Killing for a Theory -- Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment

Polish film director Andrzej Wajda points out in an article that Raskolnikov in "Crime and Punishment" kills for a "theory." Raskolnikov had already expounded upon this theory in his justification for murdering the old pawnbroker and her sister. That theory went something like this: There are two groups of people, one group are your ordinary worthless scum of the earth and the other are geniuses like himself, Raskolnikov,  who have the right merely for that reason to do what they will to the scum of the earth. He brings Napoleon into the argument, equates himself with him, claiming that Napolean took what he wanted and killed when he had to with no remorse because he had a theory and a belief in himself and its rightness, that his actions served a higher purpose. Thus Raskolnikov's actions served that same higher purpose.

In particular the argument was demonstrated again while he was engaged in one of his dialogs with the examining magistrate Porfiry Petrovich who is not entirely shocked by this theory. In fact he's the one who refers to it as a theory.  Raskolnikov wasn't some crackpot, foaming at the mouth, who hadn't thought through his theory. In fact Raskolnikov is a brilliant ex-law student yet a sensitive & compassionate individual who demonstrates his compassion on a number of occasions in particular with Katerina Ivanovna and his love for his sister, Mother and for the prostitute Sofya/Sonia, daughter of Katerina Ivanovna and he also confesses to her, his Magdalene. In fact she is forced to hear his confession. So if he is a psychopath it would have to be determined by psychiatric treatment, but since he is not a living, breathing being we have to go by his actions in the novel where he tried and believed he did good after the murders. No that wasn't in particular to atone for the murders, he still believed his theory, but actually the "good" developed out of the feelings of empathy within him, particularly for Sonia. Svidrigailov, that swine points out to Dunya that she should think of the good her brother might do one day (even though Svidrigailov has ulterior motives and is trying to blackmail Dunya into marrying him) According to Svidrigailov, Raskolnikov is a genius and he may do more good in the world eventually that allows one to ignore such a transgression against humanity as murdering two "worthless" women, one who in Raskolnikov's eyes was definitely scum of the earth. . . However, Poor Lizavetta, who witnessed the initial crime, was just collateral damage.  

But who else killed for a theory and still continues to kill for a theory? Everyone who has ever engaged in the violence of war in the modern era. Is Nazism a theory? Communism? Democracy? Even radical Islam? Not to mention all the other radical religious interpretations, interpreters & other smaller theories that operate where madmen masquerade with rationality. They don't foam at the mouth.  Hitler fulminated. He didn't foam. Stalin ruled with an iron fist. No one dared think of him much less call him a Madman until he was dead. President  Obama is as rational as any Professor can be and so was a no account like G.W. Bush and so were all Presidents and congressmen & congresswomen & all the judges.  But they all live for theories. All of their theories are right. All of their theories justify murder. Or they find ways to justify it when they have to. They are no different then the murderers who fly planes into buildings or who drop Sarin gas in a subway or blow up children in marketplaces. Because those people also don't foam at the mouth. They're rational.  They all share this one feature. They murder out of rationality and claim their theories are the true theories. They claim that their theories are better than the murderous theories against which they are opposed.

It's really no different than religion. Yes Islam is a religion. But its radical form, like radical Christianity, radical Judaism is also a theory. It is a theory that always proves that the adherent is always right and that they are doing it for the glory of God and the mass of people who would otherwise suffer if they didn't that they would lose the love of God. They claim to be merely the messenger listening to the words of a being greater than themselves. Political leaders, however, aren't listening to the word of a greater being but to their own inner greater being. That being is their so-called conscience. What Socrates called his "inner demon" they call their conscience.  But most if not every political leader's only conscience is to maintain the power that he possesses and thus it is this power that is rationalized as his conscience and if conscience dictates that murder must occur to salve that conscience, well so be it.

