Rosie O'Donnell's view has been obscured by the top brass at ABC, and now she will have to find a different vista from which she can divine truth, and dispense her happy bromides. Curiously, a Rosie cohort, Charlie Sheen, is apparently seeing some sort of light at the end of his nose: He admits he might be wrong about the conspiracy-laden 9/11 film, "Loose Change." The good news is that he might have doubts; the bad news is that Rosie, who has also touted the film, has not had such doubts. Change comes slow, no doubt, and change, like wits, can even sometimes come loose.
Stepping into the news to eclipse all this is Cindy Sheehan, the indefatigable anti-war protester who has, apparently, finally tired out. She is heading back to California to reconnect with her remaining children. News has it that she is selling her land (Camp Casey, named for her fallen son) near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
It is hard not to pity Ms. Sheehan. Her own words (found here in her "resignation letter"), which are very much worth reading, are filled with pain. Perhaps the most telling line is the one about her son, who died -- freely -- while serving the American armed forces in Iraq. Ms. Sheehan writes simply, "I failed my boy and that hurts the most." [emphasis mine]
Ms. Sheehan has admitted something to us all in her resignation letter posted at The Daily Kos. She has admitted that the most painful thing is not the Iraq War or partisan duplicity or partisan betrayal. The most painful thing is not even the death of her son. The most painful thing is that she feels she let him down by buying "into the [American] system."
One can only grieve for Ms. Sheehan, for it seems she has not yet had the chance to really grieve. Her cause, her passion, and her many minions kept her, or so I believe, from truly addressing her deepest sorrows. Today, she is finally returning to California to try to restore relations with her surviving children, to try to regain the things she has lost. But what things are those, one might ask, if not the very things that are most valued in the system known as America?
If I was a friend of Ms. Sheehan's and I received a letter from her like the one she posted at The Daily Kos, I would be concerned that my friend was contemplating suicide. I am not her friend, and yet I am still concerned. For it is clear that she feels she failed. If her greatest pain comes when she considers that her failures led to her son's death, then she is not really blaming America or war or Iraq or Democrats or Republicans or even Casey for his death, she's blaming herself.
That is too much for any mother to bear.
Ms. Sheehan strikes me as exhausted and disoriented. Someone needs to get her home, hide her from the world, and give her lots of silence. She should stay away from TVs and radios and newspapers and the Internet; she should be given lots of love, hot tea, and pampering. She needs a long holiday from the world and, perhaps most importantly, her own persona needs to be exorcized. Her resignation letter proves that she teeters on the edge of sanity. Her words are those of a martyred messiah, a snubbed prophet. She sees things better than the rest of us; she knows more than America. That sort of inflated sense of self is not healthy. It is the very stuff of craziness. It is the sound of exhaustion, of collapse.
May God give her the healing and peace she seeks. Let us all pray.
Peace to you.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
(A related Contratimes essay, "Weapons of Miss Direction", which addresses Ms. Sheehan's quasi-gnosticism, can be found here.)
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Faithless In Fashion
It all might be due to the easy trendiness of atheism these days, with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins recently dominating certain booklists with their seemingly trenchant criticisms of all things theological. How else to explain my sudden and shocking waking in the deep dark of last night with the following statement breaking sweet dreams' synapses in the core of my normally happy brain?
If there is no God, then I hate this universe.
What could the oracle mean?
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
[Addendum, 5.26.07: Since this post has inspired a decent discussion on atheism in the comments thread, I think it relevant to refer readers to my essay, "The Existence of God: A Letter To Christopher Hitchens," dated September 20, 2006. I believe it is essential reading for any serious inquiry into the existence of God. I am not suggesting that it is a prerequisite for joining the discussion here. ALSO, I think it should be noted that Luke Buckham, who comments frequently at Contratimes, is more than a mere internet friend. Luke and I know each other in the real world; we have had numerous face-to-face, heart-to-heart discussions, some over beer, some over burritos, and some while standing in a dry river bed. Hence, Luke and I might write here (and elsewhere) to each other differently than we might write to other correspondents. And, though I know we try to avoid doing so, we may occasionally make references to things NOT SAID in online conversations.
Lastly, I think it's only polite (and balanced) to refer readers to Luke's essay against theism posted at Luke's website, "O Machine." The title of his polemic is "SHARP WORDS, part 1: Are you an atheist?" Thanks. BG]
If there is no God, then I hate this universe.
