December update

It has been several weeks since I have published an entry to this blog. It was always my intention to document events and states (physical as well as emotional), and in addition to leave a record of books and movies and other items that I encountered this year. In the past few months I haven't done so.

It is now Friday evening and outside we have a bitter cold settling in. There is a blustery wind that has picked up, and while I haven't had a chance to venture out (I've been very sick these past few days), it wouldn't have been a good day to do so if I was looking for an outdoor activity. Indoor activities in enclosed spaces do not really appeal to me in my current physical state.

I thought I would mention a few of the books and films I have been reading and viewing lately. It may be that no one else reads this blog, but at least I'll leave a record.

I had a chance recently to read Garth Ennis' The Boys, volumes 1-3. It details a world in which superheroes actually come to exist, but in the corrosive, subversive and wildly creative style that characterizes the works of this author who had also created the perverse, funny, warm and dark book Preacher, it is also satisfying and doesn't stick to the tired mold of superhero comics.

The eponymous "boys" (a unit that includes a mute, disturbed Asian woman with mysterious powers) are a group of individuals who are dedicated to battling back against the superheroes, and they all seem to be misfits of one sort of another. We really don't know that drives them, for some of them seem to hold grudges, while others seem to have what would amount to a need to satisfy an urge for confrontation. Are they superheroes? Well, it turns out that they have been exposed to "Substance V", some concoction that originated with the work of a European scientist during WWII, and which confers on those who injest it a "reboot" or their DNA such that they gain superpowers. It is supposedly notoriously difficult and expensive to manufacture (one imagine it as a form of liquid plutonium, at least in my imagination), and yet it is being circulated in unrefined form (like crystal meth) so that superheroes are proliferating throughout the world. However, there are tiers of superhumans, and it is those that are corporate-branded who are able to thrive.


What will happen when you have beings who have so much power that no one is able to stop them? Is it not natural to conclude that they will become tyrants, and that they will crush and overpower the rest of humanity, reducing it to thralldom, such as is recalled in the famous dark fantasy in George Orwell's novel 1984 of a humanity crushed by a boot forever and ever? This would seem to be the case, if it weren't for the fact that, for all their power, these superheroes have weaknesses, and they need to preserve the prevailing social network to satisfy their wants. They are depraved, given in to narcotics addiction, to lust and to all manner of perversion, and this is one of the reasons why they can be controlled by humanity, or at least by selected humans, such as those that head monstrous corporations. The immense majority of humanity otherwise engages in hero worship that suggests the desperate level to which they need to satisfy their own need to believe in phantasies of moral perfection. Ask the traditional demographic of comic books, adolescent and literate young boys, and you will find this same narrative of redemption, of misunderstood boys who wish to belong and be accepted and worshiped, or at the very least, recognized.

It is still haunting to reflect, nonetheless, on the parables of social and species division that is represented by these superhumans. In Olaf Stapledon's novel Odd John, it was natural for these super-evolved beings to seek out similar beings, and then to withdraw to their island, behaving in a way that escaped any moral restriction. The characters may have been misfits, but the way in which they chose to experiment on Polynesian women in order to carry out their breeding experiments anticipated the worse atrocities that would leave the realm of fiction and would be enacted by men such as Dr. Mengele during Nazi Germany. These superheroes, despite their public image, are similary callous, but also, strangely, juvenile, in the way that teenagers are when you reflect on the dynamics of the average high school here in the USA, and the casual way in which those groups in power (the jocks) dismiss everyone else. For all those who profess nostalgia for their high school years, I ask them to consider to which group they belonged. I knew they were difficult years for me.

As mentioned by one of the characters in the series, if you have beings who can swim across the surface of the sun, how much would they have in common with regular human beings? We would necessarily have the parable of the Ewoks and the Morlocks once again, one in which the sinister element would reside in the group that exercises unrestrained power. This is evolution at work, one lacking in any moral considerations.

I always did have difficulty accepting the premise of humans being able to life peacefully with superhumans. How could they ever interact? As I recall, Umberto Eco had published an essay long ago in which he addressed some of the physical constraints, and he wrote most tellingly of the impossibility of any physical communion between the two. In my case, I always found it extremely exasperating that superheroes were always fighting either with tinpot figures who wished to conquer the world, or as in the old Spiderman series, were trolling the allies and canyons of Manhattan, putting a stop to muggers and bank robbers, as if there were no other paragons of evil and injustice operating within our system.

A mugger snatches a purse from a timid stroller, and maybe obtains $50 in cash, as well as documents (drivers lincense, credit cards, etc.) that would allow him to go on a modest spending spree. What about the devastation wrought by rougue financiers, who come up with exotic financial instruments (credit default swaps, for example), and systematically hallow out the economy and create lasting crisis such as the one that has affected Western countries these past few years? And we don't even have to add the qualifier of "rogue"; increasingly this is business as usual, and we have no regulatory agencies able to restrain or control them, and instead we have a political party that wishes to destroy any last vestiges of regulation, as well as political leaders who are in thrall to corporate interests. We have a judiciary who, in the infamous "Citizens United" decision, grants corporations with protections by investing them with a sense of "collective personhood", one that is bound to hallow out the economy and contribute to the steady erosion of public (political, economic, etc.) independence. Are there superheroes who can cope with those threats?

To his credit, in his presentation of superbeings who are thoroughly corrupt, and who are controlled by corporations, we have a book that touches on a few of these issues. However, we also are dealing with dark fantasies of societies that are coming apart, and of a unit ("the boys") who represent one of the few restraining elements.

The graphic novels (these are comics, after all) are profane in the way they attack the mythos of the pristine, uncompromised, virtuous super hero. We have the "Seven", and the leader of this group, "Homelander", looks like a blonde superhero who harks back to a young John Wayne. He is the embodiment of cultural fantasies that have held up the nordic superman as an ideal, and yes, I am suggesting that he is an American version of the German ubermensch.


I am looking forward to continuing to read this series. The corporation (Vought-American) seems to operate as we would fear any corporation is capable of operating, with a degree of impunity and self-interest that has immense scope for action, given the immense economic resources that a corporation, especially a defense corporation, is able to command. We may not have superheroes in our modern world, but we do have a faulty, corrupt, desintigrating institutional framework that is melded into the narratives of this story.
And, there have been so many other books, CDs, movies and other items that I have been reading, listening to, viewing and coming into contact with that they are difficult to mention in one blog entry.

More to come later. I need to take some Sudafed for my cold.

The Sorcerer's House by Gene Wolfe

I also finished reading a new novel by Gene Wolfe entitled "The Sorcerer's House". It was described as a fantasy, and I have found Wolfe to be an erudite, engaging, ambitious writer whose style has influenced my own. I wish at times that I had walked along the path that he cleared, he having also been an engineer who gave himself over to literary pursuits, and produced such indelible works as "The Fifth Head of Cerberus", "The Sword of the Conciliator" and "Soldier of the Mist".

His style, as indicated above, is literary, and seems almost stately. However, he is never completely trustworthy, and this is due perhaps precisely to his encyclopedic nature. Wolfe has read so widely and has so many literary precursors to draw upon that he seems to be more than just a compendium of styles. He frequently jars our perception by introducing inconsistencies that seem to escape notice because we are seduced by the action and the intoxicating prose, but are there nonetheless. He makes me think of what Jorge Luis Borges might have become if he had chosen to write longer works of fiction, rather than the short stories for which he is known.

In this case, I didn't quite know what to expect. Perhaps I was hoping for something along the lines of "Mythago Wood" by Robert Holdstock, where we had a window into the archetypal layers of the human mind. Or maybe I was hoping for something along the lines of "The Wizard Knight", a recent fantasy that he published a few years ago, detailing the growth and development of an apprentice warrior who assumes mythical qualities.

