New Environs

The new neighborhood, into which we moved a couple weeks ago, has brought surprises. It's on the western slope of Tacoma, although T-Town is broken up geologically with deep gullies, so any slope, western or not, won't be a smooth one. In any event. the place is perched on a wee knoll close to the Narrows. We get to see all the weather come in from the Pacific, and a landscape-person we know claims that this part of T-Town has a micro-climate--wetter and warmer than the rest of Tacoma. The gardeners in the neighborhood--and in Tacoma, just about everyone is some kind of gardener--therefore experiment with plants of a semi-tropical nature, as well as growing the usual rhodies, azaleas, and evergreen shrubs/trees. A fellow blogger residing in Hawaii who knows something about Tacoma will find the reference to "semi-tropical" ridiculous, no doubt.

As with many American neighborhoods, this one is really neither working-class nor middle-class. Average income might put it into the latter class, but the range of occupations varies considerably. The neighborhood looks conventionally suburban--built in the 1960s, so "rambler" style houses more or less predominate, but it appears not to be a cookie-cutter tract. What you don't see are the Victorians and Craftsman houses that dominate the North End of T-Town--houses that are cheek-by-jowl and feature lots of stairs and small rooms.

The biggest surprise out here on the slope, at least for me, is the ethnic diversity. Yes, you have your basic Euro-Americans. My early working-hypothesis is that if there's an RV in the yard, the family is probably Anglo-American. I'd be happy to have the hypothesis disproved. I wonder if there are good RV ethnographies out there.

African Americans, Asian Americans (with considerable variety within this category), Hispanic Americans, and folks from the former Soviet Union dwell hereabouts as well. I know some of the latter come from Moldavia because I heard them say so. Others may come from Russia-proper or the Ukraine. I don't know. The older generation likes to walk around the neighborhood as if it were a village, and I guess in a way it is. The women wear scarves and woolen skirts. The men wear sport-coats and hats. That is, they remind me of some of the older folks from my hometown, which featured one Russian named Wanda, who'd get all dressed up and walk her two bull-dogs to "town" every day--"town" being a micro-village of 200 in the Sierra Nevada. It's not for me to say, really, but I think Wanda belonged in St. Petersburg, strolling the Nevsky Prospekt. But she married an American house-painter, and somehow they ended up in Sierra City. I still remember her long cashmere red coat.

There are two large hills between where we live and where we buy things, including groceries, so the aerobic opportunities are good, and when I'm out walking, the Moldavians are usually out, too. I wish I spoke their language. I sincerely enjoy how unamused, wary, but not unfriendly their visages appear. The older faces especially seem to report having experienced but survived much in life.

So far the western slope has been full of great surprises. I have informed our cat, a Russian blue, that Moldavians are hereabouts. So far, she has not registered a comment in response.

Nub of the Matter

Nub of the Matter

I hate to break this news to me,
but logic dictates I don't matter.
Out of not much matter, I am made,
and such matter as I do comprise
does not export significance.

Particles of matter disperse and reconvene anew,
I know. Any one state of particulate
coherence may be lovely (rhododendron
flower, son's smile) or may be me, whom
I like well enough, but in any case, what
so ensues? In relation to everything,
I'm merest particle of perpetual change.

Only matter can make me. I've already
been made up. Dissolution's penciled in
on a calendar Heraclitus keeps next
to his river of fire. Only God can make
me matter. This is the nub of the matter,
the God's honest truth.

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Nostalgia for Nothing

Nostalgia for Nothing

The things I don't remember
about childhood are the ones
I miss the most: nights I
slipped quickly into untroubled
sleep, pine-boughed days through
which I tumbled and pretended--
I'm just guessing here. How exotic

the town of Childhood seems.
To think: I once lived there, or so
I tell me. Childhood is a village
with its own sun and moon,
a silver silo full of long days,
a golden clock-tower. It is
a place filled with people
who passed on from here.