So what about our savior of the nation, Abraham Lincoln? Our greatest President. Our most revered. The one who was so ignominiously slain in office? Our Lincoln who "freed the slaves," an act of, I believe, genuine courage and conscience, even if it was the conscience of many at the time. By doing so he risked his political power. And there was John Brown who murdered in the cause of ending slavery. He was following his conscience. But he had to do that just like Lincoln had to though the ends were different. Brown murdered as an abolitionist. It was a necessary belief ultimately a theory supported by religious and moral belief. And even with Brown there is an element of rationality. But that "good" thing, ending slavery,  required at least according to Brown, murder. But it was limited, limited to the end of slavery. Lincoln, however,  had to condemn thousands to death for a theory. It wasn't just a religious and moral belief that prodded him to end slavery or his conscience screaming to end slavery but the overriding theory. That theory was that the United States was a democracy and that it would not, that it could never be torn asunder by states seceding because their secession was over the question of slavery. So whether or not Lincoln was just excerising his free will, listening to his conscience or willing to risk everything in order to maintain his power and hold together the nation we can never truly know. But murder was the necessary supporting beam for his theory.

Yet there have been those in the modern era who did not believe that their theories should be supported by murder. And for that what was their pay back? Ghandi, MLK Jr.  Even RFK who atoned for his sins was later murdered like Ghandi, like Martin Luther King Jr. for having a theory without murder as its driving force or main support.

In the modern era the ends always justify the means. and political leaders can always justify those means whether it means one dead, two dead or thousands upon thousands dead And so often it is done without anger, without prejudice, without concern for the knowable or unintended consequences along with innumerable innocents as collateral damage.   But for Raskolnikov. though there really were no "ends" to justify his actions, his means are murder in support of a theory, a theory that is just as boneheaded as any theory that justifies murder as its bearing wall or main beam or driving force.  

The origins of some commonly used phrases and customs

1. Where did "Piss Poor" come from?  They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot. And then once it was full it was taken and sold to the tannery... If you had to do this to survive you were "Piss Poor".  But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot...thus

2. "Didn't have a pot to piss in." Those who "didn't even have a pot to piss in" were the lowest of the low.

3. Custom of the bride carrying a bouquet.  In the 1500's most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June.. However, since they were starting to smell, brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.  Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

4.  "Don't throw the baby out with bath water." Baths when they occurred consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, Then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it.  Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water!"

5. "It's raining cats and dogs." Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying, "It's raining cats and dogs."
 
6. Canopied beds. There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed.  Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.

7. They're dirt poor.  The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, "Dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery In the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on the floor to help keep their footing..

8. A threshold as your entrance way to a house. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, It would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: a thresh hold.

9. The rhyme, "Peas porridge hot, etc."  In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire.  Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers In the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while.

Hence the rhyme:

“Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."
Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special.

10. "Bringing home the bacon." When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "bring home the bacon."

11. Chewing  the fat. They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.

12. Why tomatoes were considered poisonous. Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

13.  The Upper Crust.  Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, And guests got the top, or the upper crust.

14.  Holding a wake after death.  Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom; “holding a wake."

15. Saved by the bell or he was a dead ringer.   England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave.  When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.

16. The Graveyard Shift.  Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, “saved by the bell" or was "considered a dead ringer."

On the aftermath of the George Zimmerman verdict

I'll be blunt. Where is the revolt? Where is the bringing it to the streets? The anger over the George Zimmerman verdict seems to have ended. (Not to mention that the anger, if there was any, over the Edward Snowden affair has also disappeared. Or the anger over murderous drone strikes. Or the anger over the diminishing of our constitutional rights while fantasies about royals, however, have taken over.  Such things are to be expected.) But in the immediate aftermath of Zimmerman's not guilty verdict, some held up signs. Some marched. Some shouted slogans. Others raised their fists and wore hoodies. There were shouts of anger, tears of despair and the odd bit of window breaking and other sporadic outbursts.  The parents, the sad broken parents of Trayvon, their child, were prodded, by who or what I do not know, into being selfless, forgiving, calm, rational while feeling terribly dispirited & full of sorrow, their anger almost seemingly surgically taken from them by calls for calm or perhaps fears of not wanting to be catalysts of violence. It's understandable.  It's understandable that they would prefer to have their private grief. 

