AMERICAN GOTHIC MAINSTREAM FICTION

It was all very unexpected and unpredictable that suddenly a man named Subhasis Chattopadhyay, who according to Google is an Assistant Professor of English  http://www.academicroom.com/users/cshubho  posted a message to the Westlit acadenuc listserv.  “I am currently on PhD completion sabbatical provided by the Government of India. I am working on the problem of  evil, the soveriegnty of the good and millenial concerns in the works of Stephen King and Cormac McCarthy. I hold a First Masters in English from the University of Calcutta.  I have also earned a Post Graduate Diploma in Biblical Studies from the Pontifical Athaenuem, Banaglore; also having separately trained there to become a spiritual counsellor.”  But he confides on an email,  “In person, I am a lazy music listening , reading and theological fellow. Not religious though.”  I take that to mean he is not conventionally religious in the sense of observant and that I would get along with him just fine.  I also find his insights valuable enough to quote.

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 Here is his thesis title:  “Revisiting the American Western and the Thriller with special reference to Cormac McCarthy and Stephen King.” 

This is his idea, mercilessly edited by myself:  

“Stephen King and Cormac McCarthy are not usually studied together.  . . . Their critical receptions have been very different: King has been rejected as being “a writer of penny dreadfuls” (Bloom n.pag.) for writing “socially marginal money-making pulp” (Ingebretsen 105) unworthy of the National Book Foundation’s annual award for ‘distinguished contribution to American letters’ [awarded to King in 2003] while Cormac McCarthy has been praised by the same Harold Bloom as an heir to Herman Melville.”

. . .Both Stephen King and Cormac McCarthy, though committing themselves to different genres, have the same aim: they subvert their chosen genres and engage with horror and violence not for the sake of horror and violence but for the sake of critiquing society. . . 

One of the ideological issues that both King and McCarthy engage with is the problem of evil. Their portrayal of violence goes beyond surface gore questioning the meanings of both good and evil, for “a fundamental religious and moral question has to do with goodness amid ... evil. Still, in the configurational act of understanding, "world" comes to some meaningfulness, whether good or evil. This is not a creation ex nihilo since the fundamental fact of our existence is that we find ourselves in a world to which we respond.  . . .

. . . Like Emmanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) they are “haunted by a sense of cosmic mystery” (Greene 92).  It has been remarked recently that “some of the most stirring affirmations of Christian faith can be found in the chilling stories of King” (Blake n. pag.) and Cormac McCarthy’s novels have been seen as allegories of spiritual survival, suggesting “religious themes centering around suffering and a hope for answers, if not redemption”  (Rothfork 285).  

. . .An “apocalyptic tone” (Derrida, Apocalyptic Tone 3-37) provides them the necessary intellectual space required to study Christian theology and theodicy [if God is omnipotent and good, why does he make us suffer?] in terms of the thriller and the Western. Both Stephen King and Cormac McCarthy make explicit the risks of “doing theology” (Hopkins 136) within the parameters of their fictions and this is of concern in this study. 

 …where did Evil go? And the answer is: everywhere ...In a society which seeks ...to concern itself solely ... with the discourse of the Good, in a society where it is no longer possible to speak Evil, Evil has metamorphosed into all the viral and terroristic forms that obsess us. (Baudrillard 81)

There are two traditional interpretations of the dominant mode of American literature, especially its fiction – the mode of romance, and the mode of the Gothic which is a variant of the romance, emphasizing its darker aspects (Miller 241-78) . .  . Throughout the works of King and McCarthy we encounter instances of clinical insanity. The theme of insanity which runs through Gothic literature including bestsellers is relevant to our discussion since the content of both King’s and McCarthy’s works, including the former’s short stories deal with issues within clinical psychology and psychiatry. 

. . .While American literature has been an unabashed investigation into the underbelly of lived experience, nonetheless “critics have made every effort to hide this fact” (Goddu 267). 

. . . Suttree [by McCarthy] specifically deals with alienation which may be seen for our purpose here, to re-enact the Crucifixion loneliness of Jesus. When Christ felt abandoned by His Father, He became the type for all who were abject before Him, and also crucially, of all who are to experience abjection after the Christ-event (this is the field of kenotic theology). Suttree, in this sense is a theological tale of men alienated from all others. . .  He is doomed to failure.  

. . .From the discussion above it is now evident that both Stephen King and Cormac McCarthy have extended the unique American literary syndrome of constructing the Gothic to the realm of popular culture. And thereby they have revised American horror and western literature into vehicles of theodicy, theology and apocalyptic meditation. They are our neo-evangelists. 

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To me, religious concepts as expressed by formal philosophers and institutions begin within the assumptions identified in this paper:  good and evil, self and other, and even binaries like beginning and end.  My own thoughts have run quite a different way, trying to get under these binaries by going to felt rather than defined concepts.

Thus, I begin with Eliade’s “The Sacred and the Profane” and an ecological “web” paradigm.  That is, I look for the assumptions that our experience teaches us, and that are normally stored unconsciously.  So I will say that one can feel direct contact with “the mysterium tremendum and fascinans” and that this is the true source of the Holy, truly “Other.”  It is as scary as the night sky.  Dark, hallucinatory -- and therefore Gothic.

Professor Chattopadhyay points out that the sources of uncanniness and horror in these two “pop” writers are ordinary and within our experience, even the ghastly violence in McCarthy which seems not to concern most readers.  I hardly know King’s work. 

It soon becomes apparent, reading this paper, that it deals with white mainstream assumptions as suggested.  I would suggest that the underlying Gothic horror is slavery and the holocaust of the American Indian.   Native American “religion” is entirely experience-based, ecologically sourced, and rarely teleological though there is usually a genesis story -- not always.  Maybe this is why the apocalypse of the European invasion took them so much by surprise.

To the white mainstream Euro, a population rapidly draining off to the Right, the Devil is the Dark Man as in McCarthy.  King seems to be reacting to the ghastly wilderness of the human interior and the uncertainty whether one is dealing with reality.  Recently a third source of the Gothic dark and uncanny has been the explosion of vampire romance, which some take to be an account of the HIV-AIDS epidemic and others take to be about the discovery that same-sex-desiring people are everywhere among us. Once one admits these out-groups, the whole issue of what is good versus what is evil is called into question.

