Noon slumbers. Kevin Egan rolls gunpowder cigarettes through fingers smeared with printer's ink, sipping his green fairy as Patrice his white. About us gobblers fork spiced beans down their gullets. Un demi setier! A jet of coffee steam from the burnished caldron. She serves me at his beck. Il est irlandais, Hollandais? Non fromage. Duex irlandais, nous, Irlande vous savez? Ah oui! She thought you wanted a cheese hollandais. Your postprandial, do you know that word? Postprandial. There was a fellow I knew once in Barcelona, queer fellow, used to call it his postprandial. Well: slainte! Around the slabbed tables and the tangle of wined breaths and grumbling gorges. His breath hangs over saucestained plates, the Dalcassians, of hopes, conspiracies, of Arthur Griffith now. To yoke me as his yokefellow, our crimes our common cause. You're your father's son. I know the voice. His fustian shirt, sanguineflowered, trembles its Spanish tassels at his secrets. M. Drumont, famous journalist, know what he called queen Victoria? Old hag with the yellow teeth. Vieille orgresse with the dents juanes. Maude Gonne, beautiful woman, La Patrie, M. Millevoye, Felix Faure, know how he died? Licentious men. The froeken, bonne a tout faire, who rubs male nakedness in the bath at Upsala. Moi faire, she said. Tous les messieurs. Not this Monsieur, I said. Most licentious custom. Bath a most private thing. I wouldn't let my brother, not even my own brother, most lascivious thing. Green eyes, I see you. Fang, I feel. Lascivious people.

References to death in Kneller's Happy Campers

Chapter one: MORDY, the narrator, says he got a job at the Kamikaze pizza place two days after killing himself. Perfect name for a place to be employed if you committed kamikaze/ suicide. He soon finds a place to "live" also. Interesting that he lives somewhere when he is essentially dead.
Mordy also goes to a bar after work named "Stiff Drinks". I wonder if he meets other stiffs there. He meets Uzi there, another character who is dead. He plays pool and "potted the eight ball right into the left pocket, on a fluke.." When you have anything to do with the eight ball, you're in trouble, as in "behind the eight ball." However, it is not a "fluke" to kill yourself.
Many references to death or dying are to be found amongst the pages of this novel. In Chapter three the two friends once again, "always end up at Stiff Drinks". Two stiffs just hanging out together discussing their "future" as deceased members of this new society.
Mordy is invited over to Uzi's folk's house for dinner. He learns more about how Uzi committed suicide. In Chapter five we learn that Uzi "was going into the army, and he was dead set on trying out for a combat unit." Again we hear the play on words "dead set" and foreshadowing of his suicide as he wants to go into combat, a sure wish for the end.
In Chapter six Mordy reads a book his German roommate lent him "about a guy with TB who went to this place in Italy to spend his dying days". Mordy cannot continue to read of such a depressing situation since he didn't even get to enjoy Italy and "dying days". He just offed himself after an apparent love affair that went wrong. Every character in this novel has had "dying days". Throughout the book we learn of the different ways people killed themselves including Mordy's ex-girlfriend who apparently killed herself with pills or poison. They call her a "Juliet". Someone who has no external scars.
As I read on, I am curious to meet other unusual characters and find out what they are all doing in this "hell" . Will Mordy find his girlfriend, Desiree? Who is Leehee and where is she headed? Will Kneller ever find his dog? Why does Uzi regret never going into the army? How can these dead people "live on" in the story?

Kneller's Happy Campers

After reading the first two chapters of this short novel, I was ready to read on. Though the subject is dark, the humorous prose leads one down a tunnel of curious twists into a hell of an afterlife.

Rushdie on The Moth

Check out Rushdie talk about writers block on The Moth Podcast. It's the one from 4/11/11.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-moth-podcast/id275699983

How Ayn Rand ruined my childhood

My dad saw objectivism as a logical philosophy to live by, but it tore my family apart

By Alyssa Bereznak

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/04/04/my_father_the_objectivist

My parents split up when I was 4. My father, a lawyer, wrote the divorce papers himself and included one specific rule: My mother was forbidden to raise my brother and me religiously. She agreed, dissolving Sunday church and Bible study with one swift signature. Mom didn't mind; she was agnostic and knew we didn't need religion to be good people. But a disdain for faith wasn't the only reason he wrote God out of my childhood. There was simply no room in our household for both Jesus Christ and my father's one true love: Ayn Rand.

You might be familiar with Rand from a high school reading assignment. Perhaps a Tea Partyer acquaintance name-dropped her in a debate on individual rights. Or maybe you've heard the film adaptation of her magnum opus "Atlas Shrugged" is due out April 15. In short, she is a Russian-born American novelist who championed her self-taught philosophy of objectivism through her many works of fiction. Conservatives are known to praise her for her support of laissez-faire economics and meritocracy. Liberals tend to criticize her for being too simplistic. I know her more intimately as the woman whose philosophy dictates my father's every decision.

What is objectivism? If you'd asked me that question as a child, I could have trotted to the foyer of my father's home and referenced a framed quote by Rand that hung there like a cross. It read: "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." As a little kid I interpreted this to mean: Love yourself. Nowadays, Rand's bit is best summed up by the rapper Drake, who sang: "Imma do me."

Dad wasn't always a Rand zealot. He was raised in a Catholic family and went to church every week. After he and my mother got married in 1982, they shopped around for a church. He was looking for something to live by, but he couldn't find it in traditional organized religion.

Then he discovered objectivism. I don't know exactly why he sparked to Rand. He claimed the philosophy appealed to him because it's based solely on logic. It also conveniently quenched his lawyer's thirst to always be right. It's not uncommon for people to seek out belief systems, whether political or spiritual, that make them feel good about how they already live their lives. Ultimately, I suspect Dad was drawn to objectivism because, unlike so many altruistic faiths, it made him feel good about being selfish.

Needless to say, Dad's newfound obsession with the individual didn't pan out so well with the woman he married. He was always controlling, but he became even more so. In the end, my mother moved out, but objectivism stayed. My brother and I switched off living at each parent’s house once a week.

It was odd growing up, at least part-time, in an objectivist house. My father reserved long weekends to attend Ayn Rand Institute conferences held in Orange County, California. He would return with a tan and a pile of new reading material for my brother and me. While other kids my age were going to Bible study, I took evening classes from the institute via phone. (I half-listened while clicking through lolcat photos.)

Our objectivist education, however, was not confined to lectures and books. One time, at dinner, I complained that my brother was hogging all the food.

"He's being selfish!" I whined to my father.

"Being selfish is a good thing," he said. "To be selfless is to deny one's self. To be selfish is to embrace the self, and accept your wants and needs."

It was my dad's classic response -- a grandiose philosophical answer to a simple real-world problem. But who cared about logic? All I wanted was another serving of mashed potatoes.

Still, Rand's philosophy was well-suited for the self-absorbed tween I was becoming. Her books were packed with riveting plot twists and sexy architects -- easy reading as long as you skimmed over the occasional four-page, didactic rant. Around the time I began exploring Rand's literature, my parents began an epic legal battle over child support. I felt isolated by the conflict and found solace in Rand's message: You must rely on yourself for happiness.

Just as many use faith as a reason to continue during hard times, objectivism helped me stay strong throughout my parents' legal battle. I got a part-time job, played field hockey, ran for student government and joined the yearbook staff. I argued with a Birkenstock-clad substitute teacher the day he showed Michael Moore's classic underdog-bites-back documentary "Roger and Me" in government class. He looked at me in disbelief as I, a skinny blond girl with braces, insisted that General Motors CEO Roger Smith had every right to ruin the lives of Flint, Mich., citizens. On weekends I argued with my friends that global warming didn't exist. I hoarded my accomplishments at school, convinced I'd earned them all on my own. Meanwhile, my mother quietly packed my lunch every day.

Soon, however, I began to question whether my father's philosophical beliefs were simply a justification of his own needs. As soon as the legal drama erupted, he refused to pay for even the smallest things, declaring, "Your mother is suing me," in defensive sound bites, as though it explained everything.

Can I buy new shoes? A couple bucks for the movies? Your mother is suing me.

Twenty dollars for a class field trip? Your mother is suing me.

From what I understood of his favorite capitalist champion, any form of altruism was evil. But how could that kind of blanket self-interest extend to his own children, the people he was legally and morally bound to take care of? What was I supposed to do, fend for myself?

The answer to my question came on an autumn weekend during my sophomore year in high school. I was hosting a Harry Potter-themed float party in our driveway, a normal ritual to prepare decorations for my high school quad the week of homecoming. As I was painting a cardboard owl, my father asked me to come inside the house. He and his new wife sat me down at the dinner table with grave faces.

"We were wondering if you would petition to be emancipated," he said in his lawyer voice.

"What does that mean?" I asked, picking at the mauve paint on my hands. I later discovered that for most kids, declaring emancipation is an extreme measure -- something you do if your parents are crack addicts or deadbeats.

"You would need to become financially independent," he said. "You could work for me at my law firm and pay rent to live here."

This was my moment of truth as an objectivist. If I believed in the glory of the individual, I would've signed the petition papers then and there. But as much as Rand's novels had taught me to believe in meritocracy, they had not prepared me to go it alone financially and emotionally. I began to cry and refused.

