Illusory Flowers in an Empty Sky

Of Darkness and Light and The Book of Man Have New Covers

2012-01-27T15:05:00.003-07:00

Willie Bain's Attack on Alex Salmond is Desperate and Irrelevant

2012-01-25T14:58:00.001-07:00

Alex Salmond

In this article in The Guardian, Labour M.P. Willie Bain claims that Scotland's First Minister, Alex Salmond, is not a progressive.

I agree. I've always considered Salmond a conservative, and I've never trusted him.

And it doesn't matter.

Salmond is the leader of the S.N.P., a party whose mission is independence for Scotland. Salmond is right when he says that Scotland is a progressive country. That's why Salmond is pretending to be progressive. No matter how reactionary the leader of the party that leads Scotland to independence, an independent Scotland will be one of the world's most progressive nations.

Bain shows his true colors in his shockingly fatuous conclusion:

In good times and bad, the people of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland have stuck together. The UK is the house that, together, we have built. It does not belong to one part of the country. It belongs to all of us. Our shared values and principles burn strong, and our shared history informs our future.

This is fiction. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have not "stuck together" - they have been occupied by an oppressive nation, England. I lived in Scotland through the Thatcher years, when Scotland was ruled, not governed, by a government it had overwhelmingly rejected.

Scottish Zen

2012-01-25T09:53:00.000-07:00

Today is the birthday of Robert Burns, Scotland's national poet.

But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white--then melts for ever;
Or like the borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow's lovely form
Evanishing amid the storm.

Humans Are Animals

2012-01-24T06:06:00.001-07:00

Nick Hentoff has a thoughtful piece on why he's decided to stop eating meat.

I came to the same decision recently, though I still follow the Buddhist practice of eating whatever people are cooking when I'm their guest.

The reasons for my decision were similar to Hentoff's. While I don't have a problem with the taking of life in order to eat, I deplore torture - of any species - and the commodification of sentient beings.

Hentoff writes:

I am puzzled by my disinclination to become involved in animal rights issues on a larger scale. Frankly, I am overwhelmed with the task of trying to grasp the complexities of how governments should protect human rights without sticking my toe in the philosophical waters of the animal rights movement.

I think it is morally and pragmatically dangerous to separate human rights from animal rights, which is why I am not a humanist. Humans are the most destructive invasive species, and our only hope of survival is to stop arrogantly privileging the "rights" of our own species over those of others.

Guest Blog Post: Tragedy, Then Farce by Larry Fondation

2012-01-23T04:22:00.000-07:00

With the partial exception of Ron Paul (an inconsistent libertarian), all the Republican candidates for President believe in and support big and intrusive government.

They can’t deny it. And, they are not good liars.

What’s startling is not that politicians lie; it’s that so many Americans either believe their lies and/or embrace their hypocrisy.

If you support a large, muscular military that can project its power around the world and across the globe, then you believe in Big Government. Period.

If you believe that government can and should tell you who you can and cannot marry, then you believe in Intrusive Government. Period.

If you believe that government should tell a woman she must deliver her rapist’s baby… Well, you know.

In fact the only kind of big government the Right Wing does not believe in is taxing the wealthy. They believe that we should have terrible schools, cavernous potholes, starving children, decimated fire departments, decrepit elderly people and so on and so forth – all so the rich can horde their money and revel in the sin of gluttony. I wish they would just say so. And, Obama, too. Then perhaps the real battles could begin…

Larry Fondation is a fiction writer, journalist and community organizer in Los Angeles. He is the author of Angry Nights, Common Criminals, Fish, Soap and Bonds and Unintended Consequences.

More Gabrielle Giffords Emotional Pornography

2012-01-22T12:54:00.001-07:00

Note the arrogance of "we" - the assumption that everybody supports the same racist measures that she does.

A Narcissist in Love

2012-01-21T06:36:00.000-07:00

The 1987 film A Man in Love may not be good, but it is exceptional. The leads, played well by Peter Coyote, Greta Scacchi and Jamie Lee Curtis, are pathological narcissists. This is true of almost every romantic film, the comedies and the tragedies, but in most such films - John Cusack's are good examples - the characters, though amoral and self-centered, have a veneer of likeability that seduces the audience into identifying with them.

In A Man in Love, the characters are so profoundly unlikeable as to make identification with them impossible for any but the most conscienceless narcissists in the audience. This lack of identification makes it easy to see what is actually going on, and to see that such "love" stories are devoid of love. So this is an important film, and a better film than it tries to be, because of what it shows us about so many other, more popular, films.

Stories: Who Tells Whom?

2012-01-19T06:03:00.002-07:00

Banksy

Stories are not created by writers, but by readers. The writer creates a text, which (if the writer does it well) triggers a story in the mind of the reader, but a thousand people reading the same text experience a thousand different stories. Even the writer, in the process of writing a book, can experience a story with details that are contradicted by the text.

In When It All Comes Down to Dust, it is stated right at the beginning that the protagonist has black hair and tanned skin... but, as I wrote the book, and saw the story happening with my mind's eye, I did not see a woman with black hair and tanned skin. The woman I saw had blonde hair and a fair complexion. In writing the text I cannot even control how I imagine the narrative, so what chance is there of controlling how other people see a story, or the meaning they might find in it?

The Camera Neither Lies Nor Tells the Truth

2012-01-17T03:53:00.000-07:00

Elmore Leonard by Annie Leibovitz

Jean-Luc Godard asked, "When you see your photograph, do you say you're a fiction?"

There is an iconic photograph of Elmore Leonard by Annie Leibovitz. He sits on a chair on a street, with palm trees and buildings silhouetted by a sunset or sunrise. He wears sunglasses, all his clothes are black, and a typewriter sits on his lap.

I saw this photograph on a poster in a bookstore in Scotland in the late 1980s, before I had read anything by Leonard. It gave me an impression of Leonard's prose style, what he calls his "sound," that I found to be accurate when I began to read him a decade later and he became my favorite novelist.

But Leonard doesn't type. He writes his novels with a pen. So is the photograph a fiction?

No more a fiction than if he had been photographed with a notebook instead of a typewriter. What is being presented is a mediated persona, an image contrived to present a certain story, a story that has been chosen instead of millions of other possible stories about the person, the subject.

Yes, photographs are fictions, and so are clothes, names, titles and facial expressions, things said and things done, things told and things not told. Shunryu Suzuki said, "life is like a movie." As we experience it, life is not "like" a movie - it is a movie, with narratives and meanings contrived from our interpretation of what is presented to us, and what we present to ourselves.

Against Pragmatism: King and Obama Are Polar Opposites

2012-01-16T00:13:00.000-07:00

M.L. King and Malcolm X

Today is Martin Luther King Day, and the U.S. has a President who, though black, would most likely have opposed the Civil Rights Act.

I've been saying for some time now that Obama's supporters have battered wife syndrome. As he makes it compulsory for everyone to buy the wares of health insurance companies, demands the right to assassinate anyone he wants to, and, most recently, approves indefinite detention without access to counsel for U.S. citizens, there are those who still insist that it's not his fault.

I recently had a conversation with a friend who suggested that Obama is "pragmatic," and has done as much as he realistically could so far.

Obama was elected with a mandate to govern based upon the progressive platform he ran on. He abandoned all of it, and has served his corporate masters while taking George W. Bush's policies even further than Bush managed to. I don't see that as pragmatism. But, even if it were, pragmatism is too easy an excuse for cowardice and greed.

It could have been argued that, while slavery was awful, to try to abolish it would not be pragmatic.

It could have been argued that, while women ought to have the right to vote, to make such changes to the law would not be pragmatic.

It could have been argued that, while segregation was awful, to try to abolish it would not be pragmatic.

Dr. Martin Luther King didn't make such excuses. He said:

On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.

King did not what was pragmatic or easy, but what was right. Lyndon Johnson did the same, and signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Barack Obama would have been more likely to try to reach a bipartisan agreement with the Ku Klux Klan.

Our Worst Fear Is Always Realized

2012-01-14T02:18:00.001-07:00

What is the thing that we fear most? Some will say death, others will name other catastrophes, but it all amounts to the same thing: the loss of what we see as reality.

This is the heart of all that scares us, and so it is the fuel that powers every horror story. In Stephen King's novel Pet Sematary, there is a scene so chilling that nothing that follows matches it, even though there are 300 pages left.

A boy's dog has died, and the town drunk takes him to a certain place and tells him to bury it there. Later, the dog comes home, alive. The boy sits outside with the dog and nervously waits for his father to get home from work, wondering how he'll react when he sees the dog. When his father gets home, he simply tells the boy, "He needs a bath, Jud. He stinks of the ground you buried him in." And he goes inside the house.

More frightening than a burial ground that brings the dead back to life is the realization that his father knows about it, and so does everyone else in town. Things are not they way the boy always thought they were. Life and death no longer make sense. His reality has collapsed.

The reason horror novels are so enduring is that they are essentially true. However hard we try to construct, organize and control life, it never works. We fear the dark because of what we cannot see.

Zen practice is frightening because, if we really do it, it collapses our realities, and does not replace them with others. Nothing we believed turns out to be true, including any beliefs about Zen. Nothing can be held on to, including who we think we are. How much we suffer depends on how invested we are in our beliefs. Meister Eckhart wrote:

The only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won't let go of your life: your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away, but they're not punishing you, they're freeing your soul. If you're frightened of dying and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. If you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth.

The Era of the Author

2012-01-13T03:39:00.000-07:00

The Guardian has an interview with Amanda Hocking, who, after selling a million books on Kindle, has signed a deal with a legacy publisher. And here is an article the same paper published last year about others who're doing it themselves.

There has been a lot of debate, some of it heated, in the indie publishing world about whether Hocking's decision to go with St. Martin's was wise or not. It seems to be a trade-off she chose thoughtfully, but I think more and more legacy-published authors will make the opposite choice. I'm one of them.

My newly-published (by myself) novel When It All Comes Down to Dust had been with a major publishing house for a year. They kept expressing enthusiasm, but also kept not getting round to making an offer. On Monday I got tired of waiting and decided to do it myself. The book was published - in paperback and digital formats - and selling the next day.

Until recently, authors had to wait at the whims of publishers. My second novel, The Champion's New Clothes, was bought by a publisher in 1989 - but they didn't get around to publishing it until 1991. There was nothing I could do except wait.

It's different now. Before signing with publishers who'll pay them royalties of about 10 percent, authors would be well-advised to ask the publisher, "What are you going to do for me that I can't do for myself?" If there isn't a compelling answer, why sign away your rights when you could be getting royalties of 70 percent by doing it yourself?

The last decade has been the worst in the history of modern publishing, but we are now in the best time for authors since publishing began.

My New Novel Just Published

2012-01-10T19:29:00.000-07:00

Laura Ponto wouldn't mind watching Frank del Rio being strapped to the executioner's gurney, even if her job is to find mitigating evidence in death penalty cases. Frank's not a client, but a long time ago he did unspeakable things to children - and Laura was one of them.

Now Frank is being released on parole, and they both learn that their lives are still intertwined. Their story will end in a place even darker than it began. This shattering noir tale of suspense, sex, violence, love and death in the urban desert of Phoenix, Arizona, has been called "one of the great post-realist novels" by the French magazine Transfuge. It is Barry Graham's most uncompromising novel to date, and Laura Ponto is his most unforgettable protagonist.

Paperback Kindle U.S. Kindle U.K. Read a sample

The Assumption of Monogamy Poisons Relationships

2012-01-08T14:48:00.000-07:00

There are two premises contained in the title of this article - "Why Men Need to Cheat" - and I disagree with both of them. The idea that one gender is less monogamous than another is a cultural creation, and it varies through time; the work of Chaucer shows that in the Middle Ages women were regarded as the more libido-driven gender.

I also disagree that non-monogamy has to mean "cheating."

I was once in a bar with a friend who was also a friend of my girlfriend. He saw me leave the bar with a woman I had just met. In the morning he called me and asked if I had spent the night with her. When I told him I had, he offered to lie to my girlfriend and say I had spent the night at his house. I told him that my girlfriend and I, though committed, were not monogamous, and that she knew what had happened and had no problem with it.

He was shocked.

He didn't mind that I had (he thought) cheated on my girlfriend, who, again, was a friend of his too. He was prepared to lie to her to cover up for me. But he considered it "sick" that she knew and didn't mind that I had spent the night having sex with another woman.

