A Message to Outer Space

No one knows what shadowy memory haunts them to this day. In this connection one might also add that one of the Heeresgrupe E intelligence officers at that time was a young Viennese lawyer whose chief task was to draw up memoranda relating to the necessary resettlements, described as imperative for humanitarian reasons. For this commendable paperwork he was awarded by Croatian head of state Ante Pavelic the silver medal of the crown of King Zvonomir, with oak leaves. In the post-war years this officer, who at the very start of his career was so promising and so very competent in the technicalities of administration, occupied various high offices, among them that of Secretary General of the United Nations. And reportedly it was in this last capacity that he spoke onto tape, for the benefit of any extra-terrestrials that may happen to share our universe, words of greeting that are now, together with other memorabilia of mankind, approaching the outer limits of our solar system aboard the space probe Voyager II.

 These are the words of one of my great literary heroes, W. G. Sebald, in his magnificent book The Rings of Saturn. In the first sentence from that passage above, Sebald is referring to those who survived a brutal ethnic cleansing in Bosnia--the perpetrators being Croats aided by Germans and Austrians. Below is the melancholy Sebald. With much to be melancholic over.

Without naming him, of course, Sebald is referring in the magnificent passage, to former UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim. Here he is.

Now tell me. Which of those two men would you rather share a beer with? This question is strictly theoretical, or hypothetical, since neither still resides corporeally on this earth.
     It is true that Waldheim, along with Jimmy Carter, was asked to record messages that were then loaded on the space probe that, to this day, is still en route. I don't think anyone knows what their message were, but I have not looked into that question extensively. It is also true that if you look on the UN website, for the bios of the former secretaries-general, you will find that Waldheim's does not mention his years in the Balkans (nor any of the other dark corners of his resume), though it does mention that in 1968 he was elected President of the first United Nations Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.

The Litter Lady Has Met Her Match, and She's Getting Mad

 

The photo you see above is me in my idyllic days of litter collection. That photo was from the day I went out on a litter walk with a reporter from my local paper, and it was quite a jolly day.  When the article came out, I had much response from people I knew as well as strangers who recognized me when they met me. One woman, I remember, said she liked that I didn't "judge people," by which she meant the people who left the litter that I then picked up. And to a certain extent, that was true. I didn't care so much about Them, though I did wonder a little bit what the deal was with Them. What I cared about more was doing something small that could help the world and also make me feel I'd done something constructive. Aside from the clean-up aspect of the effort, my goal was to get recyclables into their proper containers and get glass off the street so it couldn't harm anyone or their tires.

     I have continued this practice, and when my husband walks with me, he helps out too, often spotting a "find" before I do, or a place to deposit it if we haven't taken a bag with us.The protocol for recycling is that the bottle or can has to be empty when it goes into the bin, and sometimes the bottles or cans I find are not empty, and so I empty them myself--into the gutter or some such, trying not to make too much of a mess. I myself do not drink soda or any of those other weird kinds of drinks that come in those bottles and cans, and sometimes it's hard for me to believe that people actually do drink them. Sometimes, if I'm feeling annoyed, I say to myself or my husband, "If they're going to buy this crap, and leave it by the wayside, they could at least drink the whole thing." Not the mellow, nonjudgmental litter lady of yore, you may be thinking.

      Anyway, sometimes I come across a "find" that poses a particular challenge.  For example, just yesterday, I spotted a can standing on the curb--I believe it was some kind of sparkling, flavored water--and it was unopened and entirely full. I could not for the life of me think what to do. I did not want to open the can and dump out the entire contents--thinking that perhaps a truly thirsty person might come by, see it, and actually be able to make use of it. So even though I had picked it up, I put it back down again. Another time--this was in the winter--I found a beer can that was mainly full, but the liquid was frozen into a kind of mush that I could not easily pour out. I had to let that one go as well. Sometimes people drink part of the drink, and then dump in a cigarette or two, so the liquid becomes a kind of nicotinic brew, which is particularly gross to dispose of. Today, however, I truly met my match. It was a bottle of that Lipton Ice Tea, and when I picked it up, I could see it had something in it that had to be discarded, so I opened it and tipped it over, and something really gross kind of oozed out. It looked a bit like a very thick, grainy Dijon mustard, and it struck me that this might actually be some form of human waste, and what was I to do now? I don't think it was human waste because (1) how could it get into that small-necked bottle? and (2) it didn't smell like human waste. Still, I did not know what to do with it--continue to dump it out? Drop it in a recycling bin without dumping it? No on both counts. What I did was set it down in a somewhat out-of-the-way spot. But I felt bad about it. And also mad.

