False Dichotomies & Hot Chocolate

P.O.E.

11/11/11,11:11:11 - A Pome by Bloomsday

OnePocalypse greets us with little or no
Fanfare to witness twelve Ones in a row

The Century ends this day just before noon
Another begins before midnight's Full Moon

For those who would greet the auspicious with doom:
Let Century's spells be broken by Bloom

The One is a positive "Yes" in some codes
As "Aye" is employed in those ancient, lost odes

Repeated affirmatives for all eyes to adore
Like Molly's soliloquy'd "Yes" said, times four

And when the numerical festival's done
Remember Dear Luna's first trip 'round the Sun

Is "The Shining" Haunted?

There is a strange, dark feud upon the land.

When a river of blood cascades from an elevator in the Overlook Hotel, is there something else that flops out?   Some mass or object that is fleetingly obscured by the deluge?  This fascinating thesis suggests there is.

Repetitive viewings reveal what certainly looks like a mass at the foot of the elevator door, but that doesn't mean there is one. This video takes the opposing view, that what seems to be a mass or object is not. Instead, it is the blood, itself. Its surface sheen creates the illusion of an object at the foot of the elevator.

Bloomsday, the final arbiter of all things, conveniently asserts that neither side is persuasive.  But the thought that Kubrick thought to put a little subliminal somethin'-somethin' extra in the shot is slightly more entertaining that the thought that he didn't but it looks like he did.

It is worth noting that there's plenty of strange subliminal stuff in The Shining, including a faint word or sound uttered or whispered on the soundtrack multiple times in the film's first hour.  Its first use occurs as Jack passes two columns on his way to Ullman's office.  You'll also hear it several times during their conversation, and a dozen or so times thereafter. You may have to crank the volume loud, but you'll hear it.  This video provides the exact moments the sound appears.

As the blood settles, it may be worth noting that the elevator scene, itself, is placed first in Danny's mind as he talks to Tony in the bathroom mirror.  Could those gaping, unblinking "eyes" above the two elevators staring at the viewer during the gushing horror be witness to a heretofore unnoticed onscreen cameo of Tony?

The Annual "Shaming of the Pumpkin Breaker"

The Metaphysic of Malick

Terrance Malick's "The Tree of Life" has found its way to my fireplace mantle.  It sits there, along side photos of the most important moments - and people - in my life. This is appropriate, since the film, itself, is a survey of such things, delivered with a deluge of profound beauty.

Although it's narrative structure, snapping back and forth between past and present, between memory and imagination, bears little resemblance to cinematic convention, it does resemble our narratives within - facts commingled with fictions, emotions, fears, regrets. It also answers questions that few dare to ask themselves: the hows, the whys.

For those confused by the experience, I'll offer one bit of guidance on the cinematic agenda at hand: listen carefully to the elevator rides.

Twelve Ones in a Row

A coupla decades ago, I started thinking about the odometer of human history, those spinning numbers on western culture's dashboard.  It was years before the 9's rolled over to 0's on our calendar, but I thought long and hard about the end of the nineties and the beginning of the "aughts"; the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first; the end of our second millennium and beginning of our third.

This inquiry was devoid of supernatural numerology or religious fervor or computer panic, but it was, instead, about those things.  I theorized that a kind of mass hysteria would overtake reason as our society felt pushed to the year 2000.

I think it's fair to say my theory was correct: if you haven't noticed yourself as subject to mass hysteria in the past decade or so, then you've probably noticed it in others.  It may be diffuse and hard to define, but like obscenity (and isn't mass hysteria a kind of cultural obscenity?) you know it when you see it.

What never reached my inquiry was a simple question, in desperate need of an answer: When would it end? 


I suppose a significant slice of the hysterical pie chart would say, "With the Rapture, of course." But I was looking for a more reasonable, concrete answer.

I think we have a "prime candidate" for an answer: November 11.  On that day, a second will pass twice that provides plenty of grist for the Stop the Insanity mill.  In the coming weeks, I'll make the case for this theory, here, at The Bloomsday Device, but I'd encourage you to dwell on it, too.

For Our Anniversary: I Hired Wilco to Play our Living Room

Occupy: Clevelandia

For thoses at Moses
Your quadrant is wrong
The tune I'd be singing
is Tom Johnson's song

He sits in North West
amid pigeons and dung
and waits an eternity
for his song to be sung.

The music eludes us
but chanting is sweet;
you'll find all the lyrics
at Tom Johnson's feet.

Robyn Hitchcock Appreciation Week: 9/30 - 10-7

For our anniversary this year, Molly wants to spend a weekend in a glass hotel. I don't care, as long as there's a pool.

Ghost of a Dog

Bloomsday searches his mind for the correct approach.  He silently walks his client out of the chaotic courtroom, filled with anxious people waiting for the judge to appear, down the main hall to a quiet spot near the east windows.  He leans on the radiator and gazes out, down fifteen floors to vast construction site: the Burnham Plan, resurrected.

"I am not judging you," he says.  "But I feel the need to put as fine a point on your situation as I can before the judge sentences you.  I want you to know, I see the effort you've put into your sobriety since we met.  You actually look like a different person, you look like more of a person, and I think you're honest-to-God remorseful for what happened that night. I think you've been transformed by this horrible process.  Right now, I'm a fan of yours.

"But I have to prepare you for this: when your case is called, everyone in the room with think you're despicable.  I believe that we're all more than the worst things we've ever done, but most people in the room will find what you did a sickening display of the worst people can be.

"This is no DUI accident where someone got killed, thank God.  But in one way, it's worse than that.  DUI's are reckless, thoughtless acts. When you beat a dog to death in a drunken rage, you show malevolent intention. You show something dark and horrible about your personality to the world.  Maybe it's your drunk personality, which I wouldn't consider your true self, but if people mostly know you by how you act when you're drunk, and the things you do when your drunk, then, I'm not sure what other self you expect others to see.

"Take it from a guy whose father drowned in a sea of cheap vodka: you can never drink again.  That's it. Over. Done. Alcohol must always remain in your past, now.  If you put it in your present or your future, you will kill someone.

"I'm not your friend. I'm not your priest. I'm not your AA sponsor. I'm your lawyer. I look out for your legal interests.  I'm not sure what I'm going to say when the case gets called, but I'm going to try to get you through this as painlessly as possible.  Hopefully, right now, I've awakened you to how you should see your own situation."

Bloomsday sees the bulldozers down below, peeling the surface, digging deep into the ancient earth of Clevelandia. Dump trucks carry away what must be removed. "You're going to have to lay a new foundation, and build from there."

The Temple of the Lonely Word

I pull up to the ATM machine at the PNC on Clifton Blvd. and find a debit card and receipt already sticking out of the machine. I look ahead a see a car pulling off. I beep, but the car is gone. I take the debit card and receipt from the machine, insert my own and transact, then I back the Blue Vibe into a spot.

 I stroll into the bank and I am instantly ordered to remove my sunglasses but some guy in a suit. A security guard is, also, several feet away, inspecting me. I have not taken two steps into the bank before this insult.

 I comply and wind myself through the empty Temple Grandin lane to wait for a teller. "May I help you?" she asks.

"I found this in the ATM machine outside," I say, loudly, like my beloved Temple.

I hand her the debit card and receipt through the slot, and she thanks me.

I walk away, back past the security guard and the other suit who ordered my sunglasses off.

"Thank you," he says.

 "Save it, brother," I say as I put my sunglasses back on. "Everyone's a suspect, right?"

 I push through the door, and leave them all to ponder the moment in silence. Amen.

Popsicle Lessons

The Only Labor Day Song That Mattered

Luna: September Nocturne

"...and what if there were two,

 side-by-side, in orbit,

 around the fairest son?"

 

Annunciation: Clevelandia

The world is recreated
a billion times a day
by Google maps
and Jesus traps
and souls above the fray.

These words are scored in stone
upon the rocky shore:
"He is faithful."
"He is faithful,"
is what the words implore.

