Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Saturday, December 03, 2005
“We’ll all join her soon”
Good Morning all, Mickey I like your “Subway Chronicles”. You have enough for another book? They give real insight into city life which in some ways is not all that different from life in the mountains. The poem/lyrics that you posted in last night’s # 34 are really something.
MUDGE...you have made me the happiest person in the world today. The dedications are beautiful! I cannot wait to read “our” masterpiece.Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 12/03 at 09:02 AMWow, that’s awful about the woman falling. Since Astoria is such a neighborly kind of place, I bet a lot of people knew her. Even people who walked by her body.
Oh, and I first read the Conrad quote as “judging a man by his TOES” instead of his “foes”. I think toes is more interesting.
Posted by Christine Hamm on from Astoria 12/03 at 10:29 AMHi Rosemarie. Yeah, I’d love to do a subway book. One day...when I’m a little better known. For now, nobody cares enough about what I have to say on the topic to justify a book deal.
Hey Christine: I’m glad it’s not toes. Mine are a mess. A lifetime of wearing only sneakers (I should’ve listened to my mother) and kicking things has ruined my feet...especially the toes on my right foot.
While you’re here, Chris, how about a story?
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/03 at 12:12 PMOh dear, RMJ, I think “masterpiece” is about as far from the truth as one can get. Right this minute I’m in the “oh-dear-god-what-was-I-THINKING?” stage of post-novelitis. Glad you liked the deds, though. You’ll need to email me your email so I can send the non-ending file along. derus (at) sbcglobal (dot) net.
MZ: In 1987 I was on the 14th Street crosstown when a woman committed suicude by jumping in front of the train. I wasn’t in the first car so I didn’t see it, but I was stuck in the $()!^$ car until the remains were removed.
I was drunk, it was late, I was off to get laid, and was I pissed...! Ick. I shudder at myself now. If only I’d had my own “number” back then, perhaps I might have spared a thought for the pain that led her to do this.
Posted by Mudge on from Dear, dead Austin 12/03 at 01:01 PMHey Mudge, good to have you back here on a regular basis.
Your story reminded me of a time I sat in traffic on a highway. Lots and lots of traffic. Cursing everyone I could think of...until we reached the cause: a major accident. Ambulances, stretchers, mangled cars, a body under a blanket, the works. Someone was gonna get a really bad phone call soon and I was bitching about losing 10-15 minutes? Mudge, do you think we ever stop being assholes or is this big brain just more than any of us can handle?
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/03 at 01:10 PMStop being assholes? no. We grow out of it, little by little, and try our goddamnedest to life the veil from others’ eyes as best we can.
Does it work? Sporadically, temporarily, and “limitedly” if I may be forgiven the ugsome neologism.
It’s not our ability to harness brain-power, IMHO, but our ability to fire up all 16 cylinders of brain-power for more tasks that causes this issue. We use pretty much all the space in our brains, just never much at a time or much for a task that isn’t directly related to the stimulus. In a weird way I envy people with synesthesia http://tinyurl.com/224y8 for their fascinating perceptual ability. I think they’re simply ahead of the evolutionary curve, and therefore lack the support systems for cataloging and organizing the Universe in this intriguing way.
Remembering that we’re storytelling apes, MZ, we’re susceptible to an ape-like sacination with gore and death because those are the elements of all the best gossip.
Posted by Mudge on from Dear, dead Austin 12/03 at 01:27 PMMickey: your story this Saturday hit me hard. Rosemarie is right; hold onto this one for future use.
You talk about what that the old woman might have experienced years ago. It made me think of all that a little girl I once knew could have experienced. My story, then:
There was road construction at the back entrance of the high school in the town where I grew up. The high school was across the street from a semi-famous old hot dog stand, “Walter’s”. This girl, nine years old, was crossing the street from Walter’s during the after school rush that occurs every day in that car-addicted town of soccer moms and dads that commute each day to cushy jobs in NYC.
I think the woman who hit the girl, who inexplicably ran across the street leaving her twin sister at the curb, was exceeding the 30mph speed limit by not very much. But the impact was enough to break the girl’s leg. Worse, when she bounced from the car and landed head-first on the pavement her skull didn’t crack, so the brain had nowhere to go as it expanded, and it shut off.
The little girl’s mother--my mother--received a phone call at home within minutes. She had been bed-ridden with a slipped-disc in her back for weeks. I had just returned from my first day at junior high school and was telling her about my day. My older brother, a high school senior, was off doing teenager stuff. Dad was at work in NYC.