When I think about it, there always seems to be a mythical quality to all his protagonists. They are heroes, in the Greek sense, figures who are better than ordinary humans but who have frailties as well. They don't quite realize their special status, and they fail at times, but they have a greater destiny and they always seems to find a series of challenges and encounters that are quite metaphorical, as they echoe the mileposts of the hero's journey. The hero is always reluctant, but grows into his role.

In this case, we have an ex-con by the name of Bax who comes into possession of a mysterious house located in a small town in the midwest. The provenance of this house if very mysterious, and there is a lore associated with it. The community seems to think it is haunted, and Bax will begin to have mysterious encounters of his own.

It turns out, this house serves as a portal to the land of fairie. However, excursions to this place do not figure prominantly in this novel. Instead, the adventures take place in the mundane world, one in which the protagonist has to struggle with obtaining money to sustain himself, while coming to terms with the growing list of characters he encounters. That he never seems to question his sanity is perhaps a little perturbing. It would be easy to think that this novel represents the reflections of a character who has become unhinged, but despite all the fantastic elements, he proceeds as normal in a novel that takes the form of epistolary exchanges.

The hero is, as always, appealing, and there is always an air of innocence to him. The same can be said of Severian from the Urth of the New Sun series, or Latro of the historical fantasies, or the protagonist of the Wizard Knight. He is earnest, however it may be that he also has a deep wellspring of knowledge and a deep philosophical grounding. Such is the case with Bax, who is always discovering something about himself.

The element of danger comes into play in the threatened encounter with a werewolf, one who goes by the name of Lupine (Wolfe, as in the author's name), and a creature that has attacked and killed several people in the town. I almost suspected Lupine to be an externalized materialization of the character Bax, but it is, indeed, a cartoonish, deadly femme fatale. We have encountered them several times in his fiction. they wish to seduce the protagonist, but there is no love that is offered by them. It is to be a type of conquest.

Bax resists, and he finds new family members. The motif of identical twins is reproduced several times, which only serves to emphasize the idea that we have a character who is splitting off from himself. Bax has a twin brother named George who despises him, and they in turn have a different set of identical brothers who live in fairy. The mom is also an identical twin. This twin motif is redolent of some deeper meaning, of a psyche that is budding off in some form of fractal movement, curling and reproducing the same structure over and over.

Yes, the novel does incorporate some trite stereotypes that seem at time jarring, but only if we fail to appreciate that Wolfe's protagonists have a certain juvenile quality. Such were the ideas of youth, and such were the exciting yearnings and sexual fantasies of juvenile males, those that have been continually acknowledge by fantasy writers, and took the form of voluptuous, scantily-clad females in pulp novels. (Think of Frank Frazetta artwork.)

The ending seems muddled. It concludes rather hastily, and it seems to be characterized not by a logical, satisfying tying of all the loose ends, but by a precipitated encounter. It belies the pace that we have come to associate with Wolfe novels.

I found this novel enjoyable at times, but ultimately, disappointing. I will, however, continue to read his works. They form a common thread that links my teenage self with the person I have become now. I can certainly share in this sense of innocence, even if, more and more, I seem to be obsessed with retracing my steps.

Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013

Wolves Eat Dogs by Martin Cruz Smith

I must be losing more of my brain cells than I realize. I seem to be having more and more trouble logging into this blog. The attribution of a causal mechanism to physiological deterioration may be faulty, however, in this instance. If I were to be truthful, I would have to state that I am losing the urge to continue with this blog.

Recently I finished reading Martin Cruz's Smith's novel, Wolves Eat Dogs. It details the further exploits of his iconic Eastern European police detective, Arkady Renko, who first came to the fore in the novel from the 80s, Gorky Park.

He may conceivably have appeared in other books, but I first encountered him in that one. It was a novelty at the time, to have a detective/crime fiction narrative set in the Soviet Union. Back then, our perception was that the country was a police state, and that lurid crimes did not provide the convenient narrative fodder that we associated with much more disorderly countries such as those of the West. After all, if Big Brother was watching over you constantly, what could escape the notice of the watchers?

It was a satisfying thriller, as I remember, being a teen back then. Now, all these years later, we have the latest exploits of a detective who, seemingly, would be in his sixties, but would more accurately be assigned an age in the forties. Arkady will always be that age. He will go through live growing wearier and wearier, but he will also never become completely frail. He is world-weary, as all detectives should be.

In this instance, he investigates a crime which involves the murder of a Russian oligarch, that species of predatory capitalist that arose out of the ashes of the Soviet Union. What is detailed is a world filled with bewildering change, where the New Russians of the post-Collapse are engages in an orgy of consumption, given full scope for the expression of their predatory instincts. That they have plundered the economy and accumulated immense wealth is not to be denied. That there may conceivable be a deep backlash is also a prospect that seems worrying.

In this ecosystem we are transported as well to the dead zone around the Ukrainian site of the Chernobyl accident of the 80s. I remember that accident, and it seems as if it took place only yesterday. We had always believed that the Soviets were insufficiently careful with their industrial pollution, but this was a mishap of a scale that was breathtaking. There were expressions of panic throughout Europe over winds that might spread radioactive waste throught the continent. It was a moment of terror and, given that the country was still a closed society, we may never really know the full scope of the damage caused by this disaster.

Well, it turns out that there is a connection between this zone and the murder of the oligarch. Arkady is sent to investigate, and he comes into contact with the band of survivors and returnees who have chosen to make a life in this zone. There is still life in this area, and the region is not a dreadful husk of its former self. There is live in the detective as well.

He enters into relationships, and seems to be seeking a sort of absolution or, at times, an excuse to give in to his self-destructive nature. It is a stereotype that we hold about the Russian mind, the one that is burdened by the sheer scale and relentless struggle visited upon him by his surroundings and his history. We have no nostalgic schmaltz surrounding the memories of a past age of greatness, such as we have with the Portuguese "saudade". We have bitterness, and a deep sense of loss over what is perceived at times to be an idealized rural past. Did this Russian mentality, distorted as it may be by the Western imagination, really exist in the past as well? What happens to countries that are shaped by this sense of loss?

There is action, there are dangerous encounters, and there are fascinating, fictionalized details about this area. In the end, the mystery seems to be resolved rather messily and, to my mind, in a formulaic way. While it could have been anticipated that the culprit would be revealed to be an unlikely suspect (in this case, the scion of the famous Gerasimov clan, a researcher who promotes ecological restoration even if the radiation from the dangerous isotopes will persists for thousands of years), what I disliked was the fact that we had scenes in which, once again, the villain delays executing the protagonist and seems to gloat, spending just enough time to ensure that salvation comes to the detective. It seems almost like a failure of the imagination to give in to these plot devices.

I relish this character, and can certainly identify with him. I am now approximately his age, and feel at times the spiritual weight of my own years. However, I didn't find this novel particularly satisfying. And yet, I will return to him as long as Martin Cruz Smith continues with this series.

Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013

A Light in the Road

I also finished reading Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road”. I first heard of this author last year, when I saw the film by the Coen brothers, “No Country for Old Men”. I was intrigued, and while I didn’t go out and look for that novel, I still somehow appreciated the dark vision that was evident.

This novel deals with a society in which the natural environment seems to have been irrevocably destroyed, and the last few humans are scrambling desperately to survive. A man and his son are on the road, traveling south, looking for some form of haven but having to deal with seemingly impossible odds.

