the dream/the nightmare

Fashion photos ... The Guardian

Irving Penn, Mascara Wars, New York, 2001

‘Companies spend millions of dollars developing breakthrough technology, and we were reporting on the latest “mascara war” between two of the giants,’ Posnick recalls. ‘The model’s eyes were closed for two hours while Penn photographed every possible variation... He had a picture that wasn’t especially exciting or memorable, but there was nothing that he hadn’t already tried... Our model opened her eyes, and I saw that they were completely bloodshot. Penn said, “Don’t move.” He did just two or three more exposures. Here was the shock that was missing’

Photograph: Irving Penn/Condé Nast

Steven Klein – Horse Pool Windsor, Connecticut, June 2005

Another frequent collaborator is Steven Klein, the photographer best known for his work with Madonna and Lady Gaga

Photograph: Steven Klein

selfishness

Of all the human burdens, selfishness is the most irksome.

And if you don't believe this, then please, choose another and use that.

elector to withhold vote for Trump

This is old, but I missed it and thought it was worth the price of admission since listening to author Christopher Suprun speak on the car radio earlier today: He sounded like someone who cared about the country he and I share:

DALLAS — I am a Republican presidential elector, one of the 538 people asked to choose officially the president of the United States. Since the election, people have asked me to change my vote based on policy disagreements with Donald J. Trump. In some cases, they cite the popular vote difference. I do not think presidents-elect should be disqualified for policy disagreements. I do not think they should be disqualified because they won the Electoral College instead of the popular vote. However, now I am asked to cast a vote on Dec. 19 for someone who shows daily he is not qualified for the office.

Is it a useless gesture? I would say not. Trump will be president, I suspect, but the country will be left begging as a result.

another day

A snippy-snappy day in which newscasters, who no longer have budgets that would allow for news casting, are predicting increasing cold, petty crime and bureaucratic plans for which the money has yet to be ponied up.

How I wish someone would take these broadcasters into some back room and lay a belt against their back sides:  There is no knowing the future and talking about it as if it could be known is an abdication of responsibility. How I wish someone would simply draw the line and say, "yes, human beings are important and their doings deserve investigation that is factual and thoughtful. It will never be complete, but that incompleteness is an aspect for which decent newscasters assume responsibility."

"I choose THIS story ... not THAT one. I may be wrong. Being wrong is not so bad." Running away into a future that cannot be known is chickenshit.

But of course they are well-dressed, talk loud, have unimaginative vocabularies, and display flashy tits.

It's the money, honey.

Bashar al Assad, U.S. ally

Though I haven't got the energy or brains to parse it, my sense is that the United States has sold out to its former arch-villain, Syrian president Bashar al Assad and has decided to stand aside as so-called rebels and civilians are massacred in Aleppo, Syria's second largest city. The slaughter may rank historically with the 1994 genocide once witnessed in Rwanda. Everyone seems to look back in anguish at that slaughter, but the anguish is for the dead and not, as in Aleppo, for those still, somehow, living.

Does the U.S. hope to escape a charge of complicity? Of course it does. But can it? I seriously doubt it. And having Bashar al Assad as an ally is ... unspeakable. Out-of-hand executions, gas attacks, no mercy.

Rebels groups have been supported by the United States, Turkey and Gulf monarchies, but the support they have enjoyed has fallen far short of the direct military backing given to Assad by Russia and Iran. [Reuters]

The US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, told the security council that the Syrian government, along with Russia and Iran, bore responsibility for the deaths of civilians in Aleppo. She accused the three states of putting a “noose” around civilians in the city, asking: “Are you incapable of shame? … Is there no execution of a child that gets under your skin? Is there literally nothing that shames you?” [The Guardian]

 Of course knicker-twisting does little or nothing. And a lack of principles deflates still further a nation awaiting the inauguration od Donald Trump as president.

Before the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, there were numerous assessments/projections that suggested that an end-game scenario needed to be formulated if the Middle Eastern arena were not to fall prey to sectarian in-fighting. Well, in Iraq and elsewhere, there still is no end-game scenario and the infighting, as promised, flourishes.