Hardcore objectivists often criticize liberals for basing decisions on emotion, rather than reason. My father saw our family politics no differently. In his mind, it was reasonable to ask that I emancipate myself and work for a living. To me, it felt like he was asking me to sacrifice my childhood so he didn't have to pay child support. To me, it felt like abandonment.

Nearly a year after that conversation, my parents' legal battle came to an end. In Santa Clara County's record room, the typical family law case occupies the space of a small manila folder. My parents' case filled several shelves. A judge decided my father would have to pay my mother both what he owed in child support and her attorney fees -- an amount that totaled about $120,000.

Dad’s only choice was to sell our house. I moved to Mom's and saw him for the occasional restaurant lunch or family holiday. The distance between us grew wider when I went off to college. He'd call me every other month to play 20-minute catch-up before he had to rush back to work. More consistent, however, were his e-mails. Forwarded from the daily objectivist newsletter he subscribed to, each one had a title like "George W. Bush, Genius" or "Obama the Pathetic." They continue to pile up in my in box, mostly unread. Every once in a while, I'll click on one, hoping to find a "How are you?" or "What's new?" to no avail. It's a hopeless exercise. I learned long ago that an objectivist like my father simply doesn't care to know.

Alyssa Bereznak is a grad student at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Follow her on Twitter @alyssabereznak.

Segway into Keret (yes, I know how to spell segue)

I did not read Midnight's Children, but I have heard the name Salman Rushdie in our very literary family's discussions. So when I perused the Etgar Keret website--etgarkeret.com--I was excited to find praise of Keret from Rushdie. He is quoted as saying that Keret is "A brillaint writer... completely unlike any writer I know. The voice of the next generation." That is neat. I think that this Keret quote found on his website really sets the stage for his stories. The writer says, "I think that when you write or make films, you try to show how you experience reality. I don't experience it as realism, which is objective, and something people agree on. The moment you accept subjectiveness, it transcends realism--falling in love is flying in the air." I'm not sure I get the whole falling in love part, but I do get Keret's different perceptions of reality. It got me thinking... and I'm not sure if this is in fact a restatement of this quote or in direct contradiction to the quote... but if you transcend reality in a story, as Keret does, then you escape the common, dime-a-dozen pieces, which have been written a million times, and convey similar themes or ideas in a new space, a space which is common to all of its readers. But then wouldn't that make the piece far less objective and far more subjective? So maybe I have that wrong. But for my own fiction I think it would be a fun idea to bring all readers to a common ground or a common reality by establishing a transcended reality in the story. You see?

Midnight's Children

This novel connects the author with the history of his vast country and its people - Incia. He is inseparable from his culture, and the lives of others born on the date India was liberated in 1947. Page 529 - "My special blends: I've been saving them up. Symbolic value of the pickling process: all the six hundred million eggs which gave birth to the population of India could fit inside a single, standard-sized picklejar; six hundred million spermatozoa could be lifted on a single spoon."

To know Saleem Sinai.

"Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each "I", everyone of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you'll have to swallow a world."

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rusdie

Chapter 1: Perforated Sheets

I probably need to read this again. The novel opens with an omniscient narrator recounting his life story beginning with the moment of his birth in India. Coincidentally, this event takes place with the official recognition and celebration of the country's independence from Britain. The narrator, Saleem Sinai, doesn’t think this is a mere coincidence. It has been prophesied. I suspect the author will weave the story of India’s independence with tales from the narrator’s life story who now, at age thirty-one is desperate to find or create meaning in his life. “I fear absurdity,” the narrator states. Oh great.

The narrator warns that he has many stories to tell, and that he feels no obligation to telling them chronologically. Time is “running out” and is of no use to him now. This attitude is reflected in the structure of the narrative which quickly shifts from event to event as the narrator hurriedly completes his task. “I must work fast,” he says, “faster than Scheherazade, if I am to end up meaning – yes, meaning, something.”

The narrator then begins a story about his grandfather who as a young man trained in Germany to be a doctor. He returns to India where he apparently intends to begin his medical practice. First though, he literally falls on his face one cold Kashmiri morning and vows to never again bow before man or god, a decision which leaves him feeling empty and “vulnerable to women and history.”

OK, I definitely need to read this again.

Lonesome Traveler - Jack Kerouac?
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole?
Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson?
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey?
The Black Dahlia - James Ellroy?
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck?

Anyone? Anyone?

"The days were growing shorter, the light was quickly failing and towards the end of each afternoon the heart became uneasy. A primitive terror seized us - that of our ancestors who during the winter months watched the sun go out a little earlier each day. 'Tomorrow it will go out forever,' they must have thought in despair, and spent the entire night on the heights of fear and trembling."

I wrote a long comment on Matthew's postings, but accidentally deleted it.
Basically, I agree with you that there are lots of "water examples" in the book WITB. In the first three pages there are comments on being thirsty, drinks, the cistern, bucket, and water is mentioned four times in the first three pages. The search for the meaning in life seems to be tightly linked with the narrator's observation of nature, the river and liquids, both nourishing forms and poisonous "alcoholic" ones flow in and out of his quest.

Yellow Calf probably offers the narrator (his grandson) bitter coffee as a foreboding or as a flat statement that life is a bitter drink, take it as it comes, without sugar or cream. I also have heard this term used in names of creeks or as in Bitter root, a valley name in Montana or some area out west. The story takes place in Montana where water is valuable to farmers and fishermen alike. Life is harsh and bitter on the prairie, winters are bitter cold.

The two women introduced on page one, part one are special to the main character and to the entire structure of this story. "Coming home.." on page one is mentioned twice. He is coming home "to a mother and an old lady". Women are the source of giving. They give the narrator a place to live, food, a history and they, as females, give life. His father and brother meant a lot to him, but they are both dead. His mother is alive and carries on, she being the caregiver of his grandmother. The story links women to life and they are attractive and both good and evil to the main character. The grandmother, even though she passes away, is reaching out without any dialogue. She never once speaks coherently. She as the grandmother is the lifeblood of the family, however, she is in the winter of her life and now it is up to Teresa to lead the family on. She has found a successful husband and the narrator must work with him.

The book is beautifully written and as you wrote Matt, has "beautiful prose as lush and nourishing" as life itself.

Pop, no, did not notice the name "Fish". I also am puzzled by the old guy, the one who tore up his plane ticket, who promises the narrator money and needs him to help him escape. Why didn't he just keep the plane ticket and fly away if he needed to get away?

I have the problem of trying to comment on your writing. I cannot see how I can read your work at the same time. Cannot remember what you wrote. Pretty much frustrated and ready to console myself as the main character does....

mythology and its absence part II

I am tired, so the following is all over the place.
This post assumes two things: 1. Stories aren’t superfluous, but vital, and not in some mamby pamby sort of way: “oh but they awaken your soul (don’t let me forget about this, because I’m making fun of it, but I think there is some real meaning to it)” kind of crap. Stories are vital in the same way that thumbs are vital—no thumbs, no survival. 2. There are many kinds of stories, but the two categories that I want to talk about are entertainment stories and pedagogical stories. Entertainment stories is a loose category into which I’m throwing everything from funny personal anecdotes to most movies. The only things that really designate an entertainment story an entertainment story is that it is in some way captivating, but if it were to be forgotten the next day, there would be no real consequence. So in other words, entertainment stories are fun and useless. Pedagogical stories are necessary in the same way that thumbs are necessary. Like entertainment stories, they should be captivating enough to hold the attention of the young and easily distracted, but also because captivating stories are more likely to be remembered (the content of pedagogical stories isn’t easily acquired from the raw, so it must be preserved with high fidelity and as if it were to exist forever). Ok, I think I covered the two assumptions.
My argument is that mythology is in the pedagogical category, and that literature should serve the same pedagogical function that mythology serves. If that’s true, that mythology and literature, though each expressing themselves differently, serve the same pedagogical function, then the only thing you have to figure out about any piece of literature is what it’s intending to teach us. For mythology the basic outline of many stories is “this is how we were created, this is who we are, and this is what we do, and this is what happens when we stray from what we should do.” It’s a description and a prescription. I think literature does the same thing, and in today’s world where the authentic is quickly but hopefully not permanently being supplanted by the artificial, its role is just as important. It describes us, it holds a mirror up to our face and shows us for the first time what we truly look like, and it presents us with the scenario of what we should be doing, and/or what’s going to happen to us if we aren’t doing what we should be doing (Benny doesn’t need stories because he only has one program: catch mice. But humans are the animal defined by their ability to act on any number of programs, so stories help them choose the best ones.)
So a pedagogical story is a survival guide. I was talking with mom about how a real story would have to exist beyond itself and its reader, it should help us navigate the world. A real story should be able to take a table and make some relevant comment on it. Long story short, a table is made from trees and humans directly depend on trees for our survival and if we don’t understand our relationship with trees then we are at risk of destroying them and thereby ourselves. No joke, it’s a fact of life directly relevant to our own lives seeing as how we breath air and stuff. New mythologies must include technology because it is now part of our survival.
Anyways, modern authors have a doubly difficult job; not only are they mining the content of their stories from raw ore, but they are also working against an pseudo-mythology that is kept in place so that a few people benefit greatly from our ununderstanding of how we were created, who we are, what we do, and what we should be doing. Modern authors’ first task is to disassemble this pseudo-mythology, hopefully explaining to us that we’ve been duped. They then have to tell us who we really are and what we really do, what we should do if we hope to survive and thrive (someone whose soul is awake realizes the true nature of their humanness, and the true nature of their relationship to other humans and the environment, sees the interdependence and so is less likely to harm either).
James Welch’s book gets at this, I think. He realizes that the white culture that the native Americans are buying into bases its existence on machines (yet doesn’t understand them), on nonsymbiotic relationships with other humans, on short-lived thrills, etc. Basically on a way of life that won’t thrive or even survive for very many generations to come. They don’t understand their own nature, that their nature is one and the same as nature’s nature, and most importantly, they don’t have a survival guide. But I think Welch’s book holds up the mirror to native americans’ faces and white people’s faces (at this point our fates are shared), disassembles the pseudo-mythology, and with the help of Yellow Calf, starts to build a new survival guide that will maintain us indefinitely.