The water washes sins away
as hands and face we clean,
Annunciates
Greek palindrome
in church tiles' waxen glean.

The weighted Dame leans overburdn'd
by Clair and Lakeside door.
her scales are tipped,
unjustily gripped,
which makes her feel a whore.

The freedoms, four, are buried here
beneath this hallowed ground.
from: fear and want,
of: speech and faith,
feed flowers more profound.

Don't think such thoughts the Thinker thought:
Your head just might explode.
Though, if your thoughts
are lower down,
you may become untoe'd.

Sir Kubrick lies in city street
to puzzle and confound,
with Toynbee's
odd mystery
of logic never sound.




A steady stream of virgin tears
Forever soaketh stones
At River's Edge
Where saints allege
The penitent atones



DNA @ Level C
Hath many portions Plum[b]
From Square to Square
To Square to Square
As Pekar to his Crum[b]

The pyramid enshrines the words
that came from Moondog's mouth
But towers glow
where seekers know
he spoke them, first, due South.

"She's Got a Touch of Tuesday Weld"

Archipelago in the Stream

Feeling Solzhenitsyny?

WikiSolzhePedianitzyn, here

a haiku

Sotzhenitsyny

gnats are itching in my beard

they also taste good

Harvard Commencement Speech, 1978

Iam sincerely happy to be here with you on the occasion of the 327th commencement of this old and illustrious university. My congratulations and best wishes to all of today's graduates.

Harvard's motto is "VERITAS." Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us as soon as our concentration begins to flag, all the while leaving the illusion that we are continuing to pursue it. This is the source of much discord. Also, truth seldom is sweet; it is almost invariably bitter. A measure of truth is included in my speech today, but I offer it as a friend, not as an adversary.

Three years ago in the United States I said certain things that were rejected and appeared unacceptable. Today, however, many people agree with what I said . . .

The split in today's world is perceptible even to a hasty glance. Any of our contemporaries readily identifies two world powers, each of them already capable of destroying each other. However, the understanding of the split too often is limited to this political conception: the illusion according to which danger may be abolished through successful diplomatic negotiations or by achieving a balance of armed forces. The truth is that the split is both more profound and more alienating, that the rifts are more numerous than one can see at first glance. These deep manifold splits bear the danger of equally manifold disaster for all of us, in accordance with the ancient truth that a kingdom — in this case, our Earth — divided against itself cannot stand.

There is the concept of the Third World: thus, we already have three worlds. Undoubtedly, however, the number is even greater; we are just too far away to see. Every ancient and deeply rooted self-contained culture, especially if it is spread over a wide part of the earth's surface, constitutes a self-contained world, full of riddles and surprises to Western thinking. As a minimum, we must include in this China, India, the Muslim world, and Africa, if indeed we accept the approximation of viewing the latter two as uniform.

For one thousand years Russia belonged to such a category, although Western thinking systematically committed the mistake of denying its special character and therefore never understood it, just as today the West does not understand Russia in Communist captivity. And while it may be that in past years Japan has increasingly become, in effect, a Far West, drawing ever closer to Western ways (I am no judge here), Israel, I think, should not be reckoned as part of the West, if only because of the decisive circumstance that its state system is fundamentally linked to its religion.

How short a time ago, relatively, the small world of modern Europe was easily seizing colonies all over the globe, not only without anticipating any real resistance, but usually with contempt for any possible values in the conquered people's approach to life. It all seemed an overwhelming success, with no geographic limits. Western society expanded in a triumph of human independence and power. And all of a sudden the twentieth century brought the clear realization of this society's fragility.

We now see that the conquests proved to be short lived and precarious (and this, in turn, points to defects in the Western view of the world which led to these conquests). Relations with the former colonial world now have switched to the opposite extreme and the Western world often exhibits an excess of obsequiousness, but it is difficult yet to estimate the size of the bill which former colonial countries will present to the West and it is difficult to predict whether the surrender not only of its last colonies, but of everything it owns, will be sufficient for the West to clear this account.

But the persisting blindness of superiority continues to hold the belief that all the vast regions of our planet should develop and mature to the level of contemporary Western systems, the best in theory and the most attractive in practice; that all those other worlds are but temporarily prevented (by wicked leaders or by severe crises or by their own barbarity and incomprehension) from pursuing Western pluralistic democracy and adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in that direction. But in fact such a conception is a fruit of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, a result of mistakenly measuring them all with a Western yardstick. The real picture of our planet's development bears little resemblance to all this.

The anguish of a divided world gave birth to the theory of convergence between the leading Western countries and the Soviet Union. It is a soothing theory which overlooks the fact that these worlds are not evolving toward each other and that neither one can be transformed into the other without violence. Besides, convergence inevitably means acceptance of the other side's defects, too. and this can hardly suit anyone.

If I were today addressing an audience in my country, in my examination of the overall pattern of the world's rifts I would have concentrated on the calamities of the East. But since my forced exile in the West has now lasted four years and since my audience is a Western one, I think it may be of greater interest to concentrate on certain aspects of the contemporary West, such as I see them.

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.

Political and intellectual functionaries exhibit this depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in their self-serving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And the decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood, is ironically emphasized by occasional outbursts and inflexibility on the part of those same functionaries when dealing with weak governments and with countries that lack support, or with doomed currents which clearly cannot offer resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

Must one point out that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end?

When the modern Western states were being formed, it was proclaimed as a principle that governments are meant to serve man and that man lives in order to be free and pursue happiness. (See, for example, the American Declaration of Independence.) Now at last during past decades technical and social progress has permitted the realization of such aspirations: the welfare state.

Every citizen has been granted the desired freedom and material goods in such quantity and in such quality as to guarantee in theory the achievement of happiness, in the debased sense of the word which has come into being during those same decades. (In the process, however, one psychological detail has been overlooked: the constant desire to have still more things and a still better life and the struggle to this end imprint many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to carefully conceal such feelings. This active and tense competition comes to dominate all human thought and does not in the least open a way to free spiritual development.)

The individual's independence from many types of state pressure has been guaranteed; the majority of the people have been granted well-being to an extent their fathers and grandfathers could not even dream about; it has become possible to raise young people according to these ideals, preparing them for and summoning them toward physical bloom, happiness, and leisure, the possession of material goods, money, and leisure, toward an almost unlimited freedom in the choice of pleasures. So who should now renounce all this, why and for the sake of what should one risk one's precious life in defense of the common good and particularly in the nebulous case when the security of one's nation must be defended in an as yet distant land?

Even biology tells us that a high degree of habitual well-being is not advantageous to a living organism. Today, well-being in the life of Western society has begun to take off its pernicious mask.

Western society has chosen for itself the organization best suited to its purposes and one I might call legalistic. The limits of human rights and rightness are determined by a system of laws; such limits are very broad. People in the West have acquired considerable skill in using, interpreting, and manipulating law (though laws tend to be too complicated for an average person to understand without the help of an expert). Every conflict is solved according to the letter of the law and this is considered to be the ultimate solution.

If one is risen from a legal point of view, nothing more is required, nobody may mention that one could still not be right, and urge self-restraint or a renunciation of these rights, call for sacrifice and selfless risk: this would simply sound absurd. Voluntary self-restraint is almost unheard of: everybody strives toward further expansion to the extreme limit of the legal frames. (An oil company is legally blameless when it buys up an invention of a new type of energy in order to prevent its use. A food product manufacturer is legally blameless when he poisons his produce to make it last longer: after all, people are free not to purchase it.)

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society based on the letter of the law and never reaching any higher fails to take full advantage of the full range of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man's noblest impulses.

And it will be simply impossible to bear up to the trials of this threatening century with nothing but the supports of a legalistic structure.

Today's Western society has revealed the inequality between the freedom for good deeds and the freedom for evil deeds. A statesman who wants to achieve something highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; thousands of hasty (and irresponsible) critics cling to him at all times; he is constantly rebuffed by parliament and the press. He has to prove that his every step is well founded and absolutely flawless. Indeed, an outstanding, truly great person who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind does not get any chance to assert himself; dozens of traps will be set for him from the beginning. Thus mediocrity triumphs under the guise of democratic restraints.

