the unbearable lightness of fame

Did town criers really say "hear ye, hear ye"?

And did they ever weep, or did "cry" always refer to voice volume?

As for me?

Read all about it; or rather read all of it.

My latest book.

My ninth: Journey to the End of Love: In Search of Leonard Cohen -- and My Self.

how embarrassing

How embarrassing?

Good question.

This embarrassing.

I am embarrassed. I have become embarrassed. I am embarrassing. Switch pronouns. We are embarrassed. We have become embarrassed. We are embarrassing. We are being embarrassed. We are an embarrassment. "We" here stands for the Disunited States of America. The good ol' DSA. What is it to be embarrassed? Embarrass: "to perplex, throw into doubt." The estimable Online Etymology Dictionary tells us "embarrass" comes to us from the French, meaning "to block," which came to us from the Italian "to bar," which came from Latin. Embarrass came to mean "to hamper, hinder," and then later "make (someone) feel awkward." Other meanings over the centuries have even included "mental state of unease." With this FACTUAL word history in mind, no matter where you perch on today's razored fence of political discourse, you cannot deny the reality of embarrassment. Whether you lament it or celebrate, it is here. The Age of Embarrassment. Whether you are on the barricades or hiding from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement [Embarrassment] (ICE), welcome to Embarrassmentville. "Welcome" is hereby spelled e-m-b-a-r-r-a-s-s by edict of Embarrassing Executive Order No. 001. So, get used to it, boys and girls -- and anyone in-between or off the charts. Get used to a state of being perplexed, doubtful, blocked, barred, hampered, or hindered. Get used to feeling awkward and ill at ease. Get used to being embarrassed or making others feel embarrassed. Show your Embarrassment Visa upon demand.

fissure fracture tensile tendril chasm

Since I started this blog, several years ago, with an inaugural column about excess and consumption, haven't we as a society become ever more fractured and fissured, with the tensile tendrils of chaos causing more chasms?

Icelandic dreams

Iceland. The thought during a balmy winter beckons me. Go north, and then north of there. Go to the planet's true north, its northernmost capital. While others go to the Cayman Islands (as I once did) or Belize or Puerto Rico or Mexico, you name it, to a warmer clime, I am fantasizing doing deeper, going into the cold, mine and Nature's. solo. And why not. Just the name of the country invites stoic challenge, though geothermal springs dispel those notions, as do stories of all-night revellers and Nordic, guilt-free abandon. Why not. Having flown to Ireland and Germany and seen the in-flight map of Transatlantic flight progress displayed on the screen on the back of the seat in front of me, and in those instances flying over Iceland, and thinking, wow, we are almost there, in Europe (though not quite; is Iceland in Europe?), I am thinking, Let's skip the continental Europe part and see what Iceland offers, even if no ice is there, literally or metaphorically.

commonweal

Commonweal. No, not commonwealth. Forget the wealth part of it. Remember the common element. Have we lost a sense of commonweal? The common well-being, the body politic. A shared welfare (another word whose shades of meaning are often shrouded).

Commonweal.

A Secular Prayer

Would that we could summon, or have someone, or something, summon unto us, for our own behalf, the solidarity of community, not riven by solipsism or divided by dissonance. Would that we could respect and honor our very own commonweal, even if by not trashing the land we traverse, or by unlittering the litter strewn before our averted or blinded eyes. Amen.

albatross of euphemism

Here's a good clue as to where something fits in the moral labyrinth (or firmament): is it called by what it is? or do its users use a euphemism?

"Enhanced interrogation techniques" is torture. We can debate whether torture is moral or permissible or odiously necessary or an evil choice among other evils in wartime (or peacetime), blah blah, and so forth, but it is still torture.

If you have to resort to a euphemism, what is that telling us?


I salute commentary at the blog Orange Crate Art in this regard.

Of course, the military has a long history of employing euphemisms, as do governments.

worth asking

Last night, having viewed the movie "The Railway Man" I encountered a "fearful symmetry" a day or so after the Senate released a report five years in the making (which I have not read) on "enhanced interrogation techniques," i.e., torture.

Don't people (a nation, a community) (don't I, don't you) have both a right and an obligation to ask:

What are we? What do we espouse? What do we stand for? What defines us?

I do not pretend these are simple questions evoking simple answers. Nor do I pretend to speak with authority, as I type this in a comfortable chair in a public cafe in a free society. (Allow a digression: are you "free" if you are cajoled, motivated, nudged, coerced every day by forces you do not recognize or acknowledge? I'm not talking conspiracy or paranoiac whisperings. I am referring to the relentless onslaught of consumerist stimulation that tickles our fancies and enslaves our wallets.)

I propose the asking (and potentially answering) of these and like-minded difficult but profound questions as part of our civic discourse  -- beyond pieties, cliches, jingoism, chauvinism, and bromides.

