The Distant Future, as Currently Forecast

Contemporary art, by nature, gives wide space for interpretation. Surely the artist sought to capture one, specific, envisioned image, but as different people try to interpret it, its lack of specificity inevitably lends itself to differing interpretations. I envision this as a glance out the window –

into an odd sunset of a dying world, flat expanses seemingly lit on fire, the horizon, a mere barrier between the burning ground and the glowing sky, the world slowly drained of life by the unforgiving embrace of a dying star.

The frame, lit orange by the embers behind, frays and blurs its edges amidst the heated death of the former structure, the farmhouse of a since dispossessed family giving one last effort at existence before collapsing into the ruins of a civilization.

The land, slowly drained of life by a perpetual dust bowl of starry death, glows under the intense radiation of an ever expanding reign of terror, with even the locusts who had once terrorized the land pacified by the greater threat.

The sky, glowing a bright yellow in the last sunset of a world ruined by the inevitability of time, renders colors which once would before had confined themselves to the smallest sectors of the sky, the intense glow blocking even the shine of the largest stations.

The world, having finished giving host to its last child, resigns itself to the fate of all such habitable worlds – being consumed by its life-giving mother in its final breath of existence –

– and the rest of civilizations paid no attention to the lowly demise of but one world of many.

The Unstoppable Train

A train of strange proportions pulled into the station; from a distance, it appeared grotesquely distorted, with cars seemingly half their normal size; one would mistaken the cars as fit for mere sticks – no human would fit through their doors. The few dozen cars seemed far too short for their number; the design, I conjectured, must have been designed to fit in a much shorter station than typical twenty-car trains would require, as much of the stations on this line lacked. Yet, as the train neared the station, its deceleration gave birth to a strange sight; as the train slowed, its length gradually increased such that only the first half of the train pulled alongside the platform when it finally came to a stop.

Travelers mingled on the platform; a dignified, older man clearly in a hurry jockeyed to board the train; a unkept and unshaven man excitedly ran, seemingly contemplating jumping out a window before deciding to wait and exit the train in a more civilized fashion; a young woman leapt off the train and embraced a significantly older man, kissing as if they were lovers as they walked away; many travelers – clearly all innocuous, innocent, inconspicuous – passed through the platform.

At the last car on the platform a young man and woman with a strange hat furiously argued over a map of some sort.

“We missed our stop,” I overheard the woman say. “Are you sure you calculated correctly?”

“I swear my watch isn’t behind,” The man retorted. “See – my second-hand is synced with the stations’ watch,” he replied, “and I just set it at midnight,” ignorant to the fact that his watch read 3:57 instead of 7:57.

“And please throw out your dead cat,” the woman interjected.

The man clutched the box to his chest with even more vigor. “You don’t know that,” he insisted.

As the train pulled out of the station, the man threw the woman’s hat out a window, followed by his box, in a fit of anger. I examined the hat. It felt much heavier than mere cloth warranted, and beeped whenever I pointed its front at myself and when I aimed it at a hot-dog stand alongside the platform.

Then, after the train cleared the platform, it began to rapidly accelerate, the sound of its horn growing lower in frequency until it was no longer audible, and its shape shrinking, while turning increasingly red, and abruptly disappearing not long afterwards.

I was only beginning to ponder the strangeness of such a train when a massive boom followed and rained a shockwave of death and destruction on the station.

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Just a Hint: Newtonian physics need not apply here.

Comments

First, I conjectured Carlos’ environment in his one-sentence blog post:

https://uruguayocarlos.wordpress.com/2016/03/06/although-a-simple-title-will-do-i-will-purposely-make-it-longer-because-it-fits-the-theme-of-this-weeks-blog-post/comment-page-1/#comment-70

Then, I suggested more of the Eagles’ music to Alanna:

https://alannasays.wordpress.com/2016/01/24/goodbye-to-an-eagle/comment-page-1/#comment-26

Finally, I noted ways in which different observations about the Invisible Man fit together on Dana’s blog:

https://horriblefish.wordpress.com/2016/03/30/suddenly-you-discover-that-youre-as-transparent-as-air-at-first-you-tell-yourself-that-its-all-a-dirty-joke-or-that-its-due-to-the-political-situation-but-deep-down-you-come-to-suspect-th/#comment-46

And then I was glad to finally be done.

