San Sargasso

To the Lucky Winner...

I had a secret fear that no one would ever post any comments to San Sargasso (which debuted September 26, 2004), and that this would make me feel even more isolated than ever on my lonely island. So it was with some relief that I received my first comment from a guy called Chris Canary (another island?). Thanks, Chris!

I wanted to think of a special way to thank him, and one of the things I like about living in cyberspace is that you can give someone an image of something and it’s almost as lovely (if not lovelier) than receiving the thing itself. (I learned this from a Parisian friend who once emailed me a picture of the first gardenia of the season from his beloved terrace garden in the 10th arrondissement. And, yes, that is about as romantic as it gets for me.)

The first thing I thought of was a tiara; but I figured it would be time-consuming to find just the right one.

The next thought was some S&H Green Stamps. Now, this is a rather odd notion to wash ashore even in my nostalgia-cluttered mind, but I figured it was the sort of item that was bound to have a cottage industry of collectors associated with it. A quick google excursion proved to be disappointing: it turned up only the photo you see above (click on it for a better view), which is still not satisfactory because I had in mind an image of a page filled with the little green stamps, emblems of something like money found on the street, currency of idle dreams, which look so charming side by side.

I was surprised, but when I thought more about it, not surprised, to discover that Warhol had done a lithograph of S&H Green Stamps in 1965, a few years after the famous Campbell soup cans. (For better or worse, Warhol’s work and folklore have had such a great influence on me, I sometimes wonder whether I would have had any sensibility at all if the man had never existed.)

Then I thought, well, perhaps I’ll offer something even rarer than S&H Green Stamps: namely, Texas Gold Stamps. And, Chris, since I couldn’t find any photos at all of those, you’ll have to be content with the little reminiscence that follows.

In San Antonio, Texas, where I grew up, the cashier at the H.E.B. grocery store would hand you a bunch of Texas Gold Stamps with every purchase. (This would have been in the 1960s.) They were attached together sequentially in a ribbon, and I think the number of them you received was in proportion to how much you spent.

As kids we were fascinated by this, and it was our job to collect the stamps, detach them, lick the backs, and glue them carefully, one by one, into the books which were provided by the stamp company. I recall there was a satisfaction in filling up a page, similar to that of winning a game of bingo. And as the pages accumulated and the books filled, there was a joy of anticipation, and a sense that you could almost touch the limitless treasures that would otherwise have been out of reach for members of a lower middle class family such as ours, because there was a whole catalog of items you could get if you had enough books to trade in. I don’t recall actually getting any goods, just the excitement of collecting, looking through the catalog, and dreaming about the prizes.

Last word: As I recall there are some wonderful images in Sugarland Express (Spielberg’s first feature film, released in 1974), where the fugitive mother Lou Jean (Goldie Hawn) tosses money and long ribbons of Texas Gold Stamps out the window of a speeding car. I’m not a big Spielberg person, and I haven’t seen the film in decades, but I recall being charmed by it, and I suspect it’s worth revisiting. (Hmm, how did we get from tiaras to Sugarland Express? It’s the damn seaweed around here – all these inconsequent things, adrift and contiguous in San Sargasso.)

There Is No Reincarnation

There is no Reincarnation or De-incarnation: only Carnation: a perpetual blooming.

When It Comes to the Brows

When it comes to the brows, go for the High or the Low, but stay away from the Middle.

Boston 10 Years After

I have never kept a journal, but occasionally I will jot down some journalistic thoughts. These are scattered about on little notebooks and scraps of paper. I don’t think there’s much chance of stringing them together into any sort of meaningful narrative, but perhaps they should be thought of as driftwood or notes in a bottle found on the shore of San Sargasso. Here’s a notation dated September 23, 2002:

At San Diego airport, leaving for Boston, the pilot of the American Airlines 757 slammed on the brakes just before leaving the ground. Warning light – something about the engine. Two-and-a-half hour delay. Everyone seemed to take it in stride, although obviously all were nervous about the flight. I couldn’t help thinking about how I would have overslept the flight (if indeed it was fated to crash) had David not called before picking me up for the ride to the airport. But I guess those kinds of thoughts have become commonplace in the minds of the more neurotic of travelers.

I must say it was the first time I could say I actually prayed for a safe landing, but I prayed for the safety of everyone on the plane, not just for myself, and not to any particular god, but to the Thing that does take care of us sometimes and surely exists.

I hadn’t seen Lizzie and Damien in about 10 years. I was a little apprehensive that they might have aged shockingly, but they had in fact aged only a little, and were as vital and energetic as before. Lizzie seemed more sure of herself – she had just been promoted – though she still had some of the neurotic / obsessive qualities that could be at times endearing and at other times tiresome. Damien for his part alternated his expressive soft-spoken articulations with roars of laughter – at almost everything. (For him, almost every spoken expression falls so short of his sense of reality that the expressions collapse into caricature and provoke hilarity).