The relevance of the Western is partly that the “other” is so present (Indians, Mexicans, Asians) and partly that the ecologies of such a wide land throw the focus back on the tension between the loner and the group when both struggle to survive.  It is also a place where time is brought up to consciousness again and again because so much irresolvable and evil history still lingers.  In fact, I think our reluctance to give up this “story” is at the heart of our meddling in the Middle East.  Some explicitly WANT the apocalypse to come in order to end the horror of ambiguity.

“And thereby they have revised American horror and western literature into vehicles of theodicy, theology and apocalyptic meditation. They are our neo-evangelists.”  This is very valuable, and the more it is brought to consciousness the better.  The approach will re-dignify “the people’s stories” and increase our honesty about what we’re doing.

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If you wish to contact Professor Chattopadhyay or to get the full document I quote above, you could contact me for help.  

"LIVVAGTERNE"-- "THE PROTECTORS"

There are a great number of movies and series with the title “protector” in them, so let us recall that this TV series is Danish and called “Livvagterne” in its native language.   http://www.mariannedepierres.com/mdp-on-tv-the-protectors-danish/  is an accurate review, IMHO.   The series is considered “Danish Noir” as opposed to English, Scots, Welsh, French and so on -- each with it’s own cultural twist.  Americans have their own unique style, of course, and there is a particular world view coming out of Vancouver, BC, that I would not quite label “Canadian.”  It often includes the aboriginal population.  I normally follow English styles, but they can be viciously S/M, more explicit and more interested in perversion.  Consider “Prime Suspect,” “Wire in the Blood,” “Cracker,” and the like.  Of course, the English also do “cozies” and what might be called “Oxford.”   Great preoccupation with class. The French series I tried seemed still Existentialist and cramped, bitter and authoritarian but sexy.  The Welsh central detective actor has died and I can’t remember his name.  The Scots series (“Rebus”) is called “Tartan Noir.” I’m increasingly aware of “sub-categories” of the BBC, with special attention to the industry on the Tyne.  “Detective Montalban,” an Italian series, is not available on Netflix yet.

Generic “protector” shows vary according to who is being protected and whether the emphasis is on the object of protection or the psychological toll on the protectors themselves, which was the shift that distinguished “Homicide” in the beginning.  Others have followed that pattern, even when the protectors and the vulnerable become very mixed, as in “Oz” where the chaplains and warden try to protect prisoners and each other, and some of the vulnerable must make terrifying compromises to protect themselves, like becoming the slaves of more powerful men. “The Protectors,” the Danish version, has its own focus on relationships, family, love and loyalty with a tolerant attitude toward sex, but less interest in violence, not that it’s entirely gone.

I’ve only seen two years of the series and didn’t know there was a third until just now when I checked imdb.com. These shows can be streamed from Netflix, one episode after the other, like reading chapters in a book, which takes a while to finish but this one has a strong through-line that holds the focus.  Quite apart from the quality of production, which is excellent, and the wonderful aerial shots of various locations (especially the city at night), the professional but unfamiliar actors quickly become transparent.  This story follows an arc from the first episode when a young Egyptian woman with cheekbones that would make a Sioux groan with envy is able to hold her own and even shine during recruitment training for these elite guardians of famous people and national leaders.  

Her cohort includes two others; they become a close threesome.  Jasmina, Islamic, bonds with the Catholic one as a friend and the other, a Jew, as a little more than that, and the three are soon tight, living in an old church with a stained glass window depicting Abraham, the father of the three Middle Eastern religions represented by the three “protectors”.  The series does not shrink away from religious issues, which are causing so much conflict among the three global descendants of Abraham.  In the window Abraham holds a knife to the throat of his son.  

The series plots take a winding labyrinth through tales that go from near-farce when a stalker takes on the persona of an actress to an on-the-scene African exploit retrieving diamonds finally found in shit -- in a body.  There were ten episodes per year, paired to follow five stories. "Leon," who is the director and nearly invisible in the beginning -- only looks up from his desk to receive, unperturbed, more news of disaster and apocalypse.  “The world is ending!” announces someone.  “Yup,” says Leon.  “I’ll deal with it.”  His lover, an Ingmar-Bergman-worthy Liv Ullman with red hair, is his safety and sanity.  They swim on the beach near their home, warm-up together nude in a sleeping bag on the sand, and are married on a sailboat.  Leon guides his people through one crisis after another, in spite of interference by a politically appointed overseer, until gradually we understand from small clues what goes on in his head and how he learned it.

By the end of the second year the limits are reached.  The honorable and sensitive man has accidentally shot a child and cannot recover.  Jasmina has watched someone very much like herself die horribly as a result of an act of terrorism.  Jonas, the cold-blooded one, has lost the woman he loved the most, but refuses to admit she is dead because he believes in the afterlife.  Yet he goes back to his wife.  Leon resigns, fed up with the incompetence of those who have exposed him -- along with all the others -- to terrible suffering, loss and death, all for political power-mongering.

The issue of protection is a major one for me, but I won’t go into psych reflections here except to say that I’m sure that it’s behind my devotion to Westerns in the Fifties.  I was not alone.  The main premise of “Gunsmoke,” “Paladin,” and even “Rawhide” (where it was supposed to be the cows who were being protected) or “Wagon Train,” was Alpha Men giving tough and skillful protection.  By the time we get to more modern protectors like the NYPD cluster and the later, even more sophisticated, “Baltimore cluster”, motives and skills become the chief suspects.

A new element in the more recent crime stories is the possibility of CCTV surveillance, constant communicating, GPI locating, data crunching, tiny nano-bugs, and so on.  Most of the plots depend upon smart phones or pulling something out of a database.  The constant under-theme is how much law enforcement is justified in invading and controlling our lives.  In addition, the internet erases boundaries, esp. for crime, so law enforcement agencies -- previously local or national -- must work together in ways not always supported by communication.  Another issue is that things like metal keys have been replaced by thumbprint locks and card IDs, which can be diverted in inventive ways.

Sifting through the Google posts about “The Protectors,” I find that there is a predecessor series by the same writers called “The Eagle: A Crime Odyssey, ” which is streamable on Netflix.  The episodes begin with an eagle’s view of the country, then pick up some ecological detail: mountains, rugged shore, small household on a bluff with clothes flapping on the line, the face of a reflective man, flashback to a child.  Right away the sense of events overwhelming people and demanding intervention comes in the dramatic form of a huge airliner takeoff aborted in order to get the protagonist off the flight to supervise a terrorist take-down, even though he was going to see his dying mother.  Those are the key terms of being this kind of protector:  choose the greater good or choose the personal desire.  Americans go for desire.   Personally.