It is feasible and easy everywhere to undermine administrative power and it has in fact been drastically weakened in all Western countries. The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.

On the other hand, destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society has turned out to have scarce defense against the abyss of human decadence, for example against the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror. This is all considered to be part of freedom and to be counterbalanced, in theory, by the young people's right not to look and not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.

And what shall we say about the dark realms of overt criminality? Legal limits (especially in the United States) are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also some misuse of such freedom. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency — all with the support of thousands of defenders in the society. When a government earnestly undertakes to root out terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorist's civil rights. There is quite a number of such cases.

This tilt of freedom toward evil has come about gradually, but it evidently stems from a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which man — the master of the world — does not bear any evil within himself, and all the defects of life are caused by misguided social systems, which must therefore be corrected. Yet strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still remains a great deal of crime; there even is considerably more of it than in the destitute and lawless Soviet society. (There is a multitude of prisoners in our camps who are termed criminals, but most of them never committed any crime; they merely tried to defend themselves against a lawless state by resorting to means outside the legal framework.)

The press, too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word "press" to include all the media.) But what use does it make of it?

Here again, the overriding concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no true moral responsibility for distortion or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist or a newspaper have to the readership or to history? If they have misled public opinion by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, even if they have contributed to mistakes on a state level, do we know of any case of open regret voiced by the same journalist or the same newspaper? No; this would damage sales. A nation may be the worse for such a mistake, but the journalist always gets away with it. It is most likely that he will start writing the exact opposite to his previous statements with renewed aplomb.

Because instant and credible information is required, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors, and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be refuted; they settle into the readers' memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial, and misleading judgments are expressed everyday, confusing readers, and then left hanging?

The press can act the role of public opinion or miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters pertaining to the nation's defense publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion into the privacy of well-known people according to the slogan "Everyone is entitled to know everything." (But this is a false slogan of a false era; far greater in value is the forfeited right of people not to know, not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life has no need for this excessive and burdening flow of information.)

Hastiness and superficiality — these are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century and more than anywhere else this is manifested in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press; it is contrary to its nature. The press merely picks out sensational formulas.

Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within Western countries, exceeding that of the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. Yet one would like to ask: According to what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible? In the Communist East, a journalist is frankly appointed as a state official. But who has voted Western journalists into their positions of power, for how long a time, and with what prerogatives?

There is yet another surprise for someone coming from the totalitarian East with its rigorously unified press: One discovers a common trend of preferences within the Western press as a whole (the spirit of the time), generally accepted patterns of judgment, and maybe common corporate interests, the sum effect being not competition but unification. Unrestrained freedom exists for the press, but not for readership, because newspapers mostly transmit in a forceful and emphatic way those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and that general trend.

Without any censorship in the West, fashionable trends of thought and ideas are fastidiously separated from those that are not fashionable, and the latter, without ever being forbidden have little chance of finding their way into periodicals or books or being heard in colleges. Your scholars are free in the legal sense, but they are hemmed in by the idols of the prevailing fad. There is no open violence, as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to accommodate mass standards frequently prevents the most independent-minded persons from contributing to public life and gives rise to dangerous herd instincts that block dangerous herd development.

In America, I have received letters from highly intelligent persons — maybe a teacher in a faraway small college who could do much for the renewal and salvation of his country, but the country cannot hear him because the media will not provide him with a forum. This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, to a blindness which is perilous in our dynamic era. An example is the self-deluding interpretation of the state of affairs in the contemporary world that functions as a sort of petrified armor around people's minds, to such a degree that human voices from seventeen countries of Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia cannot pierce it. It will be broken only by the inexorable crowbar of events.

I have mentioned a few traits of Western life which surprise and shock a new arrival to this world . The purpose and scope of this speech will not allow me to continue such a survey, in particular to look into the impact of these characteristics on important aspects of a nation's life, such as elementary education, advanced education in the humanities, and art.

It is almost universally recognized that the West shows all the world the way to successful economic development, even though in past years it has been sharply offset by chaotic inflation. However, many people living in the West are dissatisfied with their own society. They despise it or accuse it of no longer being up to the level of maturity by mankind. And this causes many to sway toward socialism, which is a false and dangerous current.

I hope that no one present will suspect me of expressing my partial criticism of the Western system in order to suggest socialism as an alternative. No; with the experience of a country where socialism has been realized, I shall not speak for such an alternative. The mathematician Igor Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliantly argued book entitled Socialism; this is a penetrating historical analysis demonstrating that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death. Shafarevich's book was published in France almost two years ago and so far no one has been found to refute it. It will shortly be published in English in the U.S.

But should I be asked, instead, whether I would propose the West, such as it is today, as a model to my country, I would frankly have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through deep suffering, people in our own country have now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Even those characteristics of your life which I have just enumerated are extremely saddening.

A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human personality in the West while in the East it has become firmer and stronger. Six decades for our people and three decades for the people of Eastern Europe; during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. The complex and deadly crush of life has produced stronger, deeper, and more interesting personalities than those generated by standardized Western well-being. Therefore, if our society were to be transformed into yours, it would mean an improvement in certain aspects, but also a change for the worse on some particularly significant points.

Of course, a society cannot remain in an abyss of lawlessness, as is the case in our country. But it is also demeaning for it to stay on such a soulless and smooth plane of legalism, as is the case in yours. After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits, introduced as by a calling card by the revolting invasion of commercial advertising, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music.

All this is visible to numerous observers from all the worlds of our planet. The Western way of life is less and less likely to become the leading model.

There are telltale symptoms by which history gives warning to a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, a decline of the arts or a lack of great statesmen. Indeed, sometimes the warnings are quite explicit and concrete. The center of your democracy and of your culture is left without electric power for a few hours only, and all of a sudden crowds of American citizens start looting and creating havoc. The smooth surface film must be very thin, then, the social system quite unstable and unhealthy.

But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive. You can feel their pressure, yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?

How has this unfavorable relation of forces come about? How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present debility? Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing steadily in accordance with its proclaimed social intentions, hand in hand with a dazzling progress in technology. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of weakness.

This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very foundation of thought in modern times. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world in modern times. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was born in the Renaissance and has found political expression since the Age of Enlightenment. It became the basis for political and social doctrine and could be called rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the pro-claimed and practiced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of all.

The turn introduced by the Renaissance was probably inevitable historically: the Middle Ages had come to a natural end by exhaustion, having become an intolerable despotic repression of man's physical nature in favor of the spiritual one. But then we recoiled from the spirit and embraced all that is material, excessively and incommensurately. The humanistic way of thinking, which had proclaimed itself our guide, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man, nor did it see any task higher than the attainment of happiness on earth. It started modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend of worshiping man and his material needs.

Everything beyond physical well-being and the accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtle and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any higher meaning. Thus gaps were left open for evil, and its drafts blow freely today. Mere freedom per se does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and even adds a number of new ones.

And yet in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted on the ground that man is God's creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding one thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual be granted boundless freedom with no purpose, simply for the satisfaction of his whims.

Subsequently, however, all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming ever more materialistic. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even excess, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistic selfishness of the Western approach to the world has reached its peak and the world has found itself in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the celebrated technological achievements of progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the twentieth century's moral poverty, which no one could have imagined even as late as the nineteenth century.

As humanism in its development was becoming more and more materialistic, it also increasingly allowed concepts to be used first by socialism and then by communism, so that Karl Marx was able to say, in 1844, that "communism is naturalized humanism."