In which APUSH finds its way into AP III

The book is a dramatized version of black history, especially noting the movement from the South to the North, from the country to the city, from the field to the factory, from slavery to emancipation. Explain.

The book here, of course, is Invisible Man.

After the prologue, Invisible Man opens with the narrator taking Mr. Norton to see the Trueblood residence. Especially given that TIM is taking orders from Mr. Norton, a rich white trustee, and the location of the Trueblood house in former slave quarters, this is a clear indication that the start of our novel occurs in slavery. To move the analogy forwards, the clear next step would be emancipation and civil war of some sort. This is the weakest part of my analysis; Bledsoe having the Narrator leave ‘slavery’ somewhat resembles emancipation.

After emancipation, former slaves initially enjoyed freedoms and even political power, as measures similar to the ironclad oath forced the former political elite of the South out of power, allowing African Americans who held a majority of the electorate to find office. This historical detail is somewhat seen in the freedom that TIM feels walking around in the North; he even does not save money for a train back to the college, a testament to his confidence in his perceived economic freedom. However, after the civil war, southern whites soon pushed back against the freedom of former slaves, passing black codes that virtually reduced them to a slave-like status. This decrease in rights is seen in Bledsoe’s letters warning potential employers of TIM; like southern grandfather clauses, Bledsoe deceptively reduces TIM’s rights in violation of what he told TIM, in parallel to what the north told former slaves. After TIM finds out Bledsoe’s (southerner’s) deception, he takes a factory job in the North; as a part of manufacturing Optic White of Liberty Paints, like the black, foul-smelling chemical he adds to the paint, he is essential to white society like the factory jobs that African Americans filled in the Great Migration of World War I when most white males left to fight in Europe.

This is where the analogy takes a curveball: Ellison wrote Invisible Man in 1952, in the midst of the Cold War, well before any of the major civil rights movement and even before Brown vs. Board. Thus, either Ellison was largely lucky in an accidental analogy, or he had the incredible foresight to predict the following progression of African American Civil Rights movements; I will chose to believe the latter.

After TIM is done a great injustice by Brockway and the Doctors of the Liberty Paints factory hospital, he is recruited to join the Brotherhood. Like the nonviolent movement of the SNCC and King, as seen in their March on Washington, the Brotherhood sees cooperation of Black and White supporters. Finally, in Ras’ rise, we see a parallel to the rise of Black Nationalism and Militant (but not violent) Civil Rights.

While King and other leaders of the Civil Rights did not sell out to violence in order to reinforce stereotypes of African Americans, we should at least forgive Ellison for a mere small blemish in an otherwise flawless depiction of the advancement of African Americans in his past and future.

A Golden Day in the life of the Invisible Man

A Golden Day, a poem by Paul Lawrence Dunbar, cheerfully describes the sights and sounds of a golden day – “the day was filled with sunshine” – “a golden bird was singing” – and presents a positive outlook. Ellison, however, does know how to use irony.

In The Invisible Man, The Golden Day is a bar and brothel, in which “the stale beer smell struck like a club through the noise of voices and the juke box.” The narrator takes Mr. Norton there to get brandy for him; this however ends badly: “Mr. Norton’s head jerked like a […] punching bag.”

This contrast can be explained by the narrator’s explanation of The Golden Day’s struggles: “The school had tried to make the Golden Day respectable, but the local white folks had a hand in it somehow and they got nowhere.” As evidenced by the Trueblood¹ house, which white people visit because it confirms their stereotypes of African Americans as adulterous and uncivil, the ‘white folks’ no doubt interfered in efforts to reform The Golden Day in order to deny African Americans a chance to appear even somewhat respectable. Thus, the name is appropriate; ‘The Golden Day’ represents African Americans’ hopes for what the actual Golden Day should become, with golden birds and divine melodies. Yet, in the same way that white society opposes social advancement and dreams – A Golden Day – of African Americans on a larger scale, whites ensured that The Golden Day would similarly not fulfill their dreams. Thus, The Golden Day / A Golden Day is a symbol of the shattering of African American dreams by white society.

