Here’s the bracket:

Fight 1: F. Scott Fitzgerald vs. Franz Kafka

Fitzgerald shows up drunk, on a butcher’s tricycle, and has to be lifted into the ring. He saunters over to the opponent’s corner where he has a conversation with the stool. He calls it Zelda, hugs it, then falls asleep. Meanwhile, Zelda Fitzgerald, his manager, is nowhere to be found. (Suddenly hip to technology, she’s back in the locker room playing the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on a Gameboy.)

Initially, Ezra Pound had informed everyone that the charity matches would be a professional-wrestling style match and told everyone to wear a costume that representative of their work. Soon thereafter, Hemingway suggests they make it a more manly sport, and suggests boxing. Pound agrees, but never gives Kafka the news that the format has been changed. Kafka, having no idea how to represent himself, let alone his work, decides to dress in a giant beetle costume like a post-metamorphosis Gregor Samsa. For added effect, he brings along his manager, a boa constrictor named Indiana.

Result: Fitzie is disqualified.

Fight 2: Edna St. Vincent Millay vs. Hemingway

Edna St. Vincent Millay starts off furiously with a flurry of quick jabs, and then she distracts Hemingway by leaning down in her low-cut blouse. The pig can’t resist leering, and she catches him with an uppercut, then another. Soon, he’s leaning into the ropes, and it looks like she might upset the self-proclaimed “best boxer in this bunch.”

Soon, however, Millay begins to tire. She heads back to her corner, where she throws in the towel saying simply, “I cannot last the fight.”

Result: Hemingway wins by default. After he’s declared the winner, Hemingway jogs around the ring triumphantly, arms raised, even though all he did was get hit in the face about fifty or sixty times.

Fight #3 Ginsberg vs. Frost

Ginsberg enters the ring at the end of a long procession of what appear to be monks of some variety. Ginsberg is playing a lute, which Frost snatches away and snaps in half. Before the referee can even start the fight (or get their gloves on), Ginsberg and Frost are swinging at each other. Soon, it turns into the equivalent of a mixed-martial event.Knees and elbows are thrown and Frost pulls on Ginsberg’s beard, before Ginsberg manages to get Frost into a rear-triangle choke, and Frost reluctantly submits.

Result: As no actual boxing occurred, the referee has to find a different way to justify a winner. He calls the match for Ginsberg because Frost was mean and broke Ginsberg’s lute.

Fight #4: Walt Whitman vs. Ezra Pound

When the match starts, Walt Whitman initially walks up to Pound and tries to shake his head. Instead of fighting, he suggests that everyone goes and “plays base-ball, the American game.”

Pound responds with a quick body blow, then an uppercut to Whitman’s chin. Whitman again tries to reiterate his desire for a non-violent sport, but Pounds repeated jabs soon goad him into a real fight. Like a rabid mountain man, Whitman lets loose with wild haymakers and bolos, and they connect—1, 2, then 3 in a row. Soon, Pound is bloodied, but Whitman doesn’t let up, soon even Whitman’s great beard is swaying like a heavy bag.

Result: The ref gives Pound a standing count and calls the fight.

Fight 5:  Ginsberg vs. Whitman

Just as Ginsberg and Whitman are about to start the fight, Ginsberg bashfully asks if Whitman would like to go out sometime, maybe they could have dinner or catch a base-ball game. He suggests that maybe they could stop at one of the local supermarkets in California to pick up grub. Whitman agrees and they depart.

Result: No match on account of love at first sight.

Fight 6: Kafka vs. Hemingway

Because of the result of the Ginsberg-Whitman match, the Kafka-Hemingway match becomes the championship bout.

Kafka enters the ring, baffled, still not sure why he’s there—or anywhere, for that matter. Kafka sets his snake/manager on the stool and waits.

Hemingway, talking smack, doesn’t care about Kafka’s confusion, and implies that Kafka is simply yellow and doesn’t want to fight. As the fight begins, Hemingway comes out swinging, landing a few good punches, but they don’t do much damage because of Kafka’s elaborate beetle costume.

Kafka doesn’t throw any punches; instead, he simply ambles around the ring in his beetle costume as Hemingway pummels him. Eventually, the audience begins to boo because of his inaction—and because Hemingway’s punches have no real effect.

To liven things up, Andre the Giant, who is in the audience because Pound had invited him to participate in the originally planned professional wrestling-style event, decides to enter the ring.

As Hemingway wails on Kafka, he climbs up the top rope and when Hemingway steps back to regroup, leaps onto Kafka, knocking him out. The ref counts out Kafka, and Hemingway, the consummate jerk, doesn’t hesitate to start punching Andre, despite the fact that Hemingway’s body blows hardly have any effect.

Andre begins to grapple with Hemingway, then hoists him and throws him into the third row of seats. Everyone applauds when this happens.

Andre raises his hands in victory, and heads over to Kafka’s corner to sit down. Then he sees the snake. Andre, reputedly deathly afraid of snakes, faints.

The referee shrugs, holds the snake in the air, and declares it the winner of the tournament.

