One Hundred and Sixty

Fourteen years ago, when Bush ran for re-election, everyone else in the company said they were going to vote for him.  Why, I asked, after they’d complained about him throughout his first term, would they vote for him again?  They replied that, despite his faults, Bush was a Republican.  They would never vote for a Democrat.

They felt confirmed when, four years later, the Democrats nominated Obama.  Mark was the most vocal, yelling angrily that Obama was a socialist who, if elected, would take money away from middle-class people “like us” and give it to “those tool-and-die guys”, apparently forgetting that he had been a “tool-and-die guy” himself only a few years earlier.      

They all assumed I was going to vote for Obama.  Bob teased me for my naïveté in believing he would keep his campaign promises, while Rick and Lorna each took me aside and told me earnestly that Obama was not “the long-awaited Messiah”.  I agreed that Obama was no more likely than any politician to keep his campaign promises, without telling them that I wouldn’t be voting for him because he wasn’t a liberal, as he pretended, much less a socialist, as they imagined.

Three months ago, when I returned to the company, I wondered whether anyone there had learned anything during the interim.  I teased Bob for voting for Trump, just as he had teased me eight years ago for voting for Obama, expecting him to deny he'd voted for him; but to my surprise he said he did, and was “still cautiously optimistic” about Trump.

Mark surprised me as well, by saying party labels are meaningless; Bush, Obama, and now Trump, are all war criminals who should be strung up from the nearest lampposts.     

Nick surprised me by saying he’s never taken any interest in politics until now, but Trump scares him.

I was sitting at my desk earlier today, aware that Nick was babbling again, but paying no attention until I heard the words “Pavlov’s dog”.  I then turned and saw everyone else was looking at me.

“You got his attention”, said Amanda.  “I bet you know about Pavlov’s dog, don't you?".

“Of course,” I said.  “I’m Russian.”

“I was just telling them I was out with my buddies last night, and I made a joke about Pavlov’s dog”, Nick explained.  "And none of them knew what I was talking about.  Can you believe that?”

I could believe it, because everything Nick's said about his buddies suggests they’re fools.  But I was surprised Nick knew about Pavlov’s dog – or rather admitted knowing about it.  He's given everyone the impression that he is himself a fool who knows and cares only about video games.  But I find his act even less convincing than Bob’s Republican ‘true believer’ act.

While I sat wondering why he’d stepped out of character, Nick continued talking.  I don’t know how he made the segue, but he was now talking about Schrödinger. 

“Pavlov’s dog got into the box and fought with Schrödinger’s cat,” I said.  “That’s why the cat was dead when the box was opened.”

“That’s not a joke,” Nick said, frowning at me.  “I told them a joke, but that’s not a joke.”

So I went back to work.

One Hundred and Fifty Nine

I'm still alive because I don't take life seriously.  Just as the only people who take god seriously are atheists, so the only people who take life seriously are suicides.

One Hundred and Fifty Eight

Lately I’ve been waking up during the night, often two or three times. 

I look at the clock, wondering why the alarm didn’t go off, because I feel as though I’ve slept all night.  But I always find I've slept only a couple of hours.

I feel as though I’ve slept all night because my dreams leave me exhausted.

I used to remember my dreams in detail.  And they were detailed.  They were elaborate spectacles and I watched them as a spectator, aware they were dreams.  I learned about myself from watching them.  Now I remember nothing of my dreams after I wake.  I wouldn’t know I’d been dreaming if I didn’t have the feeling that something momentous had been happening, and suddenly it stopped.  A great cacophony suddenly stopped, leaving nothing but the silence of my bedroom.

It was as though I'd been dreaming I was in a forest, and heard the sound of a distant battle.  It grew louder and louder as I walked towards it until, finally, I climbed a hill and saw the soldiers below me, fighting; and they, seeing me, stopped fighting and looked at me.  Did they think I was their general?

It was as though I'd been dreaming I was in an insane asylum, and heard its inmates wailing.  The sound grew louder and louder as I walked towards it until, finally, I opened a door and saw them; and they, seeing me, stopped wailing and looked at me.  Did they think I was their doctor?

It was as though I’d dreamed I was in hell.

I am in hell.  We all are.  I used to think I could help them.  But now I know I can help no one.  So I no longer remember my dreams.

One Hundred and Fifty Seven

Google commemorated Marlene Dietrich’s birthday today with a Google Doodle of her dressed in white tie and tails. Her ‘legacy’, claimed one of the accompanying comments, was her “willingness to challenge gender norms”. Another comment described her as bisexual, which is less obtuse than those who call her a lesbian, but still wrong. 