I cite this because I find his reaction to be typical in a culture where relationships are based upon a self-centered, proprietorial attitude towards other people, or, more precisely, other people's bodies. A woman once told me, "I couldn't stand the thought of you touching someone else the way you touch me." I left that relationship soon after.

I disagree with Dr. Anderson's belief, expressed in the article, that sexual attraction cannot be sustained in a long relationship; I know for a fact that it can. But the puritanical assumption of monogamy, and demand for it, has nothing to do with love, and turns relationships into battlegrounds of ego.

Why I Write

2012-01-06T12:56:00.000-07:00

In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing
About the dark times.
- Bertold Brecht

At this time of unprecedented crisis for America (and therefore for the world), I think of a story told by the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova about something that happened as she waited in line to deliver food to her son who was imprisoned by Stalin's regime:

One day somebody in the crowd identified me. Standing behind me was a woman, with lips blue from cold, who had, of course, never heard me called by name before. Now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked me in a whisper (everyone whispered there):
"Can you describe this?"
And I said: "I can."
Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face.

How Far Can Santorum Spread?

2012-01-04T14:59:00.000-07:00

In this blog post, Nick Hentoff suggests that Rick Santorum could go all the way to the White House. He writes:

The insulated Chicago Democratic operatives in the White House will underestimate Santorum, believing that he is just another extreme right-wing tea party social conservative who will alienate voters. I lived for a year in Philadelphia while Santorum was in the Senate and I can tell you that ethnic (Irish and Italian) blue collar democrats - Reagan Democrats - love this guy. More than once I walked into a shop in South Philly and saw Santorum's picture on the wall. The only reason he lost in 2006 was because he was running against Robert Casey's son.

I don't think Santorum will get the Republican nomination, but, if he does, I think Hentoff might be right. While Santorum's Google problem is amusing, I don't think it will negatively affect the support he'll get from those who vote Republican even if Fu Manchu gets the nomination - and it might actually generate sympathy for him among Bible Belters who'll be appalled at the disgusting humor of those liberals.

Old Graham's Almanac: Forecast for 2012

2012-01-01T17:17:00.001-07:00

On New Year's Eve, Obama signed off on indefinite detention for U.S. citizens, while declaring that it breaks "with our most important traditions and values as a Nation." And he still signed it.

How much of a suspension of disbelief, how much tolerance of cognitive dissonance - what Zizek calls "fetishist disavowal" - are Americans capable of? A lot. I predict that even as the economy continues to collapse, and more people lose jobs and homes, and more young people die in a war that the U.S. is losing in Afghanistan, people will continue to believe in the fiction of this nation as a place of opportunity and freedom. Democrats who opposed the policies of George W. Bush will continue to support the same policies under Obama. Republicans will continue to vilify Obama, even though he is one of them. The wealthiest, who are doing better than ever, will continue to do so.

I estimate Obama's chance of being re-elected as 50-50, only because the Democrats will threaten that someone even worse will replace him. Whoever replaces him will probably not be worse or different.

The rest of the world will watch as the U.S. unravels. And Americans will watch reality T.V., at least until the electric supply is cut off.

Happy new year.

Another Year More, Another Year Less

2011-12-31T04:24:00.000-07:00

The Picnic by Vince Larue

On the last day of 2011, I offer warm thanks to my friends, my enemies, and everyone who reads this blog.

Here are the ten most-read blog posts this year:

Beavis and Butt-Head Should Study English Lit

Koan Commentary: The Book of Serenity, Case 20

Chris Hedges' Hysterical Defense of Cornel West

We Must All Become Grandmothers

Any Man With a Microphone Can Tell You What He Loves the Most

Abortion: Choose Your Ideology and Defend It

Alone

Zen in the Street

There Is No Such Thing as Money

Writing Wipes the Dirt from the Window

Gabrielle Giffords: Poster Girl for Emotional Pornography

2011-12-30T05:06:00.001-07:00

The Arizona Republic has named Gabrielle Giffords as Arizonan of the Year. Her achievement? Getting shot and not dying.

The article praises her recovery as "a hero's journey." I've read much praise of her "courage" and "heroism" elsewhere. Logically, this means that the people who died after being shot that day were weak and cowardly.

While what happened to her is undeniably awful, Giffords' recovery is not about heroism, but about luck, wealth and privilege, about access to as much health care as she needs.

In our culture of emotional pornography, people who suffer tragedy are fetishized. Since being shot, Gabrielle Giffords has been presented as a liberal saint. In reality, she is an ordinary conservative. Her position on immigration is as racist as that of Jan Brewer. Her objection to SB 1070 was not that it was racist, but that it was impractical. She cheered the deployment of the National Guard to the border, to combat a problem that does not exist. Even though her being shot has been cited as an example of why guns ought to be banned, she herself supports gun rights.

I could not help but laugh when, in the aftermath of the shooting - which killed six people, whose names are seldom heard now - I saw some people crying while holding a banner that bore the words Gabby Was Always There for Us. Who is "us?" How was she "there?" If "us" means wealthy white people, I suppose she was.

Her being selected as Arizonan of the Year simply for not dying is an insult to those who died, and to those who die in violent attacks every year, and to Arizonans who have actually achieved something. It would make as much sense to give the award to Paris Hilton.

Zen Won't Solve Your Problems (and Doesn't Have To)

2011-12-29T04:19:00.000-07:00

In "Actualizing the Fundamental Point" (Genjokoan), Dogen Zenji writes:

Those who have great realization of delusion are buddhas; those who are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings. Further, there are those who continue realizing beyond realization and those who are in delusion throughout delusion.

When we first come to Zen practice, we hope it will solve our problems, make them better, make us better. It often seems to make our problems worse - but only because we become more aware of them.

If you are not gentle before practice, then practice won't make you gentle - but you will become aware of your lack of gentleness (at first painfully aware), and will know how to take care of it. If you have an anxious or angry personality, practice won't make you tranquil or calm; you will see your anxiety or anger more clearly, and, when you see it, you will know what it is and what to do (often, nothing). Obsessive thoughts don't diminish through practice; they are just seen for what they are. Enlightenment is seeing clearly what is going on. Delusions don't disappear, and may not even diminish, but, seen as delusions, they lose their power over us.

Book Review: Cleaving by Julie Powell

2011-12-28T04:10:00.000-07:00

Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession by Julie Powell (Little, Brown, hardcover, $24.99) I'm surprised at how good this book is. I couldn't get through Julie Powell's first book, Julie and Julia. I only liked the film because of the parts that are about Julia Child, and because of Meryl Streep's performance. I found the Powell character irritating and boring.

Her second book, which has gotten some scathing reviews and many personal attacks on its author, promised more of the same. Fortunately, it breaks that promise.

It's another memoir. This time, unable to stop being unfaithful to her husband, Powell tries to distract herself by learning the art of butchery. She gets an unpaid apprenticeship at a butcher shop run by people she calls "meat hippies." She forms intimate friendships with her bosses and colleagues, and she learns how an animal's flesh gets from the farm to the kitchen table. When her lover refuses to see her, she has a series of anonymous sexual encounters, while hoping to hold her marriage together.

This could have been self-indulgent or turgid or gimmicky, or all three. But there is little about this book that isn't good. Powell knows how to write narrative, and, however painful or shameful her confessions, she never slips into narcissism. Whether she's describing butchering an animal, making dinner, stalking her ex-lover or having bad sex with an unattractive stranger, she writes with honesty and wit that makes the reader care. It goes on slightly too long, losing some momentum, but not to the point of becoming dull.

Unlike its predecessor, this a serious book, not an exercise in attention-seeking. Powell emerges as a decent person trying to figure out how to live, and as a writer of depth and nuance who may have great books ahead of her.

Something that doesn't seem to occur to Powell, though, is that she isn't the problem. What's causing all the pain and confusion is an unquestioning acceptance that monogamy is a virtue. Powell clearly loves her husband; indeed, she finds life without him unthinkable. She doesn't seem to mind when he has an affair, since it doesn't make her doubt that he loves her and wants to be married to her. She just doesn't seem to be a sexually monogamous person, and I can't see that there would be any problem were it not for the (perhaps self-imposed) expectation that she should be, or should be perceived to be.

The Royal Family: The Original Reality T.V. Stars

2011-12-27T04:04:00.000-07:00

Reading the news about Prince Philip's health issues, it occurs to me that the Royal Family was the prototype for the current reality T.V. culture, in which people are famous only for being famous.

From The Guardian's "news" story:

On Christmas Day, Princes William and Harry drove separate cars to the hospital from Sandringham, the Queen's private Norfolk estate, taking the Duke of York's daughters Beatrice and Eugenie and the Princess Royal's children Zara and Peter with them for the 45-minute visit to their grandfather.

So, an old man got sick, and his family went to visit him.

Can you tell me one noteworthy - or even interesting thing - about Prince Philip, aside from his wealth and that he married the Queen? Can you tell me one noteworthy - or even interesting - thing about the Queen, aside from the position she inherited? The fascinating thing about these people is that they are so unremarkable, but their unremarkable problems and dramas are scrutinized as though they are important. In some ways, Princess Diana (click here to read the obituary I wrote for her) was the Jade Goody of her generation.

Christmas Verse I Wrote Long Ago

2011-12-25T04:20:00.000-07:00

On the floor, naked,
by the Christmas tree -
Christmas is coming
and so are we.

Holiday Giveaway: Answer a Koan and Get the Dalai Lama's New Book

2011-12-24T04:35:00.001-07:00

The publisher of Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World, the new book by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, kindly provided me with a very nice hardcover copy to offer as a giveaway to readers of this blog.

I haven't read the book yet (I'll write a review when I do), but here's what Publisher's Weekly says about it:

“This wise, humane book, an original work rather than a collection of talks, is an incisive statement of His Holiness’s thinking on ways to bring peace to a suffering world.”

Let's make this fun... In the spirit of His Holiness' nonsectarian view, if you want this book by the Tibetan Buddhist leader, you have to answer a Zen koan:

"When the wind blows, the trees dance. Where does the dance begin?"

Leave your answer as a comment on this post. Whoever leaves my favorite answer gets the book. If I can't pick a favorite answer, I'll pick a winner at random.

Phoenix Independent Cinemas: Royale Dies, Is Filmbar on Death Bed?

2011-12-23T18:48:00.000-07:00

Back in August, I predicted that the Phoenix Filmbar would either close within a year, or become mainly a music club. From the looks of things, it won't even take that long.

While I was put off by the (lack of) ethics of Stacey Champion, the Filmbar's P.R. flack, who responded to criticism of the Filmbar without disclosing her professional interest (see the comments to this post, and this follow-up), I hoped my prediction would be wrong. I was never sure if Ms. Champion was showing shady ethics or just incompetence; those in the know told me a large part of the reason for the Filmbar's hiring her was that she doesn't charge as much as more professional spin doctors. Her comments on the second post suggest that she doesn't understand the meaning of "professional interest."

The Filmbar has, as I predicted, become primarily a venue for bands and D.J.s, a larger version of The Lost Leaf. Though it continues to show films, it seems to be focusing on films that are in the public domain - so the Filmbar can charge admission to see films it doesn't have to pay for. I'm curious as to how many customers are paying to see films they could watch at home for free.

When the Filmbar's original programmer, Steve Weiss, was laid off, its programming was done by Andrea Beesley-Brown, the "Midnite Movie Mamacita," who had just opened The Royale, an independent grindhouse in Mesa. The Royale, which is closing tomorrow, had also been inclining toward old public domain films.

I predict that the Filmbar will close in the first quarter of the coming year, or else will continue as a music venue and will either stop showing films, or just show whatever it can get for free in order to justify the name of the place.

Zen and Caregiving

2011-12-21T03:48:00.000-07:00

A friend who is faced with being the caregiver for a seriously-ill loved one asked for input/advice from friends with experience of being caregivers. I wrote:

It helped me to accept that what the person I was taking care of and I had in common was that neither of us liked or wanted to be in this situation. From that similarity, compassion arose - on both sides.

Also, I practiced removing myself from the story, and, minus self-concern, it was almost shockingly easy.

At one point, when covered in shit and feeling repulsed, I asked myself, "Who is this that doesn't like being covered in shit?" Of course, I couldn't find him.

Weekend in L.A. - Books and Friends

2011-12-20T03:33:00.000-07:00

The Independent Book Fair in Los Angeles, at which I performed on Saturday, was organized by my friend Andrew Pogany, former editor of Flaunt magazine, and founder and current overlord of Echo Park Books. (During his time at Flaunt, he published my article about the executions I have witnessed, "Why I Watch People Die," which won a FOLIO Silver Medal for Best Single Article, and can be found in my book of the same title.)

