Walter Lippmann

For more true tales of magic, try "Walter Lippmann," only on Lasken's Log @ https://laskenlog.blogspot.com/

Meaningless dreams

If Sigmund Freud were sitting across from me, I'd ask him what he thinks meaningless dreams are about.  Of course he would answer that a meaningless dream by definition is not about anything, that sometimes "a cigar is just a cigar."  "Dr. Freud," I would press on, "I'm having dreams about things you might term 'cigars' because they don't represent other things.  For instance, I dreamed of a door that was partially open, with a view to the street.  And I dreamed I rubbed my fingertips over the smooth surface of a desk.  Oddly, these dreams were vibrant in unearthly ways, but they were drained of extended meaning -the partially open door and the smooth desktop were...just those.  Dr. Freud, am I having meaningless dreams because of what is happening in Afghanistan?"

Dr. Freud might wonder why his repose should be disturbed by my question, then he might remember that in life he posited a referential universe, where things are predicated on past events, almost Newtonian- where things cause other things- even Einsteinian- where things are relative to other things.  A cigar is never just a cigar, especially for Freudians, I would argue to Freud.

I would stop arguing with Freud when I realized that the conversation itself was a meaningless dream.

When I taught elementary school, a music teacher showed me how to train kids to sing a round.  The trick is that the two groups need to look in opposite directions while singing.  Here's what I taught my second graders to sing in a round:

Row row row your boat

gently down the stream-

Merrily merrily merrily merrily

life is but a dream.

At the time, I wondered if I was teaching something radical, an explicit doctrine that life is a meaningless dream.

Full disclosure:  The above encounter with Dr. Freud actually happened, in my head, and it turned out he was not so easy to dismiss, for he reappeared, seated beside me in my living room, to admonish me: "You are indulging in wishful thinking!  You want life to be a meaningless dream so you can escape from the meaning of Afghanistan's collapse, which weighs on you."

I stared at the self-induced simulacrum for a few moments.  Freud regarded me back while puffing on a cigar (which, to my consternation, turned into a flaccid penis as he palpated it, the white silky smoke an obscene addendum).

"What wishful thinking?" I asked (defensively, as Freud might have noted).

"If the world is a meaningless chaos," Freud answered, "then you are not responsible for things going wrong in it, and you are not responsible for things that are going wrong inside you, things that are thrusting about of their own accord, oblivious to human dictate.  You get the picture?  You're out of control."

I got the picture all right.  Looking down at the dining room table I saw the headline of the morning paper: "'What was it all for?' ponders a town of Marines."  They are wondering what America's involvement in Afghanistan was for.  I wanted suddenly to have an out-of-body experience and return to my long ago second grade class, singing with them, "...life is but a dream."

Dr. Freud puffed at me, white plumes of suggestive smoke, then said: "America's post-war policies were not a dream.  They have become meaningless, as far as meaning goes, but there is meaning in the meaninglessness."

I couldn't disagree with an idea stated so clearly, but before I could respond, Freud became transparent and faded away, leaving wisps of smoke to clarify his thought: American foreign policy has been real, and that is its only meaning.  We did not conquer evil.  We did not determine our own evil or goodness.  We did not do anything except wage war.

I felt a familiar mental buzzing and knew that Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster was approaching my desert door.

"Robert," I thought in his direction, "I hear you.  Have you been eavesdropping on my thoughts again?"

"I have," thought Robert.

I opened the door and Robert trudged in.  I picked him up and set him on his favorite cushioned chair, recently vacated by the founder of psychoanalysis.

"Robert, what are your views on my conversation with Dr. Freud?"

Robert was dismissive: "Freud's motivation was to prove to his mother that he was a success; that's what I think."

"Ok, but...what about meaninglessness?  Do gilas ever get upset by the thought that everything is meaningless?  Like if a coyote eats one of you, does that seem to make your life meaningless?"

"No, we don't approach existence like that.  The meaning of a thing is the thing itself.  We don't complicate the picture with intellectual ornament."

