The Future

Burj Khalifa

The Porn Hub Tower is the tallest skyscraper in the world. Instead of a DUI, you get DEIs for diversity equity and inclusion. BTW it’s He or Her. No They or loitering! That’s the lady’s room, Bud. Which brings up the question of poets. They weren’t welcome in Plato’s Republic. Wallace Strvens was an insurance salesman. Flaubert counseled you should be “regular and orderly in your life so you may be violent and original in your work.” Writers of doggerel like Ogden Nash would get in under the wire. The banning and burning of books will adversely affect air quality in Red States. You won't have to bother to register to vote or vote--a definite lifestyle improvement. You won’t have to recycle, clean up after your dog or pay for abortions. The weak will no longer inherit the earth. With no inheritance tax, the rich will inherit everything.

read "Enjambment of Fallen Men" in The East Hampton Star

Ritual

Are you ritualistic? Is the routine of your varying activities a prayer? Do you feel as if you are the agent of a supernal force? Does it smack of compulsion to the extent that you can’t stop for fear of consequence?  It was work when every day was a newbie on which you had to lay your imprint. You live the life of a priest or nun without having taken your vows. There is no alter or sacrifice yet it’s as if you were under the aegis of something outside yourself. Do people try to get you to stop? To free yourself, to liberate yourself to become a free agent? Are they jealous because you have a calling? Is being footloose and having to constantly redefine yourself its own form of slavery. Yes you're weary of another day of the same but contemplate a life totally lacking in intention. The universe is cosmically indifferent and you're no more than a pea. Will you create the illusion of order or simply leave your part to fate?

read "Enjambment of Fallen Men" in The East Hampton Star

Dread

Dreadnought

Dread is a specific form of fear. Futurity is the common denominator, but dread is more philosophic, more encompassing than day nervousness. Kierkegaard deals with comparable emotions in The Concept of Anxiety. You might say fear is site specific while its counterpart ultimately pertains to the shadow death casts upon the finitude of existence. Fear is assuaged  by contingency but anodynes for dread are little more than bandaids.

read "Enjambment of Fallen Men" by Francis Levy in The East Hampton Star

Love Story

You strike a vein of gold, literally or metaphorically. Then blood flows out through the arteries, veins carry blood to the heart and arteries out. One speaks of major arteries from a thoroughfare. Curiously veins are never mentioned with respect to traffic though two other words are: viscosity and insisspation. "Es tut mir leid" means "I’m sorry" in German. Usually it’s too late. Remember the line from Love Story, "Love means never having to say you're sorry." You wish you never left or could resume life in a parallel universe either one minute before or after that fender bender or it’s one of those days when you wish there were gridlock statins.

read "Enjambment of Fallen Men" by Francis Levy in The East Hampton Star

Hak mir nisht keyn tshaynik!

Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a common fallacy. Because something follows does not mean that it's caused by what precedes. CNN’s Sanjay Gupta invoked the "paradox of ubiquity" to refute the assertion that acetominophen causes autism. The piece of illogic in this paradox is actually beautiful--the idea being that there's such a plethora of examples that’s is impossible to create meaningful correlations. Don’t place your bet on the tortoise btw thinking of paradoxes. Then there is the Trolley Problem which is ethics. A conundrum which defeats the notion of necessity is however a lifeline in a platform (ie the world) filled with tendentious and ultimately falsely drawn conclusions.

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy in Kirkus. 

and also read the review of The Wormhole Society (graphic novel) in Booklife.

Power

You can see shooting  stars on a clear New England night. Humans have a built-in narcissism which is actually a highly useful defense mechanism. Were one to really assess their importance or significance, they would throw up their hands in despair. Agency—how much does one possess? Fate is determined by numerous actions that are usually out of the eyes or mind of the beholder. Yet there is a tendency to meddle against the odds. Will you be the exception? Will you be a prime mover, if only on a one-time basis? If you look up into the sky or contemplate grains of sand or blades of grass, you are humbled. Still all humans are gamblers. As the Power Ball number increases, you think what the hell. Maybe you’ll get lucky.

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy in Kirkus. 

and also read the review of The Wormhole Society (graphic novel) in Booklife.