I arrived in L.A. two days earlier. At the airport in Phoenix, they searched me and scanned me so diligently that they didn't find the pepper-spray that I had forgotten was in my jacket pocket, and that I only discovered when I put my hand in my pocket as I got off the plane.

The book fair was outdoors, and, unusually for L.A., it was a rainy day, so things didn't look promising. But the rain never got heavy, though Andrew held an umbrella over the first author who read, Sesshu Foster (author of the wonderful City Terrace Field Manual), and there was an enthusiastic audience throughout. Foster was followed by Mandy Kahn, whom I had never heard of before, but who turned out to be an impressive writer and an extraordinarily cool person as well. Next up was Jessica Garrison, reading from her great One Dollar Stories. Then I got up and recited from memory chapters of How Do You Like Your Blue-Eyed Boy? and The Book of Man. Then the ever-superb Larry Fondation read from his recently-completed story collection Martyrs and Holy Men, which I think is his best book so far - a departure that stays in place.

The rest of the weekend was a round of parties with old friends and new, some Christmas shopping in Little Tokyo, where I had the best sushi I've ever eaten, some time at the redoubtable Red Lion, and a quick visit to MOCA, where I saw Richard Nixon's resignation letter - compelling in its briefness and mundanity - and took a picture of a woman who stood viewing photographs in such a way as to become a part of the exhibition.

Yesterdays and Tomorrows

2011-12-16T16:29:00.000-07:00

Last night some memories of the mid 1990s caught up with me. First, as I hauled a suitcase full of books through the airport in Phoenix, I heard someone call my name. Being face-blind, I didn't recognize him until he said his name - he had been in the creative writing class I taught at Phoenix College in 1997. I told him back then that he had a major talent. Last night he told me he had finished a novel, and had been thinking about contacting me to get me to take a look.

When I got to L.A., Larry Fondation and I talked late into the night, as we usually (always) do. At one point, he showed me the Bloomsbury paperback of Of Darkness and Light, published more than 20 years ago. He had ordered a used copy soon after we met in 1997, because the book was then out of print and had never been published in the U.S. The copy he had was signed by me, in 1996, to the poet Ai, who I spent some time with back then. "Light in all your tomorrows," I wrote to her. She had her last of those on March 20 last year.

Tomorrow, Larry and I will be reading (him), reciting from memory (me) and signing books at the Independent Book Fair.

At Phoenix Filmbar Tonight: Lonna Kelley & the Broken-Hearted Lovers, Make My Baby

2011-12-14T15:29:00.000-07:00

At the Filmbar in downtown Phoenix starting at 9 this evening, Make My Baby (click here for my review of a recent show) will be playing... and one of its members, Lonna Kelley, will reunite with her old band, The Broken-Hearted Lovers, formerly known as The Reluctant Messiahs.

Admission is $5, with proceeds going to the legal fees of Kevin Pate, who's also playing tonight.

How to Eat an Elephant

2011-12-13T03:30:00.000-07:00

A Zen student tells me she feels overwhelmed by the state of her life, with too many responsibilities.

I tell her that having to eat an elephant would seem overwhelming, but only if we look at the whole elephant. If we eat it one bite at a time, it's like any other meal.

She says, "Shit, man, it's a fucking huge elephant."

I say, "Each mouthful is exactly the size of your mouth."

The Ten Best Books I Read This Year

2011-12-12T00:41:00.000-07:00

If a title is hotlinked, click on it to read my review.

Johnny Porno by Charlie Stella - I think this is the greatest novel published in the last 40 years.

The Outlaw Album by Daniel Woodrell - One of the greatest books by one of the greatest living writers. His first collection of stories doesn't contain any that don't carry their weight. Also see Winter's Bone and The Bayou Trilogy.

Someday This Will Be Funny by Lynne Tillman - The literary daughter of Beckett and Wharton has never put a foot wrong, and she's on top form in this story collection.

Pike by Benjamin Whitmer - Just about everybody in the world of radical fiction talked about this book. Read it and you'll understand why.

Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette - The third book by the French master of Marxist noir to appear in English is also his weirdest.

The Underbelly by Gary Phillips - The king of ghetto lit combines brutality and tenderness in what might be his best book yet.

The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly - This book is the real thing, a rollercoaster of a yarn that's a perfectly-authentic rendering of the catastrophe that is the contemporary U.S.A.

Lonely Hearts Killer by Tomoyuki Hoshino - Various U.S. publishers asked the author to change the ending. P.M. Press didn't, and they were right. This novel is an original in every way. It's like what Cormac McCarthy might write if he were Japanese and weren't a crusty old conservative.

The Turner Trilogy by James Sallis - This author is a national treasure, but the Turner novels seem to be the least well-known of his books, perhaps because they're so quiet compared to the brilliantly-rendered carnage of his Lew Griffin series. But the quietness of these three short novels makes their beauty and tragedy all the more devastating.

Crimes in Southern Indiana by Frank Bill - He's not Woodrell, and he's not quite Whitmer, but Bill's first book, a collection of linked stories, earns him a seat at the same bar in the same suicide tavern as them.

And you might want to check out some of mine.

Honorable mentions: Allan Guthrie, John Rector, Helen Fitzgerald, Simon Logan, Duane Swierczynski

Seeing Things (Anais Nin Was Half-Right)

2011-12-11T17:04:00.001-07:00

Anais Nin said, "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."

We don't see things as they are, but we also don't see them as we are, because we don't see ourselves as we are. We mistake our vantage point - a bunch of thoughts, feelings, memories, desires and avoidances - for who we are. For as long as we identify with that vantage point, we have no idea what is going on, and no idea who we are.

Vince Larue: Art to Commemorate the Two-Year Anniversary of The Sitting Frog Zen Center

2011-12-10T13:28:00.001-07:00

At the Book Fair in Los Angeles December 17

2011-12-09T13:39:00.001-07:00

BOOK FAIR
Hosted by Echo Park Books and Space 1520
Dec. 17, 11am-4pm

Vendors:
PM Press
Penny Ante
One Dollar Books
Hennessy & Ingalls

Readers (begin at 1pm):
Sesshu Foster (Atomik Aztex)
Mandy Kahn (Collage Culture)
Barry Graham (The Wrong Thing)
Larry Fondation (Unintended Consequences)
Jessica Garrison (One Dollar Stories)

Music selected by: PART TIME PUNKS

The Most Important Thing About the Internet

2011-12-09T10:27:00.001-07:00

Grief

2011-12-08T06:12:00.001-07:00

Picture: John Hinton

"How are you these days?"
"Sun-faced Buddha, Moon-faced Buddha."
- The Blue Cliff Record

I talked with a friend who has long considered grief to be the price we pay for love. She told me that events in her life are changing her mind about that.

I told her I don't think grief is a price we pay for love, but rather that it is a part of love. When death comes, I think the grief is to be experienced the way the joy was experienced before - and if we experience it intimately, grief and joy are not separate, and both are love.

Any Buddha We Believe In Is a False Buddha

2011-12-07T09:05:00.001-07:00

There has been a fashionable debate in the Buddhist world about whether or not the Buddha believed in rebirth.

Most of the people involved in the argument confuse rebirth with reincarnation, which are not the same, or even similar. But, instead of debating that, the focus of the disagreement is on what the historical Buddha thought.

This misses the point in at least three ways. For one, we don't know for sure that the Buddha Shakyamuni ever actually existed. For a second, it doesn't matter to the practice of the Buddha Way whether he existed or not. For a third, if he did exist, his opinions about rebirth or reincarnation are irrelevant to the practice of the Buddha Way. To make him an authority, to take his view as our own, is to turn away from the Dharma.

The Buddha is not one person. To clearly see the Buddha is to see a mirror, and to see the Buddha even more clearly is to see a mirror of a mirror. The enlightenment of the Buddha is your enlightenment, not that of another human being who (probably) lived thousands of years ago.

Disguises I Have Worn: Why Subterfuge Is Necessary for Investigative Journalism

2011-12-06T05:35:00.001-07:00

Great Eastern Hotel, Glasgow

I've been following The Guardian's coverage of the News International phone-hacking scandal. While I think hacking a person's phone is criminal and should be treated as such, I disagree with The Guardian's apparent position that subterfuge should never be committed by journalists.

I've misrepresented myself several times: I dressed in rags and pretended to be homeless in order to get admitted to the Great Eastern Hotel in Glasgow, because I wanted to examine the conditions there. When I heard that a nursing home was neglecting its residents, I pretended that I had an elderly relative I wanted to find a place for. I've gone on ride-along with cops who didn't know I was a journalist, because I wanted to report what they actually said when they didn't expect consequences. When Sheriff Joe Arpaio was acting as a "celebrity waiter" at a charity event, I went to the restaurant for dinner, pretending to be a tourist from Scotland, and asked him whether he was going to run for governor. There have been other such deceptions - these are only the ones that spring to mind right now - and the sad fact is that they are often necessary in matters of public interest. It should be exceptional, and a last resort, but as long as the privacy of individuals is not being violated, I see no ethical problem with it.

Two-Year Anniversary for the Sitting Frog Zen Center

2011-12-04T04:04:00.001-07:00

It is now two years since The Sitting Frog Zen Center opened. It some ways, I can hardly believe it's been so long, and in other ways I feel as though it's been much longer.

For two years prior to that, the sangha met in a "floating zendo" - sometimes at a Unitarian Universalist church, sometimes at a music venue/artspace, sometimes at the homes of Zen students. With scant resources, we set out to establish a place where people could come to sit in contemplation, a place of safety and acceptance. And, due to the love of the Dharma by certain people, it happened.

When I look around the zendo, I see the support of other people. The zafus and zabutons, the altar statue, the air-conditioning system - all donated by people who have sat here.

Since December 2009, a wide and wild diversity of people have sat in meditation here. Some have moved on, others have stayed. Some show up from time to time, others come every week. People of all ages, all social classes, and from various Zen traditions, have sat with us. I am grateful to all of them.

People have eaten food grown in the garden, we have published a book, made video, audio and written teachings available online for free, we have held retreats, and we have ordained an additional teacher, Daishin Stephenson Sensei. We are planning Zen Centers in other places. The next will be Portland, Oregon.

A never-ending bow to all that has made it possible. Okage sama de.

Paying Attention to Distraction

2011-12-03T03:27:00.001-07:00

A Zen student told me he was struggling with his practice, because he was having problems being mindful and was usually distracted. I advised him to just acknowledge the distracted state of mind and not try to change or control it. Trying not to be distracted is just one more distraction.

Later, he wrote to me:

I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciated our last Dokusan. I can’t recall the precise words, but it was along the lines of observing the inattentiveness without judgment, and then back to the present. There was obviously more to it than that, but... when I sat back down on the cushion I felt a rare sense of peace that was pretty deep. I know the Zen thing is “Oh, that’s just deep peace like I rarely experience, now back to the breath,” but it sure did feel good...
I also wanted to let you know that one of the most powerful pages I’ve ever read (Zen or any other book) was page 65 of Kill Your Self, “Who Hates What Life?” This is “count your blessings” on rocket-powered steroids... This radical way of looking at the world can almost be disorienting, because you realize very quickly, as you said, that really the only thing you hate is your story and the comparisons to what is in front of you. Everything else, well, you pretty much love. And to realize that yes, you pretty much love everything, is quite shocking.

I responded:

Though there's no purpose in Zen, there's also no lack of purpose. As The Heart Sutra says, "No attainment, and also no non-attainment." And so, while you can note, “Oh, that’s just deep peace like I rarely experience, now back to the breath,” it's equally okay to note, "Oh, that's just the breath, now back to deep peace like I rarely experience." See? Closing the gap.
The shocking thing about awakening is the realization that everything we've believed has been illusory, and that everything is, and always was, perfect. That's what Linchi (Rinzai) means when he says, "I dislike nothing."

Book Review: The Bodhisattva's Embrace by Alan Senauke

2011-12-01T05:53:00.001-07:00

The Bodhisattva's Embrace: Dispatches from Engaged Buddhism's Front Lines by Alan Senauke (Clear View Press, paperback, $15) In 1998, I attended a workshop by the Buddhist scholar Rita Gross. I don't remember the title of the workshop, but I do remember that it included the word "sex," because at the beginning it was busy, filled with people who apparently hoped it would be dirty. It wasn't, and a few people left in disappointment.