But the President of the United States meanwhile assisted by the news media truly diffused it all.  The President said: I am Trayvon. Demand freedom.  Demand justice. Demand rights. But do it quietly. Be peaceful. Be orderly. And we all did exactly that. There was nothing different. We did exactly what we always do. Nothing! For it is better that we do nothing  as we can go on with our individual lives, our individual days, our individual selves, confronting our nagging inconveniences and paying our bills.  It's all swept under the rug so it seems. It's pushed aside.  It's stale like yesterday's coffee still sitting on the stove.  But having done what was done in that aftermath of "not guilty" we can pat ourselves on our back, our collective backs, for having had the courage to speak out, but willing to keep our powder dry, live to fight another day, hold on to our anger to let it loose the next time an outrage is committed. 

There will be another day and there won't be another day. There will be another day because there is always another day, a new outrage, another we can't take it anymore outrage. Another stunning, shocking, how can it get any worse than this day kind of day.  And yet there will not be another day. There will not be another day because the next response to the next outrage will be the same as the last response to the last outrage. This is because we are paralyzed. This is because we have no leaders. We run in circles and we scream and shout but we get nowhere and we get nothing. Anyone who will take up the mantle as a leader will be immediately suspect will immediately be thought of as someone who has an ulterior motive, an axe to grind, a person with a childhood problem that is being played out in the sandbox of today's reality.

Motive. What might the ulterior motive be of a leader who would lead us out of this morass? Search me. I'm sure the solons of the media could make up something.  But what can be done? Nothing as we talk everything to death. Everything ends up in talk and we take the easy way out because we are all exhausted from the talking and do absolutely nothing. And we slip away into what is the easiest thing to do. That is the real motive, the motive of those who have a stake in seeing nothing done, nothing changed.  

So we return to yoga. We have that run in the park.  We order those tasty fries. We repair to our favorite watering hole or have another Starbucks coffee.  We sit in front of our computers, laptops and TV sets, stream our favorite shows, or we read another detective novel where morality ends up to be upheld. We recharge our smart phones and post another message somewhere or we watch our children play with tablets but carefully regulate what apps they play with. And above all we show up to places with our headphones on, our little mp3 players crushing our hearing with urban lyrics, that subsume our anger. Have a nice day world. We are pathetic. We are weak and we get what we deserve. 
   

Secret to Prism

Secret to Prism program: Even bigger data seizure

By STEPHEN BRAUN, ANNE FLAHERTY, JACK GILLUM and MATT APUZZO

— Jun. 15 2:53 PM EDT

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the months and early years after 9/11, FBI agents began showing up at Microsoft Corp. more frequently than before, armed with court orders demanding information on customers.

Around the world, government spies and eavesdroppers were tracking the email and Internet addresses used by suspected terrorists. Often, those trails led to the world's largest software company and, at the time, largest email provider.

The agents wanted email archives, account information, practically everything, and quickly. Engineers compiled the data, sometimes by hand, and delivered it to the government.
 

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/secret-prism-success-even-bigger-data-seizure 

Not a big surprise

NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

National Security Agency discloses in secret Capitol Hill briefing that thousands of analysts can listen to domestic phone calls. That authorization appears to extend to e-mail and text messages too.

by Declan McCullagh

June 15, 2013 4:39 PM PDT




The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that."   (Read the Rest below)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589495-38/nsa-admits-listening-to-u.s-phone-calls-without-warrants/

On NSA spying and who we are going to convict.

Congressman Peter King wants to prosecute the whistle blower.  That's a way to handle it.  Arrest and prosecute the messenger. 