*Williams Carlos Williams is the ringside doctor.

*Time machines would be required to make this a fair (and possible) tournament.

“Drawing on decades of research in psychology that resulted in a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, Daniel Kahneman takes readers on an exploration of what influences thought example by example, sometimes with unlikely word pairs like “vomit and banana.” […}Thinking, Fast and Slow gives deep—and sometimes frightening—insight about what goes on inside our heads: the psychological basis for reactions, judgments, recognition, choices, conclusions, and much more.  –JoVon Sotak

Thinking, Fast and Slow received some good press (selected as one of the best books of 2011 by New York Times Book Review, Globe and Mail, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal), which means more people searching Amazon for the book. Except they might find something else by accident.

Thinking, Fast and Slow was published on October 24^th, 2011, the same day that Fast and Slow Thinking by Karl Daniels became available on Amazon.

It’s not a coincidence that the titles and author names appear similar. The second book piggybacked on Kahneman’s, selling print-on-demand copies to the confused. The author of Fast and Slow Thinking does not exist, because that book is not really a book: it’s internet “content” searched and skimmed and compiled by bots. Some pages only have two words on them. Some of the writing, apparently, even quotes Kahneman.

Who knows who developed this little scheme—when I looked last night, I couldn’t find the book again (screenshots from 4/12/12). But it’s a great trick. All you need is algorithm and you, too, can become a self-publisher and rake in the dough. After all, what’s an e-book market explosion without bookspam to flood your bandwidth?

The internet is nothing but a giant database that you’re already accessing every day, so why not devote a desktop to search, plagiarize, and publish while you play Words with Friends? Call it the “Hello, World!” bot. Once you develop your algorithm, do yourself a favor and patent it.

That’s what Phillip M. Parker did, and now Amazon lists him as the author of 107,000 books.

You read that correctly: 107,000 books published. And he says that he’s created over 200,000. He’s the most prolific “author” to date, with more titles than Alexandre Dumas, R.L. Stine, Isaac Asimov, and Nora Roberts combined (and multiplied by 153).

Parker doesn’t stop at the Amazon marketplace, either. He “generates” poetry, too. According to his Wikipedia biography:

Parker has applied his techniques within his dictionary project to digital poetry; he reports posting over 1.3 million didacticpoems, aspiring to reach one poem for each of words found in the English language. He refers to these as “edge poems” since they are generated using graph theory, where “edge” refers to mathematical values that relate words to each other in a semantic web. He has posted in the thesaurus section of his online dictionary the values used in these algorithms. Genres produced include the following: acrostic, butterfly, cinquain, diamante, ekphrastic, fib or Fibonacci poetry, gnomic poetry, haiku, Kural, limerick, mirror cinquain, nonet, octosyllable, pi, quinzaine, Rondelet, sonnet, tanaka, unitoum, waka, simple verse, and xenia epigram. Genres were created by Parker to allow one genre of poem for each letter of the English alphabet, including Yoda, for Y (poetry using the grammar structure of the famous Star Wars character), and Zedd for Z (poems shaped in the letter Z). His poems are didactic in nature, and either define the entry word in question, or highlight its antonyms. He has stated plans to expand these to many languages and is experimenting with other poetic forms.

Parker plans to tap the lucrative romance novel market next.

It’s no secret what a raunchy database the internet makes. Might be time to revisit some small presses.

–Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town, p. 64

There’s an institution, which shall remain nameless, whose H.R. Dept. has asked for a philosophy of teaching.

I thought I’d offer the readers of Bark both the ‘Erasure’ version (followed by the thing that I submitted for the job)…

Thinking The Other

Commodities want
to know
shelter with flesh.

You ask the kind
of reward
virtually.  Through-

out we are known, feel
exposed, full of
weeds worth even more.

The what splintered

too and filth-strewn
glitz grammar

seek partners already
exhausted

and roll.

Why:

To Cultivate Critical Thinking and Imaginative Engagement with The Other

Not all questions are equal. In North America, for example, we often pursue answers like commodities, as if we’re constantly in the market for the idea or the semblance of thought that will make life easier or more convenient. Other answers are born into the marriage of curiosity and vulnerability. We want to know something that matters, that persists throughout generations, a thing that binds us to their pursuit of truth and makes it our pursuit too. Moreover, we feel exposed to the social vicissitudes of life and death without at least trying to find shelter with other flesh and blood participants. Where, you ask, do we find such shelter?

My reply (with missional theologian Lesslie Newbigin) involves the possibility of the meta-narrative. I seek it. I seek it in everything I read (poetry, fiction, non-fiction) and in everything I write (all the above, plus the occasional sermon or letter to the editor). It’s also clear to me that emerging generations of students seek a means of piecing together those cultural fragments in a meaningful whole. My reward and my challenge in teaching is giving them the tools and the courage to make the effort on a habitual basis, and to suggest that this effort is worthwhile. It is worth a great deal, I might say in class, for an individual to know what he or she thinks (and to arrive at those ideas through writing). It is worth even more, however, to believe that others, with differing ideas, may have something to say and something to hear. This kind of conversation takes place, not only literally and academically everyday, but figuratively and virtually throughout one’s existential pilgrimage.

