No one, Nameless, Nobody . . .

This is the opening salvo in a surreal, urban epic I plan
on writing sometime in the future . .

N was in the City for a two-day conference with his interchangeable colleagues Beau and Craig (in his head, N kept track of them with the nicknames Greed and Avarice: the latter to denote Craig’s relative skill to the primitive tendency). At lunch of day one, N escaped into the unfamiliar streets, relying on the loopholes of ATM services or cellular phone calls to gain his freedom. Now as he walked, unwilling to admit to even himself that he was lost, he longed to swill dry martinis with them and feign interest in sports cars and sport fucking. For at the very least he would not have been robbed or lost, or forced to admit defeat with an awkward phone call. Of course, the situation was not yet hopeless.

N soon passed out of what could be called the skyscraper district, neck-hair raised by the obvious transition but confident that he was now heading back towards a stranger-friendly vein that could take him back to the heart of the city. The impressive architecture of the convention center's (not to mention his hotel) neighborhood was now strictly absent in favor of squat, boorish buildings housing pen spring manufacturers, envelope stuffers, or whatever increasingly obsolete industry a semi-ghetto might support.

He was plainly lost now, but as always calm; the phone flipped open in his hand begged the consideration of taxi cab or Avarice. A quick return to the polyethylene comfort of his hotel room or a bleak, familiar ride back with unpreventable stop at who knows what for no discernible reason.

Before N could make the call, or make the call, the sun thrust its almost vulgar magnifying glass onto the edifice up ahead. It blatantly highlighted the rest of the street, sure, giving crystalline insight to the pools of bum urine, the random refuse, the arrangements of splinters in alleys. But the building up ahead struck nerves. N forgot the phone call and picked up his stride. What could this enormous building be, Its vibrant beige set against the monochrome. As he approached, letters equally large in contrast read “The Federal Building” in no uncertain terms and left the details at that.

N walked closer, momentarily unconcerned with the time, potential xenophobia or the severity of his dilemma. Could this be a figment of his imagination? Some blinding urban oasis with delirium in absentia? What was its proximity and importance to his location, the conference he was skipping, the change in his pocket, the auto-mobile and personal computer that he owned? There must be some trickle-down relevance, he thought, it was “The Federal Building”

He was now on Its block, purposely ignored by two silvering jarheads desperately expressing their feeble importance. They wore unique uniforms displaying their roles as security guards, but the colors and acronyms bespoke of no attachment to the Feds. They reminded N of uniforms young cadets might wear . . .gunless, meritless, shiny in fabrication and carefully coordinated in masculine colors. Both men wore their facial and cranial hair identical, smoke grey and close-cut with template trimmed goatees. Likely stupid eyes behind gunmetal blue sunglasses that embarrassed the sun’s glare. They milled about, but N refused to be intimidated by their menace.

N was now merely abreast of the Federal Building, squinty as It warped perception across six lanes of potential traffic. The two men fell out of view, being of little interest to N, however, curiosity revived at a remarkable hole in the wall. An alcove that darkened and who’s dimension was deceptive. The Federal Building seemed ashamed of it and an imaginative personification of the concrete’s face shoved this aberration into the lower corner. Without poetics N leaned towards the Federal Building’s gaping asshole and crossed the street without consideration. The defense of ignorance, of unfamiliarity and the armour of his suit protected him from that paranoia that grants velvet rope the power of crowd control.

As he approached the complexity of the orifice grew; it could be sealed shut with fire doors, curiously thrown open. The ceiling of the chamber was much higher than the door pretended and a web of steel piping extended up far beyond what the street saw as the limit. Nothing to see, N thought. Interesting perhaps, but not worth a criminal record. Perhaps just a few feet more and he would. . . .

The doors shut behind him, two grinning troglodytes (and yes the same man-child twins from moments earlier), enraged at some quite invented trespass, closed in on him. There was, of course, nowhere that N could escape to and yet he refused to compromise with these stencils. No better than thugs he said aloud.

They threatened him, not with arrest but with physical violence and barked commands of indeterminable purpose. It would be a fight then . . . .

N kicked the closest man in the kneecap, resulting in a distinctive pop. This threw him off balance in precisely the right direction to spin into the punch that would render the other man unconscious. The first man, now certainly debilitated, had struck his head on the concrete and now supervised a small pool of blood from his brow. He faded into sleep as well.

Panic is not N’s nature. As these aggressors and possible points of authority (though N doubted it) lay in the alley, temporarily disabled, N thought of a way out. He could fiddle thru their rings of keys in the hope that he could find the correct one in the few seconds that they’d be out. A daunting possibility and one that could only lead to failure. The second option took a decade to emerge . . .

N climbed up to the lowest of the network of pipes with a slim prayer to nothing that it would support his weight. From it he moved to another, and another, until he was precariously high above the melee. One, the man he’d punched, began to wake up below and tended to his partner. They would have a great deal of explaining to do, N thought, to their bosses, to doctors, to themselves.

N’s plan had worked in the short term. He was now uncomfortably balanced on two or three pipes with incalculable capacity but, while it was difficult to tell how far up he could climb, this route must certainly have its limits.

He clambered up another five feet, looked down to see the men still sitting. Perhaps they were despondent, or waiting for reinforcement. Up was the answer, N thought, or in. A large vent some 10 feet above him was reachable by a complicated twisting of his torso and tentative grasps to ever shrinking pipes.

At the point of the vent, the pipes were much less frequent. He stood on one that ran horizontal and parallel to the vent’s wall and leaned into the vent itself for additional support. Even in this awkward position N made short work of the screws with a pair of nail clippers and made the requisite nervy maneuvers to displace the vent cover, turn it 45 degrees, push it into the ventilator shaft proper and perform a gymnastic feat to enter himself. Goddamn his age and goddamn his attire, N would not be stymied by the relative possibility of a task.

Within five minutes of struggling N dropped into a poorly lit bathroom and contemplated his next move.

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To Home

This is a sort of return to the form I originally wanted this blog to take on: pure writing. In this case a bit of spontaneous surrealism. Let me know what you think .. . .

To home. With access to television, liquor, bed. And only the slight impediment of angled rain and the ink blackening at the edges of this narrow walk of clean, white light; surroundings stretching out to pupil dark antimatter spotted with feeble pokes of arc-sodium or traffic control. The walk is a quarter-mile or less of shortcut through former ghetto leveled for institutional purposes; one wonders if the hapless fled like squirrels under the terrifying boom of the crane. Each step one closer to rest, the redemption of a day spent in the trap, in analogy waiting for flies to rest in open jaws. The street up ahead signifies some colloquial comfort of proximity; a stone’s throw if there was one.

The foot trumpets out a little slap with every step on wet concrete, and at some point (BEFORE rest, television, the warm glow of something cooking) it’s echoed behind. The head turns to see another, all in black, piercing the fluorescence. He’s moving fast, with a purpose that betrays not peace but desperation, malice, greed. The first instinct, being civilized and unaccustomed to violence, is to move faster. Escaping on foot always seems to put the advantage to the prey, but this predator is above mere speed.

For a brief moment the front door seems close enough, just across this sometimes busy street, up another meager half-block and around the corner. Not time, quite yet, to start fumbling for keys.

The gap closes, but not through any compromise of fear or effort. Hunted down like a sickly antelope under the eyes of a city that never takes names; a look back reveal s the dark figure now looming large. Charcoal details emerge: the savage edge of a face, a rugged frame as tho built brick-by-brick, an obvious lack of weakness.