The poetic language is compelling. I was continually intoxicated by the language, and recognized a vividness of image as well as association with memories and reflective stages, in which the thoughts of sadness and loss seem to predominate. This is no happy narrative, no world of sunlight and plenitude and confidence. All these characters are in peril, and they are all lonely and seemingly lost in this world.

What kind of natural disaster could have befallen such that it could kill an entire ocean? Who can imagine the scale of extinction that could encompass the eliminations of whole species of birds, as well as the loss of fish in streams? The characters, and almost all the humans that are encountered, are reduced to scavenging for food, trying to find the last stores of canned goods, and even, most hauntingly, to cannibalism. This is most poignantly demonstrated in the episode with the three scarecrow figures that are seen from afar, one of them a pregnant woman, and the discovery that comes after.

The man is trying to protect his son, and any sense of moral rectitude and hope seems to lie in the love that they express for each other. There is no society any more. Human extinction seems to be the strongest possibility, and the dark tone of this work is echoed by the weather, by the clouds and the chill and the rain and the snow as winter sets in. It is the gloam, if I am indeed recalling a word that would suggest that period before darkness sets in, and yet, the innocence of the child seems to represent the one lonely, consoling light.

Traveling as they do, they come to know each other and to deepen their love for each other. And, as the father says in their rather terse dialogue that is so concise it becomes poetic, they are lucky. Something is sustaining them, even as they risk capture, and torture, and are punished by hunger and solitude and sickness. They reach out to each other, and each gesture of affection represents a moment of hope that stands out in the darkness.

The ending, as one may imagine in a dark work, is one that is in keeping with this predicament. There is no prospect of a happy Hollywood ending, and of a rescue by representatives of a resilient society. The truth is, society is not resilient. Disaster seems to have overtaken everyone on this road, but the journey also obeyed a human imperative. Who can exhaust the meanings of the road? It served to sustain them, and to give hope when there was none.

I look forward to reading more of McCarthy’s works.

A Dark Fantasy (Odd John)

I few weeks ago I read the book “Odd John” by Olaf Stapledon. It had been my impression that I had never read this novel before, although I had read other works by this author. However, as I delved into this work, it seemed to me as if faint memories were awoken, and with them, some reservations.

This book deals with a recurrent theme in science fiction, that of a transformed humanity. In this case, mutations are cropping up and selected humans are being born with a novel brain structure, one that increases their intelligence dramatically. The title character, “Odd John”, is one such being, and this book details the story of his life, from his beginning and the anxiety provoked by his odd appearance and behavior to his adulthood, one in which he undertakes to search for others of his kind and to form a separate society.

Their intelligence is a rank above that of ordinary humans, one so much as to brook comparison to the chasm that separates men from cattle. He, the boy, is able to progress far beyond the frontiers that have been established by the brightest of the human race, and this contributes to a feeling not only of condescension (mild, but nonetheless disturbing), but also to a certain recklessness that comes with the idea that he ordinary limits and restraints don’t apply to him. Thus providing justification for an early murder.

If one can see beyond the hero worship of the narrator, an erstwhile friend of the superhuman, one can see indeed a being who is somewhat monstrous. After all, besides his intelligence, he is also able to engage in telepathy, and can control minds by suggestion as well as by the implantation and the erasure of certain thoughts. Who can stop such a being?

Of course he and his kind will awaken fear. And this is recognized early on, because in addition to telepathy, these beings would seem to be able to see into the future, an ability to forecast, perhaps, trends and likely outcomes based on their acute reading of psychological motivation as well as sociological trends. Of course normal human society will reject them, and they will be attacked at some point.

The superman is not an innocent being, after all. With unrestrained power we have to face the possibility or, perhaps closer to the truth, the inevitability of abuses that will be committed. The book seems to obscure this with the admiring perspective of the narrator, but the reader can’t help but feel alarmed, a sensation that I have no doubt was one that was consciously crafted by the author.

After establishing their society in an island which the superhumans brutally take over by expelling and killing the inhabitants, they proceed to conduct their experiments. Part of these involve biological investigations, ones in which they callously and, once again, brutally carry out, this time by extracting eggs and other tissues from inhabitants (women, mostly) from neighboring islands. At this point, the narrator also feels a certain amount of horror, but he is also thrilled by the display of power, and it is a phenomenon to which all of us are, perhaps, susceptible.

The scoundrel and the tyrant have ever been compelling figures. I look, for example, at the doings of a tinpot dictator such as Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who is always engaged in bombastic speeches, denouncing aggresors and enemies, both foreign and domestic, and expropriating property as well as shutting down free speech. They have a certain entertainment values, as if we were to imagine that they take us into a different realm of perception, one in which we can engage our own power fantasies. Like the example of the man who finds a magic ring that grants him invisibility in one of Plato’s works, evolution is at work regardless of the level of supposed intelligence, one in which we give way to brutal acts of self-interest.

These superhumans will be confronted and, after accomplishing a somewhat mysterious mission of cogitation or transcendence, one that seems undecipherable, they die and somehow sink their island. However, I am left with the impression, not of futility or ambition thwarted, but with the idea of a monstrous threat that remains ever present in human society. They may have been super-intelligent, and they may have been unnaturally dextrous physically, but they behaved with naked self-ambition as well, and seemed no more spiritually developed than an obstreperous five-year old.

It is, indeed, a dark fantasy.

Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013

A little man's dreams

After a break of several months in which I have been involved in a never-ending project that has yet to reach completion, I have decided to resume blogging. If perhaps I feel less strongly than before about the need to maintain a record of books and movies and outings that I have seen and participated in this past year, I nonetheless continue to feel that this is a good excuse to include thoughts about my life and endeavours.

Earlier today I saw the German film, Merchant of all Seasons. It is a film by the prolific Rainer Werner FaBbinder, the West German director who did so much to revitalize the films of his native country. Of course, when I was a young man, I had never heard of him, but when I commenced taking German language classes at the university, I still remember the admiration that was expressed by the graduate student instructors who taught our classes. He did produce a series of compelling films that highlighted human interactions, and the ways in which German society was developing.

This film deals with the story of a rather modest, short and pudgy German man by the name of Hans, one who seems to be somewhat lost and is stumbling through life. He has experienced rejection from his family, and finds himself in a somewhat tepid marriage to a woman named Irmgard.

The film deals with the breakdown suffered by this man, as he finds himself unable to stop yearning for that which was unobtainable for him. What was unobtainable was a life that was honest, one in which class considerations, social conventions and the pressures for conformity and upward mobility were not as crushing. After all, he is a fruit vendor who peddles his product from his cart, all during a period of time in which the German economy has sprouted and grown wings, this transformation being known as the “Wirtschaftwunder”.

His family despises him, and the real love of his life rejected him. He seems out of sorts with the culture of his time, and the spirit of rising expectations. It was, perhaps, an optimistic time, but one in which everyone was compromising their values in order to gain financially. Hans, however, seems unable to do so.

We will see the desintegration of his family and, slowly enough, the continued disintegration of this man. Life in which ambition and personal dreams are unreachable seems to be a curse that he can’t withstand, and the film in its modest way suggests this psychological crisis. I say that this is done in a modest way because the acting is not particularly noteworthy. It would seem as if a director who was known for low-budget films relied on seeming amateurs, at least from what is evident in this movie.

The characters are never truly convincing. This may also be the fault of the screenplay, which seems also a little too simplistic, with much awkward dialogue that seems to not mirror the true rhythm and expression of everyday life. It seems more like a student film, and the direction as well seems somewhat amateurish. Once again, perhaps because it was one of FaBbinder’s earlier films, although I also seem to recall being very impressed with another film that came from this era, “Ali: Fear eats the Soul”, about a migrant workder (Gastarbeiter) who falls in love with a middle-aged German widow.