Lizzie, Damien and I had dinner at Bob’s condo in Savin Hill. Our uproarious conversation seemed to have exactly the same tenor as 20 years ago when I lived in Boston, giving our friendship in my mind a sense of indestructibleness.

We talked about our old intimate lore of the past: my former roommate who was a peeping tom, referred to as “Captain Kangaroo” because of his resemblance to the children’s TV show host; the plastic wiggle eyes that had detached themselves from my (circa 1982) Halloween costume and which Bob had saved all these years; how Bob’s father had fought for Mussolini; the New York public access TV video I had recorded for them with the guy who performed the entire show while in his bathtub; the obscure underground film we all loved called Thundercrack.

And we told some new stories: my San Diego neighbor across the street swimming on the front lawn; my adventures with K; the movie Requiem for a Dream.

Walking in the South End of Boston on a beautiful day, I observed that the tone or essense of the city, if you will, seemed exactly the same as it was when I had lived there 20 years ago. Although there was unpleasantness there, the sameness was comforting, because it confirmed my suspicion that nothing is ever lost; that all potentiality is conserved and recurs eternally in the present. (I used to think the opposite: that the particular newness and intensity of moments, if not captured there and then, would be lost forever.)

A Message from the Cosmos

Written in chalk on the sidewalk in front of the renovated church on 3rd and Robinson:

THANK YOU FOR BEING

Why Write?

I have been tormenting myself with this question ad nauseam from the time the unfortunate idea that I could “be a writer” entered my adolescent brain. Now it seems clear that the point is not “to be a writer” (in the sense of creating for myself an identity that is valued, by myself or others, on the basis of the quality, import or renown of my writings); and indeed insofar as that is the motivation, then my writing is likely to be of no value.

What matters instead is that, time and again, over the years, certain images, scenes, stories, phrases or ideas (for convenience I’ll refer to these as “fragments”) have continually drifted into my consciousness, in one form or another, with a kind of lazy imperative, like odd debris or bits of seaweed washing against the shore – as though they would like to come ashore at that moment, but could just as well drift unhurriedly a little further down; and yet it seems that they will surely come ashore sooner or later, perhaps not on this shore but on some other.

I’m not at all certain whether these fragments are “important,” yet I fancy that they keep drifting into my mind because they are treasures or curiosities of a kind no one has ever quite seen before, or at least they have never been seen through the eyes of the likes of me; and I fancy there may be something peculiar, eccentric, probing or magnetic about my consciousness that attracts these certain fragments; and finally I fancy that they would like to have a voice or to be embodied somehow, but they would just as soon be something else or nothing at all.

(This lack of urgency has felicitous side effects: it not only frees me from the paralyzing feeling that I am not “up to” the writing, but also allows me to forgive myself for my laziness and lack of discipline when it comes to writing.)

And so now I feel that, insofar as I can be attentive and “true” to these things that “would like to be” expressed, then the activity of writing is worthwhile. This all goes back to my intuition that “the reason we are here” (if there must be a reason) is simply to be (as alertly and attentively as we can), and, in doing so, to serve, momentarily, as the very specific and peculiarly apt sense organs of “It” (what some call “God,” “the universe,” “Consciousness,” etc.). And I should add that I don’t believe we just sense in a passive way, but rather, in being, we project a reality in much the same way as a play is staged or a film screened. And I suspect that this reality has value, and indeed, that it is sacred, though not in the commonly understood religious sense.

These notions of mine that seem to be classifiable as spiritual, mystical, metaphysical, and so on, may well strike some readers as nonsense; they certainly would have seemed like nonsense to me before my "spiritual awakening" (more on this later). But I hope you will give me some credit for simply recording what passes through my mind (however deranged, deluded or misguided it may seem) as truly and honestly as I can.

Moreover, as I often tell myself, if these notions are without merit, then, since we don’t know the truth and cannot know the truth, why not choose the more pleasant delusion over a more depressing one?

My Most Lovable Vermin

I’ve come around to believing that, when it comes to knowing the truth about things, you really can’t get anywhere unless you are able to entertain two contradictory notions simultaneously and understand intuitively that they are both true. In fact, in doing so, you yourself become the resolution to the paradox, and it may very well be that the resolution is to some extent your reason for being.

For example: at various times in my life I have had a strong sense that human beings as a species are really a sort of vermin when looked at on a global scale. And even when looked at a little more locally, say, when you weigh the behaviors, values and worth of individual earthly communities, it often seems to me that the aggregate is pretty despicable, and that there is a kind of justness in the Pandora’s box of misery, disease, strife and destruction that afflict human beings. I even go so far sometimes as to think that if the species were exterminated from the face of the earth – whether by our own doing, or by some unforeseen external agent such as an asteroid – it might not be such a bad thing; and that the surviving species of flora and fauna (if any) might then have a better chance of flourishing and perhaps transforming the earth into a new “dehumanized” paradise.

