Been Trying To Get to You

I have been spending too much time doing research, trying to catch up with 30 years in a couple of weeks, but going down rocking. Reading and writing until my eyeballs feel like pinpricks and my brain is swirling. I started doing this thing of sleeping for a few hours and then getting back up to work.

Starting the day with new stuff from Ray Wylie Hubbard:

 There has not been much to report. I did the group thing last Friday. The notes are around here somewhere. I think I will add them separately.

CC was found and she is alive.

I made it to church Sunday. The standing wore me out and I did not accomplish much else on Sunday. About the only other places I have been have been Payless or Walmart or the convenience store. I just came back from the convenience store.

Oh, I did laundry one day. Thursday or Friday. I talked to the niece when I did. Yes, it was Friday.

Another thing from last Friday: the phrase "all this useless beauty" got stuck in my head. It came to me as part of a song; one I could not remember. Then I tracked it down a few days later. 

 

I have been keeping to Coke Zero or to one 2-liter of RC Cola. 

Although I did get to spend time with Esoterica. 

We had heavy rains last night, after I called it a day.  

I have decided that the Georgia Supreme Court writes tiresome opinions. It must be an institutional thing, since the same style persisted over 30 years,

The law is not a profession; it is an obsession, more like a disease of the brain. 

Rock on.

 

I started  this post days ago, meaning to write around these things.

Undiscovered Country: The 100th Anniversary of Virgina Woolf’s “On Being Ill” (Literary Hub)

There was something atavistic about the skunks, their ancestors living under my house generation after generation. I felt watching them Woolf’s deeper, darker explanation for why, while indifferent, nature soothes the afflicted. “Inside the transcendent communion with nature,” she wrote, “resides the most disquieting fact of existence—the awareness of an unfeeling universe, unconcerned with our fate.” This indifference calmed and conciliated compared with the weight of my loved one’s concern.

This sounds more like me up to 2010:

Woolf understood that those in pain are susceptible to illusion. “This monster,” she writes, “the body, will soon make us taper into mysticism, or rise, with rapid beats of wings into the rapture of transcendentalism.” It is assumed by believers that religion comes down from above, but if God exists, human bodies made him. The idea of the supernatural felt disrespectful to the stark reality of a damaged body like mine.

***

Woolf called illness, “the great confessional,” a rare space where “truths are blurted out.” But I had found her truths existential, and almost impossible to bear: “…how we go down into the pit of death and feel the waters of annihilation close above our heads…”

The odd thing since I got home is that with my body falling apart I have not succumbed to the weariness and then the depression as I used to . I have learned to work around the problems and the pain. More importantly, I have medical insurance and a willingness to use that I did not have once upon a time. It is also good that I have done much to eliminate the stress, have learned to pace myself, and do not have a life where I have to keep throwing myself against a wall just to survive. On the other hand, the bureaucracy that has undertaken supervising my life does not understand that I have time only for writing, that is my job before I kick the bucket, my poor PO seems to think I am an isolated misanthrope when I feel like nothing of the kind.

 Heavy Metal: A magazine in transition  (The Comics Journal)

When I was young, I was quite the reader of Heavy Metal. It seems to me now that that stopped in my thirties. Perhaps because the magazine became harder to find; perhaps because it no longer amazed me; perhaps because I turned to things that would make me money. Will it survive? Will its survival matter? Have our times gotten too shriveled with conservatism.

Anatomy of a Galileo Forgery (JSTOR Daily) forgeries are so much fun, yet this one on this day when lethargy has begun to overtake me again, I am troubled with the thought of history being undermined.

 Both of De Caro’s copies of the Sidereus had a title page blemish that turned out to match perfectly a legitimate 1964 facsimile copy of the book. In that facsimile edition, a photo retoucher had failed to correct a paper blemish that the camera read as an ink dot … and here it was again four decades later, pointing to one of the sources of the De Caro fakes.

Detailing a trail of shady library exchanges; forgeries used to replace stolen originals; originals with added forged details to increase their value; and multiple forged copies (De Caro claimed he made five copies of Sidereus Nuncius), Wilding argues that the SNML “is merely the most sophisticated example we have so far detected in a long run of forgeries, whose primary aim was to stand in as surrogates for stolen copies.” Eager to disabuse people of rooting for clever forgers and the schadenfreude of seeing experts conned, Wilding writes, “these books are the product of organized crime” undermining history and the institutions that make history possible.

But is not history always undermining itself?

We found out today that Donald J. Trump has not even made an agreement to end his “excursion” into Iran, but only an agreement to make an agreement. How many will tout him as a genius? That he is the greatest dealmaker in history? Plenty.

Iran war updates: US, Tehran confirm ‘peace deal’, signing set for Friday | US-Israel war on Iran News | Al Jazeera

US Army Major: Trump lost the Iran war and if he’s not held accountable he will start a new war!

We Can Reject Trump’s Orgy of Decline

And I’ll mention one point in particular that seems not to be getting the attention it deserves. The memorandum of understanding to be signed Friday reportedly says that Iran will not impose tolls in the strait of Hormuz for the next sixty days. This is presumably the basis of Trump’s claim that the strait will be “toll-free.” But the government of Iran says that the strait will operate in the longer run “under Iranian arrangements.” This seems likely to be true, since Iran has established the principle that it can close the strait, has paid no price, hasn’t repudiated a right to do so in the future, and will be more interested and able to enforce its will in the months and years to come than we’ll be able to stop them.

***

Could the humiliating loss to Iran—along with the embarrassment of our 250th anniversary celebration—be a kind of blessing? Could it provide a spur for us to arrest and reverse our decline in national power and also our slide into imperial decadence? Indeed, the American people don’t seem to have been too impressed by Trump’s White House cage circus. Perhaps here, unlike in imperial Rome, it may not be too late to revive the spirit of republican virtue?

Why It Matters (Sheila Kennedy) should leave depressed about the people but I think there are more who want to be better human beings, who think Trump and his ilk are not better human beings. Meanwhile, we live with their stupidity. 

Gerrymandering in Indiana is worse than 95% of the U.S., new report says  (wthr.com). The Indiana Supreme Court wrote in its last abortion case that if the people of Indiana have control of the legislature and can amend the constitution. Quaint legal fiction or a delusion, I leave to you, dear reader. I think it is BS. Indiana is in the hands of one political party that will not let the people decide for themselves.

The Results Of One-Party Rule (Sheila Kennedy):

Over time, a dominant party tends to fill watchdog roles — attorneys general, inspectors general, ethics boards, judicial appointments — with loyalists. These watchdogs may not be corrupt themselves, but they tend to become less aggressive when it comes to investigating the ruling party.

Long tenure also gives a party time to build patronage. Government jobs, contracts, licenses, and permits flow disproportionately to allies and donors. What begins as political favoritism can gradually morph into corruption (Illinois and New Jersey are classic examples of states where decades of machine politics have created cultures where “transactional behavior” is just “how things work”).

In competitive states, scandals can be exploited by the opposition party, but in states where the opposition is permanently weak, the dominant party doesn’t have much incentive to police itself.  The discipline imposed by an external threat is missing.

This year, for the first time in a long time, Indiana Democrats are running candidates in most of the districts thought to be “safe” for Republicans, and the new Lincoln Party is also attempting to upend the GOP’s lock on Hoosier governance. Perhaps the state is on the cusp of a revived competitiveness–and a more competent and less corrupt governance.

 

 How the Rest of the World Sees America (Through the Eyes of Its Writers) ( Literary Hub ) - a reading list. About time we start thinking what others think of us, take it seriously, and mend our ways. American exceptionalism needs a dose of humility.  

Reading American Patriotism Has Always Privileged the Hopes of the Future Over the Sins of the Present (Literary Hub) is a good antidote to my thinking that Trump is a giant hairball in our national history, it is time for us to just shut up and get off stage. He is that hairball. Diving back into legal history keeps reinforcing the idea that if you think there has been no systemic racism in this country then you need to look up the word thinking in the dictionary. It has been here, it lingers behind the mean-spirited cowardly parasites who think birth gives them status. What is also to be seen is how we have tried to follow our better angels. I thought in the following to see a glimpse for a better future.

Such is the problem of patriotism: a higher law that is really a lower law, because it substitutes a theory about America for the reality. It esteems the state above the person, the shell above the contents, in the hope that what is good for one will be good for the other. It has never worked that way. Where patriotism has meant exceptionalism—the belief that America was born to lead—it has wreaked havoc on the cause of democracy and fair dealing, at home and abroad.