One of those who didn't leave was social activist and Zen priest Hozan Alan Senauke, who at the time was executive director of The Buddhist Peace Fellowship. I remember Senauke because of his response to another workshop participant who gushingly praised Hillary Clinton, and quoted the title of her book It Takes a Village. Senauke laughed and said, "I think Hillary's being disingenuous." He then explained why.

I was impressed by his warmth and by what seemed like a sort of compassionate pugnacity. In laughing at naive praise of Clinton, he didn't seem to be mocking or putting the other person down. He wasn't going to let ignorant statements go unchallenged, but he spoke as an opponent, not an enemy, and so what followed was a discussion rather than an argument.

That is the tone of The Bodhisattva's Embrace, a loosely-structured collection of personal essays, complemented by Senauke's haunting photography, covering his experiences in Burma, in prison ministry in the U.S., commentaries on the death penalty, global warming, consumerism and social injustice in general. You don't have to be interested in Zen or Buddhism or meditation to be inspired and informed by this book - you just have to be interested in caring, and in taking responsibility for this interdependent universe, and in healing instead of harming.

Even when Senauke's writing is personal to the point of nakedness, it is never self-involved. Even when angry, he seems, in Orwell's words when describing Dickens, "generously angry."

This is not a book you'll find in many bookstores, since Senauke published it himself through his Clear View Project. I hope many people will order it, because, along with David R. Loy's Money, Sex, War, Karma, it is is one of the most vital books on politics, and Zen, and both.

Breaking News: Jameson Johnson, Fake Ex-Cop, Real Ex-Convict, Reappears in Phoenix

2011-11-30T05:13:00.001-07:00

J.J. Johnson: "Fuck, I'm great."

I first met the activist and self-styled hero "Jameson Johnson" two years ago. A mutual friend had been living abroad, and Johnson had been storing some furniture for him. Now our friend was back in Phoenix, and asked me to help him move the furniture from Johnson's place to his own.

At that time, Johnson was working as a mitigation specialist for various attorneys. His business was called Southwest Litigation Support, and its clients included Joy Bertrand, who was also his girlfriend.

While we were moving the stuff from a storage room in Johnson's and Bertrand's house, he and our friend chatted. Johnson held forth about local politics, so our friend asked him if he ever considered running for office. Johnson responded, "I can't. When I was a cop in Philadelphia, I shot and killed a 13-year-old kid. That would come out if I ran."

"A lot of people wouldn't care," our friend said.

"I care," Johnson said.

I was struck by two things:

1) That Johnson would talk about such a thing in front of someone he had met less than a half-hour ago, and whom he knew to be a journalist, and

2) from his demeanor, I was sure that he was lying, and I said so to our mutual friend, who said Johnson was known for his improbable, and inconsistent, stories about his past.

By the time we had moved the furniture out into our friend's van, Johnson had told another story about shooting someone, this time as a marine.

A week or so later, on a Saturday, there was a protest march against Sheriff Joe Arpaio, which I attended. In the park where the marchers assembled, I happened to be standing near Jameson Johnson. Our proximity was such that he was able to take a close-up photo of me. The earthquake in Haiti had just happened, and I overheard Johnson lecture someone about it, saying, "Let me tell you what's really going on over there..." Then he said he was flying to Haiti to help out on Tuesday. I was sure this was a fiction, and indeed it was.

Shortly after, I learned that Johnson, who is black, claimed that his father was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, but told other, widely varying, stories about his childhood.

I was now curious, so I did some checking, and found no record of Johnson's having been a cop in Philadelphia, though I didn't investigate deeply enough to know for sure, since some records are sealed.

So I wasn't surprised in September this year when Phoenix New Times columnist Stephen Lemons, a friend of Johnson's, revealed that he was really Jimmy Carroll Johnson, a convicted armed robber who had been in prison during the time he claimed that he had been a marine. Joy Bertrand had no idea about his real identity, and she broke up with him when she found out.

I also wasn't surprised when Lemons revealed that Johnson, after claiming he was being smeared by law enforcement, and that he had been working undercover in prison and wasn't really a convict, had refused to answer questions from a Federal judge, and then disappeared off the grid, including removing his Facebook page.

That was in September. People have wondered where he had gone and what he was doing.

"My father was a Klansman"

The answer is, he hasn't gone anywhere, but he has taken a new(ish) name, "J.J. Johnson," and gotten a shave.

His new Facebook page - which apparently hasn't been shared with any of his old contacts, like Lemons or activist Dennis Gilman (who has been vocal in his support of Johnson post-scandal), though there are a few local attorneys on his new friends' list - has the handle "mitig8r," so presumably he's still in business.

And his troubles haven't silenced his pontifications on Phoenix politics, if this note he wrote is anything to go by:

OCCUPY REALITY
by J.J. Johnson
A woman who I respect greatly uses an unusual acronym for a reality check: FIGJAM; Fuck, I'm Great! Just Ask Me!
While many of the people I respect have been occupied with the Occupy Wall Street Movement, I've sort of hunkered down on my own self-involved sidelines to watch. I've been impressed with the energy and passion that I've seen, but I've been confused, too. While Randy Parraz, Chad Snow, Tom Ryan and countless dedicated volunteers fought a bloodless coup in LD 18 to depose de facto Arizona Governor Russell Pearce, other folks have chosen to set up shop in parks and yell at cops who are union employees. Wouldn't it make more sense to go out to Fountain Hills or Paradise Valley and beat on paint buckets in front of the 6000 square foot homes of the 1%? Just a thought. The 7000 or so voters in PV that actually control Arizona don't care if you stay in a park until your pit hair forms dreadlock. They don't think of the OWS movement at all. They laugh when the mini-utopias turn into an urban Lord of the Flies situation, with everyone screaming for the conch.

Occupying Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland and Zucotti Park in Manhattan are interesting goals, and attract a lot of attention. What is more important is to occupy the ballot box. The victory in LD 18 was only possible because of a focused convergence of interests. The Koch brothers can throw giants checks into bubbling pots of dirty money, but they ultimately cannot mark a single ballot in Arizona. A real, meaningful direct action is registering a low-efficacy or first time voter, then giving him/her a ride to the polls. If you really want to go for broke, get an entire family registered on the Permanent Early Voter List, then swing by to help them fill the ballots out over dessert. Walk with their children to the mailbox, and send those ballots off. Explain to the children why it is important for them to participate in the democratic process when they reach the age of eligibilty. That is an effective direct action. That is literally a voter's insurgency. Russell Pearce is headed for the unemployment line because activists earnest in their convictions figured out how to show the average denizen of a red district that it was in their best interest to depose the throne. Ma and Pa Lunchbucket did not vote for Chad Snow's snazzy suits; they voted to oust King Pearce because his values no longer comported with their own. As the author of SB1070, Pearce is still dangerous. I have no doubt he will again rear his head where and when he can hurt the people of Arizona the most.

Perhaps the message that is better digested than Occupy Whatever is a simple message to elected officials: You Are Next. Should you choose to ignore the will of the electorate, we will replace you with someone who does. Stop scaring old people. Start educating the young. Provide a responsible safety net for those amongst us who cannot care for themselves. Focus on jobs. Stop trying to figure out a devious way around Roe vs. Wade, and stop blaming brown people for all of Arizona's ills. Trim your own palm trees, while you are at it. Oh, and Governor Brewer? We really don't want you to spend $585 million dollars on unneeded private prison beds in the face of falling incarceration. We would like you to fully fund AHCCCS organ transplants. We well understand that that Corrections Corporation of America is your single largest donor, and we don't care. Don't do it. If you do, we'll punch you in the ballot box too.

Fuck, I'm great. Just ask me.

I emailed Johnson via Facebook and asked him if he'd consent to be interviewed. He immediately blocked me from contacting him or viewing his page, but not before I had gotten screen shots. So, since I don't expect to hear from him, I'll end (for now) with this captured image from his new Facebook page. His chosen quote is resonant, considering that he delights in war stories, but has no experience of war.

Worst Actor: Steven Seagal v. Chuck Norris

2011-11-30T01:08:00.001-07:00

In 1998, Arizona declared an official Steven Seagal Day (I'm not kidding), and I interviewed Seagal when he came to Phoenix. I liked him.

In a column for Phoenix New Times, I wrote:

What's most striking about Seagal when you talk with him is that such an intelligent and thoughtful man can be such a talentless actor--and not realize how talentless he is. With a decent actor, his movies would be good action flicks. With him, however, they're classics of pulp cinema. Seagal--and, remember, this is coming from one of his biggest fans--may be the worst actor working today. He makes Chuck Norris seem like Robert De Niro.

That was true at the time, but history has shown me to be wrong.

I called Seagal "the Stanislavski of bad acting." That now seems like an outrageous injustice towards Norris.

I've been thinking about these two thespians because I revisited some of their masterpieces last week. And, like Muhammad Ali coming back to reclaim the World Heavyweight Title after being defeated, Norris wins the title of worst actor through sheer attrition.

No matter how little talent a person might have, if they keep on doing something, for years and decades, they can be expected to get better at it. Not necessarily good at it, but better.

For most of his career, Steven Seagal has been unable to walk across a room convincingly when there's a camera pointed at him. The same is true of Chuck Norris.

Seagal has been making films since 1988, and he's now been in 41 of them. As he's gained experience, he's gotten less and less appalling. When I saw Machete last year, I was shocked to find that he not only was competent, he was actually quite good.

Since beginning his acting career in 1968, Norris has been in 39 films and the long-running T.V. show Walker, Texas Ranger. Impressively, his acting hasn't improved even slightly since his performance opposite Bruce Lee in Way of the Dragon in 1972. He walks as though he's in The Village People, and says his lines as though he's reading a language he's never heard before. He has two facial expressions: in his usual one he looks stoned, and in his other one he clenches his teeth and screws up his face in an attempt to look fierce that actually looks more like constipation.

When teaching martial arts, Norris has talked about the importance of commitment and will-power, and I think his filmography demonstrates that he practices what he preaches. Is there any other actor with the inner strength that is surely required to do the exact same thing for four decades without getting any less inept? It strikes me as oddly heroic.

Hearing With the Eyes, Seeing With the Ears

2011-11-27T19:11:00.001-07:00

Winter desert sunlight dapples the yard of The Sitting Frog Zen Center as a man comes to dokusan. He asks me whether the awakened mind suffers during unpleasant dreams.

I say, "Hakuin said that everyone knows the sound of two hands clapping. What is the sound of one hand?"

He hesitates. "I can hear it," he says.

"If you can really hear it, then you can show it to me. Can you show it to me?"

He shows it to me.

I ask him a checking question. Again, he brings the sound of one hand. It contains the answer to his question. I give him his next koan, then ring the bell.

Burnside Style

2011-11-26T02:15:00.001-07:00

Through a mutual friend, I had the privilege of hanging out with the late, great R.L. Burnside when he would come to Phoenix to perform at The Rhythm Room in the late 1990s. One show he played, supported by T-Model Ford, is depicted in my forthcoming novel When It All Comes Down to Dust, which I should have some news about soon.

By the time he became famous, R.L. had 11 teeth, and the health problems to be expected in a man in his 70s nearing the end of a hard life, but he still had a dynamic energy, on and off stage. I remember a motel room one morning, R.L. sprawled on the bed as he told jokes, cackled, and passed the bottle of Jack Daniel's around his guests. "Jack's good company," he said. (When his doctor told him he needed to eat more vegetables, he switched from Jack to Bloody Marys.)

I remember sitting in Seamus McCaffrey's one afternoon with R.L., T-Model, and T-Model's drummer, Spam. R.L. calmly ate a bowl of soup as T-Model, who was in his 80s, got riled up and hit Spam, who was about half his age, with a walking-stick.

I had no idea, until now, that Alan Lomax had filmed R.L. back in 1978... and it's on Youtube:

A Wish for a Less Arrogant Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T00:30:00.001-07:00

When people ask me my plans for Thanksgiving, I commonly tell them I'm going to celebrate it traditionally, by giving my neighbors blankets infected with smallpox, then moving into their homes after they die.

One of the most putrid songs I have ever heard is Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land," a song so beloved by Americans. Guthrie sings, "This Land is your land, this land is my land... This land was made for you and me." This was the justification used for the genocide of the people the land belonged to. It was called "manifest destiny."

My friend Roger Clyne understands the history of the country he was born into. When this century began, he performed at a New Year's party organized by the City of Phoenix. As he was about to finish his performance, he said, "I'd like to wish us all a less arrogant next hundred years."