Isn't it time to stop pointing fingers and start looking at ourselves and how much we are part or maybe the whole of the problem? I look at my Verizon bill and I can see all the phone calls made and to what number and length of time. The same thing with my internet house phone. My cable company knows what I watch and has access to what I DVR. Netflix tells me what I recently watched and makes fairly accurate predictions of what I might like to watch.. Amazon has my wish list and does the same as Netflix. I'm bombarded by spam. How did they get my email address? My internet provider knows what websites I go to even if I have a privacy setting. They know my banks. How far away is it that someone can crack my passwords? (It's easily done by those in the know BTW). I guess the difference is that the government who can easily access anything these days as major corporations do have a different POV for all this. They are looking for suspicious things and anyone associated with someone under suspicion becomes suspicious whether they do something wrong or not. Re: "National Security letters" for example. So we do have something to worry about, but pointing fingers at whistle blowers only makes it worse.

The Banality of "Don't be Evil"

“THE New Digital Age” is a startlingly clear and provocative blueprint for technocratic imperialism, from two of its leading witch doctors, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, who construct a new idiom for United States global power in the 21st century. This idiom reflects the ever closer union between the State Department and Silicon Valley, as personified by Mr. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, and Mr. Cohen, a former adviser to Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton who is now director of Google Ideas.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/opinion/sunday/the-banality-of-googles-dont-be-evil.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

Boyhood

Boyhood is an attempt at climbing as high as the stars. And once forgotten one is still climbing. I am looking out at the street from my window through glass that ripples and has bubbles but is always clean. I have many friends, but I am always up before them watching the street for the first to emerge. I never am out first. On most Saturday mornings the sun glints against the windows on the other side of the street blanking them out and sometimes hurting my eyes.

On some mornings when it's raining the Astoria, Queens summer streets are steamy and bathed in purple light while streams run along the gutters with bits of paper racing to the sewers. Behind me through the open window in the bathroom I hear the water running down the drains and splashing into the courtyard and as the drops get slower I know when the rain is over.

I sometimes have to wait a long time for Billy K. I can't say his last name but I like the name "Billy K" because it reminds me of the cowboy, Billy the Kid. Billy K still is missing two teeth in front. Mine came in real early before I was seven. Billy and I go to the library a lot. I never went to a library before Billy K. I didn't know there was such a place. The first time I was there I was scared.

"They're going to give me books for free, Billy?"

"That's what they're supposed to do."

The way Billy said it, I was expecting to be called stupid or silly. But he never said anything to make me feel bad. Billy K was a quiet boy and mostly we sat on his stoop and looked at books or played Go fish or talked about the war that had past us almost before we were born as if we were old men who lived through it all. Billy did most of the talking especially about his father who was in the war, but who I never saw.

Still I didn't always play with Billy K and one day when I walked past him to go down the block to where Larry and Dennis lived, he looked up at me with those missing teeth showing and said, "Want to go to the library today?"

"No. Not today Billy. Today I'm playing a different game."

"With who?"

"You know Larry and Dennis?"

"I don't like them. They always pick on me." He said.

"They don't pick on me. They like me. Dennis showed me his father's Japanese rifle that he got during the war. We always play war." Billy smiled up at me, a knowing smile, and then looked down at the ground between his legs and I walked by.

One morning on my way to school I walked past Billy K's stoop hoping to see him come bounding down arms flapping and book bag by the handles. There was a truck opposite his stoop and a ramp touched the street from a door in its side like a great tongue. Two men were struggling up the ramp with a green plastic covered couch. Billy K was standing next to the stoop watching not dressed for school.

"You're going to school today, Billy?" I asked.

"No. Today I'm moving."

"So you're going tomorrow?"

"I don’t know, probably."

"Where are you moving to?"

"I don't really know. . . I think the Bronx."

"Where's that, around the corner?"

"It's around lots of corners far away, maybe as far as

Japan."

"That far? I won't see you then tomorrow?" I asked.

"Can you go to the Bronx?" he asked.

"The Bronx? I don't know. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Can you come here?"

"I'll come if my mother lets me. I know this place pretty good." Billy said.

"Ok. Goodbye Billy, I have to go to school. I'll see you then. Maybe we can go to the library."