America’s descent, on its 250th anniversary, to the demagoguery of an unapologetic nationalist is not the aberration many want it to be. It is the consummation of forces that have been latent from the start: a rumbling warfare between a political theory of equality and a more visceral urge for mastery. And while “America First” may represent a particularly abrasive form of the phenomenon, it cannot be isolated from a tradition that has long confused the strength of America with the substance of democracy. When the answer to Donald Trump is a renewed and refined patriotism, drawing on the example of Abraham Lincoln and a civil war that claimed nearly a million lives, it is clear that we need to go deeper.

***

My conviction, as a true believer in what the journalist Randolph Bourne called the “American promise,” is that America needs to shed the conceit of exceptionalism to fulfill its democratic mandate. We must lose the myth of preeminence to see the world as it is. From foreign policy to health care, education to the environment, questions of freedom and justice have been lost in the mists of national pride: the still-religious intuition that we have already arrived. The paradox, as Bourne defined it during the nationalist frenzy of World War I, is that America will have to become less patriotic before it can recover what is true and beautiful in its creed.

There are so many areas in which America excels Europe, thought Bourne, but in patriotism we follow and regress. As the irrepressible Emma Goldman lectured a jury, as she defended herself against charges of conspiring against conscription, there are more kinds of patriotism than carnivals of self-regard.

“Gentlemen of the jury,” she told a court in 1917, “we respect your patriotism. We would not, if we could, have you change its meaning for yourself. But may there not be different kinds of patriotism as there are different kinds of liberty? I for one cannot believe that love of one’s country must needs consist in blindness to its social faults, to deafness to its social discords, of inarticulation to its social wrongs.”

“Our patriotism,” she continued, “is that of the man who loves a woman with open eyes. He is enchanted by her beauty, yet he sees her faults.” Goldman loved the American people, and the “great possibilities” of a free society, but she hated the “cant” of an Americanism that trampled on freedom and expected to be thanked for it: the misconceived idealism that deemed a flag more precious than a person. Patriotism, Goldman argued in an earlier essay, had become a “Moloch” and a “menace to liberty,” a value that cheerfully “abrogates the principles of the Declaration of Independence.” When a court could sentence a man to ninety days in prison for quoting the nation’s founding document, in a manner supposedly subversive of the war, the crisis was complete. 

A Lesson From Lincoln (Sheila Kennedy) 

LaCroix concluded with the observation that, at the time of that speech, the young Lincoln “did not know what was coming.” He had no inkling of the pivotal role he would play in the nation’s future, but what he could do at that time of his life was offer his listeners a set of ideas that would attach them to civic life rather than alienating them from it.

There was much more. The full video of her address is available on Vimeo at: https://vimeo.com/1199018583#t=1h18m28s. It starts at the 1 hour 18 minute mark, and I strongly encourage you to click through and watch the entire speech, which was far more powerful than my efforts to describe it.

I had not heard the phrase “the mobocratic spirit,” but it is a perfect description of MAGA.

What Lincoln understood and emphasized was the central element of true Americanism, which is allegiance to a specific approach to human governance. It is that allegiance that separates citizens of the United States from the “blood and soil” beliefs that underlie fascist regimes and motivate Trump’s MAGA base. In a recent speech, Georgia Senator John Ossoff recently reaffirmed Lincoln’s understanding of what makes one an American, insisting that  “Our national greatness flows not through our blood or our genes, but through our ideas. Americans are not a race. We’re a people united not by ethnicity, but by our shared convictions. And that is what makes us exceptional.”

 

 'If I could have just written love stories I would have preferred that': A 2006 interview with Marjane Satrapi (The Comics Journal ) 

 

I finished with "Stranger Things" and "The Sandman" on Netflix. Winona Ryder has now graduated to mother roles and seems so far from Heathers, but damn she has got a way with an axe. "The Sandman" left me as cold as the graphic novels did until Shakespeare showed up. There is a dreaming, indeed.

Over on YouTube the algorithm turned up a Cary Grant movie I had never heard of This Is the Night . That it had Thelma Todd was what attracted my attention. I knew about her death but could never recall her from any movie. Attractive, funny, and, yeah, I can see why her death was a shocker. But it was another actress who caught my attention - Lili Damita - the rather notorious first wife of Erroll Flynn. I had never heard anything of her acting, so her being a charming fireball was a surprise. However, the fascinating thing about the movie was the opening; never seen one like it, call it jazz on film.

 

 I was less impressed by The Brasher Dubloon; the novel is not my favorite Raymond Chandler novel, I like even Playback better; the movie is uneven, reminding me of better actors in the role such as Dick Powell and Robert Mitchum, but it beats Altman's The Long Goodbye.

 This is the kind of movie that needs to be remade - good enough and could be better.

 The same with this one, that never seems to come to life, and I understand why I have not seen it in too many decades to admit.

Getting Kinksy, why they matter:

 Thin Air rejected a story:

Thank you for submitting your piece "Agnes" to Thin Air online. Our editorial staff has given it careful consideration and unfortunately must pass at this time. Although we are not accepting your work, our team was excited to have the chance to read and consider it. We wish you the best in placing it elsewhere.

Sincerely,

Kruger, Web Editor

 

 And this was not much of a surprise:

Thank you for submitting "Pieces About A Small Indiana Factory, 1976 - 1984." We regret that we are unable to publish it, but we appreciate your interest in The Paris Review.

Yours sincerely,

The Editors

http://theparisreview.org

 

Doing what I can to keep rocking:

 I need to make some calls. I thought of calling KH last night when I got thinking of the distance between old songs and today. For some reason, I got to going through Hank Willaims Jr. songs just before bedtime last night. He's not a soul singer like Waylon, but I like what he's doing now with country blues. That got me thinking about late style. He got pressed into the service of a country music that had little to offer him, he moved over to a more rocking, outlaw style, then got popular and somewhat stupid about politics, and with the country blues he is putting out music that has feeling.

Speaking of Waylon, this just came across the speakers from an old live song, something I used to think was corny and now sounds like a better view of America than is coming to me today.

 The sheriff called the other day, wanting to do an interview as the DOC has implemented some new rules. I have no idea what the rules are. So, tomorrow I go out there, taking a break from work to satisfy some bureaucratic fears about my existence. Your tax dollars at work.

The writer's group meets today, and I intend to be there. Also, I need to hit a grocery. And deposit my Indiana tax refund. I probably should take time for my mail rather than my email.

I am supposed to be working on "Agnes" - maybe I can get to it this afternoon. It will let me get a grip on this research project to not be working on it all day today.

And that is pretty much life as it is here in Muncie. The sun is up now, two hours after I came back from the convenience store and started cleaning up this post. I suspect a few more will come out that will be more political,

And it could be time for breakfast.

Maybe I did get to you, I do know I got where I am going.

 

sch 

Group Notes March 2026

 I got behind on my session notes, the last I can find is from 1/2/2026, and so let's go.

3/6 

Pattern recognition

(I see dead patterns.)

Persecution

Hallucinations

Superstitions

Freestyle 3-12- 2013 (Part 6)

[I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. Continued from Freestyle 3-12- 2013 (Part 5) . sch 8/16/2025] 

Depression disorders one's thinking into a narrower focus of darkness, despair, and disgust into a worldview created upon faulty premises, which convinces one of not only being valid but superior to what are truly healthy worldviews. I say breaking depression's hold is harder than breaking any other addiction. I swear the machinery of my mind got smashed in 2010. As I begin to see just how wrong I was about myself and my world. Yet, I think my thinking of myself as a clueless lout is mostly accurate.

I suggest you have a friend who can tell you that you are screwing up, and one you can talk freely to. I had two, but then I lost faith in our friendship. When you get in such a situation, understand you need professional help. You are then in serious trouble. I did not see any of this then; do you see what happened to me?

 Reading Kurt Vonnegut Jr's A Man Without A Country reminded me that we can make do with less. Does having a Mercedes make you a better man than one driving a Ford? I spent immense amounts of time working so I could have money. I never took but five vacations in the 22 years and 4 months I practiced law. Instead of a family vacation in 2009, I blew money on crack cocaine. All that work, all that ambition, curdled into a desire for self-destruction. Put down this advice as coming from a failure at your own peril. Life is short; death is long. Consider your effect on other people.

sch

Freestyle 3-12- 2013 (Part 5)

 [I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. Continued from Freestyle 3-12- 2013 (Part 4) . sch 8/16/2025] 

Looking back, I see only a rotten-tempered, poor-mannered stubborn lout who has lived a shallow, meaningless life. I constantly let down friends and family and lovers. I want no eulogies at my funeral but this: he screwed up his life, learn from his mistakes, and do better.