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

How to be a Cat

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*How To Be A Cat

Be the noble curator of your excellence, for
fate made you perfect. In all things, be precise:
standing, sitting, staring, walking, sniffing, eating,
sleeping, killing. Never look in mirrors,
which are windows for the insecure. Sleep
in a variety of comfortable places, which
were created for you alone. Make acquaintances,
never friends. The latter tend to cling.

All phenomena are potential enemies. Therefore,
stare, listen, listen, stare, sniff, stare, listen, sniff,
hide, stare, and listen. Never perform tricks. Leave
those to dogs, who need to be wanted and want
to be liked. Talk as necessary, but never just
to chit-chat. Crack the whip of feline fury as
you wish. Keep the blades of your four feet sharp
and retracted like long-held resentments. Let
your soul's motor idle and strum the taut cord
of your body. No one owns you.

God made you and likes you best. In a world
that's dubious, you are certain. You never
make mistakes. You are entitled to what
you want; otherwise, why would you want it?
No matter what else you may be undertaking,
never be reticent to stop and groom yourself,
for you are superb, and self-maintenance
doubles as self-admiration. You are a cat,
a form of beauty that enters stealthily,
naps, and agrees to be admired. You
are a cat. Everything is as it should be.


Hans Ostrom
Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Folk Music

Folk Music

Some strumming sums up sundown,
down on the brown bank by a riverside--
be it banjo, guitar, mandolin--or
some kind of eerie zephyr overloaded
with the recently departed. "How did it
get started--this music?" Good question.
Save it for later. Now we must listen
to thump, pluck, and twang, above which
is sung a rough, melodious tale. The song
roots us to a plowed heritage, a furrowed
alluvial communal pain, a bedecked extravagance
of crops, and fatal work. Yes, we must drop
what we're thinking and listen for and under
a spell, hear harmonies swell against apron,
shack-wall, levee, and archive. The instruments
are made of wood. So are the trees. The songs
are made of air. So is the wind. The people
are made of memories. So are the songs,
the folks' songs.

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Wary Souls

Wary Souls

The soul enters
a public realm,
so soon becomes
the fool

by feeling it
must say or do
too much--dance
with Rule,

court Expectation.
Pride-inflation
balloons the soul,
who abhores

but can't elude
the puffery patrol.
Relentless baiters
of the soul,

ubiquitous louts:
shame on them.
Godspeed to those
souls who can

remain intact
and self-contained--
looking out of eyes,
sensing what is wise.

Wary souls--
seen them?
I have. They
wait and watch.

I watch and
wait for them
to exemplify for
me a better path.


Copyright Hans Ostrom 2008

This and That

Is there a large American media-outlet that can still practice worthy journalism? I doubt it. The NYT--either by choice or through incompetence--promulgated Bush's nonsense about about why we should invade and occupy Iraq. Tonight, CNN characterized Scott McClellan's "revelations" (Bush was more interested in propaganda than truth!) as a "bombshell." I can't wait for tomorrow's report concerning the fact that rain comes from clouds. . . .

. . . .Has anyone explored the possibilities of lunar power? Before I concede that I'm a lunatic, here's what I mean: the gravitational competition between Earth and Moon yanks the oceans around, creating huge forces of water that are not unlike the forces of water in dams. Why couldn't some smart engineers come up with a design for under-water turbines, strategically placed at, say, the Tacoma Narrows?

. . . .I'll need to be convinced that Obama can beat McCain. I know he beat Clinton, but McCain's campaign may be even more competent than hers--imagine that. And so far, I can't name one state that "voted" for Bush that won't vote for McCain.

. . . .I do wish someone would ask McCain and Obama who their favorite poets and novelists are. I realize there are four or five million more pressing issues out there, but I think the answers would serve as an ink-blot test.

. . . . .Tomorrow I'm going to hear a lecture by an expert in Science, Technology, and Society; by a biologist; and by an archaeologist who specializes in Holy Land digs. The topic is "Creation and Science." The Jesuits perceive no tension between humankind's science and God's creation, nor do I. For the sake of argument, let us assume that something, some force, created what is. Scientists study what is, or at least what they think is. What's the problem? I do not subscribe to the "intelligent design" "theory" because it is anthropomorphic. What we deem "intelligent" must seem moronic to any entity more intelligent than we are, including God. There's a good chance we are, at best, the rubes of the galaxy, if not of this sector of the universe. After all, we have fouled our nest. Not even birds do that.