What:

The Development of Composition Skills and An Artist’s Appreciation of Language

Parker Palmer, in his book, To Know As We Are Known, offers this summary of my starting point:

Where conventional education deals with abstract and impersonal facts and theories, an education shaped by Christian spirituality draws us toward incarnate and personal truth. In this education we come to know the world not simply as an objectified system of empirical objects in logical connection with each other, but as an organic body of personal relations and responses, a living and evolving community of creativity and compassion. Education of this sort means more than teaching the facts and learning the reasons so we can manipulate life toward our ends. It means being drawn into personal responsiveness and accountability to each other and the world of which we are a part (p. 15).

The beauty of these remarks is the way in which they place the student in a mysteriously passive position. We are “drawn into…” We are responsive and accountable. Given this framework, composition skills begin to flourish, neither out of a need to dominate nor to assert control, but to merely appreciate the giftedness of human experience. Here, it seems to me, basic grammar, point of view, voice and tone become rooted in a parabolic type of soil. Students develop and grow as they succeed in naming the nutritional elements which support their place in the dialogue or their stance in the argument. Moreover, when the wisdom that has been bequeathed to us appears well-worn, full of weeds or inundated with rocks, the what of writing becomes (and sanctifies) the ambiguity and perhaps transforms it into the very process of what Augustine called faith seeking understanding.

In this sense, I regard every person I am privileged to teach as an artist. That is, whether the man or woman will write professionally makes no difference. My pedagogical style is to invite even technical writers into that stream from which Annie Dillard emerged, describing her awe for creation as “a splintered wreck I’ve come to care for…” (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek).

How:

Through Dialogue, Challenge and Compassionate, Yet Tenacious Feedback

I read something sad in an essay that I assigned my Eastern Washington University students. It was a Harper’s Magazine article, written by Mark Edmundson in September of 1997, in which the author writes as follows:

Students worry that taking too many chances with their educations will sabotage their future prospects. They’re aware of the fact that a drop that looks more and more like one wall of the Grand Canyon separates the top economic tenth from the rest of the population. There’s a sentiment currently abroad that if you step aside for a moment, to write, to travel, to fall too hard in love, you might lose position permanently. We may be on a conveyor belt, but it’s worse down there on the filth-strewn floor. So don’t sound off, don’t blow your chance.

Alas. There’s nothing more disappointing to me than a student who’s engaged in the academic dance in lockstep with the status quo. My role, as the teacher of such a young man or young woman, might be to model what it means to take risks. I might suggest, for example, that an upwardly mobile lifestyle is not all its cracked up to be, that the name of those who secretly despair in the machinery of careerism is Legion for “we are many.”

The point, I might emphasize, and have emphasized on numerous occasions, is the intersection of one’s greatest passion with the world’s greatest need (a famous line from Frederick Buechner). To not pause and ponder at this juncture… beneath this signage… amid these lights… is to miss a profound opportunity for spiritual maturity. This, of course, does not imply that an experience in my class is now or never. There is always the opportunity to double-back, to reconsider and to think anew. And yet, I would not want a student under my charge to go unchallenged into graduation. The consumer culture, with all its glitz and glitter, awaits and will descend like confetti soon enough. For now, what’s required is a self that wants to learn without the automatic reinforcements and bribes to which we’ve grown attached.

Hope:

Students Who Value Themselves/Others As Active Readers and Writers

The measurements that I use as teacher vary from classroom encounter to one-on-one conversation to the close review of the writing assignments themselves. In the end, I’d like to see a person who is incurious demonstrate curiosity that shows no signs of abating. I’d like to read essay exams, autobiographical pieces and research papers which genuinely betray the idolatrous pursuit of a good grade. I’d like to think and to feel with my students as peers who value themselves and others as energetic dialogue partners. That’s the hope.

Northrop Frye, author of Words with Power, has written prolifically on the Bible’s seemingly limitless reservoir. Western literature drinks from it daily, and perhaps hour by hour. When Wallace Stevens, however, declares the great poems of heaven and hell to have already been exhausted by previous generations, and “that the great poem of earth has still to be written,” I take up Frye’s mantle in response and encourage my students to do the same. Frye says, “a poem of earth would be an endless narrative, without the vision that looks up and down, and adds at least a suggestion of other perspectives above and below” (p. 84).

And so, let the revisions roll.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rapaille, who is French, has a doctorate in psychology and was working as a psychoanalyst before being invited to help Nestlé market coffee to the Japanese. What Clotaire found in his first focus groups was that Nestlé needed to create a positive coffee imprint in Japanese children in order to create a viable market for instant coffee. In response to Clotaire’s discovery, Nestlé began selling caffeine-free, coffee-flavored sweets to children. These sold well and eventually the instant coffee market also increased.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You may agree that using psychological research for marketing is wrong; and therefore you may not want to read a book like Rapaille’s. I am not so pure, though. I find Rapaille’s research fascinating. At the time of the invitation from Nestlé, he was researching autism. He couldn’t resist the chance at doing well-funded research with fast results to test his theories regarding the role of emotion in the learning process. I see the writing of this book as a justification for doing research that better allows corporations to manipulate potential consumers. Here he shares the secrets of corporate marketing with us.