"Ornament?  Robert, I know you follow human news.  Look what's happening in Afghanistan.  The events do not stand in isolation.  They have meaning, and that meaning is that the entire post-war foreign policy of the United States, in which it has tried to adumbrate an identity as the world's central super-power, has crumbled, and Americans now have to collectively acknowledge that we don't know how to rule ourselves, let alone the world."

Robert spat, his usual preface to impatient remarks: "Harry, gilas do not care what is happening in other parts of the world, because we are present in our part of the world.  If humans could tolerate presence where they are, you would not need to project yourselves to places where you are not, like countries other than your own, or parts of your own country that are not where you are."

"I could retort that gilas are provincial," I ventured.

"Ha!" Robert telepathically barked, "At least we have a province.  You humans live apart from the Earth in an artificial environment, your population so compressed that you must numb your claustrophobia with drugs.  You might as well be on Mars already."

We became silent.  After a moment, Dr. Freud returned, materializing in the middle of the room. He regarded Robert curled on the chair, picked him up, then sat on the chair, placing the telepathic lizard on his lap.

"Hi doc," said (thought) Robert.

"Hi Robert," said Freud, "Nothing surprises me anymore, not even you.  In fact nothing in the afterlife is surprising because there is no expectation of particular outcomes.  The afterlife is more like the ancient Greek's Hades than current versions.  It's like swimming in an ocean of Thorazine."

"That should ensure that your perceptions are impartial," I observed.

"I think it does," said Freud, "and that gives me confidence to share something with you: my belief that President Biden was set-up."

"Duh," said Robert.

"Dr. Freud, forgive my associate.  He thinks the meaninglessness of the world gives him carte blanche to be rude.  Please elaborate on your findings."

"No problem," Freud continued, "the President was purposely misled by advisors who told him There is virtually no chance that the Taliban will take over Afghanistan, but during the same week that Biden publicly repeated this view as his own, the Taliban took over, with no apparent resistance. Biden was blindsided, seeming incompetent and clueless.  The desired outcome of this subtle coup is that Biden will take the fall for the loss of Afghanistan, its economic collapse and the catastrophe for women, if not for the entire lost cause of the post-war years back to Vietnam.  Whatever cadre comes to power after Biden can then pose as innocent, like pool contractors who skimp on the rebar, but when you try to sue them, they've gone bankrupt and are operating under a new name."

Dr. Freud stood up and placed Robert back on the chair.  He gazed at the desert through my one large window and said mournfully, "Robert is right: The motivation for my career was to prove my worth to my mother (and of course overthrow my father).  One time I read her a passage from Civilization and its Discontents that I'm fond of:

A civilization that leaves so large a portion of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence.

My mother's comment was, "Feh!" (a term she reserved for the most useless ideas), "Why would you write something like that?"

Robert groaned, "You humans with your mothers!  You really should try simplifying yourselves through egg-laying."

Robert finally left, and Freud's apparition followed.  It had been a stimulating conversation, but I felt something was missing.

Could Freud have told me more?  I went back to my frayed copy of Civilization, finally finding a statement that relaxed me enough to take an afternoon nap:

Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me.

New interview with Gregory

I hadn't talked to Gregory, leader of The Army of the Young (prominent on the U.S. West Coast and spreading) since the pandemic started over a year ago, so I thought I'd contact him and catch up.  Gregory is a political operative and messianic twenty-something.  I figured he'd have a lot to say about post-Trump reality.  It turned out he didn't.

Bakersfield is our chosen meeting point between Gregory's community near Marysville and my abode in Pearblossom.  We sat at the Woolworth's vintage soda fountain, where we first talked several years ago.  

It occured to me that Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster might be a cogent contributor to our conversation, as he has an uncanny understanding of human politics.  Gregory is not entirely comfortable that I associate with deities and sentient reptiles, so I hid Robert in my "man-bag" and told him to wait for an appropriate moment to reveal himself.

Gregory sighed quietly, it seemed to me, when I asked him his thoughts on "post-Trump reality."  He took some time to answer.

Harry, he finally said, I'm sorry, I don't entirely enjoy thinking about things the way I used to.  I know I'm the head of a political movement and so on.

