McCarthy's Syndrome

A combination of reading Cormac McCarthy's new twin novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris, plus watching live BBC coverage of Kevin McCarthy's tortured attempts to be the Speaker of the House of Representatives, has led me to a new mental disorder I've termed "McCarthy's Syndrome," in which the subject continually hears the name "McCarthy," coming seemingly from nowhere, through the day and into the night- denoting perhaps the beat of a clock that leads finally to an atomic soup of "afterlife." I'm sure Big Pharma is working on a cure for McCarthy's Syndrome- it can't come soon enough!

Where have all the gila monsters gone?

I apologize to readers for my recent absence. The cause: My inspiration, an advanced reptile, has absconded! One day in September I realized that the only remaining friend I have in this universe, Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster, had left the airwaves silent for too long. I trekked out into the Mojave toward the gila enclaves I knew, and found them gone, i.e., ALL the gila monsters were gone! Not just Robert. What a sock in the gut. When it comes to sentient beings other than oneself, you never know how much you need them until they, you know, dump you.

I guess Robert did dump me. Why else would he not have messaged my cerebrosphere, something he was never shy about?

Of course I don't really know. Maybe a cosmic mudpuppy craving telepathic caviar on the planet's surface dive bombed and slurped Robert and his fellows up.

Whatever, now my consciousness is as alone as the other 20 million consciousnesses of my ilk on the other side of the San Gabriels, where there were precious few gilas to begin with.

Does all great poetry come from the pain of an isolated soul? Where does bad poetry come from? The same place? Go figure.

I wrote a poem while sitting on one of Robert's favorite rocks:

Lipitor Sunrise

by Harry the Human

I found my father in the dead zone late last night

He had concluded that everything I thought was right

Was it you? Or was I the one who was uptight?

Mom was simply out of sight

She was not in the dead zone

She had traveled to a space her own

one we had not known

Let us pray to ancient Egypt's God of the Animal Mind

to give a reassuring sign

that in the final unity you don't find

existence sparked by eating your own kind

I did get a clue to Robert's whereabouts, in a dream. I was walking at night in downtown Santa Barbara. Results from the U.S. midterm elections were flashing from store windows. The sidewalks were crowded with college students and inland families. I found that no matter which direction I walked, I was going the wrong way, everyone was walking against me and I had to continually dodge them.

"We got tired of dodging" came a familiar voice, seemingly from a lamp post.

"Robert!" I cried,"Where are you? Why don't you have to dodge anyone?"

"Because there is only the one place, and every soul is in it and of it."

"Really?" I marvelled.

"Yes, it's boring as crap."

Sorry to leave readers hanging, but this is my progress so far. I'll get back to you soon with more findings as I investigate the plight of the increasingly elusive Mojave gila monster.

Unsex me here

I had a falling out with Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster.  We had been sharing thoughts amenably until I unwisely mentioned Yuval Harrari's book on the next stage of human evolution, Homo Deus, recommended by my friend D.L. (see "Lasken's Log" -sorry, links aren't working on this page) where we'll be gods.  Robert told me gila monsters attained this "godhood" long ago without the fanfare humans need, which I was willing to accept, but then he asserted that humans could not attain "godhood"- or as he called it, "awareness"- because we're too fucked up and don't want to be aware anyway.

"What do you mean we don't want to be aware?" I asked, "What else would we want?"

"What else?  You want to have sex with each other night and day." Robert has learned a lot about humans.  "At least gilas have a season for mating and male combat.  You have one season: mating and male combat."

"So what?  I'm telling you we humans are evolving out of this.  Soon we'll be able to modify our physiology with a limited mating season, and with the free time we'll evolve."

"As if!" Robert snorted, "If you're any indication, I won't hold my breath."

I was suddenly weary of Robert's superior species routine.  I needed a break from him and the familiar human conversations at the Family Dollar Store, so I decided to spend the weekend in San Diego.  I booked a cheap hotel on the waterfront for Friday night, filled my 2007 Camry and set out.  

The trek began on the lonely 138, hugging the desert foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, then turned south on the 15 through Cajon Pass, to San Bernadino and on to San Diego. It was about 5:15pm when I checked in.

The main objective of my trip was to walk to Balboa Park and see museums, but it was too late for that, so I headed to the Gaslamp District nearby for dinner.

Young and old lined the sidewalks up Broadway.  I dipped into random mentalities and found thoughts that reminded me of a poll conducted during the Clinton/Trump presidential race that indicated that if only women voted, Clinton would win, and if only men voted, Trump would win. This time if only women voted, no one would win, and if only men voted, same thing.