At school the next day a friend told me that he knew someone who witnessed the whole thing, someone who would become my best friend in high school. Like my sister--who died a few days after the accident when my parents made the difficult decision to turn off artificial life support systems--my friend died too young (at 19). He contracted meningitis and was gone before he, or any of us, knew what hit him.
And I think of all the things they never did. No boys ever ran fingers through my sister’s hair. My friend never experienced the outrage--always exasperating and occassionally empowering--one feels in the world I have lived to try to be a decent human being in. We’ll never write another song together, and I’ll never play it for my sister’s approval.
How many children, talented, loving--or not--were cut down today, not by stupid accidents or stupid mosquito bites, but by a system that designs machines, ammunition, chemicals, and financial agreements to do just that? I wake up in the morning hoping that maybe something I do during the day will cause that number to be lower.
captcha = hope
Posted by Keir on from The Hague 12/03 at 01:49 PMI am so sorry for your losses, Keir, but I am very impressed and amazed at the excellent use youve made of them. I’ll paraphrase Mother Theresa here: “If you can’t save a hundred people, then save one.”
You’re living that excellent piece of advice, and for this among other things I applaud you. A better world is “built” this way, this slow and steady and painful way.
Posted by Mudge on from Dear, dead Austin 12/03 at 02:05 PMCheers Mudge.
Your Mother Theresa quote reminds of one from Israeli writer Tanya Reinhardt:
“Is it more ethical to refrain from trying to save anyone until it is possible to save everyone?”
Answer, of course, is no. And what I do after I wake up is usually run from day job to day job, and home to cook dinner and pass out. How many lives I save is anybody’s guess. But I hold onto Vonnegut’s constant...um, advice, to simply be decent. At least to start with.
Posted by Keir on from The Hague 12/03 at 02:13 PMI just got this little piece of humor from a friend who’s a Lubbock native (she’s in recovery, a true Adult Survivor of Childhood):
Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you’re going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love.
—Butch HancockPosted by Mudge on from Dear, dead Austin 12/03 at 02:15 PMI’m sorry if I re-opened a wound for you today, Keir...but like Mudge, I was moved by the story of your loss and how you’ve chosen to deal with it. The quotes (Reinhardt and M. Teresa) you both offer are of the kind I once foolishly looked down my nose upon. “Why perform charity if you’re not addressing the social conditions that created such need?” I’d bellow pompously. I’m not sure what woke me up but it suddenly became clear that such efforts were not mutually exclusive and every life saved (or even just improved in a small way) carries a new energy into the world. So, I do my best to create opportunities like Operation Bolivia last year and my wife’s fundraiser last month while, at the same time, I use my writing to talk about the bigger picture.
Thanks, Keir...for sharing.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/03 at 02:20 PMY’know, Keir, it’s by running from day job to day job and passing out after dinner that you’re winning your own battle with life. Survival is first. Everything else comes after. One can’t save another if one is in need of salvation.
Which is why I feel so impatient with the Catholic doctrines, created by, administered by, and broken by the same group of deviant old men who presume to tell the rest of us who are not as fucked up as they are that only down their narrow little path lies eternal joy and salvation.
Faugh.
Isn’t it interesting, on a tangent, that Hindu cosmology most closely resembles the quantum world as it’s now described? Of course, quantum physics is not (yet?) susceptible to experimental proof, so the question is hotly debated as to whether it’s really physics or is simply philosophy. My brother-in-law and I have lively discussions about this. He’s an astrophysicist, I’m a mystic, we don’t see eye-to-eye. My most telling blow to his skepticism was to note that, until sufficiently sensitive instruments of measurement were devised, the entirety of what we call science was relegated to uncertainty as “natural philosophy.”
Don’t know exactly why, just felt compelled to share that.
Posted by Mudge on from Dear, dead Austin 12/03 at 02:25 PMHello, Everyone -
A sad, memorable story, Mickey - thanks.
And thanks for your story, as well, Keir; Mudge and Mickey have already expressed my sentiments flawlessly. I’m sorry.In many ways, death is the most interesting, most compelling fact of life, it seems. A very loose paraphrase of Camus: “It’s as though we’ve all been compelled to enter a brutal, grueling race, knowing beforehand that we are destined to lose.”