I can't pretend to know the answer or even AN answer. But I do have a strong sense that with friends like Bashar al Assad -- and possibly Donald Trump -- who needs enemies?

buying and selling the U.S.A.

NEW YORK (AP) -- President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday he has picked ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to be secretary of state, calling him "among the most accomplished business leaders and international deal makers in the world."

"Rex Tillerson's career is the embodiment of the American dream. Through hard work, dedication and smart deal making, Rex rose through the ranks to become CEO of ExxonMobil, one of the world's largest and most respected companies," the billionaire real estate mogul said in a pre-dawn news release from Trump Tower in New York.

Tillerson "knows how to manage a global enterprise, which is crucial to running a successful State Department," Trump said. In a tweet, Trump added that Tillerson "has vast experience at dealing successfully with all types of foreign governments."

As far as I can see, there is not a word in the story about Tillerson's diplomatic capacities except to the extent that dollars-and-cents deal-making and diplomacy amount to the same thing. The mercantile cheesiness of Trump's would-be Camelot makes me wonder -- is there anything about this country that Trump loves? As far as I can see, it's "the price of everything and the value of nothing" that motivates him and many of his down-on-their-luck supporters probably agree: Fuck principle -- I'd like a little filet mignon myself!

Can anyone imagine Tillerson or his ilk making America "great again" for those most in need of a job or a bit of security? What principle(s) do men like Trump and Tillerson adhere to? Trickle-down economics? Trickle-up wealth? The little guy is going to get fucked -- again -- if I had to guess. Trump will find someone else to blame.

It feels pretty slimy. The 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings echo faintly in my mind: "Have you no decency, sir?"

Santa despite the clothes

A US man who dresses up as Santa Claus fulfilled a dying boy's Christmas wish by visiting him at his bedside, before the youngster passed away in his arms.

Eric Schmitt-Matzen rushed to a local in Tennessee hospital after receiving a call about a terminally ill five-year-old boy who wanted to see Santa Claus.
The 60-year-old impersonator said he gave the child a present and a big hug before holding him as he died.[BBC]

snow day

First demonstrable snow of the season -- five or six inches -- and I wonder if elephants wish they could walk as silently as snow flakes. I have always wanted to be able to walk like an elephant, so perhaps the thought is not that weird.

The boys are out arguing with the snowblower -- a crafty and luxurious machine that is a bit logy after a season out of commission. So far, the machine seems to be getting the better of the argument.

The air is raw and, in writing this entry, I am sidestepping a column I would like to write, but for the moment seems too ephemeral to get my hands on. The impelling line is "some things are more important than equality. Love and friendship are two of them." I have the incident in mind -- the one on which I would like to make the case -- but its impact in my gut is hard to transfer to the page. So I waffle between the impact within and the mediocrity of delivery it might induce or ... shall I just pick an easier topic?

If I whine long enough, maybe the Column Fairy will descend and wave her twinkling wand.

the bullshit of "multi-tasking"

How many job applicants are encouraged to be good multi-taskers by the companies hoping to hire them? Are those companies hiring the dummies at the expense of good employees and then bemoaning the results? As Forrest Gump's mama observed, "Stupid is as stupid does." It's probably important to pinpoint who, precisely, is stupid in this equation.

Multitasking “produces shallower thinking, reduces creativity, increases errors and lowers our ability to block irrelevant information,” says Dr Sandra Bond Chapman, founder and chief director, Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas, via email. Because the brain was not built to multitask, over time it can lead to heightened levels of stress and depression and lower overall intellectual capacity, she says.
Yet despite mounting evidence that multitasking isn’t effective, old attitudes combined with new technology make juggling prevalent in most work places. [BBC]

how would Stoicism fare today?

Stoicism is a school of philosophy which was founded in Athens in the early 3rd century and then progressed to Rome, where it became a pragmatic way of addressing life’s problems. The central message is, we don’t control what happens to us; we control how we respond.
The Stoics were really writing and thinking about one thing: how to live. The questions they asked were not arcane or academic but practical and real. “What do I do about my anger?” “What do I do if someone insults me?” “I’m afraid to die; why is that?” “How can I deal with the difficult situations I face?” “How can I deal with the success or power I hold?” [The Guardian]

a pardon for Edward Snowden?