Yes, that sounds difficult, Gregory.  How are you going to handle your followers?  Are you going to conceal that you don't like thinking about things anymore?

For now that's the plan, yes.

So...why don't you like thinking about things anymore?

Well, because a political movement is based on optimism, and, somehow, in what you call the "post-Trump reality," I'm not optimistic.

You mean...you are...

Yes, I'm pessimistic.

Silence ensued as we digested Gregory's words.

Gregory, I'm so sorry, is there anything I can do?

No thanks, Harry.  Pessimism is just an emotional/intellectual state after all.  It will pass.

Just like optimism.

Exactly.

Gregory, if I may ask, what is it about our post-Trump reality that has caused your pessimism?

Of course you may ask, Harry.  I think it's the way Trump took on all our sins- not in a Jesus sort of way, where you die for everyone's sins- but in an ass-hole selfish sort of way, where you actually commit all the sins that most people can't get away with, making fame and fortune for yourself and wreckage for everyone else.

Then why aren't you optimistic because America was able to depose Trump?

Because, just as Satan is supposed to be the source of all evil, we saw Trump as the source of almost all evil, and that temporarily deluded us.  We forgot that evil, or, as I like to call it, malpractice, is really everywhere all the time.  We don't need Trump for it.

Do you dislike President Biden?

There's not much to dislike, so far.  He's right out of a central casting call for "Nice older gentleman."  But the war and dysfunction that was headed our way under Trump is still headed our way.  

Agreed, but why can't you just celebrate this limited victory for what it is?

It's too limited.  

Gregory ordered a root beer float, which struck me as somewhat optimistic.  I got a Diet Dr. Pepper.  I don't even want to think about what that meant.

Gregory, what do you want Biden to do?

Honestly, Harry, there's not much he can do.  The world is filled with millions of young people who have little hope of gainful or meaningful employment.   The default option is to send them to war, that or convert them to soylent green.

And look at biotech, Gregory continued, Humanity is going to be refashioned by scientists, and much of the human race will become obsolete by its own hand.  There's nothing anyone, including a president, can do about it.

Gregory, some people would call that optimistic.

Yes, Gregory smiled, but Harry, we're not among the elect.  I know you are a psychic with unusual connections to the, what shall I call it...spirit world? 

Gregory had been seriously unnerved during our last meeting, via Zoom, by a cameo appearance from Betty the Coyote Creator Goddess. 

But, Gregory continued, do you see yourself welcome in the coming age?

I'm not sure I'll be up to code. 

None of us will be up to code.  Remember the "savages" in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World?  They were people who still reproduced sexually.  "Mother" was a dirty word.  The savages were kept in concentration camps in the desert.  And don't forget climate change.

Let's hear it.

In order to keep the planet habitable, 20% of the fossil fuel that remains in the ground will have to go unused.  That is not going to happen.

I don't know, Gregory.  Greta Thunberg's movement has proven enduring.

That is the only movement that will count.  The adult movements are weakened by uncertainty.  The moment of Thunberg's vision has arrived.  Yet that 20% will be pumped into the sky.

Jesus, Gregory, your pessimism is getting to me.  You know, I'm a blogger.  People don't want to read bad news unless it's funny.  How am I supposed to make this funny? 

I don't know, Harry.  My calling asks me to be serious, which for me requires optimism.  Looks like we're both in the shit. 

Gee, I wonder what you can do about it, thought Robert (to us) from my "man-bag."  I had almost forgotten he was there.  Gregory gave me a skeptical look.

Gregory, I'm so sorry, I said, I know you aren't comfortable with my outreaches to non-human realms, but perhaps I could change your mind.  May I introduce Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster?

Hi Gregory, thought Robert as he stuck his head out of the bag and stared directly at Gregory, whose look turned from skepticism to disgust.

Gregory, Robert continued cheerily, don't forget I'm psychic.  I know you're not enjoying meeting me.

No...I, I'm happy to hear what you have to say, Gregory stammered, Go on please.