There are scenes that are not convincing, and that seem comical in their awkwardness. One such is the scene where he is being whipped by a towering black man during his stint in the Foreign Legion in Morocco. Who would honestly think that a mild, pudgy man with no earstwhile talent or physical dexterity would have been accepted for the Foreign Legion? And who would think that adding this background detail would in any way lend credence to the character? Once again, this must have been an early FaBbinder film.

What it does do is recall the way in which each society will inevitably generate its own outcasts. The merchant is one, unable to become a staid and respectable businessman until the very end, when it is too late. Ironically, this ends up driving him over the edge, as he reflect that it hasn’t changed the way he is viewed by his family, one that patronizes him and which he has resigned himself to never being able to win over. It seems almost like a film about adolescence in mid-life, with all the anxieties and all the self-deceptions and the untameable anger. Irmgard, his wife, forgives him after he has beaten her, but he never seems to be able to redeem himself, and gives himself over to longing.

In the end, I would hope to find more articulate, realistic, creative exploration of human dilemmas. I appreciate good dialogue, and intriguing direction, and novel ways of exploring human dilemmas. This movie, ultimately, seems somewhat frivolous. It does, however, awaken nostalgia for me, nostalgia not for the 70s when it was filmed, but for the 80s when I was a young man in college, desperate as I was to discover the world, and taking my first German courses, and feeling seduced by the spectacle of a transformed Germany. Perhaps I was also seduced by the spectacle of social mobility and transformation, on a deeply personal level.

Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013

Post-mortem on a Toyota

Here are photos of the car that I was driving when I had my accident two weeks ago. It is not a pretty picture and I still feel terrible about this occurrence. Although I seem to have recovered reasonably well, and my bruises don't hurt nearly as much as they did two weeks ago, my heart still goes out to the other drivers.

Last week I managed to work up the courage to drive by that same stretch of road to evaluate the conditions and what might have led to this accident. There are numerous overpasses as this represents an interchange between two freeways. Those overpasses, at 3:30 p.m., leave large stretches of the road ahead in shadow.

The freeway also curves slightly to the left at this junction, and there are large pillars that hold up the overpasses. These pillars also block part of the view of the road ahead.

Finally, I should emphasize that the highway undulates in this stretch of the road. It curves up and then down. I remember reaching the crest and then looking at dismay at the cars that were stopped in my lane of traffic. It was a sudden discovery and I didn't have time to take any other steps to avoid the collision other than to hit the breaks. I knew there would be a terrible collision, and the woman in the car in front of me told me afterward that she saw my car approaching and also knew a collision was inevitable.

My conclusion is that this is a very dangerous stretch of road. The visibility is poor because of the shadows of the overpasses, because of the pillars that block the view ahead, because the highways is curving to the left so that those pillars are in my line of sight and because the road undulates up and then down. These factors may in part be explained by the contours of this area, since it does constitute a hilly area with the roads forging a path through them. Of course, there are much more dangerous stretches of road that leave drivers terror-struck.

My worst drive has taken place while on the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH 1), driving from northern to southern California. The road is a narrow two lane, and if you are driving south, you are on the outer ledge of a cliff that leads down dramatically to the ocean. The road curves constantly as well, and if you aren't driving at highway speeds, the cars bunch up behind you with insistent and foolhardy drivers maniacally gesturing at you. My other nightmare drive was on the interstate 5 freeway in the early morning hours (between 4 and 5 a.m.), during a stretch in the central valley, when a dense fog descended and cut down visibility to one or two feet one each side. I couldn't even see the road and didn't dare stop to the side lest I prove a target for another driver behind me.

I still wonder if I might not have suffered a terrible injury on that drive, and if all that I have experienced in the intervening years is just an illusion that is filtering in my mind as I lie in a coma somewhere. Yes, I might very well be a brain in a vat, to recall the thought experiment commonly described to philosphy students at the university when they are studying Cartesian epistemology. How do I know I exist?

The number one factor behind this crash, of course, was that this is rush hour and you must always be on the highest alert. I had thought that I was, but my perception would seem to have been faulty. I'll never forget the sickening feeling of seeing the cars stopped in my lane, and knowing there was nothing I could do to avoid the collision.

Yes, cars were bunching up in waves, as I remember studying in my physics classes at the university when we were being introduced to wave structures. Yes, cars drive in packs, and they leave open spaces in between that give a sense of false security. My friend also told me that he notes the same phenomenon has applied in his work as a retail assistant. Customers arrive in packs, and then they have long stretches in which there are few customers arriving.

The problem is, in this instance, we are talking about motorized vehicles traveling at dangerous speeds, not congestion at a shopping outlet. In this case, I have driven on this highway hundreds and hundreds of times. I still can't explain what happened. In this case, it was a "chronicle of an unforeseen calamity", if I may modify the title of a Garcia Marquez novel.

P.S. I can't help but anthropomorphize the car that I was driving. It was a trusty vehicle, and it had over 75,000 miles. It would have given several more years of trusty service. Even when we heard of all the problems with Toyota recalls due to the publicized problem of sudden acceleration years ago, I never stopped trusting this car. To me it had a somewhat forlorn appearance, tucked as it was in the back of a busy auto repair shop. According to the insurance claims officer, it has been totaled, and we will be given market value for it. This may sound silly, but I feel like apologizing to the car for the damage it sustained. And yes, of course I feel terrible about the other drivers involved in my accident, and they of course take precedence.

Jurupa Park at Southridge

I was able to attend an arts event at a public park this past Saturday. It was very, very hot in the beginning, and the temperatures didn't help to encourage people to attend. However, it cooled down as the event progressed and it was very pleasing to see massive storm cloud formations in the sky, carrying with them a promise that would be fulfilled on Sunday when we woke up with rain during the early morning hours.

These hills had never seemed particularly scenic to me, and that was one of the reasons why I had never ventured out to explore this area. What ends up happening with these parks is that they are commonly taken over by raucous off-roaders who bring all manner of motorized vehicles to perform what they deem are reckless but exciting daredevil maneouvers. They will arrive in battered trucks then use noisy vehicles to spin and race around and around, all while blaring loud thrash metal music. That was one of the reasons why I had avoided this particular park, thinking I would find more of the same.

It turns out that this park abuts a residential area and, as such, much of this raucous activity that is carried out in more desolate locations is missing here. I don't doubt that people will arrive to carry out other dubious activities in this location, such as using drugs, but at least during the daytime it seems to be fairly well monitored. The neighbors are not going to put up with unseemly activity, although I wonder how many of these middle class denizens have ventured up these hills.

They were holding a bike tournament on the day of the festival, and this event was scrupulously kept apart from the art festival that was taking place next door. I found it necessary, however, to venture over to the Jurupa Hills area, and was able to take a few photos. It seems to be fairly well used, but I wasn't able to explore more than the entrance. For one thing, my presence would have been a distraction for the bicycle course that had been set up. For another, it was over 100 degrees, and I wasn't prepared for a hike, especially if I was carrying fifteen pounds of camera equipment and a heavy tripod. I need water and good shoes, and in this park I don't doubt that there are snakes about that might cause injury to the incautious hiker. I'll have to return in the future, perhaps in the fall when temperatures have decreased.

Musings of a Brown Buffalo

I finished Oscar Zeta Acosta's "The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo" yesterday. It was a difficult book to read because it was so exasperating, being so fundamentally uneven in tone. There were, however, many interesting issues to investigate, and one must not forget that this book has been incorporated into the canon of Chicano literature.

I look forward to presenting my observations in the near future.