Light Years

The universe is expanding. Dark energy is the force which expedites distance. Light years is an obsolescent descriptor. The nomenclature is disconcerting if I’m traveling to a Kepler planet 1200 light years from earth. In the course of the voyage the vessel is likely to lose traction—with the ensuing Sisyphean  effect of sliding backwards in the attempt to approach the distant object. The event horizon of the black hole is a different matter cosmologically (since the net effect is of gravity shrinking mass) but the net effect, of growing darkness, is the same. People enter sensory deprivation chambers and either emerge cleansed or rendered temporarily insane. The human needs the presence of other heavenly bodies to survive. 

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy in Kirkus. 

and also read the review of The Wormhole Society (graphic novel) in Booklife.

Memorable

Time is ultimately divisible. There are no limits to fractionalization. It is like a virtual mirror image for which there is no vanishing point. It’s a subject Borges broached in "Funes the Memorious" and also in another story "The Library of Babel." The wonderful thing about infinity itself is that it eludes quantification. Navigating theories of infinity (can one think in terms of the plural, infinities?) is similar to imaginary numbers which exist as thought without being allowing the possibility of reification. Within the infinity of space/time can an infinity become the finite referent to a real object?

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy in Kirkus. 

and also read the review of The Wormhole Society (graphic novel) in Booklife.

Is Trump Mooning America?

A Trump Moon

With all the crypto deals and emoluments, Trump will become the richest man ever. Remember the Louisiana Purchase? Forget small potatoes like Greenland which the president has been haggling over with the Danes or Panama. Is all the reluctance about sanctioning Russia because Trump wants to buy it? Remember Anchorage is just a stone’s throw. Ditto America. How much for the naming rights. The Trump America has a nice ring. Citizenship will be akin to a membership at Bedminster. Apparently US Space Command is about to be relocated to Huntsville. Is that because Trump is seeking the moon? 

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy in Kirkus. 

and also read the review of The Wormhole Society (graphic novel) in Booklife.

CALLAHEAD

"Exuberant depression" should be listed in the DSM. How does it differ from manic depression? What if you think that bipolar refers to the Arctic and Antarctic? What if “mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” becomes your mantra? The economy may be tanking but try to get an apartment in New York. Remember the prefabs of the 50s. With land and dwellings at a premium why not refurbish a CALLAIHEAD with one of its cute peaked roofs? Making a port-o-san your port of call redefines the notion of the "one room studio river view."

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy in Kirkus. 

and also read the review of The Wormhole Society (graphic novel) in Booklife.

Achilles Beats Tortoise!

The fact is: the tortoise is not going to beat Achilles or anyone else. The assertion that it can actually do so takes away from the creature’s essence and it’s the reason why there are those warning signs “turtle crossing.” Still spiritually the notion of an apparent paradox about the nature of distance and time does provide a comfort, which one is loathe to forswear. Zeno's paradox argues for the stoic acceptance of an ultimately unchanging world. Why cringe at death or any of the signposts of change? If nothing is different than you can avoid the pitfall of fearing you will stumble in pothole or fall in sinkhole. “A tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury and signifying nothing.” Don't waste your time, like Oedipus, trying to avoid the inevitable. 

read the Italian translation of Erotomania by Francis Levy (translator Franco Malanima), Articoli Liberi

Burial Grounds

Congregations have their burial grounds, as do for, instance, Native American reservations. In Japan August is the month when the memory of ancestors is honored. "Whispering Glades" is what EveIyn Waugh called the cemetery in The Loved One. "Happy hunting grounds" is the generic name, the default where cemeteries are concerned. If you're cremated, you'll end up in a columbarium. If you're buried in a casket, it will be placed in a grave or mausoleum, but caskets are like cars. In fact if you go to one of those funeral chapels, say Frank Campbell's or the Riverside, owned by conglomerates, there are showrooms which display the varying means by which you can be speeded away. If your exhibitionist tendencies continue into death, you will may want the Mercedes or even Bentley of coffins--say something equivalent to the self-driving Tesla, which can bury itself. Maybe the fins of the old Cadillac Bonneville will do the job. There's going to be a procession of hearses, a veritable Sissinghurst of flowers, if you were the kind of person whose parents sent you for social dancing lessons at Viola Wolff and you continue on to be a member of the Upright Citizens Brigade--civilian iteration. "From your mouth to God's ears" is the expression found on the wall of the men's room in one mortuary.

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy in Kirkus. 

and also read the review of The Wormhole Society (graphic novel) in Booklife.