The futile effort to run, to steel oneself for anachronistic battle. Legs burn, but perhaps it will be the last time to savor something as pure as pain. A fatalistic sigh with each step, finally arriving at the street. End phase one, but the traffic is incredible. An orchestra of mingling music and purpose. Complementary car troubles dropping in synch with puffs of fog. Last breaths from borrowed lungs.

The turnaround is intended to meet fate, as no divine force shines on cowardice, and a memory streaked in long absent colors pulls fingers into a fist.

The dark figure now exposed in the light, a harmless derelict to be escaped before he’s pitied change out of pockets. The dimming memory of panic leaves only the faintest mark on one's conscious.

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"Still haven't lost my hunger, but only time will tell"

I'm currently less than one gestation period from making that leap from obedient apprentice of Newton, Hooke, et al to nameless device for the aims of the state, or worse yet a serf on the partition wall farm of opportunists or greedheads. There will be cups to piss in, addresses to change, crucial decisions regarding yet-to-be earned money, and a glance at the broad, homeworkless horizon. One general direction, most appealing to my contemporaries, holds a potential lifetime worth of important events like childbirth, new home purchase, tee-off times, and struggles with victory proclaimed merely at the gapstop.

The other, the preferred route, moves nowhere physically for some time. If that horizon bodes complacency, these pins and needles must be home. It was here that I promised myself indulgence for my muse if I could merely hold out . . .learn to shoulder grunt work, understand the fundamentals, prove your ethic to be unquestionable, try not to drink too much. Meanwhile, I learned the cold thrill of academics; the martial discipline that demands always some fraction of your focus, the all-or-nothing examinations that cannot tell a lie. If one has a skill, here is where to feed it. If a weakness, here it will be illuminated.

I want to write, and when I fail to earn my keep at that I should like to teach others what the desire to write has taught me. I'd like to be burrowed away in some back office, surrounded by text. Only to be brought out to lecture, denounce the government or give eulogies.

I plan nothing short of professional apostasy; certain suicide or at least whiplash from resistance to this career path potentia. A return to school, part-time at first, that will have me reading Voltaire or Tolstoy on lunch breaks between inspecting concrete pours and contemplating Omissions/Errors/Corrections. Eventually I'll attend a school I actually wanted to attend in the first place, whatever that may be a few years from now. I think I can only rest at a PhD.

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Why I'm Reading the Bible and What I Expect to Find

I've begun to read the Bible, along with a group of colleagues, with scheduled "Bible Study" meetings in which we will meet to discuss whatever dreck, miracle or incongruency we have found in the previous week.

I (and I'm not quite sure if I speak for the entire group) am an atheist. My lack of faith in a god is as powerful as the supposed faith that many claim. I believe in evolution, I do not believe in an afterlife as a event in which some individual essence retains it's individuality and lives on in some physical-law confounding eternity, I think clergy are either maliciously fooling others or ignorantly fooling themselves. I think that the spiritual tendency is an evolutionary left-over from the days in which the world was so inexplicable complex that needed something to keep our heads from exploding. (Serotonin and Spirituality , I don't agree that this needs "contextualization" {near the end of the article}, I would argue it's pretty straightforward) And yet I find it quite neccessary to read this manuscript cover to cover.

This book has been the fundamental (only?) document to contain the essence of so-called "Christianity" (we won't be making it to the Christ portions for some time). A precept that many people think this nation was founded on (although there are convincing arguements against this: here, here). It holds together a variety of schools of thought (many who claim to be seperate and distinct for no discernible reason) that I think are damaging overall to us as a people. The rules of this religion, themselves, may have a positive impact in many areas. The problem often occurs within religious hypocrites: those who "go to church" and yet participate in acts of greed, lust, envy, slot .. . . etc. I strive to understand the full scope of right and wrong as the Bible tells it so I can fully understand and appreciate this hypocrisy I feel I am drowning in.

Conservativism, in 2005, is a force to be reckoned with. The social aspects of conservativism claim to have roots in x-ianity and the bible. I intend to find the broad swipes at homosexuality and compare the perception of a homosexual in the Bible to the perception of a woman. I suspect that the Bible fosters little respect for women (we find this evident in the first few pages with Eve being an accidental villian, and the descendants of Adam rightfully taking numerous wives). To fully understand the bullshit that is neo-conservativism I want to understand their document, and I expect to find that scarcely few proponents have even read it.

Creationism is the foolishness that will not die. The Bible supposedly has some profound, meaningful explanation for how life started. I am midway through genesis and have not found it, in it's place however is one of the driest, most vapid explanations of a phenomenon one could imagine. I knew I would disagree, but I didn't think I would find it so boring. In a time when the truth is under attack, it seems important to know one's enemy.

And, for me, that is the reason to read this. To further understand the ignorance (and no, it's not all the Bible's fault) that plagues mankind, and to be able to actively refute the talking points of true believers who have never taken the time to read the book that is supposedly so important. If you'd like to join in our Bible Study Group, please let me know.

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The Selfish Gene vs. The Demiurge:Part 2, Mankind

So, with raw "uninterpreted" science we arrive at uselessness, or at the very least the ungratifying condition of being tools of our genes. A painful conclusion, perhaps, but one that acknowledges the facts and thus one that puts us in a position to honestly examine this world and develop a plan.

This theory of life makes no case for man in his present state being the "goal" of evolution or the universe. We are not created in the image of some sourceless deity, nor does our particular configuration represent a model for the dominant species in other circumstances. We are survival machines. That being said, no amount of bias will discount the fact that we are special. In intelligence (a broad characteristic with a finger in every pie) we reign supreme, in physical dexterity we are capable enough to survive, in language we are sophisticated nearly to a fault, in curiousity we exceed the feline by accomplishment as opposed to death.

We are, as joe said, a small part of something larger. There is no shame in this, no part of the whole is truly small enough to be insignificant. Our intelligence, and specifically our extragenetic, collective intelligence is astounding. In a few short generations we have confounded the snail's pace of evolution, outran the "accomplishments" (genes accomplish nothing but survival I know, but let's for the moment consider this a competition) of our genes, and in fact, as a species, are nearly parallel in importance to ourselves as our natural environment. We create change at such a speed that evolution virtually doesn't exist on a timescale we can comprehend.

I am of the belief that we are preparing, or should be preparing, to abandon life all together. At some point, and one can't predict the formula for change as a function of time, we will be ready to leave these bodies (our genes surely overstepped their bounds, or rather, created a monster they could no longer control), or at the very least this "system" behind. Why suffer the whims of nature when we were never the priority to begin with? Why trap ourselves in a body that was created merely to proliferate and as a suicidial misstep was capable of genius?

What does this mean? What it means is we should have no fidelity to tradition, and yet learn from it. We should have no attachment to our viscera and yet use it's template to escape. Our genes have no regard for us? Well then, we shall have no regard for them. This is nothing short of the slave (us, the survival machine) becoming the master.

The Demiurge is defined as a powerful creative force, Plato uses it as the force that created the material world out of chaos. We are this powerful force. We have the capacity to take this chaotic world (oh yes, there are "rules", but there is no purpose) and put our order on it. Not an order that succumbs to our genetic failures, our tendencies towards distraction, our myriad fears and weaknesses; but an order that stretches our fingers to every corner of the universe, defines the world as that which suits us, and relieves us from the whims of a nature that has tried to crush us since our inception.

So, as part of this sweeping, all-powerful force I will continue in part 3 to state where I (the small, almost insignificant piece of this force) think we've gone right, where I think we've gone very wrong, and see if we can't understand what we should do as individuals.

Please comment.

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The Selfish Gene vs. The Demiurge: Part I, Biology

The terms, conditions and reality of biological evolution have been misunderstood (even amongst those who accept them) in the larger community. There is a widely held perversion of the truth that insists that change is entirely random and that the solitary unit of evolution (and thus of life) is the individual organism or worse yet the “group”. Genetic and biological research has shown, on the contrary, that the individual gene is the unit of life, and therefore what is “selected” when we speak of natural selection. Success in evolution only applies to the individual gene, the humans or other animals that carry them around and disperse them via disease or procreation are merely “survival machines” for these genes. Acts of subconscious altruism (I’ll speak of well-planned actions later) can be interpreted as moves to extend one’s genes into the future (i.e. protecting the offspring) or protecting the solidarity of a group which, in turn, protects oneself (“You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”). Social insects are a special case of this, as the entire civilization tends to act as one survival machine.

The history of life is simplified (ohh, what a task) by imagining a chaotic, dynamic world in which, initially, short, replicating strips of organic chemicals competed for dominance (of course they didn’t really compete at this point, due to random mutation some were merely better suited for the environment and thus thrived). Eventually (read: billions of years) these replicators found themselves deeply embedded within larger, multi-celled organisms uniquely obsessed with survival and proliferation. Serving as the primary architect for an essentially automated process (living, from the gene’s perspective is quite simple: create an organism with a brain that is well-suited to life, kick back and cheer yourself on to immortality), the gene gets the primary benefit of all biological marvels by actually existing beyond the death of the organism. You have genes in you that have existed, unchanged, back down your ancestral change until well before vertebrae came to be.

The presupposition that all biological phenomenon can be explained by this drive is open to scrutiny, and I’m willing to accept the challenge of any anomaly to disprove or discredit it. It’s not my theory, of course, but is well-explained in Richard Dawkin’s The Selfish Gene (a must read for those interested in evolutionary biology, and in fact the originator of the term “survival machine” as well as many others), and many other works. I don’t profess expertise, but I am of the belief that every biological event is dictated by this axiom. This also requires a predominately nature-based approach to personality, dangerous ground to tread in a world where homosexuals are supposedly forced into “perversion” by other homosexuals, children become violent maniacs as a result of television programming and the mere mention of narcotics is enough to catapult an otherwise sane individual into drug-fueled madness .

Cultural behaviors (that is seemingly extragenetic acts perpetuated by memory, literature, parenting, etc but also undoubtedly effected by genetics) are perhaps the trickiest AND most interesting aspect to attempt an explanation. But here goes:

Religion:

Our genes (quite powerful and complex relative to the gene’s of other survival machines), have a difficult survival machine to maintain. Human beings seem to be curious and intelligent to a fault, skillfully manipulating their environments and other organisms within it to, ostensibly, benefit themselves. In the formation of such a cunning survival machine the gene likely runs into problems keeping the mental state of their bot balanced.

With an eye towards further speculation, I would claim that the “religious gene” (or the tendency to create this extragenetic effect) exists primarily to keep the survival machine sated and at peace. It allows us to accept answers so we can devote more time to procreation then philosophical investigation.

Art

Once again the survival machine must be kept in balance, a difficult proposition with an organism as complex as a human being. We get bored easily, we also have complex emotions (crucial in developing relationships, forming alliances, etc in the interest of immortalizing our genes). Art likely originated to serve several functions: ease boredom (those good at easing the boredom of others are favored and quite likely to propagate, the entertainer is a favorable genetic disposition), manage emotions (those capable of keeping their emotions in check can devote time to procreation) and work out complex thoughts for oneself and others.

The list goes on, and the above cases are meant to serve as examples rather than the subject.

The difficulty comes when we attempt to give this life meaning.

What is the impact of understanding that you as an individual are virtually irrelevant? Merely a short stop for your genetic overlord before you are discarded in favor of your offspring. A bleak outlook to be sure, and one perhaps the existentialist would find some solace in.

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One can not retire without accomplishment, nor inspire without confidence.

Given the opportunity, a million monkeys typing would produce not Shakespeare but a furied plea in fits and starts, scattered amongst the brilliant, in a language based in the click of the keys as opposed to the letters they form. Perhaps lush forest floors’d provide the Rosetta Stone, or Mozart’s masterpieces a dictionary of what each plastic push should emote. The point being: this act is not random. All lit. is the smoke of whirring engines, the ozone of blown fuses, the near failure but final relief of internal struggle spilling onto parchment. And this despite objectivity.

I describe this fully understanding the postmodern cliche of writing about writing, the optimistic analyses is that the subject has become so "large" that it must build a model of itself, or at the very least periodically clean cobwebs out of the corners. And in my other hand is the defense that I've lately been ascribing previous TV time to real, tangible writing projects that will at the very least serve as indestructible tablets to prove my existence.
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I've devised a system for prewriting long projects that I think is going to allow for precise organization of a complex novel I've been working on for over a year now. I've been using my nascent abilities in HTML to piece together note documents using extensive hyperlinks. It doesn't require the internet but rather uses the concept to provide a quick reference between pages. For instance, a chapter document (documenting all of the events, setting, characters, etc). Within the note text are links to character sketches, reference documents and tagged passages of other relevant chapters. I don't claim to be professional, but I can assure a budding writer that approaching larger projects with an eye on precise organization will be to their benefit. And I must say I finally feel like literature could catch up with the times.

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The other day, in our basement, we found abox of the personal affects of the previous occupant. Letters, postcards from foreign countries, the occasional still photo of various anonyms in generalizd settings. To dig thru these items, only several decades short of being artifacts, tested all stereotypes and matched any cinema in the fullness of the individual's character. Hunches from one scrap of paper were confirmed eventually; characters would reappear in familiar hand writing to update us on things that happened several years later.Here is what we've surmised: Ricky Izzarat was a Hispanic of indeterminate origin. He spent his formative years in Daytona Beach, Florida. He was abused by his parents. Eventually, Ricky went to college at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. It is indeterminate whether this was before or after a stint of living in New York. It is also indeterminate when Ricky decided to come out as a homosexual. He had a career with Boeing Aircraft as of 13 years ago. He had a male friend that was constantly concerned about his own weight. he attended late-night parties in NYC that tailored to gay men. He was involved in an HIV vaccine trial sometime between 1989-1991. There is likely more to be gleaned from this pile, I'm thinking of working it into a sort of project. Arranging items chronologically as well as in a fashion that answers questions soon after they are asked and presents the arc of his life, there is definitely enough material.

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Shattered Rossi

This post may trickle into the personal, but I hope it's still interesting to the outsider.

Things have irrevocably changed. Either a dare met with injury or a hypothesis dissappointed, one. We mixed a gross contradiction of unpretentious intellectuals into an apoplectic slurry of alcohol, stoned junta, world music, technologic fetishism, lawlessness, warts-and-all cosmopolitanism and philosophical ADD in one of the most anarchic cities in the country and eventually, some year later, we met the status quo's inevitable. There are no tears to shed for that first to die in outer space. We've all come out relatively unscathed with permanent memories to match any cinema and a bracing view of Your pathology. I suppose there is a comment or two to make:


The darts I wrote during this period, that of the House Trumbull, were arrhythmic, selective, unconscious and for the most part bad. But their spine thickened and I think at some point in the future I can approach them again fresh and it will be some of the best stuff I have ever written. An example I don't hate is next to my profile pic. The ideas for longer form literature were profuse, yet the opportunity for only the best of social situations (i.e. hanging out) were even more in number and I've been left with a thousand incomplete ideas. More importantly I have been convinced that ability and inspiration is not my deficit, distraction is.

The Son of Juan gave all of our extended family a moniker that presupposed a purpose: Guerrilla Detroit was supposed to be an idealized, unwritten creed for how skillfully none of us gave a fuck. I apparently misinterpreted it as a spit in the eye of the suburbs we all emerged from and a unified recruiting device for the like-minded. Nontheless, Guerrilla Detroit as a community group failed for more reasons than I care to mention, not the least of which is that everyone involved had little interest in pledging any degree of allegiance to a group of even the purest intentions. We coalesced precisely because we refused to under a thousand under circumstances. Just as well, none of us had a precise definition to reference. Nor did any of us have identical utopias.

Many people came through our doors, mostly invited and almost always welcomed. We saw every level of human depravity and decency. Wiped the mouths of grown men, housed strangers for a night or two, passed the dutch to whoever claimed interest. We threw parties of a certain magnitude, I stood on furniture and pumped my fist or threw that same furniture out into the ink. There was an often successful attempt to vent the resevoir frustration that comes with our age and occupation(s). In the end our all-embracing attitude was our end, let it be said that the devil may come in many forms but you can still recognize him a long way off.

We gained an interesting notoriety and I'll try not to admit that it makes me smile.

Most of us are now leaning towards a more solitary life, I'm looking forward to a few lonely nights where I can finally allow the words to come out, it's been since the suburbs that I wrote 2,000 words in a sitting. The rest of us all have our own destiny we're trying to carve or force or sumbit to.

However, everything does not end, thankfully, and you can still find me and mine on Friday nights grubby and shouting about moral relativism, AK47, the infinite. Perhaps breaking your good china. We'll still be somewhere near the center of the revelry, halfway thru a case of Pabst with a lot of shit to do in the morning.

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Population Pt. 1: "Life is Sacred"

In daily commutes from this A or to that B, I find my speed sometimes hampered by people. Not always the willful ignorance of some slow-poke or a powerless individual deliberately milking a situation for any control they can temporarily claim. Oftentimes there are simply too many individuals in one space, comprising a teeming mass that expands and contracts at environmental whims. Beyond my arrogant observation that most of these people are likely "just in the way" ,or not hustling off to a task on an equal par with mine, in urban and suburban areas there is the sense that there are too many of us.

As a transportation dork I've come to understand that the capacity for things like roads, sidewalks, traffic signals, public transportation, and to a similar extent public institutions such as schools and courthouses, are built to a precise demand predicted to exist sometime in the future. 20 years is often regarded as a good figure for transportation demands, 5 is more likely for something like a school. The problem with these estimates, one would argue, is that (barring the apocalypse) there may very well not be the funds in the future to make upgrades to match an increasing demand.. Where does this problem come from? The fatal flaw in these predictions is the capriciousness of exponential growth. Without digging too far into the mathematics, suffice it to say that the variables in an exponential formula lend themselves, generally, to a wider range of results than linear relationships. Failing to correctly predict one factor can affect a result by orders of magnitude. Or, in application, lead to a crowded interstate in 10 years rather than 20.

I stated all this, really, to talk about the topic of the title. Population is an issue, whether one opines that every sperm is sacred or condones infanticide. Population was a concern of tribal cultures who were concerned about their ability to balance their responsibility of supporting a member thru gestation and childhood against their own personal needs. People, fully understanding where children came from, often made the undoubtedly life-changing decision to end their child's life, often post-fetal. There was an overwhelming sense of placing the well-being of the tribe or community above the well-being of one's self when the benefits of a "selfish" act failed to outweigh the detriment to the community.

Americans don't do this.

On a large scale we seem to have failed to consider the fact that every birth is not only a death, but 60 Billion calories, thousands of unrequited dollars, several hundred barrels of crude oil, a potential drain on gov't resources (with regard to social security and healthcare and transportation and defense and education and . . .) of millions. Every person added to the mix is a gamble, plain and simple. Some people pay off, some of us do not.

We've been very successful in paying lip service to the concept that life is sacred; celebrating the birth of children under any circumstance, prolonging the inevitable death of the elderly by subjecting them to batteries of treatment to pull them several inches back from the brink, imagining that our lives are so special that they could have only been created in the snap of divine fingers. Anti-choice activists claim that abortion is murder while supporting death in both foreign and penal policy. Eric Robert Rudolph bombed buildings because he believed so much in the sacredness of life.
While I do believe that once a child is born it is absolutely the responsibility of the parent and the community to provide that being with a shot, with as equal circumstances as possible, I must confess that we Americans don't really hold life sacred.

Take, for example, the birth of children in abject poverty in both inner cities and rural communities (I'm thinking here of the unspeakable poverty in parts of Appalachia). We Americans seem to find this life (on the brink of starvation, cold, uneducated, unhappy, unhealthy) so satisfying that it would be a shame not to let another child in on it. We hold the value of that child's life to such a level of import that we are literally willing to subject him or her to the absolute worst life has to offer rather than fix the problems affecting ourselves and those already born. In our refusal to accept the reality of our environment we seem to think that "love" is enough for a child. Unfortunately, Love is a poor substitute for dinner or textbooks or a blanket or vaccinations. Love is important to raising a child (and daunting problems also arise when people have children without love or even worse without evena sense of responsibility, but this topic does not speak to the economics and philosophy of overpopulation that I'm shooting for), but so is having the approriate resources to put that love into affect. Those who bear their children in abject poverty (and I'm not speaking about people who have simply bad credit, or a mediocre job. I'm not relegating the bearing of children to the upper crust) are not holding life sacred, in fact they make a mockery of it everytime they select exaggerating the problem over the simple mathematics that a deer or a fox perform. And because this is America, we can often only think in soundbites that rhyme, I've comprised a piece of verse: "If you can't feed, don't breed."


Another example is the current "healthcare crisis". Our nation is crippled by rising health care costs and their impact on corporate incomes, personal financial security, and what I will call the "emergency infrastructure" (that is our ability to respond to health emergencies such as gunshots, car accidents and fires). While I have equal vitriol for frivolous lawsuits and underhanded drug companies (and the demons in Washington who promote their interests), the topic of this post relegates me to discussing the issue of prolonging the inevitable.
In our relentless pursuit for the sanctity of life we, America, have developed a method of operations with regards to the elderly and the terminally ill that neither holds life sacred nor benefits the community at large. A prime, well-known example of this is the Terri Schaivo case, in which faux-Christians demanded that a woman nature pronounced dead 10 years ago must remain plugged into machines presumably until decay. Rather than facing the sad truth of inevitable death and freeing up resources for an recovering individual who needs it, rather than donating the still vital organs to an 8 year-old girl with a malformed kidney, rather than putting a corpse in the ground where it belongs, our pursuit of sanctity required that Terri Schaivo remain "alive". When the voice of reason finally prevailed, not without a fight, it was discovered Terrie was virtually brain dead with no chance for even marginal recovery using current medical methods.
To a less exaggerrated degree we take this philosophy to the elderly. To 90 year-old women having their chests opened for the 14th time, to 85 year old men confined to a bed for eternity but whose tired heart promises the the financial return of one more surgery. to $100 per day (whether paid by insurance or the gov't) in drug costs to squeeze out a year or two more of unhappiness.

This is not holding life sacred. This is being terrified of death.