This statement has proved to be not entirely unreasonable. One does not see the same stones in the foundations of an eroded humanism and of any type of socialism: boundless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility (which under Communist regimes attains the stage of antireligious dictatorship); concentration on social structures with an allegedly scientific approach. (This last is typical of both the Age of Enlightenment and of Marxism.) It is no accident that all of communism's rhetorical vows revolve around Man (with a capital M) and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

The interrelationship is such, moreover, that the current of materialism which is farthest to the left, and is hence the most consistent, always proves to be stronger, more attractive, and victorious. Humanism which has lost its Christian heritage cannot prevail in this competition. Thus during the past centuries and especially in recent decades, as the process became more acute, the alignment of forces was as follows: Liberalism was inevitably pushed aside by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism, and socialism could not stand up to communism.

The communist regime in the East could endure and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who (feeling the kinship!) refused to see communism's crimes, and when they no longer could do so, they tried to justify these crimes. The problem persists: In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. And yet Western intellectuals still look at it with considerable interest and empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East.

I am not examining the case of a disaster brought on by a world war and the changes which it would produce in society. But as long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we must lead an everyday life. Yet there is a disaster which is already very much with us. I am referring to the calamity of an autonomous, irreligious humanistic consciousness.

It has made man the measure of all things on earth — imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now paying for the mistakes which were not properly appraised at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility.

We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. It is trampled by the party mob in the East, by the commercial one in the West. This is the essence of the crisis: the split in the world is less terrifying than the similarity of the disease afflicting its main sections.

If, as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on earth evidently must be more spiritual: not a total engrossment in everyday life, not the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then their carefree consumption. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become above all an experience of moral growth: to leave life a better human being than one started it.

It is imperative to reappraise the scale of the usual human values; its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance should be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or to the availability of gasoline. Only by the voluntary nurturing in ourselves of freely accepted and serene self-restraint can mankind rise above the world stream of materialism.

Today it would be retrogressive to hold on to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Such social dogmatism leaves us helpless before the trials of our times.

Even if we are spared destruction by war, life will have to change in order not to perish on its own. We cannot avoid reassessing the fundamental definitions of human life and society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities should be ruled by material expansion above all? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our integral spiritual life?

If the world has not approached its end, it has reached a major watershed in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will demand from us a spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life, where our physical nature will not be cursed, as in the Middle Ages, but even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon, as in the Modern Era.

The ascension is similar to climbing onto the next anthropological stage. No one on earth has any other way left but — upward.

Browns Haiku

Browns Browns Browns Browns Browns

Browns Browns Browns Browns Browns Browns Browns

Browns Browns Browns Browns Browns

"Hail, Caesar!" or The Apeshank Redemption

8/11 to 9/11

This was the first song on R.E.M.'s first album written and released after September 11th, 2001.
I'll leave it's interpretation to you. Listen to it a hundred times or so, like me, and then we can talk about 9/11.

Feeling Dreyfussy?

There Will Be Green

A Trinitarian Notion

Exodus 8:2 - A Trinitarian Notion

Raised a Catholic, I have been taught to split the concept of God into thirds -- Father, Son, Holy Ghost. I have often suspected some smoke and mirrors on this point, as if this trinitarian notion was specifically designed to mislead us, divert our attentions, confuse us into submission. I recall the lion tamer in Errol Morris' Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, who reveals why they seem to provoke their animals with the four legs of a chair: the lions can concentrate on only one leg at a time and will soon get confused and lie down.

Nevertheless, there is something appealling about things trinitarian: disparate concepts synthesized into one. I never expected to find a cinematic trinity that would hold such sway over my views of film, but now that I have, I will run with it.

My Cinematic Trinity: Magnolia, Network, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. These films are connected in ways you do not expect; mysterious ways.

I begin with Melinda Dillon. In CE3K, we find her cowering in the corner, clutching her child, terrified and screaming as an unimaginable "supernatural" event occurs outside. In magnolia, we find her cowering in the corner, clutching her child, terrified and screaming as an unimaginable "supernatural" event occurs outside.
Then there's the TV show host collapse. In Network, Mr. Beale endures a disturbing episode or seizure and falls to the ground in front of a live studio audience. In magnolia, Jimmy Gator does the same.

The "look" of the WDKK? set matches that of the Howard Beale Show. While Network has no musical soundtrack to speak of, it does include the stirring drumroll/brassy theme to Beale's Show, echoed in magnolia by Jon Brion's swingy WDKK? theme.

Music is integral to the story telling in both CE3K and magnolia, and both include a "musical crescendo." The musical note communique recieved by Dreyfuss in CE3K is parodied in magnolia by the musical note quiz questions.

Anderson clearly reached back to the 70's for thematic and visual inspiration. The magnolia DVD extras actually includes him screening Lumet's film for cast and crew, asking them to look at the cinematography and pay attention to the "old school" television men, like his own father, Ernie "Ghoulardi" Anderson, a late night Cleveland horror show host.

If I have convinced you that these movies are intentionally connected, then pull back your lens a little further and consider this: Network is The Father, CE3K is The Son, and magnolia is The Holy Ghost. Network, the dark, cruel God of the Old Testament, savage and vengeful, it ends with a "crucifixion." CE3K, the loving, benevolent God of the New Testament, hopeful and joyous, it ends with an "ascension." magnolia, the kitchen sink God of everything else, the God of the Next Testament, perhaps, it ends with a shocking Exodus 8:2 reminder that "this is something that happens" and we simply can't explain it all away: sometimes, we have to let the mystery be.

Kubrick and Toynbee, Resurrected

"The Toynbee Conundrum is not a work of fiction," began Bloomsday at the podium. "It is, however, a factual account that includes multiple works of fiction. Let's begin with facts. Arnold J. Toynbee was born of British aristocracy before the turn of the century. His grandfather was a renowned otorhinolaryngologist (ear/nose/throat doctor) whose death in 1866 is attributed to a mishap during an experiment with chloroform. His granddaughter is currently a prominent journalist and advisor to Britain's Labour Party."

"Toynbee, himself, rose to prominence as a historian. I will do no justice to his dozens of volumes of world history, since I haven't read them. But I do know that his views on the ebb and flow of civilizations, and on the methods of decline and ascent of cultures, set him apart. He talked about how the Sumerians invented irrigation to save themselves from extinction. He talked about the ideas of Christianity and communism and how such ideas transformed the social landscape of the globe. He also believed that Buddhism would someday transform Western Civilization in unprecedented ways. He was, to my mind, a chronicler of paradigm shifts, which makes him something of a paradigm shifter, himself. But that's an opinion, and I'd like to stick to facts for now. Toynbee died in 1975."

"Ray Bradbury is a renowned writer of science fiction and fantasy. Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes come to mind. Bradbury immortalized the name, Toynbee, in a short story called The Toynbee Convector. The time travel story was first published in Playboy magazine in 1984, and involves a scientist who misleads people about the world he has visited in the future. His lies about the future motivate and inspire the people of the present to create a future that never existed. When the future finally arrives, it is not the one he visited, but the one he had lied about, created out of the hope from the past."

"Stanley Kubrick directed many complex films, but none as grand in scope as 2001: A Space Odyssey. The 1969 film was a collaboration between Kubrick and sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke and posits an alien lifeform that gives pre-humans the gift of sentience, then waits until an evolved humanity develops the technology to travel off the planet. The story's crescendo occurs near Jupiter where the sole survivor on a malfunctioning space station confronts a mysterious monolith that has awaited human arrival for eons. The story contains no obvious references to Toynbee or his writings."

"In 1983, playwright and screenwriter David Mamet published a short play that mentioned Toynbee in a peculiar way. The play, entitled 4:00 a.m., takes place on a late night call-in radio talk show not unlike the halcyon days of Larry King. In the play, a caller encourages the world to support "the theories of Toynbee" as presented in Kubrick's film, then reveals those theories to involve resurrecting all the past dead of Earth on the planet Jupiter. The show's host tries to correct the insistent caller, pointing out that neither 2001: A Space Odyssey nor it's source material, Clarke's The Sentinel, had anything to do with such theories, then points out the practical difficulties of such a mass ressurection."

"Here's another fact: starting in the mid - 1980s, messages have been carved into linoleum tiles and placed in the roads of many American cities referring to this apparently erroneous Toynbee/Kubrick connection. These are collectively known as Toynbee tiles.