What could the oracle mean?
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
[Addendum, 5.26.07: Since this post has inspired a decent discussion on atheism in the comments thread, I think it relevant to refer readers to my essay, "The Existence of God: A Letter To Christopher Hitchens," dated September 20, 2006. I believe it is essential reading for any serious inquiry into the existence of God. I am not suggesting that it is a prerequisite for joining the discussion here. ALSO, I think it should be noted that Luke Buckham, who comments frequently at Contratimes, is more than a mere internet friend. Luke and I know each other in the real world; we have had numerous face-to-face, heart-to-heart discussions, some over beer, some over burritos, and some while standing in a dry river bed. Hence, Luke and I might write here (and elsewhere) to each other differently than we might write to other correspondents. And, though I know we try to avoid doing so, we may occasionally make references to things NOT SAID in online conversations.
Lastly, I think it's only polite (and balanced) to refer readers to Luke's essay against theism posted at Luke's website, "O Machine." The title of his polemic is "SHARP WORDS, part 1: Are you an atheist?" Thanks. BG]
Monday, May 21, 2007
AnAlogy Gore-alogy: Fun With Al
As a preview to Al Gore's forthcoming book, The Assault On Reason (see my essay here), I thought it would be fun to see how readers complete the following sentence:
Al Gore writing about reason is like _______________.
OR, readers could finish this sentence:
Al Gore lecturing us about the assault on reason is a bit like ________________.
(For a few examples, you can look at the end of my essay posted Saturday, May 19, 2007.)
Invite your friends! Pass the word.
Blessings and blissings!
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
Al Gore writing about reason is like _______________.
OR, readers could finish this sentence:
Al Gore lecturing us about the assault on reason is a bit like ________________.
(For a few examples, you can look at the end of my essay posted Saturday, May 19, 2007.)
Invite your friends! Pass the word.
Blessings and blissings!
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Reason Is Not So Fooled: Al Gore's New Book
I am back, and I am mad as fire ants on skin. Actually, I am merely back.
Let me ask you a few questions. If I write a book entitled Freedom From Hate: Rejecting intolerance, bigotry and prejudice, and the psycho-social constructs that protect them, wouldn't you expect me to be free of hate, intolerance, bigotry, and the psycho-social constructs that protect them? If I write a book called Loosed At Last: Self-delivery from addiction, would it be imprudent of you to ask whether I was the one photographed last week puking with Christopher Hitchens outside Circa Tabac?º What if I pen the best-selling Regular As Sunrise: 10 sure steps to overcoming diarrhea? Would it be proper of you to presume that I did not write that fine book while sitting at a desk in my bathroom?
Just asking.
_______________
If the writer of Ecclesiastes is correct, that there is a season for everything under the sun, then there is a time for scoffing, for sarcasm. A friend of mine once said that she could not embrace Christianity because there was not a single reference in the whole Bible to God laughing. One wonders what she meant: the Bible has several references to God laughing at idols, scoffing at vanities, mocking false and phony gods. In other words, there is a time for scoffing, and the time is now.
You may have already garnered from my many essays about Al Gore that I am incurably Algore-aphobic. I am very discomforted by the over-crowding inside Al Gore's head. But that is the least of my phobias. I am much more phobic that Al Gore is presenting himself to the world as deity.
Surely you have heard that Mr. Gore is about to release a new book called (I am not making this up), The Assault on Reason. No, this is not autobiography, nor is it a confession or tell-all foisted upon the world to generate sympathy for his reckless rhetoric, his own sins of the mind. Those of us paying attention find just a hint of delight, an almost arthritic mirth, in the irony of it all: Al Gore is going to pontificate on the world's flight from reason. We giggle, but with some pain: our joints rattle and grind, joints battered by years if not decades of twists and sprains and hyper-extensions earned while fighting the fallaciousness of mass hysteria, even mass opinion.