Today, those of us fortunate enough to have food and shelter should consider how we came to have what we have. We should understand that much of it is going to have to be given up if we are to survive, because our system, never sustainable, is in the process of collapse. And, while enjoying sustenance, rest and companionship if we can, we should remember something written by another friend of mine a few years ago: "Today is the day the unenlightened heathens call Thanksgiving. The rest of us know that every day is Thanksgiving."

Towards Empty Pages: Why I Write The Way I Write

2011-11-23T15:44:00.001-07:00

Image: Vince Larue

Someone asked me, "Do you write such stark, short books on purpose, or does it just come out that way?"

What I aim at when writing is the antithesis of self-expression. I move towards silence, towards saying nothing, or as close as I can get to an empty page while retaining the story. I know a book is complete when there's nothing else that can be taken away without losing the story.

New Poem: Cause and Effect

2011-11-22T03:00:00.000-07:00

Scottish physicists declare
that the universe may stop expanding
and implode instead

English physicists declare
that neutrinos suggest
that effect could precede cause

An American woman dances
with joy in a kitchen,
laughing and singing, while

a Scottish man melts butter
in a skillet, breaks eggs,
drops them in the butter,

adds pepper and salt,
flips the eggs with a spatula,
adds more salt, more pepper,

toasts two slices of bread,
puts them on a plate,
covers them with the eggs,

hands her the plate and a fork,
kisses her, kisses her -
the dance goes on

Effective Self-Defense Includes Never Talking to Cops

2011-11-19T13:25:00.001-07:00

Benjamin Whitmer brought my attention to this essay on self-defense by Sam Harris. It's a fairly good piece, and one of the books Harris recommends, Meditations on Violence, is excellent.

As a martial artist, and as a former boxer, and as someone who has been involved in too much street violence, I will say that it is impossible to train for a real fight - and the best preparation is understanding that.

Although most of Harris' advice is good, he gives one piece of advice that is so wrong-headed as to be dangerous:

What if a person dressed as a police officer comes to your door and asks to be let in? Unless you are absolutely certain that he is a cop—e.g. you can see that he arrived in a marked police car—you should explain that you have no way of knowing who he is and then call the police yourself. Thousands of crimes are committed each year by people impersonating cops.

The actuality is that thousands of crimes are committed by cops, not just by people impersonating them. Harris' perspective is that of a privileged white man who trusts uniformed authority. (That's why he thinks authorities should be able to torture people.) You should never let a cop inside your home unless they have a warrant and you can't stop them. If you know they really are cops, and you (foolishly) insist on talking with them, you should go outside and lock your door behind you.

But, again, you should never talk to cops. This video, which I've posted before but is well worth repeating, explains why.

Two Questions About Thugs in Uniform

2011-11-19T11:34:00.001-07:00

Viewing the horrifying photographs and videos of U.C. Davis Police Lt. John Pike pepper-spraying passive, sitting students, two questions occur to me...

In this era of cell phone cameras/video recorders, blogs and Youtube, are cops unaware that their chances of engaging in this sort of thuggery without it being made public are remote?

Or do they do it with confidence that, even though the pictures and videos will go viral, they'll get away with it anyway?

Nick Hentoff: Tents and Medical Supplies Destroyed by NYC Officials at Occupy Wall Street

2011-11-17T11:07:00.001-07:00

Nick Hentoff is representing people arrested at Occupy Wall Street pro bono, as is his wont when he sees people being persecuted. Yesterday he wrote:

While I was in court today I heard reports that the N.Y.C. sanitation crews were using chain saws to dismantle some of the larger communal tents. One of these structures was the medical tent where a patient was being treated by a volunteer nurse when a chain saw ripped through the back supports. I was told that thousands of dollars in medical supplies as well as patient medical records was thrown into a dumpster and hauled away. N.Y.C. seems to be taking the position that only individual property can be released which means that much of the property that was in communal use is not being released.

Booklist Review of The Wrong Thing

2011-11-16T13:44:00.001-07:00

PM Press’ Switchblade imprint focuses on gritty crime writing at the grim fringe of the genre. The narrative point-of-view here is apparently that of a junkie, and it provides an intimate, inside-the-skull look at the world as experienced by “the Kid.” Otherwise unnamed, Graham’s Hispanic noir protagonist has his short, violent life dissected like a frog on a breadboard. Spanning the Kid’s life from his barrio origins to his inevitable end, Graham builds a razor-sharp character study of a knife-wielding sociopath. Fans of James Sallis’ Drive (2005) and the recently released movie based on it will feel right at home in the Kid’s world.
— Elliott Swanson, Booklist

Occupy Wall Street Is Not a Bourgeois Movement

2011-11-16T11:28:00.001-07:00

I've heard some people argue that Occupy Wall Street is based on the anger of privileged white people who find themselves forced into a poverty that many people have to endure without protest.

I can sympathize with this argument, but the actuality is that an oppressive system only collapses when it becomes unbearable for the majority of people. A capitalist system depends on the existence of an underclass for it to function. When that underclass becomes the majority, the game is over.

Capitalism has failed. It was always a matter of when, not if. There are now more peasants than ever to toil in the making of products, and fewer people than ever with the means to buy them. What we are seeing now, throughout the "developed" world, is a monster dying from its own poison.

Defend Internet Freedom

2011-11-16T11:22:00.001-07:00

From Root Simple:

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

This sort of advocacy is unusual for this blog, but we believe a free Internet is essential for both cultural innovation and democracy. Sure, the Internet is mostly made of porn and kittens, but we like it as it is. What we don't want to see is it being unduly controlled by either the government or corporate interests, so we're participating in American Censorship Day by offering up this information to our readers.

Today, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is headed to the House Judiciary Committee. The purported purpose of this bill, and its counterpart in the Senate, is to stop infringement on copyrighted material, but the scope of the proposed law is way too broad and vague, and if you spin out the implications, downright scary. It has has the power to censor the Internet. It can blacklist or bankrupt sites on whisper-thin grounds, it will impede small businesses and new start-ups, and even punish individuals with jail time for infringing copyright in smalls ways, like, for instance, posting a family video in which copyrighted music is playing in the background.

This bill is likely to pass, and it will happen soon.

It's hard to summarize all the nasty pointy prongs of this legislation in a few words. The video above does an brief overview--be sure to watch to the end for last second updates. Our smart friends at the EFF, who are helping us with the whole Urban Homestead trademark thing, have written several cogent, lawyerly pieces about this legislation:

Disastrous IP Legislation Back and It's Worse than Ever

SOPA: Hollywood Finally Gets a Chance to Break the Internet

American Censorship Wednesday

Today there is a call for mass action. You may have noticed some of your favorite sites have blacked themselves out in protest.

If you'd like to take action, the EFF has provided a page that helps you shoot a pithy email to your own congresspeople. It only takes a couple of seconds and feels really good:

Take Action

At Occupy Phoenix, Nine Plainclothes Cops and Three in Uniform Steal Tents and Detain a Man for Possibly Sleeping

2011-11-15T13:22:00.001-07:00

Brookfield properties' Rentacop (off-duty NYPD officer?) calls a service-related disabled Veteran a "Faggot"

2011-11-15T12:53:00.001-07:00

Why I Trust Zen Practice

2011-11-15T03:00:00.000-07:00

Photo: Philip Ryan

Everywhere I go I see his face.
He is yet me,
But I am not now him.
- Dongshan

Someone new to Zen practice asked me, "What mindset should I have when I'm meditating?"

It is a common question, but not a useful one. The idea that we "should" have any specific mindset is just another manifestation of the ego's desire for control, for "doing it right."

I told the student that the correct state of mind is whatever state the mind happens to be in at the time. Chattering or quiet, restless or calm, attentive or distracted, elated or sad, it does not matter. What matters is that we observe the mind, in whatever state.

When I began Zen practice, I had plenty of core beliefs about what it would be like. They were all wrong. I had plenty of expectations. None of them came true. Zen practice turned out not to be full of cherry blossoms, moonlight and falling leaves, but about boredom, aching legs, frustration and exhaustion. My mind would not do what I thought it should during zazen.

And I realized that this was okay. Better, I realized that, since I was doing the practice, whatever was happening was what should be happening. My thoughts and feelings were irrelevant.

So I stayed with the practice. First lay practice, then monastic practice, which are the same thing. I wondered if my mind would settle down. It never did - but it did not have to.

And my heart opened, the heart of the Buddha. My eyes opened, the eyes of Bodhidharma. When I bowed, it was a bow that had begun before I was born. When I chanted, it was with a voice that had spoken long before I had formed any ideas about what Zen should be.

Yet nothing changed. All the crazy thoughts and stories, all the turbulent emotions, all the preferences, were still there. But I didn't believe them anymore, and, having lost those beliefs, I didn't replace them with new beliefs. And, without beliefs, I was no one's enemy. Whether sitting in a silent zendo, or marching with tens of thousands of people in political protest, there was only compassion, the spirit of ahimsa - non-harming.

Against the Need for Philanthropy

2011-11-14T07:06:00.001-07:00

I listened to this Dharma talk by Gil Fronsdal. In the discussion that followed, Fronsdal, an excellent Buddhist teacher, unwittingly showed that an awakened heart does not necessarily lead to political understanding.

When someone mentioned the U.S.'s penchant for oppressing and exploiting other nations, Fronsdal responded with the "well, everybody else does it too" defense. He then praised Americans for their spirit of volunteerism, saying that the support they give to non-profit organizations is unequaled in any other nation.

That's because other nations have social systems that take care of their citizens' needs rather than leaving it up to individual generosity. Fronsdal's view perfectly represents the American social pathology, an unquestioning acceptance of the status quo - missing the point that, while it is admirable that citizens volunteer to help other citizens, it is vile that they have to. His is the standard liberal view that praises kind treatment of slaves rather than condemning slavery.

Vince Larue's Art for the French Translation of Before

2011-11-13T07:29:00.001-07:00

The second book of mine to be published in French will be Before, which is being published in France as Les Nuits Blanches d'Edimbourg.

Vince Larue is doing the art for it, as he did with the first one, Regarde les Hommes Mourir.

It's fitting that this book is being published in France, considering that its strongest influences are the films of Godard, Truffaut and Bresson, and the novella of the title is written in the style of a film - with suggestions for camera angles and music - but written in such a way as to be entirely a novel, and, while using the conventions of film, unfilmable.

Margaret Kilgallen: Here and Gone

2011-11-11T06:44:00.001-07:00

Watching the documentary Beautiful Losers, I travel back in time.

It is 2005. I am reading a magazine, #37 of Giant Robot. One article is accompanied by a picture of a young woman standing facing the wall of an art gallery, a can of paint in her left hand, a paint brush in her right. She is wearing a dark tank top, her hair is tied back, and her attention seems focused on the tip of the brush as it touches the canvas on the wall. This is what she does, who she is.

There are photographs of her paintings, too, intense, compassionate, sometimes violent images of human life.

There is an interview with the artist. The warmth of her personality and her seriousness about her art are evident as she talks about her family history, her love of Amish craftsmanship and Indian art, banjo music and the history of California.

"I have always really loved craft and craftsmanship and the philosophy behind it: make everything you use," she says.

The artist is Margaret Kilgallen. We have never met, but, as I look again at the photograph of her at work, I have to look through tears.

The picture was taken in 1998 at the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis. The interview was recorded at her dining room table the following year. In 2001, she died of cancer, at age 33, leaving behind a husband, a child and a remarkable body of art and ideas. She was already pregnant when she was diagnosed with cancer, and was told that in order to fight the illness she would have to terminate her pregnancy. She refused to, and died three weeks after giving birth to her daughter.

Beautiful, yes, always, but never a loser.

Is Q.R. Markham a Pulp Kathy Acker?

2011-11-10T04:12:00.001-07:00

Kathy Acker (Photo: Allen Ginsberg)

The Guardian has an article about the latest literary scandal - Q.R. Markham's spy novel Assassin of Secrets turns out to be compiled from cut-and-pasted passages from post-Fleming James Bond novels and others.

Before this was discovered, the book had received high praise from reviewers and other authors. It strikes me that it is an impressive achievement to create a compelling story by stitching together chunks of other books. I would find it an impossibly daunting task.