Here’s another interesting blog about the work of the writers,  Mai Brostrom and Peter Thorsboe.  http://eurodrama.wordpress.com/tag/peter-thorsboe/    There are other predecessor series.  I appreciate the terse, oblique, can-you-get-it style. Good for subtitles.  I’m sure they have been influencing American writers for a while.  Maybe American watchers are finally ready for them.  Maybe it’s the surprising return of the ’60’s and ’70’s Ingmar Bergman factor: serious, intense, thoughtful.  

I see the villain of “The Eagle” (“Ornen”) now -- he’s Leon, the hero of “The Protectors!”  Well, that actor.  Thomas W. Gabriellson.  Makes Clint Eastwood look like a scenery chewer.

RE-CRIMINALIZING CONDOMS

When I was born in 1939, condoms were illegal.  Canada and the US were both trying to re-populate the prairies with productive farmer tax-payers, now that the governments had managed to eliminate all the Native Americans who were far too elusive and different to be useful.  NA’s were defined by their tribal “centers” rather than their “boundaries,” but nations are based on boundaries.  Some nations, like islands, have natural boundaries and so if their populations increase too much, things get crowded and emigration is necessary.  My grandfather, born in 1875 in Scotland, was the oldest of four children born to Archibald Mitchell Strachan, who was born in 1850 and who brought his family to the North American prairies where they survived but did not exactly prosper in spite of virtue and education.   My father was born in 1903 in South Dakota. 

My father, the oldest son of an oldest son, did not feel economically secure enough to start his own family until he was 34, partly because he was still helping his parents.  He was very concerned with limiting family size to two, as were his siblings.  A progressive man, he had a collection of pamphlets from Margaret Sanger, who actively promoted birth control.  His three sibs all limited their families to two, but somehow -- accidentally, I think -- there was a third conception at our house, my younger brother who is now dead.  As a human being, he was a joy -- quite gifted --  and not resented, but it was an extra cost that weighed the family down.

My parents’ birth control method -- actually my father’s choice -- was condoms.  He made such a big fuss about them that on his wedding day his brothers got access to his suitcase and laid in on top of his honeymoon pajamas a stallion condom, QUITE large.  Maybe you didn’t know that horses used condoms.  So do bulls.  (They need a little help putting them on.)

Condoms have nothing to do with virility.  They are about fertility and disease, a safety measure that has nothing to do with human marriage and everything to do with biology and planning.  (Check out veterinary supplies.)  My mother had her own ideas about birth control, so after the birth of the third child, she had her tubes tied.  (She was one of four sibs in a family that never quite had enough money, also didn’t marry until late because she was helping to support her birth family.)  I don’t know why my father wasn’t the one to have a vasectomy.  My parents were always faithful (so far as one can ever know), did not drink, did not party.

Condoms were illegal.  My father ordered them by mail and they arrived in a plain brown wrapper.  In our house it was a major crime to get to the mail before the adults. This became a personal challenge when I was three, because I liked to open packages, and also when I was thirteen, though by that age what I was after was magazines.  WWII and the resulting world-wide wave of accidental and orphaned babies plus venereal disease (today called STD’s) that changed society’s view, but even then “rubbers” were kept quietly in the back.  One asked the pharmacist, who might be inclined to give unwanted advice or even to refuse.  The conservative back-to-the-past forces of society like this.  It’s a great source of power for a righteous small town pharmacist to know who is buying condoms and in what quantity.

A movement is underway to forbid the CARRYING of condoms.  Not the purchase, not the practice, not the possession of icky used condoms, but packaged any-brand condoms, because it is ASSUMED that a person carrying a condom is a prostitute.  It’s obvious that the cops have slipped the paradigm of arresting people carrying little baggies of illegal drugs over onto sex.  (EVERYTHING gets slipped over to the obsession with sex.)  It is totally insane thinking.

Think of the unintended consequences:  sex without condoms obviously means unwanted pregnancy , anal sex to prevent pregnancy and a steep rise in both anally and vaginally transmitted diseases.  Carrying condoms is part of prevention to prevent spur of the moment unprotected sex.  On the one hand the authorities ban the carrying of condoms and on the other hand they make not wearing a seatbelt a criminal offense.  If they think banning condoms is an effective way of controlling prostitution by exposing sex workers to suffering and death, why do they not think that banning seatbelts is a good way of eliminating bad drivers?

Backdoor Johnny, a character I invented who is a creative thinker, sees this most recent development in a different way, since he has developed a brisk business in DNA collection and identification that depends on the collection of ejaculate from condoms, esp. those used by people in the sex biz. [See this blog on Jan 21, 2013. The idea is that he sells info from his database the same as Facebook sells its info about you.]  Backdoor Johnny sees that this law is intended to force “bare-backing” is so Johns will not be so easily traced, because they are liable to be cops or law-makers.  (He makes a LOT of money getting them into his database because of the potential blackmail.)

Sister AIDS, another invented character who is a creative thinker, looks at these laws in another way.  [www.strachanscriver.blogspot.com  SUNDAY, JUNE 10, 2012.  The idea is that a nun contracts HIV from a needle stick.]  She sees them as controlling women, children and nonconforming men by forcing them to take risks.  Sex exploiters are all in favor of unwanted children being born, because that’s where they get their “product,” a constant stream of marketable human beings that no one cares about very much because they are too economically fragile to form coherent families, whether genetic or chosen.  Sister AIDS belongs to a category of serious women that bad cops and legislators very much underestimate.  In the past they have devoted themselves to orphans and abused women, but now they begin to understand that it’s important to go to the source of the troubles.  Look at the testimony in this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=c9qBrFCSGDg

Pope Francis I may be conservative but he is also sensible and he must know that one of the main reasons Roman Catholics have become non-observant and even non-attending is that they know the consequences of having too many children and so use forbidden birth control.   Celibacy and female priests aside (which are the concern of priests, not congregants), growth in the Roman Catholic Church would be improved by quantum leaps if Francis I would endorse the use of condoms and birth control.  If people no longer had to go to confession knowing that what they do for family planning is a necessary sin, then they wouldn’t have to lie.  If they don’t have to lie -- and the priests know very well that they are but are not inclined to punish them for it since they understand the reasons -- they will be far more whole and less self-deceptive when it comes to other issues. A religious organization cannot depend upon secular authorities to enforce their medieval understanding of sex, their self-destructive attempts to control reproduction.  Locking the doors to prevent escape will not work.  You know the counselors’ saying:  “When a door closes, a window opens.”  Even a stained glass one.