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Define Success (Part 3):Talk is Cheap, Times Have Changed

When queried at dictionary.com the top result for success is: "The achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted". Using this loose defintion within an attempted explanation for what success is in our individual lives means, quite simply, that however we term success it will never occur without action. We cannot be Van Gogh, Bill Gates, Alexander the Great, whoever without a pursuit of the model which we've defined. We not only must determine what success means (as I have attempted to do in the 2 previous posts) but we must also actualize this definition to truly be pleased.
Success in a limited, animalian scope can be literally translated into survival. An animal is successful if it can live long nough to pass on its genes. We too can be pleased with this solution, after all an intuitive survey of our environment shows we are merely animals. Improbably sophisticated and ubiquitous yes but still subject to famine, hurricane and injury. There was a point, not long ago in geological time, in which a successful hominid was that one who could simultaneously kill or gather a surplus of food (for him/herself and any dependents), evade death from predatory animals (or even defensive prey) and injury, and find a mate who was equally capable of spawning children. In simple terms, mankind's sophistication (that is cleverness, language, ability to manipulate objects, etc) came from competition, some of which he was desperately disadvantaged in. Early man was no match for the tiger, and many a simpleton was likely gobbled up kicking and screaming, cursing his weak arms and high-pitched growl. Of importance is that this task, survival and reproduction, was basically a full-time job (at least until agriculture came along) or at least so demanding that other ventures were marginalized (for example, nomads did not spend their entire day trying to kill things, but the destabilized nature of their lives stymied the evolution of culture).
In reference to the prioritized list of Part 2, early hominids could only be successful in the first (or second if they were truly skilled) list: themselves. Nothing they did could affect the species, even if they declared war upon their fellow man they would only be able to destroy a handful before some other self-interested hominid put them down. As man approached the agricultural age his potential for influence amongst the prioritized list grew, with the advents of language and more sophisticated tools men and women could settle in tribes and work for the betterment of their community. A medicine man could find a life-saving or pain-relieving herb, a skilled craftsmen could develop a better arrowhead, a wise leader could develop a new logarithm for making decisions. Man's increased sophistication quite literally changed the definition of success by changing the potential for influence.
As man settled into farming communities their influence spread, and as the role of chieftain became the role of king, one's actions could have influence throughout communities in a region. In pre-Columbian America the first group to devise the zero concept, or to use the Incan method for counting ropes could potentially influence other people that they would never meet.
In a very short time, man devloped amazing abilities. He could influence change (Thomas Edison, Newton, John Locke, Christ) around the planet not only to people he would never meet, but people who didn't even look like him. As the globe shrank the potential influence throughout the priorization list above grew. Millions of people all over the world are involved in activities that influence and affect themselves, their family, their communities, their civilization and in fact all mankind.
Whatever the precise definition of success is, it must take into account our potential to affect change from top to bottom of the list in a way that has never been possible before.

This does not mean that it is easy to affect change, merely possible. And it makes some sense from a strictly physical perspective that the further down the list one would like to go with their objective (recall, success has something to do with attaining a goal) the more energy of one kind or another it will take. Species-level influence will not come through individual-level energy. One essentially gets out what they put in, and some individuals are much more capable of directing particular types of energy (that is some people are more creative, outspoken, visionary or prone to leadership). If there were an inkling that mankind was really one large organism (root word organize) it could very well be argued that each individual is a cell (civilization merely the order of one's body extrapolated) and each individual has some function mostly decided by their abilities. However, this is another discussion. Let's make the assumption (and yes it may be overreaching) that the individual will pursue that track in which their talent/function lies. Or at the very worst the track they decide on will be a stab at pursuing this function (even in failure perhaps increasing competition in this arena and thus useful).

What is all of this getting at? Defining success for oneself is a multipart problem. First, one must decide upon their personal version of right and wrong (one can select organized religion, nihilism, or their particular flavor of prioritization). Secondly, one must decide on an objective that somehow squares with this vision of the world. And finally one must pursue it. It can be assumed that if one desires their success in the higher levels of prioritization (or within the more poorly defined structure of say x-tianity) they will have to dedicate their entire lifestyle to it and that it will not be easy.

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The Fourth Anniversary

Today is the 4th Anniversary of a tragic event that we still don't really know the truth about. Do something to remember the life of those that died. Please watch the videos in this link and consider the questions that they raise; I don't agree with every controversy it puts forth but the volume of video and analysis is worth the time.

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staplegun

An explanation of "sTapLegun" that I wrote late last year

Let me explain sTapLegUN in the several ways in which it is significant to me:
1) It's a beautiful word. Like the "cellar door" model from Donnie Darko it is somehow rhythmic, inspiring and yet not individually functional enough to say anything on its own. It stands like a dream.
2) I have a (staked?) interest in the utter "modernness" of this modern world and all of the devices we've created and produced en masse to satisfy our many idiosyncratic needs. A staplegun is a wierd, mutant kind of tool in that it takes one useful object (a "staple", various forms of which have been used in construction dating back to at least the Incas) and combines it with another in less than intuitive fashion. For me it is something of a symbol for both man's ingenuity/innovation as well as his tendency to weigh himself down with "things".
3) In the future (if we make it), when we're all one gender and one race, or simply telekinetic hovering heads, nothing will seem as absurd as being macho and obsessed with collecting things that are big, powerful etc. Stapleguns do serve a purpose, as do big trucks and shotguns . . but if we think that's the only reason people buy them we are seriously mistaken.
4) Rearranged: UNTapLegs....i know that we generally tap feet, but this has a subconscious affect on me. Some kind of coded imperative to stop bouncing my leg impatiently as the world marches on this course. And, it's not just a command to stop; it's a command to re-educate completely.

A sTapLegUn in the literary sense is a modernistic, mutant amalgamation of at least two literary forms, expressing in sbstract the particular worldview as described above, here are a couple sTapLegUns:

-An arachnid lurch that flakes off skin and rubs in dirt. Lie-buying smile that convices aphids the strangest narcotic mile between beyond now and when his chin truly ages. A crossed proprietary wire that introduces itself in stages.

-Escape is not an option for all tunnels lead you home and every wall lept is a one brick taller Rome. Those fields you lust for have been groomed and saved, removed from the appeal of an experience with numbered days or a fearless leader states it's time to enter caves.

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Define Success (Part 2): Moral Relativism, Observer Created Universe and More Q's than A's

The continuation of this discussion requires the assumption of several things; however success is defined it must contain value under the one major heading: influence. And to repeat this influence is not neccessarily power, popularity, wealth, et al but merely the ability to affect change. It can be argued that for an act to be"successful" does not require a universal perception of positive influence; as a test for this we can look to acts deemed universally negative (such as Hitler's physical and psychological trouncing of Europe) for lessons on how to be successful, i.e. if Hitler had been working toward a common good and yet used his brilliance and charisma to overthrow a tyranny he would be heralded as a hero. Therefore negative actions can be considered successful, but for application into our personal lives we would much rather define it in terms of what we determine to be "good".

Moral Relativism:
It is a common assertion that while theft in general is bad, stealing bread for a starving family is to be excused by authorities ranging from local to divine. Likewise, while violence is frowned upon, murder in self-defense is thought of as the actions of a hero. Even within our stricit morality there is a sliding scale that depends on circumstances, all encapsulated within an only slightly broader set of circumstances we can call the "human situation". This situation consists of being a living being on this planet, being subject to the laws of physics and their extrapolations into the laws of chemistry and biology. There is no morality to these scientific laws, we are not carbon-based organisms because it is the "right" thing to do, gravity does not influence us because it has the moral authority to decide which way is down. These laws are the broadest set of circumstances and because we exist in spite of them rather than the other way around we have no basis on which to philosophize whether or not they are correct, they merely are. Nonetheless, we have worked hard to determine a set of codes by which all of us should live, and nearly every rule that has lasted the aeons and remains enforced deals strictly with how one human being relates to another. Frequently, these codes emerge independently among various cultures; just as frequently naunces vary greatly and what is right amongst one civilization is deemed wrong in another. This argument has existed in Western culture likely since white people discovered tribes practicing infanticide/paganism/whatever and, upon delcaring their savagery and immorality, decided these individuals were uneducated, subhuman and disposable. This represents a significant clash of cultures in which a person of any vintage or creed could declare both sides were wrong, or right for that matter. The point is that the idea of right and wrong is at best a social construct. It makes sense that many individuals would reach an approximation of the same values without even being educated about them because many of our civilizations are essentially the same. That is, a farming based community will share many of the same values with other agricultural communities (more so communities farming the same crops or living within the same environs) as would hunter-gatherer groups share many common interests.
If right and wrong are simply social constructs there can be a set of rules for deciding them, and thus a very broad set of "rules" that could be applied to anyone and possibly incorporate wildly different lifestyles.
I propose arranging a set of of prioritized groups (each one in sequence larger than and composed of the previous) that goes something like this:

Yourself
Family/Friends
Community
Society
Species

What this means is that everything you do should be arguably good for all 5 groups, however it is most important that your acts are good for yourself (health, survival, development etc) followed closely by those you know personally as family or have adopted psychologically as family members. Followed behind this your actions should be, if not tremendously positive for your community, at least responsible to and mindful of the needs of your community. Followed behind this your actions should be concerned with the current circumstances of your society (whether you consider it the nation or the globe). Of still significant concern is whether or not your actions are positive or negative with respect to your species.

Notice this manner of prioritization makes no claim about what is good for any of these things, that is for the individual to decide through experience, careful thought, conversation with diverse groups, and lifelong education. No one really knows what may be good for the species; perhaps the species (man) is at its best currently, maybe its numbers must be reduced and its technological advancement reconsidered. This system of prioritization also allows for current mores to be inserted. Vegetarianism and PETA-esque animal ethics make sense in one way: refraining from killing animals and ingesting them introduces health benefits for individuals, efficiences for a civilization, and a peaceful cohabitation for our species. Likewise any personal philosophy can find room within these priorities. The important thing is, as always, balance. Not every act you take will have species level implications but the outcome of your life in general certainly will. Every action you take, however, does have implications for you as a person and who you are ripples through each of these levels.

So, for the sake of further approaching the definition of success, let's state that whatever it is the individual on trial for "success" must be in the balance "positive" through their list of priorities (under the influence of whatever they have determined to be right and wrong). This means that one must decide what they think is right and wrong, decide on ambition (for an action to be successful it must in the very least be an action), and pursue it within the morals they have decided on with an eye on the implications through the list of priorities above.

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Define Success (Part 1)

No excuses and no answers, but I'll tell you what I know. All claw hammer and all "time to go"

I'm in little position to proselytize, to be sure, but I believe my anxiety pins together the myriad pains, boredoms and tribulations. Without an actualization of this we all see ourselves as something far less than complete, without an honest evaluation of its degree we merely prolong our inevitable disappointment and yet this personally variable concept goes without extrapolation for most of us.

Without a definition of success every point of pride is easily diminished, every failure unacceptable yet expectable, every step merely that and not neccessarily up or forward.

As people, and thus inward thinking and a bit feeble, it may be easiest to look at how many self-proclaimed successful individuals quantify this elusive success:

1) Money:
The world is run by very rich people, the richest of whom virtually always gaining their wealth well within the laws of a "free society" and yet with utter disrespect for those they'd shared a nursery with. Wealth is a welcome byproduct of success and a possible indicator of influence (more on this later) but what is this more than the acceleration of quite primitive desires and a degree of paranoia manifested in compulsion? Is this not the animalistic survival instinct (that is, tooth and nail struggle for life's essentials) exaggerated by our species' unprecedented means? Is greed any indication of a mental evolution? While the root of greed may be an essential (the push to obtain life's neccessities) hardly anyone could call it's apex personal success, no matter their creed.

2)Piety:
It can be said that when all else fails there is god. When the profound questions of the universe stand in stark challenge to the handful of knowledge we typically have, the readymade answers are easiest. One can sleep at night in the warm glow of their powerful imagination, comfortable in the knowledge that when all this anguish is over he or she will be rewarded by having held tight to what they'd been told. Faith trumps all for many: fact, impulse, aspirations, ability, determination. Faith treats success as it treats all other aspects of life, in the simplistic terms of conformity, repression. Faith allows one to give up all the wonder of life on earth to the easiest , simplest possiblity. I believe it was Nietzche who said: "For every difficult question there is an answer that is simple, clear and wrong." Faith allows success without effort, or rather with the effort it takes to fail classes or lose jobs. To truly define success we must understand what the point of all this sputtering and bustling is, faith restricts this question's investigation


3)Influence:
Virtually anyone labeled "successful" has had at least the degree of influence to attract that label. Influence can come politically, artistically, interpersonally (that is, affecting change in the life of another) or philosophically (for convienence let this category include religion). Influence is not positive or negative; however, the concept of influence introduces the dicotomy of good and bad into the discussion of success.

"The Dichotomy of Good and Bad"
Despite scientific abberation to describing things in terms of human perspective, influence can only truly be measured under the subjective terms of opinion. This condition does not stress popularity as much as it does demonstrable impact on the way groups change their behavior, performance or belief. Influence frequently comes as a result of one or more of efficiency (the "Engineer" definition of improvement, objective completion, conservation in pursuit of goals, problem resolution or mitigation, etc), innovation (introduction of something new and useful, be it idea, product or process) or "by example" (typifying any of society's wirtues of reliability, bravery, strength, creativity, honesty, foresight etc etc).


This, at best, only slightly clarifies the problem of defining success. Great heroes and great villians can both still be considered successful in the vagaries I've detailed. To further understand what success means, the human perception of positive action and negative action must be explored. Human beings rely on a strict morality that has essentially been handed down since time immemorable; this morality is often thought of as universal, manifesting among the faithful as God being the ultimate good and Satan being the ultimate evil. However, the precepts of these simplistic morals are in two ways flawed:

1)They speak only to humans:
An age-old argument for the existence of god goes something like this:
"Do you believe in a universal good and bad?" Asks the theologian, noting with pride how reluctant anyone would be to answer in the negative. Moral relativism is on par with evil even amongst the most agnostic minds.
"Why, yes" responds the athiest.
"Can you think of anything that is good that is not related to a person or a group of people?" the theologian continues.
After a moment of contemplation the atheist answers: "Not as such, sir, no"
"Then how can the ultimate good in the world not be personified?"
This trick, of course, is expected to leave many a slack-jawed doubter and set one on the course to conversion. The issue with this isn't whether or not moral relativism exists (more on this later), but the second question. The athiest is stumped in this part of the "proof" because, in essence, it is a trick question.
We, human beings, have evolved to a certain, arguably advanced, stage of mental power. At the root of this mental power is a "drive" to increased development based on survival and proliferation. Somewhere, likely very early, we developed a binary categorical impulse; we learned to put everything in our environment into the "good" category or the "bad" category. Our basis for these categorizations was, of course, what these items meant to US or our tribe. Edible plants are good, poison ivy is bad. Fire is good to keep warm by, but it is bad if it touches your skin. Everything is categorized by what things do to us and what things can do for us when properly manipulated. We never had a reason to wonder whether the wind was good for the air, whether the river was good for the rock, or whether we were good for the deer. Even now we would have a difficult time saying any of these things were good or bad unless they somehow affected us. For example, if we kill too many animals (through force or deforestation) there may not be anything for us to eat. The reason the athiest in the above example cannot think of anything "good" outside of humans is because our brains simply do not work that way. The theologian points to God simply because he lacks imagination (as do we all); he favors the simplest explanation that requires the least investigation. Whether there is an ultimate good or not, the conditions of it will not be limited by our imaginations.