"Yeah, ok. Goodbye," he said. "I hope I see you some place."

I never saw Billy K again.

Our Kind of Ridiculous: Yous, Me and Blackness as Probable Cause

Kiese Laymon

When I was twenty-four, I flew paper airplanes past the apartment of a thirty-two-year-old white boy named Kurt in Emmaus, Pennsylvania. Kurt rocked a greasy brown mullet, bragged about ironing his bleached Lee's, and said the word "yous" a lot. Even with caked-up cornbread sealing the cracks of his teeth, and a raggedy mustache that looked like it was colored by a hyper six-year-old, Kurt always reminded me of somebody cute.
Kurt, whose apartment was directly above mine, lived with two women. One was his girlfriend. She could see. One was his wife. She could not.
Three little boys lived in the apartment with Kurt and his two partners. The youngest boy was Kurt's girlfriend's child. This miniature Viking loved to run his muddy hands through his blond hair and grin when he wasn't growling. The other two boys looked like they rolled around naked in a tub of melted tootsie rolls before coming outside to play.

http://gawker.com/5990859/our-kind-of-ridiculous-yous-me-and-blackness-as-probable-cause

Why is there a Pope?

Why is there a Pope? (No other major religion has the equivalent.) There's probably a ridiculously long explanation for this though you won't find it in the New Testament. Yes there is Matthew 16:18 but that passage doesn't say "Pope." And there is no absolute proof that Matthew, apostle and one-time tax collector, was the scribe of the first synoptic gospel but may have been written by an unknown non-observer.   I think the idea of such a church structure that has at its head a "ruler" who has the last word didn't come from the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth but is based on the political organization of the Roman Empire. 

British scientists announce breakthrough in turning DNA into data storage

© AFP Photo

Scientists in Britain on Wednesday announced a breakthrough in the quest to turn DNA into a revolutionary form of data storage.

A speck of man-made DNA can hold mountains of data that can be freeze-dried, shipped and stored, potentially for thousands of years, they said.

The contents are "read" by sequencing the DNA - as is routinely done today, in genetic fingerprinting and so on - and turning it back into computer code.

"We already know that DNA is a robust way to store information because we can extract it from bones of woolly mammoths, which date back tens of thousands of years, and make sense of it," said Nick Goldman of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) in Cambridge.

"It's also incredibly small, dense and does not need any power for storage, so shipping and keeping it is easy."

DNA is the famous double helix of compounds - a long, coiled molecular "ladder" comprising four chemical rungs, adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine, which team up in pairs. C teams up with G, and T teams up with A.

The letter sequence comprises the genome, or the chemical blueprint for making and sustaining life. Human DNA has more than three billion letters, coiled into packages of 24 chromosomes.

The project entails taking data in the form of zeros and 1s in computing's binary code, and transcribing it into "Base-3″ code, which uses zeros, 1s and 2s.

The data is transcribed for a second time into DNA code, which is based on the A, C, G and T. A block of five letters is used for a single binary digit.

The letters are then turned into molecules, using lab-dish chemicals.

The work does not entail using any living DNA, nor does it seek to create any life form and in fact the man-made code would be quite useless in anything biological, the researchers said.

"We have absolutely no intention of messing with life," said Goldman.

Only short strings of DNA can be made, which means the message has to be chopped up into small sections of 117 letters, each attached to a tiny address tag, rather like packet-switching in Internet data, which enables data to be reassembled.

To prove their concept, the team encoded an MP3 recording of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech; a digital photo of their lab; a PDF of the landmark study in 1953 that described the structure of DNA; a file of all of Shakespeare's sonnets; and a document that describes the data storage technique.

"We downloaded the files from the Web and used them to synthesise hundreds of thousands of pieces of DNA. The result looks like a tiny piece of dust," said Emily Leproust of Agilent, a US biotech company that took the digital data and used it to synthesise molecules of DNA in the lab.

