SURREALISM IN AMERICA AND DONKEYS IN THE HAY

donkey jen

 

 

The last few weeks I've been training myself to hear the misinformation of the day, aka the news, with dispassion. I want to be able to hear American news as unengaged as if it were North Korean news. The part of the news that matters in Washington DC is of no relevance to me. I cannot be a participant in democracy because democracy is over. I enjoy listening to BBC international in the night to hear about events in the African countries. Only because Africa is the only part of the world American news never mentions, except for American military involvements in North Africa. Something the government in Sierra Leone did has the same relevance to me as the latest foothold in the American right wing's takeover of the US government. A few of the democrats are attempting to alert us to what is happening, but I'm thinking most of the democrats have their hands in the same pockets as the republicans. What's really going on is taking place on the top floors of skyscrapers and we the people are the ants crawling inline on the ground. Of course, they can't take us seriously. We, the non billionaires, are the same as ants. Step on them--so what? Scorch them with a magnifying glass--so what? Destroy their economy and take all their resources--so what? Pour gasoline down the hole and throw a match on it--so what? I do like to keep abreast of what is behind a sudden surge in yard sales, selling used clothes on facebook, daycare centers closing. Paying attention to current events I have come to see the people playing the headlines game, keeping their faces on the cover of Newsweek, are ruthless and devoid of caring. They're from the dark side. Their way of life is the dark side. By way of life, I mean consciously bleeding our economy. Why should I give them so much attention?

 

donkey jack

 

 

At Sri Aurobindo's center in Pondicherry, on the southeastern coast of India, the room where the international newspapers are read they call the Room of Lies. Gore Vidal's summation of why we have no history is it is written from diaries, journals, letters, memoirs, all of which are self serving, and newspaper articles, which we all know are inaccurate. 1-2-3-therefore: we have no history. Why do I take it as anything but what it is? The news is a corporate daily soap opera that is bigger business than tv football, basketball, baseball, the works. It's a big money tv show. Corporate news has the stamp of approval by level headed businessmen that have our best interest at heart. Like Godzilla had Tokyo's interest at heart. I haven't paid attention to tv news in so many years that when I see something inadvertently at somebody's house or in a restaurant, I'm stunned. They're not touching any subject seriously. Their haiku brevity telling it in the least words possible with a moving picture of a familiar face, an explosion, an image of military might, is impressive when I listen to the script as a concisely written brief documentary poem. Very well paid script writers work backstage. Headlines and images interspersed with commercials for tires and hyper expensive cars, razors, underarm deodorant with ingredients hardly a computer could spell, a peek-a-boo shot between a hot babe's legs on the beach at Cancun with a guy that lifts weights--they're having a rare, expensive beer. When you don't see tv for a long time, it's as hysterical as Sponge Bob Square Pants. We surely are in a time of surrealism. I think of the Hangover movies. They are Marx Brothers funny, and every bit as surrealist. 

 

donkey jen

 

 

I watch the race with my friends on Sunday, a commercial comes on, the channel is switched to a football game. A commercial comes on, we're back at the race track, or if commercials are still on the race channel, switch to another football game and watch until the next commercial, then back to the race. I have a ball. I don't know what they're watching, but I'm watching surrealism in everyday life. As I let go of the belief system that more is better, I see the surrealism that comes to us through what we call media. I cannot go there. I can, however, see some tv every once in awhile, like looking at an exhibition of surrealist paintings. It's like watching a movie of tv trends of the present. I cannot give myself over to hypnosis by the corporate media listening to them tell me over and over I'm no good unless I have fill-in-the-blank that I can't afford. I don't want it in my mind and don't want it in my consciousness. Last Sunday I chose not to go see the race because I was in a relaxed place and did not want to enter that mind of coercion to buy something I don't want. It's so bad that after a pit stop, the announcer is required to say, "he filled up with Sunoco racing fuel." Sunoco is funding the race with big money and they want the product mentioned a certain number of times per hour. I know it's all business, it's how things are done, we couldn't have the race without it. Sometimes it's over the edge. I see tv as bringing a continuously changing billboard into my home, my quiet space. I'm not filling up my space with noise about potato chips, mattresses, crappy tacos, windshield wipers, cellphones, stuff, stuff, explosions, none of it anything I want. Sunday was a day I did not want that belief system in my head, even as a folklorist observer.