This reference is further seen in more direct comparisons. For example, the citation of “a golden bird […] singing” in A Golden Day is countered by a sketchy jukebox. The “I loved you” theme of A Golden Day is even more markedly opposite to the “half-dressed women,” prostitutes. To summarize the differences, Ellison even includes what is arguably the best comparison of A Golden Day and The Golden Day: “The Golden Day was in an uproar.” This reference primarily serves to further the sense of treachery in following the white line, which is a primary theme of The Invisible Man. It furthers the understanding of white society as ultimately self-centered and unwilling to allow the advancement of African Americans, instead opting to reinforce existing stereotypes.

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¹Autocorrect attempted to change ‘trueblood’ to ‘troubled.’ I was tempted to let it slide.

Themes in Grapes of Wrath

1. What’s central to Grapes?

desperation, hope,  hatred of outsiders, the American dream, family, sacrifice, homelessness, immaturity / maturity / growing up, exploitation, unity, competition

2. What’s most central to Grapes?

Family and sacrifice

Standing together versus every man for themselves

3. What does the book say?

People sacrifice in the name of family, whether this family is a strict blood-line definition or Jim Casy’s ideas of ‘mankind’ as a large family.

Sacrifice is driven by hope.

Standing together is more effective than going about as individuals.

Standing together is the best way to pursue the American Dream.

Having an every man for themselves attitude makes exploitation of the individuals easier.

4. Polishing it up.

Hope for the future of family drives sacrifice for the betterment of the family, whether this family is by bloodline or by identification.

Pursuing the American Dream individually leads to the increased exploitations of those individuals, whereas making sacrifices as a group leads to more resistance to exploitation.

 

The Gypsies of Wrath

When attempting to gain compassion on behalf of a wronged party, one must balance two directions. Focus on too few and their individual plights, and the audience can be distracted from the true scale of the issue, and care more about one’s characters than the issue at hand. Too large a scale and, as Stalin was reputed to have said, “One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic;” one can too easily ignore numbers, however grim. In Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck uses short inter-chapters detailing the struggles faced by the migrants as a whole to draw the reader out enough to associate the individual challenges of the Joads with those of every migrant. In The Harvest Gypsies, an excerpt of The Blood is Strong, also by Steinbeck, he primarily opts to take a logical approach; however, his work still bears reference to this alternating structure.

In Grapes of Wrath, this connection is made plainly obvious; for example, in the last inter-chapter, Steinbeck establishes as a generality.

“When the first rain started, the migrant people huddled in their tents, saying, It’ll soon be over, and asking, How long’s it likely to go on?
And when the puddles formed, the men went out in the rain with shovels and built little dikes around the tents. The beating rain worked at the canvas until it penetrated and sent streams down. And then the little dikes washed out and the water came inside, and the streams wet the beds and the blankets. The people sat in wet clothes. They set up boxes and put planks on the boxes. Then, day and night, they sat on the planks.”

This clearly references the Joads; then, he foreshadows the ending:

“In the wet hay of leaking barns babies were born to women who panted with pneumonia. And old people curled up in corners and died that way, so that the coroners could not straighten them.”

By referencing the Joads through a generality, the reader is drawn to associate the struggles of the Joads with the migrants as a whole.

In The Harvest Gypsies, Steinbeck sort of uses this effect; he portrays situations in specific and descriptive ways to establish intimacy.

The green grass spreading right into the tent doorways and the orange trees are loaded. In the cotton fields, a few wisps of old crop cling to the black stems. But the people who picked the cotton, and cut the peaches and apricots, who crawled all day in the rows of lettuce and beans are hungry. The men who harvested the crops of California, the women and girls who stood all day and half the night in the canneries, are starving.

Also, personal anecdotes:

If you don’t believe this, go out in the cotton fields next year. Work all day and see if you have made thirty-five cents. A good picker makes more, of course, but you can’t.

and

I’ve seen them, red eyed, weary from far too many hours, and seeming to make no impression in the illness about them.

While not a specific integration of general and specific arguments, these still do serve to draw the reader in amidst statistics and logical arguments. Yet, as Grapes and Harvest share an emotional aspect, they also share logical arguments. In the last inter-chapter, Steinbeck laments:

“Frantic men pounded on the doors of the doctors; and the doctors were busy. And sad men left word at country stores for the coroner to send a car. The coroners were not too busy.”