Do not confuse my thoughts with self-pity. I feel something far closer to annoyance than self-pity. Annoyance at what I was, and annoyance at never being able to correct my errors. What a terrible thing to see how to live a better life without being able to live it.

I fear more depression's lingering effects than self-pity. Depression deranges normal thinking.

derange... 1. to throw into disorder; disarrange. 2. to disturb the condition, action, or function of....

sch

[8/16/2025: I did not note the dictionary used for the definition above. DERANGE Definition & Meaning (Merriam-Webster) follows the quote closely enough for rock-and-roll. Continued in Freestyle 3-12- 2013 (Part 6). sch]

Me at 53 (Part Two): 3/6/2013–3/10/2013.

[ I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. Continued from Me at 53 (Part One): 3/6/2013–3/10/2013. sch 7/13/2025] 

I should be depressed that the mail lost 10 pages of my novel. I make $5.25 a month and typewriter cartridges cost $4.00 each. I may never get the thing rewritten! I shrug my shoulders and go on.

My oldest sister wrote me that our father thinks we hate him. I do not. I think I lost my anger about my parents' divorce back in March 1986 when Dad broke down crying at the news of my mother's death. I have a great deal of sympathy for both my father and mother. At 53, I see them having struggled against their lives as best they could. They both had a great deal of pain imposed on them by others and by themselves, and I have no need to increase their pain. Besides, any resentments on my part have been balanced by the embarrassment of my felony conviction.

I seriously screwed up everything. I accomplished everything with my suicide, except my own personal extinction. I have left problems back home and then created more. I solved nothing.

My felony conviction has done two things for me. I have nothing more to run from. The ex-wife complained of my running out whenever there was an emotional crisis. I have nowhere to run and nothing to run away from. I embarrassed myself before the whole world in such a profound manner, I only surprise myself by having withdrawn from the solution of suicide.

sch

[7/13/2025: Continued in Me at 53 (Part Three): 3/6/2013–3/10/2013. sch]

Me at 53 (Part One): 3/6/2013 - 3/10/2013

[ I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 7/13/2025] 

I turned 53 on February 27, 2013. This was my second birthday in prison. I got no birthday cards, and I expected none. Joel Cartiglia gave me a cream cake. Two other inmates wished me a happy birthday. I am so many years older than I wanted to be.

It has taken me several days to get around to writing down these thoughts. I had to answer a letter from my older sister and also one from a friend in Tennessee. And I have been tired. So much for mea culpas. 

I do not feel depressed as much as this feeling of being out of synch. Sometimes I feel as if I am clapping on the off-beat. I feel certain someone will think that appropriate. A great gap seems to open before me whenever I think of the future. I have no thoughts of a future, but I cannot escape the fantasy game. I have two women deserving an apology; one in Anderson and one in Muncie. I doubt the latter will be alive in 20222 and the former will probably care less about an apology from me than the sun cares about the star Altair. About the future, I feel like death seeking a home.

sch

[7/13/2025:

The woman in Anderson was not happy that I tried to make my apology. It was left on her voice mail; she did not want to see me. That was my ex-wife, A-.

CC did not die. Neither did she change. She accepted my apology without wanting to change her ways. She also seems like death seeking a home.

Just because I stopped being suicidal does not mean that I was not ready to die.

Continued in Me at 53 (Part Two): 3/6/2013–3/10/2013. sch]

Operation Empty Locker - The First Week 10-19-2013

 [ I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 7/4/2025] 

First off: Unit 5751 is second in the meal rotation schedule for the second week in a row. Mr. Dixon's inspection/harassment did not cause this achievement. Those ranking came about before Dixon got sicced on us. Still, I really need emptying my locker of books. 

I gave up on Drama in the Modern World (D. C. Heath and Co.). I did this week before last; wanting prose, my Best European Fiction 2010.

I do not know if Jim Holt's Why Does The World Exist? An Existential Detective Story (Liveright Publishing Corp, 2012) caused or only accelerated my current depressive mood. I got to say I thought it a brilliant explanation of scientific, religious, and philosophical explanations of why we are here and so is our universe. I noticed no one really argued that we cannot really determine why the world exists with life but that since it appears life does go on "bra" we need to get to doing a better job of living. And that is all for Mr. Holt quoting William James.

Maybe the bad mood comes from not writing. During much of my reading of Why Does The World Exist?, I had "Mike Devlin's Homecoming" in mind. Holt's book sharpened my wits on a theme. I kept seeing my dialog in my second section re-written, re-ordered. The world exists so I can try my hand at writing! LOL

How bad of a mood? I got thinking about cancer and euthanasia. How it will be to die and be dead. I cannot see, but maybe three or four people talking me out of this decision. One has not spoken to me in over four years and will not again in this life. One I have never spoken to in my life. The other two keep shifting about. I see myself forgotten. I cannot hear my name spoken. My writings go into a dumpster. I become a name on a grave marker, that's actually a cypher. I feel peacefulness with these thoughts. With my current situation, I feel annoyance with a farce that has gone on too long.

Julian Gough contributed a story to Best European Fiction 2010. In his author's statement, he suggests the-world-as-comedy and world-as-tragedy. No one in Why Does The World Exist make a similar suggestion. I cannot fit Christ's crucifixion into a comedic universe, but maybe someone else can do so. Maybe the inexplicability of General relativity to the quantum world is a universe at play?

Then I read Jill Paton Walsh's The Attenbury Diamonds: A Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane Mystery  (Minotaur, 2010). What is it about these subtitles? We make fun of the book titles from the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries which almost summarize the book, but here is the subtitle as every bit the marketing tool. Even though I read Ms. Walsh's completion of Dorothy L. Sayers's Thrones, Dominations with enjoyment (it may have been the only mystery novel I read in years), I would not have snatched The Attenbury Emeralds from the discard pile of our prison's leisure library without that subtitle.

I am not so sure how much The Attenbury Emeralds contributed to my melancholia. I thought the prose competent, albeit drab. Yet, it is 1952 and the Wimsey's are as hard hit by winning World War II as anyone. Lord Peter is now 60. So a little drabness seems appropriate. But what bothered me more was the novel's organization, its action. Lord Peter recites his first case with help from Bunter, and that that old case re-enters their current life with a tale I thought Wilkie Collins would have used. That left a whodunit that worked well enough. Not as well as the subplot about Lord Pete becoming Duke of Denver; I read that fitfully.

I guess Ms. Walsh wrote another Lord Peter novel, A Presumption of Death. I heard nothing of it, but I was probably not listening when it appeared on the scene. Maybe she has written more with Peter Wimsey as Duke of Denver. I realize there can be a problem reading a series out of turn. I gave Joel C. Rex Stout's Murder by the Book, and he hated Wolfe and thought Archie a fool. So, it may be a similar fault on my part for this series.

I also must admit I do not think highly of these literary resurrections. I abhorred Robert Goldsborough's Nero Wolfe stories. - competent but tone-deaf is my recollection. I avoid Robert B. Parker's working on Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlow. I did like John Gardner's revival of James Bond - but Gardner was generally a better writer than Fleming. I also liked Colonel Son (Wish the movies would look to these for their continuations). I think Ms. Walsh, a good writer with an idea of her characters. That she wrote with the approval of the original writer's estate is the only black mark against her. Updating, quieting Wimsey seems the logical thing to do - one only needs to look at what Margery Allingham did with her Mr. Campion after WWII. Involving Harriet as a sleuth was already done by Sayers herself in Have His Carcass (one I never went back to read) and Gaudy Night (Vane did not appear in Nine Tailors, Murder Must Advertise, and The Dawson Pedigree; all of which I may have read more than once.) 

Why go on about a character that long predated my birth? Dorothy Sayers and Lord Peter taught me how to hide behind a facetious exterior. How to talk without giving myself away. He never quite fit into his world, regardless of his birth or talents or money. He always wanted to be useful when usefulness seemed quite unlikely. I first met him in the person of Ian Carmichael on Masterpiece Theatre. Then I began reading the novels. I must admit to not finishing Five Red Herrings. I read all the short stories collected in Lord Peter. I think Dorothy L. Sayers a subtle genius who played with the form (see Gaudy Night), and the content of the whodunit (Gaudy Night, Murder Must Advertise, The Dawson Pedigree, and the short stories). I see now I should have questioned myself when I stopped reading Sayers.