If Markham created something original by doing this, I don't necessarily have a problem with it (though it seems unfair that he didn't let the people who published and endorsed his book in on it). The late Kathy Acker contended that text takes its meaning from context - and so she saw creative plagiarism as a valid literary form. She never hesitated to take a chunk from another author's book and put it in the middle of one of her own. Her reasoning was that, once placed in her book, the text she had appropriated meant something different that it had in the book she had taken it from, and, therefore, it was no longer the same story. I wonder whether Markham is doing something similar.

Genuine Simplicity

2011-11-09T03:19:00.003-07:00

A few years ago there was a cultural fad called "voluntary simplicity." Maybe it's still popular, but I haven't heard the term in a while. It was about wealthy white people cutting down on their material possessions and lifestyle extravagances in order to find spiritual fulfillment. Of course, it didn't work.

It couldn't work. Rich people playing at being poor don't become any happier than poor people who get rich. As long as we're still caught up in a self-centered story, a desire for fulfillment, for something to believe, someone to be, life is complicated and cluttered, however "simple" our living space.

Charlotte Joko Beck once asked me if I knew what had become of a famous tennis player of the 1980s. I said I had read that he had attempted suicide, and Joko just said, "Oh. Complicated."

A genuine voluntary simplicity would mean giving up all of our unnecessary stuff - and the most useless, cumbersome stuff we burden ourselves with is carried around inside our heads. How would life be without that clutter? If the mind was as sparse and elegant as the picture above, containing only what is necessary and beautiful, would we need to believe anything? Would we need to be anything?

Books Are Hands Reaching Out

2011-11-08T02:28:00.002-07:00

I have read, and heard, that writing is a lonely occupation, but my experience has been the opposite.

I heard from someone who bought my book on Zen, Kill Your Self, the day his father died. "It really helped," he said.

Someone else told me he read some of the poems in Traffic and Murder out loud to his wife in a hospital waiting room as he prepared to have surgery.

A response I could not have anticipated... A man wrote to me:

I am writing to express my deep appreciation for your book The Wrong Thing, which I happened upon en route to the park with my daughter. It was in a free box at the base of the stoop of my apartment. The flow of your writing style and the imagery contained therein resulted in my inability to put the book down. I identified somewhat with the Kid insofar as I too was rather unloved as a child, got into trouble with the law to some degree, and have been searching for love, which I have found on occasion. I loved how you brought out the Kid's underlying nature, that he loved to cook for people, especially Vanjii, cared for Catboy, and loved to read and watch the news, all of which could have been nurtured had he loving parents... perhaps. At any rate, the end of the book powerfully overwhelmed me, and all I could do was to let the tears fall. I have a friend, a dear friend, that just barely avoided arrest, having been involved with some dicey characters. She too had a very rough childhood. I called her to tell her that I love her. I believe that if one knows that someone truly loves them, they will more likely than not choose their actions with more care and deliberation. Your book reminded me how powerful love is; for this I thank you.

Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail

2011-11-06T06:10:00.000-07:00

As e-books prevail, more and more readers need a good reason to spend money on hard-copy, paper, books - until recently known simply as "books." Few publishers know how to provide that reason, which is why most of them are in crisis.

Switchblade Press knows.

It is obvious why anyone should want to read the just-published anthology Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail. It is uncannily timely, with its theme of riots, revolts and revolution, and it contains brilliant and urgent stories by Michael Moorcock, Sara Paretsky, Cory Doctorow, Larry Fondation, Benjamin Whitmer, Kim Stanley Robinson, and 12 others - including me.

But there is a good reason to order the paperback rather than the electronic version: Like other Switchblade editions, this book is a thing of beauty. The cover art... the texture of the paper... everything about it makes it a pleasure to hold in your hands and to have on your bookshelf. It is the kind of book that gives you a reason, at this point in history, to still have a bookshelf.

Abortion: Choose Your Ideology and Defend It

2011-11-04T19:41:00.000-07:00

This picture - pro-abortion propaganda, dumbed down to the level of an advertisement - embodies the pathology of the U.S., where ideological fundamentalism trumps discourse.

First, there is the absurdity of its premise; if a being can only be recognized as a human life the more it matures, as the advertisement seems to suggest, then it would be logical to kill infants, then toddlers, with life only becoming worthy of protection when the "person" reaches a certain age.

If you become a person at birth, what is it that has made you a person? Are you a person if half of one of your feet is still inside your mother, or are you only a person when every inch of you is outside? Does your personhood become more valid once the umbilical cord is cut?

These are stupid questions, of course, but they reflect the level of the argument - or, more accurately, the war - over abortion in the U.S. The discourse, such as it is, has been static in the 38 years since Roe v. Wade.

It is an ideological war in which I walk through No Man's Land.

I am pro-life.

I am also pro-choice.

This is only a contradiction in the eyes of fundamentalists on either side.

On the one hand, there are the fundamentalists who describe themselves as being pro-life. It might be more appropriate for them to call themselves "pro-existence." They picket such places as Planned Parenthood, harassing women as they go inside. Often, they picket on days when abortions are not being carried out. One client of Planned Parenthood recalls a time when she was hassled by anti-abortion protesters as she went in to get birth-control pills.

"They showed me photographs of dead fetuses. I thought, 'The reason I'm going to Planned Parenthood is to avoid that.'"

However, these people do not show pictures of abused children, or children abandoned - physically or emotionally - by parents who do not want them. Their interest in "life" tends to stop at birth. These same zealots almost invariably favor capital punishment.

On the other hand, there are the fundamentalists whose sacred doctrine is abortion.

Both sides are wrong.

Abortion is execution. It is killing.

This is why its fundamentalists deny that a fetus is really a living being. They have to, or it would be impossible to justify their position. Throughout history, people who have committed atrocities have justified their behavior by denying that their victims have validity as human beings. The slave trade depended on black people being seen as less than human. The Nazis justified the Holocaust by denying the validity of the Jews as human beings.

And so, those who are pro-abortion (which is not the same as being pro-choice) view the fetus as a cluster of growing cells, a tumor, something to be gotten rid of without remorse.

This denial of the fetus's validity as a child does not stand up to any kind of scrutiny, whether religious or scientific. If you believe humans have souls, how can you say when the fetus has a soul? Does the soul hover like a vulture outside the mother's body, waiting to jump into the baby as soon as it comes out? If your perspective is that of an atheist, then the actuality is even clearer -if there is no soul, then life is life. A fetus is alive inside the womb, feeding and growing. And abortion is the taking of life.

A fetus is a baby. And yet I am pro-choice. I think all women should be entitled to abortion on demand.

Why?

Two reasons. One is that abortion is often a necessary evil. Pro-lifers believe they can speak for the fetus. They talk about the baby's right to be born. What gives them the right to decide that the baby would choose to be born? Can anyone be sure that a baby would choose to be born to a mother who doesn't want it? Pro-lifers tend to be solipsistic in the extreme. I've heard them say over and over that, even if the woman doesn't want to have the child, she'll love it after it's born.

You only have to look at a newspaper to see the fallacy of this. People who love their children may find it impossible to believe that all parents are not like them. But in a world in which child abuse and neglect is routine news, in a country with the highest rate of child poverty in the industrialized world, it's clear that too many children are being born into misery.

But even this argument is a red herring, a distraction from the real issue, which is one of freedom. You do not have the right to kill, but you have the right to refuse assistance if that assistance would invade your body, which is the last boundary of privacy.

Suppose you are driving on the highway and you see an accident. The law requires you to stop and render assistance. But if one of the victims needs a blood transfusion, you cannot be compelled to hand over your blood. To refuse might be considered despicable, but you have the right to refuse. It is your blood. Nobody owns your body except for you, and nobody has the right to use your body or take from it without your permission.

Suppose you have a child, and that child needs a life-saving organ transplant, and you are a suitable donor. You do not have to do it. You can refuse to give your child one of your kidneys, even though the child will die without it. There are many names that can be applied to you if you refuse to help your child live, but you have the right to refuse. Some might consider such selfishness revolting, but it is your right. When it comes to your own body, you have the moral right to do what is morally wrong.

This right applies before birth, too. Even if we recognize the fetus as a child, you cannot be compelled to carry a child inside your body, and to go through the painful and sometimes dangerous process of giving birth. If the fetus could survive outside a woman's body, there would be no case whatsoever for the right to abortion. This is why there is no moral defense for partial-birth abortions, unless the health of the mother is in danger.

But if you get pregnant by accident, you find yourself with an unwanted stranger living inside your body, feeding off you as it grows. And you have the right to refuse to give yourself to that stranger. You have the right to abort, to let the child inside you die. And, whatever anyone might think of you for the abomination you commit with your body, it is your body and your conscience alone.

Music Review: Make My Baby

2011-11-03T20:13:00.000-07:00

Last night I was at the best music show I've been to in a long time. Phoenix band Make My Baby played in public for the first time, at the Crescent Ballroom.

I expected the show to be good, considering that the band is comprised of the great Lonna Kelley and most of the members of another great Phoenix band, Monophonic Hillside (which plays at Monorchid tomorrow evening), but I didn't anticipate just how wonderful it would be.

Make My Baby sounds like a hybrid of The Raincoats and The Shangri-Las. Gorgeous vocal harmonies by Kelley, Tabby Hufman and Ann Seletos, strange and hypnotic drumming by Tabby Hufman and Seletos, and guitar and bass by Kelley and Jay Hufman make for a sound that is trippy, lush, slightly sinister and utterly compelling.

They played a set of six songs - five originals, and one by German band Dos Hermanos. Aside from a glitch with the sound system on the first song - which they took in their stride, and just redid the song - the performance, had it been recorded, would have made a terrific album. They've been together only two months, so haven't put out a record yet, but it won't be long.

The Crescent Ballroom, newly-opened, is an excellent venue, a comfortable, elegant hangout with good food and fine acoustics, one that Phoenix has needed for a long time.

Here's Make My Baby playing a song on the Serene Dominic show:

What Is Found There

2011-11-02T03:23:00.000-07:00

In this article, Jeanette Winterson writes:

I had no one to help me, but the T.S. Eliot helped me. So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn't be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy.

So it was for me. Books saved my life, and gave me a life. I grew up in Maryhill, Glasgow, a Third World hidden within the First. The only physical contact I knew was violence, and most days the best I could hope for was not to be hungry. It was in books that I learned about something called love. Books became my parents and my friends. In a world that told me I did not matter, T.S. Eliot, Robert Burns and Robert Louis Stevenson told me that I did. Ancient Chinese poets taught me that the moon and stars viewed by the Buddha were the same ones I could see from the window of a rat-infested cold-water tenement. While those around me could see only the next drink, Edwin Morgan's From Glasgow to Saturn revealed geography - physical, psychological, spiritual - to me. Most of us knew we were being treated like vermin, but I knew how and why, because Karl Marx and George Orwell told me. And the books, all of them, told me that I wasn't alone, that there was a conversation, and I could join it, and I did.

Without books, I think I would be in prison or on the street, if I was even still breathing. If you think books are not essential to survival, you have never had to survive.

William Carlos Williams knew:

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

Dreams: Art by Vince Larue, Text by Barry Graham

2011-10-31T17:08:00.001-07:00

Dreams: A Meditation on Halloween

2011-10-31T04:00:00.000-07:00

In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: she is going to die: I shudder, like Winnicott's psychotic patient, over a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe.
― Roland Barthes

It is the time of ghosts, the time to acknowledge and celebrate what is always present, never hidden, but usually ignored.

In my dreams, the dead and the living mingle, not separated by time. A cruel man, a man I hated when I was a child, a man dead for many years now, asks me to recommend an Ipod. In my dreams, the dead are not dead. In streets and houses, they go about the same business as the living. The Arizona desert is in Glasgow, Scotland. Conversations are had, work is done, and it is as though old hurts and grudges never happened. In my dreams, the dead are not dead, but their weaknesses and failures are, leaving only people, with no one to blame. The stories we carry are the real and only ghosts. Only stories are born, and only stories die.

Untitled Halloween Poem from 2007

2011-10-30T16:59:00.000-07:00

for Technicolor Holly

Halloween rising,
and I'm riding shotgun
with an incandescent raver girl
at the wheel
and a junkie on the back seat
when the bars are closing
and the desert a mirror
of the moon

Too Starved a Subject for My Sword

2011-10-28T17:16:00.001-07:00

Spurred by the forthcoming film Anonymous, M.V. Moorhead does a good job of debunking the claims that Shakespeare wasn't the author of the plays attributed to him.