If Someone Had Told Me

 

About 15 years ago, I met D in a writing workshop. We were working so hard at learning to tell stories on the page and to discuss each others' stories in a respectful and insightful way that would help us grow as writers. I liked her right away. I liked what she wrote, and I liked her comments on my work as well as on the work of the others in the workshop. I felt like I knew her already, which we sometimes feel about people who are destined to become friends. Anyway, I told her that I would like to be her friend, and we did become friends, and our families got to know each other quite well, and we have celebrated many events and holidays together over the years. We have also read a lot of each others' work, as we were in a writing group together for many years. I would say that one of the identities we share is a literary identity.

We both have many other identities. Just to mention a few, we are both mothers and sisters and Jews and Oak Parkers; we are daughters; she is a teacher; I am an editor; I am a wife, and and she was too until recently. And then in addition to all these, we also share an identity of being writers.

The point of all this is that if 15 years ago, when we were sitting in that first writing workshop, thinking about words and stories, and how much we loved them, if some imp had come and whispered in my ear that 15 years from then, I would be going to a Super Bowl party at her house, I would have been incredulous but I would also have thought that this was such a ridiculous thing to say that I might not even wanted to waste any energy being incredulous.

     But things evolve and reconfigure. I have no understanding of the game of football. I am not, therefore, a football fan. For a number of reasons that I might go into in a different post, I have come to appreciate the physicality of it, and I also find some of the shots of the players' faces . . . eloquent. A story of sorts occurs on those fields, and although I don't understand it entirely--not nearly as much as I understand, say, M. Proust up there at the top of the post--in a few minutes, I am going over to D's for a Super Bowl party. Life dishes up many surprises. Does it not?

Locked Horns

In my novel-in-progress, two characters--an acrobat and his boss, the circus owner--argue interminably, getting exactly nowhere. I won't mention the topic of all that arguing; the point is the interminable arguing. A month or so ago, while working on these scenes and this relationship, the phrase locked horns came to mind. As it goes with the kind of writing I do, when an image seems fertile or resonant, I want to know more about, to see where it might lead me. So I googled locked horns, and learned quite a bit.
     As some of you likely know, this phrase is a literal reference to horned animals and the kind of trouble they can get themselves into.

If you have those complex things on your head, you best be careful. As I read in several places, the situation of locked horns doesn't happen all that often because most animals know how to evaluate the dominance hierarchy, and where they stand within it. As a help in this regard, animals know how to position themselves just so to show off their size and strength. Any animal can see, the theory goes, who's the Alpha, and the non-Alpha knows enough to back off. Nevertheless, errors are made, and then trouble for the lock-ed ensues. Here's another pair.

        As you can guess from these photos, and see in several online videos, including this one, once locked together, the two may not be able to unlock. Thus they cannot eat or drink, and they cannot move without the other. They drag each other hither and yon until one or the other dies, and then the still-alive one is trapped by the dead one, barely able to move, and so the two become locked together in death--a gruesome situation.

Here's a three-way, which I bet is not very common.

To understand all this, I probably spent about an hour--gazing at images, reading reports from hunters and others who had observed one of these to-the-death engagements, plumbing it. Only a few small details from this research will likely appear on the printed page, but I feel enriched by having learned all this. It won't be lost on you to say that many of such battles seem to be afoot or potentially afoot in this little world of ours today. 

Economic Indicators

A while back, I wrote a post about a a cafe in Iowa, and its business uptick (people ordering "a full lunch") as an indicator, perhaps, of an uptick in the economy. There, I also mentioned that what might be good for the cafe (higher bills/customer) might not be good for the customers and the rest of the world (more calories, larger waistlines, more heart disease and diabetes). Today, I have four more possible indicators--all from stories I heard on the radio this week.
     1. Law School.

Apparently, many law students are concerned about their job prospects vs. the cost of a law school education. Complaints focus on misrepresentations by law schools and the ABA about the current career climate for lawyers. As my husband pointed out, it's easy to add more chairs to a law school classroom; it's not like in a science lab, where students needs high-cost equipment. There was a time (a long time) when a law degree was an excellent credential for a lucrative career path. It practically guaranteed one. I believe that this is not the case anymore.