"This one, for example at the corner of W. 3rd and Prospect, here in Cleveland." The large screen behind Bloomsday lights up with colorful message. "And another one, on the other side of downtown, at East 12 and Euclid." The screen fills with photo of a second tile, its message partially obscured by tar, but common with the first in its reference to Toynbee and Kubrick and resurrecting the dead on Jupiter. Over a hundred have been found, mostly East of the Mississippi, many seem the work of a common hand, though others appear to be copycat tiles. Freelance investigators have narrowed down suspects, yet tiles continue to appear even though some suspects have died."

"So those are the facts. And what are we to make of these facts? Anyone have a suggestion?" Bloomsday inquires of his puzzled audience.

"The Greatest Part Cannot Know, Therefore, They Must Believe"

Bloomsday was there. Afterwards, I went back to the dorm, smoked my brains out and played Sonic the Hegemony Hog.

The rest of his lecture is at The Manifesto. Wait til he takes his corduroy jacket off!

Lawyers, Nuns & Money: The Secret Consecration

Friday 8:30 a.m.

The phone rings.

"Good Morning, Bloomsday. It's Tim." Father Tim, the renegade priest who blew up Rodin's The Thinker in 1970 and has availed himself to the ecclesiastical laws of sanctuary to avoid prosecution ever since. "Your colleague, Mr. Gaines, has informed me you are travelling to West Virginia this weekend."

I am packed for the surprisingly short trek from Cleveland to the southern banks of the Ohio River to a casino where my brothers and sisters of the criminal defense bar throw a weekend frat party masquerading as a seminar each summer. Higbee Gaines, my now clean and sober friend formerly known as "The Problem" has given the priest too much information about my recreational activities.

"Yes, that's true. I'm leaving in an hour or so, but there's no room at the inn, Father. At least not in my room."

"Oh, that's fine. I don't need a place to stay down there. I have friends waiting. I just need a ride."

"A gambling junket?" I ask. "I thought you were on the lamb, Father. Crossing state lines might be dangerous. Besides, this call may be monitored for quality assurance."

"I'll take the risk. I assure you my journey is spiritual business, not vice. It's not the casino I need to get to, but your destination is just a few miles from mine. You mind if I catch a ride?"

"Sure," I say with a tinge of regret. "Gotta hit the road by 10:00."

"That's perfect. Thank you, Bloomsday. I'll be waiting at the rectory. I understand the imposition, but could I ask one additional favor?"

"Sure," I say with a deeper regret, still.

"Can I bring along Sisters Beatrice or Bernice, as well?"

10:05 a.m.

I pull up and find Father Tim, crazed Michael Landon mane and priest-collared, waiting with two summery-habited nuns. They each have backpacks that they toss in the trunk of my beloved 2003 Pontiac Vibe.  The nuns smile broadly as they hop in the back seat. Tim takes shotgun.  I had spoken to one of the nuns, Beatrice or Bernice, over the phone a few weeks earlier; I wasn't sure which. I now understand through my rear-view mirror that they must be identical twins, utterly indistinguishable from one another.

Their gratitude is effusive as we pass the onion domes of St. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Church and hop on the highway east toward Youngstown.  As we settle in to highway travel, Father Tim offers some explaination.

"You're casino seminar takes you to Chester, West Virginia. Do you know what else Chester is known for?"

I have no idea.

"It's home to one of the largest landfills in America, garbage from several metropolitan areas have been transported there for years, including the garbage from Washington, D.C."

I check the mirror and notice the delightful smiles on the twin nuns (or is it nun twins?) have disappeared. Replaced by somber, tragic faces.  "You mean, he doesn't know?" one says as they glance at each other.

Father Tim misses no beat: "There wasn't time, Bernice. I didn't want to tell him over the phone. He might have had second thoughts..."

"Excuse me.." I interrupt, but I'm interrupted by simultaneous voices from the back seat.

 "Requiescat in pace!" both nuns cry out in unison as they cross themselves.

"Ladies, please..." Father Tim cautions. "Let us not get too wrapped up in the emotions of this. We are servants of God on a mission."

"You mean, like the Blues Brothers?" I ask.

Father Tim looks puzzled. A voice from the back seat: "Oh, I love that movie!" 

Another voice: "Yes, funny. Lots of car crashes though. Tragic, tragic John Belushi."

"Requiescat in pace!" both nuns cry out in unison as they cross themselves again.

"Last year, a girl went missing from the one of the poorest neighborhoods in Washington." Father Tim brings back the gravitas. "Gangs, drugs, guns, prostitution; she was 13 and she was in the middle of it all.  Her grandmother had raised her, but she lost her to the streets. A homicide detective there in D.C. came to believe that the girl, Evie Nichols, had witnessed a murder and, since her were loyalties untested, she was murdered, herself.  According to interrogations of several gang members, she was shot in the head, placed in a suitcase and tossed in a dumpster just a few blocks from the hospital where she was born.  

"Of course, this information was gleaned nearly six months after her disappearance, so the contents of every dumpster in D.C. had, long before, been transported to Chester, emptied, and bulldozed over with more garbage.  The detective, the grandmother and church and civic leaders pleaded with city officials to search for her body with the help of a dumping schedule gridded map and GPS - every container load is theoretically locatable, but the city decided it was too dangerous and futile..."

"A needle in a haystack, they said," spoke a voice from behind. "Perhaps, the needle wasn't even in the haystack, they argued. A proper burial would elude her."

"So, are you telling me you're all bumming a ride to find a dead girl in a suitcase in one of the largest landfills in America and give her a proper burial?"

"No," says Father Tim. "We don't need to find her to give her a proper burial. We're going to consecrate the landfill, then give her proper burial rites, wherever she already is."

"And the friends you have waiting down in Chester?" I ask.

"Evie's grandmother, the detective, some friends of the family, community folks...practically a minor congregation ready to break the law and trespass for the sake of a little girl's immortal soul."

"I brought wire snippers, just in case we need them," says Bernice or Beatrice.

A long silence follows as we travel down the highway. Forgive us our trespasses, indeed.

Hurley for Governor

There Will Be Fart Shoes

There's "Your America," There's "My America," & There's "Our America."

Altman's Nashville pretty much sums up "Our America."
Please. Please. For the love of God, for the love of our children: Remember "Our America."



Happy Fourth of July. Hurley for Governor.

Kick Out The Style, Bring Back The Jam

First off, pretty righteous flautistry. Second, pretty righteous drumming by big-haired 80's chick. Third, Bloomsday always heard political allegory in this song: America "threw it all away," didn't it?

Luna and The Good Listener

Damn You, Assange!

Bloomsday Device HACKED!! by Olivia Newton-John Cult on Bloomsday Eve!

Annunciation: Clevelandia

The world is recreated
a billion times a day
by Google maps
and Jesus traps
and souls above the fray.

These words are scored in stone
upon the rocky shore:
"He is faithful."
"He is faithful,"
is what the words implore.

The water washes sins away
as hands and face we clean,
Annunciates
Greek palindrome
in church tiles' waxen glean.

The weighted Dame leans overburdn'd
by Clair and Lakeside door.
her scales are tipped,
unjustily gripped,
which makes her feel a whore.

The freedoms, four, are buried here
beneath this hallowed ground.
from: fear and want,
of: speech and faith,
feed flowers more profound.

Don't think such thoughts the Thinker thought:
Your head just might explode.
Though, if your thoughts
are lower down,
you may become untoe'd.

Sir Kubrick lies in city street
to puzzle and confound,
with Toynbee's
odd mystery
of logic never sound.




A steady stream of virgin tears
Forever soaketh stones
At River's Edge
Where saints allege
The penitent atones



DNA @ Level C
Hath many portions Plum[b]
From Square to Square
To Square to Square
As Pekar to his Crum[b]

The pyramid enshrines the words
that came from Moondog's mouth
But towers glow
where seekers know
he spoke them, first, due South.

...Just the Bang and the Clatter as an Angel Hits the Ground.