These explorations soon gave way to hunger, but most of the restaurants were crowded and geared towards couples, where I would have been a sorry spectacle eating alone.  Finally I found a relatively quiet bar that served dinner.  An attractive waitress in her mid-twenties greeted me at the bar with a big smile.  She said her name was Trina.  She was wearing cut-off jeans that had been carefully tailored to cover as little as possible.  A few more beauties assembled, hanging around in the background as Trina grilled me on what kind of martini I wanted- dirty? with a twist? Bombay gin?  Each time I selected, she grinned from ear to ear and said, "All right! Good choice!"  I dug into her mind and found that she was toying with the idea that I might be sugar-daddy material.  Realizing how glum my dinner would be without such illusion, I allowed the fantasy to play out, mostly a passive exercise of my not revealing that I live alone in the desert and my best friend is a gila monster.   Thankfully sleepiness came upon me by 9:00 PM and I slipped into relief and darkness in the hotel room.

By 8:00 AM I was dressed and seated in the dining room for the minimalist breakfast (included): reconstituted scrambled eggs, a tiny selection of cheap pastries, coffee.  A TV screen on the wall forced everyone to hear President Biden excoriate Trump for stealing classified documents, then excoriate Russia for waging war on Ukraine. I checked the minds of my fellow breakfasters, mostly mid-level management on business trips, men and women, some alone, some with others. The news had a vague pull on their attention- but only out of anxiety that someone might expect them to be informed; almost the entirety of their focus was on the infuriating eggs and the equally infuriating nature of the coming day.

Twenty minutes later I was walking uphill on Cedar, sweating already in the unseasonably hot morning.  Turning left on 6th I walked along the ridge of Cabrillo Ravine.  The El Prado bridge took me over the ravine (which these days accommodates the apocalyptic roar of Highway 5) to a complex of museums and a rough reproduction of Shakespeare's Globe Theater, built in 1915 for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition.   I hung a left into the Globe Theater courtyard, which was filled with several high school classes on field trips to see Macbeth.  

"Unsex me here!" yelled an agitated boy as he prodded a girl with a plastic sword.

"Mr. Anderson," called the girl to a fortyish man in tasteful slacks and short-sleeved shirt, "Brad is harassing me!"  

"Calm down, Brad!  Leave Terry alone, and remember what that line is supposed to mean!"

"I do, Mr. Anderson," Brad said mockingly with a leer, pointing the sword towards Terry, now at an ambiguous 30 degrees, "It means Lady Macbeth wishes she were a man, so she could be strong and have any idea what to do."

With this basically correct interpretation Brad leapt towards Terry, the sword behind his back, calling "Gotcha!" as Terry screamed in shock and delight.  Mr. Anderson looked around to see who expected him to do anything, saw only me, and went back to scrutinizing a clipboard.  

Mr. Anderson might have further instructed Brad that it's Macbeth who lacks resolve and doesn't know what to do.  Here's the context for Lady Macbeth's line:

Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,

And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full

Of direst cruelty.

From this we learn that in Shakespeare's time it was thought that "direst cruelty" was a male trait, not normally found in women.  Quite a change in 400 years!

Nearby I found the irresistibly named "Museum of Man," full of beautifully composed models of pre-modern hominids.  My favorite was Lucy, the famous three million year old adult female. She was about as tall as a seven year old modern human.  Her upper arms were long for swinging from tree branches, but her legs were humanlike, designed for upright walking.  I gazed into Lucy's sad but focussed glass eyes, sending my thoughts I wasn't sure where to ask for her statement. Finally Lucy responded, though to me or from me I couldn't tell: 

We were a kind of you; we walked along the forest floor for vast generations until you killed us.  You will never know our forest floor, our philosophy, the throb at the heart of the universe that beat through us and our forest floor.

I was sorry I asked.

Next was Heidelburg Man.  He reminded me of my grandfather, who had an all-purpose store in North Dakota - the broad forehead and wide lips, the wise patient expression, the random hair. H. Man was the first hominid to live in cold climates and hunt big game. The H. Man model was reconstructed from a 400,000 year old jawbone. There seemed no way to know from the extrapolated head and face if H. Man was as over-sexed as Homo Sapiens (Latin, "Man the wise"), but since we're thought to be direct descendants of H. Man, it would stand to reason. What else about H. Man stood to reason? Without loincloths, how were such things handled?  Were they handled? Are these questions important?  Would a Trump survival and/or resurgence clarify anything other than that patriarchy is in peril?

