Judgment Call

[4 July 2008, 21:40] The boom and pop of fireworks. The expenditure for entertainment. The sound of having fun on the 4th of July in the United States. Disposable income. Human activity. At the same time, tree frogs croak in syncopated harmony. A percussive celebration for all!

72 deg F in Huntsville, Alabama, on this new moon night. I’ve got quiet on the brain. Just finished watching, “No Country for Old Men,” on my new Blu-Ray disc player. Saw, “In Bruges,” last night. Will also watch, “La Vie En Rose,” before returning the DVDs to the Movie Gallery rental store by Tuesday.

Some sort of problem with the right eye – infection, scratch, something. May be from the cat walking across my face last night. Put drops in my eye to keep it moist.

Ate lunch with Ron Smith and Gary Shelton on Wednesday at Dreamland BBQ. The usual esoteric conversation. A possible business deal came up in the middle of our talk, about taking a dead SAIC project and turning it into a commercial venture. Business opportunities abound. The door opens a little but what lies on the other side of the darkened sill? [Take a couple of deep breaths to ponder] We only know when we step through.

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror in the near dark this evening, the only light coming from our 32” LCD TV in the master bedroom. I contemplated the reflection of my hands rubbing together under the water faucet (after 46 years, I realized I tend to rub liquid or solid soap between my palms and not so much rub the end of my fingers together to remove whatever it is I think I wash my hands for), remembering my childhood fear of unknown beings that friends told me come up out of the carpet when the lights went out so that I had to jump from one twin bed to the other in order to turn on the bedroom light when I wanted to go the bathroom and not get grabbed. How much have I depended on others’ opinions of how the world works! As I turned to dry off my hands, I thought about the creatures depicted in Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Last Judgment” and compared the bizarreness of Bosch’s painted universe to the killers in “No Country for Old Men.” I doubt I make this comparison for the first time in human minds and I know others will make the same comparison after me. However, I realized after I dried my hands that though I have met some true lunatics, even those who claim to have seen devils and followed their guidance, I have only televised or cinematic depictions of humans slaughtering one another to show me what devoted psychopaths can do. Soldiers, police and other civilian protection personnel, a type of temporary trained psychopath (brainwashed or even born with the propensity, if you will), have killed other humans in the world around me but not in front of me. Therefore, my stories have lacked maniacal killers. Death comes to my characters through “natural causes.” Why let that be?

My next book, “The Mind’s Aye,” gives voice to a couple of killers. I’ve looked into my collection of thoughts and found an area where the subject of depression gathers dust in a pile of books I’ve read and yellowed copies of recorded conversations I’ve had. Within that collection, a story emerges, showing how depression and suicide, the yang of the body that corresponds to the yin of happiness (or the other way around), without the counterbalancing weight of the conscience, gives rise to externalization of violence to self. I have an expanding outline of the book but the story lacks originality because…well, my life lacks originality at the moment.

I write because I want my conscious voice, the result of subconscious decisions, to take solid form. I write because I see an imaginary boxlike form in front of my mental eye that has no corresponding form in nature. I will spend my whole life trying to describe the shape of the box, the ever-changing surface, and the forces that keep it suspended in mid-air. I project the box’s image out of my eyes and onto this page.

I say “boxlike shape” only because I have the shape of a book in my mind right now. The object morphs constantly, cloudlike at times, a bouncing ball, usually a shapeless blob pushing down on my shoulders and forcing my torso into “hunched-over man” mode.

I finished reading, “The Brothers Karamazov,” a few days ago. My thoughts wandered as I wrapped up reading, pulling bits of Kafka, Schulz and Shakespeare out of the back of my mind as I wondered why the news recently quoted the Chinese president as saying he’s read the writings of Marcus Aurelius over 100 times (or was it Epictetus?). The West reads “The Art of War.” The East reads “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius. Who influences whom in this situation and for what reason? No answer from me – I just expose myself to the news and hear from others what to read. I make no grand sweep of my arm and declare, like Umberto Eco, to have insights to share. I write what I think. Enough. Time for another paragraph.

At 22:43, the fireworks have stopped। The tree frogs keep croaking. I know the liter or so of Pepsi in my system will keep me caffeinated for a long time. I can go to bed and fall into a state of daydreaming, drifting into thoughts of incoherent behavior where the secondary meaning of one word or phrase influences the direction of the snakelike trail my mental storytelling takes.

The secret to my love of technology despite my dislike of the resultant environmental damage such technology causes? I look forward to the day I can plug myself into a machine that will capture my daydreaming so I can turn my thoughts into instant stories. No more conscious editing on the fly due to my slow typing or unwillingness to dictate my thoughts to a voice recorder and pay someone to transcribe my spoken words into typed text.

Yesterday, I saw the movie, “WALL-E,” with my wife. The movie’s depressing image of the future, with a toxic Earth pushing English-speaking, United States-centric humans into an automated spaceship where their lives turn into Matrix-like vegetative states, foretelling a not-so-distant future for real humans, gave me hope. First of all, I see how the generation behind me looks forward to a more-connected world. With cultures clamoring for attention in the virtual world, innovation will occur. With innovation comes improvement. Secondly, can we squeeze acceptance of others’ cultures into our daily thoughts, too? Absolutely. If so, then perhaps understanding will follow, showing that "survival of the species" can accommodate saving species subtypes.

On this anniversary of one political entity declaring independence from another, I believe the middle class will survive, even flourish, giving the world’s poor something to attain to, providing stability and preventing peasant uprisings in the process.