Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
I got more and more spooked as I meandered among the aisles; ultimately I put my few items back and walked right out, got in my car and drove to Target.
I'm definitely in the latter's target demographic (huh huh) I learned. Seems a small matter, but egads, gadzooks and great googly moogly. I'll take the illusion of differentiation over the bleak light of day experience of hob-nobbing with the hoi polloi.
"God must have loved the common man, for he made so many of them," Grandma R. used to say. Such haughty self regard cuts against the Midwestern lumpen proletariat ethos, but so does higher education, avant garde cultural insurrections and top shelf imported scotch.
I'll take my elitist snobbery hand in hand with a red and white shopping bag, thank you.
They have that popcorn machine right at the entrance anyway.
Says Jezebel: "During an elaborate ceremony at the Vatican's Saint Peter's Square that involved a lot of fancy costumes, bejeweled bibles, Latin liturgies and probably some bored, sleep-weary children, clandestine Sith lord Pope Benedict XVI canonized Kateri Tekakwitha, making her the first Native American saint."
Catherine Tekakwitha, an ancient Mohawk Indian whose encounter with the European invasion led to grisly tragedy yet gave her "immortality," becomes an alluring metaphor at the heart of Beautiful Losers, the novel by Leonard Cohen, better known of course for his music. The book meant a great deal to me in my 20s, when I lived for a time at 25th Street and Florida Avenue in San Francisco and imposed the prose on as many friends as would borrow it.
"Gorgeously written … one comes out of it having seen terrible and beautiful visions" says the New York Times of Cohen's book
In an astounding coincidence, there was a mural at the end of my block at 24th Street in the barrio neighborhood that featured classic American Indian and Mestizo imagery -- corn fields, pueblo pastel colors and proud brown faces looking stoically ahead. And one of the people beatified in the work, alongside Cesar Chavez and the like, was none other than Tekakwitha, shown in a deerskin tunic and with beads and feathers dangling from a badge in her straight black hair, her sharp features etching a picture of lasting beauty in my mind. Or so I envision it now.
By contrast, as Cohen memorably writes, Tekakwitha "was not pretty," bearing the scars of some facial skin torment. For all this Chicago expat blogger knows, the grueling winters in Iroquois country that became upstate New York and Quebec helped to do her complexion in. Yet the iconic La Raza-style rendition of the Native lass was impossible not to fall in love with, in a fashion, just as the central character of the book falls in love with her culture-spanning story. The book is considered an "experimental" work of the '60s, with its split narratives and time shifting and wordplay as I recall. Despite its genuine warmth and scathing honesty, it reads a bit sophomoric to me now. Cohen said he typed the whole thing on speed. But as a seeker living at the edge of the world, looking for adventure or whatever comes our way, it felt like a heavenly blast of Truth and Art and Transcendence and all those restless romantic intellectual spiritual passionate Manichean-dichotomy-resolving, trauma-healing, angst-abating ideals that make a man do strange crazy things in pursuit of himself, of meaning, of happiness, of peace or enlightenment, pleasure or pain, whatever. So often it all leads instead to chaos, doubt, angst, pitying -- and back to the beginning. I'd summon the image of a serpent eating its own tail at this point, but that seems a bohemian indulgence too far.
Christ. Writers. They try to get away with murder. Tekakwitha recently became a saint in the Roman Catholic Church, or so I read. Much more important, she is used to stirring effect in Cohen's piercing novel. //SPOILER// I will never forget the brilliant, astonishing, koan-like insight at the philosophic "climax" -- the dramatic apex of a piece of prose, or so a schoolmarm taught me, to some use at least, in my formative years -- of the story, as I recall: "I change! I remain the same!" It still wells up feeling in me to think and write and read those words. As an aside, eventually a gay couple bought the house I was living in and tossed us scrabbling renters out. One was a scab news photographer filling in for the AP during a strike; one was a barmaid from Montreal, Cohen's hometown; another was a girl I loved and lost who ascended to some kind of museum conservation expertise.