An ethical epic

I haven't seen all of Terrence Malick's movies, but I have been entranced by the ones that I have seen. Despite the fact that I was a young man still in junior high school I nonetheless clearly remember the reception that was extended to his film "Days of Heaven". The cinematography by Nestor Almendos was justly recognized, and the acting seemed to be in key with the understated tone of this movie, but it was the story that seemed to work its enchantment on viewers. Perhaps it was an exercise in sublime romanticism or perhaps it seemed to capture a wistful look towards the past that had been elevated in response to the disenchantment we all felt in the late 70s, but it seemed to catch hold and maintain a grip on our imagination. Of course, the idea of escape and of journeys towards new and open realms of possibility have always exercised their appeal on the western imagination, and this film was no different, as grasped even by a child of my age.

It seemed as if we heard very little from Terrence Malick in subsequent decades, and indeed, he has come to be known as a director who produces films at considerable intervals. From time to time his name registered in my consciousness, but I lament that I didn't take the time to watch his latest works. It wasn't until the highly laudatory comments with regards to his latest film, "The Tree of Life", that I undertook to begin exploring his works once again. I turned first to his film from 1998, "The Thin Red Line".

This film is an adaption of a novel that deals with the experiences of a group of soldiers during one of the pivotal battles of WWII, this being the Battle of Guadalcanal. From the very beginning, when we see a crocodile submerging itself into a pond full of algae, it struck one again the lyrical notes that I remembered from his classic of the seventies ("Days of Heaven"). It was a film that struck a deeply philophical tone, being as it was a profoundly meditative exploration of the ways in which humans abide by the values that they think define them.
Through the use of multiple first-person internal narrations we become much more connected with the characters as they reveal their own internal worlds. One obtains the unsettling sensation that these revelations are a little too personal, and that we are eavesdropping on a conversation that is not meant for our ears, however much the issues that are raised strike a universal note. It would seem as if we are placed in the position of an interlocutor who is asked to intercede for these characters, and to dispense some form of dispensation for the suffering and for injustices that are committed. This is, of course, an uncomfortable position for us.

I was struck over and over again by a plaintive note in these meditations. The characters are genuinely honest in their ruminations, and they seek an explanation for the inhuman situation in which they find themselves, treated as they are as pawns who are about to be sacrificed. It raises, understandably, questions of ethics as we ponder the meaning of violence and the petty compromises that each and every one of us makes as we proceed in our existence. It is very much an interior search that consumes all of us at certain points, and one that leaves us breathless as we consider the possibility of mortality.

The characters are all enmeshed in conflictive situations, both external as well as internal. We have the military officer by the name of Tall, played by a grizzled Nick Nolte, who reflects on the meaning of failure as he perceives it. It is an experience that humiliates him and leads him to pursue redemption at whatever cost, even if it be the sacrifice of his entire company of soldiers in the single-minded pursuit of the capture of a hill defended by Japanese soldiers. We also have the earnest Witt, a soldier who had gone awol but who was reincorporated into the ranks, and who is forever held in a form of wistful suspension as he meditates on the spirit he sees in his fellow soldiers. He represents a form of earnest reflection that serves to denounce the inhumanity of their situation, and yet through his observations we recognize how it is that this group of men are bound together, and how it is that their weakness constitutes, paradoxically, their strength.

The reason I found the character of Witt so compelling has to do with the ethical concerns that hit me as I was watching the film. While it may very well be true that we live unconsciously for the majority of the days of our lives, unable as we are to recognize and value the relationships that define our existence, it is also true that there is a fundamental spirit that coheres around groups of people as they find themselves in desperate circumstances. The idea seemed to overwhelm me after watching the film tht compassion, that ability to "see the light" in other people, is an experience that is only felt by those who are similarly cognizant of their own weaknesses and vulnerability. It cannot be attained by a higher entity who is removed from our sphere of concerns, and as distant as the religious icons to which people address their appeals in moments of desperaton. What hope of compassion do we have from a God that is removed, and that is portrayed as eternal and all-cognizant? How can this God every truly understand us and feel compassion, if compassion truly necessitates the awareness of a fundamental bond that these men come to feel as they perceive their supreme weakness and vulnerability? Pity is not the same as compassion, for pity is defined by the awareness of hierarchy, and in hierarchy, there is no bonding. It is easy enough to see the abuses of power in the actions of an officer such as Tall, although this is compensated in some minor way by the actions of his subordinate Staros, the Captain who tries to delay the order to march his soldiers up to the hill where they will certainly be slaughtered.

Is obedience a virture? Why is it that faith as presented in Christian ethics seems to involve so much needless suffering? We are left to question ourselves and to wonder, as one of the characters asks himself, about the presence of good, and of how we are left mired in a debilitating morass of ethical incertitude, where values seem to be compromised eternally for petty ends, as is all too evident in this film. "How did we lose the good that was given to us? Let it slip away, scattered, careless?". Did we indeed squander the gift that was given to us?

The experiences of these soldiers as they see their comrades cut down is one that is profoundly unsettling. Their perpetual thirst is emblematic of this quest for satisfaction, of this most elemental need to explain not only this monumental battle between two opposing forces but also the internal self-doubt that consumes them all. The married officer, Bell, is particularly consumed by the memory of the wife he has left behind, and he relives over and over one particular memory, that of a golden and melancholic afternoon spent in her company and consuming what he saw as the ultimate aspiration of all human beings: a genuine bond with another human being. Bell, of course, is fated to lose this relationship and to see his fondest hopes shattered as the movie progresses, but his relationship is perhaps emblematic of all the hopes and disappointments that we all feel.

The action sequences are indeed fairly dramatic. As the soldiers proceed in their campaign a sense of dread gradually overwhelms them, and it is only as a result of desperate actions undertaken in an attempt to combat the perception of futility that they manage to overtake the hill and proceed to overrun the Japanese line. It is evident once again that these experiences are devastating, and all the characters are left in various states of despair but also, in fleeting moments, with glimpses of a raw and angelic humanity that reveals how it is that humans are able to achieve communion once their illusions have been shattered. They are not numb and this experience of not seeming to care is not indicative of "bliss" or nirvana. They are all being born anew, but this rebirth is one that is divested of Christian theology. It is religious but it is not dogmatic.

The movie proceeds from one character to the next as we are exposed to their innermost thoughts, thoughts that are piercing in their honesty and in their desperation. This suffering reduces many to incoherence, and we see this time and again in the shots of soldiers, both American as well as Japanese, who lie in fetal crouches or who are left in various postures of supplication, crying aloud and seeking, it would seem, some explanation for the suffering they are forced to endure. The wounded soldiers who lie prostrate, with terrible wounds, and who shiver uncontrollably, or who wail bitterly like the wails of a doomed humanity that rails against the injustice of this situation, like the soldier who is given a lethal dose of morphine as the only way to get him to finish dying.

We see humanity at its extremes, and yet there are a myriad number of ways in which humans promulgate suffering amongst others. It is not a situation that is limited to wartime, for the seeds of this evil or, what we may term, compromised humanity are evident everywhere, as is all too evident in the earnest reminiscences of the soldier Train who recounts the beatings he used to receive as a small child from his violent and drunken father, or the false illusions held by others who had failed to find a place for themselves among regular society. One thinks most tellingly of officer Tall.

In the end, there is an earnestness in this film that speaks to issues of self-awareness and of what it means to be human. As evident in officer Welsh's response to the inquiries of Witt, that pair of friends who remonstrate with one another and carry out a debate as to the fundamental redeemability of humans, we see that experience of loneliness and alienation that is also, paradoxically, a marker of weakness and compassion. "Do you ever feel lonely?", Witt asks. "Only around people", answers Welsh.

Captain Staros leading his men:

The Japanese platoon as it corners Witt near the end, killing him soon after.