Let us recall for the moment that Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, is from credits-to-Oscar one long fallacy: the film unrelentingly confuses or, if not confuses, conflates correlation and causality in an almost insouciant non causa pro causa polemic. Of course, this is not to suggest that the conclusion is right or wrong; Mr. Gore may be infallibly correct in his conclusion that humans† are killing the planet and that the need for green living is of moral imperative. But his method is utterly irrational. His method is an assault on reason. Even his appeals to "most scientists" or "scientific consensus" are fallacious, as is his appeal to experts; both are fallacies, the former, the fallacy argumentum ad populum (or consensus gentium, the appeal to majorities), the latter, the appeal to authority.
In 1987, I had the pleasure of hanging out with Al Gore at a house party held on the edges of a tiny New Hampshire town. He was just beginning his bid for the White House; the twenty or so folks gathered in the kitchen and living room were remarkably interested in his words. But they were not sufficiently interested to give him the Democratic nomination in 1988, nor were they overly awed by him. My impression then (vague as it is now), was that the only person sufficiently awed by Mr. Gore was Mr. Gore himself.
Alas, I find he has not changed at all over the last 20 years. I also find that his current fans are giving him a pass. But since I am not a fan (nor am I at all current), he does not pass my way without receiving a jeer and a tomato (both the jeer and the tomato, by the way, are certified organic and totally carbon neutral; the jeer is also free-range). My incredulity slips into sarcasm at the idea: Mr. Gore has come to the rescue; he is going to enlighten us all to the true value and blissfulness of reason. He shall demonstrate logical perfection; he will rise above the profanum vulgus and model proper thinking. But one look at his unintentionally hilarious essay on economics from 2006 will give you a sense of Mr. Gore's vast skills in clear thinking. Perhaps my reference to that essay is unfair; perhaps lucidity is not one of reason's predicates. Perhaps muddied and abstruse prose is the crown jewel of reason. Perhaps.
The Gore Advantage
The advantage to writing a book called The Assault on Reason (TAR) is that the author instantly presents himself as the Most Reasonable Human. For surely the man who writes such a book could not be the most assaultive force on reason, could he? No, he could not. He can only be reason's protector, exemplar, purifier. He must be reason's very template.
And this is proven (I use the word the way Mr. Gore uses it) by TAR's description at Amazon. I would be remiss not to demand that you read it. Please! Go check out this most-reasonable description of this important bulwark against anti-rationalism. It is eye-opening: you will be aghast at your own benighted reasoning skills. A light will shine in your darkness, I am sure.
I just pray that the light shining in your darkness is not a bullet coursing through your incredulous head. I hope that, instead of inflicting any injury upon your lovely self, you will turn toward the light through derisive laughter. It is surely where and how I must turn. Laughter, for me, is the only reasonable alternative to suicide.* A high school friend of mine published next to his yearbook picture a veiled dig at the interminable laughter of a girl he thought he loved. He wrote, "Laughter is the air release of all one fears." But my friend was wrong. Laughter is not the release of all one fears. It is the release of all one hates. I either laugh at Al Gore or I kill myself; I either open my mouth and release my hatred or I open my cranium some other way in order to let out what I loathe. And I do loathe "Al Gore"; I hate him.ª But I do not hate Al Gore the man, the gentleman I met in 1987 or the man that holds his wife's heart. I do not hate the Al Gore loved by God. No, I hate Al Gore the commodity, the product. The merchandised. And the only passage to sanity I can find is one that demands -- for a season -- derision, mockery, scoffing, laughter. I laugh at Mr. Gore, at his absurd over-reaching.
(OK. Let me grant that there's nothing more irrational than for me to critique a book I have not yet read. I admit it is hard to read a book that is not yet even in print. But I am not sure it is unreasonable of me to make a wild prediction: In his new book, Mr. Gore is not going to be elucidating his many intellectual mistakes. Nor do I expect his book to consist of one long string of apologies. And I also do not expect Mr. Gore to admit that he is, of all people, quite eminently dis-qualified to write this book. This is a book that is, above all else, committed to promoting Al Gore.)
Al Gore's book is, like so many deeds and screeds of too many today, mere psychological projection. Mr. Gore is going to point out the sins of others not knowing (apparently) that such sins are his own. (I am reminded of what I wrote to Open Ide, a cowardly visitor to this site a few weeks ago.) And the only sins any one of us is truly expert in is the sins that are indeed our own. The Assault on Reason is a child's game of distraction: Look! What's that behind you?! Mr. Gore hopes you will ignore what is in front of your face, just so he can slink away, unchallenged, but nonetheless beloved for his commitment to "dialogue," to "reasoned conversation."