Dietrich wasn’t attracted to men or women. She was an actress, and therefore a narcissist. She created an androgynous persona to attract an audience composed of both men and women because she knew they both felt trapped in their conventional gender roles, and wanted to see them challenged. Like Narcissus, she was attracted to an image of herself that she created and saw reflected in the eyes of her audience, male and female.

She was an actress who enjoyed the company of men like John Wayne and Ernest Hemingway, who performed their sexual personæ as skillfully as she did hers. One comment in support of the view that she was lesbian quoted her as saying “Sex is much better with a woman, but then one can’t live with a woman”; but what she meant by it isn't as obvious to me as it is to others. Was she speaking as a woman, or as the androgynous persona she had created? Either would find sex with a woman better than sex with a man because ours is a patriarchal society in which women must learn to please men, but men aren’t expected to know what pleases women.

A woman might find sex with another woman better than sex with a man for the same reason that a man might find sex with another man better than sex with a woman. It’s forbidden, which makes it attractive. It’s forbidden because it’s attractive. 

Most men don’t really like women, and most women don’t really like men, because most people are conformists; and people who conform to conventional roles, and expect others to do the same, are boring. Most people are such conformists that the only nonconformity they can imagine is sexual; which is why they’re obsessed with sex.

One Hundred and Fifty Six

They say they believe they'll live forever.  That would be terrible if it were true; but they say all the wrongs we suffer in this life will be made right in the next, and all the wrongs we do to others in this life will be forgiven in the next.  I’m sure they want to believe it, but I don’t see how they can.

I think I can live with the truth.  At least I try.  But they don’t think they can.    

One Hundred and Fifty Five

I woke this morning with the words of Major Amberson echoing in my head.  They're actually the Major’s words as spoken by Orson Welles in his film of The Magnificent Ambersons, which so impressed me when I was a child that I read the novel on which it was based.

As he nears the end of his life, the Major becomes uncharacteristically philosophical.  He asks himself what happens to us when we die, and reasons that our souls return to wherever they came from.  The sun is the source of all life on earth, therefore our souls return to the sun.

I knew Tarkington’s novel won the Pulitzer Prize, but I found it inferior to the film.  The Major’s words sounded magnificent when spoken by Welles, but looked banal on the page.  This was perhaps the first time I became aware that a second-rate novel can inspire a great film.   

Now that I'm nearing the end of my own life, my thoughts seem to me as banal as the Major’s.

It’s obvious why the sun was our first god.  He rules the sky, and fertilizes mother earth with rain.  But before the gods there were goddesses.  And before them both, the void.

Egyptologists are puzzled by the fact that Nut was goddess of the sky and Geb, her brother/husband, god of the earth.  But Nut was goddess of the night sky.  The black void overhead was her body, and the stars that filled it were the souls of the dead.  Osiris climbed up a ladder to re-enter his mother’s body and become king of the dead.

The Book of Nut is the earliest known text on astrology and astronomy.  What we separate into religion and science is the study of the night from which we all woke and to which we all return.

One Hundred and Fifty Four

We had our Christmas party yesterday evening.

It wasn’t actually a party.  The last time I worked at the company, Don rented a suite at a local hotel every year and we’d have a real party.  Bob and his wife brought their instruments and played while we all danced and sang Christmas carols.  After I retired, the company lost so many employees that Don stopped holding annual Christmas parties.  Yesterday’s party was just dinner at a restaurant, and only for the employees, not their families.  Not even Don’s wife was there.

Sitting at the table, I became aware of how much the company’s group dynamic has changed because of Nick.

Most of the employees who are gone now had been around Bob’s age, and the new hires are all Nick’s age.  He and the women sat at my end of the table, giggling together, while I sat silent.

I asked myself if I was jealous, but decided that isn't the case.  It’s true I used to be the focus of the group, but only in a negative sense, as the eye is the focus of the hurricane.  Petty quarrels swirled around me, but I refused to be drawn into them.  I thought of myself as the only real adult in the room.  Nick has made himself the focus of the group by being the most childish adult in the room.

He babbles constantly about his favorite comic book heroes, video games, and the pranks he and his 'buddies' play on each other.  He doesn’t do this with the other men in the office.  His audience is the women, who laugh indulgently as they probably do at the antics of their children (The women are all married, with small children).

I might find Nick as amusing as the women do if I didn’t have to work with him.  But even Bob, who never says a critical word about anyone, told me Nick is ‘erratic’ and ‘disorganized’.