If religious workers cannot see that bad sex is both the cause and the result of devaluing human beings, buying and selling human beings without their choice, using violence to control the vulnerable, and stripping all the love out of sex, then who can?  Certainly not legislators or cops.  These two categories are far more interested in their appearance to be doing something than they are in actual effectiveness.  But this is also true of religious leaders.  We need to create centers that draw people in, not boundaries that keep people out.

THE MACHINIFICATION OF EVERYTHING

By the time I got past my eye doctor’s appointment and looked in the down-the-hall washroom mirror, I saw a face like a big red tomato, dripping wet.  This was because the doc’s file on me did NOT say “eyes allergic to lidocaine, wash out immediately” as I have made him write in repeatedly.  I don’t know whether the page fell out or they made a new file or what.  It’s a new office, very nice.  Hung with fine art by a man who is the most striking colorist since a certain artist discovered Merlin Enabnit.  (Private nasty joke.  Enabnit's book on color sold in hobby shops.)  My face gets red when it’s sun-burned, wind-burned, very cold, or when my butt is chapped. 

If my eyes are not washed out at once, they will swell shut so I can’t drive home (80 miles) and, as I’ve told the doc only half-jokingly, I will have to stay at his house overnight.  He doesn’t laugh.  I had to grab his arm once to make sure he heard me before he put the drops in.  He doesn’t listen.   The sober quiet girls who used to do the washout are replaced by a young man who did not put in enough saline drops to wash out my eyes -- too little, too gentle.

The doc forgot to order certain glaucoma tests and says there was not time to do them, but the last two times I also had to return for them -- I don’t think he forgets.  I think it makes two appointments out of one.  (My glaucoma scores, each eye, are 19.  That’s below the alarm point which is 22.  I have no loss of peripheral vision.)  It costs $30 per drive to GF.  This time I used my Christmas money.  The doc is part of the “creme de la creme” of arty GF society, which revolves around Charlie Russell.  For them $30 is a lunch tab.

My friend has just had two cataract operations that went wrong, leaving him in pain and blind.  This doc does thousands of operations, so I asked him what might have gone wrong.  I said, hoping to make him stop his scribbling and look at me,  “I want to ask you a question.”   

“Of course,” he said, not looking up and still scribbling.  When I asked, his first reaction was alarm that he might have done the operation or be blamed for it.  Then he settled down and gave me a bullshit ratatat med school exam answer that boiled down to “not in my practice.”  Then he came to the conclusion that I was afraid to have a cataract operation but thought I ought to.  You know,  “I have a friend who. . .” when you really want to know for yourself.  This is the guy who sent me to the incompetent diabetes doc, simply because she was female and he assumed I would prefer a lady doc.

Great Falls is touting “medicine” as their primary “industry.”  Billboards proclaim “top ten percent of total joint replacement doctors” and “industry award winner among hospitals.”  I want you to know that my blog is among the top ten percent of blogs in Valier, or would be if there were any other blogs in Valier.   (Since there are no others, I also occupy the bottom ten percent.)  It used to be that doctors who advertised were openly considered quacks.  And before the sole existing hospital swallowed all the rest, there used to be two hospitals, operated by nuns.   There are two keys to this little gold mine:  one is an aging population that has lived hard, mostly outdoors, and the other is insurance, big ranch-financed personal insurance, plus some Medicare for the lesser folks.

While I was in GF, I stopped by the fabric store to pick up two yards to cover an ottoman.  It took 45 minutes to get waited on.  The management had decided it was a quiet day and had sent two clerks home to save their wages.  The remaining clerks were slowed way down by having to use little hand-held zappers to shoot the codes on the fabric bolts, and then having to double-check with pencil and paper because the machines got it wrong about every fourth time.  One of the sets of tests on the eye doc’s machine had to be done over because the machine didn’t register the first set.  “Shall I hit it hard alongside its head?” I asked the ranch girl giving the test.  “Please,” she said.

I hadn’t been up the main Central Ave of GF for a long time, partly because it’s a narrow street with diagonal parking which people are always backing out of without being able to see, so I puttered along at 25 mph.  (The posted limit was 30, which I think is high.)  Two different motorists behind me became enraged that I was so slow: honking, gesturing, hollering out the window, and finally pulling into the on-coming lane (double yellow no-passing line) in order to get around me.   At the next two red lights I pulled up right behind them, so I don’t know what they gained.

Dave Lull sent me a link to http://www.bryanappleyard.com/rage-against-the-machines/  It’s a review of two books about the increasingly robotic and machine-dependent society we’re creating.  But I live in Montana.  Despite ice on the road in the morning and high winds the rest of the day, the land saves me.  The drive home -- even with stiff red eyes -- was a series of grand baroque panoramas of sky, all purple gauze and glowing amber edges.  The fields are dull and dun, too dry and too often chemical fallow, but the sky show went on demonstrating what the billowing smoke would look like if the Rocky Mountains were on fire or became volcanoes.  I passed a bald eagle on a fence post, way out of his habitat.  If he was looking for road kill, he’ll be hungry.  They’ve poisoned out most ground squirrels and rabbits.  The law just changed to allow citizens to "harvest" the big stuff like deer.  He’d better stick to fish.

The best moment of the day was stopping out at Bundi’s nursery where I generally visit in June when the frosts are finally past.  The winter greenhouse was already June inside.  There was a gorgeous lemon tree with both lemons and blooms and a fabulous huge clivia in a tub.  I bought an amaryllis, which I normally do at Christmas, but somehow missed this year.  We had a nice talk about Agapanthus Africanus. (below)  These last three kinds of plants are bulbs from South Africa.  The cash register was not electronic.  The sound system was blasting Johnny Cash, but the young woman who waited on me (this town is swarming with pretty girls cheerfully doing low pay jobs) was listening on earbuds to “alternative music.”   She told me the name but I forgot.

My friend despairs at the cynicism and machinery of the world, so I am wanting to assure him that it’s not quite too late, that mixed in with the death and greasy steel there are still corners of the world where the sky is grand (no shrieking F15’s today) and gardeners still tend blossoms.   But I wish I could have gotten some good advice for his eyes.