But Al Gore writing to us about reason is a bit like my lecturing Fabio on hair care. Al Gore promoting reason is not unlike Madonna promoting chastity. It's like Bill Maher telling the pope to cool down his opinions. It's a bit like Rosie O'Donnell advising Steven Wright on paradox, or Paula Abdul coaching Melinda Doolittle on how to be more vocally dynamic. It's a bit like George W. Bush giving tips to William Safire on how to pronounce nuclear (which, as we know, is just a variant spelling of unclear), or Eddie Van Halen telling André Segovia to be more subtle, or Anna Nicole Smith appearing at Fatima and urging women to remember her temperance.
In other words, Al Gore's book should be a failure before it even hits the editor's desk. Instead, it will be wildly successful.
Laugh your way to light. It's the season.
Peace and true mirth.
ºI mean this as a joke, of course. I do not know if that was Mr. Hitchens partying with me in Soho. But I do recall smashing rounds with a British atheist.
†Christianity has unflaggingly agreed with Mr. Gore since time immemorial, but with a twist. Humans are not going to destroy the planet. Humans already have destroyed the planet.
*I mean this facetiously, really.
ªMy hate is purely a rhetorical device.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
Let me ask you a few questions. If I write a book entitled Freedom From Hate: Rejecting intolerance, bigotry and prejudice, and the psycho-social constructs that protect them, wouldn't you expect me to be free of hate, intolerance, bigotry, and the psycho-social constructs that protect them? If I write a book called Loosed At Last: Self-delivery from addiction, would it be imprudent of you to ask whether I was the one photographed last week puking with Christopher Hitchens outside Circa Tabac?º What if I pen the best-selling Regular As Sunrise: 10 sure steps to overcoming diarrhea? Would it be proper of you to presume that I did not write that fine book while sitting at a desk in my bathroom?
Just asking.
_______________
If the writer of Ecclesiastes is correct, that there is a season for everything under the sun, then there is a time for scoffing, for sarcasm. A friend of mine once said that she could not embrace Christianity because there was not a single reference in the whole Bible to God laughing. One wonders what she meant: the Bible has several references to God laughing at idols, scoffing at vanities, mocking false and phony gods. In other words, there is a time for scoffing, and the time is now.
You may have already garnered from my many essays about Al Gore that I am incurably Algore-aphobic. I am very discomforted by the over-crowding inside Al Gore's head. But that is the least of my phobias. I am much more phobic that Al Gore is presenting himself to the world as deity.
Surely you have heard that Mr. Gore is about to release a new book called (I am not making this up), The Assault on Reason. No, this is not autobiography, nor is it a confession or tell-all foisted upon the world to generate sympathy for his reckless rhetoric, his own sins of the mind. Those of us paying attention find just a hint of delight, an almost arthritic mirth, in the irony of it all: Al Gore is going to pontificate on the world's flight from reason. We giggle, but with some pain: our joints rattle and grind, joints battered by years if not decades of twists and sprains and hyper-extensions earned while fighting the fallaciousness of mass hysteria, even mass opinion.
Let us recall for the moment that Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, is from credits-to-Oscar one long fallacy: the film unrelentingly confuses or, if not confuses, conflates correlation and causality in an almost insouciant non causa pro causa polemic. Of course, this is not to suggest that the conclusion is right or wrong; Mr. Gore may be infallibly correct in his conclusion that humans† are killing the planet and that the need for green living is of moral imperative. But his method is utterly irrational. His method is an assault on reason. Even his appeals to "most scientists" or "scientific consensus" are fallacious, as is his appeal to experts; both are fallacies, the former, the fallacy argumentum ad populum (or consensus gentium, the appeal to majorities), the latter, the appeal to authority.
In 1987, I had the pleasure of hanging out with Al Gore at a house party held on the edges of a tiny New Hampshire town. He was just beginning his bid for the White House; the twenty or so folks gathered in the kitchen and living room were remarkably interested in his words. But they were not sufficiently interested to give him the Democratic nomination in 1988, nor were they overly awed by him. My impression then (vague as it is now), was that the only person sufficiently awed by Mr. Gore was Mr. Gore himself.