One last thing about The Attenbury Emeralds: I kept recurring to Remains of the Day while reading it.

Next: John Irving's In One Person, and a book on political decision-making.

Tomorrow, I have a call-out to see Dr. Gomez, one of our three psychologists. I was thinking last night about asking for anti-depressants. I'm not so sure now.

sch

Wishing I Had Read Kierkegaard

 Reading Zachary Hardman's Kierkegaard's philosophy of love (Engelsberg ideas) explains some things about my depression and, I think, why I feel like I am on a much more even keel now.

I recognize my feelings while depressed in these paragraphs:

How, then, might the spiritual self be rescued? To answer that, we should briefly look at his earlier companion piece, The Concept of Anxiety. Anxiety, or angst, for Kierkegaard, the natural consequence of our fallen nature, is, far from being a negative emotion or an illness, the thing that marks us out as spiritual. Unlike animals – which are not, strictly, selves – we are conscious of myriad choices about how to live our lives. This produces in us anxiety – the ‘dizziness of freedom’ – as though we were looking into a chasm. The chasm is the boundlessness of our own possibilities. There is something infinite about possibility. Where we have possibility, we have imagination, desire, a movement toward becoming. In short, God. For Kierkegaard, God is that ‘all things are possible’.

If we lack possibility we live by pure necessity, from moment to moment, as animals do. Or in a world of triviality. This, for Kierkegaard, is spiritlessness. The spiritless subject ‘tranquilises itself in the trivial’ and, therefore, does not even know it is in despair. Spiritlessness manifests itself today in a rational-scientific attitude that whatever cannot be measured does not exist, in the banality of consumer culture, in the distractions of modern media. Kierkegaard asks: what are we distracting ourselves from? Without the distractions that prevent us from seeing the emptiness at the heart of our lives, we would have no choice other than to despair. For Kierkegaard, that would be a very good thing. The closer we come to despair, the closer we come to the remedy.

I mean feelings, not thoughts. The latter I pigeonhole as rational. Despondency - the word I favor for depression - deranges the rational; what feels like logical thought is only rational to the despondent. Feelings swamp and colonize the logical, and they are not pretty, happy, shiny thoughts. 

My feelings come within these categories:

There are two forms of self-conscious despair he highlights. The first is the despair of not wanting to be ourselves. The desire here, really, is to be rid of the despair of being ourselves. We may despise being ourselves or pine after being someone else, perhaps a famous actor. But this – wanting to be rid of our despair – only intensifies our feelings of despair, which Kierkegaard calls ‘the rising fever in this sickness of the self’. The second type of despair he mentions is the despair of ‘wanting in despair to be oneself’. Though we may earnestly want to be ourselves, in perhaps trying to invent some better, less despairing version of ourselves, we avoid actually becoming ourselves. We may decide we must become prime minister, for example, but this is not really our self, so our despair intensifies even further.

I read similar things in Orthodox Christian writers:

Yet it is only when we are brought to the ‘utmost extremity, where in human terms there is no possibility’ that, for Kierkegaard, we accept ‘for God all things are possible’, which is to have faith. The person of faith puts his or her trust in God – for whom ‘all things are possible’ – knowing full well ‘that humanly speaking his destruction is the most certain thing of all’. This is irrational: ‘to have faith is precisely to lose one’s mind’.

Orthodox Christian recognizes explicitly the idea of a fool for Christ, Fool-for-Christ (OrthodoxWiki).

Back to the original essay, this helps me understand why I think of myself divorced from my old despondency:

Whether we rid ourselves of despair is, ultimately, our choice alone. But this notion of the single individual standing alone before God in fear and trembling is often held to be the weakness of Kierkegaard, who is criticised – including by some existentialists – for forsaking social relations for religious asceticism. When we dig deeper, we find this is only partly true. In the later Works of Love – his inquiry into the biblical commandment to love one’s neighbour – Kierkegaard writes that: ‘Love is a relationship between: man-God-man, God is the middle term… For to love God is to love oneself in truth; to help another human being to love God is to love another man; to be helped by another human being to love God is to be loved’. If God, for Kierkegaard, is that ‘all things are possible’, then to love another person is to see the infinite possibility that dwells within them and to help them on the way to their realisation of the spiritual self. As we cannot fully know the other, this is an act of faith. It is to hope....

On the other hand, I had reams of philosophy in my head and my despondency censored all of it. It may be that I would have failed to recognize myself in what I knew.

See, I also ignored a favorite Lou Reed song.

What I would like to say now is that I was given enough breathing room to put what I had learned from philosophy, what I was learning from Orthodox Christian writers, what I knew from Lou Reed, was putting all this information into a system that let me live, to get past the self-destructiveness of my despondency, the utter revulsion I had towards living in this universe. In short, knowing the parts did not help until I found a way to connect them all.

If I did this, so can you. Oh, yeah, those who feel despondent do read Kierkegaard sooner than later. Like, in many ways, I am no one to emulate.

sch 6/22

 

Depression, Feelings of Inadequacy: Best European Fiction of 2010 10-14-2014

[ I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 6/18/2025] 

I need to get books read. The unit manager sicced his bully boy onto our unit. Allegedly, most prominently, because we have been ranking between 4 and 6 in inspections for most of this year. He also mentioned the disappearing shower nozzles and the guys (all sex offenders) driven out of their rooms (except for counts and sleeping). That one of the counselors was removed - allegedly for introducing contraband - got a mention that was more an announcement, but never was any explicit connection made with the increased inspections (I did that). After all, the meal rotation inspections have no apparent rationality, or we would not be second this week. The inspection that put us into second place occurred before the enhanced inspections. One more reason for calling this place Franz Kafka land. Also, the unit manager's promise to do something about the black mold and the dripping water pipes remain unfulfilled. These inspections have as much to do with meal rotation standing as I have any longer with polite society.

But I got three pillows to hide. I have two extra blankets. I got the Norton's Anthology of English Literature and volume one of Shelby Foote's Civil War history, on which I perch my CPAP machine. I put them into the locker, along with pillows and one of my blankets. I must get room, and that means the books must go. Which, for me, means reading them, not discarding them

And I had a rather bad bout of depression. Joel C. read over "Mike Devlin's Homecoming". He spotted one problem I had seen - it is not quite as much a standalone storey as I think they all ought to be. He also pointed out a flaw I did not see. I wanted Devlin to be a hope for others. This hope was to be an illusion. I see this installment's overt theme to be illusions. Devlin has his illusions: his independence from nostalgia, that he can go back to his pre-prison life, that he has time to accomplish his goals, that his son will appreciate the father's absence, and all he needs for success is will power. The other main characters have their illusions about Devlin. The problem Joel saw was I had not given the reader enough reason to believe in their hopes/illusions. That I already killed Mike Devlin influenced me. From that flaw, I think I found another with pacing. I put a lot into this. I also had a problem with obsessional behavior.

Depression started creeping in with my questioning if I have any talent for writing. I know I am doing something. Then I ponder just how good is my judgment now. I will myself to patience, for feedback from outside of this place. I tell myself it takes me four drafts to get over my laziness of mind. This was the third draft.

It did not help T2 that last evening hung up the telephone rather than take my call. More about that later.

I will make Devlin think of his life as empty as mine has been. It may be another illusion. He will continue. I came up with this phrase: To not be a Captain Ahab without a Pequod.

Draft four awaits typing paper. Actually going to work on draft 3.5 longhand. We have been out of copying/typing paper for about a week now. The guys running the gambling here went wild, copying their betting slips. This does give me time to read.

I finished Best European Fiction 2010 (edited by Aleksander Hemon; Dalkey Archive Press, 2010) last night. I feel pummeled by the experience. Yet it made me want to get back to writing by telling me how far I had gotten off the path when I turned down TJ's offer to let me write. Yet, I cannot put my finger what exactly moved me.

Peter Terrin's "The Murderer" and Georgi Gospdinov's "And All  Turned Moon" and Victor Pelevin's "Friedmann Space" taught me the use of fantasy as a satirical device. Not all fantasy wields a sword. Doesn't mean it can't cut, though.

(Forgot Peter Krištúfek's "The Prompter".)

Then come the stories I think of as fantasy without the satire. The story is a character in David Albahari's "The Basilica in Lyon." The Faust story makes an appearance in Julian Rio's "Revelation on the Boulevard of Crimes" and the Messiah in George Konrad's "Jeremiah's Terrible Tale". What I will call magic realism appears in Valter Hugo Mae's "dona malva and senhor jose ferreiro" (ghosts) and Orna Ni Choileain's "Camino" (a seer) without stilting the storytelling. Not that I have found any use, but in a story already written. Yet, it gives me ideas.