ATTACHMENT THEORY

My understanding of attachment is biological and cross-species.  When I was in my twenties (normally the years of maternity) with Bob Scriver, a surprisingly maternal man, he repeatedly captured very young wild creatures and brought them home, expecting me to care for them -- which I did with pleasure, but on a basic level.  That is, I fed them by hand, took them to bed with us at night (except for the eagle), and interacted with them until they reached adolescence.  I was helped by a mother cat who nursed very young babies and taught the adolescent bobcats how to hunt.  When they approached adolescence, all these animals -- who were not caged -- left on their own to find new territories.  They’d disappear for a few days, come back, then eventually be gone for good.  We did not reflect in those days about morality of doing this. (I have never given birth or nurtured a human baby.) 

Through his later life, Bob would hatch eggs of larger birds, carrying them in the front of his shirt.  They imprinted on him and followed him everywhere even as adults.  If they were migratory, like the Canada geese which he stole from wild nests, they would leave unless caged.  (He never acquired chickens or “chicks,” in the human sense, but the latter were mostly not interested anyway.  He was a little too funky for most even after he was famous.)

Our relationship was similar to that of the geese:  I was closely imprinted and followed him everywhere until I had grown in skill, confidence and curiosity enough to “fly the coop.”  By that time he had converted me to being an instrument of his success and not much more, certainly not allotting any time to nurturing or even simple interaction.  It was not his fault that this omission opened up in me exposure to my childhood attachment issues.  He did not mind that I distanced myself, becoming an instrument, a writer with him as my subject.  He wanted that. 

The problem -- in some ways -- was not in our age difference (b. 1914 to b. 1939) but in our generational difference, since each generation has its own assumptions about what is meaningful.  His own attachment issues meshed with mine in dysfunctional ways that were deeply magnetic, holding us together.  His mother had dutifully raised her first son, but was ambivalent because of her difficulty in adjusting to a marriage that took her from a comfortable and cherished life in Quebec to the high windy prairie of the Blackfeet reservation.  In the English way, that son was the heir and belonged to the father.  As second son and therefore “hers,” Bob had to fight to escape smothering.  All these people had very strong will and vitality.

My infancy and earliest years were also with a surrounding mother, closely attached because my father traveled, who then became impatient with me after two boys had arrived.  Her mother was dying slowly of cancer.  She was stretched thin and pressed me into service as her instrument until I escaped in high school by being a high achiever, which was a major family value.

“According to some psychological researchers, [ambivalent/resistant attachment] develops from a mothering style which is engaged but on the mother's own terms. That is, sometimes the child's needs are ignored until some other activity is completed and that attention is sometimes given to the child more through the needs of the parent than from the child's initiation.”

I spent a great deal of time reading, attached to the people in books.  The family protected this, valued it.  Bob did not.  Once I hit puberty, I was separated from my brothers which became a separation from the whole family.  I went into my room, locked the door, and lived in books.  Bob didn’t allow this.  It is my pattern now, except that I lock the house.  My congregations were alarmed when I locked my office.  The pattern worries most locals, who are socialized to stay in groups, usually family.  When I go to Town Council and sit at the back, they are almost offended.  They want interaction and a webwork of attachments.  Church congregations were like this as well, which was part of my unease with ministry.  I see towns and congregations as books.

“Around 65% of children in the general population may be classified as having a secure pattern of attachment, with the remaining 35% being divided among the insecure classifications. Recent research has sought to ascertain the extent to which a parent's attachment classification is predictive of their children's classification. Parents' perceptions of their own childhood attachments were found to predict their children's classifications 75% of the time.”

In summary, a small preponderance of people welcome attachment but one-third are unsettled or ambivalent.  This may be both caused and perpetuated by the kind of society we have.  

“Children are likely to fall into the same categories as their primary caregivers indicating that the caregivers' internal working models affect the way they relate to their child. This effect has been observed to continue across three generations. Bowlby believed that the earliest models formed were the most likely to persist because they existed in the subconscious. Such models are not, however, impervious to change given further relationship experiences.”

The major shift I see now is a universal turning towards attachment to peers rather than to adult care-givers.  Day-care, group events, peer mentors, and -- more than anything else -- minute-to-minute constant electronic connection, plus the focus of the media on grouping children into markets, have meant that kids today don’t turn to adults for care or advice.  They ask each other what they ought to do about issues as serious as unwanted pregnancy, murder, disease.  Adults are seen (as in the days of early interaction of whites with Indians) as seizers, who will either exploit or imprison them.  For the most part, they are probably right.  Worldwide we probably have more missing and incompetent parents than at any time since the post-WWII chaos.  Criminal seizers have it easy.  Supposedly benevolent seizers have it tough.

Not only do kids try to take care of each other, many are pressed into taking care of their parents.  I don’t mean old frail parents, but alcoholic, childish, incompetent adults whose children -- often quite small -- try to feed, warm, comfort, and doctor their mothers and sometimes fathers or even grannies.

In all fairness it must be admitted that some kids exceed what normal parents are able to provide.  “Another issue is the role of inherited genetic factors in shaping attachments: for example one type of polymorphism of the DRD2 dopamine receptor gene has been linked to anxious attachment and another in the 5-HT_2A serotonin receptor gene with avoidant attachment. This suggests that the influence of maternal care on attachment security is not the same for all children. One theoretical basis for this is that it makes biological sense for children to vary in their susceptibility to rearing influence.”

Survival of individuals and of groups, as well as whole species, is dependent on constant adjustment to new conditions in the environment, the ecology.  An occasional maladjustment may be a source of improvement.  Too great a maladjustment or two many of them will end in elimination.  In the Anthropecene Era the biggest and scariest changes are in other humans, but also they have a remarkable capacity and willingness to nurture each other.  Yet we must also attach to the foxes and geese, because they are part of our ecology, too.

EXPECTATIONS SHAPE POPE FRANCIS

A child, worried about his pet, asked a famous theologian whether dogs could go to heaven and whether they had souls.  The theologian thought for a moment and said there was really no way for us to know this, but we ought to act as though they DID have souls that went to heaven.  Then we would treat them with dignity and love.

There’s a second story.  The Hell’s Angels finally got to thinking about their image and resolved that they would improve it.  So they were roaring down the highway one day and came to a motorist stopped alongside, tinkering under the hood of his car, clearly broken down.  These guys were pretty good mechanics, so they stopped to help out.  The motorist, looking up and seeing these scary guys advancing on him, panicked, pulled out the oil dip stick and defended himself by slashing at them with it.  So they beat him to a pulp.

With those tales in mind, let’s think about the new Pope Francis presumably named for Saint Francis with all his associations, especially the Zefferelli movie “Brother Sun, Sister Moon,” which was the favorite movie of Mother Teresa’s nuns.  There are three movies about Saint Francis but they won’t stream.  I’ve ordered the discs.