Luna's Soundtrack: Memorial Day Weekend Edition

There Will Be Kermit

Science is Real!

Inspired by Actual Events

"There are two ways through life: the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow."

"Someday, you'll fall down and weep, and you'll understand it all...all things."

"Guide us to the end of time."

"Unless you love, your life will flash by."

I Am a DJ. I Am What I Play.

Best Cinematic Mom: Melinda Dillon

Here's her bio.  BTW, in case you missed the hint, Dee Wallace, Teri Garr and JoBeth Williams are all "Spielberg Moms," for E.T., CE3K, and Poltergeist.

A Trinitarian Notion: (Old) New Order

Lawyers, Nuns & Money

My experience with the beloved Sisters of St. Ruth began when, while jogging through their ravine access to the Cuyahoga River valley, I found a large bone less than 50 feet from a cemetery for nuns on the property. I took the muddy bone to the Convent. I told the sister who greeted me exactly where I had found it, and it didn’t seem right to leave it there, especially if a forensic expert thought it was human. She asked for my name and number, and I gave it. A few weeks later, I got a call.


FRIDAY 8:25 a.m.
“Mr. Bloomsday?”
“Yes,” I said into my cell phone in the crick of my neck, as I fumbled for my office key with a Grande Mild in one hand and a dozen criminal files in the other.
“I have an update on the bone you found. It created some excitement around here, so we asked a butcher who told us it was from a large animal, probably something thrown in the trash and taken into the woods by raccoons, he said. He said it was sawed.”
“Ah, the mystery solved,” I said.
“Yes, mystery, indeed!” She sounded like Julie Andrews. Was this nun faking a British accent? “It caused quite a stir, thinking that it was lost, somehow. The bone, I mean. It is now filed in our archives, with your name and number, and a brief explanation of how it was found and what our resources have told us.”
“Resources?” I asked.
“The butcher, I mean,” she clarified.
“Yes,” I said. “Butchers are good resources. As are plumbers. And carpenters.”
“Definitely carpenters!! Ha-ha” she laughed.
“Well, I must tell you I very much enjoy your property and I hope my running through it to get down to the jogging path in the valley is o.k. It’s been a healthy habit. And I do love cemeteries.”
“We welcome the use of our land for enjoyment of its beauty, for recreation, and for prayer. We also have composting, our vehicles run on natural gas, we do paper recycling, and we have a wind turbine powered generator coming soon.”
“Very impressive, Sister.”
“You’re a lawyer, Mr. Bloomsday?”
“Yes, but I only work for people who don’t have money to hire a real lawyer. I’m an advocate for the poor.”
“Well, we don’t have money because we take a vow of poverty.”
“Are you saying you need a lawyer, Sister? You do qualify for my services.”
“No, not I. But perhaps you could stop in during one of your jogs and talk with someone here. They have legal questions.”
“I’ll jog over after work. Who shall I ask for?”
“Ask for Sister Beatrice or Bernice.”
We hung up. I went and took a piss, gathered files from my office and headed to the loony bin.

9:45 a.m.
I’m at the Cleveland loony bin, about to talk to a dangerous mental patient. I take a dump in a clean bathroom, thanks to the kindness of a shuffling, limping hospital staffer. A black man in his sixties. Morgan Freeman in the movie.
I pace behind him as he slowly keys through door after metal door until we reach the Cuckoo’s nest. “How is Mr. Zeppinger these days?” I ask. I know that he has threatened to kill judges and doctors and cops, that he has been wrestled to the ground in court by six thick-necked bailiffs. I know that he’s as high and drunk and crazy and violent and dumb as can be.
“Aw, he O.K. He’ll be happy to see you, though,” says Mulney as he turns another key down this corridor to my client.
“Oh, he doesn’t know I’m coming,” I say.
“Yeah, but you gettin’ him outta group. He’s in group right now and he’ll be all happy as a sissy in Boy’s Town to get a visitor during group.”
“Francis Assisi?”
“Huh?”
“Nevermind.”
We arrive at the end of the corridor in a wide ward with chairs around televisions and chalkboards. “Zeppinger! Got a visitor!” A man with his head down on his folded arms on the table looks up at Mulney. “Zeppinger. Lawyer’s here.”
Zeppinger speaks: “HE CAN SHA-ZIZZLE MY PUH-ZIZZLE!”
“I’m Bloomsday, from the public defender’s office. I have some important legal matters to discuss with you.” He caught my eyes and I smiled. He stood up and politely walked around the remaining group members toward me and Mulney. I shook his hand hard, like he’d just won an election. Mulney slowly, almost processional in his limp Kevin Spacey way, led us to a “media room,” stuffed with televisions on push carts, two computer terminals, DVD and stereo players, and even a digital camera on a tri-pod. We sat at ends of a small wooden table in the center of all this technology. Mulney left and locked us in.
“Good morning, Mr. Zeppinger. My name is Ulysses Bloomsday. I am the attorney assigned to defend those who cannot afford to hire counsel. I have now been appointed to your case. I want to, first, so that we are on the same page, explain where your case is at. You are at an unusual point in the context of criminal proceedings, and you may want to take advantage of that. You were arrested and charged with assault and aggravated disorderly conduct, each charge a misdemeanor of the first degree, punishable up to six months in jail and a thousand dollar fine. Do you remember getting arrested?”
“Yeah, that was all bullshit, though. I talked back. I talked back and they pushed me around and arrested me. I ain’t do shit.”
“I have no reason to doubt you. I know cops can be assholes, even liars. But you are no stranger to aggressive behavior. Didn’t you threaten to kill the judge the last time you were in court?”
“Yeah, but that lady rub me the wrong way. She like an evil voodoo priestess.”
“O.K., that comment brings me to my next point. The judge ordered you be held to determine your competence to stand trial. Do you remember talking to a doctor about that?”
“Yeah.”
“And then, the doctor decided that you were not competent, but that they would try to restore you to competence here, at the Cleveland Behavioral Center. But then you threatened to kill the doctors and even pushed one up against a wall here. So the doctors now say that you are incompetent, non-restorable. They say you will never be competent enough to stand trial. That means they can’t prosecute you. The criminal charges will be dismissed and the county probate system will handle the matter. The law requires you reside in the least restrictive setting, which, given your past behavior, means Western Reserve Mental Hospital, where you’ll undergo 90-day reviews to determine when they cut you loose.
“You know, your momma’s out there, writing letters to the judge, begging her to get you help. You’re momma thinks you gonna get killed in here. She thinks this hospital is filled with crazy violent people who may threaten your safety.”
Zeppinger rolls his eyes. “My momma. She don’t understand shit. So you sayin’ I don’t ever have to see the voodoo priestess again?”
“Yes.”
“You sayin’ I’m going to Western Reserve instead of city jail?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then I just got moved from coach to first class. Thank you, Mr. Bloomsday.”
“My pleasure, but I hardly did anything. I’m just the messenger.”
“Don’t kill the messenger?” Zeppinger smiles.
“Correct. Do not, under any circumstances, kill the messenger.” I stand and shake his hand. “Any questions?”
He looks at the Styrofoam cup in my hand. “Can I have the rest of your coffee?”

10:45 a.m.
I leave the loony bin with time to spare before my 11:30 conference with The Birdlady of Archwood Avenue, so I decide to head to Tremont for a fresh cup of coffee. The Onion domes of St. Theodosius loom, sun soaked green, above the gallery/café, Kitchen Synchronicity. The wooden screen door cracks closed behind me as I enter.
“Mr. Bloomsday, medium-medium?”
“Yes, thank you, Sadie.” Sadie opens the place at 6:30 a.m., and cashes out at 2:30 p.m., a dentist’s favorite time.
“I was wondering if you were coming in this morning. You’re usually here much earlier.”
“Yes, well, I had a field interview or two scheduled today.”
“Ah, yes. I understand.” Her joyous almond eyes reflect the light from the under lit pastries. “I wanted to ask you a legal question about my dog.” She hands me my coffee and I take the first sip.
“Woof,” I say.