If Matthias Ospelt can create an interesting story about Lichtenstein, why cannot I do the same for Indiana? I found myself drawn to those from small countries: Albania (Ornela Vorpsi), Bosnia (Igor Štiks), Croatia (Neven Usumovic), Estonia (Elo Viiding), Iceland (Steinar Brage), Latvia (Inga Abele), Lithuania (Giedra Radvilavičiūtė), Slovenia (Andre Blatnik), and Switzerland (Peter Stamm). From the biographies, I suspect we share a feeling of being from the boondocks.

I suggest reading the biographies and writer statements in a book like this. Here I got ideas, here I got inspiration, and here is where I saw how far I got away from my dreams of writing. TJ and my oldest sister condemned me at different times of being against dreams. I recall being deflated, taken aback by both accusations. I never meant to be so critical, such a realist. No one has asked me what dreams I had or might have. Maybe I dreamt too largely. Maybe I never expected, never wanted, to live so long. I was far too superficial because I thought I had no time. But I do not remember anyone telling me they really wanted me to stick around. Not you, TJ. Not you T2. Nobody came back to get me. I had to get sent to prison before my dreams about writing could bear any fruit.

I need to write honestly about what I know. The Europeans got this idea through my head. Then I must write well. This was also beaten into my head. I may not pull off a story like Jon Fosse's "Waves or Stone", but I can try. I thank all of them who I forgot to mention.

I move onto Michael Z. Lewin's Out of Season (William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1984) Thirty years old, it came out that year of Phyllis and Michele Moon and an angry TJ; of leaving Muncie and starting law school; of hopes remaining. I recognize the Indianapolis of this novel - even if I had no idea of gay bars in Indianapolis. That would LAH telling me of them. I wonder if Lewin still lives. Is he in print? This is not the first of his books I have read. I liked the fellow. I will have to make my mind up about how I like him. I go on towards a less crowded locker.

sch

Reading & Thinking - 9/23/2014–9/24/2014 (Part 2)

 [Continued from Reading & Thinking - 9/23/2014–9/24/2014 (Part 1). I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order. The date in the title is the date it was written. Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 6/13/2025] 

I notice The Week for September 26, 2014, carries a piece headlined "Marijuana's impact on teens". It notes teenagers smoking pot daily are seven times more likely to commit suicide. I suggest anyone smoking pot daily is like someone drinking daily: they have other problems hidden by their drug use. Bah. Silliness - confounding causation with correlation. Why is it so hard to admit we live in a world brutalizing our minds, that we all need psychiatric help sometime? What makes medical treatment so less palatable than the brutish mechanisms of prisons and punitive measures?

Thursday. Finished my Adult Continuing Education creative writing class. The first time we've met in 3 weeks. The B.O.P. had no one to staff the Educational Building these past few weeks - the person scheduled for Education was put to non-Education tasks. I feel queasy signing the sign-up sheets for the classes that BOP cancelled - it feels a bit of a fraud - but I do. It may show up that I have been programming. This is why the others scribble their names. They can show they have been doing their programming. That nothing was done, nothing learned, matters not in the least.

Kafka ought to have a bust or statue put up by our federal government. Or maybe one for Potemkin. Attorney General Eric Holder stated how prisons should not be warehouse, but that is what we have here at Fort Dix FCI. Maybe that explains why I face a lifetime of a court supervising my life. If I truly pose a threat to the general public, my incarceration may not affect the underlying source of that danger.

I again have death on my mind. Sherry Weesner dying reminds me how little I did with my life, and inadequate was what I did accomplish. I do not see why I could not close the deal with death before I got arrested. Unless the purpose was to teach me just how poorly I lived my life. I imagine now all the sensations I shall miss for being dead: the sun rising, or a crisp, snow-filled morning; blueberry pancakes; the smile of a beautiful woman; laughter in the night; a medium rare rib eye steak; Jerry Lee Lewis singing "Put No Headstone on My Grave"; the smell of trees; a cat chasing a mouse pursued by a young boy and an old man trying to keep the mouse alive; a mourning dove in the morning; The Beatles; a fish at the end of a line; Sophie Marceau and Michelle Pfeiffer; The Westerner; The Clash; the stacks of huge pumpkins at Ashby's Farm; the soft glowing blue of the sky in early September; Laughery Creek at the bottom of Cavehill Road; driving U.S. 52 between Rushville and the faces of what remains of friends and family. I have awakened to what all I let go by.

No work today. Rain would've knocked out landscaping, but there was also a recall. Recall means the compound is shut down. I have a meeting - my monthly one - with psychologist Dr. Gomez. I call it my do-you-still-want-to-kill-yourself monthly check up. I really don't. Although I really do wonder why the government does not gas us. After all, the people through their representatives at Washington, D.C. have made clear their disgust and repugnance. Why not return to the Nineties? That is the Seventeen Nineties. It makes sense to me. It keeps me from procrastinating - I got things to do before "they" come to a mass agreement on getting permanently rid of "us."

I also have been reading my way through A Sense of History (American Heritage 1985). I need to clear this brick out of my locker, but it also gave me a break from fiction. There is good writing here. Good writers are to be found, too: Perry Miller, Bruce Catton, B.H. Liddell Hart, David McCullough, Alfred Kazin, Robert L. Heilbroner, Henry Steele Commager, Louis Auchinloss, Barbara Tuchman, Wallace Stegner, Walter Karp, and William Manchester. It has left me wishing I had read Prescott and Henry Adams and George Bancroft. I should never have gone to law school.

I have not ignored fiction entirely. I read Cesar Aira's "Picasso" in The New Yorker for August 11 & 18, 2014, which showed me the short story as an essay with a punchline, and in interior monologue:

... And how could I leave the Picasso Museum with a Picasso under my arm?

I like the dagger through of wit at its end. 

[Continued in Reading & Thinking - 9/23/2014–9/24/2014 (Part 3) sch 6/13/2025.]

Cold Mountain and Ending August of 2014 - 8/29/2014 (Part Two)

 [I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order. The date in the title is the date it was written. Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. 

Continued from Cold Mountain and Ending August of 2014–8/29/2014 (Part One) sch 6/8/2025] 

I really want to discuss Zora Neale Hurston's Dust Tracks on a Road (Harper Perennial, 1991). What an odd autobiography! What great writing! A monument to the fickleness of public taste and how talent can survive. I am glad to have found her. I think I am better for the experience.

Hurst mixes the folkish with something more formal. It pleases and impresses my Midwestern ears. We do try sounding not as uppity as Easterners, but do like it known we have had an education.

I was always asking and making myself a crow in a pigeon's nest. It was hard on my family and surroundings, and they in turn were hard on me. I did not know then, as I know now, that people are prone to build a statue of the kind of person that it pleases them to be. And few people want to be forced to ask themselves, "What if there is no me like my statue?" The thing to do is to grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear. 

Chapter 4: "The Inside Search"

I wish I had such wisdom, or wrote so well.

 Nothing in Cold Mountain moved me enough to copy it down, as with these paragraphs from Dust Tracks on a Road:

There is something about poverty that smells like death. Dead dreams dropping off the heart like leaves in a dry seasons and rolling around the feet; impulses smothered too long in the fetid air of underground caves. The soul lives in a sickly air. people can be slave-ships in shoes.

Chapter 8: "Backstage and the Railroad"

***

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they at dwell therein.

Chapter 10: "Research"

Hurston spends more time on her anthropology career than her writing, or her marriages.

 What Hurston wrote in the following paragraph I found applicable to me. It also applies to others I know. I never pursued writing, decades back when everyone thought I ought to be a writer and I thought everything was crap.

I wrote "Their Eyes Were Watching God" in Haiti. It was dammed up in me, and I wrote it under internal pressure in seven weeks. I wish I could write it again. In fact, I regret all my books. It is one of the tragedies of life that one cannot have all the wisdom one is ever to possess in the beginning. Perhaps, it is just as well to be rash and foolsih for a while. If writers were too wise, perhaps no book would be written at all. It might be better to ask yourself "Why?" afterwards than before. Anyway, the force from somewhre in space whicdh commands you to write in the first place, gives you no choice. You take up the pen  when you are told, and write what is commanded. There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you. You have all heard of the Spartan youth with the fox under his cloak.