Alas, I find he has not changed at all over the last 20 years. I also find that his current fans are giving him a pass. But since I am not a fan (nor am I at all current), he does not pass my way without receiving a jeer and a tomato (both the jeer and the tomato, by the way, are certified organic and totally carbon neutral; the jeer is also free-range). My incredulity slips into sarcasm at the idea: Mr. Gore has come to the rescue; he is going to enlighten us all to the true value and blissfulness of reason. He shall demonstrate logical perfection; he will rise above the profanum vulgus and model proper thinking. But one look at his unintentionally hilarious essay on economics from 2006 will give you a sense of Mr. Gore's vast skills in clear thinking. Perhaps my reference to that essay is unfair; perhaps lucidity is not one of reason's predicates. Perhaps muddied and abstruse prose is the crown jewel of reason. Perhaps.
The Gore Advantage
The advantage to writing a book called The Assault on Reason (TAR) is that the author instantly presents himself as the Most Reasonable Human. For surely the man who writes such a book could not be the most assaultive force on reason, could he? No, he could not. He can only be reason's protector, exemplar, purifier. He must be reason's very template.
And this is proven (I use the word the way Mr. Gore uses it) by TAR's description at Amazon. I would be remiss not to demand that you read it. Please! Go check out this most-reasonable description of this important bulwark against anti-rationalism. It is eye-opening: you will be aghast at your own benighted reasoning skills. A light will shine in your darkness, I am sure.
I just pray that the light shining in your darkness is not a bullet coursing through your incredulous head. I hope that, instead of inflicting any injury upon your lovely self, you will turn toward the light through derisive laughter. It is surely where and how I must turn. Laughter, for me, is the only reasonable alternative to suicide.* A high school friend of mine published next to his yearbook picture a veiled dig at the interminable laughter of a girl he thought he loved. He wrote, "Laughter is the air release of all one fears." But my friend was wrong. Laughter is not the release of all one fears. It is the release of all one hates. I either laugh at Al Gore or I kill myself; I either open my mouth and release my hatred or I open my cranium some other way in order to let out what I loathe. And I do loathe "Al Gore"; I hate him.ª But I do not hate Al Gore the man, the gentleman I met in 1987 or the man that holds his wife's heart. I do not hate the Al Gore loved by God. No, I hate Al Gore the commodity, the product. The merchandised. And the only passage to sanity I can find is one that demands -- for a season -- derision, mockery, scoffing, laughter. I laugh at Mr. Gore, at his absurd over-reaching.
(OK. Let me grant that there's nothing more irrational than for me to critique a book I have not yet read. I admit it is hard to read a book that is not yet even in print. But I am not sure it is unreasonable of me to make a wild prediction: In his new book, Mr. Gore is not going to be elucidating his many intellectual mistakes. Nor do I expect his book to consist of one long string of apologies. And I also do not expect Mr. Gore to admit that he is, of all people, quite eminently dis-qualified to write this book. This is a book that is, above all else, committed to promoting Al Gore.)
Al Gore's book is, like so many deeds and screeds of too many today, mere psychological projection. Mr. Gore is going to point out the sins of others not knowing (apparently) that such sins are his own. (I am reminded of what I wrote to Open Ide, a cowardly visitor to this site a few weeks ago.) And the only sins any one of us is truly expert in is the sins that are indeed our own. The Assault on Reason is a child's game of distraction: Look! What's that behind you?! Mr. Gore hopes you will ignore what is in front of your face, just so he can slink away, unchallenged, but nonetheless beloved for his commitment to "dialogue," to "reasoned conversation."
But Al Gore writing to us about reason is a bit like my lecturing Fabio on hair care. Al Gore promoting reason is not unlike Madonna promoting chastity. It's like Bill Maher telling the pope to cool down his opinions. It's a bit like Rosie O'Donnell advising Steven Wright on paradox, or Paula Abdul coaching Melinda Doolittle on how to be more vocally dynamic. It's a bit like George W. Bush giving tips to William Safire on how to pronounce nuclear (which, as we know, is just a variant spelling of unclear), or Eddie Van Halen telling André Segovia to be more subtle, or Anna Nicole Smith appearing at Fatima and urging women to remember her temperance.
In other words, Al Gore's book should be a failure before it even hits the editor's desk. Instead, it will be wildly successful.
Laugh your way to light. It's the season.