3:45 p.m.
I ring the buzzer of the 19th century Victorian mansion across the alley from the church. A pleasant female voice allows me in. I cross the threshold. “I’m here to see Tim?” I ask.
“Oh, one moment.” The sister turns and murmurs into an intercom, “Father Tim, you have a visitor.” A pause. “He’ll be with you in a moment.”
I gravitate to the veranda. “I’ll be outside, admiring the veranda, if you don’t mind.”
She looks at me in my Atticus suspenders, slightly puzzled. “O.K.”
The door closes behind me and I am on a wide, deep corridor that wraps around the outside of the house. Across the street is Lincoln Park, a civil war encampment turned urban oasis with chess tables. Bums and whores congregate for the daily lunches supplied by the church. I’m pinching the paw of a disinterested cat when Father Tim comes out. He looks more like a Manson worshipper than a priest. I hide my surprise at his dirty Michael Landon mane, his bony, leathery face, and his floods as I stick out my hand to shake his. “Ulysses Bloomsday.”
“Sister Beatrice or Bernice told me you were someone who could answer some questions I have about civil disobedience. Would you like to head to the park and talk?” I agree and we cross the street to the park and find a bench.
“Some friends of mine have this idea to protest the war and the administration. Labor Day. The air show, downtown. I’ll be talking with them about this in days to come and I hoped you could give some advice.”
“First of all, I can’t advise anyone to break the law. I can only advise you of the consequences of your decisions. What to expect. What your rights are. Possibilities and probabilities and potentialities.”
“That sounds rather mathy,” says Father Tim.
“Mathy?” I say.
“Possibilities, probabilities, potentialities: aren’t those calculus terms?”
“Oh, yes. There is a calculus to what I do. There is science in the law. But it is a heretical science, Father. Some call it alchemy.”
“Are you confessing that you are a heretic, Mr. Bloomsday?”
“I don’t have to confess, Father. I am in a state of perpetual absolution.”
“Oh, so you are a heretic.” A broad smile crossed his face.
“I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, Father.” I went on to advise the priest on the laws of civil disobedience, trespass, free speech, aggravated disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, as well as procedural matters relating to court appearances, pleas and bond. “Ultimately, whenever one of your friends winds up in court answering to a charge, I’ll know about it and I’ll be there.”
Father Tim studies me. He hesitates before asking, “Are all these stories about you true, Mr. Bloomsday? There seems to be quite a mythology about you.”
The church bells signal noon. As the dregs shuffle through the summer effluvium toward their free meals, I can’t seem to muster a response.
"Are you familiar with the concept of Sanctuary?" Father Tim asks.
"Victor Hugo, Hunchback, 'Sanctuary! Sanctuary!' Of course." I reply. "Not much legal bite to it. Churches get raided by the FBI often enough, I suppose. Remember the Branch Davidians? It's a nice idea, though: civil society grudgingly respecting the boundaries of ecclesiastical property."
"Do you know the last time police entered a church in Cleveland to execute a search warrant or arrest warrant, Mr. Bloomsday?"
"I confess I do not."
"Never. I know. I've checked." Father Tim lights a cigarette. "It's a topic of great interest to me, since I've been on the lamb for most of my life."
"...Sounds like you're about to confess a sin of your own, father. Perhaps you shouldn't."
"Oh, it's all very silly, really. No one got hurt. But perhaps you're right, Bloomsday."
"Listen, I've got someone in mind to help you with your situation. My intuition tells me that I can help you more if I don't know what you're talking about. May I arrange a meeting?"
"I'd love to talk to someone about this."
"Done," I say, standing and shaking his hand. "As in, 'In the name of the father, the done, and the holy spirit.'"
"That sounds more like stately, plumb Buck Milligan than Bloomsday," he laughs.
For the first time in a long time, Bloomsday feels his audience has fully understood his joke.

8:30 p.m.
Love of Chair, Bloomsday remembers. That was the name of the mock soap opera on the old PBS kids show, The Electric Company.

He scans the crowd of legal elites attending the gala. A newly annointed Supreme Court Justice is here tonight as the guest speaker for the annual banquet of the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland. Hundreds of lawyers, dignitaries, rootily-poos. He sees no sign of his ersatz confidant, nor his arch-nemesis. "...And what about Naiomi," the mock announcer intoned in his drifting 70's memories.

He makes eye contact with a few key players, a humbled waive "hi." His boss is engaged with his labor problems. A politician not yet touched by scandal, but possibly worried, sits sifting through mashed potatoes. The grande dame of federal court escorts her legendary lawyer husband to the bar.

"Hey, Bloomsday!" his fellow advocate whispers from behind. He turns around to find Cherry Osgood, looking inebriated. "I just saw Judge Fuckitty-Fuck picking her nose in the ladies' room." Bloomsday happens to respect and admire Judge Fuckitty-Fuck, but knows that Cherry holds a grudge.

"I just straiffed past a prosecutors' table." Bloomsday confesses.

Us poverty advocates are lowly people, out of our element in high society. We have an even more peculiar affect around legal high society: the rich lawyers. They dismiss us as proletariat. I respond that they are bourgeoisie. There is certain common ground among us. The Constitution, for example. The rights of all citizens. "I ensured the rights of 37 citizens, today. How about you?" Bloomsday thinks.

We are both architects of society, I suppose. They clean up loose ends, ensure all parties have their ducks in a row. The fixers. The closers. "Michael Claytons, are we?" We're all dressed like him, tonight. At least I am.

"Status of operations?" Bloomsday asks Cherry.

"Well, no sign of The Problem, but Johnny Ipod Lawyer says he's coming." Higbee Gaines is The Problem. He is one of their deepest friends. Booze and pills used to be The Problem that we all talked about behind his back. Now, he, himself is known as The Problem, personified. He is scheduled to join us at our banquet table, clean and sober after a 30 day stint in rehab.

Just then, with Jungian verve, he spots Higbee entering the ballroom. He's fattened up a it, and looks well in the low light. They make a bee line for each other and hug. "Do you get conjugal visits in rehab?

"Sure," says Higbee. "Daily conjugal visits with my hand."

"Hourly, probably. With both hands. I know if I was in rehab, I'd just gloomily masturbate all day."

"Nah. They keep you busy. Try to help you put a positive spin on things."

"Have you been keeping up with the corruption scandal?" Bloomsday asks.

"Every fucking word." he says. "Priceless."

Bloomsday has not heard this verbal crutch of Higbee's for months. It sounds different when he's sober.

"By the way," Higbee continues. "They also had a Wii wth Netflix. I watched every episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker and Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries. I also watched most of Dark Shadows, too."

"I'm impressed. And you weren't stoned or drunk for it? That sounds like progress. I presume you're prepared to rejoin the League of Extraordinary Lawyers, again? Your membership dues are paid in full."

"Ready. Prepared." This answer is a reference to an old joke about lawyers. Civil attorneys versus criminal attorneys. Civil attorneys are always prepared for trial but are never quite ready for trial. Criminal attorneys are always ready for trial, but never quite prepared.

"There are protocols for re-entry. You must submit to trial by fire. I have a case I need your help on."

"I'm in," he pledges.

I tell him about the renegade jesuit hobo sitting in sanctuary at the Convent of St. Ruth's. I don't tell him the outlaw priest who needs assistance is clean and sober, too.

"...and what about Naiomi?" Bloomsday poses the question.

SATURDAY 7:50 p.m.
I take the family out for "Sad Bookstore Night," which includes a trip, first, to a decent, stinky-carpeted used bookstore in a strip-mall, then to a garishly named, cavernous, big box mega-budget bookmart just down the road. I'm relieved to find a few comrades milling the aisles of the former, and a vast, empty parking lot moating the latter.

My hunt for a couple of specific short stories turns up cold, but I find several Cliffordian odysseys that will prove big, red and useful. As Amonymous meanders the empty aisles of the bookmart, and I follow in classic Kubrick steadycam tradition, I notice several displays that trouble me: new trade-sized editions of dozens of L. Ron Hubbard books, with inky, sexy, retro sci-fi comic covers; vast rows of milky white Ayn Rand reprints, austere art deco lettering and all.