Now, if people knew that I entertained such shockingly antisocial ideas from time to time, they might suppose that I am the sort of misanthrope who takes pleasure in hearing about disasters, famines, plagues and the more minor sufferings of other people, and that in my own interactions with my fellow humans I might be expected to be habitually cold, disdainful, disrespectful, even belligerent.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, as time passes I find I am more and more compelled to be kind and generous toward other people; and I find myself easily moved by news of violence and suffering (whether near at hand or across the world) – to an almost embarrassing and exaggerated degree. In spite of a long-standing queasy aversion to sentimentality, tears now form quickly and involuntarily in my eyes when I encounter certain stories that strike me as intimations of real suffering or love.

This pathos comes, I think, from a saintlike (if you’ll permit me to use that word with humility) feeling of compassion toward other people, which in turn derives from compassion for myself and my own past suffering. (I reckon I don't suffer much anymore, thankfully.) It is as though what I despise is not the human species, but rather the monstrousness that has enveloped it and taken it over. I fancy I am able to distinguish between the verminous and belligerent habits of human beings on the one hand, and, on the other, the miraculous individual being itself which breathes and feels pain and, one hopes, love.

But I want to add that the love and concern that I feel for individual human beings is not simply the sort of love for one’s neighbor that is professed by the religions; it is more profoundly connected to a general, radiating love for everything that is. It’s a sense that all that is in the present moment is sacred (yes, even the violence and horror), and that it is my duty to call forth that sacredness; to embody it in myself; to let it flow forth; to dissolve and neutralize the monstrousness to the extent that I can (and I suspect that each of us has vastly more power to do this than we suppose). And if you are detecting disturbingly Messianic overtones here, then I would suggest that there may be some truth to all individual forms of madness – even the Messianic.

And so these two ostensibly contradictory impulses, one malevolent, one benevolent, exist simultaneously within me; and they are no longer the source of internal conflict. It is as though I were capable of seeing humans from an “extrahuman” point of view; in other words, from the point of view of the entire earth considered as an organism, for which humans seem to be an element run amok and deserving of annihilation; and at the same time I can see myself as very intimately and actively a member of the human world, capable of feeling and expressing (though perhaps discreetly and surreptitiously, as though it were an embarrassment) those traditional virtues of love, kindness and compassion.

These contradictory modes of being coexist harmoniously in me, and I am that strange being whose duty it is to be their resolution.

[Footnote: The title of this piece is a playful allusion to a long-running column from Reader’s Digest called “My Most Unforgettable Character,” which I remember reading as a child.]

Some Gnats

As I was walking back home from the coffee shop one day, this odd phrase occurred to me:

No one better able to inspect this bug from the inside.

I suppose this is my quaint way of saying that, although I may be a know-nothing with respect to science, politics, philosophy, etc., I flatter myself that I am the foremost expert on the workings of my own psyche – and that counts for something.

Footnote: In his essay, “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense,” Nietzsche writes, “[I]f we could communicate with the gnat, we would learn that he ... feels the flying center of the universe within himself.” I say, true, but some gnats are more interesting than others!

Miss Translation

A while back a friend praised the new translation of Swann’s Way by Lydia Davis. (Or, more accurately, he praised the first paragraph in comparison to his reading of the French text; I’m not sure if he’d read the whole thing.) I have such a soft spot for the Moncrieff/Kilmartin version, it’s hard for me to imagine anyone could improve on that significantly, and I felt, pessimistically, that it was more likely to go in the direction of worse. Sure enough, I read the first paragraph of the Davis translation and felt it was all wrong. Here’s an excerpt from the email message I wrote about it:

“For a long time I went to bed early” sounds abrupt and prosaic to my ear. I still prefer the rhythm of “For a long time I used to go to bed early.”

Same with “In Search of Lost Time” [the newer English title of the novel, which in French is À la recherche du temps perdu] – I know it’s accurate but it just sounds so trite in English. “Recherche” makes me think of a scientific journey inward and downward into the depths of memory – like being in a diving bell, whereas “search” sounds like a cop tearing up a room looking for drugs. Search and seizure. Or that idiotic Leonard Nimoy TV program called “In Search of ...” “Remembrance of Things Past” as a title for the book is kitschy, but I think Proust would have preferred it.

I think a translator is actually more faithful to the spirit of a work when he departs slightly from strict translation in favor of maintaining the illusion that the reader is reading something that is written in his own language. When you watch a movie, you don’t want to be reminded that you’re watching a movie.

But I suppose it’s wrong of me to hold up one translation as better than another in any objective sense; the point is I’m so thankful to Moncrieff/Kilmartin, because if it weren’t for them, Proust’s world wouldn’t exist for me, and I wouldn’t be quite the same person.