Rapaille’s self-proclaimed purpose in writing the book is to help us understand ourselves better and as a result to “liberate” those who read his book. “There is remarkable freedom gained in understanding why you act the way you do. This freedom will affect every part of your life, from the relationships you have, to your feelings about your possessions and the things you do, to the attitudes you have about America’s place in the world” (page 11).

To give you a chance to see if you want to read the book, I’ll include some highlights. Food first:

Americans are intensely concerned with food safety. We have regulatory commissions, expiration dates, and a wide variety of “food police” out there protecting us from unsafe food. The French, on the other hand, are far more interested in taste than safety. In France, there is a method of preparation known as faisandée. It involves hanging a pheasant (the source of the name) or some other gamebird on a hook until it ages—literally, until it begins to rot. While most Americans would consider the thought of this alarming, French chefs utilize this method because it dramatically improves the flavor of the bird. Safety is not nearly as much of a concern for them or the people for whom they cook. Of course, such culinary explorations come with a price. There are far more food-related deaths in France every year than there are in the United States, even though there are five times as many people living in the United States. (page 26)

Americans are “eternal adolescents.” Despite the fact that in some ways we are relatively young, we live by (sort of) a  relatively old document:

We look at Europe as the old world and America as the new. Yet in many ways, America is one of the oldest of the world’s nations. The French Revolution began in 1789, more than a decade after our own revolution. Modern Italy became a nation-state in 1861. The German empire was founded in 1871. Our culture isn’t nearly as old as the French, Italian, and German cultures (all of which existed long before the current nations of France, Italy, and Germany), but we have existed in our present form longer. We have the oldest written constitution in effect on the entire planet. (page 85)

What keeps us young? Well many things, but for one:

Immigrants come here and leave the past behind. They start over in America. They are reborn here, often with new careers and new (American) dreams. Since we continue to receive immigrants in large numbers, this sense of renewal and reinvention is a living thing in our culture. (page 85)

For those of us who continue to try to understand the magical power of repetition in poetry, music, and prose (rhyme, motif, image echoes, the pleasure of hearing our favorite songs over and over again) this commentary on how repetition and home are married in the American mind may be interesting:

When we think of home, we think of words that begin with the prefix “re-.” Words like return (as the girl did when she came home from school), reunite (as the boy did when he got back from college), reconnect (as the family did when they told each other their highs and lows for the week, and as the woman did when she spoke to the picture of her father), reconfirm (as the boy did when he saw his family in the stands of his baseball games), and renew (as the woman did during her family’s various rituals). This sends a very powerful message to us about what it means to be home. Home is a place where you can do things repeatedly and have a good sense of the outcome—unlike the outside world, where everything can be so unpredictable. Home is a place where doing things again gives them added meaning….If home is about return, reconnection, renewal, reunion, and other words with the prefix “re-,” then the physical location means nothing. What is important is that the feelings of family exist wherever you define “home.” (pages 99 & 100)

While many people around the world think Americans are overly preoccupied with money, Rapaille has some ideas why we’re seen this way and why this doesn’t necessarily mean we’re greedy. Unlike other cultures, we cannot be “knighted” or “become a baroness”:

Money is our barometer for success. Most Americans find it impossible to feel successful if they are underpaid. Money is a scorecard. If someone is doing a job similar to yours and making more money, you unconsciously believe that he or she is doing a better job. Being paid for a job imbues it with instant credibility. I spoke with someone recently who told me about his early struggles to become a professional writer after leaving a corporate career. For two years, even though he was doing high quality work, he failed to make any money at it. “I felt unemployed,” he told me, “even though I was working ten hours a day.” A publishing contract changed his whole attitude about his accomplishments instantly. Suddenly the previous two years gained validity. The money the publisher paid him was proof. (page 124)

Yet, not all money warrants admiration for Americans. It needs to be the right kind of money:

Money earned via hard work is admirable, proof that you are a good person. We have little respect, however, for those who inherit money rather than making it on their own. We might be fascinated by the exploits of someone like Paris Hilton, but we don’t feel that she’s proven anything, because she was born rich and her celebrity stems exclusively from her wealth. We attribute Patty Hearst’s early difficulties to her growing up an heiress, and we consider the ongoing problems of the Getty children to be the product of old money. We love it that Bill Gates has more money than the Queen of England, because he earned every penny of it himself. (page 125)

According to Rapaille, Americans aren’t looking for perfection:

If something is perfect, you’re stuck with it for life, and that doesn’t sit well with most Americans. We want a new car every three years. We want a new television every five. We want a new house when we have kids, and another one when the kids grow up. (page 136)

Since we don’t want perfection, we know our things will stop working at some point. The point at which something breaks is a crucial one for our relationship with a company:

Americans are much more responsive to good service than they are to perfection (which they don’t believe in anyway). Crisis is a great opportunity to create loyalty. If a customer comes to you with a problem with a product or service and you solve that problem quickly and minimize the customer’s inconvenience, you will likely earn that customer’s dedication….Ironically, if your product never breaks down, you never have the opportunity to develop this relationship with the customer. When the customer seeks to replace the product (as he inevitably will), he is likely to look elsewhere, because he hasn’t formed a bond with you. The bottom line is that great service is more important to Americans than great quality. (pages 138-139)

One of my favorite parts of the book is Rapaille’s own immigration story. I won’t tell it to you, though. I’ll let you pick up the copy of the book to see it for yourself (yes, I’m getting tired of typing and I don’t want to paraphrase it since it works so well just as he has written it). You’ll find it on pages 180-181, and it helps fuel one of his overriding messages of the book: this country needs to remain a welcoming place for immigrants. Our sense of making the impossible possible is rooted in a confluence of wild dreams, and immigrants are some of the best importers of these otherwise difficult to transport faith-inspired, work-supported, vision-rooted dreams.

I spent Saturday keeping up with news of advertisers dropping Rush Limbaugh like the rotten potato he looks like, smells like, and sounds like. It comforted me to know the outrage over his comments was strong enough to make people put commercial pressure on his show. Then I ended up on Carbonite Online’s Facebook page, which stated their reasons for not advertising with Limbaugh anymore. For every comment applauding their decision, there seemed to be another siding with Rush. *Sigh*

I’m tired of standing on my soap box shouting about sexist behavior and discrimination. It feels too much like too few are listening. My voice is hoarse.

Instead, I’m now looking for things that make me feel good about being a woman—and a writer. I found one already, Flavorwire’s 10 of the Most Powerful Female Characters in Literature:

Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish adaptation of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." The Swedish title of the book actually translates to "Men who Hate Women."

Jane Eyre, Jane Eyre
Hermione Granger, the Harry Potter series
The Wife of Bath, The Canterbury Tales
Katniss Everdeen, The Hunger Games trilogy
Hester Prynne, The Scarlett Letter
Éowyn, The Lord of the Rings trilogy
Lyra Silvertongue, His Dark Materials trilogy
Janie Crawford, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Hua Mulan, The Ballad of Mulan
Lisbeth Salander, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Thinking of my own history, I would like to add at least one more. As a teenager, I loved Princess Herald Elspeth of the Mage Winds trilogy by Mercedes Lackey. Elspeth rode into battle and kicked some serious butt, never needing a man to do the fighting for her.

Who would you add to this list?

Happy Women’s History Month.

But here’s my dilemma:   as a co-chair on the script committee for this year’s rowdy rumpus, I tried to do that double entendre thing.   That is, overseeing 18 other writers like myself, I tried to corral those who wanted to introduce a plethora of fart jokes and other assorted potty humor.   For the most part, we were successful and the dialogue for Ham Times At Ferris High is not half bad.   (You might want to check out a show.)  Unfortunately, what wound up on the cutting room floor were seemingly innocuous lines like “Shut up” (changed to “Be quiet”).   When Dick Vitale, an ESPN mainstay, says something about going “number one in the pool, but having Duke at #2 going all the way…,” instead of smiles, we recently got frowns of disapproval.   Moreover, when another hilarious personage complains that the Bible is boring, one individual asks us not to disrespect the Old and New Testaments.   I guess my point is this:   the suburban superego has gone into hyperdrive!

Or, to put it more succinctly, censorship in America shows no signs of abating.   And for a liminal poet like me there’s nothing to do but sigh…   Sigh and write my ass off!

What in the world are folks afraid of?  It’s not as if we’re running around the stage, shouting F-bombs.   It’s not as if what we think of as juvenile humor isn’t in fact funny at all.  It clearly is.  Consider the staying power of the average innuendo…  Wink!  Wink!  Nudge!  Nudge!  Know what I mean?!   We have one scene with the Ty Pennington character from all those Home Make-over Shows, and when a pretend-student approaches him with a stud-finder, the device beeps like crazy!   Inference?  He’s a stud — Get it? — “and this happens all the time.”

***

Now I’d like to contrast this Pleasantville motif with what happens to aspiring writer who finds himself among other writers in your standard MFA program… or PHD program or… BFD program (stands for Big F**king Deal).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Let the expletives fly!  O You Allen Ginsberg proteges!  Howl!  Is there a body part out there that rhymes with Carolina?   Are there any dirty diatribes that have gone unexplored by Philip Roth or John Updike or even Mitze Szereto?  What might be the vernacular of your most authentic composite character who stars in a porn flick — and might it induce the real-life one to blush?  The answers to these questions are border-line offensive, and I suppose that’s the crux (or the crotch) of the matter.

Suburban sensibilities, which thrive in certain areas of Spokane, ought to be challenged.   There ought to be holes that we can poke through the thin veneer of piety, that is the banner of morality that we want succeeding generations to uphold.  But why?   Why poke holes in the cultural chit-chat unless we’re prepared to say something more than it’s all a pile of shit?   Why not give the people their delusions in spades?   Why not allow the Wizard of Oz to remain comfortable behind the curtain?  Why not grant the space to figures like him to manipulate the levers and gadgets, which billow smoke, which scares us to death?