     2. Nuclear waste.

In a small town in Spain, described in the radio story I heard as located in the land of Don Quixote, the unemployment rate is so high that the townspeople (at least those interviewed for the story) are celebrating the deal they've just made to become a nuclear waste site. It is jobs that the people of this town want above all else. I am grateful that I am not in a position to have to decide between having a job and living above a nuclear waste site.
     Here's another view of the town--with more of the Don Quixote feel.

     3. Guns.

The economy in the Flathead Valley in Montana is booming because they manufacture guns there. The manufacturers are having a difficult time finding enough workers with the technical skills required, as these are more than straight assembly-line jobs. To try to satisfy the need for highly skilled workers, the gun manufacturers are partnering with local community colleges to implement training programs that suit their industry.

     4. Mattresses.

A new nonprofit company in Nashville, called Spring Back Recycling is taking on the rarely attempted task of mattress recycling. In their words, they are working to "protect the environment by offering retailers, institutions, and consumers an economical alternative to dumping used mattresses in landfills," which, I learned from the radio story, is where most mattresses end up. 

Each year more than 30 million mattresses are sent to landfills across the country. Because of their large size, mattresses take up considerable space and can take decades to decompose. Additionally, mattress springs frequently get caught in bulldozers, loaders, and trucks causing extensive damage.

The mattresses are broken down into raw materials such as cotton, metal, wood, and foam. Each of these component parts is bundled and sold to area scrap buyers to be reused in other applications.

Equally impressive, Spring Back employs previously incarcerated and homeless men to do this work.

We can all draw our own conclusions from my compilation of economic indicators, but I always like to see a little light at the end of a tunnel.

Birthday/Santa

Tomorrow is my daughter's birthday, and I am sending her this digital cake. I wish I could send her or make her an analog cake (meaning a real one), but she lives too far away for that. Anyway, as many people know, having a child is one of the most life-altering experiences there is, so a child's birth-day, no matter how old she becomes, can stir things up. Last week, my husband reminded me of a memory I'd put aside for quite a while, and I think it fits well as a Discomfort or Diversity, so I've decided to tell it here.
     Because we are Jewish, when our daughter was young (say 4 or 5) and Christmas came around, my husband talked straight to her about Santa. The reason was that he did not want her to feel left out or ignored by the jolly old gent and all his jolly gifts.

 

Perhaps he was being overly protective, but he did it out of love. If we lived in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood or town (as I did when I was growing up), perhaps he wouldn't have felt the need, but we don't, so he did.
     Back then, we were very close friends with a family that also had young children. That family was not Jewish, and Christmas was a great, magical event in their home--tree, wreaths, lights, cookies, scented candles, and all the rest. One evening, around Christmas, we were visiting at their house. The children were in one room playing, and the adults were in a different room doing what adults do--probably talking.
     Suddenly, the children came running in, a little frantic, and one of them reported that our daughter had declared Santa to be not real. No one knew what to do or say. Not the adults.

Not the children. Including our daughter, who I think might have been a bit shocked at the power of her words.

I understand the urge to protect the innocence and illusions of childhood, though I never had any particular feelings about Santa except terror. As a young girl, I did somewhat cling to the tooth-fairly illusion, which my parents were very cagey about--never really admitting how the exchange of tooth and coin occurred.
    Perhaps we should all just "stick to our own kind" if we want to protect the innocence of our children. You know I'm kidding, right? But it is kind of confusing.

It Was Indeed a Matter of Time

A few weeks back, I was talking to my friend L, on her birthday. We've known each other for many years, since we were college students, living in the dorm, so we've been witness to many profound and formative moments in each others' lives. For her, it was a birthday with significant meaning, and she said that one phrase kept running through her mind: "There's so little time." And this made me think--and say, "But it wasn't always that way. There were times that seemed endless, as if they would last forever." And this made me remember the way summer days or nights felt when I was a girl, that time meant nothing at all. And it also made me remember the endlessness of time in a different way--summer days in my 20s, when I was directionless and lonely, and I wasn't sure how to make it through a entire and endless, empty day.
     I'm certainly not the first to write or think about the relativity and elasticity and sometimes-brevity of time. But that day, in that phone call with L, I felt it completely and intimately, and way down. As usual, context is everything, and in the context of our friendship, feelings run deep. We told each other stories--laughing and crying. Some of them felt like fairy tales.

I wonder how it would be if time were a mother instead of a father. What might she carry instead of a scythe?