Agilent then mailed the sample back across the Atlantic to the EBI, where the researchers soaked the DNA in water to reconstitute it and used standard sequencing machines to unravel the code. They recovered and read the files with 100-percent accuracy.

The work follows a big step last year when scientists at Harvard announced they had stored 700 terabytes of data - enough for around 70,000 movies - in a gram of DNA.

The new method eliminates the risk of error when the DNA is read, say the researchers, whose work appears in the journal Nature.

"We figured, let's break up the code into lots of overlapping fragments going in both directions, with indexing information showing where each fragment belongs in the overall code, and make a coding scheme that doesn't allow repeats," said co-author Ewan Birney.

"That way, you would have to have the same error on four different fragments for it to fail, and that would be very rare."

Data is accumulating massively around the world, and storing it is a headache. Magnetic and optical discs are voluminous, need to be kept in cool, dry conditions and are prone to decay.

"The only limit (for DNA storage) is the cost," said Birney.

Sequencing and reading the DNA takes a couple of weeks with present technology, so it is not suitable for jobs needing instant data retrieval.

Instead, it would be appropriate for data that would be stored for between 500 and 5,000 years, such as a doomsday encyclopaedia of knowledge and culture.

But on current trends, sequencing costs could fall by a factor of 20 within a decade, making DNA storage economically feasible for timeframes of less than 50 years, the authors claim.

Source: Agency France-Presse

Facing it

Denial

    There's a scene that plays out in my head every time I hear a certain part of Richard Strauss's "Death and Transfiguration." The music slowly but dramatically builds, crashes with the cracking of a kettle drum, then thundering brasses and tireless strings take over; suddenly the sound is like a soaring jet coming in on a strafing run. A gash opens up in the sky as the plane passes overhead and a flood of emotion sweeps me away, as my flesh rises and my breath feels pulled from my lungs.

The music levels off to cruising speed and everything is taken with it. Floating souls of all earthly beings head toward the horizon which has become an amorphous pink depth.  All creatures that crawl, walk, fly, or swim swirl into this pink entrancing foam.  A vortex sucks up from the sky and I can almost feel the rush of air as the brasses plummet beneath the strings, and I am loosened from myself for that brief instant when it feels like I've taken flight.  The whole universe seems to be engaged. It's on a grand scale and it's a gigantic palette.  Something is waiting, somewhere above and beyond and all the last images that were cherished diminish in a movie fade out.  There is no longer pain, grief, remorse.  I am transfigured.

    Such is idealized death, idealized as to bode promise not fear, idealized because it is my imagination prompted by Richard Strauss, my Catholic background and about 40 years of watching movies.  However, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross might, if she were here, call it "denial." The terminally ill as we have learned through her writing first deny when they have been told they are going to die.  Art, being emblematic, sometimes seems to me a way to ward off evil, a sort of totemism. Even though I am not ill terminally or otherwise, Kubler-Ross has already uttered it. I am going to die someday. I am terminal. That is why for me creating art is denial.

Anger

    I am on a small boat, running on a vein of royal blue, twisting deep into the dense green jungle towards its heart. The destination is a rendezvous point, a small dock on a tiny river village outside of Santa Domingo in the Dominican Republic. It's the middle of April, 1965, three days before the U.S. invades, and this can only be a movie that I am in and am about to replay for you.

    This morning after the secure from general quarters, the Officer of the Deck instructs me to get ready to put my boat, the PL, in the water. The PL has a super charged, bored
and stroked six cylinder, gray marine, that accelerates so smoothly a nickel can stand on its end on the head cover as the throttle is pulled fully open.  It's my job to take care of that engine. It's now my luck to go where it goes. My job notwithstanding, I still have to put on full dress whites, wrap my bell bottoms in canvas puttees, and spit shine my shoes. They change their minds about the shoes in the last minute, telling me to put on my tennis shoes.
    After the boat is launched, the coxswain pilots it along-side a Jacob's ladder hanging from my ship, the landing ship dock, The USS Fort Snelling (LSD-30). Two marines climb down with M-16’s and both the Gunnery officer and the XO follow with forty-fives strapped to their sides.  They’re in battle fatigues, and without rank identified, they huddle in the cabin with the coxswain who steadies the boat with short revs of the engine. Suddenly we pull away with a jolt.