 

donkey jack

 

 

I rested and worried in the bed between spells of sleep about the donkeys in the cold at night, in the cold rain. I wanted to convert small chicken shack to a shelter for the donkeys. Had to tear out a rotted floor I put in at least 25 years ago and a wall. It's not as complicated as it sounds. I borrowed a power jigsaw that cuts through nails easily. Opened the wall up, no problem. Backed the car down to the barn, tossed a heavy, tightly-packed bale of good hay in the trunk, left the lid up and drove up to a place I could throw the bale over the fence and roll it down to the donkey den. Parked the car, went back to the hay bale, cut the twine and opened the bale for the donkeys. Jenny buried her nose in it. I think she'd eaten baled hay where she lived before. She played with it, loosening it with her dexterous lips, ripping out a mouthful to chew on, chewing it like I'd made her day with a box of chocolates, and it was good hay too. I watched her taste it with her first nibbles, assessing the flavor. A smile came to her face and she picked up another swatch and started chewing. Jack acted like this might have been his first hay bale. He may have eaten from round bales before. He approached the hay with some hesitation, needing to check it out. He saw Jenny chewing on it and he pulled out some to chew. He seemed to be discovering the dried grass, unsure how he was going to like it, and it turned out he liked it. I covered the ground in the shed with hay for them to lie down on through cold winter nights and when the weather is bad. I know they like the ground, but I thought a little insulation might help keep the ground from being so cold. They might decide to eat it. They're welcome to it.  

 

donkey jen

 

 

*

NEWS JUNKIE BY CHOICE

     robert motherwell

 

Keeping abreast of current events I'm finding leans me toward a rotten mood. An attitude develops that is in line with learning everything is wrong, nothing aint right. I see that when a slightly left leaning (leaning toward moderation) group of young people put on a demonstration, they get battered by cop "batons" that are very hard sticks for cracking skulls, and arrested, even when they're sitting down. It's irritating that right wing demonstrations where white men carry guns and make an uproar about taking out the government, the police look on in satisfaction that these guys are doing the right thing. Of course. Police like people who want police state. If you're opposed to police state, police hit you in the head with a very hard stick or beat the shit out of you with it. It's like "football hooligans" in the UK cut loose with bronze badges and black sticks. I'm just pointing out one source of irritation for me. The attitude that characterizes the state of mind brought on by listening to news regularly: "You know what burns my ass!" The teabaggers are people who listen to fiction on the Faux channel presented like drama and get themselves all worked up so when they speak, no matter what they say, it comes out with the same attitude of saying, You know what burns my ass! Constantly on a mission to vent about them no-good liberals (others) who like the Bill of Rights and have concerns beyond worrying about guns (penis size).

A few times at the coffee shop when the guys in a small group I'm engaged in conversation with start getting wound up and using this tone of voice that is way too involved in something with too little information, to break the spell I'll say, "You know what burns my ass?" They look at me with suspicion. I hold my hand about waist-high above the floor and say, "A flame about this high." It's light-hearted and makes the point---y'all are getting a little too involved over too little. It breaks the spell. The main reason I like to stop that too-much-engaged talk is it starts sounding like blustery genital insecurity. We all learn how to sound like we know what we're talking about when we're growing up. Everybody has their own style of sounding authentic. I don't like to get going with the attitude that I've got the last word on whatever it is, the hands-on-hips attitude. That comes when I reach the point where I won't be pushed any further. In the first year of the coffee shop an occasional teabagger would get going on a rant. Rant doesn't work in there. The ones partial to rant stop going in after they find nobody else wants to rant and nobody cares to listen to rant. This is one of the aspects of the coffee shop regulars I like. Nobody rants. And it's not all liberals. Rant is a cover up for not knowing what you're talking about.

The odd part is that so many of us are so close to the verge of rant --- the ones of us who pay attention to current events, a better word than news. News we associate with misrepresentation. Current events has as sense of photographable event in time and space. Like somebody drove their car off a pier by mistake and barely made it out alive. Or a certain number of people were killed by a drone strike. They don't tell on the news anymore about drone strikes. Early in the use of drones they told the body counts with pride. Killed so-and-so Taliban top dog sunbathing on the roof with his family. Took out the whole family. Shouldn't have been sunbathing with a known terrorist. The frequency of it started looking bad, the collateral damage (body count) added up to figures that became embarrassing. Now we hear nothing about drone hits, though we know they're going on every day. Paying attention to current events / the news puts this kind of crap in my head. There is so much of it that the interior of my head is an infinite collage of information from the dark side of humanity. We call it what's going on in the world. What's really going on in the world is people working every day at whatever they do, people doing the best they can to get by, people treating each other with decency and respect, people getting along with each other.