Edward Snowden has been the subject of several high-profile appeals this year, calling on Barack Obama to pardon the National Security Agency whistleblower and allow him to return home to the US. Writers, intelligence experts, film stars and tech tycoons have all Now the most audacious display of support for Snowden is under way. Messages calling for his pardon are being beamed on to the outside wall of the Newseum, the Washington institution devoted to freedom of speech and the press that stands less than two miles from the White House.

jailing the least dangerous

A quarter of the US prison population, about 364,000 inmates, could have been spared imprisonment without meaningfully threatening public safety or increasing crime, according to a new study.

Analyzing offender data on roughly 1.5 million US prisoners, researchers from the Brennan Center for Justice concluded that for one in four, drug treatment, community service, probation or a fine would have been a more effective sentence than incarceration....

The Brennan Center calculates that this could equal a cost saving of $20bn a year, greater than the combined budgets of the US departments of commerce and labor.

"cult of personality"

Swimming up from the eddies and depths of sleep, it occurred to me that if there were a tailor-made descriptive for U.S. president-elect Donald Trump, it would be "cult of personality." In my mind, it was bang-on for a short-and-sweet, let's-not-waste-our-breath-on-this-topic summing up.

It was bang-on and yet a closer examination of the phrase exuded fragility and blurred edges. What was the difference between charismatic leadership and self-anointing raiment?

The terms "cult of personality" and "personality cult" were further popularized by Nikita Khrushchev's initially secret speech On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences given on the final day of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, February 25, 1956, which criticized the lionization of Josef Stalin.... -- Wikipedia

Of course the meaning, if not the words, spread further back into history. Perhaps every (wo)man is his or her own cult of personality, whether in subtle or in gross, so bad-mouthing the one and leaving the other unscathed reflects more on the source and less on the object of that source's observations.

When "cult of personality" is positive, everyone applauds. Viewed negatively, people get shot or hanged. And still, for all the parsing and poking, "cult of personality" strikes me as fitting Donald Trump right down to his bourgeois puttees.

He loves nothing and he'll sell it to you all day long.

I had a Zen teacher like that once.

cell-phone revenge fantasy

Passed along in email:

Trump du jour

Passed along in email:

postmortem art

"A new exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum recalls a time when portraits were seen as a way of remembering and celebrating life outside of mere memory."

city of love, city of rats

Ah, la citéde l'amourappears to have suffered a couple of setbacks  

1.'When Parisians are literally tripping over rats on the sidewalk, it is clear that the City of Light has a problem." and 

2. "With more and more asthmatic children needing hospital treatment in Paris amid an exceptional bout of pollution, France's government is putting medics on alert and warning residents to limit outdoor activity over the weekend."

shut up

A little silence never hurt anyone and so, as an early Christmas present, it might be nice to take a moment and just shut up. I don't mean some new and improved and goopy activity: I mean personally, in a time when no one is looking ... when, in fact, even you aren't looking and chewing and digesting and protesting and extolling and relaxing and improving. Just shut up. Literally. For a literal minute. Shut ... up.

I don't know about you, but for me, these are times that feel like a case of national rug burn. Volume has replaced veracity and, even when I am not discussing or dismissing the arguments of others, still there is a sense of discomfort in my mind. Common decency dwindles as the president-elect issues some new round-house edict that lacks supporting evidence. The delight of one persuasion is dependent on the discomfort of another. The ills are real enough, but the raucous anger seems to find no rest or reprieve.

My friend Dave sent me an email: "I don’t get it.  The state of being angry is almost considered a badge of honor by many – an emotion one should aspire to. But when I was growing up, I was taught that anger (though we all experience it times) is a negative emotion and that angry people were not to be admired or emulated."

Everything is for sale. Honor goes begging. Is this my country? Is it yours? Discussions that begin as sharing and caring and all the other nice words shudder and slump into something akin to my-sorrow-is-more-sorrowful-than-yours. Or, alternatively, my-joy-is-more-joyful-than-yours. Words like "Marxist" or "socialist" are hurled, yet there is little evidence that anyone might be willing to investigate their actual meanings. And the volume increases, even when there is no one there to listen. Even when there is no one listening, still I am forced to listen to myself.  