Peace and true mirth.
ºI mean this as a joke, of course. I do not know if that was Mr. Hitchens partying with me in Soho. But I do recall smashing rounds with a British atheist.
†Christianity has unflaggingly agreed with Mr. Gore since time immemorial, but with a twist. Humans are not going to destroy the planet. Humans already have destroyed the planet.
*I mean this facetiously, really.
ªMy hate is purely a rhetorical device.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Better An Honest Grief
It is not writer's block. That sort of thing assumes a writer has something to say, to pass along. The metaphor implies obstruction of an otherwise glorious flow of verbiage; it implies a log jam interrupting the normal flow of a sure and powerful river.
What is it called when the river itself is empty, dried up? Writer's drought? What if there is nothing to block, no flow to impede? Or what if the writer's well is filled with dust? What do we call that?
I have nothing to say. At least, I feel like I have nothing to say. The Virginia Tech shootings were my last real reason to craft anything resembling an essay, a poem, something literary. How sad that I should only find a muse in grief. But is that even true? Did I find inspiration in sorrow and tragedy?
Perhaps. But today I've found something else in my gnawing gut; I've a belly full of disgust. I am sickened by the transitions. We humans, or most of us, seem to move from issue to issue, tragedy to tragedy, searching for smooth segues from bit to bit, from pod to pod (as news/documentary items are called on "Current TV"): We want something. We move from pod to pod like rats from switch to switch; we will electrocute ourselves for a new bit of bitter cheese. And I recoil at the thought that we are DONE with Virginia Tech, or Don Imus, or 9/11. That we have "moved on," emotionally, intellectually, spiritually. That we are hunting for the next big distraction, the next Beltway sniper or car chase or racial slur or outrageous political misstep. We look through blogs and news feeds; we grope about, snickering as we dismiss x and y and z; we take hold of A, and we write or film or opine in harried insistence that we have to say something, we have to move the debate, to push the national conversation. We must have A, we must shape it just so; and we shape it so we can have, as quickly as possible, B.
I walk through bookstores, I scroll through blogs and search engines; I sift through news pages and flip through YouTube clips or newsreels and I see nothing but words: words and words and words. We jam words into every void, every crevice. Windbag thinkers tell us that bad speech is fought with more speech; advertisers jam words into scoreboards and dashboards and every readable surface on the planet. We have so many words offered as answers we cannot see that words serve as cataracts to our eyes: we cannot make out the form of the questions that we ever even asked. There is just a dull, hazy light, double, triple vision: two moons in the night sky in our waning, aging light.
What is the solution to Don Imus' alleged racial slurs? Words. What is the solution to Seung-Hui Cho? More words. What to do with Iraq, Harry Reid, Rosie O'Donnell, Bill O'Reilly, Randi Rhodes, poverty? Words and more words. What is the solution to the estrangement of man's existence from his essence? Words. Declarative statements. No question marks.
My word.
Immediately after 9/11, TV networks went days and days without running any advertisements. Why? What purpose did that serve? Did it suggest that to hawk one's wares in sight of thousands of dead people was too tawdry, too decadent and heartless and rapacious and mercenary? How many dead people DOES it take for the networks to stop advertising, two, three? Why 5,000, 4,000, 3,000? What is the magic number necessary for a nation to stop and grieve properly? Who sets that number? What number tells us we can move on?
And how long must I wait before I can write about anything other than all that has preceded this moment? How long, really, do I have to forget the martyrdom of Peter or the destruction of Jerusalem or the Black Plague or the desolation of the American Indian or the savagery of the fur trade or the decapitation of infidels or the garroting of babies or gunshots in a classroom, before I can call myself au courant?
Yesterday I wept at a funeral for one of my dearest friends. Afterwards, as I approached my friend's now-empty house where a luncheon was to be held in her honor, I stopped to talk to Barbara, another friend who had moments earlier eulogized (so boldly, so elegantly) our dead friend. In the midst of our gentle, teary conversation, I said, "Better an honest grief than a dishonest joy." I shocked myself with the sentence, having no idea where it came from, or why exactly I had said it. But in a moment's pause both Barbara and I knew that it fit the moment perfectly; it was the very summation of her wonderful eulogy and what we were searching for on the shoulder of Lookout Hill Road.