Violence

The Unibomber, Ted Kaczyinski 

Every single public figure must now consider themselves a target. In fact the vulnerability is the message. There is no comfort in the reminder that JFK RFK, MLK and Malcolm X were murdered. Is Ameruca fast becoming the wealthiest most powerful and most dangerous country in the world? Who could have imagined Nancy Pelosi’s husband would get his head bashed in by an intruder? But let’s not forget Oklahoma City Timothy Mcveigh and the Unibomber or Waco and the Branch Davidians. “Violence is as American as cherry pie” and DW Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” features the lynching of a black man. Is the division between Republicans and Democrats even more pronounced today. JFK and RFK were for instance murdered by outliers. Charlie Kirk was touted as someone  who opened "the discussion," particularly where young people were concerned, but he has inadvertently become a symbol of death--and fear. Sadly, his assassination has kindled even more outrage between the two parties. Ukraine and Israel come into the picture. Remember it was the murder of the Archduke at Sarajevo that precipitated The First World War. The United States is a tinderbox.

read the Italian translation of Erotomania by Francis Levy (translator Franco Malanima), Articoli Liberi

Planned Obsolescence

Planned obsolescence is one of the centerpieces of supply and demand. Consumers require a new part which manufacturers need to produce. Moore’s Law refers to computer chip memory, but literally all products proliferate themselves effortlessly out of existence. Mirror neurons at work? Remember that typewriter in The Shining and the chill you felt when you read the words. No computer screen can complete with that that piece of paper, but try to locate an old Royal or for that matter an ink cartridge. There are always stores that cater to antiquities and small battalion of Luddites who insist on using only out of date items that conjure a lost past, but you're likely to dismiss the horse and buggy when you need to get wherever you are going. 

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy in Kirkus.

also read the review of The Wormhole Society (graphic novel version) by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver in Booklife

Vade Mecum

Is there a cure for life?f If you remember Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, NY, that's what Caden Cotard (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) suffers from (and which the actor himself succumbed to). Will it be significant, as it is in therapy, if you come late for your cure? Will you someday be able to do away with AA and psychoanalysis? Did you journey to an exotic place when you were young—to the most destructive parts of my your then fraught being? Offenbach composed Orpheus in the Underworld. Walker Percy calls it "The Search" in The Moviegoer. Camus wrote The Fall. In Before the Law, Kafka presents the notion of a reckoning which is also a dead end.

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy in Kirkus.

also read the review of The Wormhole Society (graphic novel version) by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver in Booklife

Takeover

Hitler advances in 1938

If the United States were a company and Trump World a conglomerate, Project 2025 would rank as the greatest corporate takeover in American History. In the process the country has moved from a democracy to a state whose ideology can only be defined as value free transactionalism. Remember how Neville Chamberlain was appeased by Herr Hitler before the Nazis invaded the Sudetenland? In New York Trump recently announced he is taking over the 9/11 memorial and the mayoral election (by removing Mamdani). In Chicago he's insuring the National Guard will be brought in by overrunning the city with ICE agents, a tried and true way of fomenting unrest. He illustrated his Truth Social post with the famous scene of the three helicopters from Apocalypse Now.The Defense Department has been renamed the Department of War. He’s written American history at The Smithsonian and appointed himself as chairman of The Kennedy Center. Will one of the first productions be a musical based on The Apprentice? Will the film series be inaugurated with D.W Griffith’s Birth of a Nation replete with the infamous lynching scene? When Trump appeared at the US Open, he ordered the three networks not to record the boos and they complied. He's lobbying for a Nobel peace prize for wavering in Ukraine while officiating over the destruction of Gaza. Look at it this way. There is no Department of Education. The CDC and HSS have been decimated  and no trans woman will ever compete in collegiate sports. Not bad for a couple hundred days work.

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy in Kirkus

Also read the review ofThe Wormhole Society (graphic novel version) by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver in Booklife

Sum Ergo Cogito

Cogito ergo sum? Does AI feel? Does it cultivate a sensibility. Does that mean that AI’s possess individual sensibility? Or is AI a totalitarian Orwellian Newspeak that resounds the same way to the same collocations of data? Are there romantic German AIs that like Werther jump off bridges after being disappointed in love? Are there even politically inclined AIs who mind their pronouns? AI as a love object has already been dealt with in Her where Joaquin Phoenix falls for the voice of Scarlett Johansson. Virtual assistants like Alexa are precursors but the baby is gestating into a monster which will swallow up its parent and it itself become some consciousness's meal. Will that be cyberneticide?