In general, I dislike relying on the words of others as a means of expressing my opinion. But today, I will borrow the words of Max Ehrmann's 1927 "Desiderata," which encourage a politer form of my sense that shutting up and letting the silence have its say is a good idea. Anything -- anything at all -- can happen in the silence.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

One minute.

Shut up.

What's that like?

"Welcome to the Age of Anger"

Thus far this morning, I have been immersed in an article in The Guardian entitled "Welcome to the Age of Anger." ("The seismic events of 2016 have revealed a world in chaos – and one that old ideas of liberal rationalism can no longer explain.")

Of late, I had pretty much sworn off Donald-Trump-linked hair balls of analytic thought, but the willingness of the article to take a look at both liberal caterwauling and conservative triumph -- and to look beyond the easy I-can-explain-that's -- kept sucking me deeper and deeper into the article's maw... people of good will infused with viciousness; people of viciousness veined with good will....

People are people first and intellectuals or red-necks, atheists or believers, infuriated or joyful only later. The arrogance of leaving out the people when discussing the "voters" has made my teeth itch.

This is a hell of an article, even if I have to concede the author is smarter than I by miles. It's a long, long article by Internet standards and it is probably far from perfect, but there was enough there to force me to say it felt like something closer to the truth.

Anyway ... that's how I've been spending the last hour.

why did god create man

For the godly in the crowd, why did god create man?

By whatever definition or parameter accorded to god, why create man?

Was it boredom? Was it the fact that no one had invented video games?

And to those who would stroke their luxuriant beards and say that the question is "imponderable -- don't waste your time," the obvious follow-on is that if you can't/won't answer that one, how could anyone prattle on and on about the other prattling stuff that follows in the wake of man's creation?

Somewhere, there must be a tale of sorts to respond to this question, but I can't remember it.

And if there's a tale to tell, did god make it up or did man?

I'm only half-kidding about any of this. It's kind of weird in my head at the moment.

having children ... NOT

The other side of the coin ... or, perhaps rather, the point at which heads and tails intermingle and wonder is no longer a bright and shining star but rather a dust storm with bright spots or a bit of wheat within the undeniable chaff. Having children is, if you listen to the whispers, a "blessing" that, ipso facto, cannot be gainsaid in social settings. There is no room for "but," and yet any parent who has taken the trouble to be a parent has slammed into the "but" wall. Rituals shudder where "buts" assert themselves. And yet, without the "buts," how honest could anything be? Is ritual more important than honesty? I don't know.

French author Corinne Maier has two children but can't wait for the youngest to leave home, saying they have left her "exhausted and bankrupt".

Her attack on "idealising parenthood" struck a chord with many mothers and fathers around the world. Here are some of their comments - followed by the responses from others who completely disagreed.

Perhaps some TED talker will come up with an oleaginous, one-size-fits-all approach to all this, but I have a feeling that the bottom line is simply learning to live with the I-don't-knows. Good, bad, having kids, not having kids ... it's nice to air the laundry, I think.

PS. And associatively there is a study:

The regular use of Caesarean sections is having an impact on human evolution, say scientists.

More mothers now need surgery to deliver a baby due to their narrow pelvis size, according to a study.
Researchers estimate cases where the baby cannot fit down the birth canal have increased from 30 in 1,000 in the 1960s to 36 in 1,000 births today.

ignorance/knowledge

As is her occasional wont, Janet sent out one of her multiple-recipient quotes from her late husband Isaac Asimov yesterday and I was on the list:

There is a cult of ignorance  in the United States, and there always had [sic] been.  The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge”.

Given the on-going horror/anger/surprise/anguish/outrage/delight over Donald Trump's winning of the 2016 presidential race on Nov. 8, the quote carries with it a series of up-to-date barbs from one point of view. Without getting terribly specific, Trump's stream-of-consciousness campaign volume dissed a great deal of what the intellectually-inclined held dear. Women, immigrants, outsourcing of jobs, racism and a host of other issues were just the surface of what he was willing to trash. Never with much intellectual specificity, mind you, but with enough so that a lot of people just knew what he meant. Hard-working, church-going, health-care strapped, three-job-holding Americans had had enough.