But what if the new Pope was thinking of Sir Francis Drake, Vice Admiral (1540 – 27 January 1596) who was an English sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, and politician of the Elizabethan Era, knighted by his queen in 1581.  He was second-in-command of the English fleet against the Spanish Armada in 1588. He also carried out the second circumnavigation of the world, from 1577 to 1580. He died of dysentery in January 1596 after unsuccessfully attacking San Juan, Puerto Rico.  

Or how about Francis M. Drake, an Iowa governor and Civil War veteran.  (Union officer.)   Or what about Frances Drake (1912 - 2000), an American film actress best known for playing Eponine in Les Miserables (1935).  She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

“Pope” is one of those jobs that changes people because it reveals so much privileged knowledge to them that it transforms their understanding of the world.  “Dear Abby” became far more tolerant and human after reading her mail for a few years.  Something like the same has happened to most of the Supreme Court judges (not Scalia or Thomas who remains cloaked anyway.)  Everyone is looking for small clues: Francis said “Brother Cardinals” instead of “Lord Cardinals.”  What shoes are he wearing?  (I haven’t heard.)  At meals he looks for a space among the others instead of insisting on a reserved special place.  Suddenly everyone is reading up on Argentine history, which is very mixed.  How does this Francis fit into that?  Did he oppose cruelty and corruption?  http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-eisner-pope-and-argentinas-dirty-war-20130317,0,166222.story  It sticks in my own mind that the worst of the Nazi torturers and genociders were finally found in Argentina.  (But also a major population of Jewish refugees.)  I don’t even know the specific story of their indigenous population.  Only 25% of the population is observant Catholic.  (45% in the USA.)  

Here’s a friendlier version. http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/14/opinion/ghitis-pope-argentina/?hpt=hp_c1

 He strongly opposes gays but rides the bus.  He fights poverty and inequality, but he opposes Liberation Theology, a great source of reform.  He is friendly and cooperative with Jews (says he will open the Vatican archives to discover what really happened during WWII) but no one knows what he thinks about Buddhism or Islam or indigenous religions.  His “in-house” charge seems to be double:  get rid of the predators of children and get the money straightened out.  We’re not used to this face.  Does he remind you of Gomer Pyle or Jonathan Pryce? 

In seminary there used to be talk -- mostly when the denominational people were around -- about the way that congregations shape their ministers through their expectations and reactions.  This was why internships were so important: would the “teaching congregation” have enough patience to tolerate blunders, maybe fairly serious ones?  Would they expect or even insist upon the qualities that people want?  We know how our media invents and feeds on quarrels, exaggerates honest differences into deadly rivalries, does its part to create martyrs because that sells books.  (Even though no one seems to read the very books they vilify or exalt.)  But do reporters really dig deep for facts and dynamics?  Any more than congregations examine their ministers closely?  

In the major professions where people have great power (medicine, law), the practice in the past has been to depend upon peers to govern each other, but technically at least, the Pope has no peers.  Until now.  How much will Benedict interfere with Francis?  His assurances don’t mean any more than they did when he had no peers, but now he has an equal, too.  What if Francis finds out that Benedict’s dear attendant, nicknamed “Gorgeous George,” is more than a helper?  At some points in history such problems are dealt with quietly -- the offender disappears.  We don’t do that anymore -- except in Argentina in the recent past.

What a cliff-hanger.  Slightly mishandled, this papacy could be the end of the Roman-style Catholic Church.  We already have the Anglican, Lutheran and Episcopalian shards from past controversies.  But they say the real rival in the Southern Hemisphere is the Evangelical church -- going directly to God through the Bible, discarding the machinery of earthly institutions.  Everyone is his or her own Pope, Archbishop, Cardinal and Priest.

The wild card is poverty.  Whether one considers it a cause or a result, whether one thinks poverty is waxing or waning or just changing shape, it is the marker for the effectiveness of religion in guiding us to survival, whether individual or en masse.  And the even wilder card -- indeed, the whole deck -- is planetary climate change and the accumulating pollutions and erosions of the Anthropocene Era which will certainly require us to be fewer and possibly force the death of billions on us.  It does now -- except that the dying are mostly anonymously poor.  No one misses them -- not really.  Will the Pope lift them up?  With a blessing or a scourge?

It seems to me that the people who demand equality assume that it will mean lifting everyone up to a middle-class American standard of living and education.  This is impossible: there are not enough resources on the whole planet.  We assume that everyone everywhere will live the same, but this is also impossible.  Some will live where there is plenty and some will live on the desert.  The way we think about this, including the way our expectations affect our leaders, will deeply affect how we act.

___________________

NOTE:  The four ancient patriarchates (splinters of the original Christian catholic church) enjoy the highest prestige.  Patriarch means the same as Pope.  These men do not meet.  As Popes, they do not require celibacy but are otherwise quite conservative and ceremonial.

Two among the many sub-groups still have some power.  In the Greek Orthodox Church: Patriarch Theodore II is young for a Pope (b. 1954) and seems altogether honorable and progressive, devoting himself to art and charity.  He doesn’t seem particularly political, coming to power because his predecessor was killed in a helicopter crash, and unanimously chosen.

Head of the Russian Orthodox Church is Patriarch Kirill, who has extended friendship and suggested collaboration to Pope Francis.  He is in the midst of a scandal over a $30,000 wristwatch and other luxuries.  He and Putin are buddies.  Kirill is the man who had Pussy Riot, the female rock band, arrested for demonstrating against him in front of the church.  The women were imprisoned for five months.

Read more: Orthodox Eastern Church: The Patriarchs and Churches | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/society/orthodox-eastern-church-the-patriarchs-churches.html#ixzz2NitJbK3T

MARCH IN MONTANA: Remarks

“March in Montana”, one of the Great Falls auctions that hitchhikes on the major auction in celebration of Charlie Russell’s birthday, is “featuring” sculptures by Bob Scriver and Earle Heikka.  There are points of similarity between the two men and also significant points of difference.  Heikka and Scriver both had backgrounds in taxidermy at museum levels where dioramas are the goal.  Both are local, Heikka born in Belt and Scriver born in Browning.  Heikka (1910 - 1941) was older than Scriver and committed suicide while Scriver was in the service in Edmonton, before the latter began serious sculpture.  They were not acquainted.  Both men did Western genre subjects: pack trains, cowboys and Indians, and stagecoaches, but Scriver’s work included many other subjects including portraits and a small group of religious works.  He's best compared to the French school of Beaux Arts sculptors who created many of our familiar monuments: men like Fraser, Procter, Saint Gaudens, and so on.