A lot of music is going on; radio is full of music. Everybody has their own personal music collection. I'm talking to myself about paying more attention to music than the news. Instead of turning on the news, put on a good cd by Mazzy Star and hear Faith Sandoval sing Fade Into You. It is so much better than the republican assault on democracy to fill my head with. Five Finger Death Punch would be better to listen to than any politician, including POTUS. When I think about it, I regard politicians the lowest form of humanity, yet I focus attention on them every day paying attention to current events. I'd be better off hearing what Carlos Santana had to say with his guitar than the young teabagger, Rand Paul, has to say with his lying tongue. But who do I spend my time hearing? Not Santana. I have several Santana cds. Why am I not putting them in the player? I hear them talk about rape and abortion and vaginas and viagra and every kind of thing between the legs, but never anything from an intelligent mind. So why don't I leave it off and read a biography of Federico Fellini or some Harold Rosenberg essays on abstract expressionism or some Louise Gluck poems? Instead of listening to how a fire killed several people and destroyed property, why don't I put on an album by Patti Smith or Burning Spear or Taj Mahal or Ole Belle Reed? I can pick up a book of poems by Constantin Cavafy that is within reach, or a book of poems by Nelly Sachs, also within reach.

And what do I do? I listen to mostly BBC radio news, American edition, and NPR, hearing about politicians, economy, teabaggers, Sarah Palin, Kansas preachers, Syrian army killing children, Israelis v Palestinians. The Israel lobby shut down journalist Helen Thomas over saying publicly that Israel is occupying Palestine. She was out and gone. I listen to the stories of screwed up white guys killing children. News of the random shootings by white guys in crowds of white people has superseded black gangstas killing black gangstas. Rape is the big news again this week. In place of a tv show called COPS about black guys getting arrested for anything, how about a show of white guys getting arrested for rape and call it KULE DOODZ, soundtrack by the Beastie Boys. Two CNN women reporters waxed all gooey about the two poor teenage boys who had so much promise until convicted of rape. Isn't it a shame those nice boys got such a bum deal. That is the laugh of the week. No mention of the girl. It's a good thing. They'd have probably called her out on being a slut. Admit it, byatch, you liked it. Both women acted like they couldn't imagine a girl not wanting to get poked by every guy at three frat parties. This is the stuff I allow into my head on a daily basis when I have a choice. I could have Murray Perahia playing Goldberg Variations in my own home in a minute, or Steve Reich's Music For Eighteen Musicians. I could be looking at a book of paintings by Robert Motherwell or Kurt Schwitters. What do I do? I listen to the news to hear what's the latest, what's happening, a cold blast of unreality inserted into my own personal reality telling me my world is not real; only the world of deception and money is real.


*      

MO YAN GETS THE NOBEL 2012

       scared orphans, nanking memorial

Today I saw the first disk of a 2disk film from netflix, a BBC nature tv series, 3 one-hour episodes per disk, Wild China. The first disk deals with the Southern Mountains above Laos and Vietnam, tropical forest. Central China, Hunan province, has beautiful mountains. Then western China, the Tibetan plateau and the mountains, the Himalayas and Chinese mountains we've never heard of that have never been explored by any human, inaccessible. We of the west pay no attention to China except as the place everything we buy is made. Cheap labor, militarist society. The video shows how the very most remote people live in those places where the most remote rural people are poor and have least interference from government. The filming of the birds and underground burrowing critters, the insects, the fish, it was an amazement to see what a few photographers good at getting close-up shots could do with a mother monkey carrying her one day old baby, monkeys that live in cold mountains with snow, seeing varieties of animals I've never seen before, like a Tibetan bear with eyes that make its face look like a mask, even a few seconds of seeing a snow leopard. It brought to mind Peter Matthiesson's beautiful book, The Snow Leopard (1978), his search for the elusive snow leopard. The memory of it makes me want to read it again. All I remember of it from so long ago was that I loved it. Sometimes I wonder if Matthiessen might be the great American writer of our time.

I've been reading history of China, have seen multiple films of different times in Chinese history. I don't mean kung fu westerns, but films from mainland China where an art renascence is in progress. For example, today I heard on the news that Mo Yan of mainland China was given the Nobel Prize for literature. I was a bit disappointed the Committee didn't see Dylan having it coming like I do, but have no argument with it going to Mo Yan. A very respectable writer, good to have this attention pointed to him. He's a straight-forward writer, but does not challenge the government to put him in prison. I get the impression he likes to write. The freedom now for writers is almost as free-wheeling in China as here. Mo Yan is one of many in China. He stands out from the rest. At amazon.com is a good list of his novels available in translation. He's been keeping his translator, Howard Goldblatt, busy for several years. Just thinking that in my next lifetime I might enjoy translating contemporary Chinese writing into whatever language I'm born into, maybe Danish. I don't say any of this to forecast next lifetime. It struck me a lifetime as a Chinese translator of beautiful writing would be a good life, fulfilling. It has its agony, of course, like everything else.