Samurai Action Redux

This afternoon I saw the samurai film "13 Assassins", an unabashed action film that incorporates a tribute to Kurasawa. It was a stirring film that criticises the notion of honor when it is not accompanied by compassion and an appreciation for the social good. It seemed at times a condemnation of Japan, but it was at others an evocative thriller with many elaborate sets.

More to come later. (Addendum -- I guess there is no update to this review, as of June 2013)


Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013

Time to venture out

This will be one of my shortest blog entries, but also, one fraught with emotional significance. I'm going to the park to exercise and I am going to drive to that location. After several days of despair over my accident on the fourteenth, I am looking to get over a psychological obstacle. I desperately need a return to normalcy.

Addendum: I returned somewhat chastened. My torso hurts, something all the more apparent with any jarring motion. I couldn't jog my regular 2 to 3 miles, and limited myself to walking.

A Grander Perspective

Although I spent the day at home, dealing with anxiety and regret over the accident I had yesterday, I find that I need to recover a sense of normalcy. Towards that end, I need to continue to review the books and movies as well as cultural events that I attend. I can't lose perspective, after all, even though I feel that I am in a sinkhole of despair and regret.

A few days ago I finished reading Robert Charles Wilson's latest novel, Vortex. It is the third novel in his series that portrays a future world in which the Earth encounters a process (better to say process or agent rather than entity) that is denominated as the "Hypotheticals", originating as it did out of robotic entities that have been propogating throughout the galaxy since time immemorial. In the first book they arrived on Earch without announcing their presence and they encased it in a sort of time fold, propelling it into the future. In the end a gigantic arch was brought to Earth and this proved to be a passageway that connected the planet to other worlds.

The first novel in the series, Spin, won the Hugo award for best science fiction novel a few years ago, and it was justly earned. The book detailed this premise, and it followed the life of three individuals who had to find some way of accomodating this vast change. Perhaps the most compelling figure was that of Jason Lawton, the brilliant son who was put in charge of undertaking explorations of the spin mechanism, and who in his psychological complexity revealed the fragility as well as the triumpth of human will. This family was furthermore conformed by his sister Diana and by a family friend who lived with the family from an early age, and who was at times a distant rival as well as close accomplice, Tyler.

The premise was intriguing from the very beginning, alluding to the ways in which humans would project their hopes and fears on the intervention that had been visited upon them. This is no classic novel of first contact, for this contact will ever be frustrated. After all, it is continually asserted that the Hypotheticals have no consciousness and are instead akin to an "ecology", but I would debate this premise and would merely say that what seems to distinguish them is a lack of individuality, not a lack of self-consciousness. They (the ecology or process or conglomerate) does undertake to carry out momentous projects, and it does accumulate and salvage technologies, and it is in a continuous state of expansion, but it never reveals individual points of view. Perhaps a forest does have a form of self-awareness, if I may project my doubts on an example that comes to mind, but one that is only dimly perceivable if at all by its inhabitants.

This is a novel in which humans are forced to adapt to changed circumstances, and as such, we are made aware of a variety of responses that vary from the positive to the paranoic. We have obsessive personalities and sibling as well as paternal and social conflicts, and these manifest themselves in startling ways.

The second novel, Axis, was a little more uneven. It lacked the psychological depth that had been evident in the characters protrayed in the first novel, and the phenonomenon that forms the crux of this novel (the arrival of a cloud of Hypothetical machines whose purpose is to gather up and transmit information down the line in their network) seemed perhaps out of step with the scale of a satisfying novel. It turns out that there are not only geographical arches but also temporal arches and the Hypotheticals are revealed to consist of some mechanism or process that documents the information prevalent throughout the galaxy at certain specified time periods, in this case, at cycles of about ten thousand years. Once again, the Hypotheticals don't seem to reveal self-awareness as embodied in individual consciousness, but instead are likened to a process, one that is emblematic of evolutionary imperatives but that, distinct from what happened with anthropocentric creatures such as ourselves, has not resulted in individual self-consciousness in the Hypotheticals. This conception, as ever, proves debatable in my mind, for we must not excessively anthropocentrize conciousness such that we can recognize it only when it takes our form.

In the third novel, we are made aware of another leap in scale. The story takes place about ten thousand years in the future, and in this story we see the reincarnation of two characters we had seen in the preceeding novel. They are Isaac Dvali, the child who had been gestated and incubated with hypothetical technology, and Turk Findlay, the pilot who had been killed at the end of the second novel.

What Robert Charles Wilson does is continue to create fascinating new scenarios for human civilization. Now, humanity has used the arches to expand onto new worlds, forming a polity of worlds that are termed "cortical" democracies because they are dictated by rationality and debate. But we also have another intriguing alternative, which is the "limbic" civilization represented by Vox Central, a group of artificial islands whose citizens are networked by the implantation of nodes, and who share a common emotional and volitional consensus that is governed by what is called the "Choreophagus" (the "leader of the choir").

It is a collection of processes that helps to regulate the emotional stability of its citizens, and it was created to service a new theology that addresses an old need, that of reaching out and somehow establishing contact with entities that were personalized. It is a form of wish fulfillment for establishing literal contact with a Godhead, this being, of course, the Hypotheticals.

The story is interspersed with an episode that details an episode of conflict and unexplained revelation in the early period of human experience with the Spin mechanism. It is the story of Bose, a man who has suffered a tragic loss and who has taken the Martian biological treatment to become a "Fourth", Sandra, a psychologist at a state institution, and the vulnerable, angelic but also mysterious character of Orrin Mather, a man of humble background who is somehow transcribing a story of the far future, one that details the story of Turk and Andrea in the far future.

As is the case with all of Wilson's novels, we receive an intriguing combination of speculative and, at times, breathtaking description of evolving human society in the face of new approaches and discoveries, and an exciting story that directly illustrates how these discoveries are incorporated in a conflictive way into human consciousness. They are the same, eternal stories that have so compellingly formed a part of our cultural framework. Stories of societies in conflict, of social bonds that seem fragile, of mechanisms of compulsion as well as autonomy, and an intriguing thread that I have seen in various novels: that of the dangerous role of perverse theologies that seem like tools used by unscrupulous people to try to tyrannize human existance.

Such was the case with "Mysterium", the novel that won the Phillip K. Dick Memorial award over a decade ago, and details the existence of a parallel universe in which a theocratic institution modeled faintly on a repressive form of Catholocism held sway. Such was also in evidence in "The Chronoliths", an exciting mystery in which the appareance of gargantuan, monolithic monuments leads to the speculation about the end of the world and the possible advent of the parousia, leading to ever greater dislocations and an ever more fanatical religious group that is formed to exploit this uncertainty.

Religious authorities, because of their closed and hierarchical nature, always seem to be a source of conflict in Wilson's novels. In this case, we see such a rigid and paranoid entity in the members of Vox Central, and it points to the perception of and distrust of dogma that is in service to a prescribed end.

And this novel is also concerned with the end. In a breathtaking narration, after the human conflicts have been resolved, we see the evolution of the being known as Isaac Dvali, who becomes fully incorporated into the hypothetical network, attaining the considerable powers that have been accumulated by this process or ecology that can be described as archeological.

Isaac proceeds to the far future, and he narrates the evolution of a universe that is rapidly hurtling towards a strange ending, in which the expansion of the universe has been completed, and the bonds that held subatomic structures have dissolved. The future societies, and we do see societies and collective agencies with volition, are brought together and responses are evolved, and as such, we see a galaxy that resonates with cohesion (that cohesion that always seemed to escape human society), and in which new dimension are colonized, only to discover the existence of ever older and more powerful societies. Structure and consciousness pervades the universe even at the end of time, and the novel makes use as well of the "many worlds" speculative construct to offer a resolution to the mystery of how Orrin Mather had received this narration of the far future.