Well, I'll do my best, but I should explain that gila monsters do not have a sense of humor.  I've tried many times to understand what Harry means when he says something is "funny," to no avail.  I do know from my study of human physiology that laughter is a response to the reconciling of the left and right hemispheres of the human brain- which represent, roughly, literal versus figurative thinking- mediated by the corpus callosum, a bundle of nerve tissue that connects the hemispheres.  As the c.c. sifts through the streams of the two interpretations of the environment, it finds esoteric matches.  The c.c.'s brain decides which of these matches is "funny" (from Middle English, fon, fool).  The matches are sent to the brain's humor centers (there are 15 million).  If enough electrical charge is accumulated in the humor centers, a feedback loop with the c.c. emerges, and this triggers a spasmodic choking response in the upper body.  The experience, though highly valued by your kind, is mercifully denied to mine.

FYI, Robert, I retorted, what you just said was funny, but, as the saying goes, it was so funny I forgot to laugh.

Actually, Robert, said Gregory, who appeared considerably more relaxed, your ideas are intriguing.  I'm not much of a humorist myself, and I often wonder about laughter.  Since Harry went out on a limb to bring us together, maybe your analytical abilities could help him find the humor in the highly pessimistic scenarios we've been mulling.

Wow, thought Robert, another human willing to listen to me.  The world just keeps getting better.  Let me think.

Robert started his purposeful thinking by chewing softly on the rim of my leather bag.  His thoughts were guarded, but sometimes we picked up stray, fragmented sentences.  They were not funny.  

Finally Robert stopped chewing on my bag and looked up, directly into Gregory's eyes.

Try this, Harry, Robert thought, still holding Gregory's gaze:

 A rabbi, a Catholic priest and a pantheist are walking together when they come upon the final 20% of Earth's remaining fossil fuels.

The rabbi says, "Hey you two, why don't you go in with me to buy this last 20% of fossil fuel.  Then we'll pull it off the market and save the Earth!"

The Catholic priest says, "That's a great idea! Count me in!"

The pantheist says, "No!  This may not happen!  The Earth God is freezing to death and wants the surface of the planet to ignite and warm him!"

We gathered that Robert had come to the conclusion of his "joke" because he was shaking spasmodically in what I understood to be his first experience of humor and laughter.  Gregory looked pale and a bit disturbed.

Robert, I finally said, Please snap out of it.  That was not funny.

Really?, Robert spat, You obviously didn't get it.

Gregory and I decided not to belabor the point.  We made our goodbyes and headed to our cars.  On the drive back to Pearblossom Robert told me that now that he understands humor he is going to write a book called "Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster's favorite jokes."  He says he will forward the jokes to me as they develop.

The ride home was uneventful, though punctuated every few minutes by spasmodic sounds from Robert's throat when he managed to get his corpus callosum to fire.

[For background on Gregory and his movement, and for a peek into the 2044 U.S. presidential election, go to http://www.gregorysarmyoftheyoung.com/]

                                                                

                                                                      Home sweet home

Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster's favorite jokes

Three entries from the upcoming book, "Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster's favorite jokes":

1. Once there was a king who was not a megalomaniac.  He wondered: "How can I know what to do if I'm not a megalomaniac?" 

2. The Earth felt cold and neglected.  The Moon said, "You dummy!  Look at the sun.  Do you see it complaining?"

 

3. The cat said: "I am at the top of the food chain.  The humans serve me because I am far more beautiful than any human could be."  The dog hated that and barked at her.

Note: Though I'm able to change individual words on GoogleBlog's edit page, I have for several weeks been unable to revise sentence layout. The cause is that my original posts have been invaded by a spideweb of alien script (comprised of segments of punctuation marks) which I have determined is machine language that most unsuspecting humans do not speak. I have written to GoogleBlog several times and asked why machines have assumed this new, sinister role, and what exactly the humans are talking to machines about, but I have received no response. I assume that humans invented this machine language so that machines, even though they mostly don't understand human writing, will at least know how to separate paragraphs. After fruitless experimentation, I confess I am unable to retrieve a single double-space between Robert's 2nd and 3rd jokes, which required such justification after I removed the original joke #3. This joke, I thought, was not Robert's best, as it seemed a naked attempt at guilt and shaming. I've reconsidered, however, and now feel that since the joke carries a potent truth, it merits honorary funniness. Since you've read this far, here's the joke: "A member of an Eastern religion that believes in reincarnation was starving to death. He hoped he would come back as a person who had always had enough to eat so that he would understand why such people are rarely happy."