Love/belonging, Esteem, and Self-actualization.

This was originally meant to be a comment on Mom’s “Winter in the Blood-Chapter 1-PT. 1” post but I’ll stoke my own importance and make it its own new self aggrandizing post. Here we go.

“My throat ached with a terrible thirst.” This quote is a simple but so very deep summary of what Winter in the Blood is about. It shows we the reader the deep longing that our narrator has within his soul. He is searching for a basic satisfaction of human needs, to find who he is, to fill his soul with something that it is missing. What he is missing is a connection to his Native ancestors and history, the world (as in mother nature) and especially a connection to himself and self-knowing. These are basic satisfactions of needs on the beginning levels of Maslow that are not being met. The narrators feeling of emptiness is indescribable like a thirst is indescribable, what biologically satisfies it does not matter, you will know when you are satisfied and you will know when you are not. An attempt is made to quench this thirst but with the wrong solution... poison that does not provide sustenance, only superficial relief... alcohol.

Winter in the Blood has many references to water and to liquid. These are always negative references when they concern the narrator but are positive when they involve non-Native Americans. The clearest example has to do with the silty Milk (white) River that provides an abundance of fish for the white men but nothing for the Native Americans. In fact, the narrator cannot even see fish or even believe that there are fish in the river while the whites receive sustenance and prosperity from the river easily. The narrator cannot function in the world, so much so that it is not possible for him to provide for himself from it and it hardly provides the basic elements of survival for the Natives. Again, alcohol is its offering. Everything that they get is through struggle and usually results in pain.

There are more water examples than I can list or have time to search for at this point but the dry, cracked, gumbo flats are one example, summarizing the world that the NA’s live in. Another that I like is Yellow Calf’s well. He is still somewhat connected to the old ways of the Natives and maintains his communication with the old world but his pure life is still being corrupted and influenced by the new world... his well is cloudy, but at least it doesn’t provide alcohol. A new thought comes to mind; I wonder what the fact that Yellow Calf makes bitter coffee with the water has to do with things? Also, the little girl in the narrators car ride that gets sick from the water is interesting. She seems to be Native, which I reason from her father having a beaded headband and cannot drink the water without getting sick. Things are getting worse for the youth.

The narrators relationship to liquid is a metaphor for his search for meaning in life like a need that needs to be satisfied like thirst and the disappointment that this search has created for him. His methods for understanding the world are incompatible with the modern world. They create a distance that makes it hard for him to to understand how life works and therefore hard to be successful at finding meaning and happiness. His perceptions are different from the perceptions of those around him even though they witness the same things. They probably both create and result from the distance he makes and experiences in his life. The differences in realities is very visible in the strange, Richard Brautigan-esque and magical realist occurrence of the rivers and reservoirs being full of fish for the white man but completely bleak to the narrator that was mentioned earlier. It is not that he is unlucky at fishing, he cannot see the fish at all and does not believe that they are even there. For the whites the water is prosperous, for him, desolate. He is on a separate, unfortunately lower, plane of existence. He also feels that his father never got anything accomplished in life but is then directly contradicted by his mother who says that he must be confused. These are both instances of the author showing the narrators disconnection from the world. This is done, I think, to show the position of the Native Americans in the modern world. They have different perspectives that do not work in the new reality. The narrator is a symbol for all NA’s.

This novel is bleak. Its desolation, hopelessness, and misunderstandings shrivel any positive emotion in the reader like a drop of water sizzling through the sand of a scorched riverbed on a summer day. The feeling is a dryness in your mouth, sucking away hope like bone dry dust. The mother horse and her colt in the first part of the novel offer promise and the possibilities that come with new life but at 100 pages in and from the title of the book I doubt that things are going to turn around. What can be seen as positive is the authors beautiful prose which is lush and nourishing as well as the knowledge of alternate perspectives that come with reading the novel. When we know pain we can better work to and then appreciate happiness. blah blah blah.

Chapter 1 and 4 - Pt. 1 WINTER IN ....

I liked your comments about Native American Mythology, and how actually all people have had some sort of Mythology, religion, government, structure, or what ever to keep life in perspective, to give their group meaning. I like how James Welch brings us into the life of one family on a reservation, showing how the "old ways" have been abandoned and how the family has adopted many of the "white man's ways". It is not really a negative life unless one constantly looks back to the way Indians used to live in America. The main character sees good in nature and searches for the past to help him make it in the present. Their history is not as it was in ancient days, but their family has its own history and survival as a family comes first. He at least has his memories and stays on the ranch, constantly returning to it.

See page 8 - where he even sees hope and life in a tadpole he saves from the washtub. Small details in his life give him pleasure like recalling the good times with his brother when they used to ride calves for fun until their father caught them. Much is revealed through what the protagonist notices. The author does not try to overwhelm us with complex prose. He just presents the story and lets us decide what is important. The life this family leads on the reservation is how it is, even though the past keeps popping up. We know the main character keeps bringing up his bad knee, keeps explaining what type of man his father was, visits Yellow Calf for a reason.

Questions: What is the "borrow pit" and why does Lame Bull not acknowledge the main character's comments about how old he was on pages 6-7 when he says he was twenty? Lame Bull seems to just ignore the comments. Also, why does he call his mother "Teresa" sometimes instead of "mother" or "mom"?

myth and its absence

One of the themes that the groundbreaking short film Messenge explores is the extent to which humans are obligated to maintain some sort of mythology, personal or shared. I think this theme is also somehow deeply relevant to Winter in the Blood, though I'm not sure how. My guess is based on the assumption that 1. stories (from world mythologies to soap operas to lies to self-confirming delusions) are a universal trait of the human species just as language and music are 2. as my boy darwin would tell us, nature allows for no excess; if a trait exists, it has a cost to the organism but is perpetuated because of its adaptive advantage. So, these native american fellows once had a complex and rich system of beliefs that infused the greater culture. My hypothesis is that, unlike modern american mythology (religion, history, television), native american mythology was an adaptive mechanism central to their survival as a people. It was like a traffic system with agreed laws, assumptions, courtesies, etc. that guaranteed the safety of the road. When the white man came, not only did he nearly bring the native americans as a people to the edge of nothing, but he also erased their culture and its mythologies. Welch paints a bled world in the opening pages and chapters of his book. Nihilism, deadness, decrepidness, hopeless humor. The fish are gone from the river, the ancestors of the deer that the protagonist's ancestors hunted are no longer within reach, the last thread to the ancient knowledge is thin and thinning. My question is how much of this lack of life and prosperity is the result of the lack of a unifying and clarifying story, and how much can Welch's book do to resuscitate the stories that might be left, for them and us, and all the rest of those bad beginners.

Winter in the Blood-Chapter 1-PT. 1

The first chapter was a negative beginning: burnt grass, bare gray skeleton, stark as bone, none of them counted, dry, cracked gumbo flats. The location is dry and a prairie opens up for us, bleak and hot, yet with the contrast of the horse and her colt holding life and promise behind the old cabin. It describes the protagonist's difficulty in coming home after being with the white man and his wild wife, his eye swollen, feeling the emptiness in life, not caring about his mother, grandmother and girl "who was thought to be my wife".

The mention of distance in this first chapter - "But the distance I felt came not from country or people; it came from within me." - turns out to be a significant word or theme throughout this book.

The novel's beginning made me sad, but I needed to read on, to find out what the protagonist was feeling, to feel what he felt, to discover why the people treated each other with distance. This might just be a unique literary experience. I was ready.

supplementary reading

Excerpt from 'A Prospect of the Sea' by Dylan Thomas

It was high summer, and the boy was lying in the corn. He was happy because he had no work to do and the weather was hot. He heard the corn sway from side to side above him, and the noise of the birds who whistled from the branches of the trees that hid the house. Lying flat on his back, he stared up into the unbrokenly blue sky falling over the edge of the corn. The wind, after the warm rain before noon, smelt of rabbits and cattle. He stretched himself like a cat, and put his arms behind his head. Now he was riding on the sea, swimming through the golden corn waves, gliding along the heavens like a bird; in seven- league boots he was springing over the fields; he was building a nest in the sixth of the seven trees that waved their hands from a bright, green hill. Now he was a boy with tousled hair, rising lazily to his feet, wandering out of the corn to the strip of river by the hillside. He put his fingers in the water, making a mock sea-wave to roll the stones over and shake the weeds; his fingers stood up like ten tower pillars in the magnifying water, and a fish with a wise head and a lashing tail swam in and out of the tower gates. He made up a story as the fish swam through the gates into the pebbles and the moving bed. There was a drowned princess from a Christmas book, with her shoulders broken and her two red pigtails stretched like the strings of a fiddle over her broken throat; she was caught in a fisher- man's net, and the fish plucked her hair. He forgot how the story ended, if ever there were an end to a story that had no beginning. Did the princess live again, rising like [con't]

supplementary reading

a mermaid from the net, or did a prince from another story tauten the tails of her hair and bend her shoulder-bone into a harp and pluck the dead, black tunes for ever in the courts of the royal country? The boy sent a stone skidding over the green water. He saw a rabbit scuttle, and threw a stone at its tail. A fish leaped at the gnats, and a lark darted out of the green earth. This was the best summer since the first seasons of the world. He did not believe in God, but God had made this summer full of blue winds and heat and pigeons in the house wood. There were no chim- neys on the hills with no name in the distance, only the trees which stood like women and men enjoying the sun; there were no cranes or coal-tips, only the nameless distance and the hill with seven trees. He could think of no words to say how wonderful the summer was, or the noise of the wood-pigeons, or the lazy corn blowing in the half wind from the sea at the river's end. There were no words for the sky and the sun and the summer country: the birds were nice, and the corn was nice.