I agree with him entirely, and will just add one point he overlooked: Much of the argument that Shakespeare couldn't have written his own plays is based on a (wrong) belief that a man from his social class wouldn't have enough of an education to know the history of other nations. But Shakespeare's plays get many historical details wrong - for example in Julius Caesar, clocks keep striking, and the characters remark on it ("The clock hath stricken three."), even though clocks hadn't been invented yet. This was probably less the result of a lack of education and more that Shakespeare was more concerned with good stagecraft than historical scholarship.

Here's something I wrote on a graffiti-covered toilet wall many years ago:

I conclude, from all this wit,
That Shakespeare himself comes here to shit.
Others say that I'm mistaken,
For this is all the work of Bacon.

Daniel Woodrell - Still Outside the Tent

2011-10-27T15:33:00.000-07:00

Photo by Keith Rawson

In 1996, I read an interview with Daniel Woodrell in Your Flesh magazine. When asked how he felt about his lack of mainstream acceptance, Woodrell - who was already regarded as one of the best contemporary novelists by the few who had read him - compared it to a tent, and said that he didn't belong in the tent and preferred to stay outside.

His comment had a profound effect on me. I had been in the U.S. for less than a year, and my novel The Book of Man had gotten some traction, and so the great and the good of mainstream publishing were sniffing around me, trying to figure if I could be a lucrative commodity. I was in negotiation with one agent who was telling me I should write novels that were less dark, not morally-ambivalent, longer, more descriptive, less violent, and about middle-class white people.

Woodrell's remark perfectly articulated my own feeling, in a way that I had not been able to. Most of the outside-the-mainstream artists I knew only identified as such because they were not invited to the white man's table, and they would join it as soon as they were allowed to. I had never wanted a seat at that table.

I read the interview with Woodrell on a Saturday afternoon. On the Monday morning, I called the agent and ended our association. And I went on writing what demanded to be written. I am grateful that I did.

Fifteen years later, Woodrell is finally getting some attention, because of the film of his novel Winter's Bone. (Read my review of the book here.) Little, Brown will soon reissue all of his novels. His new book, a great collection of stories called The Outlaw Album, has just been published, and he was at The Poisoned Pen last night to discuss it.

I asked him about the 1996 interview, and it turned out that the journalist who did it was my friend Patrick Millikin, who was the moderator of last night's discussion with Woodrell. I asked Woodrell if his feelings about the "tent" had changed since then, now that he's invited in, and I was happy when he said they had not. He allowed that he might enter the tent sometimes, especially if they had good liquor, but that he had no inclination to stay there and that he believed that no artist should want to. I would say that this is why Woodrell's books have made some of us feel less alone.

Koan Commentary: The Sound of One Hand

2011-10-26T06:00:00.000-07:00

John Cage

Hakuin's most famous koan: What is the sound of one hand?

The composer John Cage, always experimenting, visited an anechoic chamber at Harvard - a room that was entirely soundproof.

Alone in the room, he sat still, and realized he could hear something. He verified that no sound was coming in from outside, so it must be in the room with him. He searched for the source of the sound, and could not find it.

Eventually, he realized what he was hearing. "I heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation. Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music."

There is no silence. Whether you are surrounded by deafening noise, or in an insulated room that no sound can enter, the beat of your heart, the blinking of your eyes, your breath, all speak audibly, saying, You are here. You are here. You are here.

Watching the Wrong Film

2011-10-25T12:50:00.002-07:00

Hakuin: Anger

I remember walking to a cinema with a woman I was dating. We were quarreling furiously as we walked. I was still furious when we reached the cinema, when we took our seats, when the film started, and when the film ended.

When we left the cinema, we walked to a bar and met up with some friends. They asked about the film, and I realized I could tell them nothing about it. I had not seen it.

I had sat there in my seat for a couple hours, and my eyes had seen light and color, and my ears had heard sounds. But I had not seen the film. I had been wrapped up in my own story, my own resentments, my own self-centered dream, so much so that I had missed what was undoubtedly a more important story being shown on the screen. I was focused on a different screen, that of my ego.

When I began to practice Zen, I realized that this was my state most of the time, and that of almost everyone else too. It is not just films we miss, it is life. It is not just anger that causes us to miss it, it is any fixation upon self. For as long as we are caught up in our own story, we miss what is actually going on.

Sergio Casci Interview

2011-10-24T18:21:00.001-07:00

Here is an interview with one of my oldest and dearest friends, Sergio Casci, screenwriter of American Cousins, and, his new one, the horror film The Caller.

Not only is he a terrific writer, but, in 1988, he was very kind to a guy he worked with at a magazine, a belligerent young ruffian who was trying to write a horror novel. That novel was Of Darkness and Light, and Serge's encouragement was so essential to getting it written that I dedicated the book to him.

I would write late into the night in my bedsit on Woodlands Road, Glasgow, then take what I had written to work with me in the morning. Serge would read it and critique it for me. He was such an avid reader of horror novels - much more than me - that when the book started to freak him out, I knew I was on the right track.

Trivia fans take note: Serge is married to another brilliantly twisted writer, the novelist Helen FitzGerald.

A First World View of Theft

2011-10-23T10:12:00.000-07:00

Here is an ignorant, arrogant and blinkered piece in The New York Times, by Rachel Shteir, author of The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting. Apparently only bourgeois, recreational shoplifters are worthy of discussion.

Where I come from, there are two reasons why people shoplift:

1. They are hungry.
2. They have no money, no way of obtaining money, and stores are full of things that advertisements tell them are desirable.

Shteir writes:

Now that psychopharmacology has replaced psychoanalysis as the therapy du jour, researchers have tried to locate the origin of the urge to steal in order to chemically quiet it. Kleptomania is grouped with other compulsive disorders like gambling, drinking and sex addiction. So far, only Naltrexone, best known for helping alcoholics stop drinking, has been found to be significantly helpful in reducing the urge to shoplift.

Here's something that might be "helpful in reducing the urge to shoplift:" End poverty.

Even if shoplifting were motivated by kleptomania, and pharmacology could cure it, most people I know couldn't afford the meds. They'd have to steal them.

Eva Dugan Lost Her Head, Don Harding Turned His Back

2011-10-22T13:49:00.000-07:00

The history of the death penalty, like any other history, is made up of stories, some factually-accurate, some not, but which become accepted truth if repeated long enough.

History records that the reason the State of Arizona stopped hanging people and started gassing them instead is that there was an unseemly incident in which Eva Dugan's head pulled off when they hanged her in 1930. It was decided that a method of killing less distressing to the spectators was in order.

It's also popularly believed that the reason the state stopped gassing people and started poisoning them was because of the unpleasant demise in 1992 of Don Eugene Harding, who vomited all over himself, took a while to die, and flipped off Attorney General Grant Woods while dying. The witnesses were so distressed that the state decided it was time for a new method.

It turns out, though, that it didn't happen that way.

My friend Chuck Kelly witnessed it. He tells me that Harding was facing away from the witnesses. "One of the witnesses - I don't remember which one - did say that Harding appeared to be flipping off Grant Woods... I would say this would be a difficult interpretation to make, since Harding's back was to us... Also, some witnesses did say they were upset by the execution."

Chuck kindly dug out the report he wrote for The Arizona Republic at the time. Here it is:

Film Review: Texas Killing Fields

2011-10-21T12:19:00.000-07:00

Texas Killing Fields is a film that gets everything right. It is right about the U.S. Southwest, it is right about poverty, it is right about murder, it is right about cops, it is right about childhood and it is right about love.

Written by Don Ferrarone and directed by Ami Canaan Mann, and co-produced by her famous (but less talented) father Michael Mann, it has attracted much less attention than it deserves. I went to a screening a few weeks ago, but had not heard of it before and have not heard of it since, though it opens in Phoenix today, and has been open elsewhere since last week.

Set in a town that we might call Anyshithole, U.S.A., this is a pitch-dark police procedural centered around a series of murdered young women's bodies being dumped in the eponymous marshland that has such a fearful local reputation that even the cops are afraid to go there. The investigating officers are a middle-aged, Bible-thumping transplant from New York (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), an angry young thug (Sam Worthington) who grew up locally and is still trying to recover from the brutalities of his childhood, and his equally-thuggish ex-wife (Jessica Chastain). They are surrounded by people so desperate and so wounded that almost any one of them could be the killer.

But the emotional center of the story is a child, played with powerful conviction and understatement by Chloe Grace Moretz, who is trying to maintain her sanity and decency while living with her abusive, trick-turning mother and her gaggle of customers.

Ferrarone's writing and Mann's directing are compassionate but devoid of sentimentality, and harshly honest without being judgmental. The cops are well-intentioned but arrogant and incompetent, the criminals range from terrifying to pitiful, and everyone is too caught up in their own desperation to see what is going on. There is little hope, and no redemption, offered, but if Morgan's character's favorite book is right in saying that the truth shall set us free, then there might be a painful liberation.

Why Pundits Cannot Discuss the Occupy Movement

2011-10-18T07:59:00.000-07:00

Cops "protect and serve" at Occupy Phoenix Photo: Z. Matmol Skylan

As the movement that began with Occupy Wall Street continues to spread nationwide, media commentators and political hacks show that they don't understand what is happening. I don't mean that they are confused, or not entirely getting it; I mean that they actually have no idea what is going on. It is so beyond their ken that they don't have a political/philosophical language with which to discuss it.

Occupiers are criticized for having no unified ideology, no specific common demands or goals. Their critics are like dinosaurs trying to understand computers. They are unable to comprehend any approach other than the hierarchical one they have been conditioned to see as the only possibility, and so they cannot understand a movement that comes together to discuss and decide upon its goals, rather than gathering around a pre-set dogma. They seek to label because they seek to control, but they can find no labels that will stick to this movement. Their reality is failing them, and so they are afraid.

Vince Larue: The Covers, and the Hand that Drew Them

2011-10-14T09:39:00.000-07:00

This is the hand of the great French artist Vince Larue, with the books I wrote that he did the covers for. There will soon be our graphic novel, Dark Heat, and more books in the future.

Film Review: Death Wish (Revisited 37 Years Later)

2011-10-13T03:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I watched Death Wish, which I hadn't seen in decades. I was surprised at how bad it is, and how camp. The script, and most of the the acting (one of the exceptions being Charles Bronson's) are often at the level of pantomime.

I was fascinated, though, by the film's premise, that rich people have to fight back against the marauding peasants, who are depicted as wild animals. The film certainly spoke to the paranoia of New York City's privileged in the 1970s, which is why it depicts a city that existed only in the frightened minds of those who could pay to have their groceries delivered (which is how the young thugs in the film find out where the protagonist's family lives so they can pay a rape-and-murder visit).

The film holds Arizona up as an ideal - a place where the wealthy can have all the space they want, so they don't have to deal with pesky poor people, and that allows them guns to use on any proles who do accost them. It is after a business trip to Tucson that Bronson's character goes on a vigilante rampage in the streets, parks and subway of N.Y.C.

In actuality, N.Y.C. is a sustainable city, and the cities of central and southern Arizona are social and environmental disasters. But, for all its silliness, Death Wish gets something right - the so-called American Dream is based entirely on self-centeredness and irresponsibility. It is a film that disproves its own stupid message, and, for obvious reasons, has relevance today beyond being an amusing cultural time capsule. I would like to watch it in the company of a group of Tea Party members.

Book Review: Yoga Heart by Leza Lowitz

2011-10-11T03:50:00.000-07:00

Yoga Heart: Lines on the Six Perfections by Leza Lowitz (Stone Bridge Press, paperback, $12.95) is a beautiful book in every way. Comprised of Lowitz's poems on The Buddha's Six Perfections and illustrations by Japanese artist Akiko Tanimoto, it is both a work of art and a guidebook for living real life. Its design and production make it not just a joy to look at and read, but to hold in your hands - fitting for a book that closes the imaginary gap between the physical and the spiritual.

Alone and out of context, some of the poems might seem didactic, more like sermons or admonitions - but in the context of this collection, they are like notes in a symphony. Lowitz is a yogi and a Buddhist, and these poems are not just about yoga and Buddhism - they are yoga and they are Buddhism. They contain the practices, and so are contained within the practices. Some are funny, some quietly advisory, some celebratory, and some so musical that they ask to be chanted aloud. Many of the poems would serve well as liturgy. This is a unique and wonderful book. If you do any kind of contemplative practice, I not only recommend that you get this book - I urge you to.

Columbus Day

2011-10-10T17:01:00.001-07:00

With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want... Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold
- Christopher Columbus

Today the U.S. celebrates an inept navigator who thought that San Salvador was Japan and Cuba was China, and who enslaved, mutilated and murdered the natives of the lands his ineptitude took him to.