In Mo Yan's Red Sorghum, he lets it happen. The rape of Nanking, December 1937, is one of the great atrocities in human history. It's there with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Nazi death camps, Pol Pot, and the list goes on and on without end all the way back to the trees, to the ants. It's what we embodiments of the spirit of life do. I'm recalling my friend Millard Pruitt back in the time the Ayatollah was on tv. His solution to the Iran problem in the late 70s early 80s on tv news and everything else that came up, was universally, "A-bomb em." I sat there and chuckled within, not looking downward at him, but seeing country wisdom, a way of thinking from a place that was outside time until television arrived soon after electricity. A-bomb is television imagination. Change the channel. Zot! End of that one. Knowing he was coming from a way of seeing that was another time, another Age, another century, respecting that, and liking that in him, I said in fun, "If A-bomb em is the answer to every problem around the world, seems like there'd come a time you'd be the only one left." He said, "That'd be all right." A straight-ticket republican and a straight-jacket mind. If he were living, he'd be sending money to Alice's tea party, like he did to Reagan before, and Nixon and Goldwater.

Mo Yan wrote about the rape of Nanking from the inside, from someone telling it who was there seeing it, living through the Japanese occupation after initially mowing down everybody they saw. It was a full military assault on a civilian city inland. It was so bad it makes me feel immense sorrow just it coming to mind without details. I've read about it, seen documentaries about it, seen films made from fictional accounts of it. It's a moment in Chinese history I know fairly well. Couldn't pass a test on it, but sure do have a feeling for it, evidenced by the dampness in my eyes from it just coming to mind. Mo Yan gets down and dirty in it. I mean real dirty. It's not for the squeamish. What I've learned from Mo Yan and other sources of what the Japanese did to the Chinese people of Nanking makes me look at the Japanese a little bit more like WW2 vets I know look at them, men who won't drive a Japanese car. They gave the Nazis a run for the most vicious people on earth championship in their time. It was a blessing for all of Asia that America shut the Japanese military mind down, or possibly redirected it into corporate mind. Nonetheless, Mo Yan writes visually like a movie.

The memory from Mo Yan's Red Sorghum that will never leave my mind, I don't mean I obsess on it, but I'll sure as shit never forget it, is the old man the Japanese soldiers tied to a post and forced the local butcher, the man's neighbor and friend, to skin him alive in front of a big crowd of people gathered to see what was happening. The man whose skin was getting cut off cursed the Japanese with every breath, every curse word and phrase he knew; he cursed them until he expired. The Chinese don't mind getting down and dirty and they don't mind sorrow. Sorrow is a legitimate feeling in Chinese writing, and in Chinese life. They haven't had enough television and prozac etc yet. American writers over the last half century have taken sexual writing surely by now as far as it can go and not repeat itself, the Chinese don't go there in excess. In China, the Sixties sexual revolution passed them by. Some tried it, but the Tienanmen Square incident put an abrupt halt to that thinking. There are more important things going on in China than sex, as dictated from the top down. There is a certain way of looking at what I call the Chinese embrace of sorrow as a metaphor for the dark cloud of militarist rule and continual surveillance from known and unknown directions that hovers over all of China from way back in its history. Like the American pop culture fascination with zombies and vampires as metaphor in a time when the Bank is draining, coincidentally, our energy from our pockets to unaccountable Cayman Islands accounts.

The Chinese have their issues like we have our issues. Their issues are particular to their history as our issues are particular to our history. It's like individually it's our experiences that individuate us. I like reading Chinese writings of this time, fiction, poetry, essays, histories and the subtitles in films as well. China was closed up through the early part of my life. I wondered what was going on there, but didn't know how to find out with a logjam of curiosity backed up, waiting to see if I'd see the day China opened enough to let us see what is going on inside. First, I discovered the film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which pulled me in and made me want to see more. Discovered Zhang Yimou films. Zhang Yimou made a film of Red Sorghum with Gong Li. Netflix doesn't have it. I want to see it. I'll go to amazon soon and pick out something by Mo Yan to read. Or could read Red Sorghum again. It's such a powerful incident in China's history, in China's psyche. It's a story that needs telling and a story that needs hearing. I'm glad Mo Yan won the Nobel, for himself and for China. Congratulations to Mo Yan.

*