Welch, Thomas, Picasso, and Everyone Else

Randomly selected sentence from A Prospect of the Sea:

“Did the princess live again, rising like a mermaid from the net, or did the prince from another story tauten the tails of her hair and bend her shoulder-bone into a harp and pluck the dead, black tunes for ever in the courts of the royal country?”

Randomly selected sentence from Winter in the Blood:

“My right eye was swollen up, but I couldn’t remember how or why, just the white man, loose with his wife and buying drinks, his raging tongue a flame above the music and my eyes.”

Prospect is almost pure metaphor; not only is the princess a character in the story that the boy is imagining within Thomas’s story, but she is taken from a Christmas story in the boy’s story. Three levels of fiction. Then there is a prince from yet another story. Within this one sentence, the princess, who is already a metaphor, is futher simileed upon when she rises like a mermaid. She alternatively becomes a musical instrument. And then there is also an allusion to the phoenix as she rises and lives again. Thomas takes a single subject and sends it through a prism, breaking it into many concepts, all of which existed within the original subject as possible themes from which metaphors could be constructed. The difference between Thomas and Welch and the majority of authors is that most authors will take a trait from their character or a quality or concept that they want to describe, find an appropriate metaphor that illustrates that trait or quality or concept and they stick to it; their work is done and they don’t think about it twice. Thomas starts with a trait or a quality or a concept, considers many possible metaphors to illustrate his that trait etc. and instead of choosing one, he throws them all in, mixing them together and bending them back and forth upon and through one another. An author might say a subject was quiet, strong, and intelligent, etc., but Thomas turns all those adjectives into metaphors, letting them play with one another, sometimes letting them take over an entire paragraph or an entire story. He doesn’t let the plot get in the way of the will of the metaphor. His stories are kind of similar to dreams in that way.
VS Ramachandran wrote about the paintings of picasso that show a subject composed of all possible perspectives of their face and body, combined into one form. It turns out that within the are of the brain that recognizes faces, there are specific areas that recognize the face from a given angle, whether profile, straight on, ¼. Normally only one of these facial recognition areas activates when viewing a face, but when a person views a multi-perspective picasso face, all three of these areas activate simultaneously. I think Thomas is doing something similar to our brains when he composes these multi-layered sentences with multi-dimensional metaphors. He intentionally activates multiple and disparate regions of our brains that in normal life never have the opportunity to activate simultaneously. I don’t know why it’s cool, why having these multiple regions activate simultaneously is cool, I just know that it is. It’s like a sphinx or a griffin or a labradoodle or Beatles’ harmonies. Anyway, Welch kind of does this too, but not to the degree or level of skill that Thomas does. He has some runs like “his raging tongue a flame above the music and my eyes.” That’s interesting because it completely disregards natural laws that dictate that something like a tongue can’t at once be a flame and also in someone’s mouth and in the air. Welch activates fear with raging, the sensation of touch with a flame, hearing with music (which in itself activates many other senses and emotions) and vision, all within one short sentence and with one thing. the sentence occupies multiple dimensions, senses, emotions, and all the intellectual crap that goes along with it. Kind of like cerebral yoga, which is why I like good art, what little of it there is. Ps I’m not going to re view or revise these posts, so I apoligize if their our gramattical, or speling airers.

the following

post was screwed up by these stupid posting things so it is kind of hard to make sense of, but basically there is a prospect of the sea, and then the other section is winter in the blood

word analysis

A Prospect of the Sea
570 word sample taken from the first paragraph of Dylan Thomas’s A Prospect of the Sea.
21 sentences total
Adjectives
High, hot, unbrokenly, blue, warm, before, golden, sevenleague, lashing, moving, drowned, broken, stretched, broken, dead, black, royal, green, best, first, full, blue, house, nameless, wonderful, lazy, half, nice, nice, summer
Total adjectives: 39 or 7% of total words
Neutral adjectives: 20 or 50% of total adjectives
Positive adjectives: 13 or 33% of total adjectives
Negative adjectives: 6 or 15% of total adjectives
Color adjectives: 7 or 18% of total adjectives

Nouns

Summer, corn, work, weather, corn, noise, birds, branches, trees, house, corn, wind, rain, noon, rabbits, cattle, cat, arms, head, sea, corn, waves, heavens, bird, boots, fields, nest, trees, hands, hill, boy, hair, feet, corn, strip, river, hillside, fingers, water, sea-wave, stones, weeds, fingers, tower pillars, water, fish, head, tail, tower gates, pebbles, bed, princess, christmas book, shoulders, pigtails, strings, fiddle, throat, net, fish, hair, story, end, story, beginning, princess, mermaid, net, prince, story, tails, hair, shoulder-bone, harp, tunes, courts, country, boy, stone, water, rabbit, tail, fish, gnats, lark, earth, summer, seasons, world, God, God, summer, winds, heat, pigeons, wood, chimneys, hills, distance, trees, women, men, sun, cranes, coal-tips, distance, hill, trees, words, sky, sun, country, birds, corn

Total nouns: 123 or 22% of total words

Repeated nouns:

Corn: 7
Summer: 4
Bird(s): 3 (plus 3 species)
Tree(s): 4
Water- 2
Sun: 3
Fish: 3
Sea: 2
Rabbit(s): 2
Hill((s)ide): 4
Tail(s): 3
Living things: 55 (45% of nouns)
Natural things: 92 (75% of nouns)
Dead things: Possibly 1
References to the weather or time of year: 14
Body parts: 14

Like: 6
No: 6
Winter in the Blood

~570 word sample taken from the beginning of Winter in the Blood.

31 sentences total

Adjectives

Tall, sorrel, burnt, shady, bare, gray, stark, hot, swollen, white, loose, raging, wild, white, easy, even, bad, black, furry, burnt, blazing, pale, green, milky, dry, cracked, deep, empty, terrible

Total adjectives: 29 or 51% of total words
Neutral adjectives: 17 or 59% of total adjectives
Positive adjectives: 1 or 3% of total adjectives
Negative adjectives: 11 or 38% of total adjectives
Color adjectives: 6 or 21% of total adjectives

Nouns

Weeds, pit, leak, mare, colt, grass, cabin, place, name, roof, mud, logs, chunks, skeleton, mice, insects, tumble weeds, home, bone, wind, wall, hill, cabin, barbed wire, graves, Earthboys, daughter, man, Lodgepole, Earthboys, fence, sun, back, highway, eye, man, wife, drinks, tongue, flame, music, eyes, Rocky Boy, money, breasts, hair, home, cinch, torture, throat, knee, head, heat, mare, colt, cabin, graveyard, hills, Little Rockies, haze, home, mother, old lady, grandmother, girl, wife, reason, hatred, love, guilt, conscience, distance, years, country, prarie, sun, Milk River, valley, waters, river, sagebrush, cottonwoods, flats, country, distance, people, distance, distance, country, people, hawk, moon, feelings, mother, grandmother, girl, highway, fence, two miles, home, throat, thirst

Total nouns: 102 or 18% of total words

Repeated nouns:

Mare: 2
Colt: 2
Graves/graveyard: 2
Distance: 4
Sun: 2
River: 2
Home: 4
Mother: 2
Grandmother: 2
Cabin: 3
Throat: 2
Hill(s): 2
People: 2
Country: 2
Girl: 2
Body parts: 11
Living things: 33(32% of nouns)
Dead things: 8
Natural things: 49 (48% of nouns)
References to weather or time of year: 5

Like: 0
No: 6

Some adjectives and nouns that the two stories share

Summer, distance, hill, throat, head, hair, water, heat, man/men, weeds, wind, river, sun, green, black, etc.

The Rebirth

“...He began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of his hands outward, so that, with his legs folded before him, he had the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes without a lotus flower...”

This reference to Eastern philosophy early in the pages of Heart of Darkness, a novel set in the African jungle, a novel about the depravity of man, written in Victorian England and by an author from Poland shocked me. It seemed so out of context to what the rest of the story was about. There is no peace in the story, no zen, only... suffering.

Now I see that it fits perfectly. Buddhism, specifically personal enlightenment and the quest for understanding are prevalent ideas in Heart of Darkness. Marlow’s journey up the river and into his own soul is his journey to awakening. His quest is much like that of Buddhas journey to seek the meaning and source of suffering in the world. He will see much of it in the jungle.