Better an honest grief than a dishonest joy.
It is the sort of sentence one might find in Bartlett's, if only its author were noteworthy. It is also made up of mere words. It is more words, words that blind like tears, the cataracts of grief flowing over cheeks, pouring from the dulled eyes that search for a friend who is now a question mark.
Sometimes the only word we want to hear is not a word at all.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
What is it called when the river itself is empty, dried up? Writer's drought? What if there is nothing to block, no flow to impede? Or what if the writer's well is filled with dust? What do we call that?
I have nothing to say. At least, I feel like I have nothing to say. The Virginia Tech shootings were my last real reason to craft anything resembling an essay, a poem, something literary. How sad that I should only find a muse in grief. But is that even true? Did I find inspiration in sorrow and tragedy?
Perhaps. But today I've found something else in my gnawing gut; I've a belly full of disgust. I am sickened by the transitions. We humans, or most of us, seem to move from issue to issue, tragedy to tragedy, searching for smooth segues from bit to bit, from pod to pod (as news/documentary items are called on "Current TV"): We want something. We move from pod to pod like rats from switch to switch; we will electrocute ourselves for a new bit of bitter cheese. And I recoil at the thought that we are DONE with Virginia Tech, or Don Imus, or 9/11. That we have "moved on," emotionally, intellectually, spiritually. That we are hunting for the next big distraction, the next Beltway sniper or car chase or racial slur or outrageous political misstep. We look through blogs and news feeds; we grope about, snickering as we dismiss x and y and z; we take hold of A, and we write or film or opine in harried insistence that we have to say something, we have to move the debate, to push the national conversation. We must have A, we must shape it just so; and we shape it so we can have, as quickly as possible, B.
I walk through bookstores, I scroll through blogs and search engines; I sift through news pages and flip through YouTube clips or newsreels and I see nothing but words: words and words and words. We jam words into every void, every crevice. Windbag thinkers tell us that bad speech is fought with more speech; advertisers jam words into scoreboards and dashboards and every readable surface on the planet. We have so many words offered as answers we cannot see that words serve as cataracts to our eyes: we cannot make out the form of the questions that we ever even asked. There is just a dull, hazy light, double, triple vision: two moons in the night sky in our waning, aging light.
What is the solution to Don Imus' alleged racial slurs? Words. What is the solution to Seung-Hui Cho? More words. What to do with Iraq, Harry Reid, Rosie O'Donnell, Bill O'Reilly, Randi Rhodes, poverty? Words and more words. What is the solution to the estrangement of man's existence from his essence? Words. Declarative statements. No question marks.
My word.
Immediately after 9/11, TV networks went days and days without running any advertisements. Why? What purpose did that serve? Did it suggest that to hawk one's wares in sight of thousands of dead people was too tawdry, too decadent and heartless and rapacious and mercenary? How many dead people DOES it take for the networks to stop advertising, two, three? Why 5,000, 4,000, 3,000? What is the magic number necessary for a nation to stop and grieve properly? Who sets that number? What number tells us we can move on?
And how long must I wait before I can write about anything other than all that has preceded this moment? How long, really, do I have to forget the martyrdom of Peter or the destruction of Jerusalem or the Black Plague or the desolation of the American Indian or the savagery of the fur trade or the decapitation of infidels or the garroting of babies or gunshots in a classroom, before I can call myself au courant?
Yesterday I wept at a funeral for one of my dearest friends. Afterwards, as I approached my friend's now-empty house where a luncheon was to be held in her honor, I stopped to talk to Barbara, another friend who had moments earlier eulogized (so boldly, so elegantly) our dead friend. In the midst of our gentle, teary conversation, I said, "Better an honest grief than a dishonest joy." I shocked myself with the sentence, having no idea where it came from, or why exactly I had said it. But in a moment's pause both Barbara and I knew that it fit the moment perfectly; it was the very summation of her wonderful eulogy and what we were searching for on the shoulder of Lookout Hill Road.
Better an honest grief than a dishonest joy.
It is the sort of sentence one might find in Bartlett's, if only its author were noteworthy. It is also made up of mere words. It is more words, words that blind like tears, the cataracts of grief flowing over cheeks, pouring from the dulled eyes that search for a friend who is now a question mark.
Sometimes the only word we want to hear is not a word at all.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
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