    At about two miles to go to the island the boatswain’s mate (known as the bow hook) and I are made to stand at parade rest in the well of the boat behind the engine compartment.  The boat is about twenty-five feet long and six feet wide.  It's all battleship gray, made of wood, but molded and streamlined for speed, looking a bit like a small PT boat. The bow has a six inch high chrome railing, the cabin follows with hand grips on the roof;  and behind the cabin in the well the engine roars inside a raised wooden compartment.  We stand just behind the engine, grateful we're not made to stand on the space above the rudder assembly, the stern or the tail of the boat where an American flag flaps wildly.

    We enter the mouth of the river and as the coxswain de-throttles, the supercharger screams then lowers its tune from a shrill whistle to a faint sigh. The Gunnery officer peers out from under the cabin and orders the bow hook to stand on the bow.  I can see the shadow of the officer's beard even though it is only about 0800..

    I stay put and watch the bow hook shimmy his way forward along the cabin, gripping the hand grips then leaping agilely onto the bow.  He gets down on his hands and knees, pulls a line pole from its holder, and begins to knock away at the hanging brush as we pass through. The gunnery officer, a little dramatically, I think, loads & cocks his forty-five.  The XO hunkers himself down behind the coxswain his gun unholstered and the two marine guards each lean their weapons out of both sides of the cabin, the muzzles pointing toward opposite shores. Finally the gunnery officer orders me to jump up on the boat's stern and stand at parade rest. I was scared shit before, now I may have to ask someone to pass me the toilet paper.

    Up on the stern I think of this, this preparation done as though I am the sacrifice. I assume the parade rest position, but then look around trying to hide the look of stark terror I know is on my face.  I see blue water, the green jungle, my boat and the automatic weapons. I wonder almost out loud why I don't have one, and grow so angry that I wish I could snatch a weapon and do away with these officers and marines.  My God, I am going to die, you mother fuckers.  Suddenly, the flag whips between my legs and flaps ominously, wrapping itself around my legs and swathing my genitals, a death shroud. But no I can’t die. I won’t die, ever.


Bargaining

    I am on one of my many early morning walks. It's Sunday. Winter floods all the senses. I walk as usual across Smith Street, down Butler, across Court, along Kane and finally cross over the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and onto Columbia Street. I walk south. The neighborhood changes from Carroll Gardens to Red Hook. Buildings are in deserted and collapsed states. Lumber, bricks, garbage are scattered amid oil blotches and dog shit. Abandoned shopping carts look as though they were tossed by a tornado against a rusting chain link fence, and curbs sinking into the gutter blur the distinction between sidewalk and the street. It's Beirut, Baghdad, Brooklyn. It's not a movie, but as usual I think I am in one.

    It is frigid, but a man, a Rambo styled bandana tied around his head, naked to the waist, sleek and muscular, emerges from under a broken stairway. He stops to watch me. I remind myself, since there isn't another soul on the block in either direction, that I have two six pound weights in my hands. If he takes steps in my direction, it's either him or me. During this rush of terror I have no other thought and just pump my arms like a prizefighter and continue moving.  The feeling is the same as taking off in airplane. You can't back up.  Mercifully he disappears beneath his stairway like a troll.

    By the time I reach Carroll Street to traverse the footbridge back over the BQE to civilization, back through Carroll Gardens, I've convinced myself that I'm just a paranoid. But as I climb the steps of the bridge the incident becomes a message. St. Stephen's church on the other side of the bridge tolls its bell heavily. Blung. Blung. Blung. It repeats for several minutes. Beneath the walkway, the cars and trucks roll thickly and noisily even at this hour, most heading up and out of the blackened pit of the BQE toward the open air Gowanus Expressway. Two large green signs with white lettering point the ways. I'm humbled by the bells and overwhelmed by the traffic noise. I turn around to see the sun's winter brightness, low on the horizon blotting out the distance where the westbound traffic is coming from and the eastbound traffic is going. I'm praying for forgiveness and salvation, suddenly and I see it as a long take with deep focus. I’ll be good. I’ll be good I promise I’ll be good. I just need another chance.  

