Permanence

H. Rap Brown (in case you didn't know)

The baby boomers for whom concepts like Trilling's Liberal Imagination were as immovable as the Pyramids or Angkor Wat--are witnessing the demise of the humanistic project. Seemingly overnight they awakened into a Brave New World,  it's Soma, SSRIs and a host of Benzodiazepines such as Klonapin which are as available and ubiquitous as toothpaste and "as American as cherry pie," to quote H. Rap Brown. Where have all the flowers gone? Indeed, it's like the dream of the old professor in Wild Strawberries, in which he enters a town in which the legends above storefronts are written in an indecipherable script. Goodbye to All That is the title of the famous Graves book about the loss of another way of life--in the wake of the enormous casualties following World War I.  Humanism is dying in obscurity. One doesn't need to ponder the potentially destructive effects of AI. Indifference is the killer. There's a whole world of it, a black hole and juggernaut that sweeps away the past and anything else that gets in its way.

Read "The Great Bonac Footrace of '83" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Empress Traveler

Inside Geneva's Large Hadron Collider

The micro and macro worlds are pleasant places for a vacation. If you're lucky, you may even achieve quantum entanglement with the body of your choice. Neither are a stone's throw from the visible universe with its joys and sorrow. Kepler planets which a spectral analyses reveal to evidence carbon  (a sign of life) are 1200 light years from earth. That's a 365x24x60x60x186,000 mile journey. Climb into your biosphere "Rollin' rollin' though the streams are swollen, keep them doggies rollin'" was the theme song of a 60s TV series, Rawhide. If you're a cow puncher, you're going to have to be patient. Crossing, The Milky Way, though it's only one galaxy, is no  mean feat. On the other end of the scale are the bosons which occasionally make guest appearance in the LHC. Everything must come to an end. When your two weeks of vacation are expended, you're back, a rat on a treadmill, going back and forth between equally elusive failures and successes which dominate your day.

Read "The Great Bonac Footrace of '83" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Hypergraphia

Jack Torrance's typewriter

Hypergraphia is the compulsion to write. One of the known antidotes is rejection, but it doesn't always work. Just as the body rejects transplanted organs, the area between the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus, which regulates the balance between rational thinking and emotion, doesn't always produce a negative response intense enough to prevent the overly avid scribbler from inflicting his or her craft on the world. In fact the DSM-IV makes note of certain neurotransmitters which jump at the shock which may come from a seemingly innocuous phrase such as "we're going to pass on this one."

Read "The Great Bonac Footrace of '83" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Schrodinger's Cat

Schrodinger's cat?

Trump like Orpheus? After all his angry women tore him apart, was he able to sing? The president himself named the pathology affecting his critics, Deranged Trump Syndrome, but it actually derives from the fact that he doesn't stop talking. If you look at the history of MAGA starting when Kelly Anne Conway was Trumps's press secretary, you note that the Gatling Gun is the preferred mode of rhetoric. It's a steady ratatatat which brooks no interruptions. The object, of course, is to beat your opponent up with words. The president looks at debate as an MMA fight of the kind he staged on The White House lawn to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the country. Gaslighting, of course, is one of the figures of speech and it's actually similar to the quantum idea expressed in the parable of Schrodinger's Cat which can exist and not exist in its box, as long as it's not perceived.

Manifest Destiny

newspaper report of annexation of Hawaii in 1898

Manifest Destiny comprises the notion not only of eternal expansion, as we see in the eyes of the current ruler (once president) of the country,  but also of ultimate possibility. In this sense the current incarnation of the concept is a form of romanticism not entirely shy of fascism. the ultimate instantiation of this feeling is the simple Jimmy Cliff lyric "you can make it if you really try." Really? At one point every door must close. Kafka's "Before the Law" is a wonderful embodiment of the reality which underlies all endeavor, and also the delusion of breadth within the relatively narrow window one terms "life."

What If Stormy Daniels Had Said "Yes!"

 

Would she have kept her maiden name or would it have been Stormy Trump? Stormy Daniels or Trump would have been a great escort for Donald when he had dinner with The Oligarchs and even the wily Puta himself. Stormy Trump is the gal you want to have on your arm when you bomb Iran into the stone age.

Rasputin

Rasputin

MAGA conservatives don't like governmental intrusion into their lives, unless of course it involves abortion. Abortion is allowed since it's viewed by right-to-lifers as murder, even when a woman's life is in danger. Requiring children to take MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) is also looked at as communism or socialism at best. MAGA folks like Social Security and Medicare since they need money to live and can't afford hospital bills. They don't like the taxes that are needed to pay for these social services but they, at the same time, don't seem to mind that very rich people such as the President end up paying no tax at all. It's difficult to understand how they justify this, but remember this is medieval age replete with inquisitions, and conspiracy theories galore including QAnon. In medieval times you had nobles with castles, motes, knights looking for the Holy Grail and huge Mar-A-Lagos and there were Jeffrey Epstein type sorcerers whose reach and influence was everywhere. Rasputin, who was a faith healer as well as Lothario, would have been no competition for Epstein. 

Read "The Great Bonac Footrace of '83" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star