What I'm Reading Now

Not that you asked, but here's what I'm reading (and I usually have 5-6 books going at once, a practice that drives some people with different reading habits figuratively crazy):

The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day's autobiography--of interest to those wanting to know more not just about her but about radical politics in the early 20th century (socialism, anarchist-movements, organized labor, "distributism," anti-war movements, etc.), the Catholic Worker movement, whether politics and religion can intermingle effectively, women and religion, working-class life in Chicago and New York City, and the progressive/populist strain in Catholicism. Oddly enough, Day experienced the great S.F. earthquake, although she and her family were living in Berkeley, so their home wasn't destroyed. Apparently, the quake-proper lasted over 2 minutes. Of course, animals felt it coming as early as the evening before, she and others report.

Early Christian Rhetoric, Amos Wilder--older brother of Thornton.

The Beggar, by Naguib Mahfouz--Egyptian novelist, winner of the Nobel Prize.

The Walls of Jericho, a novel by Harlem Renaissance writer Rudolph Fisher. This partly for work, as I agreed to write an article on Fisher.

Selected Poems, A.R. Ammons. He was born in North Carolina but is associated, too, with New England. Free verse, but highly attentive to sound; rooted in everyday life, as W.C. Williams's poetry is, but Ammons strays from imagism and often writes tight little conceptual or meditative poems. I rather like this philosophical aspect of his poetry. He's also a master of very short poems. He can be whimsical, like cummings.

My books were finally paroled from storage, but they are in a half-way house situation--still sitting in boxes, awaiting the construction of shelves. More slowly than the tortoise, I'm cataloguing them on LibraryThing.

That's my bookish update. I'll leave you (or someone) with an epigram from Oscar Wilde: "A cynic knows the price of everything but the value of nothing."

More Epigrams

Epigrams are satisfying to try to write also because they are free-standing assertions, the rest of the essay having disappeared or never materialized. This situations is quite pleasing when one wearies of encumbering his or her opinions with evidence. Sententiousness Lite! I do encourage you to write epigrams, of which there cannon be an over-abundance.

Some additional epigrams:

1. No one has ever said to me, "Your Majesty, I beseech you"; what a curious oversight.

2. There are no beautiful cities.

3. It's no accident that we haven't heard much about Pavlov's Cat.

4. If regret were the same as repair, I'd feel better about the past.

5. The Earth is a function of the sun, which is an obscure star, so let's not get ahead of ourselves.

6. Destiny is a manifestly melodramatic concept.

7. Hope is one way wisdom expresses fondness for folly.

8. Reason is like a long, well mapped road. We should take it as far as it goes but know it will stop; then we must rely on something else.

9. Poverty is hell.

10. Evil is inexplicable.

11. Memo to self: You are here because some people were generous and other people were mistreated; therefore, you should be thankful and mindful.

12. A cold night is nobody's friend. A mild evening is nobody's enemy.

13. Receiving an award is a way in which one's obscure future tricks one's gullible present.

14. If, in a stressful situation, you don't know what else to do, then drink some water, eat some food, and take a nap.

15. Atheists should have enough faith in atheism not to try to convert believers.

16. If you feel compelled to smell left-over food to determine whether it's edible, it isn't.

17. Never stand in line to give someone money.

18. If in doubt about your behavior, tell the truth and then apologize.

19. Humility is the temporary suspension of the amnesis that led one to forget he or she is flawed and unimportant.

20. Whatever a cat does is done for a good reason, which is not always apparent to humans.

21. God is everything added together plus one.

22. Grace is the sum that results from adding love to absurdity.

23. Faith is getting out of bed after you have slept and going to sleep after you have been awake.

24. Of course we must seek answers, and of course we must expect that when we find them, they will have changed the questions.

25. A system which demands conformity is not sure about its rationale for being and is probably in flight from its inherent flaws. A system is more likely to adapt and to thrive when it is able to absorb creative tension and the interplay of difference.