When I got home to Pearblossom around 4pm it was 115 degrees, and my little berg got one of its rare mentions on L.A.'s local news. To unwind and celebrate my refreshing vacation, I wrote a poem:

Unsex me here!

By H the H

Do it now, ye gods of men!

Genetic rules did not intend

the tools and hard drives in my den

to sport and rule outside my ken

Nor women in this feisty round

a key to being have they found

No logic to the urging sound

of gametes playing lost and found

Unsex us here election day!

All coming after then can say

our species finally had its say

and Robert, just coyote prey!

January 6 in Joshua Tree

Sorry for my lengthy absence, but I'm really getting into estivation! Seriously, if you faced roasting in the desert while staring at the apocalypse day after day, versus sensuous engagement with cool sand under a rock, which would you choose?

I'm sure I don't have to explain it to you. I don't want to hear about it anymore- the collapse of human civilization, our role as collapsees, the brightly packaged new humanoids buffed to a shine, waiting to replace us- I'm saying I don't want to hear about it anymore unless the story is delivered honestly, so that, say, David Muir of ABC would come on my dusty TV at 6:30pm and say, "My fellow humans, we have secretly longed for our downfall for so long that it has, regrettably, started to arrive. There's an old saying, 'Be careful what you wish for.' My fellow American humans, won't you help me reverse our wish? Altogether, say with me: 'I wish none of this were happening!'"

Anyway, that's my excuse for choosing shaded bliss, but last week, on the evening of July 21, 2022, I was jolted out of slumber by a blast in the early evening of telepathic energy shooting over the San Gabriels from all of L.A. County, down to San Diego and up to San Francisco and Portland and beyond.

I was in Joshua Tree National Park (130 miles southeast of my homebase, Pearblossom) at the time with my desert companion, Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster, who taught me how to estivate there, thinking it would be a productive venue because of the therapuetic effects of Joshua trees. Robert says they have strong "auras" (from Greek "breeze, breath"), the closest English word Robert can find for the gila term, Krrrech-ack sput sput sput.

Joshuas are highly conscious (they are aware, for instance, that they may be gone soon). It was the Joshuas who alerted us that night to the telepathic tsunami.

You probably made the connection that July 21st was when the prime-time January 6 hearing was, and the burst of mental energy from the population was the spreading realization that a political shift of dynamic proportions had taken place.

I'd like to share the following brief exchange I had with Robert about the hearings:

Me: "This unified, highly polished and possibly effective hearing has, for now, saved the two-party system. Democrats have reasserted their relevance, and they are now the rational seeming party even though, other than working to contain Trump, they are doing...well...not much."

Robert: "Harry, you child! Why does it take a gila monster to wake you up? The daily vicissitudes of human political systems do not matter to gilas except as local readouts of the planetary forecast, which as of this morning was: Critical disruptions across the Earth's surface starting next Thursday afternoon and continuing over the next eon."

Sorry, I should have warned new readers that Robert is, in human terms, an extreme cynic and pessimist, though he asserts that his mentality is standard for gilas and has served them well for 20 million years.

I don't have much more to say about my epiphany, such as it was. If I or Robert get any further earth shattering insights, we'll crawl out from under our rocks and make sure the news gets to you.

Until then, pleasant dreams!

Ask the slime

I  The problem

In the mirror it is trapped:

the solitary soul not easily unwrapped;

its universal juice, reluctant to be tapped,

when pressed provides a sorely needed sap

of poetry and useful things like that.

II  The crime

I thought it best, as if I need but rhyme

to indicate the truth, to tell about the time

humanity emerged out of the slime

and saw the upward path it sought to climb

and found too late its orphaned soul- the crime!

III  What now?

Whom to punish?  Who gets the dreadful blame?

Do we need a gun?  At whom to aim?

Or rather ask the slime, our single seed:

What did we leave in you?  What do we need?

What I think

Listen to the raindrops:

plink...plink... plink...

Saying something clear yet

indistinct.

Watch the swirling foam going

down the sink,

and you'll agree with me about

what I think.

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, reading my mind, to admonish me: "Harry, you are indulging in wishful thinking!  You want life to be a meaningless dream so you can escape from the reality 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).

Freud replied, "If the world is a meaningless chaos, 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 (for new readers, I'm a telepath, retired to the desert), "I sense 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 make life seem 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 real 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 assured by advisors that there was virtually no chance that the Taliban would take over Afghanistan after a U.S. withdrawal, but in 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 America's 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 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 line that relaxed me enough to take an afternoon nap:

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

[For unkown reasons, links on this page, including "Older Posts" below, are not working. For recommended further reading, search "Gregory's army of the young" and "Lasken's Log"]