It is an ending that recalls Olaf Stapledon's seminal work, "Starmaker", and it points to a cosmology that is at both ends affirming and comforting but also, so to speak, apocalyptic. I use this term in accordance to the original meaning that refers to an "unveiling", but also consciously wish to suggest a religious aspect as well, the sense of culmination that would accompany religious ecstasy.

For Wilson's novel, ironic as it may be, also contrive to incorporate a religious experience of ecstasy that affirms the survival and the attainment of cohesion. Consciousness is celebrated, and it is breathtaking to see how this experience conforms to the contours of a out-of-body experience, quite literally in both "Starmaker" as well as "Vortex".

It is a celebration of consciousness and of the attainment of a supreme state of empathy that seems also, at times, because of problems of scale, to be oddly distant. We can imagine it, but it is hard to really incorporate it. We are beings of a much smaller scale, but the fact that we can imagine it, as well as imagine narratives in which humans in uncertain circumstances find common ground, serve to invest this novel as well as other works by Wilson with a moral and ethical grounding. And, as such, leads the reader to take into consideration the idea of a cosmology that is more personal, that is ethical and affirming rather than distant and cold, and that is, as such, a romantic conception.


Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013

State of Shock

I had an accident as I was driving home on the freeway today. It was, as you may imagine, a shocking experience, and I still find myself in a trembling state, five hours after it happened.

It turns out that I decided to modify my routine. Instead of staying in my office I left for home after finishing my work. Little did I imagine what would happen.

As I was nearing a major interchange where two freeways cross, I had no cause to suspect that I was entering into a dangerous situation. Traffic had been bunching up at times, alternately moving smoothly and at high speed, then slowing down before clearing up again. It was frustrating, but nothing I hadn't seen in decades of driving on California freeways.

In this case, I was on a speedy portion, having moved to the fast lane where I normally don't drive (why, why, why did I switch to that lane?) when I passed a turn in the highway, underneath an overpass that obscured somewhat my sight.  I then saw with intense alarm that cars seemed to be stopped in front of me. Why couldn't I have anticipated this slowdown? I am still berating myself over and over, having made assumptions that didn't apply about my lane and about my safety.

I had a sickening, sinking and panick-stricken sensation that I would not be able to avoid the collision with the car in front of me. There was no time to look to either side of me to look for a clearing, I just had time to hit the brakes desperately, knowing as I did that I could only hope to minimize the impact, not avoid it. The tires let out a loud squealing sound, and I smashed into the car in front of me, propelled her (it was a woman in that car) into the car in front of her. It was an incredible banging impact like a thunder clap, and of course I felt the impact and a moment of terror. My airbag inflated, cutting off my vision. I did stop, but the collision had been severe, and the front of the car was caved in.

I sat in my car which was now without power. It was still in drive, but it somehow lost power. There was a whiff of smoke that was coming out of the steering wheel, and I remember feeling an intense feeling of annoyance about the radio program that was still emanating from my speakers. It was just after the NPR program "Marketplace", before "All Things Considered", thus placing the time of this accident at approximately 3:30 p.m. I wasn't thinking clearly, and it took me a few minutes to realize that I could actually turn the radio off.

I was worried as well by an intense pain I was feeling in my chest. I thought I might have hit the steering wheel but, upon reflection sometime later, and after viewing my chest in the mirror, I saw that the seatbelt must have restrained me and created that sensation of pain. I still have the bruise in the shape of the seatbelt strap along my upper chest.

It was terrible. I sat in the car, incoherent and in a state of immobile vulnerability. I couldn't step out, and found myself wondering in annoyance why the highway patrol was taking so much time to arrive. I was also looking at the car I had rear-ended, stopped a few hundred yards in front of me, and I felt an intense sense of shame. How could I do this to that person?

I didn't move until I saw the driver in front of me stepping out of her car to walk towards me. It was dangerous because we were exposed to traffic and, as one may well confirm, California drivers will stop for no one. My door would not open completely but I managed to step out and walked towards her, and she asked how I was doing. I told her I was not well, and had the presence of mind to ask her as well if she was injured. She said she was fine, but she was trembling, and I could not overcome my sense of shame, something compounded by what she told me.

It turns out that she had seen me approaching, and knew I would collide with her. I told her that I came upon her car all of a sudden, and I couldn't stop. I just couldn't anticipate what had happened. How could it have happened?! That was my despairing question that was echoing over and over in my mind, and that wouldn't leave me in peace. It was that question as well as the intense wish that I had stayed in my office, where I would have found myself in a cool environment, without having caused this suffering.

It must have been terrible for her to see a car approaching from her rear window and know that she was about to be rear-ended. I wonder if she tensed up, awaiting the impact. That would have been the worst experience for anyone, seeing approaching calamit and knowing that you couldn't avoid it. When I was rear-ended by a semi-truck seven years ago, I didn't see it coming and the impact was sudden, jarring, but ultimately not as damaging as it could have been if I had tensed up. What happens is that injuries can be compounded by settling into a protective stance, thus sacrificing the flexibility that better allows us to absorb an impact.

She was trembling, and I was incoherent. I couldn't even remember the word for "air bag", much less offer an explanation. Our illusion, especially for people who have been educated, is that we will always be able to express ourselves when we need to. We are trained to communicate, but I was stammering and could only answer after considerable hesitation. I felt bad for her and the other driver.

It took a long time for the police to arrive. In the meantime there were immature drivers who would take photos from their windows as I waited in the car. One held out his camera phone and said, "Say cheese!" as he drove right by me. Of course, people are crude and indifferent, especially at moments in which others are in need. Have I ever been that insensitive? I hope I haven't, I sincerely hope I haven't, although I know and must acknowledge shamefully that I have been annoyed when I have seen traffic stoppages due to accidents. I gave little thought to the people who must have been suffering as I and the other drivers were suffering.

I was becoming more and more desperate as the minutes passed, and I managed to dig out my phone and call home. I talked to a family member and explained my predicament, shocking her. It seemed as if the patrol would never send a car. Traffic was proceeding slowly on either side of me, and I have to confess that I felt even more fear that a car would rear-end me as I had done to the car in front of me. I caused an incredible traffic jam, right at the beginning of the perpetual calamity that is rush hour on California freeways.

Eventually, a patrolman arrived and parked behind me. He told me to see if I could move the car, and I told him I didn't think it would start. He was patient and told me to try, something I hadn't done because of my state of mental confusion. To tell the truth, I was also afraid that my car might erupt in flames if I tried to operate it, given the whiffs of smoke coming out of the steering wheel.  I put it in park and did as he told me. It did start, and while he cleared traffic in the adjacent lanes (stopping the oncoming cars), I moved to the side.

They took a report, and I waited for a tow truck. Note to self: I need to upgrade my AAA membership. I was only covered for 7 miles, and the distance to my house from the accident site was 21 miles. That left 14 miles for which I was responsible, and the tow truck driver charged $10 per mile. The charge was $140, when I could have had that coverage by paying an additional $20 to AAA. My regrets compound my misery.

I was able to talk to the other gentleman involved in the accident, the one whose car was rear-ended by the car that I hit. He was an elderly Hispanic man with blue eyes, and we spoke quietly. He saw how shocked I was, and he tried to comfort me. I felt terrible as well about the impact that he had suffered, but most of my shame was caused by the plight of the woman whose car I had directly hit. Her rear bumper had been detached from her car and was still stuck to the front of my car.

As the man said, at least we weren't severly injured. My chest was still hurting, and I still found myself in a web of despair and regret that was and is clouding my thoughts, although writing always helps to provide more clarity and comfort. He said that we were all still walking, and I felt a little better. If I could have apologized I would have,but I didn't have the sense of mind (nor the propiety) to do so. He looked at my totalled car and said, "It is all material", in Spanish. We spoke in that language.

In the end, the tow truck arrived and we hitched the car. I was still feeling despair and shame about the other drivers, and would have approached them again, especially the woman (either a Latina or an Asian) who I had hit. How can I apologize to them? I never saw her car until the last few seconds before the impact. How could I have missed it, and why, why, why didn't I stay at work and wait until 6:30 p.m. to drive home, as was my custom? I wish I had stayed there, and am still blaming myself.

If I had stayed in my office it would have, hopefully, been another uneventful afternoon. I didn't need to stay there, since I teach, and I only need to remain until I finish my office hours. I had finished, but decided not to remain reading and waiting in boredom on campus until rush hour had passed. I decided to try to make it home, and it had been an uneventful drive until that last stretch.

The thing is that I am having difficulty understanding the concept of an accident, an occurence that takes place and is utterly unanticipated. The fact is, we are all fragile beings, and none of us can handle all the unanticipated conditions that we encounter. That is the definition of an accident, an unforeseen circumstance or condition that impinges on our life and which we are not able to accomodate in a successful manner. I have to resist the temptation to be judgemental even though I know that I will be assuming responsability for this accident, from a legal framework and economic framework. (Well, insurance will cover me, but I will pay the cost in terms of premiums that will be raised.) This is an accident and I was unfortunate enough to encounter conditions that I couldn't handle. Yes, accidents involve a crushing sense of humiliation, as if I wasn't humble enough already.

I'm not trying to dodge blame, but part of me doesn't accept it. Is it a matter of fairness? Who can I appeal to? There is no cosmic authority to which I may address my complaint, no judge although it is ideologically comforting to believe that there will be a tribunal to which I may address my argument. I should be grateful that I wasn't maimed, and that the other drivers appeared not to be injured, but I feel a strange sense of impotence. I am forced to admit that I blame myself, and I am having a hard time trying to shake this crushing sensation.

My despair comes from asking what I could have done to avoid this situation. I wonder if everyone involved in an accident engages in this type of reflection. What if? I would be much safer if I had not done what I did, but how many calamities may have been incurred in other instances when I had acted differently? How many times have I counted myself fortunate by unanticipated luck? The answer is, many, many times. I've had many near-misses these past few years, and many moments of shock and panic when I though something would happen to me but it didn't. It isn't about karma, that concept of some cosmic balance that we can't avoid. It is about chance and accidents.

I'm still obsessed by the thought of how I could have avoided my misfortune. This is a useless exercise because we aren't accepting that it has already occurred and, therapeutically, the healthiest thing we can do is move on and resolve the problem, rather than engaging in this fantasy speculation about a world in which this misfortune hadn't occurred.

People do it all the time. What if I had only said those last words to a family member who passed away suddenly? What if I had checked a seat belt, or checked the stove, or verified some item of information before I left and found myself with a grave problem because of a supposed oversight?

That is what I am feeling at this point. The burden of shame, regret and what if.

Masks and the lack of restraint

Yesterday I had the chance to see the 1966 Japanes film "The Face of Another". It details the story of a man whose face has been horrible disfigured in an industrial accident, and who is forced to retreat from society and distance himself from his loved ones under the strain of the consequent psychological crisis that is provoked. It has elements of science fiction but also, in its own earnest way, focuses on issues of identity and of how people assume certain guises in order to interact in society. It brings up fundamentally the notion of the fragility of social bonds.

The idea of the face as the focus of identity is one that is pervasive. As a species we are programmed genetically for facial recognition, and the face seems to be the chief medium whereby we read the interiority (the identity) of the others whom we encounter. We find comfort in the detection of a familiar pattern, even though there is nothing intrinsically truthful about the face. In a sense, one can understand the ancient Greek impulse to rely on stylized masks in their drama to portray emotions and states, and not on the feigned realism of a face that is just another emblem of a changing reality, one that all too often misleads.

In this case, the chief character is one who finds himself facing a profound psychological crisis as he reflect on what it means not to have a face any longer. It isn't necessarily that he is lacking in a mouth or nose or lips or ears, it is only that he has been horribly disfigured and can no longer aspire to the anonymity that any typical individual enjoys when venturing out into a crowd. His disfigurement is such that he must need wrap his head in bandanges in order to venture out, thus drawing attention to the full scope of his tragic situation. He will be going through a pretense of interacting with others and continuing with a normal routine that is abundantly evident to him by the nature of the reactions that he provokes. Everyone seems to evade his look, and they become glum or unnaturally cheerful, patronizing or sympathic, refusing to say what they must undoubtedly feel: repulsion and fear. He has become hidden under the swathe of bandages, and he is thus a figure of pity as well as a threat.

He undertakes to acquire a new "face" by visiting a doctor who proceeds to manufacture one for him. This doctor seems all too easily seduced by the prospect of working with such a patient, for he is a psychologist who is furthermore given to philosophy. He recognizes this as a unique opportunity to test out his theories about social bonding and about how identity is, ultimately, an ephemeral characteristic. Everything is flux, and thus identity is momentarily stabilized precisely by the assumption of masks, those masks that escape detection but that are nonetheless pervasive. This mask implies a role, and the mask will dictate changes in the character of his patient. After all, the "ghost", so to speak, is in need of a material medium.

After manufacturing this mask, we do indeed see these changes manifest themselves in the protagonist. He is, if anything, more alienated than before, and we see this as well in the way the lighting of the film evolves. It seems now to take a stage-like character in which spotlights seem to pick out the character and follow him, and in which the we see this hidden dynamic of removal as well as assumption. The character supposedly will undertake a trip away from his home, but will instead rent an apartment, and he will venture in and out in excursions in which he assumes his mask and becomes ever more frenetic and unrestrained in his actions. The mask is removable and, after all, the parable at the heart of this story is that ethics as well as identity are also similarly assumed qualities, a currency of exchange that is rootless in the same way that he has become.

It is inevitable that he will succumb to violent impulses, for he feels the growing power of artifice, of the mask that takes over his life, as the psychologist predicted it would. It leads to self-destructive impulses, for it is leading to a frenetic search for constancy and moral grounding, and when he proceeds to "seduce" his wife using his new guise, he crosses a boundary that she is unable to accept.

It is notable as well that there is another secondary story in this movie, an episode involving a woman who is horribly disfigured in half of her face, and thus presents a Janus visage to the world. She is both unbearably beautiful (on her unblemished side) as well as horribly ugly, and she is also struggling to maintain a fixed social role in her society. In the end, she will seduce her brother and drive him to torment, while giving in as well to her self-destructive impulses as she submerges herself in the ocean in the final scene of the film.

The film, thus, constitutes an investigation character, ethics and the illusion of identity. Are we indeed condemned to a mask-like identity, without any hope of being able to express what we would like to imagine is a stable, authentic self? The self has been under attack during much of the 20th century, after all, with the rise of psychoanalysis, structuralism, communism and narrative theory, among many other schools of thought, but in this film we see what would seem to be a parable of despair, in which the characters seem to implode as they reflect the emptiness and the violence that they seem, incomprehensibly, to harbor. It feels like a very modern film despite the fact that it was released over forty years ago, and it reflects many of the anxieties of our modern age.

After all, who can stand to look at their reflection in the mirror for more than a few minutes before feeling an asfixiating sense of bewilderment and estrangement?

 

 

Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013