Epigrams

I've always liked reading epigrams. Sometimes they're jokes, as in Twain's "Wagner's music is better than it sounds," sometimes they're bits of folk-wisdom ("A stitch in time saves nine"), and sometimes they're philosophical appetizers, as in "Narrative is the art of making time legible," which I think Kate Haake wrote, but I'm not sure--she may have adapted it from someone.

I've long wanted to write epigrams; perhaps very short poems qualify as such. When I have the pithy phrasing ready, the wisdom-part fails me, and when I'm able at least to fake some wisdom, the pithiness isn't there, but I decided to forge on and write some.

Epigrams

1. Most epigrams are too sententious to love but too brief to resent.

2. Epigrams are linguistic actors pretending to be wisdom; they are the bit-players of philosophical drama.

3. A good question is a great gift. A great question is a revelation.

4. Ultimately, competition is tedious, and cooperation is intriguing.

5. Prayer is the art of being still when your mind wants to be in flight.

6. Poetry is a way language plays with humans.

7. All friendships should last longer.

8. All novels could be shorter; even in almost perfect novels, there's at least one extra word.

9. One's name is an accident that feels like an inevitability.

10. If you're illiterate, you can't read this, but you will not have missed anything.

Blog-Map of Sweden

I just found a blog-map of Sweden. What's not to like about that?

http://bloggkartan.se/klick/

I wonder if there's a blog-map of the U.S.

Ecology

It's a bit disorienting for me to witness and experience the problems we--the U.S. and the rest of the world--are having with starvation, global warming, fuel, and poverty.

I don't know exactly why, but I got involved with what was known as the "ecology" movement as early as 1970. By involved I mean chiefly interested: I started doing some reading. Like The Population Bomb. Silent Spring (of course). Ray Dasmann's The Destruction of California. A book called Nixon and the Environment. Oddly enough, a philosophy professor of mine at a wee community college ended up crafting a manifesto for Deep Ecology. His name is George Sessions. He brought ecological thought into a year-long history of philosophy--in 1972. Well done, George. He used an article by Lynn White--called something like "The Judeo-Christian Roots of the Ecology Crisis." Not a terribly popular article at the time, but now, guess what: even fundamentalist Christian churches are interested in the environment.

Then I joined Friends of the Earth, which at the time was considered the more radical counterpart to the Sierra Club. I don't think Friends of the Earth exists anymore. They published a newsletter called Not Man Apart, the title of which is an echo from a poem by Robinson Jeffers. I wrote letters to Congress. I remember sending some money to a project aimed at saving eagle-habitats. The (bald) eagle is doing all right now, but I can't take any credit. The amount I sent in was minute, and who knows whether that project helped at all? One throws some cash into the abyss of time and hopes it helps.

The dire predictions about over-population, over-consumption, bad planning, and laissez-faire economics seem to be coming true. A question I had back then was whether capitalism was compatible with environmentalism. Communism, of course, was no bargain for the environment, chiefly because in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe, it was trying to match the U.S. and the West factory for factory, bomb for bomb. So my question wasn't and isn't a loaded one. I just always wondered how a system driven by the illusion of unlimited supplies, unlimited amounts of land, and "need" where there is no need (I do not anything they want to sell me on TV for $19.95, but wait, there's more) could last in a finite system.

When we first moved to Tacoma, we had to recycle everything voluntarily. We'd load up newspaper, glass, metal, cardboard, and plastic, and take it out to a place near the dump. They paid pennies per pound, and we always had a mock celebration when we'd get a $1.50 for a whole load of stuff.

I am well aware of Jimmy Carter's faults, but I still don't know why the U.S. didn't listen to him about energy. Okay, I do know why the U.S. didn't listen to him. Because he was drowned out by the din of corporations and the advertisers' fondest dream, Ronald Reagan. And because no one likes to plan ahead more than about a week.

When it comes to things like the Civil Rights Movement and a comprehensive fuel-plan, I get very impatient with the theoretical arguments and free-market or states'-rights excuses (respectively, in reverse). In fact, the federal government does need to step in during crises and do the right thing, and people have to let corporations and states know that they, the people, are going to go along with the program. Eisenhower had to send troops to Little Rock. White citizens of Arkansas had to back off and take their lumps.