Amonymous settles in on a bin display of Chinese-made toys, wind-up scuba divers, rubber balls with glitter, mooing cans...He picks up an item that is shaped like a microphone or an ice cream cone and presses a conveniently placed button with his thumb. Inside the plastic globe at its top, small gears whirl into motion and tiny lights spin in glorious patterns. Amonymous gazes.

A store worker tries to look busy nearby, and gives a benign "how cute" to the tableau of my son staring mindlessly into toy. "It's a time-travel machine!" I say to Amonymous. "It sends you several seconds into the future!" He looks up at me, then back to the whirring toy in his hand. "See? It works!"

The store worker chuckles. But I'm not interested in her commiserations. "It was invented by L. Ron Hubbard," I continue, "with help from his girlfriend Ayn Rand..." The store worker looks confused. "...before they invented the second half of the twentieth century and turned America into an Amway distributorship for decades."

The worker walks away nervously. I continue, louder, "Thank god we put them in a box together and sent them into space so they couldn't stick their hands in our pockets while we stared at little whirring Chinese made toys anymore!" Amonymous is still gazing at the stupid thing. He turns to me to ask if he can have it, but before a syllable comes out I boom, "NO." He puts it down without a fight.

As we leave the store, I pass a garish poster of the lipsticked whore, her eyes fixed on the future, like a propagandist photo, and another of that mental patient talkshow host dressed as...as...Generalissimo Francisco Franco? Really?

"Say goodbye to this place, Amonymous. We'll never come back." A Bloomsday pox upon thee.

MONDAY 9:05 a.m.
Bloomsday's gait is different now that each step is tinged with a short, sharp shock of pain, the product of a weekend home improvement injury. How could he have known that, with kitchen cupboards removed for the installation of new hinges, his opening of a waist high drawer would unleash an avalanche of pots and pans, beneath? His big toe, victimized. Such dubious cause and effect, this jostling of things beneath. There are hazards to nesting, too, I suppose, muses Bloomsday as he limps to work in odd syncopation. If there is a lesson it is this: Don't do chores in your bare feet, asshole.

Bloomsday feels the watery vibration of his cell phone against his crucifixion. He pulls the phone out of his breast pocket to see that he is already engaged in a call with his newly-sober friend, Higbee Gaines. "Hey, oops, I must have nipple dialed you..." Bloomsday apologizes.

"No, I called you, but I heard you call someone an asshole just now."

"Oh, yeah, me. I was talking to myself."

"Again? At any rate, I wanted to talk to you about that renegade priest you asked me to talk to. Do you know why he's a renegade?" asks Higbee.

"I'm on a need to know basis. No. I never thought to ask Sister Beatrice or Bernice."

"Well, you definitely need to know this: he blew up The Thinker."

This jostling of things beneath, indeed, Bloomsday muses. "I have know idea what you're talking about, but if I did, I certainly wouldn't be talking about it on my cell phone, sir. Meet me at the Rock Hall. Behind it, where the skate park was."

Bloomsday hates talking on the cell phone about anything important. He is inclined to face to face interactions. Much can be gained from face to face interactions. Much can be lost in a telephone call.

"Listen. It's not like that. They know where he is. They just haven't bothered arresting him. They want him underground. If they arrest him, he'll just be a martyr. So they leave him alone. But they won't let him preside over mass. That's his punishment. Handed down by the Cleveland Police and the Catholic church."

"You're suggesting he's on the Holy Lamb?"

"Yeah, since March 24, 1970."

Bloomsday was a gurgling babe, then. Borne amid the clamor of lunar landings and crazed hippie cult murders, The Thinker was desecrated with explosives the same Spring as shots rang out in the Kent State sky.

TUESDAY 9:08 a.m.
Bloomsday shuts the car door and checks his pockets. He fumbles with the ear bud wires of his music content delivery system, then walks briskly up the parking lot incline toward Cleveland Browns Stadium. The cheapest walking distance with a view.

The giant LED on its west side shows the time: 9:08. Technically late. Practically, not.

Bloomsday bisects the Jesse Owens/Police Memorial Plaza, at the northeast corner of Sheriff McPoodley-Roo's Way. As he approaches a cannon, aimed squarely at him in the center of the square, he see's something he hasn't before. Two men in European suits and sunglasses waiting for him.

"Dobry den," one says to him. "Are you not Bloomsday?"

Bloomsday recognizes that accent. "Dobry den. You'll have to follow me. I'm late." The two men suddenly spring into action, placing themselves on either side, tripping to keep up.

"We understand you are a man of the people."

"Sure," I say. "Aren't you?"

"Well, yes, but not the American People. I was born in Czechoslovakia. I now live in the Czech Republic. I never moved."

"That's funny." I say. The other man is suspiciously silent. I stop outside the doors of the justice center. "Gotta go, guys. What can I do for you?"

"We are here on behalf of the Government of the Czech Republic. We wish to make you an Honorary Ambassador to our country, and extend membership in our Order of the Finicky Eaters."

"Excuse me?"

"That's not it's real name. Only members know the real name."

"Why me?"

"Because you're on television, dummy."

"Oh, you know your Paddy Chayefsky."

"Actually, I know my Ned Beatty."

"So, I'm in. Great. What do I have to do?"

"You'll be invited to Prague for a ceremony. There is an award. You give a speech. We pay you."

"I feel that there's something you're not telling me. What's the catch?"

"Our government has taken great interest in the story of The Thinker. We think you are an excellent resource on the topic."

"Yeah, me and Sister Wendy."

"Who?"

"Nevermind. This is getting a little Kafkaesque."

"That's funny you should say that. Prague and all. Cleveland's a lot like Prague."

"Yes, but we have no Kafka."

"I wouldn't be so sure, Mr. Bloomsday." He lean's heavily into me, as if casting a spell. I recognize him. Years ago. The Stinky Puppeteer. It was a puppet production of Eurydice. Orpheus. Our second night in Prague. The tiny, cramped theater stunk of the unwashed. It was him above the tangle of strings.

"You're creepin' me out fellas. Gimme some time to think about this." He pushes his way through the revolving door of the justice center, leaving his new friends in the cold.


4:45 p.m.
Bloomsday drafts a closing argument on a treadmill at the Lakewood Y. His musical menu includes: Brand New Day by Sting with Stevie on harmonica (warm up); the album, Eraser, by Thom York (hard momentum running, intermittent hard walk); selected songs from Todd Rundgeren (cool down). For shits 'n giggles, he rocks out to Prince's When U Were Mine and I Feel 4 U on the way home and blasts Darking Nikki in the driveway.

Inside the stone colonial, Molly and Luna snuggle like hamsters, awaiting papa. He gathers his effects from the car and sees he has missed a phone call. The number is not familar, with an unknown area code. Suddenly, his hand vibrates as a new text message arrives. It's a tweet. "@BloomsdayDevice: How was U'r workout?"

Bloomsday's first thought is, Prince is tweeting me. But reason prevails. Another text arrives: "I'm in the cab down the street." Bloomsday turns and looks and sees a cab parked, lurking, suspicious. No one takes cabs in Cleveland.

He takes to the cab, walking tall. Two passengers emerge. The stinky puppeteer and his silent companion. "Dobry den," he says.

"Dobry den," Bloomsday replies. "Have you been waiting long?"

"No hurry. We had waffles at Gene's Place. Delicious, I'd say."

"I believe the technical term is delicioso."

"Pardon?"

"Nevermind. Look, I'd invite you in, but I got a new baby and a tired momma in the house. How about you take me in the cab to the destination of my choice."

"Excellent idea. We need just a half our of your time."

"Fuck that. Your taking me to bloodymaryville. You fly, you buy."

The stinky puppeteer surmises. "I think I understand."

"To the Park View, cabbie!" Bloomsday commands.