Fog City offers a litany of noirish indulgences, then as now
I think I was office temping or doing something like that when not becoming one with grunge or pining for literary inspiration in my room, lurking at arthouse cinemas or orbiting the city's phantom French Quarter for noir ambiances, mingling with the demimonde or engaging in other scurrilous and unseemly actitivies in the wild '90s. A friend at the time called my job "pretty Beat," which felt beyond redeeming to a would-be creative trapped in a tiring gray suit and tie workaday world.
Yeah. That. My side point being, such are the downs and ups of "blight" and "gentrification" in a city, where perchance an Irish neighborhood might transubstantiate into a Latino one, enticing pioneering hipsters to move in, only to attract higher-class homeowners (huh huh) and reincarnate the 'hood as a respectablish locale. The humanity. A fine feature review of the novel is here if you want to immerse your soft warm brain in a deeper vat of literary ponderingness.
And hey, here's a whole latterday Cohen concert if you're interested. His lyrics appeal to the Bukowski in me. Plus he wears a bad fedora.
On that note, here's that guy who sang of a Leonard Cohen afterworld and now resides On a Plane of his own. Why not.
// ENTREATY // I am stymied, by the by, that I cannot find the mural shown online anywhere, despite no dearth of documentation on "Mission District murals." To wit. The painting in question is on a diocese building or something like that. Maybe the Church put a hex on those who would steal the soul of the souls so depicted? Perhaps someone in San Fran will elevate the mural to the digital plane. Once upon a time I took pics myself to slide inside the cover of the book, but those bygone media of the era have proved far less digitally shareable with their disappearing into boxes and such than what the kids do today with their fancy doowhacky devices with the thingamabobs and the ganeckdagazoinks and so on. Kids.
It's painfully ironic. Fresno's grassroots artists too often exhibit collage works that look like they were assembled from junk in their parents' garages. It's, ah, a downscale scene generally.
But the Fresno Art Museum turned the notion on its head with the second Trashique fashion show, a benefit for museum programs that challenges local artists to concoct outfits using recycled material.
Some of the designers cheated on their content, which clearly did not all come from the city dump. Regardless, some snazzy styles emerged at the showcase, and I snapped a few pick-chas of the chicas on the runway, and beyond.
You might think it's a tongue-in-cheek concept, but the show is likely the biggest fashion extravaganza in Fresno all year, for models, designers and attendees. Which says a lot of things, but I'll let you make your own snide assertions.
More to come ...
This one I stole from Fresno State's The Collegian newspaper. What can I say, I led the set. I took a "placard" that said Media from the empty seating section for reports and stuck it on my shirt. Always the documentarian.
The latest Mad Men was the best yet. The show is unparalleled. I'm not even sure why it's so good; the characters are flawed at best, to reprehensible at worst. Peggy is the only one to really root for, and she's got her own issues (the nerve trying to balance a personal life and a career, that never works for women in Hollywoodland).
Mad Men's writing is so snappy, and the people are portrayed so perfectly. Pete is really the secret weapon; I'm reminded of the "evil surgeon" on ER who eventually took a beating (and then some) for his "tell it like it is" big mouth. Sometimes the best actor -- or at least the sharpest character -- is the villain.
Things are gelling all around, and of course the "knowing winks" that travel through time (like that recent crack about Romney, actually Mitt's father in the mid-'60s) to give us something to smirk about are enlivening. The baby juggling earlier in the season, making Pete and Peggy squirm so cruelly, was genius.
But I think like everyone, I'm still looking for more Don, specifically more of this unfortunate youth he spent growing up in a whorehouse and, more important to the show's arc, the transformation of this country bumpkin into man of the world and master of the universe. Did he read the encyclopedia while he was selling furs? Take some business classes at least? There was no google button to learn everything from back then. Ultimately, how did he get so educated, effective (if he really is) and cocky?
"You told me your mother died in childbirth. Mine did too. She was a prostitute. I don’t know what my father paid her but when she died they brought me to him and his wife. And when I was ten years old he died. He was a drunk who got kicked in the face by a horse she buried him and took up with some other man I was raised by those two sorry people." (Don Draper, to Rachel Menken)
It's pretty hard to will yourself to the top. That kind of "inner game" doesn't come like flicking on a light. It's more like the sun gradually rising, and it cycles to some extent as your confidence ebbs and flows through life, unless you find a way to artificially hold it up. Mercurial Don makes being the kind of guy who walks in like he owns the place look as easy as glib Roger does wining and dining clients and acting charming in spite of himself, although we know they're both unhappy and faking it.
