The Four Faces of a Single Man

 “I did get the conception clear which Gerald often speaks of — of looking over the Ego’s shoulder while it’s jumping about.

“Useful to think of that part of my will which wants this way of life as a research worker, fallible but serious-minded. The research worker has to share his study with Maggie, his lisping, cute little daughter; Grandfather Chips, his miserly, selfish old parent; and Libido, an immense gorilla who, when aroused, can be really dangerous, but who spends most of his time snarling, or bolting his food, or snoring, or nastily playing with himself. 

“The research worker tries to concentrate, while Maggie dances about, prattling of her exploits, and Grandfather Chips fusses over his money and plans to get more. Sometimes he has to intervene to restrain the gorilla, who is apt to smash up all the furniture, and overturn the work bench with his apparatus…”

“Remember, every word spoken to another human being is spoken in the presence of these four. They all hear it, and make a note of the information, privately planning to use it for their own purposes, when the opportunity offers.”

— Christopher Isherwood’s diary, July 16, 1941

Knowing It's a Wave

“In Dharma, we learn to observe the mind.

We do not follow every wave. we feel it rise, know it’s a wave, and let it pass.

Anger, fear, longing, none of them define you.

They visit. And you breathe.

This is freedom from impulse. This is right mindfulness.”

— Mark Nicholls

How the Ruthless Rich Underestimated their Idiot

“In ditching democracy for autocracy, (the billionaires) underestimated the autocrat. If you’ve created a trillion-dollar business, you might naturally think of Trump the serial bankrupt as merely a cartoon capitalist. You can recognize, and bow down to, Trump’s political genius while imagining that it is merely an exercise in branding, a big Trump sign placed over the door of a tower that’s actually owned by you and your confreres. Since everything else about Trump is an act, you can assume that he doesn’t really believe that he alone can will into existence a radically reshaped American capitalism. Surely he does not imagine that a single crude weapon — a blunderbuss of tariffs on all imports — will undo the effects of decades of economic globalization?

“But he does. He has been absolutely consistent over nearly five decades in his conviction that American capitalism is an ideal system that will work perfectly once there is a leader strong enough to stop foreigners from rigging it. That leader, of course, is his indispensable self. America’s destiny will unfold from his instincts and impulses, so long as they are unchecked by democratic processes or the petty rationalism of evidence-based decision-making.

“If capitalism is to be made personal, it would be a good idea to begin by understanding the person who is going to embody it. There is a reason Western capitalism ditched absolute monarchy: personal rule is rule by whim, prejudice, grudge, and tantrum. There are always opportunists who make money from chaos, and they will batten on the spoils of Trump’s bedlam. But capitalism as a system abhors uncertainty. Its beneficiaries are now ruefully remembering, far too late, that science, intellectual freedom, international cooperation, and social stability create wealth — and that giving untrammeled power to an autocrat bent on obliterating all of those things is a very efficient way to squander it.”

— Fintan O’Toole, the New York Review of Books

'Thunderbolts:' A Bolt to Cure the Blues

I’d intended to skip Marvel’s Thunderbolts, having been disappointed in several of Marvel’s lackluster movie efforts since the pinnacle that was the Avengers saga. But I went this afternoon and I’m glad I did. 

It’s terrific.

What we have here is a collection of super ne’er-do-wells under the command of winsomely evil CIA director Julia Louis-Dreyfus — until they become “inconvenient.” These broken and hunted “superheroes” must band together to face an overwhelmingly powerful being and a Jungian apocalypse that is swallowing Manhattan. 

Thunderbolts has well-paced action, wit, deadly dangers and heart-tugging heroics — just the ingredients one wants in a well-made superhero movie. 

Marvel’s comic book Thunderbolts were created in 1997 by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley, and while this bunch of characters is different, they retain the same unlikely-hero, against-the-0dds appeal. 

They have a sort of Guardians of the Galaxy vibe without being in any way imitative. Some deft, convincing screenwriting and direction has placed their humanity in the dramatic forefront of their super-humanity.

The Tools of Totalitarian Dominance

“ ‘(Totalitarianism) bases itself on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all, which is among the most radical and desperate experiences of man.’ Chronic unemployment, inflation and punitive taxation, the debasement or suppression of a public forum for action and debate, the dislocation that comes from moving from nation to nation or job to job, the imposed inconsequence of innocence and guilt, in groups and out groups, the threat of terror — all tools of totalitarian dominance — seem to prepare victims and bullies alike to undervalue their lives.”

— Hannah Arendt: A Life in Dark Times by Anne C. Heller

Rumi and Rumination

TO BROOD is to wander through a grove

where one sheep strays

and a hundred wolves follow.

Why did I make brooding my vocation

when awe was an option?

Thought spinner,

mull the wine of wonder.

— Rumi (Sept. 30, 1207-Dec. 17, 1273)

I Am a Tree

I eat the sun, I drink the light.

I am a conjurer. My sugar is self-sacrifice.

I cut my arm to feed my leg.

I am waiting for nothing, needing for nothing. I am an army, I am the mother of them all,

I can regenerate.

I clone a nation from my foot.

I am a country of one.

I am a family; I am a household.

I have skin and I can bruise and I can bleed, and I can cry. I make my friends. We are connected.

We are inseparable. We grow intertwined.

We share the sky, we are agreed.

I can give, and I can care for.

I’ve got other mouths to feed.

They need me.

I am a tree. I know secrets that you will never know. I channel lighting. I see in color.

I make the air you need to grow.

I’m not a man, I’m not a woman. Surprisingly I’m both.

And when I know that I must die

I put the best of me back into the ground. I stretch for miles and miles and miles. And let’s not forget my leaves:

Clouds of green.

— Majel Connery