For some time, I have felt that drugs has skewed the activities of the ignorant ... and the smart ... but slowly it becomes clear that blaming drugs is too easy:

US police have arrested a man wielding an assault rifle who entered a pizza restaurant that was the target of fake news reports it was operating a child abuse ring led by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her top campaign aide.

Also worth considering is the sensitivities [enforced ignorance] of ....

"To Kill a Mockingbird" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"  have been suspended from the curriculum in some Virginia schools, after a parent complained about the use of racial slurs.

But back to the quote: I find myself not quite convinced: On the one hand, ignorance can be unspeakably cruel, confining, consoling ... and just plain dumb. I find it unspeakably stupid, for example, to dislike a person just because of his or her color or sex and that stupidity deserves a slammed door from where I sit. I also find it pretty damned dumb to deny history.

And yet the quote would not resonate, I suspect, if those laying claim to intelligence didn't sometimes smugly overlook the ignorant and less-fortunately endowed. Kindness is lovely ... if you can afford it, if the kids aren't hungry, the bills unpaid.

No, "ignorance" is not as good as "knowledge," but it is a knowledgeable person who is likely to know this. It is the knowledgeable who must learn to exercise the patience and courage to turn back to the tide of ignorance. This means education and a certain comfort level. The knowledgeable get tired of saying "no" and the ignorant get tired of being said "no" to.

Never mind ... I'm losing the thread of this argument. I guess maybe smug-dumb and smug-smart both make my teeth itch.

Color me Dumbo.

snooker champion

An entire news story, as near as I can see, in which the winner was lauded and the play extolled but the name of the game went utterly unmentioned. A lot of sports writers seem to take that liberty, which makes me wonder why they should consider themselves adequate news writers.

Not until the commentary at the end of the story did I learn:

Former world champion John Parrott on BBC Two: "That was one of the finest games of snooker I've ever seen. The evening session really was snooker from the gods. Everything about that match from both players was just stupendous. It's going to be hard to top a final like that this season. It really was that great."

silent monks sing "Hallelujah..."

Passed along in email:

spic 'n' span

Grey day, vaguely crabby....

I guess I wouldn't mind so much if feather-merchant millennials reiterated "it is what it is" if 1. they showed some evidence that they had actually looked into what "it is" or 2. showed come capacity to wash the supper dishes properly. And the same goes for "living in the moment" or the insistence of tacking "artisan" or "hand-crafted" onto shoes, toothbrushes, beer or whatever.

Doesn't anyone else get tired of the fact that a 2x4 is no longer a 2x4 and yet is called with a wave of the laced cuff, "a 2x4?" From my crabby perch, I think of them as "the app assholes." Without electricity, the sense of loss would be enormous.

But never fear ... there's an explanation. Explanations explain stuff, right? And with an explanation in hand, you've got an app. And with an app, you've got...

Another asshole?

Ah well, I'm probably just hungry. How's that for an explanation? Soma here I come.

Why wash dishes when there are dishwashers -- blessings on whose name -- to do the work?

progress in spiritual practice

If there is progress in spiritual practice, you're not doing it right.

If there is no progress in spiritual practice, you're not doing it right.

Of course, I could be wrong about all that.

a blivet of tears

Over a lifetime, I suspect, there has grown within me a blivet of tears filling drip by drop. Last night, watching the news from the war-savaged Middle East, the blivet began to leak and the tears slid down my cheeks. It was all, somehow, just too damned much.

Two 27-year-old young men, each with not much more than a modicum of medical experience, were treating the young children deliberately wounded by snipers in Aleppo. The men, Americans I believe,  knew from the wounds that these injuries had been deliberately inflicted and were not just collateral damage. There were no doctors. There was no anesthetic. Everyone was hungry and frightened. The voice-over informed the TV viewer that this man or that woman had lost a brother. A father kissed his young son's forehead. The boy was petrified.

Both of these young men did what they could. One boy would not lose his leg. The girl shot in the face died despite all best efforts. One young man said that seeing any child die was horrific. He estimated he had seen 200. On the TV screen, the drip-drip-drip mounted and my blivet of tears-withheld bulged until I began to feel the wetness on my cheeks. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, the man whose snipers were at work, appeared on the screen, long and lanky and dressed in a clean suit.