Life as suffering is the first and most prevalent truth of Buddhism. Darkness touches everyone in the jungle, it permeates into their souls. Those that let it stay there are doomed. Those that use the knowledge of suffering to further their own understanding and are successful at keeping their souls pure will be stronger from the experience.

Kurtz is on a path toward enlightenment but his path has faults. Marlow looks to Kurtz for inspiration on how to survive in the jungle. Marlow absorbs Kurtz’s life knowledge but Marlow knows that Kurtz has been corrupted by the ways of man and the evil of the jungle and will never move past these flaws. Kurtz does maintain a zen-like understanding of the world but he still fights against it and tries to conquer the jungle. “‘Oh, but I will wring your neck yet!’ he cried at the invisible wilderness” (97). According to Marlow, Kurtz’s soul is as “...translucently pure as a cliff of crystal” (100). He is on the path but is perhaps a few wrong turns away. That his soul is a cliff and not a lotus flower is the problem and there are far too many heads on poles at the bottom anyways.

The “bepatched youth,” better known as the Russian, is an interesting character, halfway to enlightenment but also halfway to doom. He is a lost soul and is looking for guidance. As a student of Kurtz, “He surely wanted nothing from the wilderness but space to breathe in...” This is a pure motivation but unfortunately his mentor can only get him so far towards accomplishing this.

The one person that does effectively use the Dharma of Kurtz and the jungle is Marlow. The most important lesson for Marlow comes from Kurtz on Kurtz’s death bed and may be the moment that Marlow obtains enlightenment. Kurtz’s last words, “The Horror! The Horror!” are the foundation of the Buddhist outlook on the world. Life is suffering.

What makes Marlow different from everyone else in the novel is that he maintains the middle way. There is nothing extreme in his actions. He almost doesn’t change at all throughout the story and it is only his enlightenment that makes him different in the end of his trip up the river than he was at the beginning. He only observes. He gathers knowledge for his own understanding. He sees the hedonistic ways of the cannibals and is tempted but does not join them. He sees the colonists materialism and refrains from their extremes but still wants to make a buck for himself. His soul remains pure and he comes away with a greater understanding of life. There is light in his heart.

After Kurtz dies Marlow returns to the sepulchral city. Here his new Buddhist understanding makes the people in the city stand out and gives him the feeling that he stands out from them as well. “I felt sure they could not possibly know the things I knew” (101), although he “...had no particular desire to enlighten them...” (101). Unfortunately, and true to Conrad’s style, a wrench is thrown in the clarity of these passages when Marlow adds, “...I was not very well at that time” (101). This may mean that because he wasn’t well he couldn’t spread his knowledge or it could mean that the thought of having a greater knowledge than those around him was crazy. The later may be disproved in the next paragraph.

The novel ends with Marlow again seated in the position of a Buddha. His storytelling demonstrating that he has found the origin of suffering and gained an understanding of how to be free from it. Like the Buddha, Marlow spends his time after enlightenment traveling and teaching others what he has come to understand.

There are most definitely many more examples of Buddhist philosophy throughout, but my knowledge of Buddhism is limited and I am thinking that this may be my last post on Heart of Darkness so I am going to be lazy and let other people continue this specific journey to enlightenment. Post themes if you find them and I will do the same if I come upon them in further readings.

104

“...I had a vision of him on the stretcher, opening his mouth voraciously, as if to devour all the earth with all its mankind. He lived then before me; he lived as much as he had ever lived - a shadow insatiable of splendid appearances, of frightful realities; a shadow darker than the shadow of the night, and draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence. The vision seemed to enter the house with me - the stretcher, the phantom-bearers, the wild crowd of obedient worshippers, the gloom of the forests, the glitter of the reach between the murky bends, the beat of the drum, regular and muffled like the beating of a heart - the heart of a conquering darkness. It was a moment of triumph for the wilderness, an invading and vengeful rush which, it seemed to me, I would have to keep back alone for the salvation of another soul. And the memory of what I had heard him say afar there, with the horned shapes stirring at my back, in the glow of fires, within the patient woods, those broken phrases come back to me, were heard again in their ominous and terrifying simplicity. I remembered his abject pleading, his abject threats, the colossal scale of his vile desires, the meanness, the torment, the tempestuous anguish of his soul. And later on I seemed to see his collected languid manner, when he said one day, ‘This lot of ivory now is really mine. The Company did not pay for it. I collected it myself at a very great personal risk. I am afraid they will try to claim it as theirs though. H’m. It is a difficult case. What do you think I ought to do - resist? Eh? I want no more than justice.’ ...He wanted no more than justice - no more than justice.”

Flames and Running and Threats of Violence and All Around Crazyness

Can anyone give me a brief summary of exactly what was going on with the fire and Kurtz crawling into the jungle and Marlow chasing him and natives rioting in the third part of the book? It starts on page 90 of my edition. It was very confusing and I don’t know who is attacking who and why Kurtz is trying to escape and whether Marlow really has the desire to kill Kurtz, who started the fire, etc., etc., etc.

What is the purpose of this section? Nothing really came out of it did it?

A Nice Boat Ride Into the Darkness...

The actions, behavior, and emotions of men under an evil or adverse influence is a central theme in Heart of Darkness. As Marlow begins to pilot his steamer up the river in Part II of the novel the stakes become even more ominous and the outlook more dark than in part I. The stress of the jungle weighs heavily on each person on the boat. The cannibals, the pilgrims, and Marlow show in their actions and the way they interact with each other that they are being influenced by their surroundings. They seem to be evolving. Presenting my observations are once again an effort at furthering my own understanding and, yes, once more as I look deeper they become intertwined and looping until they are like a tangled ball of yarn. Look deeper if you dare. At a basic level this is an investigation into how each group of characters reacts to the jungle.

Moving up the river for the travelers is like traveling back in time “to the earliest beginnings of the world” (46) or “into another existence perhaps.” (47) I think this is literal. The men have to change to survive. How each man survives is in the end up to them alone but is a struggle against outside factors. Marlow sees that there are two ways to get to his own final destination... the civilized way, by overcoming, conquering and remaining separate from the jungle or by the way of the uncivilized, the way of the jungle, of the native and, it would seem, of the cannibals on board. By letting the jungle overcome you and hoping that you come out on top. Heart of Darkness is a suggestion on how to survive though Conrad’s solutions may not be as straight forward as they seem.

The other “existence” mentioned that the travelers come to know is a self influenced by a world where there are no rules except those of the jungle. One would think that the way of the pilgrims would be the most civil. They are most “evolved,” they are not part of the early, presumably un-evolved men that the cannibals are from and therefore should be well mannered. This is not the case. They behave ironically, as is classic of Conrad, and are willing to kill fellow men for a promotion. The manager and his nephew talk of hanging Kurtz because they cannot compete with is success. The behave like animals. Ironically, Kurtz’s success is not because he is better at the capitalism game but because he has succumbed to the way of the jungle. He has essentially gone native and does not identify with the white men and other colonialists anymore. His methods are “unsound” but he flourishes in the savage environment.

Here the cannibals can be seen as the more civilized group on the steamer. It is in their nature to eat human flesh, presumably murdering just to survive but they do not. Here I wonder if the cannibals are the ones changing to a more civilized nature because of the jungle or the white man’s influence or perhaps it is Marlow’s perspective itself that is changing. He is surprised to find that his view of them is as less of savages and as more as, in his words “not inhuman.” He is struck by the thought of their humanity. The boat is traveling in a prehistoric world. These are men that fit with this world. They can behave in their own natural ways. The white men are out of place, unsuited. They are the beasts in this jungle. Marlow is tempted to move toward the ways of those that fit into the puzzle of darkness. When you fit into place there is no need to rock the boat and those that do rock the boat pass over you.

Marlow feels a pull from the jungle. He recognizes the comfort that comes with giving in and succumbing. Seeing Marlow change, his following of the cannibal’s path is obvious when Marlow stops to ask his storytelling audience on the Thames if they detect “an appeal to me in this fiendish row…” (50) in his desire to succumb to the jungle and the ways of the natives. He throws off his shoes soaked with his helmsman’s blood (barefooted like a native), he has a desire to dance and howl in the forest and he seems to identify more with the cannibals. He does denigrate anyone who would be so weak as to let themselves succumb but the seed is planted.

The jungle calling to Marlow and Marlow succumbing may also be one of the reasons that Marlow is drawn to Kurtz and why Marlow is almost infatuated with Kurtz while everyone else sees him as negative competition. Marlow knows that Kurtz has succumbed to the ways of the jungle and is perhaps feeling the same pull. He recognizes it at least. Kurtz is far succumbed but there is still an appeal to Marlow in seeing Kurtz and hearing “the gifted creature speak” which I believe is the type of appeal in seeing an oddity or paradox of humanity. Kurtz is a savage, closer to beast than man, but now Marlow sees that the savage may not be so inhuman in the jungle.

The appeal of the simple life of the cannibal, where there is only black and white and nature to determine your fate is made less objectionable by the surprisingly good behavior of the cannibals. In their simplicity they do not have the drive that would cause them to murder for success like the pilgrim. They don’t have the temptation and the greed. They haven’t evolved the emotion and have not yet been corrupted. They are at the beginning of the world while the whites are at the end (If anyone can find this in the text let me know. It comes up several times but I couldn’t locate the most concise example.) They have, however, begun the process of evolution to the dark ways of the whites. They work for brass wire.

