so; why not.

In the interim -- because we all have to play chess with Death on the beach, or give him a Melvin -- may your time be long, your shoe leather thick; your glass full and your bowels cooperative. Be well.
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MEHR, MIT SCHLAG:  This add-on from December, 2019 seems appropriate. It's what we all hope is true, one way or another, anyway.


Actor Danny Aiello passed away, age 86.  He appeared in a number of films, including one on my top ten list:  Jacob's Ladder (1990).

Set in 1975 New York, Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins), divorced Vietnam vet with a PhD in Philosophy, is working in the Postal Service, and may (or may not) be slipping in and out of a series of flashbacks connected to Vietnam in 1971 [part of my time in the Southeast Asian barrel], and the accidental death of one of his three children (Macaulay Culkin, pre-Home Alone). He also begins seeing inexplicable things (demons, things out of a Lovecraft novel) in broad daylight. Reality appears to be shifting and he's frightened.

Singer has lower back issues, and sees a Chiropractor, Louis Denardo, played by Aiello ("...You look like an angel, Louie," Singer tells him, "Like a big cherub. Anyone ever tell you that?"  "Yeah," says Louis. "You; every time you come in here").

At one point in the story, Singer is struck by a car on a New York street. His lower back seizes up, his wallet is stolen by a vagrant Exmass Santa; he's brought to a hospital that becomes progressively more nightmarish, a Hieronymus Bosch painting.

Louis shows up at the hospital ("What is this, the Middle Ages?" he yells at a nurse when he sees Singer in traction in a bed) and forcibly takes him out, back to his chiropractic office. He puts Jacob on his adjustment table and begins working on his back.

Singer tells Louis what he's been seeing, that the hospital was a vision of hell. "Ever read any Meister Eckhard?" Louis asks; Jacob says he hasn't, and Louis is surprised. "How'd you get your Doctorate without reading that guy?

"Eckhard saw hell, too," Louis continues. "Know what he said? He said the only part of you that burns in hell is the part that won't let go of your life. Your memories; your attachments; they burn them all away -- but they're not punishing you, he said; they're freeing your soul.

"So, the way he sees it -- if you're frightened of dying, and you're holding on -- you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace -- then the devils are really angels, freeing you, from the earth. It's just a matter of how you look at it. So, don't worry about it. Okay?"

Now he knows what we do not. It's a decent film. Aiello is good in it. Give it a whirl.

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