Mudge, your quote from Butch Hancock is brilliant. Thank you very much. I’ve got a word document on my desktop called: “Notes from Mickey’s.” Butch’s remarks are about to find their way to that page…
You know, I’ve read that Quantum Mechanics is the most successful theory in the history of science. When applied as Bohr & Heisenberg and the gang intended, it’s NEVER been wrong.
That said, it certainly very much resembles a philosophy, and an astonishingly interesting and earth-shaking philosophy, at that. Advaita, a “philosophy” of non-duality, grown out of the Hindu tradition, seems very, very similar to what the particle physicists are saying, right now. It’s really fascinating to read studies comparing the two. In fact, one of the world’s great Advaita guru’s, Ramesh Balsekar, in Bombay, frequently talks about Quantum Mechanics, and how it serves to “prove” his points about non-duality…
Posted by joe on from Oregon 12/03 at 03:26 PMJoseph Conrad also said:
“All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.”
He wrote eloquently on the “switch from a civilizing optimism to total bestiality” in colonial ventures…Posted by sk on from 12/03 at 03:30 PMHello everyone. Welcome back, SK. Long time.
Since you mentioned Bohr, Joe, here’s my favorite quote of his (and I paraphrase): “I don’t like making predictions. Especially about the future.”
Just thought I’d bring that to the “table.”
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/03 at 06:41 PMY’all: please don’t say “sorry”. It’s the most difficult response to consider. But let me say thank you to Mickey and the Expendables for maintaining an atmosphere in which sharing that story feels natural.
“One can’t save another if one is in need of salvation.”
-MudgeFantastic.
Another little story, also from my comfortable suburban youth, somehow related to Mudge’s quote above:
I had such an inept social studies teacher in 11th grade (for you Europeans: I was 16) that I dropped out of the class, an absolute impossibility and scandal in our high school. I took some blow off class in Oceanography instead, and managed to help get the poor old lady retired early. (Sorry lady whose name I can’t remember anymore.)
Point is, to make up for it in 12th grade I had to double up on my social studies, and landed in “Advanced Placement American History”, a course that could get you actual college credit if you passed. Needless to say, I don’t think any of the revolutions mentioned in Mickey’s latest book were discussed in the class. When it came time for the final exam, I was woefully unprepared, having spent my senior year in high school learning about more important things than American History (loosely: sex, drugs and rock n roll).
The big essay question on the final exam was: Why did George Washington and the founding fathers pursue a policy of isolationism in the formative years of the United States of America. My answer, which earned my a failing grade, was one sentence long and I remember it word for word to this day: “Because they knew they had to get their shit together before they started to #### with the rest of the world.”
Posted by Keir on from The Hague 12/03 at 07:17 PMKeir, I’ll bet you said more in that one sentence than the rest of your class did in hundreds of collective pages.
Off topic: Funny thing, but I’ve been getting some visitors here tonight thanks to a mention of me on a “Something Awful” forum. Someone there called me an “ultra-vegan, anti-corporate demogogue” (their spelling, not mine) and gave out this URL. As a result, more than few folks have clicked over.
“Ultra-vegan, anti-corporate”...is that supposed to be an insult?
The demagogue part, however, has me really chuckling. That’s twice in the past month or so....and, look out, I’m beginning to like it. Of course, I’d rather have an ultra-vegan demitasse...or even better: an ultra-vegan Demi Moore. Now, we’re talking…
So whaddya think? Am I a demogogue or demagogue ?
(Captcha sez: heavy)
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/03 at 09:52 PMHi Mickey, Keir, & SK -
Mickey, thanks for the quote from Bohr - excellent. It’s going right into my “notepad,” as well.
Keir, I agree with Mickey. That single sentence speaks volumes, and it’s probably the most accurate, insightful, and significant response your teacher received all year…
SK - thanks for the additional Conrad quotes…
Mickey: As far as I can tell, anyone who is deeply concerned about the needs and aspirations of ordinary people, opposes war and capital punishment and racism, hates factory farming and cruelty to animals, longs for a world in which the very atmosphere itself is no longer under attack, opposes the corporatization of the entire world, and speaks passionately and honestly about these concerns - is a demagogue.
Yeah, you’re a demagogue.
Me too, I hope.Posted by joe on from Oregon 12/03 at 11:59 PMHello Joe (my fellow demagogue). Thanks for the Amazon review.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/04 at 07:52 AMA very late visitor to this post, Mickey! Thanks for all those tales, links, etc. etc.
And I LOVE the quote by Conrad.Posted by Helga Fremlin on from Daylesford, Australia 12/05 at 02:14 AM
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