Heikka worked in a very difficult medium, “Marblex,”something like paper mache which cracked badly when it dried.  It required much patience to master and didn’t receive or hold detail very well.  As far as I know, Heikka didn’t cast them in bronze during his lifetime.  His pieces were one-of-a-kind, hand-painted.

In contrast, Scriver worked in plastilene, was a master mold maker, and built his own foundry, the Bighorn Foundry, in order to have total control.  The bronzes cast in those days were silicon bronze using the Roman block method and had a very specific patina meant to be like those of the Animaliers cast in Paris in the 19^th century.  They were numbered in small editions, certificates were issued, and sales were recorded in a master book that appears to have gone missing since the Montana Historical Society, who received Scriver’s estate, can’t seem to locate it.  Possibly it was intercepted before the estate was moved.

In the early days Scriver cast in hydrocal, a very hard version of plaster, and he kept a key casting of each piece in case something happened to the mold.  (Since metal shrinks when it is cast, molds made from previous bronzes will be slightly smaller.)  It appears that one of the pieces in this auction is one of those key castings.  If the mold was made from black tufy cold molding compound, it would leave the piece discolored this way.  It's hard to know how to value something like this.  We used to set the price of hydrocals as one-tenth the price of the bronze, but if it were the mold key, it would be worth far more as a production basic.  It's not much to display unless painted and could easily be broken if struck or dropped.  It ought to have been destroyed at Bob's death.

"Lone Cowboy, 1880".  Created in 1968, no edition numbers.  This specific piece was a companion to the original “Lone Cowboy” which was Bob’s trademark for many years.  It was also a “breakthrough” in a different way, the first of Bob’s work that was consciously designed.  It was the piece Warren Baumgartner, a master watercolorist from NYC, helped with in order to teach Bob composition.  Heikka never had the benefit of such lessons.

One of the most complex of these composed sculptures is “Real Meat”.  Created in 1964 , numbered 8.  Original certificate included.  The phrase is the original Blackfeet name for buffalo.  These animals are specific buffalo that Bob measured and studied at the Moiese National Bison Range.  The men were modeled by members of the Kicking Woman family and the horses are taken from Bob’s own horses.  This large piece is in a different scale, a different style, and a different composition from the Russell sculpture to which is it sometimes compared.

"The Hornaday group" is a famous remnant taxidermy group in the Smithsonian.  Since it was showing signs of age and needed some refurbishment, this bronze was created for sale to finance that work.  Inscribed "Special to Loran & Delores Perry" which means it was not numbered.

Other buffalo portraits include “Herd Bull” which is the study for the buffalo bull that once stood in the Scriver Museum of Montana Wildlife.  This is #5 of 110.  It claims to be cast by the Proctor family in the '70's.  I know nothing about that.  110 is a large edition.

The “breakthrough into bigtime" notice came with the large rodeo series that developed out of the commission from the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association to do an heroic-sized portrait of Bill Linderman.  The Calgary Stampede bought a complete set of these bronzes.  These pieces have only recently begun to show up in auctions.  

The most spectacular  and graceful is “Paywindow,” the bucking horse on one foot.  It is nearly balletic.  This is numbered 17 and was cast in the Bighorn Foundry, Bob's own.  Original certificate is with it.

"Not for Glory" is the pickup men, one taking off the rider and the other getting hold of the horse.  This is copy #2, cast in the Bighorn Foundry, Bob's own.  Original certificate included.

"Headin' for a Wreck" is the steer-wrestling event.  Those in the know would see that the cowboy's timing is just enough off to make trouble.  This is the #6 casting and was cast by Powell Bronze Foundry, which was run by Eddie Powell, Ace's oldest son.

Later there were smaller “cowboy” pieces.  This one is old-timey and uses Bob’s longhorn steer, “Tex.”  He called it "When Cutting Was Tough."  #55 of 110.  Arrowhead Bronze Foundry.  This foundry used ceramic shell casting.  The high numbers were common with Bob in the later years.  There is no "law" -- not even business law -- that controls the number of castings in an edition.  Severely limiting the number was a convention in the early days when molds lost detail in every casting.  It was a gentleman's agreement that Bob came to despise as bad business practice since modern molds don't lose detail.

Bob liked to work in groups around a subject.  The Lewis & Clark monument commissions for Great Falls and Fort Benton were financed by the sale of smaller castings, sometimes replicas and sometimes on the same theme.

"Captain Lewis & Our Dog Scannon"  turned out to be misnamed.  The dog's actual name was "Seaman."  Arrowhead casting.  The dog that posed for this Newfoundland dog was named "Windsor."  This is casting # 26 of 150.  The dog (and the slave York) actually belonged to Clark.

"Capt. Wm. Clark, Map Maker."  #26 of 150.  Arrowhead casting.  Actually, he's surveying here and will record numbers from which maps can be constructed.  Since this casting has the same number as the one just previous, they were probably sold together.

"Lewis, Clark & Sacajawea", #25 of 35, is a small version of the Fort Benton monument.  Actually Pompey is in it as well.   Created in 1974. The Certificate of Authenticity that comes with it is issued by the Lewis & Clark Memorial Committee.

This “set” is a series of “collectibles” on the theme of coffee, suggested by an entrepreneur.
Coffee Break Series: "Coffee Break," "Batwing Chaps," "Wells Fargo Cargo," "Bull Durham Cowboy" and "The Sheriff."  Set #141/250.  Arrowhead castings.

A few other individual old-timey pieces might be commissioned or just be inspired by reading or conversation.

"Salute to the Buffalo Robe" is inscribed "Special to Loran & Delores Perry" so is not numbered.  Created in 1995.  Commissioned to celebrate the 150 anniversary of the establishment of Fort Benton and includes a certificate of authenticity from the Fort Benton Committee as well as being inset with a Fort Benton 150th anniversary medallion.

 "Defending the Mail" created in 1989.  #27/150.  Arrowhead casting.

"1861 Mail (Pony Express)" Created in 1991.  #7 of 100.

"Montana Trapper." #96/100  Created 1976.  Arrowhead casting.

Of course, Scriver continued with the animal pieces.  This one revisits the idea of two bull elks fighting over a cow, but uses a different composition.

"To the Victor"  #54/75  Arrowhead casting.  Late in life Scriver's human figures seemed distorted sometimes, but his animals always kept their anatomical accuracy.  One could look at the high number sold of this piece as either damaging its value because it's not very scarce, or could see it as an indicator of popularity, which is always good for sales.