I originally thought that the cannibals were so well behaved because they had more restraint, as Marlow suggests, but on further reading I came upon Kurtz’s report to The International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs. In it Kurtz suggests that the savages see the white men as gods… or the text, I think, can also be interpreted as a suggestion that white men assume this air for the goal of being seen as gods. Anyways… it may actually be out of fear of the gods that they do not attack even though they outnumber the pilgrims and are themselves starving. The pain of hunger is the hardest pain to overcome according to Marlow. Or maybe pain that is harsher than “the perdition of one’s soul…” is just part of the cannibal’s life. Or maybe they have no soul. Why they do not attack I do not honestly yet fully understand.

Hopefully this post stirs up some conversation about how the jungle is affecting the travelers, how it affects man in general and what state the various members of the expedition are in as a result of the jungle. I would also find it interesting to try and dissect what exactly Conrad is going for with his plot and themes even though I know the can of worms it opens. In any case… Flex your brain! Mine hurts again.

The Idea and the Reality of Efficiency

So Marlow says “What saves us is efficiency – devotion to efficiency.” Unlike the Romans who conquered weaker societies, Europeans colonize them. This, of course, is more acceptable. He explains by saying, “The conquest of the earth…is not a pretty thing. What redeems it is the idea only…something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer sacrifice to.”

In reality, the Company is a model of inefficiency conveyed through descriptions of the employees of the Company, and their work and the conditions at the stations. Inefficiency is suggested by Marlow’s first encounters with company employees as he’s inquiring about a job.

“The men said ‘My dear fellow’ and did nothing.”

Later, he describes his visit to the Company offices for an interview. As he enters the office he is greeted by “Two women, one fat and the other slim, sat on straw-bottomed chairs, knitting black wool.”

Upon his arrival at the Central Station, Marlow observes the meaningless activity of the workers. “A heavy dull detonation shook the ground, a puff of smoke came out of the cliff, and that was all. No change appeared on the face of the rock. They were building a railway. The cliff was not in the way or anything; but this objectless blasting was all the work that was going on.”

Continuing toward the Managers office, Marlow states, “I avoided a vast artificial hole somebody had been digging on the slope, the purpose of which I found impossible to divine…. Then I nearly fell into a narrow ravine, almost no more than a scar in the hillside. I discovered that a lot of imported drainage pipe for the settlement had been tumbled in there. There wasn’t one that was not broken…Everything in the station was a muddle, - heads, things, buildings.”

Regarding the station manager, Marlow says, “He had no genius for organizing, initiative, or for order even. That was evident in such things as the deplorable state of the station.”

After being stranded at the station for some time, Marlow says, “I lived in a hut in the yard, but to get out of the chaos, I would sometimes get into the accountants officer.”

In addition, according to Marlow, his steamer was sunk as a result of poor preparation and general incompetence. “The steamer was sunk. They had started two days before in a sudden hurry up river, with the manager on board in charge of some volunteer captain and before they had been out for three hours they tore the bottom out of her on stones, and she sank near the south bank.”

And finally, there is Marlow’s problem with acquiring the rivets necessary to repair the ship. “Rivets I wanted. There were down at the coast – cases – piled up – burst split…. And there wasn’t one rivet where it was wanted.” Numerous individuals go to the coast some two hundred miles away, expeditions pass through the Station, but somehow no one can provide Marlow with the minimum materials he needs to repair the boat.

This hardly seems like the perfect implementation of an Idea so noble that it justifies incredible human suffering and the exploitation of a country for its material resources.

The question I have is, does Conrad level this indictment at all European nations colonizing Africa or just the Belgian. The operations conducted in the story are conducted by a Belgian trading company which, I think, is a symbol for the Belgian government. Apparently Belgian practices in Africa were particularly harsh.

Yet Marlow describes the absurd behavior of other nations. He travels down the coast of Africa on a French sailing ship. French transportation is far from efficient as well

“We pounded along, stopped, landed soldiers, went on landed custom house clerks to levy toll in what looked like a God-forsaken wilderness, with a tin shed and a flag-pole lost in it; landed more soldiers – to take care of the custom-house clerks, presumably. Some I heard got drowned in the surf; but whether they did or not, nobody seemed particularly to care.” During the voyage down the coast, they encounter a French war ship. Marlow reports, “In the emptiness of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent.”

The English are given passing credit for their work in Africa. When looking at the color-coded map of Africa in the officer of the Company. Marlow notes, “There was a vast amount of red – good to see at anytime, because one knows some real work is done in there.” Colonies established by the British in Africa were generally colored red.

According to the Endnotes in my edition, “maps during this era often represented imperial territories according to a color-coded system. Red for British, blue for French, green for Italian, orange for Portuguese, purple for German, and yellow for Belgian.”

So is Conrad condemning all European colonialism in Africa or just Belgian colonialism? He generally portrays the British in a good light and the Introduction to my edition says he intentionally excludes the British from his indictment of Imperialism. Is he serious or is he just being a polite guest?

The Coen Brother's Barton Fink

Just a side note suggestion here for an interesting Coen Brothers film, Barton Fink (1991) if you haven't seen it already. A little lighter than what we are discussing now so hopefully refreshing to those who choose to take a look at it.

The symbolism and metaphor are great and, just like Heart of Darkness, can be looked at as deeply as you'd like to dive. It isn't gonna put your brain in a knot though, thankfully.

After you have viewed it and questioned and contemplated to you hearts content you can take a listen to one of my favorite podcasts, Watching Theology, that discusses Barton Fink here:

http://stevebrownetc.com/2007/09/podcasts/watching-theology/barton-fink-1991/

Also a decent article deconstructing the film on the web:

http://www.coenbrothers.net/viewer.html

Here's the Netflix link to the film:

http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Barton_Fink/60000822?trkid=226870

Enjoy!

Heart of Darkness.mp3

A professional reading of the Heart of Darkness

loudlit.org

The Light, The Dark, The Dialectic

The Hegelian dialectic consists of three stages of development: a thesis, giving rise to its reaction, an antithesis, which contradicts or negates the thesis, and the tension between the two being resolved by means of a synthesis. It asserts that reality beyond one's perception is interconnected, contradictory, and dynamic. It also refers to a method for presenting of ideas and conclusions. I think this is fundamental to understanding the structure of The Heart of Darkness. I just don’t know exactly how.

In the Heart of Darkness, Conrad creates numerous literary parallels; the light and the dark, land and water, Rome and England, Europe and Africa, whites and blacks, jungles and forests. These are more than literary parallels; these are dualities in what appears to be a dualistic world. The reader attempts to define and sort these dualities and in doing so reveals endless connections and contradictions. Conrad creates a surface reality that invites this exploration in the same way that the jungle or the wilderness invites exploration. The results may be similar as well.

Beyond the dualistic surface reality, true reality is interconnected, contradictory and dynamic. It is dialectical. The development of civilizations, nations, or a people is dialectical. It moves from dark, to light, and then on to darkness again. It’s unclear whether this motion is a spiral or a vortex, whether it moves up or down, whether it ends in darkness or spawns another instance of The Light. On the surface, Conrad seems to say that it all ends in The Dark, but maybe that’s only on the surface.

Early civilizations are dark. England before the Romans was dark. Marlow describes it as “cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death – death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush,” nothing more than “sandbanks, marshes, and savages. To the civilized Romans, England is incomprehensible and detestable. In the same way, Africa is dark to the civilized European. Conrad describes the journey up the Congo as “travelling in the night of first ages….” The atmosphere of the jungle is an implacable, brooding force with a vengeful aspect.

Rome and England are essentially the same. Notice Marlow says “Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this,” when speaking of the Romans. Not “exactly like this” but close. The Romans and later the English are the antithesis of The Dark. On the surface both represent The Light. I think Marlow is being ironic in his description of the Romans. He says, “They were no colonists, their administration was merely a squeeze, nothing more… they grabbed what they could get for the sake of what could be got.” This considerably understates the influence of the Roman Empire on the English. As a result of the Roman conquest civilization spread across Europe. Light came out of the Thames. England became civilized. It built a tradition based upon Roman law.

I also think Marlow is being facetious when he claims that, unlike the Romans, Europeans are justified in exploiting Africa because they have a motive higher than just making a profit. They have an Idea. I think the Romans had a number of Ideas that they spread through Europe: engineering, architecture, art, literature, government, etc. The Europeans have Efficiency. In the political and business circles of industrial age Britain the prevailing Idea was Efficiency, efficiency in government, manufacturing, and commerce. Spreading efficiency was a religion for those who participated in the exploitation of an entire continent. It was unselfish and something they could “set up and bow down to and offer sacrifice to….” Even if it was hypocritical.

The Synthesis is represented by Marlow, drifting with his colleagues on a yacht in the Thames. He combines the characteristic of the savage and the civilized. Only Marlow, and Kurtz, recognize that civilized men are, at heart, the same as savages, cannibals in their own right. They become fascinated by the conquered, fascinated by “the mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungle, in the hearts of wild men.”

Or something like that. Maybe Chaos Theory would be a better explanation.

Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now

I have been spending a lot of time re-reading Heart of Darkness, or actually a lot of time thinking about Heart of Darkness and Marlow's Romans narrative. It's been about a week and I am only eight pages though. In an effort to get back to the satisfaction that I get from actually turning pages in a book I picked up Notes By Eleanor Coppola. It is her journal from the three years when her husband was making Apocalypse now in the Philippines.