In the covid sweat lodge

                                                  The Creation of Adam, Michelangelo

My altered-ego DL and I endured two weeks of intense covid attack, with opposite effects on our writing.  DL withdrew from his blog (https://laskenlog.blogspot.com/) which he uses for polemics, proofs that he is right and others are wrong.  This happened one febrile night when we dreamed we were in India, DL and I, marching in a festival of brilliant colors.  I felt like I had left the earth to visit another dimension so I could face my life and the covid enemy with renewed will.  I went directly from the dream to my computer and wrote this account of the sweat lodge.  By contrast, DL reported after the dream that his polemics had become "unstable," that he cannot read his blog now without screaming.

Earlier, as the ordeal unfolded, we crouched near the killer for long hours, close enough to see its awful face.  Henry James wrote that nearness to death makes characters more interesting, and this thought prompted me to nag at DL that I'm his character, waiting to be made interesting.  I felt a spiritual retreat was required to handle the challenge properly.  We were sweating anyway, so I suggested to DL that we visit and refurbish an ancient sweat lodge I had discovered in the Mojave, an assemblage of stones where for centuries men gathered to sit naked around coals to sweat and reduce themselves to an essence.  I explained that only men were permitted in the sweat lodge because they had their own essence, which was not the same as a woman's essence.

DL was sold.  We went to the Family Dollar Store in Pearblossom and bought food, water, charcoal briquettes, lighter fluid and matches, then we located and occupied the sweat lodge.

We sweated so long in the sweat lodge that, as noted, DL's polemics melted, and he withdrew into me, becoming invisible.  Towards the end of two weeks, when it seemed that we were either to die or find ourselves, two visitors arrived.  Usually in the desert I commune with beings known to my readers- various deities and my overly practical companion Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster- but the sweat lodge was for men, so the first visitor was a man who had been so real in his time that he became real again.  He strode into the sweat lodge at the moment of our despair, naked, tall, muscular, young, with an ostentatious erection that seemed to broadcast his thoughts.  He announced himself:

Greetings, Harry the Human!  I am Standing Penis.  I am a man and I have come here to reduce myself to my essence, so that I may know what a man is.

Greetings, Standing Penis!

I was in a wry mood, for a change, and asked: Is it necessary for you to have a prominent and permanent erection?

For purposes here, yes, because an erection is the essence of a man.

Really?, I pursued, That seems anti-climactic, so to speak.  Is a man's essence merely to supply sperm?  Is that sufficiently noble or impressive to justify all the display?

There is more to it, Harry.  The essence of a man is to be excluded.  His mother and his wife have sent him away, to hunt for food, to be far from home.  He does not belong home.  He belongs isolated, in the wilderness where no one belongs.  The erection is a link to home.  There are other links in his mind.  He brings things from the world of his isolation back to his home.

In my culture, Standing Penis, the man's erection is problematic.

Yes, you have taken over the earth, both your men and women have, and now there is no distinction between home and beyond, between erection and aggression.

What will happen to us?

You will stop being men and women.  Your essences will combine.

At that moment the door flap flew open and a tall, naked woman stepped in.

Weeping Vagina!, exclaimed Standing Penis, You may not enter the sweat lodge, even in these decadent times!

Greetings, Standing Penis!  Do not call me "Weeping Vagina."  That name was not given by my sisters, but by you.  I have my own name.

I had stood, seeking some sort of courtesy or protocal, aware of my diminutive stature among these figures.

Excuse me...I'm Harry the Human, I stammered.  How shall I address you?

Of course, Harry, we know you, she said.  My name is Waiting Vagina.  Turning to Standing Penis, she continued, Were you not saying as I entered that the essences of men and women will now combine?

Yes, Waiting Vagina, I was saying that, yet I was hoping for a moment from the past....

Waiting Vagina joined us to sit around the smouldering coals.  Our bodies glistened with rivers of sweat.  She continued, looking wistfully into the steamy red circle:

It is no joy for me to give up my female essence.  We die in here today.  When our essences combine, we will be neither male nor female any more.

We were silent for a few moments.

I asked, When we combine in here, will the entire human race outside die, all the men and women, no longer men and women?

It is already happening, Waiting Vagina said, Men are killing women for excluding them from the Earth, not knowing that women are excluded too.  Women are killing men for not staying excluded, for coming home, not knowing there is no home.

Standing Penis stared into the coals.

Suddenly DL called out from within me, My polemics!  How can I be right and others wrong now?  At the least I should know that my politics are right, my view of human life is right, my interpretation of history is right, my way of expressing myself is right.  Right?

Waiting Vagina and Standing Penis chuckled softly.  It was reassuring to sense a unity between them.

I asked, Waiting Vagina, what is the meaning of your name?

Harry, she answered, I am waiting to be the type of the new human brain.

What will this brain be like? 

It will wait.  It will not think it knows.  It will know only that it does not know.

What's the point of that? I had to ask, and Standing Penis added an approving grunt.  Don't forget, Waiting Vagina, that after women expel them from the Earth, some men will migrate to outer space. 

Yes, Waiting Vagina conceded, and some of those men, ironically, will be accompanied by women.  Within the boundaries of space they will seek redemption of the species, but without a successful Earth memory as guide, they will lose themselves on each celestial body.  As your poet Emily Dickinson wrote: 

"Those who have not found the heaven below,

will fail of it above."

Then the face of the covid death appeared in the coals.  The rivers of our sweat carried us into the death, and we merged.  There were no more men or women.  There was no more right or wrong.  But there were still people.  The people had minds, and their minds were quiet.

We have been detected!

Last week, I and the broader telepathic community received a message of unusual strength.  The message stated simply: "We have been detected!"  Though the message was short, it reverberated in our heads, communicating a tone of extreme alarm.  I've been struggling to locate its source and to communicate back.  It was slow-going until this morning, when I enlisted the aid of my friend Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster.  We sat in the desert for hours, scanning the airwaves, gleaning with our combined bandwidth shards of conversation from the general direction of the message's origin, which, we soon discovered, was outer space.  I've forwarded the shards to earth's telepathic network (there's only one, for obvious reasons) and I share them with you now.  

Note: the shards in the first group, which I was able to glean on my own, appear incomplete.  After Robert joined the effort, his animal force produced the missing clarity. 

Please enjoy.  

Best, Harry the Human

                               We have been detected!

                                A partial transcript

...let me sip this joy for all time....

...we remember before...we need to remember before....

...yes...before, when there was pain....

....it lasted so long....

...we were driven half mad....

....until our goddess led us to divine flames, and we dropped our congealed bodies....

....so heavy, so difficult to control....

....our needs, oh god!  How we needed!

...until our goddess led us to the blue flames of love....

Sip our love, brothers and sisters, race with me through the heavens!

The Ancients believed joy had to be deserved.  

There was so little.  It was fought over.

Sip this boundless joy with me!

Brothers and sisters!  Attend!  Bringers of pain approach.  We have been detected!

How?

Our thoughts!  They take a form visible to the bringers of pain.

What sort of form?

They call our thoughts "phosphine."

They can see our thoughts?

They do not know that they are thoughts.

What do they think they are?

Useless byproducts of life- shit, if you will.

They think our thoughts are shit?

Yes, since we expel them from our minds.

Does anyone still want to sip some joy?

End of Transcript

[Note: Robert and I came across a possible clue to the transcript's meaning in "We're heading for Venus," NewScientist Magazine, 10/3/20.  Here's an excerpt:

"If phosphine is really present on Venus, and we can't work out a non-biological source in Venus' clouds, we could see a new rush to look for life on our solar system's hottest planet."