As G.K. Chesteron said, " 'My country, right or wrong' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober.' "

freedom democracy and all that

We hear our politicians and pundits toss around words like "freedom," "democracy," and similar charged diction.

Really?

In the United States, "land of the free," more than 70 million people who are eligible to vote do not vote.

That amount comprises how many countries?

Of the number who register to vote (a group that is smaller than the universe of potential voters in America), a small percentage actually votes. This year, 2014, it was about 36% of eligible voters who voted. Remember, that 70 million is missing in action.

So we have a minuscule number of people voting compared to the number who could be voting.

I rarely miss a chance to vote, even in primaries.

Freedom.

Democracy.

Do the math.

garbage

Is it just the word? Garbage. Who likes that? As for junk or refuse (an intriguing word in its own right) or waste or disposed-of goods or detritus or trash or debris or rubbish or crud or crap or effluvium, take your pick of the litter. It's all there for the taking. And this is the season for these trash pickups, these communal spring cleanings, the feel-good pick-me-ups loosely or closely connected to Earth Day. Nothing wrong with these bursts of civic pride. Nothing amiss with these well intentioned forays into beautification (or tidiness, at the least). But lately I've come to a reluctant if tentative conclusion: the people who litter -- those who are filled with careless disregard or self-loathing or appalling civic indifference --  are not the folks who are manning the cleanups. I can't prove this. I have no evidence, not exactly. Yet, to my meager mind it stands to reason: no one who picks this crap up wants to add to it again, flippantly, the next day or the next week. Wouldn't you think: why litter in the first place? Sadly, I suspect such thoughts do not invade the brain pan of the litter-perpetrators, the litter-perps, the LPs.

Another thought: those who brandish patriotism or jingoism or American exceptionalism like a bald eagle's talons are loath to admit this: we Americans are a pretty sloppy lot, often filthy, frequently just-plain dirty. Look around. No, I don't mean some scenic Grand Canyon vista. Look down at your feet. (It's regional, you say? Naw. I've seen how ubiquitous litter is in many locales, in many regions.) Oh. You say, it was not I who littered? That might be true. But if you were the one who walked by the pack of Newports or the McDonald's wrapper or plastic bag and just "let it be," what's the difference?

Garbage, by any other name.

Gun Control

Why can we accept reasonable limits on other rights (free speech, recreational drug use, driving while impaired or intoxicated, pornography) but not reasonable limits on rights related to guns and ammunition?

Hello, how have you been?

Albatross.

Sounds so Western.

Let the bird fly.

Says the sage from the East.

Exurbian Walkthrough

Deed restricted. No entry. No outlet. Cul de sac. Dead end. Subdivision. Gated community.

Keep "them" out, preserve my privilege, feed my fears, wave my flag, save my people, Jesus saves, Moses invests, walk my dog, close my blinds, hide my warts, polish my silver, lock my doors, draw the curtains, hush my lips, shout my should, mow my lawn, pave my driveway, clip your wings, keep your distance, fly my banner, sing my smirk.

This is the vocabulary of dystopia.

This is the geography of nowhereland.

This is the landscape of Disurbia.

Now Hear This

The Guardian has seen fit to review my book, BASEBALL'S STARRY NIGHT. Going international. Oh yeah.

income distribution

Speaking of income disparity, I invite you to enhance my revenue stream of legal tender. Plus, you'll enjoy the narrative.

Power to the fans!

#OWS

In a weird, extended-metaphor sense, AlbatrossDreams presaged and foreshadowed the Occupy Wall Street movement. I'm not saying this as a megalomaniac, or maybe I am. But it is true in the sense that my very first post at this blog mocked income disparity, shallow abundance, and income disparity -- especially as embodied in real estate.

I admit, however, that saying something about that or writing about it is not the same as doing something about it. Or maybe it is. After all, isn't writing or saying a form of doing?

Just saying.

Or writing.

Or doing.

prescient

If you look at my first post here, I guess I was rather prescient about the coming collapse in 2008.

Sort of.

Indirectly.

I dare you to read this

I dare every Member of Congress to read this and challenge any zealot to refute its FACTS:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html

Come on.

Refute this data, supplied by a billionaire.

I'm waiting.

compromise

It is worth noting that House Speaker Boehner did not use the word "compromise" once in his debt-ceiling speech last night.

the GOP Taliban

The Taliban wing of the GOP is hell-bent on ruination over the debt-ceiling impasse, wearing financial suicide vests, sure of their purity, confident of their paradise of possession.

Albatross of Possession

Just finished "House of Sand and Fog," by Andre Dubus III.

Though it came out more than 10 years ago, ahead of its time on the burdens of having and acquiring.

The American Dream turned tragically upside down and inside out.

Have yet to see the movie.