Chapter 11: "Books and Things"

I think that paragraph certainly applies to me, and it also applies to more things in life than writing. 

Being white, I'm not so sure Hurston's comments on race issues circa 1941 are really within my ken for remarks. I do think her observations continue to have validity - especially since my imprisonment - but surely some things have changed since then. If nothing else, we have had James Brown, Martin Luther King, Jr., Muhammed Ali, Prince, and Barack Obama. I would say there were/are millions of less public displays of change. It also seemed to me that she makes a point only recently recognized by whites: blacks are not a monolith. Read Dust Tracks on a Road. See what you think.

I finished typing the last major draft for "Cruising Down a Blind Alley." I did a read through of the first 21 pages with Joel. I want to rework the first sentence. Joel thinks it is much improved. This one really wears me out. I worry still over the last paragraph - that I mix too many metaphors. I think Joel finds the narrator/protagonist unpleasant. He is - depression has him in its grip. I think back on my own depression and the memory scares me. I am satisfied I have got him so far. But the whole remains as it was yesterday. Reading the Robin Williams obituaries made me remember a lot of what I had forgotten. Being told in the first person brings everything into the story as it is perceived by the narrator's diseased mind. Not so easy. I can say this is not creative writing workshop writing - or so I think. It may be I hurt myself by wanting these stories to be both part of a series and self-sustaining. I know where this one fits into my wider goal. That may hurt it on its own. For with the wider story is about the town and the town, the Bridges legacy, are characters in the broader story. The backdrop has a life of its own. And this story has about driven me crazy. I really have no idea what will become of these stories without Joel! Enough for now.

sch

Assessing Risks

 Years ago, I was discussing an idea with KH. He thought I was delusional. This did not sit well with me. Knowing something is a long-shot is not delusional; thinking a long-shot is a sure thing is delusional.

I found something similar in Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow's The tension between overestimating risks and ignoring them (Los Angeles Times)

I’ve learned a few lessons to help navigate the dilemmas we all face. Don’t consider risks in isolation; put them in context. Take both expert assessments and anecdotal evidence with a grain of salt. Resist allying yourself with any particular tribe or team. Be honest, with yourself and others, about your own biases and predispositions.

I will admit, when I depressed, I did not factor in the depression as altering my thinking. No longer do I feel like the Universe is playing a joke on me. However, then it felt so very rational.

sch 5/23 

Monday Morning; 11-25-2019

  [I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order. The date in the title is the date it was written.Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 4/23/2025]

Once again, central laundry - the only - laundry is not open. This happened last Monday, too. I am not directly affected - I decided to forego laundry for sick call - but maybe if no one shows up on Wednesday... Wednesday being our other laundry day has now achieved the status of our only laundry day.

I did not make sick call. I get my CPAP water. I refuse to use the chemical laced water available in our drinking facilities. The front teeth bother me. The last vestiges of my vanity.

No work. Nothing to rake. I'm in the leisure library listening to WPRB, making these notes. I will spend today reading W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz, and take a breather from John Dewey's Democracy and Education.

My brain keeps spinning around the dial. Memories and regrets and imaginings and life generally keep popping out of the static. Embarrassments from childhood return to stab me in the heart. I felt worthless a long time ago, and for a long time. I still do - without any corresponding desire to kill myself. I tell myself I am already dead. Orthodox theology has it that with baptism we are dead to the world. I also do not feel any belligerence butting heads with my belief of worthlessness. Could this be why I do not feel depressed? The novel and the stories and most of my journal are on their way out of this place of imprisonment. That changes my attitude - knowing they have escaped, even if I doubt their custodian's desire to protect them. Maybe I am only tired. I have been awake for three hours. A- was on my mind last week. We talked; all well; I hope for the multiverse's existence. I see myself alone until I die, without self-pity  as much as relief. My life was a joke before my arrest, which turned into a farce. Why do I think of the Eastgate Shopping Mall as I write the last three sentences? It comes to my mind fairly often. I cannot say the people I've known have benefitted from knowing me (or vice versa?). I have put myself in a position where I no longer need to think my presence is welcome, while also giving others a very good excuse for avoiding me. I want a rocking chair, my books, to while away the time until death comes for me.

Yet, I cannot stop writing. Trying to say something. Could be, dear reader, you are me? Let me go to John Dewey.

sch

[I finally made contact with A- on March 17, 2025. See Sightseeing Anderson for what did happene when I tried to make contact with A-. sch 4-23-2025.]

The Suicidal and Learning From Japanese Literature

 It has been a long time since I thought of suicide for myself. I assume the COPD will get me; just not as quickly; and three strikes, and it is time to give up the effort.

That doesn't mean I do not take an interest in the subject. Anthony Bourdain's death made realize I never thought about buying rope, and how he, too, let his depression get the better of him.

Geoffrey Mak's Man of the West: Akutagawa’s Tragic Hero (The Paris Review) describes a mind I can understand:

Akutagawa’s suicide note is preoccupied with sin and transgression. The writer was “aware of all of his faults and weak points, every single one.” He apologizes vaguely, “I just feel sorry for anyone unfortunate enough to have had a bad husband, a bad son, a bad father like me.”

Despondency allows for no light, no sound, no thought other than one's own foulness. I do not know if I broke my mind back in 2010, or if it is the 25mg of Zoloft I have been taking since 2021, or age, or a better physical health, but this sort of despondency no longer clouds my mind. The Orthodox Church, philosophy, my writing help, too. However, there is one fact which I do not disclose very often, thinking it will disturb people close to me: I did die back in 2010. I destroyed everything that I had built up about myself, and it was done purposefully. I wanted no to eulogize me. All I failed to do was to stop breathing. So, I live now on borrowed time; when I start complaining about losses, I say to myself if I had killed myself the thing would have been lost anyway.

There is much to pay attention in the last paragraph, too. Especially for those wondering why you should stay alive.

Akutagawa might have felt a tremor of the spirit that he believed could be pacified only by merging with the void. There’s nothing all too special about that. Sometimes, you can see the void behind the snow falling on the river from the window of a subway car crossing the Williamsburg Bridge. You either make peace with it or you don’t. You can acknowledge the void, clutch your heart, squeeze your eyes closed, say your gratitude list, and then go on with your commute. Most of us know how to do this. We do it every day.

Hmm, what I meant to be mostly about this paragraph turned into something else:

Much like contemporary autofiction, I-novel fiction often hinged on a confession, particularly unflattering, made by a narrator assumed to represent the author. The bundan praised fiction for how unlikeable its protagonists appeared, which signaled a greater risk by the author—higher stakes. In Toson Shimazaki’s A New Life (1919), the author’s stand-in discloses having sex with his brother’s daughter. Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human (1948) follows a sociopathic misogynist, an outcast of society who is locked up in an insane asylum.

sch 4/29 

 

I take the PCRA OFFENDER SECTION Test

My PO sent me this PCRA OFFENDER SECTION test to do, and I did this morning. While reading, it certain thoughts came to me, of which one is I need to post this to the blog.

Well, I did. Along with my comments on the questions and my answers. The comments are indented. My answers are the numbers at the end of the statements. The Directions below explain the numbering scheme.

If youa re interested in what the federal government wants to know aobut me, how I answered their questions, and what I think of their questions, feel free to peruse the following. I will admit is long.

 Directions: The following items, if answered honestly, are designed to help you better understand your thinking and behavior. Please take the time to complete each of the 80 items on this inventory using the four-point scale defined below: 4 = Strongly Agree 3 = Agree 2 = Uncertain 1 = Disagree

1. I will allow nothing to get in the way of me getting what I want  3 

Probably not quite the best answer, but I will work on goals, sometimes like a workaholic, but anyone reading this blog will know how work and health and unexpected events get in my way!

2. I find myself blaming society and external circumstances for the problems I have had in life  1

If I had been - or am - the sort of person who blamed others, I would be like one of these nuts who commits a mass shooting. No, I was brought up to take responsibility for my own action, not blame others. That was why suicide seemed the best solution in 2009.

 3. Change can be scary 3

Yep, just ask the stockbrokers and bond sellers, how scary life is right now. Life has been scary because there is no map on where you are going. Just got to live with it. There is also a difference between being scared and frightened (see Faulkner's The Bear for that explanation.)

 4. Even though I may start out with the best of intentions I have trouble remaining focused and staying “on track” 1

This might be my ego, but I like to think I eventually get there.

 5. There is nothing I can’t do if I try hard enough 3

Well, yeah. That was how I brought, too. Keep trying. Now, at 65, I doubt I can run the hurdles, and I know I cannot flap my wings and fly.