2)They consist of only "Shall Not"
Among the morals handed to us are a great many "Thou Shalt Not"s, most of which we can all agree on. However, the more nuanced positions of these same institutions are often left ignored by all but the most devout. While "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is a commandment, "Thou Shalt Realize Thou's Potential" remains an unimportant vow. it would be exceedingly difficult for an individual of any faith to deem a fellow human "successful" merely because he or she never murdered anyone or coveted their neighbor's wife (BTW: do women then only have 9 commandments?) , thus it seems willfully lazy to imagine that simply following these simple rules ("commandments") are enough to be "successful".

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After the War (VI)

This is the last ten pages or so. Thanks

The window became a point of contention and for a few seconds there was a nearly imperceptible line in the sand. Dr. Prang and Stanley seemed set on opening it, providing the room with fresh (if humid and hot) air. Br. Quinn and his equally irrational cohort Dr. Jiles sat on the other side of the line. It was a poetic moment to notice their striking resistance to change. Wes paid no attention to the discussion and rubbed his aching hip with decorum.

“Listen,” said Stanley. Amplifying his voice to ensure importance. “We’re going to open all the windows and the doors and see if we can’t get some kind of cross-draft. If you two don’t think it’s a good idea, no one is begging you to stick around.”

At that, Dr. Prang, Stanley and I set to opening all the windows. We returned with a pitcher of water and Prang blurting unannounced:

“So, brother Quinn. What do you think God has to do with this?”

“God? Have you looked down on the people below us Prang. Their group is growing.”

“And they seem so,” Dr. Jiles struggled with her diction “They seem so agitated.”

I looked down to see that there were fists pumping and shouting in a few sections of the crowd. I felt a twinge of their outrage. Somewhere down there an impoverished man felt power in screaming the English translation of those same mantras shouted in a Sri Lankin factory, or a Mexican field, or a Soviet breadline. Someone was demanding to know when enough was enough, or counting down the dwindling list of things that were yet to be taken away. A hard listen may have produced “The time is now!”. But then again, I’ve always been a timid revolutionary. Even if this “agitation” was simply revelatory or boredom-induced the community pillars in my room were visibly nervous, save Dr. Prang. The lower class, hell even the middle-class, was not supposed to behave outside of the status quo, no matter the weather. A parade, a riot, a block party, whatever, the citizens were not supposed to congregate in the middle of the afternoon. They were not supposed to mingle in the streets as the day approached rush hour.

“This is not an act of God, Albert. Can’t you see that. This is the act of evil. The devil opening the doors of temptation by pushing people out into the streets. Encouraging looting, promiscuity, all manner of … “

“Wait, back up Quinn.” Responded Dr. Prang, his hair was wet with sweat, especially the front, and several strands matted to his forehead. His glasses slipped down his nose, and he pushed them up with a disciplined index finger. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“When something like this happens,” Dr. Jiles, fighting to stay relevant “people have a lapse of judgment, they may do things that they regret.”

“Olivia, please let me respond to this .. . “ rapidly staring Dr. Prang up and down. By capillary action his collar was now wet with sweat. He took a deep breath “this heathen. The devil has tempted you as well Prang, with science and lies. God has tested your faith and you have lost.”

“Amazing.” Dr. Prang chuckled. “Well I . . .”

Brother Bobby Quinn, now standing at the precipice between my kitchen and the room we sat in, shook with rage. I heard his teeth grind.

“I don’t know how to respond to that. Why don’t you take things for what they are instead of trying to fit your strict definition around it . . .”

“I’ve heard enough!” His yell threw both perspiration and sweat at Dr. Prang’s feet.

“That’s part of your problem too, Quinn. See, your beliefs were all well and good several hundred years ago when no one knew better. What’s supposed to happen, what would happen if people like you would allow others to come to their own conclusions is that . .well people might think about things. New information could come to light and. . .”

Brother Quinn leapt towards Dr. Prang with a knife; my kitchen knife from my butcher’s block, and stabbed him in the chest. Dr. Prang stared at him for a moment and then closed his eyes. He betrayed no pain.

There was no predetermined protocol for response. Dr. Prang fell to the floor and for a brief moment Brother Quinn stood over him, embodying all sin and temptation. Prang pulled the knife out of himself as he lay on his back and an instantaneous arc of blood shot up onto Quinn’s shirt.

“What have I done?”

There was the requisite screaming, two bodyguards rushing thru the door, a tackle to the ground. The guilty screamed louder than all of us, pain and anguish beneath Wes’s troglodytes. By that time I was on the ground at Prang’s wound, pulling his shirt off.

“Why .. .why .. .” Dr.Jiles tried to speak through tense lips and the beginnings of tears. “Why would he DO that? How can a person . . .oh jesus .. .how can a person kill another person?”

I was the first to tend to Dr. Prang’s wound. I hesitated for a moment, assuming I had none of the knowledge or that my status at the bottom of the totem pole precluded me from response in an emergency. In my periphery I tried to keep tabs on the movements of the rest of the group; this quickly escalating drama needed to be somehow retained for history. The pot had certainly come to boil. I took off my shirt and used it to apply pressure to Prang’s wound and looked up at Wes.

“What are we going to do Wes? We need to call the police . . or . . I don’t know. What do we do?!”

Wes thought about it for several seconds; looked at the wound, looked at me now smeared in blood and looked at his own clothing for specks of the same substance. After a moment’s pause for deliberation he promptly stood up from the stool and left. He sidestepped his bodyguards (now trying to bring a zip-tie wristed preacher to his feet) and presumably headed back toward his room. As he closed the door behind him he looked back once at us; no emotion, no concern, only a stiff hint of self-preservation and the inaudible click of the door closing. He either did not want to disturb us or did not want to hear himself close the door on this tragedy.

Dr. Jiles, meanwhile, was admonishing Brother Quinn. I heard only a little of it over the din, and Wes’s exit. She scolded him for not being in control of his anger . . . for not realizing that he actually loves Dr. Prang.

This all happened in a matter of seconds, mind you, and I was responsive to Prang’s first words.

“Take me to my apartment, Julius. Don’t let me die here with them.” There was a great deal of blood in his mouth, and it bubbled over on the word ‘die’. Viscous blood ran down his chin and back towards the daunting wound on his chest. I couldn’t find the words to discourage his fatalism.

“Alright.” I said. “Up we go.” I pulled him up onto his feet and leaned him against me. Dr. Jiles was babbling something in our direction, a diatribe she’d probably recommended to listeners for recital at their loved one’s death. She reminded him, as some ineffective tack-on to her unlistenable dreck, to find his peace as he went.

“Listen,” Prang found strength to turn around and speak as I opened the door. Nearly all of his weight relied on me, his feet shuffled clumsily. “A man’s life is irrelevant . . .his mission in life is to . .” and he hacked up a deep red globule of his very essence onto my floor.

I struggled to get him to his room, him bleeding profusely the whole way, wheezing for air. He let go of my shoulder in the doorway and fell halfway into his room. Any doubt I had about the mortality of his wound had been erased. He moved his hand around uncontrollably and tried to swallow.

“Julius. I’m going to die.”

“Yes. Yes you are.”

“And I’m afraid. Very . . .afraid.”

“I understand. We all die. . .”

“Julius, I only got a hint of what you beliephhh. But I ..I don’t believe . I don’t know what I believe.”

“I don’t know either.” I was horrified and upset; a man I’d befriended only that day was dying in my arms. Even still I lack sentimentality and said the wrong things. He looked at me for the first time in vulnerability and I tried to respond. “Maybe it will be exciting to find out what happens.”