Well, nearly everyone knows the answer to each of these questions, and it finds renewed incarnation this week in the remarks of presidential candidate Rick Santorum.  Santorum wants us to beware of the liberal education our children are receiving from professors who want to peal back the curtain.   He wants us to learn technique and to be trained in the theatrics of modern-day citizenship, but to leave the truth to the experts, who undoubtably harbor no doubts about anything spewed forth by the Vatican.

It’s a shame really, a shame that nothing gets the attention like a good ol’ fashion “K’ak,” as Gary Snyder’s Coyote would have it in poem, A Berry Feast.   But so be it.

***

I know that I am now and will never be a completely cutting-edge persona.  The term Avant-Garde, applies to enfleshed souls like me only in the most modest and mundane sense.   Yet, a guy can dream, can’t he?   At my core, in the middle of the night, I’m either a raccoon or a recluse.   That is, I don’t mind having a bit of china in the cupboards, just as long as I can smash a goblet to pieces once in a while.

Are there idiots who act out of their Sigmund Freud ids without the constructive balance of a corrective?  Yes, probably so.  No body comes to mind at the moment.  But where both the id and the superego thrive, let the ego pull back and renounce everything.

Cursing with four-or-more-letter words was never meant to elevate you as a writer into the spotlight.  That vocab is just the means of keeping you alienated and isolated from others long enough… until the real inspiration arrives… so you can write…

Peace–

Bot courtesy of Creative Commons, Mattie B

Amazon gets stranger by the day. Robots are in the middle of crazy bidding wars while we sleep. These “bots” are dropping the price of books to $0.01 or raising them to $2,198,177.95 while we mess our way through discussions on how much a cup of coffee should cost if you bring your own mug. But while the market (well, the cafe here) isn’t listening to customer opinions on cost, it (well, Amazon) is following the advice of the algorithms or bots.

It’s not new that Markov chains collect information from Wikipedia, curate the articles, and sell the finished books on Amazon. Betascript does this kind of publishing all the time. Narrative Science kind of does the same thing with basic sports/business articles/reports.

One computer program, donning the human name Lambert M. Surhone, created and sold such a book about computers pretending to be human. And I don’t think it was a memoir. The Lambert bot was selling its book new, print-on-demand, for $47. Before you knew it, there was a used/like one available for $46.99. The bot bidding war had begun.

Last year a human software engineer at Facebook, Carlos Bueno, wrote  a children’s book where the main character, Lauren Ipsum, meets the Wandering Salesman, fends off Jargon, etc.  Even though you can read it on a tablet, it’s “a computer science book that doesn’t involve a computer.” He self-published as print-on-demand and set the price to $14.95. Enter the bots.

Last week, someone/something in the Amazon Marketplace was selling his book for $55.63. Bueno hypothesized that the “seller” planned to make a sale, then buy the book, have it printed and shipped to the customer, making $40.68 before shipping and handling and whatever percent Amazon takes for selling through the Marketplace. No person would fall for that trick, though–the book is, after all, sold on the same site at the original, much cheaper price.

Another bot chanced across the scene. They started battling on the price. The price dropped and dropped and eventually fell below the retail price.

Bueno believes that they planned to make up the difference with shipping and handling charges. Back when I was selling off my library, you’d get a flat amount from Amazon, $3.99, to cover media mail shipping. You could make a slight profit, maybe a buck, this way, but it always baffled me that people made any profit when they dropped the price of the book to a cent. But that was back in the day, before I’d heard about rogue robots duking it out in the Wild West of algorithm-driven economies.

Bueno grew worried when the price started dropping. As he says, “Amazon itself is a bot that does price-matching.” And we’ve all heard the horror stories about when Amazon starts price-matching.

Sure enough, Amazon reduced the price of Bueno’s book. Save 28%! Buy it now for $10.76 and it’s eligible for free super saver shipping!

But, the biggest surprise to Bueno was that the sale price didn’t cut into his earnings–Amazon’s eating the difference.

In a great faux pas, Amazon’s losing money from basing the price on a market truly guided by invisible hands, where the sellers don’t even have a copy of the book. This is what happens when bots battle. When they eventually take over the world, I’m going to be very scared.

And, right in the middle of my reading of Thomas Merton:   “Into the world where there is no room Christ has come to those for whom there is no room…”  (Raids On The Unspeakable).  Right there, on the second “no room” we heard a howl in the distance.  We heard either coyotes or wolves… or a quartet of genuinely harmonic terriers.   Yes, in the wake of all the pageantry,  both high church and low church, there came late the sound of the canine other.   Hoooowl…  (No Allen Ginsburg in sight!)  And all during the assembly-process of my 17 year old son’s used Everlast punching-bag apparatus, I could not help but think of that passage in which the Canaanite woman approaches Jesus and leaves him speechless.   She says, after the Anointed One issues the exclusive caveat — that “the Son of Man” has come only to the house of Israel:  “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat crumbs that fall from their master’s table!”