So far it is pretty good although the Amazon reviews are low. I think it'll be interesting to read along with Heart of Darkness for no other reason than the appeal of knowing that Francis Ford Coppola probably thought about the book about a billion times more than anyone on this blog combined ever will. I wonder with all of that thinking if he is still as conflicted and confused as me? Oh well, back to staring at page eight.

The Romans are Coming! The Romans are Coming!

It is said that the Romans were the greatest conquerors of modern history. They are therefore an obvious and convenient subject for comparison in The Heart of Darkness to the modern conquering English. The main character, Marlow, does just this in the first few pages of the novel in his “yarn” told to the crew of the Nellie. His comparison is interesting and also slightly nebulous. Because of the certain ambiguity that seems to be characteristic of the novel the reason for and meaning of the comparison can be looked upon with some objective interpretation both for its face value as well as on a deeper level. It is interesting to look beyond Marlow’s perspectives on Roman conquest and to consider what message the books author, Joseph Conrad, is voicing through his narrators story. The words are the same but the messages are different.

I was at first perplexed by the comparison. Actually, I should say that I was at second perplexed, having only looked deeper into the comparison upon my second reading of the novel. Because it was my second pass I had already established firmly in my mind that the author of the novel saw conquest as something that darkens the land and is in general negative, yet his main character speaks of it as something noble both when done by the simple Romans as well as by the English who elevated conquest to “more humane” colonialism. This positive perspective on conquest was, to me, a contradiction to the main themes and messages of the novel, i.e. any form of European expansion as negative.

Let me first quickly justify what led me to believe that Marlow saw conquest in general as positive before discussion of the purpose of the Romans comparison in general. I have come to this conclusion from Marlow’s statement that the land around the Thames was dark before the Romans conquered. And, “Light came out of this river since.” The idea that light is classically thought of as something positive in narrative fiction is what solidifies this viewpoint. Themes of light and dark in Les Miserables is a good example of such thought.

As said, conquest as positive conflicts with one of the largest themes of the novel. I could not understand why the main character would have “the wrong” ideas. It wasn’t until I stepped back and looked through and past Marlow’s opinion to the underling perspective of Conrad himself that things began, I say began, they haven’t fully yet, became clear.

Conrad’s storytelling technique is interesting in the dialogue. His deceptive method of making one thing seem obvious while really meaning the opposite is what makes his writing stimulating. The comparison between the Romans and the English is at first set up to make the reader form a connection between the Romans and the English as being very similar to each other. It is easy to see that their similarities are abundant. Both stories, that of the Romans and that of the narrator’s journey up the Congo appeal to the sailor’s life as romantic. Both the Romans and Marlow’s journey travel through hostile environments. The drive for promotion and financial gain are motivations of both the Romans and the Eldorado Expedition. Somewhat more deeply entwined in the story is a fascination that the Romans as well as Marlow have with abomination. Marlow states this as true of the Romans, the reader will glean it from Marlow. The description of the Roman journey up the Thames is a mirror to Marlow’s journey up the Congo. This is what makes Marlow’s description and in the end his statement that the Romans are dissimilar to the English slightly disorienting. He says, in reference to a decent young Romans emotions on such a journey, “Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this.” All of the savagery of conquest that the reader thinks that Marlow is saying all Europeans have been participating in is shot down. This is only deception by the author used for effect. Things get interesting when Marlow participates in “colonialism.”

Yes, the similarities are seemingly obvious. What makes the comparison interesting is the narrators own perceived dissimilarities. The best way to go about dissecting the true meanings and reasons for the inclusion of Marlow’s Romans dialogue is to discuss the mentioned dissimilarities that Marlow sees. Through this we will see Conrad’s perspectives, and solve our contradiction problem.

To Marlow what makes the English different from the Romans is that modern Europeans are more “efficient” than the less refined Romans, who Marlow calls conquerors. Marlow calls himself and the others on the boat colonists, a much more eloquent designation. As a colonist they have more than just the “brute force” of the Romans and the English’s strength is more than just “an accident arising from the weakness of others.” It is evolved and refined. The ways of the English are superior to the Romans because they can think about what they are doing. They use their minds and strategy. They are right, most noble, the chosen ones, that it is their God given right to take what they want form the earth. God is on the side of the English because they are smarter, more deserving and also whiter than those they conquer. The single designation of efficiency is what Marlow proposes makes them different or better than the Romans. It seems like a weak and vague argument, perhaps posed purposefully by Conrad. Marlow ends rather vaguely and inconclusively with “the idea,” which I do not fully understand but gather that he is pointing to the fact that being a conqueror sounds good in theory as long as you think of it as the idea of conquering only and try as much as possible to shy away from looking deeper into what the act of conquering actually entails. Is this what he means by English efficiency, ignoring or not noticing the process of colonialism? Is he too blind to see?

Now with all this justification from our stories main character of colonialism I as the reader naturally side with Marlow at first. What the English are doing is not violent conquering but more gentle and noble colonialism. Marlow is the main character and therefore a sympathetic person to identify with. But when you step back and consider The Heart of Darkness not as a hero story but as a spoof on the modern adventure tale the comparisons takes on a new light. This is the heart of my argument. The idea that The Heart of Darkness is parody is central to seeing the true meaning of Marlow’s comparison. It becomes ironic when all of the greed, killing, and violence that goes on in the jungle of the expedition that makes up the remainder of Marlow’s story is considered. Conrad intends Marlow’s dialogue to be paradoxical. Marlow and, more to the extreme, the others who went into the jungle with Marlow are EXACTLY EVERYTHING that Marlow says they are not. This is the point of the Romans dialogue in The Heart of Darkness. It is included so that Marlow can denounce the ways of societies that conquer weaker societies. With the criticism of the Roman ways he is ironically commenting on and denouncing himself. The English cannot see their ways and therefore look stupid for not recognizing their own similarities to simple brutes.

Hopes of further discussion and clarification is the reason that I post. Feel free to comment, critique and tell me that I am wrong. I am interested in the discussion.

The Frame Story

I just noticed there are two rivers in this story. One is the Congo. The other is the Thames, the setting for the frame story. I completely forgot about it. In the frame story, an unidentified narrator describes the scene on board a yacht stalled by weak winds and the tide on the “lower reaches” of the Thames within sight of London. There are four men onboard the yacht, a lawyer, an accountant, a “Director of Companies, who,” the narrator describes as, “our Captain and our host,” and Marlow, the old seaman, who is about to tell the story of his journey up the Congo River.

The Thames, according to the unidentified narrator has provided “unceasing service” to “all the men, of whom this nation is proud,” commanders of naval expeditions and sea merchants. Later he calls the Thames a “venerable stream” that carried “the dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths,” and “the germs of empires.” In addition, Marlow begins his tail, as the sun sets on the Thames which the unseen narrator describes as peaceful, immense, and “unstained.”

At the same time, the sun is setting a “brooding gloom,” lies to the west. It becomes “more somber every minute.” This foreshadows the tone of the story itself.

Marlow's descritpion of the Congo which he provides later is a stark contrast to the unidentified narrator's description of the Thames.

"Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were king... You lost your way on that river as you would in the desert... till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off forever from everything you had known once -somewhere- far away- in another existence perhaps.

The way that Marlow is described in the frame story is also interesting. The unseen narrator describes him as sitting “cross-legged, with his arms dropped and the palms of his hands outward," resembling "an idol.” He is also captivating his audience with his speech. Son of Kurtz?

Thoughts on...

Thoughts on "'The horror! The horror!'"?

Why! Why!

I am lost as to the reason that Kurtz is being sent for by the company. It is stated that his methods have become unsound. But what does this matter to a company and employees driven by profits alone if Kurtz is pulling in more ivory than any of the other traders in the area?

If the novel is a comment on the evils of European conquest and colonialism then I believe the author would portray these said occurrences as undesirable and evil. They are definitely not positive, no one portrays them as positive. But, by the company sending for an unsound man don't they give themselves a positive image? Is Kurtz killing natives? If so why would the company care? Is is because he has become "one of the natives"? I don't see this as being alarming to the company as long as the money is coming in either. Maybe the heads on the posts in front of camp are heads of white men. This makes more sense but it is never made clear that Kurtz has attacked company men.

Furthermore, what exactly are Kurtz's unsound methods anyways?

Darkness in my brain...

So, my confusion with this story continues. I find that the narrators opinion of Kurtz is very transient and changes every ten pages or so. I have to ask, up to the point of the story that I am, as Marlow chases a sickly and crawling Kurtz through the grass with fires blazing and pilgrims gunfire blazing around them, why is Marlow now trying to kill Kurtz? Oh yeah why, is there fires and guns blazing?

As I understand Marlow was sent to retrieve Kurtz from the jungle. I do not remember it being dead or alive. That method seems now to be the case. Previously I was under the impression that Marlow admired Kurtz for his success in the ivory trade. Now things seem obviously to have changed. Can someone tell me why Marlow's view of Kurtz has changed? Is it because Marlow knows that Kurtz will not go peacefully and therefore the only method for his extradition is through killing him?

As I read I am not dissecting Conrad's depiction of the duality of man, I am only trying to sort through the multiplicity of changing character outlooks, attitudes and motivations. I guess the multiple personalities of Marlow can be seen as duality but it is more like a split personality.

What is going on!?

Post Script: Oh wait, they are friends again now. Marlow is admiring Kurtz's greatness as he dies on the boat.

Page 50

"The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there - there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were - No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it - this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity - like yours - the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you - you so remote from the night of first ages - could comprehend."

Page 46

"In a few days the Eldorado Expedition went into the patient wilderness, that closed upon it as the sea closes over a diver. Long afterwards the news came that all the donkeys were dead.  I know nothing as to the fate of the less valuable animals. They, no doubt, like the rest of us, found what they deserved. I did not inquire..."

This paragraph is a turning point in the novel. The narrators tone changes here as can be seen in the lines about the animals dying and "the less valuable animals" finding what they deserve. What or who the less valuable animals are is ambiguous but I take it to mean men of the expedition, maybe slaves if you want to be specific. Taken in this light the lines have a very heavy meaning. From Marlow's unattached attitude we can see that he is or has become very unattached to humans in general. He has no faith and does not care if people die, they may actually deserve it. Death is inevitable. The jungle is patient.

Because this paragraph comes directly after Marlow's eavesdropping experience with the two expedition men who were talking in front of the boat in which he clearly expresses distaste for their selfishness it has an even more significant impact.

It is also at around this time that it becomes clear that Marlow's attitude regarding Kurtz has changed. I, however, missed the exact moment. Missing things has been a common occurrence for me in this novel because it is so condensed and major changes happen within only sentences. I have found myself lost on several occasions and had to reread pages in order to find out why certain unexpected things were happening. It is similar to the feeling of skipping a page in any other novel and becoming suddenly lost. However, in the case of Heart of Darkness the sensation arises without pages actually having been skipped. If anyone can shed some light as to what exactly made Marlow's opinion of Kurtz change that would be appreciated.

After the above quoted paragraph the novel becomes much darker in tone than in the preceding fifty or so pages. The jungle has started to corrupt them. Or are they already corrupted? In any case the descriptions of the jungle its self become evil in character. Marlow says that it affects his perspective, feelings and soul. It watches the men in their delicate tight rope dance of life. It waits to attack. The loss of optimism can be seen in the idea that the jungle watches them in their pointless temptation of death for "half a crown."

That's it for now. This book is a little harder to pull from than The Fountainhead. Its plot is simpler but I think more open to interpretation. Anyone want to add to the discussion of Heart of Darkness? Pretty weak entry here, just trying to get something going.

Darkness Redux

Second time up river: I recognize some landmarks, notice sites I’d missed before, but the jungle remains as dense and tangled as my first journey.

On the surface the story is about European exploitation of Africa, the evils of Western materialism, capitalism, and the triviality of those who choose to prosper in that environment. Ironically, they seek prosperity in a setting so hostile that just surviving ensures success. On the surface, the story is about Kurtz, who unlike his colleagues is idealistic and works to bring culture and prosperity to Africa. “Each station should be like a beacon on the road to better things, a centre for trade of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing,” he says.

Beneath the surface, in the murky waters of the rivers, whose heart is dark?

Heart of Darkness Introduction

Just got the book.

Here is what the inside cover of the Everyman's Library edition says: "Apparently a sailors yarn, it is in fact a grim parody of the adventure story, in which the narrator, Marlow, travels deep into the heart of the Congo where he encounters the crazed idealist Kurtz and discovers that the relative values of the civilized and the primitive are not what they seem. Heart of darkness is a model of economic storytelling, an indictment of the inner and outer turmoil caused by the European imperial misadventure, and a piercing account of the fragility of the human soul."

I will also be looking for some of these themes that I found presented in the books introduction written by Verlyn Klinkenborg:

Heart of Darkness is not a parable about the loss of one man's soul to a wilderness of evil. It is a story about what it means to share implicitly the penalty of that loss, a story about the impossibility of innocence.

Also... Torturous irresolution is apparently an abundant theme. Moral conundrums and dilemmas are raised one after another.

As well as... Kurtz being free of hypocrisy. Kurtz's demoralization is at least carried out in earnest unlike the pilgrims or other members of the expedition. Marlow admires him for this.

That is all so far. Please add the themes that you have found, preferably with no spoilers...

The Dark of Heartness

As I read, I feel as if I am paddling up stream through the mangroves, through the vines, lost among the vipers, and insects, deep into the jungle. I am in the dark. Where is the heart of darkness? Who's heart is dark?

Done. What's the next book?

Top of the List: Heart of Darkness
Grapes of Wrath?
Moby Dick?
Macbeth?
The Odyssey?
The Illiad?
Roald Dahl, Collected Stories?

The Alexandria

The once majestic but now abandoned and dilapidated Alexandria Theater catches and holds my gaze as I walk toward my apartment and up 18th Avenue. The theater is massive, taking up a half a block, surrounded by trash that dances around it like pixies in the breeze, with broken windows but still a landmark, one I use to describe where I live when people ask. I say, “Behind the Alexandria” and it is clear. The building is cathedral like and its spire and towering “Alexandria” neon sign rises above the neighborhood proclaiming its dominance. This time I approach from the much less regal backside of the building and my multiple perspectives on the building conflict with each other. The columns along the walls and the spire of the marquee make the building resemble a huge unaware brontosaurus with its head near obscured by the mists of the night. I approach the large beast but the building only slumbers lazily like a dumb animal, too stupid to defend itself from the world that moved too fast for it to keep up with.

The numerals one, two and three remain on the side of the building next to the vertical Alexandria sign representing the number of restorations done to the building that the masses that have inhabited the seats of the theatre have witnessed as they watched first run showings of South Pacific, Apocalypse Now, Back to the Future and The Lord of the Rings. I think of the architects, two men that I find through research were named James and Merritt Reid and I imagine how they walked around inside the theater the day before it opened on November 26, 1923 inspecting what they had created, feeling the rush of power and success and thinking about how the building would be an important part in people’s lives, influence so many, be a visible land mark for decades to come, etc., etc., etc. Tonight, as I sneak up behind the behemoth I only think how ugly it is. It is empty, closed and abandoned since 2004, homeless men sleeping in front of the doors that once brought so many in to sit and take part in Sunday matinees every weekend, the Sabbaths. Now it smells of urine. It is extinct.

What would the architects say if they were alive to see their creation as it stands today boarded up and pathetic? What would people that live in the neighborhood now say to the Reid brothers if they could talk to them? What opinion do my upstairs neighbors have of the brothers? I ask this because I know the answer but want to be gentle. They don't have any opinion on the men, they're not on their minds, they hardly think anything of building itself. It stands as a dead tree would, one that you pass and think nothing of because it has no use to you. The point is that the architects have been forgotten. They are not worth thinking about because they are irrelevant. Architects are not immortal. They are not world creators because it was not the architect who created the building nor determined its downfall. It was the community. It was the demand from the neighborhood for a theatre and it was the loss of that demand that determined that the theatre would cease to exist. They building grew naturally out of the ground like a mushroom or sapling because the conditions were optimal for its success. When the neighborhood as a whole did not think of the building as necessary anymore it wasn’t and it was forgotten.

Great men are creators but it is more logical to call them catalysts. They are a part of the ecosystem, organisms that convert nitrogen into usable ammonia to stimulate growth. It is not the men’s desires that determine the growth, it is the ecosystem. These men are part of an equation and not THE equation. Men did take the lead and lend a hand in the creation of cities like San Francisco, Adolph Sutro, Charles Crocker, Alexander Leidesdorff, possibly the Reid brothers, they had the money and leadership ability to get their names recognized in the history of the city but it was not because of them that the city exists. It was many factors, the discovery of gold, the location of the bay as a safe harbor for transport of people and goods or the temperate climate that resulted in San Francisco growing into what it is today. It grew as an independent organism. No one person said “let there be here a great city!” It was not the power of money it was the approval of the population demonstrated in thousands making their home in the vicinity that determined the success and ultimately the character of the city.

Architects are a tool of the city, part of the chemical or molecular process of the evolution of the neighborhood which created itself through the conglomeration of multiple families and many individuals and dollars flowing, businesses being founded, businesses being successful or families failing. This resulted in the intersection of 18th Avenue and Geary Boulevard that the Alexandria inhabits now taking the shape that it does today. The theatre would be pushed out of use when other theatres evolved to take its niche, multiplexes, IMAX, 3D. It was not the architects desires being satisfied to have a theater built that was the reason for its construction. It was the demand of the populous that created the right conditions for the theatre to rise just as the conditions of humidity, soil composition, temperature levels and rainfall levels allow pine trees to grow on alpine slopes. Pine forests are successful not because a chipmunk forgets a seed in the dirt. It is the natural progression of life that allows for the creation, growth and death of the forest that determine how the world looks. Cities have a life of their own, independent from any one factor or desire. It is uncontrollable by any one being or deity. The Alexandria was created and eventually killed by San Francisco.

Today community organizers are determining if a four should be added to the one, two and three on the theaters spire. These are plans for a fourth resurrection, one that would turn the theatre into a multiuse pavilion with shops and housing taking the place of theatre seats. Is there a demand for this revival? The demands of the environment are the only powers that will determine what the skyline of the Richmond neighborhood will look like and without the conditions of the harsh and unforgiving natural ecosytem being favorable no one person will determine its fate. Men are powerless and weak against the earth.