Steinbeck repeats this argument in Harvest:

It is easy to get a doctor to look at a corpse, not so easy to get one for a live person.

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Harvest of the Gypsies contains all elements necessary to successfully gain compassion for the migrants, and differs from Grapes of Wrath merely in that it relies on logical arguments, while Grapes appeals to one’s emotions. In the end, as it still does maintain an acceptable balance of emotional intimacy and dispassionate logic, Harvest of the Gypsies is certainly effective as a work. However, while this work may be suited for lobbying those who require hard numbers, for ordinary people, Grapes of Wrath far succeeds it in motivating anger and pity, if not action, from the reader. There is, after all, a reason why Grapes is an american classic.

Viking Common Sense

Verse 5 in the “Havamal” (Sayings of the High One) doesn’t provide a useful revelation. Rather, it merely encapsulates one common fact:

Little are the sand-grains,
little the wits,
little the minds of (some) men;
for all men
are not wise alike:
men are everywhere by halves.

This verse summarizes the universal fact that 1. people are stupid, and 2. not all people aren’t stupid. The only line left up for interpretation is the last line, which claims “men are everywhere by halves.” I theorize this is the result of poor translation, and intends to say that men everywhere are divided into the wise and ignorant. Even Albert Einstein agreed, saying that “only two things are infinite – the universe and human stupidity.”

With the election season ongoing, this fact is painfully obvious. Most notably, this truth gives both mass media and traditional media amusing material such as a plan to have the Mexicans pay for a wall, which will solve immigration since China built a wall, and has no problems with immigration (slightly exaggerated). Especially with democratic socialism taking the front line (or at least close to the front), one also must raise the question: would socialism by any other name taste as sweet (or as sour)? As such, one can quickly see the ignorance that plagues the American public from not understanding basic geography to not even knowing what socialism is before jumping on the McCarthy bandwagon, without ever realizing that the US government is largely based on socialism. Historically, poor southern whites, who stood no chance of owning slaves, and were economically hurt by slavery since they could not compete with slavery, sucked up to the slim probability that they would eventually win the lottery ticket into the southern aristocracy.

As for our actions, we must realize that people often do not make logical decisions, and shamelessly pander accordingly. Sanders must realize the hole he has dug for himself; most Americans have enough residual doublethink of the concept of socialism that socialism by any other name, which would be as sweet, is the only way to go. On a more material subject, we must make resources intended for the general public as idiot-proof as possible.

In Huckleberry Finn, this is exactly what the Duke and the King have realized. By exploiting the general idiocy, they can scam with impunity. They were revealed only with the help of a doctor and a lawyer who knew a recently deceased whose family the Duke and the King had tried (somewhat successfully) to scam. As the seemingly only two educated people, the doctor and lawyer successfully rallied a town mob – no doubt from some sort of pandering – to detain the Duke and King and chase them out of town as frauds. This thus is an application of not only stupidity, but also the power of the knowledgable to rally the easily persuaded.

American Culture from Below

The title is a reference to one of Feynman’s talks and a chapter in his autobiography.

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On Dumpster Diving details Lars Eighner’s experiences with poverty and homelessness and can be found here.

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I. On Culture

In Lars Eighner’s essay, On Dumpster Diving, one can find many revelations of the shockingly predictable flavor; his experiences with homelessness and dumpster diving reveal aspects of American society that we never notice, but in hindsight, are painfully obvious.

We constantly buy things. As consumerism has gripped the developed world, we cannot escape our materialistic culture. Furthermore, as the amount of ‘stuff’ we have cannot increase exponentially as our lives go on, this dictates that we must throw out an equal amount of used, or as Eighner describes, lightly used or unused things. Another aspect of capitalism is that advertising, and thus common wisdom, is not based on logic or science, but rather on the irrationalities of profit. Take, for example, expiration dates. Expiration dates on even virtually imperishable items such as canned goods are based on secretive processes that are more likely indicative of the shortest time that a gullible consumer can believe than of actual scientific processes. As such, it is not surprising that Eighner frequently found yogurt discarded in pristine condition solely because the expiration date had passed. Further evidence of this effect is the sheer amount of clothing he found in dumpsters, to the point that he purports that all of his clothes, save his jeans, were recovered, presumably new or like-new, from refuse of the wasteful.