“Nothing happens. What iphhhhhhh . . what ipph that’s it? I lived this long to be knived. Ehm I a martyr or a fool?”

“I .. . “

“Don’t answer. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.”

“But it. . . “

A tremendous sorrow passed over his eyes and a tightness in his chest released.

I walked back towards my apartment angry. Prang’s blood, still warm, dripped from me in various places. There was an extant surrealism, and despite the irony I must say, cinematic ambience to the day and the building. It was a unique and now tragic sequence of events to be sure and yet the most surprising footnote was that Prang had died in terror. Of all the wisdom he claimed, all the philosophical tenacity and confidence, death intimidated him. He had never really answered the question and, as I saw it, realized that it was the only one that really mattered. My heart racing, I could now hear the sounds of the street through my open windows as I returned.

“Ya’ know this whole thing . . .it’s a . . it’s my fault!” I heard Stanley say, sitting on the floor now rubbing his forehead and his eyes aggressively. Dr. Jiles was prostrate before him, waiting to console whatever garbage came out of his mouth. I was covered in a dead man’s blood, my eyes likely bright with some ember of vengeance. Quinn had killed the only person in this building that I could stand.

“Are you looking for sympathy?” I yelled. “What are you, a fucking victim now? I just watched Prang die in my arms because . .. “

“Julius!” Dr. Jiles stopped me with a surprisingly authoritative voice. All manner of unmentionable childhood memories came back, the way a woman in charge says my name runs to my very spine. “Stanley is feeling that he wants to open his heart to us, and I think we’ve had enough argument for one day. Go ahead Stanley.”

I got a warm beer out of my refrigerator, out of which wafted the sickly-sweet smell of spoiled food, and sat on my counter to hear Stanley’s confession and kill a few dozen brain cells. Not the ones that recalled the vermilion collapse of a life dedicated to knowledge (that memory in all it’s disruption was mine to keep), but perhaps some of the rage inducers accompanying the snake charmer’s meltdown or a former world-leader’s sheepish retreat. Apparently, Stanley’s was next.

“You see,” Stanley started, and then looked at me as if unsure whether I should be sitting in my own kitchen or not. “A significant portion of my investment goes into the utilities. Power, natural gas, that kind of thing. Electricity, in these last few years, hasn’t been profitable. So . . umm .. . we’ve taken steps to increase demand.”

“By shutting it off?” I asked. Olivia seemed nonplussed. I’m not sure if she understood what he meant, of course a famous psychologist would have no understanding of economics or how they affect an individual’s life. Surely that is someone else’s job.

“Yes. We . . . .because people aren’t willing to pay high costs. We have to . .. .we have to make them willing. We shut it off for a few hours in a crucial region and suddenly businesses and individuals are willing to pay more.”

As I gathered my thoughts, not easy in the heat, determining whether to cuss the businessman out or perpetuate the cycle Brother Quinn had started, Olivia asked him a question.

“Why does that make you responsible for Prang’s death?”

“Are you kidding? Seriously, Olivia, seriously. Even if Prang hadn’t died this man. This tool that I shouldn’t even allow in my apartment. Would be an asshole. Look out that window Olivia. How hot is it? How many people out there are walking home in the heat, not getting paid for a day’s work, coming home to rotting food. And why? Because this guy, this whimpering. . ..”

Olivia, seemingly hopeless at bisecting my seething, gave out an indistinguishable noise and sat down. She put her knees together and looked down.

“Stanley . .. leave” I said. Why was he in my apartment anymore? It was well over one hundred degrees and I was sweating bullets in muggy, shared air for no reason other than happenstance. Stanley’s admittance of some kind of guilt, whether actually responsible for the day’s events or not, made him amongst the last people I wanted to share my heat stroke with. Olivia began to cry; not, of course, with resistance or in remorse for Albert but in loud, attention grabbing sobs. Stanley, a bit slack-jawed, collected his wool sport coat and a few items; he looked briefly at Olivia, admittedly stark and curious in her sudden lack of comfort and control, and walked towards my door. He was on a course to be painfully close to me and as he approached Stanley cast down his eyes.

“Olivia!” I said, her childishness now annoying. “You leave too, but don’t go far. The cops will want to talk to all of us.” They both looked at me, likely savage and ethereal in Albert’s drying blood.

“I don’t know how the hell any of you people made it to where you are, but all it took was a little bit of pressure and you cracked.”

Stanley opened my apartment door and nearly fell as he caught an obvious prostitute screaming his name. She flailed on flimsy legs that wobbled as if atrophied. From my vantage point I could see the dense bubble of foam at each corner of her mouth, the dark, rheumy eyes of overdose or addiction. After her scream, sores on all legs, exposed midriff, fish-belly white forearms, she again gargled some approach at “Stanley”.
“Stanley . . . is this your wife?” had I earned the pretention to speak that way? He slid from her embrace and grasped her hands at the wrist as she fell. He was more concerned about being swatted or having his eyes raked with her jagged coke-nail than preventing any damage to her skull as it hit my kitchen floor. She spoke in drug-sick tongues and hacked.
“Stanley . . who is this? What is going on here?” Olivia said. Equally confused about the OD’ed whore’s age-old profession, it’s modern association with dangerous drugs, or the faculty of a “respectable” businessman to indulge in her temptations as she had been about Prang’s murder, or the throngs on the street below.
“This woman is . . .”
“Tell the truth man. Who cares?”
“I pay this woman for services . .” he gulped, she was unconscious now on the floor. This emergency did not call me to action as had Quinn’s attack, Stanley had to take care of this. Besides, the police were already on their way; I imagined their push down our crowded street being met with beer bottles and trash. “I pay for her services and she is supposed to stay in the goddamn room until I tell her she can leave.” His anger was building, the whole fabric of his clothing now soaked with sweat, his glasses foggy with condensate.
“And she’s obviously a drug-addict, Stanley. Shit, she might die right here.”

I got off the counter and walked to the window, Stanley turning over his prostitute, emptying her pockets of contraband, looking for identification. Despite our presence, he had to be thinking about throwing her in the incinerator. Down below, as I’d imagined, two police cars nudged through a crowd of now thousands. I could hear paramilitary announcements and commands through the PA, and I could make out the faint hollers of resistance. The people below believed they’d been sent in to corral them, not respond to legitimate crime. Where was the damn ambulance? I had a flush of pride.

A squad car stopped at the foot of the building, they would be up in moments.
“Stand your ground” I whispered to the masses “No one is better than you, believe me.”
“What?” Olivia asked.
“Nothing. Let’s go out into the great room and wait. The police will be here shortly.”

I walked back across the apartment, Dr. Jiles followed closely behind. We stepped over Stanley’s prostitute, now certainly pushing death, traipsed thru Prang’s blood and once again I felt the cool marble floor on my feet.
The ex-president’s body guards and a hog-tied, former televangelist waited there as well, in the dark. A minute behind us Stanley dragged the prostitute limp and lifeless into the room as well. We were a neighborhood pacing around for the police to show up as though someone had crashed our hootenanny or one of our drunk cousins had wrapped himself around a telephone pole. Dr. Olivia Jiles cried not unlike the stiff-lipped cry of a drug-dealer’s mother as her son is taken away.
As several police officers shuffled into the room, the lights came back on. Guns drawn, bulletproof vests on, the leader looked at me first. There we were again in the grandiose hall; gaudy, traditional decorations, a bust of someone important in each corner. And the crooked sword or bloody remnants of five who failed at the critical moment, illuminated brightly enough to burn off my writer’s block.

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