Somebody needs to set some tough-ass mileage-standards, jump-start renewable energy-sources, and tax the living daylights out of the oil giants to grab back some of that stolen cash and inject it into research, etc. I know the arguments about how "the market is working" to create new kinds of cars and reduce fuel-consumption, but the market never works fast enough, and the market doesn't plan ahead beyond the next quarterly stock-report. If the Saudis accidentally put "too much" oil on the market, the original Hummer would be back on the market, driven by soccer-moms and soccer-dads who can't resist advertising (and who can't park the damned beast). Actually, big gub-ment, as Reagan pronounced it, comes in handy sometimes, for pragmatic reasons. And Reagan himself believed in more big gub-ment than did Carter. Reagan began the gigantic deficits, and he injected billions into the military-industrial complex. He just didn't like things such as unions (workers' right), federal limits on corporations, and stuff for poor and working people.

And so ends a Friday rant.

A Glimpse in Words

One of my favorite detective novelists is Georges Simenon, who wrote many dozens of short, crisp novels featuring the Parisian police-inspector, Jules Maigret, an ursine man who's both methodical and intuitive, who smokes a pipe, drinks beer and liquor, and who often goes home for lunch, for which Madame Maigret has fixed him a chicken roasted with herbs and wine. There's always a believable psychological angle to the plot--usually nothing bizarre, usually something rooted in common human behavior, such as jealousy, envy, or insecurity.

I was reading one of the few translated Maigret novels I hadn't read before--Maigret Among the Rich--and encountered this description of Maigret, who's arrived on the scene of--you guessed it--a murder, but the victim is a well known French aristocrat:

"[Maigret] had to get used to the unfamiliar setting, to a house, to a way of life, to people who had their own peculiar habits, their own way of thinking and expressing themselves.
With certain categories of human beings, it was relatively easy, for instance with his more or less regular customers or with people like them.
With others he had to start from scratch every time, especially as he distrusted rules and ready-made ideas.
In this new case, he was laboring under an additional handicap. He had made contact, this morning, with a world which was not only very exclusive but which for him, on account of his childhood, was situated on a very special level."

I glimpsed just a wee bit of myself in this description--not that I imagine myself to be a detective or French. But I share the fictional Maigret's sense of nonconformity, which is nonetheless encased in apparently conforming behavior. What could be a more conformist job that policing? And yet Maigret has to get used to every new situation--because he doesn't trust "rules and ready-made ideas." He remains something of a foreigner in his native land. Among the rich, he feels especially strange because he's not rich but also because his father worked for the rich. My father didn't work for the rich, but I still feel strange among people who have substantial wealth. Like Maigret, I feel as if I should keep an eye on them to see how they go about things--what their rules and ready-made ideas are. Doing so doesn't make a lot of sense; it's not as if I'm going to live amongst them or be their friend. Nonetheless, a certain wariness seems to be called up by the situation, and I liked glimpsing a representation of that in this description of Maigret. (I also like the fact that Simenon has Maigret think of the people he usually investigates and arrests as his "customers.")

Simenon happens to be a fine novelist, not just a fine detective novelist. But as wildly popular as he is--he's in Agatha Christie's league--his books are an acquired taste. If you pick up one and "get" the comparatively low-key but tautly written approach, you'll want to devour the rest. If not, not. Unlike Christie's books, however, Simenon's move quickly. Simenon doesn't rush, but he doesn't dawdle, either.

Maigret's among my favorite fictional detectives--along with Miss Marple, Sherlock (of course), Kurt Wallander (Henning Mankell's Swedish policeman), Nero Wolfe, Poirot, and Sam Spade. Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone is appealing, as is Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins. Maigret might have a slight edge over them all, in the sense that I never seem to tire of following him around his fictional Paris and other locales, including his drafty office, his cafes, and his bistros. He seems to fit in, but in fact, the world doesn't fit him so well. The world takes some getting used to, in Maigret's opinion.