From Eighner’s experiences, one can also more indirectly see the full extent to what our garbage reveals about us. As police can search anyone’s trash without any form of warrant or subpoena, one can’t help but think that at least some sort of oversight from a judge should be required. Eighner describes sensitive information such as pill bottles containing HIV medication and antipsychotics whose owners would rather have out of possible discovery, and even “a small paper bag containing some unused condoms, several partial tubes of flavored sexual lubricant, a partially used compact of birth control pills, and the torn pieces of a picture of a young man,” completing a picture of the former owners’ relationship history. Going back to the continuous flow of material owing to our materialistic culture, as what we discard must be equal to what we buy, one can conclude that what we discard, then, must be equivalent, and indicative, of what we buy, which therefore allows one with a view of what we discard a complete picture of what we use, what we don’t, and, in the end, who we are.

II. On Purpose

Lars Eighner clearly seeks to remove some of the stigma surrounding dumpster diving by alluding to its viability as a consequence of our wasteful culture and emphasizing its benign nature. He begins by choosing a term for himself – scavenging – and contrasts it to other words – scrounging and foraging – that he’d prefer not to associate with. He follows by elaborating what dumpster diving and scavenging entail, making sure to establish moral limits that scavengers do not cross such as his assurance of never generating a ‘bogus’ order for the purpose of gathering food for himself. Next, he elaborates on the nature of ‘scroungers,’ who he portrays as destructive and careless.

By choosing two separate terms to describe ‘dumpster diving,’ Eighner divides the term into one possessing benign, and almost positive qualities of cleaning up after materialism and one of drug addicts and drunkards who lay waste of all reclaimable material in their path and create the negative, destructive connotation of dumpster divers. He further creates empathy for scavengers by detailing their moral boundaries and willingness to help, which he contrasts to scroungers who ruin and contaminate perfectly good things. As such, his argument could be summed up as first separating the good from the bad, and then using personal experience to further increase the divide between the scavengers and scroungers in hopes of establishing a better reputation for scavengers.

Ziggy Stardust, the Spiders from Mars, and their Debut Album

David Bowie has released some 27 albums. While most of them are filler, a few gems pop out as genuine art. Of these, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972) is widely regarded as his best album.

Ziggy Stardust

Ziggy played guitar
Jamming good with Weird and Gilly
And the Spiders From Mars
He played it left hand
But made it too far
Became the special man
Then we were Ziggy’s bandZiggy really sang
Screwed up eyes and screwed down hair-do
Like some cat from Japan
He could lick ’em by smiling
He could leave them to hang
Came on so loaded man
Well hung and snow-white tan

So where were the Spiders
While the flies tried to break our balls
Just the beer light to guide us
So we bitch about his fans and should we crush his sweet hands

Ziggy played for time
Jiving us that we were voodoo
But the kids were just crass
He was the nazz, with God-given ass
He took it all too far
But boy, could he play guitar

Making love with his ego
Ziggy sucked up into his mind
Like a leper messiah
When the kids had killed the man
We had to break up the band

Now Ziggy played guitar

One distinguishing factor of this album is its nature as a concept album telling a story from a fictional persona – Ziggy Stardust. This song tells of Ziggy Stardust’s hubris – Ziggy is described as “making love with his ego,” and looks down to the rest of the band (the Spiders from Mars). Of course, as all hubris must end, the album concludes with the song “Rock ‘n Roll Suicide,” which depicts Ziggy Stardust’s death. Like Steely Dan, David Bowie cryptically yet vividly tells a complex story. Unspoiled by association with popular films, this song serves as a standalone to represent the album as a whole; with a snapshot of Ziggy’s hubris and state of mind, one can easily guess the beginning and ending of the album, with a call to action and resulting fall.

Musically, the song is a little plain and simple in its choice of melodies; however, this suits David Bowie perfectly, as accompaniment, however monotone and repetitive, still manages to hold interest beyond a casual inspection.

With mediocre composition but impressive lyrics, this song serves as perfect representative for the album Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars.