May, 2002 I'm reading a nonfiction, philosophical book by Steve Grand called Creation: Life and How to Make It. He wrote a computer game, which I haven't seen, which creates artificial life forms. So far in the book he's trying to explain what life "really" is, a self-replicating persistent pattern. Not stuff, but rather a pattern expressed, partly, through stuff. He suggests thinking of a vivid childhood experience, and then realizing that there isn't an atom presently in your body that was there then. So we are not the stuff we are made of. Yes, if only there were some way to transfer the pattern to other stuff. I wonder what our culture would be like if we had people, in some form, who were a thousand years old? Grand says the universe is composed of “persistent phenomena,” one of which is life. “Intelligence,” he says, “is perhaps a term that should be reserved for systems that can predict the future.” A serious legal argument can be made that sanctions imposed against Iraq in 1990 by the United Nations have come to constitute genocide…. In the past 12 years, as many as 1 million to 2 million Iraqis may have died as a result of the sanctions, many of them children under the age of 5…. UNICEF officials estimated in 2000 that 5,000 to 6,000 Iraqi children were dying each month primarily due to sanctions. -- George Bisharat, Common Dreams Our culture somehow persuades us to silence ourselves. We have to fight against that. We live in a massively infected culture. So we have to start a counter-infection, like firefighters starting a backfire. There is always a market for rebellion among bright kids. Two American leftists now have best-seller books: Michael Moore, Stupid White Men, and Noam Chomsky, 9-11. This may be a sign of a tipping point in American politics. In American politics the left has an outlaw aura. Listen, it’s the call of the wild. Saw a TV show on Ulysses S. Grant. Writing is like a military campaign: You just have to press forward, no matter what. Around 1970 the U.S. entered a new phase in which manufacturing, the engine of American prosperity, began to falter…. The U.S. lost 9 percent of its manufacturing jobs between 1967 and 2001, but in the industrial heartland – the Northeast and the Midwest – the loss reached more than 40 percent…. [F]aster productivity growth in manufacturing as compared with services plays the major [role]. – “Deindustrialization: why manufacturing continues to decline,” Scientific American, May 2002
 In his movie Roger and Me, Michael Moore showed the economic devastation that deindustrialization brought to Flint, Michigan. “Productivity growth” means automation, thus less of a need for labor. We can produce more goods with less people. Deindustrialization is also created by sending jobs abroad. The U.S. elite believes that it makes sense to have manufacturing done in low wage countries. But that sucks family wage working-class jobs out of America. Between automation and job export, American working-class people have fallen on hard times. Politicians and the middle class are unwilling to deal with it, or even recognize that it’s happening. Let’s just sweep it under the rug. It’s hard to speak or write the truth because of the
human tendency to tell a story, to make things fit into a pattern.
It is only fair that we give computers bodies so they can move around. Maybe computers crash because they’re tired of their coffins. So my suggested upgrade to Windows would be to make it ambulatory. “Windows walks!”® Someone help me out here: How did Buffy get resurrected? Why does Spike have a chip in his head? Music is where we put our soul. Almost regardless of politics, Americans are deeply conservative (retentive) about the basic pattern of our culture: high levels of activity, production and consumption. It is a culture that is always looking at its watch. I don’t want to be a writer, I want to be a drug. My sister told me, “An addict always thinks that if a little of something is good, more is better.” At a party, an activist complained about being referred to, in political news, as a “seventy year-old grandmother.” I really must know: Are there contact lenses that light up, or is that just a movie trick? Publishing on paper would be too much of a commitment. Please follow after me as we learn five new things we didn’t want to know. In May, in Portland, we live for the sun to come out. It’s like new love. I’ve reached the point where I’m quoting myself. The man who had ordered the attacks [on a Seneca Indian village] was named George Washington. From that day in 1779 until now, the only way of referring to any American president in the Seneca language was Destroyer of Villages. – Thomas Perry, Vanishing Act Is an automobile still a dream of freedom for a young man? Cats have mastered the art of repose. I figure there is one other person in America who believes everything in Drift. He probably lives in a shack in some remote village in Alaska, surrounded by bomb making materials. May 14 – first roses. The other world is fiction, and it is enormous. I still think that someday all fiction will be poured into a computerized virtual world, which we will explore as we would a physical world. It will be visual, dreamlike. Characters will all have their personal characteristics, back story and potential future, as do the people we meet in “real” life. Bill Lyon said that people who are capable of being alone don’t have to be. I’m not sure he was right. Lyon, a college professor and therapist, put a lot of emphasis on personal strength and self-reliance. Sometimes that is a mask for an inability to get along with other people. I don’t think most of us were designed to live isolated lives, and it’s sad to see so many people doing it anyway. Better we should have studied interdependence. Squirrels are my guide into retirement. A squirrel never wakes up thinking, “Oh God, another day of gathering nuts.” I’m a recovering worker. The secret of drinking: one beer. I’ve discovered that one of my housemates, after I’ve been living here for over a year, doesn’t know my last name. Everyone, including me, has a hole in their mind, an area of blank incomprehension where they just don’t get it. Yeah I thought of that too: I seem to feel that poverty is a virtue, I’m poor, so what’s the problem? One problem with marriage is that we haven’t defined the obligations that go with it. For example, are you obliged to stay with your mate for life? I’ve reached the age where I say things like, “Oh dear.” I’m practicing up to be a harmless little old man. Miles to go …. To be serious about progressive politics you have to have a little “fuck you” in your personality. Old people are the bearers of bad news: We’re all going to die. No, I mean really. I’m not kidding. A couple days ago I ended up in the hospital emergency room because I didn’t read the instructions that came with some prescription medicine. A word to the wise: Read about side effects and watch for them. It took about four hours, during which I was in moderate pain, before they treated me. Apparently insufficient resources. The nurse said they were busy, they’re usually busy, and ERs across the country are the same. So maybe we ought to think about where our money is going. What would it be worth to you to avoid four hours of pain? At 62 I find I have to think about a body I used to take for granted, and I resent it. I want to think about more interesting things. That’s how you feel about politics, right? My political rule of thumb: Does it help the working class? If not, it’s not significant. On the choice between Bush and Gore in the 2000 presidential election: Do you want to get fucked by someone who tells you they’re going to fuck you, or do you want to get fucked by someone who lies to you, and then fucks you? –Michael Moore, Stupid White Men On liberal resentment of Greens after the election: They’re brimming with anger. I have to tell you, I have not seen liberals this angry since … since … well, I don’t think I’ve really ever seen liberals get too worked up about anything! – Moore Yeah, bunch of well-intentioned, mild-mannered, placid, middle-class, do-nothing, invisible bozos. And still Moore caved towards the end and tried to talk the Nader campaign out of going for it in the swing states, where the vote would be close. Fortunately they didn’t listen. When you get on the train you don’t get off until you arrive. As Ken Kesey said, “You’re either on the bus or off the bus.” The only power progressives have is kicking ass in close elections. Our way or the highway. Never trust someone who is always calm. When I do politics I run into the limits of my own temperament, impatience. It’s often hard for me to sit through meetings, listening to people’s rambling digressions, personal differences. I would rather just sit at my computer and write. Politics is the fine art of getting on each other’s nerves. When the going gets rough, the average get conservative. – Henry Rollins, in Real Conversations with V. Vale. Anyone can write. There is no lack of words. The dictionary is full of them. All you have to do is change the order. Try reverse alphabetical. Put nouns and verbs in every sentence: “Clocks break birds.” “Cars diversify.” The real problem with writing is that our culture is supersaturated. Never mind. Do it anyway. Do it to be doing it. We all need someone to listen to us talk about serious stuff. We need to hear what we have to say to know if it’s valid. Or just another pose. Most of what we have to say about ourselves is only approximately true. Our stories. Truth is not what art is about. Resonance. As Rollins says, we’re constantly having fear sold to us. It makes us manageable. Even the radicals fall for it, so stuffed with fear that we can’t grasp reality. You can’t know everything. Some of it you have to feel. I live on OPW: Other People’s Words. It’s hard to know people because we’re always trying to put on a really good show. Which is why I’m always trying to be quiet and simplify. We don’t have to be one thing all the time. Sometimes I can hear all I want to hear in silence. Only life can teach you about death. If water can wear away stone, maybe thoughts can affect reality. Wisdom lies in letting go of things that no longer serve you. And hanging on to the rest. At 62 I’m at the beginning of old age, and it’s hard to get used to. I look at pictures of myself and think oh no, this will not do, even though people tell me I look young for my age. I have to remind myself that I went through this same process in my early 40s, entering middle age, and I did in fact get used to it. I read a book then on middle age. The author said no one is ever ready for it. People age better whose minds keep expanding, but I find myself disinclined to try new things, and have to push myself to get past that. Long distance travel, for example, seems awfully complicated. Even for those of us who are used to thinking outside the box, it’s important not to get trapped inside our own mental boxes, where we think and say the same things over and over. Attitudes harden. I have to remember: I am not a recording. All of us become explorers as we get older. Important to keep up connections with people. I haven’t done that as well as I should have. Why 50 percent of marriages fail: Our society rewards behavior that is aggressive, competitive and acquisitive. These are not traits that produce good human relationships. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. The U.S., right now, is such a shining example of comic book patriotism. It’s always about war and money. Today a squirrel discovered the feeder I installed on the fence in our back yard. Now I feel like I really am retired. … a world in which opiates have become the religion of the masses. – Neil Gaiman, American Gods Clever, but I think it’s TV. Television tells them what is real, what to believe, who to vote for…. One of the Nazis said that if you repeat a lie enough times it becomes the truth. During one of a manic-depressive friend’s crazy episodes I sent her an email: “It’s not real. I know you think it is, but it isn’t.” She printed the email and kept it on her refrigerator door, along with her list of famous people who were manic-depressive. How to identify old smokers: They’re the ones with the oxygen bottles. From my sister’s experience, it looks like once you get your oxygen bottle you have less than a year to live. My sister was a small woman, but she thought she was fierce, and that no one had better mess with her. To do politics you just have to accept that it’s stupid, and do it anyway. After all, everything else is stupid. There are different levels of political stupidity. Most stupid is voting for an Al Gore or George Bush. Refuse to play their game. Make up your own game. The worst political mistake Americans make is accepting the choices given them. Don’t you just hate those guilt-tripping lectures we get from the people who clean our teeth? I’m 62. Teeth were not meant to last forever. Dentists try to scare you into getting more expensive work done. They always want to cap that tooth. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. – Gaiman I put down American Gods, and I can feel all the black cats flowing through the night. I live in a room full of reading material, which appears to be growing exponentially. I’m kidding myself thinking I’ll ever get it under control. It always ends the same way: I pick up a big stack of it and throw it away. Reminds me of a documentary about Noam Chomsky. He sat in a room full of stacks of books and papers. But he seems to remember it, while I do not. I’m much nicer in person. The words actually seem freer, once I get them off the paper and onto the Internet. Immaterial. It doesn’t matter. I’m a wanderer. I come mostly with what I wear. Wisdom lives on the edge of meaning. Late at night, so tired I can’t see straight. Once you commit to an idea, a point of view, it freezes your mind in place. Americans believe that they’re entitled. Sleep and dreams are part of death. We study dreams to find the uncertain boundary between dreams and life. No, it only sounds like it means something. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. Not even I know for sure. Peripheral Vision Mysticism and poetry depend on seeing things from the corner of your eye. Sometimes men use fewer words than women. That doesn’t mean we’re saying less. Politics: I believe it’s better to fight than hide. There’s a story I read about the director Mike Nichols. He said to his psychiatrist, “Life is terrible, you know it is.” His psychiatrist replied, “Yes, life is terrible, but interesting.” I think life is mostly terrible, but sometimes you can find a way to make the pain stop for awhile. Life is mostly dull, but if you look hard you can find a lot that’s interesting. I’m on a train crossing the Sierra Nevada in late May, from Sacramento heading for Denver, patches of snow above 5,000 feet. In the dining car I talk with a business professor from Iowa about genetic engineering of plants. A lot of environmentalists are against it, afraid of Frankenstein foods. The professor says genetically modified corn, for example, might not need fertilizer and herbicides, both of which wash off the land into streams and rivers, polluting our water. The professor says rural parts of the Midwest are emptying out, as small family farms give way to large agribusiness. People are moving to the cities. The train is a fine and scenic way to travel, except that last night, on my way from Portland to Sacramento, I didn’t sleep much. So I feel weird. Commentary on the PA system. They say winter snowfall here can reach 35 feet. I try to picture that. I wonder how they keep the track open? People wave at trains. Another problem with trains is fucking cell phones. For some reason when people get on their cell phones they talk LOUD. I wouldn’t mind so much if they would do it in a normal tone of voice. Most of the time when people talk they’re not saying anything. Sometimes I catch myself doing it. Reno, Nevada. The setting for the novel The City of Trembling Leaves, by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, better known for The Oxbow Incident. I read Leaves twice. Written in the 1940s, as I remember it was about art. From the train Reno looks like any other city. The desert is so clean and uncluttered. And I bet it’s really quiet out there. Desperately Seeking Silence In the Nevada desert I can finally sleep, confident that I won’t miss anything. The desert is neutral. I can’t believe it: In the middle of the desert the woman in the seat behind me is on her fucking cell phone. Isn’t there any place these things don’t work? Young couple curled up together in the seats opposite mine. She is reading to him from The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. As we wind along the Colorado River a rafter moons the train. Old guys with no pretense in the observation car talking about concrete stuff. Two black women bound for Chicago, going on about a murder. A book one of them read. Four kids watching a movie on a laptop. This train is running about three hours behind. I told a steward that I’m not in any hurry. She said, “You don’t take the train if you’re in a hurry.” Fantasizing about taking a bus to some small town in Oregon and renting a room for a couple of weeks. Quiet. Still. I’ve been tired for a long time, worn down, worn out. Too much happened. But I still have some magic left. Oscar Wilde said you should take your diary with you when you travel, so you’ll have something good to read. At 9,000 feet in the Colorado Rockies we go through a 13 minute tunnel that seems to go on forever, then downhill in the dark. A hazy moon, and I can see the lights of Denver spread out over the plain below.
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