Also, it's not true that most people thought the earth was flat in those days.

I think it's fitting that the U.S. celebrates this, considering how this country was developed. It's likely that the self-styled "greatest nation in the world" will be remembered by history alongside Nazi Germany.

Charlie Stella Reviews The Champion's New Clothes

2011-10-08T04:35:00.000-07:00

Charlie Stella, author of Johhny Porno, one of my favorite novels, just posted a review of The Champion's New Clothes, my second novel, which was published back in 1991 (I wrote it in 1989), and is once again available.

He writes:

Barry Graham’s The Champion’s New Clothes is a wonderful novel set around the dark, dangerous and always intriguing world of professional boxing (the Scottish version)... a modern day verismo opera; relationships requiring the kinds of sacrifice it takes to be a champion without knowing what the belt might bring. A surprising, unsettling open ending that offers no fairytale of a future.

Click here to read the rest.

Alone

2011-10-06T01:21:00.000-07:00

On se sent tres seul, tres abandonne

- Paul Reekie

Brief friendship: monster and hermit

When I was writing my first novel 23 years ago, I kept thinking about something Stephen King wrote. I don't remember which of his books it's in, but he said that the most awful word is "alone."

I would go as far as to say that fear of being alone is the basis of most fears, and perhaps all of them. I cannot think of a single horror film that does not depend upon that fear.

Take The Bride of Frankenstein. When the monster happens upon the cottage of a blind hermit, it turns out that they have both been suffering the same pain: loneliness. The hermit prays in thanks that God has sent him a friend. Unable to see the monster's hideousness, all he feels is friendship, and one gets the sense that he might not feel differently even if he could see him. The monster does not harm him. From him, the monster learns to speak, to say the word "friend." Their respite is brief; other people show up, see the monster and drive him away.

The monster then forces his creator, Frankenstein, to make a female companion for him. Frankenstein does, but when she is brought to life she is repulsed by the monster. He reaches out his hand to her and says, "Friend?" When she rejects him, the pain in his voice reveals the real meaning of being chased from a village with burning torches. He declares, "We belong dead."

If the monster's friendship with the hermit had continued, or if the "bride" had wanted him, his violence would have ended. I am almost certain that this is true of every other being.

The "Message" of Occupy Wall Street Could Not Be Clearer

2011-10-05T16:02:00.001-07:00

The most common criticism I hear of Occupy Wall Street is that the protestors have no clear, specific message. I find this bizarre. What could be clearer or more specific than occupying Wall Street?

Discussing the French suburban riots of 2005, Slavoj Zizek wrote, "The riots were simply a direct effort to gain visibility."

The late Scottish poet and activist Harry Young used to say, "Why do babies cry as soon as they're born? They're demanding their rights."

Why Phil Gordon Is the Best Thing That's Happened to Phoenix in Decades

2011-10-03T20:55:00.003-07:00

Phil Gordon

Phoenix New Times has an article that's a selectively-accurate summary of Phil Gordon's soon-to-end stint as Mayor of Phoenix. But, despite Gordon's corruption - which few dispute unless he's paying them or sleeping with them - his being elected Mayor was a godsend for this city, and the article doesn't mention it.

While rightly crediting him for standing up to Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and for the opening of A.S.U.'s downtown campus, the reporter, Monica Alonzo, overlooks his most significant achievement - the implementation of the light rail.

Journalists at Phoenix New Times opposed the light rail before and after it opened, but it has worked well, and the actuality is that it is the city's only chance of survival. It needs to be expanded much farther, no matter the cost, because as this car-culture collapses, the various parts of this vast city - and its outposts like Tempe and Scottsdale - will have to become self-contained, compact communities. To think otherwise is the logic of the ostrich. History may remember Phil Gordon as Phoenix's savior.

Gary Hustwit's Urbanized Screens in Tempe Tonight

2011-10-02T13:40:00.001-07:00

Gary Hustwit

Urbanized, the third film by the visionary Gary Hustwit, is being screened at the Valley Art in Tempe, AZ, this evening.

Hustwit was my publisher once upon a time. He put out Before in 1997. He'd started Incommunicado Press pretty much on a whim, and, since his background was in music promotion and design (he was also running his own font company), his methods of selling books were the same ones by which independent record companies sold records - lots of touring, performance, T-shirts, any gimmick he could think of. When Peter Plate and I did a West Coast tour, Hustwit filled the trunk of the rental car with books, did the driving, and acted like a carnival barker at the shows. The experience of traveling with him was exhilarating and surreal in equal measure.

Incommunicado Press lasted less than five years. Hustwit got disheartened by not being able to sell beautifully-designed (by him) books that got good reviews but remained largely invisible because he couldn't afford to buy display space on the tables at the big bookstores. Just before giving up, he tried to convince me that traditional publishing was on the way out and that the future lay in print-on-demand books and e-books. I told him he was crazy, but of course he wasn't - he was just 12 years ahead of his time. He was supposed to publish How Do You Like Your Blue-Eyed Boy?, and, so many years later, I published it in the formats he had championed.

The influence of Incommunicado can still be seen in U.S. independent publishers, but, having decided to hang it up, Hustwit moved on, leaving the publishing world and becoming a filmmaker. When he said he was going to make a film about a font, I thought he was either joking or crazy. As Helvetica proves, he was serious and sane. Anyone who wants to know where U.S. media will be ten years from now might want to find out what Gary Hustwit is thinking right now.

Revolt or Revolution?

2011-10-01T18:47:00.002-07:00

In his latest column, Jon Talton writes:

Friends keep telling me of the coming working-class revolt (Mark Thoma writes about such here). I'll believe it when I see it. Civil insurrection is certainly likely as America continues its downward course, but it will play out with minorities burning their own neighborhoods and the whites and other better-offs retreating even deeper into suburban apartheid. The Revolution in a nation of dolts could only be caused by taking away television, video games, smart phones and cheap gasoline. Then, to the barricades!

I agree with Talton, but things are worse, or better, than he seems to realize. Cheap gasoline is over. What are our rulers going to do when the peasants they enslave have no way of getting to work? Gary Snyder once wrote that real revolution would only come through people refusing to buy things they don't need. That, as Talton, Aldous Huxley and Neil Postman all point out, is not going to happen - but it doesn't have to. When the resources are not there to produce the toys, and the consumers don't have the means to buy them, then producers and consumers have to give up these roles and return to being people.

Dongshan's Enlightenment Poem: Video of Dharma Talk I Gave on September 28

2011-09-30T12:54:00.000-07:00

The Financial Crisis Is Manufactured

2011-09-29T13:47:00.000-07:00

A solution to the financial crisis

Debates about how to solve the global financial crisis miss the point, because such debates start with the premise that there is one.

We are conditioned to think of diamonds as rare gems, but they are not. They are plentiful, and only sell for high prices because the De Beers corporation has a monopoly on them.

We are conditioned to think that there is a shortage of resources in the world, but there is not. Even with the gross overpopulation (the world population has doubled in the last 50 years), there is enough for everyone. The problem is that, like diamonds, most of the wealth is "owned" by a tiny minority.

The U.S.A. Is Mentally Ill

2011-09-27T18:24:00.001-07:00

Something I've been thinking about since the killing of Troy Davis last week...

A few months ago, Larry Fondation and I had a conversation in which we agreed on two things: 1. Each of us has written books that are an accurate portrait of the U.S. in the last 15 years or so. 2. However accurately we depict it, neither of us understands this country.

I don't think madness can be understood by the sane... and this country is mad. Just as a person is a composite of aggregates, so is a country. And, just as a person can become mentally ill, so, I think, can a country.

Protests Only Work If We Hear About Them

2011-09-26T14:32:00.002-07:00

A cop reaches over a barricade and rips a young woman's shirt

The political philosopher Sheldon S. Wolin predicted that in our present corporatocracy protests would not be effective, as they were in the 1960s, because nowadays the mainstream media would not report them. The Wall Street protests - and the brutality of the police towards the protestors - have proven him right.

The only real coverage has been on websites and blogs. Click here for a fine (and frightening) piece Nick Hentoff posted today.

Edited to add: and click here for what the young woman in the photo wrote.

A Karmic Boomerang

2011-09-26T13:15:00.002-07:00

Nice review of The Wrong Thing here:

This is the fifth title in PM Press’s Switchblade Series, which is a collection of hardboiled fiction focusing the lens on the burned and rugged outsiders who “tango at the edge of society.” The Wrong Thing is no exception to this rule. It’s the story of a ravenous killer called The Kid told in rich, journalistic prose. Imagine a ruthless young murderer, not yet to caught and trying to independently reform himself, falling in love. Unfortunately, reality sets in; his past actions come back to him like a karmic boomerang. For fans of Black Lizard, Chester Himes, Barry Gifford, and mystery noir.

Future Zen Books

2011-09-26T04:00:00.001-07:00

Someone who read Kill Your Self asked me if I plan to do any other books on Zen practice.

There will probably be at least two more. Next year I'll put out a collection of my Dharma talks, called The Site of How It Used to Be. After that, at some point, assuming I live long enough, I'll write a book of koan commentaries.

Jacques Brel explained a lengthy period of silence by saying he didn't want to be "an industrialist of song." I don't want to be an industrialist of Dharma, so after those three books I think I'll take up a functional silence until the practice of teaching presents a reason to break it.

The End of Every Story

2011-09-25T13:41:00.004-07:00

The Dhammapada says: "Many do not realize that we here must die. For those who realize it, quarrels end."

Even when we know that to be true, most of the time we don't realize it. We think we have time to waste on taking life personally. We pretend that time and distance separate us from the end of our story.

A few months ago, I received an email from the publicist at a publishing house, asking if I'd be interested in reviewing a book they had just published. She sent me the book, and I emailed her to say that I liked it a lot and would write a positive review.

She wrote back: "Wonderful, Barry! So glad you're enjoying the book. Very much looking forward to your review!"

Two weeks later, I emailed her again: "Hi, just to update you - I am going to write a review, but I've been so swamped the last week or so, I haven't had the focus to do it justice. I haven't forgotten, and will do it soon."

One of her colleagues emailed me in reply to tell me that she had died that weekend, at the age of 3o.

Paul Hullah's Poem for Paul Reekie

2011-09-24T15:31:00.002-07:00

I've been asked if I've written any poems in memory of Paul Reekie. I thought I would, but I haven't. The poems haven't come. Perhaps they will.

But another dear friend of Paul's, the Japan-based English poet Paul Hullah, read this poem at the memorial event held at this year's Edinburgh Book Festival.

Legal Vandalism

2011-09-23T18:29:00.005-07:00

I was never fond of Phoenix's Paisley Violin cafe and artspace. Just as well, as I'll never go there again, having heard the news that the owners painted over a mural by El Mac at their new location.

Can Effect Precede Cause? Are We Buggered?

2011-09-23T06:35:00.001-07:00

I'm fascinated by this news about the possibility that particles called neutrinos can travel faster than light:

Subir Sarkar, head of particle theory at Oxford University, said: "If this is proved to be true it would be a massive, massive event. It is something nobody was expecting.
"The constancy of the speed of light essentially underpins our understanding of space and time and causality, which is the fact that cause comes before effect."
The key point underlying causality is that the laws of physics as we know them dictate that information cannot be communicated faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, added Sarkar.
"Cause cannot come after effect and that is absolutely fundamental to our construction of the physical universe. If we do not have causality, we are buggered."

Exciting though this is, it's not new. I first read about neutrinos in Gary Thorp's book Caught in Fading Light nearly a decade ago. It contained an article that said that neutrinos were arriving at their destination before they began traveling. The fact that no more was heard about it suggests that it didn't stand up to peer review. I wonder if this latest will.

Two Years in Prison for Phoenix Graffiti Artist

2011-09-22T08:39:00.006-07:00

This is a damn shame - a 20-year-old sentenced to two and a half years in prison for writing graffiti.

I don't have any patience for the argument that graffiti is vandalism. Sure, much of it is ugly and artless - but the same is true of much of what's called "public art." At least graffiti writers aren't supported by taxes, though I'd say there are plenty who ought to be.

If they want to lock up artists who deserve it, I suggest the cops start raiding galleries in Scottsdale.

As for the claim that this guy MAWD is "Phoenix's no. 1 graffiti vandal" - I've never heard of him before, and I've never seen his tag, so I doubt it.