The brief discourse on being gay was notable. Pete's bluntness talking to Lane ("... he thinks you're a homo"), contrasted with the madame's supposed smooth operating with Don, marked an obvious character divide: Lane knows he's effete-acting and probably has been needled as a queer plenty; Don's knowledge that he's anything but -- of course ;) -- gives him supreme confidence to dismiss such a misguided appellation.
Anyway it's amazing fun to watch the lot of their stories unspool. Here's hoping the brimming subtext finds eventual dramatic explication. The man with the miniature orchestra ... what a clever way to wrap things.
Culture critic mode, disengage.
P.S. Much as I enjoyed this latest episode, the previous one -- I wound up watching them out of order -- where a tipsy Peggy bantered with Roger was equally genius. She seems to get some of the most prickly dramedy-type moments in the show. Clever indeed how she's the one wearing the pants, despite literally kicking up her heels in a skirt, as he begs her to do her job in a rush to cover his own ass, and she fleeces the rube. Despite the creepy sex-murder-mayhem undertone via Chicago, it was a joy to watch the character's fine bristle brush strokes.
An innovative way to address mental health challenges is coming to salt of the earth Fresno, California -- a holistic wellness center. Here's a sample of my latest article for HealthyCal.org, a nonprofit, public policy reporting website.
Holistic mental wellness center coming to Fresno
By Todd R. Brown, California Health Report
To some immigrants, the details of Western medicine lie in unfamiliar territory, so certain maladies wind up being treated by traditional healers rather than modern medical practitioners.
To remedy that dichotomy between the old world and the new, Fresno County plans to open a holistic wellness center that will link Hmong, Latinos and other groups with spiritually fulfilling as well as evidence-based solutions to mental health worries.
Staffing will be contracted out, and three groups responded to the county’s request for proposals. One of them, the Fresno Center of New Americans, is a nonprofit that formed in the early ’90s to help Cambodian, Lao and Vietnamese refugees adjust to life in America. Over time it has expanded to aid other immigrant groups as well as low-income residents.
One challenge with such clients is that stoic immigrants and proud blue collar workers tend to stigmatize mental health trouble as a weakness. And in some traditional cultures, including in Central America and Southeast Asia, stress may not be seen as a culprit in emotional distress.
“Hmong believe that the body is inhabited with many souls and spirits,” said psychologist Ghia Xiong with the Fresno Center for New Americans, discussing the non-Western model of mental health. “The whole goal for the body to be in good health is to have these souls in balance.”
In this world view, a traumatic incident can cause a person’s spirit to depart his body, Xiong said. The resulting imbalance, which a Westerner might diagnose as depression or neurosis, is perceived by a tradition-minded Hmong as requiring shamanic intervention.
“They may see a doctor and say, ‘I don’t feel too well, I’m feeling very irritable, and I’m having headaches,’ and the doctor gives medicine for pain,” Xiong said. “Then they might want to see a psychiatrist and talk about how they feel, what they think. But that doesn’t really solve the third issue of their spiritual health, the third component.
A challenging book I started reading 20 years ago and still haven't finished or come to terms with. A lot of its philosophic vitriol felt personal as a somewhat anti-intellectual intellectual youth. And I came to sympathize significantly wi...
So what does decoherence mean? I latched onto the term several years ago when I was reading about quantum theory and started this blog.
Decoherence is akin to entropy, where physical disturbances sort of wash out in the overall scheme of things, an averaging of unique particle interactions in an inevitably cooling universe.
Metaphorically, creating an intellectual levee to halt that trend in our culture is one way to preserve what is special and unique amid the middling herd.
A more succinct, non-technical summary of the theory that I recently came across is by this Vancouver physics prof:
"Decoherence is the process by which quantum becomes classical; the process by which the determinism of the macroscopic world arises out of the superpositions and entanglements that describe the microscopic one."