Nice, come-back.  Eh?

I don’t know why these problem verses flash into and out of the sieve of my mind, but they do.   And when these sacred texts are somehow bracketed or emphasized or enjoined by the grunts, snorts, rooster-crows, bird-chirps and, in this scenario, the stylistic howlings of some far-off, somewhat distressed beast in the dark — it’s important that we take notice.   These moments are perhaps the temporal version of what the Ancient Celts refer to as “thin places” between worlds, places where we might inadvertently punch through a wall.   For me though, with my holy-day antennae up and fully functioning, the metaphor might be extended.   Whether a pack of pesky coyotes, one of the three mating pairs of wolves which are permitted to roam eastern Washington, or the 101 domesticated dalmatians with a Disney contract — it’s so clear that the neighbors are noisy.

I’ll say it again:  the neighborhood — as in the entire creation — as in the Ever-Expanding Universe – as in every sink hole that opens up in the  spring, every worm-hole that sucks down a morsel of dark matter and every blessed and bruised bending of the space-time continuum — ALL THIS — cries out.

You may wonder, at this point, two nights later, if the mechanically-challenged poet (me) figured out the punching bag apparatus and the answer is happily, yes.   At precisely 2:30 in the morning (PST), Christmas morning, I finished tightening the last bolt.   But I had been helped by the lingering howls.   The cries in the night haunted me like either Charles Dickens‘ Scrooge, or like Martin Bell‘s Barrington Bunny…

That is, miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, the boss of Bob Crachet, had been visited by three ghosts.   These figures reminded him (and me) of certain moral short-comings and missed opportunities in life, things that happened to correspond with Christmas celebrations of the past, the present and the future.   Scrooge makes the necessary changes in his persona and buys the Crachet family the largest turkey in the butcher shop and wishes Tiny Tim ”a happy Christmas” and a “God bless us all, everyone.”  Beautiful, heart-wrenching, double-layer tissue, slobbering-stuff…  By doing this, of course, the main character, the anti-hero of the story, becomes the hero and the dire consequences of a meaningless death are averted.

In Barrington Bunny, by contrast, the furry critter of the forest does not sidestep death at all.   He actually, in the end, embraces it, becoming a dead rabbit’s carcus (and without spoiling things for you, dear reader, there is a striking parallel here that’s drawn with another sacrificial moment in history).

Click here to view the embedded video.

What can I say?   The mechanisms of meaning are slippery little buggers.   Truth rings true as it occurs to us in and through the natural world, as well as in and through the churning of  a culture’s literary laundry.   Back and forth we go.

Back and forth we must go.   And, that’s why when I hear the howls in the night and stay up – assembling? — constructing? — deconstructing? — repeating? – I put Scrooge in the ring with the Barrington and see what happens…  Primarily, what happens is that we take the old Dickens tale and recognize it as an indictment of capitalism gone astray.   What happens is that we ponder gifts that come from so deeply within us we are never the same after having given them.   (I always joke with my children about them costing me brain cells and gray hair and wrinkles, but the punch line hits me square in the jaw or in the jowls.)   In the following musical version, which depicts Scrooge’s trip into Christmas future, a parade of people wish to express their appreciation, their appreciation for the old financier’s demise.   That is, their debts are forgiven because the bloke who died is now a deceased bloke who will no longer be hounding them for interest on their loans.   Ahhh…   Do you get the bunny trail I’m following?

Click here to view the embedded video.

 And so, without further adieu, I’d like to thank the origin of that wild exclamation on early Christmas morn (and leave the Academy of Motion Pictures unthanked for the time being).   It did the reverse of Tylenol PM.   It spoke volumes for most of creation who groans very quietly for the most part.   We can scarcely hear them around the holidays with all the hubbub… unless, of course, we’re already up, assembling.

Peace–

So I’m sitting here on Schweitzer Mountain, enjoying some snow, sleep and skiing with my two boys, Ian & Philip, plus my spouse, Sheryl…  It’s a beautiful spot in north Idaho that’s been built up through the years with condos, ski-lifts and restaurants.   That recent construction I take or leave. What I truly love is to watch the mist pour through the vast bowl of slopes and silver-frosted trees which line the trails.  Lake Pond Oreille lingers about 5,000 feet below like a pair of blue eyes reflecting on the scene.   And tonight we can expect the longest night of the year!  

The winter solstice!

Anyway, it’s occurred to me recently that tourist attractions like this may not be long for this world, that the place itself may remain with its steep and jagged landscape, but that in terms of the snow and the reason for skiers to congregate here, global warming may have other plans.   Does that sound like pessimism?   Am I pooping on the proverbial party that folks of some means have here on an annual basis?   Should I ask the therapist to increase my meds and do what supposedly comes naturally?   Relax?   Chill out?