Depression

    I'm in Seward Park High School. This is a famous old school on the lower east side just south of Delancey Street on Essex. I'm there for a civil service exam. All test takers are hustled into an auditorium, a high-ceilinged, arching structure.  Sunlight streams in through the sandy colored windows.  We're made to sit on peeling wood laminated seats for nearly an hour, and then given instructions by a bald man who reminds me of Ed Koch.  The first question he fields is about toilet availability.  He pauses and looks around, beckoning laughter with his wry look.  I'm unwilling even to smile as I'm overtaken with my thoughts. I look around; nearly everyone looks between 40 and 50. About forty years ago we would have been in a similar auditorium, acting out our thoughts instead of thinking them.

    We're dismissed to our testing rooms, row by row, and in silence, and I'm reminded of church services that I attended when we would get up row by row to receive communion.  We follow one another through the hallways, which deepen the mystery for me, up winding dirty gray stairways, worn with a century of foot falls, past the wire meshed windows, up to our rooms on the fourth floor. So this is what it's like, our final hour already passed, I think to myself, as I slide into a seat joined to a desk and feel a millennium's worth of frozen hard gum stuck to the underside.  Fade to black.

Acceptance

    I am at Yankee stadium. What can be here to disturb my imagination? Then it happens, something I have witnessed at least a million times.  For both teams it's a meaningless game, both being out of the pennant race and it's the end of September.  The game is tied in the bottom of the ninth. There are two out.  Runners are on second and third.  The batter, not a bad hitter, has a three and two count. The pitcher puts his foot on the rubber, leans forward and looks into the catcher for the sign. Those of us left  in attendance, about three thousand  are mostly on our feet, getting ready to leave as soon as a run is knocked in.  We all should have left a long time ago but they’ll be no more baseball for us until next year. The pitcher takes the sign, and then takes a deep breath. He looks over to the runner at third, then at second. Will he forget them and just pitch to the hitter? Anyone who would try to steal home in this game would have to just be crazy anyway. It's not worth it. Or is it?

    The pitcher works from the set position then releases the pitch. It's an outside fastball, but too close to the hitter’s zone to let it blow by. He swings. The ball is fouled up to his right into an empty upper deck in right field. The ball bounces among the empty seats, rolls down the stairs and disappears. I stare after it lost in thought. No one goes chasing the ball. I turn back to the game but too late to see the batter strike out. The game goes into extra innings, but I've suddenly lost interest. Where has the ball disappeared to? No one has pursued it. Clearly it was only a foul in an unimportant game. Even the baseball maniacs who would show up for a game like this don't want it. For that minute I see it as the long and final take before the end.

    It is what it is, but it’s not a satisfactory end. What is wrong with that foul ball that it should be ignored and shunned as it was except for my eyes that followed it? As a ball it started out pretty much the same as all the others. It had a cork center, surrounded by two layers of rubber. It was wrapped in gray and black twine and dipped in a gluey substance. The two halves of horsehide, looking like figure eights, had been hand-sewn with ninety-six stitches, by piece workers in Haiti. And at its beginning it was a brand new spanking baseball, snowy white, with raised red stitches and a black logo, weighing in at 5 1/4 ounces and nine inches of spherical circumference.  An auspicious beginning, its chance come round, a misguided then forgotten hit.  

    Unfortunately after writing this, I'm facing death left with one nagging almost childish question: What is the relationship of one ordinary baseball, that goes foul, to that of the entire universe?  So I am brought back to Strauss, to art. Deny. Deny. There's no money in just accepting the inevitable.