More information is at the "March in Montana" website.  

THREESOME

Her worn-through red plaid flannel bathrobe wasn’t quite warm enough this early in the morning, but being a little chilly in spite of hot coffee was not unpleasant and kept her alert for writing.  Out the window behind her computer the sun gilded a branch.  Inside the window, under the lamp, curled the cat.  Who should she be today?  Who had she always wanted to be, way down deep, the opposite of an old stout woman who never got enough exercise.  

She blew her nose -- it dripped when she was chilly -- and stuffed the tissue back into a big patch pocket of the robe.  The name of the lover from “Ramona,” Helen Hunt Jackson’s classic romantic novel, came to her mind.  Alessandro.

________________

Alessandro had gotten into the middle of a long-standing feud between factions of his Indio family up in the remote mountains of Mexico.  He had killed his uncle, not intending such a thing, and was now afoot, going north, joining the streams of more intentional travelers headed for American cities.  Thin but with defined strong muscles, he was not finished with his coming-of-age.  People looked at him -- he had a handsome face.  When he washed naked in a stream, immodestly, people’s eyes slid down his sides to that fleshly arroyo at the top of the hip that leads to the brushy tangle of convergence.

Ten years later he had found a role in the SW states as a whore for men, but not an ordinary one.  One shoulder was tattooed with the Chinese word for War and the other side said Peace.  It meant nothing.  They could have said love and hate or yin and yang or left and right.  He just wanted the two-sidedness.  Also, he had asked the tattoo artist, who was very skillful, to color his ear lobes blue with a tiny orange butterfly on one of them.  Instead of earrings, he wore wide silver cuffs on the outer rims.  His hair was long, bleached white, and his skin was burned dark.   He wore chambray blue workshirts, open to his silver belt buckle, and loaded his wrist with jingling silver bangles, which oddly suggested the Navajo to people who didn’t know Indians -- even though Alessandro stayed in the SW where they should have known.  Bangles were actually more of a gypsy affectation he had seen in a magazine.  Some called him “Sidewinder,” after that sideways snake, but others just called him “Winder” because he wound people up.

He was a connoisseur of experience, which meant both sensations and drugs, the interior sensations.  He was a creature from a Coleridge poem (someone told him -- probably some overeducated female) but also -- far beyond opium -- like some shrewd amateur scientist in a rogue laboratory.  How far can arousal go before losing control?  What degree of tumescence can be tolerated before numbness sets in?  For himself, he liked to plunge into the unknown abyss, deranged hallucinations like whitewater rafting at spring peak flood stage, no guarantee of survival because he sought that uncertainty where the knife edge cuts into the fog, revealing that nothing matters -- not really.  After the tattoos he never allowed needles again.  Not out of caution, but because he wanted no injections, no piercing of his skin’s velvet surface.  That was his boundary, his conceit.

____________________

It was at this point that the writer always had to take a break, walk around, brew more coffee, let the image and possibilities build and swell into a story.  Should this tale have a happy ending?  Should she summon dragons or snapdragons?  It was time to add the next character.

________________

Then one day he realized he was just plain puking sick and had to find a clinic, in spite of his resolve to never intervene in his own life except to mess with others.  Pain he understood, even sought out -- the bruising, the cut of the whip, being tied into impossible positions until he ached, all taught him something though he could not have said what.  They gave him visions.   But nausea was different.  And he hated the smell and mess, to say nothing of the humiliation.  Diarrhea, worse -- he didn’t have easy access to facilities and fresh clothing.

The doctor was black.  That was a surprise.  And he was very big.  He took Alessandro in his hands, moved his limbs, tapped his joints, pressed his abdomen hard, slid his stethoscope lightly against front and back, and peered into his dark kohl-rimmed eyes with a tiny flashlight.  He said,  “You are very sick.”  Alessandro said, “I have no money,” which was true at that moment.  “No matter.  I will take you home,” said the doctor, and he did.  It was confusing, because this doctor lived in an old adobe with a walled yard, very spare and humble except for books.  “You have AIDS,” said the doctor.  Alessandro said nothing.  The doctor said, “So do I.”

From then on they lived together, slept together, ate together, had sex together but not in any conventional way.  Alessandro tried all his tricks of teasing, stroking, evoking emotions by singing or telling stories, pretending not to know what he was perfectly aware of.  But the doctor knew how to observe and always saw both the surface and the depth.  He had cut people open and knew that they were not filled with sofa pillows but rather drenched in blood and cleverly knotted.  Each man had a small wall cabinet, Mexican, carved of dark wood, one with legal drugs and the other with illegal.  Both categories of substances could alter consciousness and even identity.  They did not interfere with each other’s drugs.  But they were already changing each other.

_________________

The cat jumped off the writer’s desk and went outside, making the cat flap squeak.  The day was warm now.  What is the point of this story?  What does it say about life?  Or is it voyeurism and that’s all?

__________________

One day Alessandro was attacked by some men who had always used his services until he had disappeared.  If they could not have him, no one could have him, so their attack was savage and left him sprawled senseless in the street.  But they didn't rob him.  The doctor came looking for him and carried him back into the shadowed adobe, his dangling arm jingling, to the simple white bed.  Maybe he should have taken him to a hospital, but he knew that would only prolong the inevitable.  He thought, “Life is a trajectory, like an ejaculation.”   And he thought, “I am a healer, but I have limits.  Has this boy gone beyond them?”  He prepared a syringe with a glittering needle, like a tiny stiff viper.

____________

And the writer thought, “Is the protagonist the healer or the boy in this story?  Should I have the doctor lie down alongside the boy, dying with him?  Should the doctor intend to do this and take fatal drugs, only to have the boy wake, like Romeo and Juliet?  Would that change the meaning?  But what IS the meaning?”

It isn’t really possible to be a writer without having some kind of philosophical position.  What template is under this story -- the impossibility of real permanence even in relationships, the ephemerality of human life along with every other kind of life, the excruciating beauty of the moment and the gift of experiencing it?  What is the relevance of morality?  She thought,  “I can only answer the last question.  There is no relevance to morality in this story.  It just is.”

The cat, outside, was stretched out on the deck, idly watching birds, just letting birds cross her mind.  Whatever birds are -- besides playthings.  They were certainly not worth eating.  Not like canned tuna.  In a moment she would go inside and demand some.  

The writer sighed,  "Maybe I should write about something more in my experience."