The fact is — I’m accosted on all sides with the damage that I have done by driving up this mountain.   A friend, who works for an Orthopedic Center, offered us his vacant pad in which we’ve crashed.   I bought him a bottle of Scotch to show our family’s appreciation.   And yet, the Internet reels with the stories of permafrost melting at the poles, of methane gas leaking into the atmosphere and of temperatures climbing so high that sea levels may eventually ebb and flow around Nebraska.  The only option I have in this scenario is poetry.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Of course, there’s the Sierra Club and Greenpeace and a wide spectrum of conservation organizations that an individual may join and feel as if the climate conditions can be reversed.   Hell, even BP Oil has recognized the issue and run a few commercials to illustrate how companies that generate profits from fossil fuels can still galvanize community support and reduce the carbon footprint…   But, as I see it from Mount Schweitzer on the shortest day of the year, we need much more than action.   We need the kind of cultural contemplation that only poetry can conjure and contribute to the mix of habitual change and resolve that needs to happen.

And so, poetry!

Or better yet, an epic poem the likes of which we haven’t seen in a while — at least since the Industrial Revolution initially gathered its momentum and began its methodical paving of paradise!

And maybe that’s the vortex where we might start… where I might start, as I can’t assume to speak for anyone else.

I guess the mindset that gives me the most psychic indigestion is the career agenda itself — the notion that creative artists and writers of literature need to enter the workforce as its popularly conceived in North America.   That is to say, must we automatically look upon our work as advancing us up the escalator at Macys?   Is there another way of being organized into social groups where economic exploitation is not considered a necessary evil?

Alright!   Shut up!  I hear someone saying, if you’ve read this far.    Can’t you simply celebrate a holiday like Christmas or Hanukkah without wishing or dreaming of some communist revolution or some dreamy utopia?    Shouldn’t you be having several drinks on the top of your mountain resort and forgetting yourself?

Believe me, I’ve tried.   And that’s where poetry and theology (or philosophy) do this amazing kind of dance.   It’s a dance of despairing hope, a movement full of huge stumbles and stuttering sorts of expletives.   Moreover, on the winter solstice, when it’s really dark and the clouds are torn up like shitty drafts, I do believe in what Galway Kinnel called “a music of grace.”

Peace–

I’ve written a few cards and received a few. The mantle is decorated, the lights are up. Our tree (which is a lovely tree, if I do say so) was selected weeks ago, from the same farm we visit each winter. Our cupboard is full of treats from others (parents across America: keep on baking for your kids’ teachers, because I live with one. I had puppy chow for breakfast yesterday. Crack, I tell you.) I’ve listened to a little Christmas music, mostly at the gentle urging/ultimate demand of the person I share my office with that it was time. I even pulled out the heavy artillery: Love Actually.

But it doesn’t really feel like the holiday season to me. And this doesn’t mean that I subscribe to some ridiculous notion that the holidays are either a) so f**king joyous that you walk around grinning constantly and handing out candycanes to small children while assuring them of Santa’s existence or b) a horrible, suicide-inducing time when already lonely/miserable people are constantly reminded of exactly how lonely/miserable they are, while everyone else walks around grinning and handing out candycanes. Neither of those are representative of what the holidays are like for most people.

But I do look forward to this time of year. I like baking. I like putting together care packages. I like trying to come up with thoughtful presents. I even (most of the time) like writing cards. There’s something sweet about it, and not because it’s culturally ‘expected’. I enjoy the act of handwriting a short note to people I care about, especially the ones who live far away. And sometimes by the end of the stack, of course I just want to scrawl “Happy Holidays” and sign my name and be done with it, but then I’d only be doing it by rote, and then who cares? So I try to make it matter, if only because by doing so, I’m taking a moment or two to really think about how that person is doing, and when the last time I talked to them was, and whether it’s time for a real check-in instead of some BS on Facebook.

All this is to say that I’m engaging in some of the rituals of the holiday, but it’s not working quite yet. I’m not falling into the groove of what I usually enjoy about this time of year. And isn’t that the crux of what comprises the holidays? People like rituals. They’re comforting. You make a certain meal, you sing a certain song, you say a certain prayer, whatever. Everyone has their traditions, and to some, they’re more important than others. Sometimes the act of doing something because that’s what you do leads you to something honest, to remember what you like about it, what you get out of it. And sometimes it doesn’t at all. I would be the first to say that a lot of traditions are stupid and I hate them. Not to mention that being required to spend time with people you have nothing in common with other than technically, and sometimes unfortunately, being related to them, does not make my heart fill with Christmas joy. But I look forward to some things about this time of year, and right now I’m feeling a little disappointed that I’m not enjoying it more.

I suspect that a few days from now, when friends start arriving in town, when I’m finally able to do a little baking and shopping and wrapping, maybe even if it snows, then I’ll be totally in it. I’ll be surrounded by good people, having quality time with them and enjoying some laughs. I suspect that just a little bit of time with these people will leave me feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the mountain of work ahead of me. But in the meantime, I’m feeling a little let-down by this December. Not terribly, just a little.

In the meantime, until the friends arrive and I start the baking and the wrapping and the drinking, I’ll just hit up one of my go-to resources for feeling better about the world: The West Wing.

Happy holidays, everyone! Enjoy them in whatever way you deem best.