Suddenly I was ravenously sad. No amount of cajoling and consoling helped. I was crazy with sorrow. I didn't care that my self-serving anger and sadness went nowhere. I didn't care that few if any problems was ever solved out of an emotional vortex. I could no longer hold it together. This was vile. Screaming went nowhere and nowhere claimed the scene. Was I indulging myself or was it simply that not-indulging-myself was no longer an option?

As a news reporter, I had always did what I could to put sympathies to the side, to stuff them in a tear-filled blivet because sympathies and screams clouded any possible solution or resolution or diminution of whatever latest hell presented itself. Get the facts, stuff the reactions. In the hellish heat, cool the atmosphere.

But last night, somehow it was all too much. I was a Donald Trump supporter sick of filling my blivet so that others could proceed with creating the conditions that filled that blivet. Two young men doing what they could in the face of conniving and well-dressed forces ... a part of me roared, "SHOOT THE FUCKERS!" Fuck the dignity of silence and perseverance and holy-roller serenity! Please, please, please don't tell me how you would fix it!

But it was all going nowhere and I knew it. The boy would not lose his leg. The girl died. The two young men did what they could. Few if any cried on the TV screen and I sat there crying, raw as a popped blood blister ... and woe betide any asshole who tried to conjure solace. It was all too much. How do you say "no" in a world where no is no-where near the mark?

I am reduced to tears. Is that better or worse than being reduced to understanding?
 

high-schoolers recreate price-gouged drug

A group of Australian high school students have managed to recreate a life-saving drug that rose from US$13.50 to US$750 a tablet overnight after an unscrupulous price-hike by former hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli.
The Sydney Grammar students reproduced the drug, Daraprim, used to treat a rare but deadly parasitic infection, in their high school laboratory with support from the University of Sydney and global members of the Open Source Malaria consortium.

Business being what business is in the U.S., it wouldn't be legal to sell the Australian students' product in the U.S. without going through a lot of ... uhhh.... business hoops.

psychedelic salvation

Is that Timothy Leary I see dancing in the streets?

NEW YORK (AP) -- The psychedelic drug in "magic mushrooms" can quickly and effectively help treat anxiety and depression in cancer patients, an effect that may last for months, two small studies show.

It worked for Dinah Bazer, who endured a terrifying hallucination that rid her of the fear that her ovarian cancer would return. And for Estalyn Walcoff, who says the drug experience led her to begin a comforting spiritual journey.

The work released Thursday is preliminary and experts say more definitive research must be done on the effects of the substance, called psilocybin (sih-loh-SY'-bihn).

When I was reading some book about the magic of psychedelic drugs and asked my then-shrink, Jack, why I couldn't just down a tab and skip over all the talk sessions we were going through, he kept a straight face that would have done the Las Vegas poker championship proud. Gently, but firmly, he steered me away from the notion of magic bullets.

The upside of epiphanies is that they lay out the potential for a wider vision. The downside is that where there is no capacity or muscle to digest the discovery, a bad-trip sense of failure can enter and fester. I think Jack's point of view was to proceed patiently and deliberately to build the foundation on which an organic understanding might be nourished. A wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am opening, while enticing, was just too iffy by half.

The key phrase in these discussions of psychedelic-drug-use is "under proper circumstances." The trouble is that the people relying on such reasoning imagine such circumstances can be controlled. Sometimes they can. But equally, sometimes the psychedelic takes control and outstrips the capacity of the reasoning and reasonable controller... let alone the patient in question.

But it is interesting, in an age of Facebook and texting and other quick fixes, to see Timothy Leary back in the running. The pain and confusion of psychological black holes are real and compelling. The longing for a Tooth Fairy is compelling.

Compelling ... and then there's the question of what actually works.

men and women

Dandling my toes lightly in some speculative pool, I think...

Men concern themselves with imagination, with parkour and with chaos. Women are concerned with no-fucking-around lullabies although, living as I do in a town that concerns itself from time to time with raucous sexual assertions, it's probably well to remember the fact that it is the female lions who do the serious, slinking hunt and kill.

No one ever gets all of the kudos, which is probably reason enough to put all kudos on the back-most burner.