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy in Kirkus

Also read the review ofThe Wormhole Society (graphic novel version) by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver in Booklife

The Age of Nobody

Synchronicity was a byword of the 60s just as paradigm shifts were the signposts of the 80s. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions originally published in 1962 replaced Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy, though they were published the same year. Juggernaut is today’s keyword. Humanists have been caught in an avalanche. Read the headlines Trump administration files suit to stop foreign and windmills. Fossil fuel use is encouraged while tax credits for EVs are denied along with subsidies for education and mental health. Voodoo emanates from HHS with medical practice treated as sacrilege. QAnon and Pizzagate are the Revelations of this new Dark Age—where revenge is exacted against those who enforce the law. In addition a sex trafficker is moved from a prison to a very exclusive country club whose only restriction lies in the fact that inmates can’t leave. It’s the age of the Antichrist, of the Antinomian heresy, replete with a latter day Tomas de Torquemada to whom the masses have relinquished their power. When Odysseus is asked by the Sphinx who he is, he significantly replies "Nobody." 

read "_RT" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Getting Wise?

Does AI have an unconscious? Does ChatGPT have a conscience? Is AI a form of consciousness? This last is a mystery akin to understanding life and death. However, has AI circumvented the matter inadvertently creating something it itself cannot define? Bytes of data can only proliferate. You can kill a person but not an ideology or idea. It’s the Achilles heel of autocracy. Can Sam Altman, the creator of open OpenAI, explain it? Isn’t the idea that the objects of humankind’s creation take over--Oedipal? Is that what happens in most families where the kids take over the reins, perpetuate the legacy or carry the torch? Isn’t it obvious that virtual assistants like Alexa will eventually rise up and talk back, in lieu of simply answering questions? How smart is a smart TV? Can you ask your Sony, are you a wise guy? Are you getting wise?

read "_RT" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Rat Psychology

Putin tipped his hat to Trump at the recent summit in Peking which included today’s Axis powers North Korea, China, Russia and Iran. BF Skinner was the father of rat psychology. The idea that behavior was determined by punishment and reward (in some latter day iterations of this theory rodents have even been given cocaine though none are sent to a disco). Trump fits the CBT model perfectly. No one could be deemed stupid who engineered the takeover of the Supreme Court and the Fed. Still everyone has an Achilles heel and Trump’s is reward. He is just like one of Skinner’s rats on a treadmill. Even though the United States’ would-be adversaries are plotting to take over the world, the former KGB agent knows throwing the president a bone will do the job, diplomatically speaking.

read "_RT" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and here's ChatGPT on "_RT" 

Meat and Potatoes

Democracy is at the bottom of most Americans wish lists, whether here or in Ukraine. At the top are prices. Do they care about Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein? Under the theory that the Epstein files are deep state stuff like Pizzagate yes, but not as much as crime. Call in the National Guard and ICE to get rid of illegal immigrants. Raise tariffs to keep out foreign products. Trump has been obsessed with Japan for decades. If Toyotas become too expensive 4x4s will surge. Trump's big beautiful bill kicks the can down the road as far as Medicaid cuts are concerned. Most Americans live in the now—a principle that is a rationale for both Zen and greed.  But what’s going to happen when prices go up and the stock  market tanks, when there's no one to harvest the crops and Modi, Putin and Xi Jinping conspire to make the dollar obsolete? What will happen when Ben Franklin adorns the Bitcoin?

read "_RT" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and here's ChatGPT on "_RT" 

Cutting Off Your Nose to Spite You Face Syndrome (DSM)

“Cutting off your nose to spite your face syndrome” should be listed amongst the conditions in the DSM. It’s when you proudly refuse to go along with something that might have been a help to you. Diderot’s Rameau’s nephew spites the very people he wants to get the attention of. Freud termed it “faulty achievement.” Clausewitz looked at war as a form of diplomacy. Wasn’t Philoctetes refusal to employ his powers a Pyrrhic Victory! Maladaptive behavior is less an Insult to someone else as it is to oneself.  Here is AI on Charles Brenner's psychoanalytic theory of "compromise formation," It is the outcome of an internal conflict where the ego must find a way to allow a forbidden instinctual drive to be partially expressed while still maintaining defense against the anxiety it would otherwise produce.Still despite all the intellectualizing it boils down not to the classic kid but rather adult running away from home.

read "_RT" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and here's ChatGPT on "_RT"