 6. When pressured by life’s problems I have said “the hell with it” and followed this up by using drugs or engaging in crime. 3

Oh, boy, I gave the wrong answer there. Oh, well.

7. It’s unsettling not knowing what the future holds 1

It is also exhilarating, and keeps boredom at bay. On the other hand, I am in the stock market or the bond market, or an immigrant of any sort. For those people, the future is probably scary.

 8. I have found myself blaming the victims of some of my crimes by saying things like “they deserved what they got” or “they should have known better” 1

First, of all, the judge at my sentencing said there were no victims in my case, so it is hard to blame the non-existent. Second, see above where I wrote about taking responsibility.

9. One of the first things I consider in sizing up another person is whether they look strong or weak 1

Problem or not would be more likely my first thought. 

10. I occasionally think of things too horrible to talk about 3

Although, I tend to write about them - like the mass extinction of humanity thanks to our inaction with climate change.

 11. I am afraid of losing my mind 1

Zoloft has helped with that, so has church, and time. It seems many things that made me feel crazy, are real. Such as the fall of the United States to a fascist regime. Also, I no longer dally with women from Madison County; crazy women....

 12. The way I look at it, I’ve paid my dues and am therefore justified in taking what I want 1

As a member of society, the dues are ongoing. I never took what I wanted, I worked for it. 

13. The more I got away with crime the more I thought there was no way the police or authorities would ever catch up with me 1

Since I was trying to get caught, I was wondering where were the authorities. Getting caught took a lot of work on my part. They finally showed up after I had given hope of getting arrested and had given up my criminal activities. I just called it the hand of fate and went quietly.

14. I believe that breaking the law is no big deal as long as you don’t physically hurt someone 1

Not hardly. Physical harm is the least of all harms - economic and psychological harms are far more wide-ranging and long-lasting.

 15. I have helped out friends and family with money acquired illegally 1

Since my money was not acquired illegally but through work, nor was my crime one of theft, this seems a silly question to be asking in my case. A sure sign, this is an exam given without thought to my personal situation.

16. I am uncritical of my thoughts and ideas to the point that I ignore the problems and difficulties associated with these plans until it is too late 1

The only thought and idea I was uncritical about was the plan that if I got arrested, I would have no reason not to commit suicide. See how that worked out? I think anyone reading this blog might have gleaned I am rather critical of my own ideas and thoughts.

17. It is unfair that I have been imprisoned for my crimes when bank presidents, lawyers, and politicians get away with all sorts of illegal and unethical behavior every day 1

Sure, it is unfair - if they got caught and got away with their crimes. However, I committed my crimes with the intent of getting caught, so I will not play the hypocrite and complain about others getting away scot-free. One thing I noticed in prison was how many white people with a middle class background, and, yes, generally falling within the SO camp, complained about their punishment. My reaction was, no wonder the professional criminals dislike us.

18. I find myself arguing with others over relatively trivial matters 1

I value my time too much for doing much arguing over trivial matters, especially when the fate of the country and our species is questionable.

 19. I can honestly say that the welfare of my victims was something I took into account when I committed my crimes 1

Again, the sentencing judge said no victims, so I disagreed with the statement. Probably not what my PO will want to see.

 20. When frustrated I find myself saying "screw it" and then engaging in some irresponsible or irrational act 1

About as irrational I get anymore is putting off the dishwashing and going to sleep.

  21. New challenges and situations make me nervous 1

They keep me from getting bored.

 22. Even when I got caught for a crime I would convince myself that there was no way they would convict me or send me to prison 1

Again, I committed my crimes with the intent of getting caught, so I have to admit this was not my thinking. Besides, this makes me sounds like Dillinger. I got caught for the crime I was convicted of, it is not like my life was a non-stop crime spree.

23. I find myself taking shortcuts, even if I know these shortcuts will interfere with my ability to achieve certain long-term goals 1

Yeah, I had trouble with this one - why would I take a short-cut that undermines my long-terms goals instead of a short-cut that will further my long-term goals? I am often a damned fool, but I try to be an efficient one. If my goal is to get to the other side of the mountain, why not take the highway that goes around instead of climbing over the mountain?

24. When not in control of a situation I feel weak and helpless and experience a desire to exert power over others 1

Frankly, I think there is a non sequitur in this question. Because of feeling weak and helpless, there is a desire to exert power over others? That sounds more like MAGA thinking. I do not see how exerting power over others puts one in control of a situation. Exerting one's own will to grapple with a problem is what I think would be the proper reaction. Besides, control is illusory.

25. Despite the criminal life I have led, deep down I am basically a good person 1

I do not resemble the premise of one having lived a criminal life. Yes, I committed crimes, but it was not the main focus of my life. That would have been work. Why I disagree with this statement is that I am a human being, which means I am a flawed being. I am a person trying to do more good than bad.

 26. I will frequently start an activity, project, or job but then never finish it 1

No, I keep plugging away, promising that I will get back to it. Just like I keep hoping to get back to my fiction.

 27. I regularly hear voices and see visions which others do not hear or see 1

Nope, not a problem, never been a problem.

28. When it's all said and done, society owes me 1

I do not think this applies to me at all. However, its presence here bothers me However, society does owe me - as it does everyone - certain rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I owe society the duty of not using my rights to harm others. So, society does not owe me for the harm, I did. But what the person who resorted to crime because society refused them their rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? This statement implies that thinking they are owed by society is a refusal to take individual responsibility. A person denied the rights mentioned above could take individual responsibility and still think society owes them when society has not given them the protections it gives to others. A society that does not take responsibility for denying a human being their rights as a human being is a sociopathic society.

29. I have said to myself more than once that if it wasn't for someone "snitching" on me I would have never gotten caught 1

If anyone snitched on me, it was myself acting in the most conspicuous way possible to enable myself being caught. 

30. I tend to let things go which should probably be attended to, based on my belief that they will work themselves out 2

I have found in the past 16 years, patience is a virtue. Time has a way of solving some problems. On the other hand, letting the dishes in the sink goes leads only to new lifeforms evolving. 

31. I have used alcohol or drugs to eliminate fear or apprehension before committing a crime 1

Nope, not even the crimes for which I was convicted. I think here is another question more applicable to someone with a more extensive criminal life than I lead.

 32. I have made mistakes in life 4

Well, I think that is obvious. If not, then ask my ex-girlfriends, ex-wife, friends, and family members. When I was in prison, I looked back on my life and the choices I had made, and decided that whenever I had made a major choice in my life, I had made the wrong choice. Better to ask if I have learned from my mistakes, and what I have done to ameliorate any harm I have done. I would like to think this blog is my prime example of working on both.

 33. On the streets I would tell myself I needed to rob or steal in order to continue living the life I had coming 1

I never lived on the streets. I worked, so no need to rob or steal. But what is this "the life I had coming"? Does that mean rob and steal to stay alive? I do think this statement has to confuse many; perhaps, even the one who wrote it.

 34. I like to be on center stage in my relationships and conversations with others, controlling things as much as possible 1

Control is too much work for me. Being center stage takes too much time from getting done one's work.

35. When questioned about my motives for engaging in crime, I have justified my behavior by pointing out how hard my life has been 1

I do not think I have tried justifying my behavior in 2009. I was nuts. That is not justification, it is a warning to others to take better care of their mental health before they wind up like me. 

 36. I have trouble following through on good initial intentions 2

Well, who doesn't? Good intentions are not always welcomed. CC is a good example - I have good intentions that she change her self-destructive behavior, and if I press too hard she does not take my intentions in a good way. My ex-wife found my good intentions completely unwelcome, but I did get my apology through to her.

37. I find myself expressing tender feelings toward animals or little children in order to make myself feel better after committing a crime or engaging in irresponsible behavior 1

No, and thinking anyone would sounds a little creepy to me. I find myself wondering what kind of people are supervising my life. They come across with far stranger ideas than I, and leave me wondering if my being in their system lets them exercise thoughts they keep otherwise bottled up.

 38. There have been times in my life when I felt I was above the law 1

No, that is for our President of the United States.

 39. It seems that I have trouble concentrating on the simplest of tasks 1

I wash dishes for a living; I do my job well.

   40. I tend to act impulsively under stress 1

I decided in prison to eliminate all sources of stress in my life. Prison life itself was rather stress-free - no clients, no payroll to meet, no bills to pay, no taxes, no one's expectations to deal with. Now, I do not own a car, have minimal expenses, have no crazy people in my life. This keeps the depression away as much as does my writing and Zoloft.

 41. Why should I be made to appear worthless in front of friends and family when it is so easy to take from others 1

Again, a non sequitur? Any appearance of worthlessness, I created, and I cannot complain about my intentions reaching fruition. Second, I did not take from others, so this part seem s inapplicable. Still, I do not see the progression from worthless appearance to taking from others to improve one's worth. One's worth comes from one's accomplishments, not taking.

 42. I have often not tried something out of fear that I might fail 1

I wish. If I had, I would not have made such a fool of myself.

 43. I tend to put off until tomorrow what should have been done today 2

Okay, if I am not feeling well, I do put off things such as washing dishes and taking out the trash. There are deadlines for a reason. There is the effort to catch up. Then there is pain that drives one to bed and other thoughts out of one's mind.

44. Although I have always realized that I might get caught for a crime, I would tell myself that there was "no way they would catch me this time" 2

I couldn't understand what took them so long; I was doing my best to attract their attention.

45. I have justified selling drugs, burglarizing homes, or robbing banks by telling myself that if I didn't do it someone else would 1

Well, I never did any of those things, so no attempts at justifying what never was.

 46. I find it difficult to commit myself to something I am not sure of because of fear 1

Fear? No, Cost or having the available time/energy? Yes.

47. People have difficulty understanding me because I tend to jump around from subject to subject when talking 1

I never had this complaint. If I had any complaint about conversation, it was using words people did not understand.

48. There is nothing more frightening than change 1

Change is life. Strokes frighten me. Being paralyzed from the neck down frightens me. 

 49. Nobody tells me what to do and if they try I will respond with intimidation, threats, or I might even get physically aggressive 1

Anything but. What do intimidation, threats, or physical aggression accomplish? On the other hand, if what someone tells me to do is to harm someone else, I suppose the only solution is to physically oppose the order.

50. When I commit a crime or act irresponsibly I will perform a "good deed" or do something nice for someone as a way of making up for the harm I have caused 2

I think one should make amends for the harm done. Frankly, that is what the law is supposed to accomplish. However, that does not seem to be the thrust of the statement. The "good deed" does not seem to be reparations.

 51. I have difficulty critically evaluating my thoughts, ideas, and plans

Except for what got me in trouble, I think I am overly critical of my own ideas.

52. Nobody before or after can do it better than me because I am stronger, smarter, or slicker than most people 1

This statement made me laugh. I think I am a dullard with a failing back and ruined lungs. There are plenty of people who are stronger, smarter and slicker than myself. 

 53. I have rationalized my irresponsible actions with such statements as "everybody else is doing it so why shouldn't I"

I have seen plenty of what other people are doing, and would not want to be associated with them or their doings. My irresponsible actions came from my thinking that the universe was against me, and that I wanted out on the universe's joke. Suicide, however, is harder than it looks. Depression is a lot tougher to kick than you might think.

 54. If challenged I will sometimes go along by saying "yeah, you're right," even when I know the other person is wrong, because it's easier than arguing with them about it 1

This blog has plenty of examples of where I argue rather than go along.

 55. Fear of change has made it difficult for me to be successful in life 1

No, my lack of health care did me in. Better care of my mental health would have saved me much trouble.

56. The way I look at it I'm not really a criminal because I never intended to hurt anyone 1

I am a criminal because I committed a criminal act and pled guilty to that crime.

 57. I still find myself saying "the hell with working a regular job, I'll just take it" 1

Since I never told myself this, I had to disagree.

58. I sometimes wish I could take back certain things I have said or done

Oops, missed that one. But I would strongly agree, 

 59. Looking back over my life I can see now that I lacked direction and consistency of purpose 2

Mostly, I think I had not much consistency and not enough thought about the direction and its purposes. Then came a time when nothing seemed worthwhile, that I felt useless, and I was just a hamster on a wheel.

  60. Strange odors, for which there is no explanation, come to me for no apparent reason 1

Strange odors around here usually have an explanation.

 61. When on the streets I believed I could use drugs and avoid the negative consequences (addiction, compulsive use) that I observed in others 1

I was not on the streets, and what drug use I did left me quite bored.

 62. I tend to be rather easily sidetracked so that I rarely finish what I start 1

Slowed down is a better description than sidetracked. 

63. If there is a short-cut or easy way around something I will find it 2

If the short-cut is the better way of doing a job, I will look for it. If the easy way means not doing a better job, then it is not really the easy way, is it?

 64. I have trouble controlling my angry feelings 1

Whether it is age, health, Zoloft, or returning to church and philosophy, anger has not been an issue these past 15 years.

 65. I believe that I am a special person and that my situation deserves special consideration 1

Special idiot is more like it. Special is not a word I have ever applied to myself.

 66. There is nothing worse than being seen as weak or helpless 1

Being a bully is far worse.

 67. I view the positive things I have done for others as making up for the negative things 2

If atonement is meant here, then I do take a more optimistic view of what I have done of my positive things. However, it cannot make up for the harm done, only try to heal any wounds.

68. Even when I set goals I frequently do not obtain them because I am distracted by events going on around me 2

Events do have the ability to distract - anyone reading here knows that politics has distracted me from other writing. It is hard for me to say this distraction is not a needed one.

 69. There have been times when I tried to change but was prevented from doing so because of fear 1

Inertia had more to do with a lack of change than fear. Not seeing any options left open to me was another. If I had thought there was another escape from my old life other than suicide, I would have taken it. Depression tends to distort one's thinking into narrowness.

 70. When frustrated I will throw rational thought to the wind with such statements as "screw it" or "the hell with it" 1

I wish I had. Instead, my old modus operandi was to keep butting my head against the wall. Now, I take naps.

 71. I have told myself that I would never have had to engage in crime if I had had a good job 1

My crime was not economic, it was moral. I had a good job, it had nothing to do with my crime other than how it fed my depression that led me into self-destructive ways.

72. I can see that my life would be more satisfying if I could learn to make better decisions 4

Yes. Of course, "better decisions" leaves open much for discussion. (I suppose so does "more satisfying".) In my current life, I have decided to cut out all the sources of stress I can and to live simply. This find satisfying. However, who can tell if the decisions made are really better until one is dead?

73. There have been times when I have felt entitled to break the law in order to pay for a vacation, new car, or expensive clothing that I told myself I needed 1

Never had to do this. And expensive clothing? Lol. Men's Wearhouse for my last suit. I took three vacations in 22 years. There is no paid vacation for the self-employed.

 74. I rarely considered the consequences of my actions when I was in the community 1

I considered the consequences, only they turned out not to be those I expected. Which is why I am chagrined to be alive.

 75.  A significant portion of my life on the streets was spent trying to control people and situation (sic). 1

I spent most of my life surfing the waves of chaos until I decided all was chaos and the only way out was to take myself out of the universe.

76. When I first began breaking the law I was very cautious, but as time went by and I didn't get caught I became overconfident and convinced myself that I could do just about anything and get away with it 1

Yeah, right. That is why I quit Yahoo Chatrooms in January 2010 because I thought I could get away with anything. No, I quit when I saw some of the stuff and realized that I had gone too far, and that my plan for the government to help my destroy my life that was going nowhere. Or so I thought.

77.  As I look back on it now, I was a pretty good guy even though I was involved in crime 1

I was a miserable human bent on self-destruction, thinking that nothing he did was a help to anyone. That is how I felt then, and looking back just makes me add moron to the list of character flaws.

78.  There have been times when I have made plans to do something with my family and then cancelled these plans so that I could hang out with my friends, use drugs, or commit crimes 1

Nope.

79.  I tend to push problems to the side rather than dealing with them 1

That goes against all my upbringing and training. I deluded myself into thinking I had my depression under control - but is part of the disease and perhaps its most insidious effect. If anything, I spend too much time on too many problems, else I would not spend so much time writing about what I do on this blog.

80.  I have used good behavior (abstaining from crime for a period of time) or various situations (fight with a spouse) to give myself permission to commit a crime or engage in other irresponsible activities such as using drugs 1

No. CC asked me while I was living in the motel if the place did not set me off to use drugs. I had never thought of it. Drugs are boring - they make me feel stupid, sleepy, dull. Nothing that makes me want to go back to that kind of feeling. That crack cocaine did not kill me back in 2009 left it without any utility for my purposes then. That I decided in prison - since all of my old choices and ways had not been beneficial - to do what I had not done, self-destruction is off the table. Therefore, there was nothing in that statement that had any meaning in my life.

Feel free to leave any comments below.

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