Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Like Tyson in Tokyo
An interesting take on the “idea of fear” in public life (not to mention its paralyzing potential):
Posted by sk on from 12/24 at 11:45 AMIt’s Christmas Eve, the anniversary of my mother’s death in 1999...and it’s 70F. Thanks for the story, MZ, I had a long one typed up but it was too much for the character count allowed...I’ll trim it down sometime.
I’m just not up for cheerless reminders of the world’s pain, so I’m off to read my new book Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach.
Posted by Mudge on from Dear, dead Austin 12/24 at 12:05 PMThanks for the link, SK. That would be an interesting book for a group reading project. Here’s something I wrote about fear and politics: http://tinyurl.com/bgdlw
Mudge: Sending positive vibes on this sad anniversary. As for your story, you could always post it in two or three consecutive posts.
It’s gonna be over 50 degrees here today. I’m getting outside ASAP.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/24 at 12:25 PMAgain, another reference to your wikipedia entry, which apparently has turned you obsessive.
http://en.wikipdia.org/wiki/Micky_Z
Again, what about it is factually wrong, if it bothers you so?
Posted by Donald Sanskrit on from 12/24 at 01:34 PMHappy Holidays, SK, Mickey and you too, Donald--
Mudge hope your day’s a bright as can be. Off to help out my mom with stuff at the house before Christmans tomorrow, but I’ll chat about Hamsun later-- I know, darn that pesky captcha sometimes. In meantime, try to find the Penguin Hunger, and Mysteries-- still flawed works, sure, but a world better than previous translations.
...but neither one good much for lightn fun holiday stuff, I guess. Don’t know much about those-- I might look like an older, bearded Harry Potter, but I don’t read stuff like that. Which might be funny enough cheerful thought for you-- that a commenter on Cool Observer is often told he looks like Harry Potter. Enjoy the weather, whatever it is out there!
Posted by James on from Hell's Kitchen 12/24 at 01:49 PMYou know, I’ve considered sending in photos of Frank and Roddy to sites like cuteoverload and kittenwar… but then decided that if I did stuff like that, my cat-ladyness would just be terminal, that would be the end of it all for me.
Posted by James on from Hell's Kitchen 12/24 at 02:55 PMQuiet day, huh? Well, I hope everyone was out enjoying the day as we were. Over 50 degrees in NYC...and Michele and I walked through most of Central Park (I didn’t even wear a jacket).
Obviously, I don’t expect much traffic here this weekend but I’ll check back later.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/24 at 05:41 PMThis isn’t much of a story, but it’s something.
This morning, I got out of bed at 4:30, a full hour before the first rays of sunshine peered over the peaks of the mountains--tall hills, really--to the north of my cabin.
Like most Americans, I drove the sleep out of my eyes and limbs with a hot shower. To work up a breakfast appetite, I walked out my front door, fed my hogs, and cared for the soy, vegetables, and herbs growing in symmetrical patches in every direction around my house. Once the sun finally appeared, I sat under the tall foothill pine that shades my front stoop and thought hard for a solid forty minutes. I thought big and small, happy and sad; I thought of dead bodies in Iraq and of my own beautiful children, and these juxtapositions comforted and terrified me.
Anyone who lives in solitude will tell you that these solitary moments of contemplation, when chores are done and the beauty and pain of the physical world swells in all its enormity in a simple man’s heart ... well, those moments certainly leave you hungry.
Walking inside, I made a simple breakfast of hand-cured bacon, from hogs I slaughtered, hand-picked mushrooms, from a field I planted, and hand-squeezed grapefruit juice, from wild trees that grow in patches a few miles to the east.
I read the news, and, like I do every day, I hung my head in shame. Here in my valley, ten miles from the nearest town, I am unaffected by transit strikes, foreign policy, and federal surveillance. Yet my isolation leaves me sick with guilt.
On this page, I believe that all of us find something pure, ideas untainted by the thick soot of propoganda that we all bathe in for the bulk of our adult lives. Mickey, you live in Queens, one of the densest areas in the United States, yet I feel that you, more than perhaps anyone I have yet encountered, would understand the place I call home: why I choose to produce my own necessities and sit quietly under my own tree. I am no hero; my work here alleves suffering nowhere. But I believe you would understand that too, and forgive me.
Posted by Kendrick on from (south of) Santa Cruz, CA 12/24 at 05:46 PMbill o reilly sucks satans cock on a regular basis. if satan is bored getting it from his secondary sean hannity steps in but he still gets bored.
have a good christmas.
Posted by michael on from scotland 12/24 at 07:20 PMThanks for your post, Kendrick. I’m certainly in no position to forgive you or anyone...or judge anyone (although, being a flawed human being like everyone else, I too often do). I’m just trying to learn and evolve and lessen my negative impact.
Hope you’ll join in the discussions here soon…
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/24 at 07:22 PMbill is secondary - rupert is first. see above post.
Posted by michael on from scotland 12/24 at 07:23 PMMerry Xmas, Michael.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/24 at 07:24 PMit is after midnight here so happy ‘just another day’
Posted by michael on from scotland 12/24 at 07:25 PMHappy Sunday, Michael.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/24 at 07:32 PMthanks mickey.
have a good christmas.
Posted by michael on from scotland 12/24 at 07:49 PMHey there, Mickey, Michael and Kendrick.
Kendrick - your post was movingly written. I read it twice and made a number of mental notes. It’s certainly been a while since I read a post that made me use my imagination quite so much. Have a great weekend and enjoy tomorrow’s sun rising.
Michael, dead right in re the cock sucking rota. Have I got this right - 1) Murdoch, 2) O’Reilly, 3) Hannity, I guess we’d have Tom Cruise at number 4. Nothing political, call it instinct.
MZ & Kendrick - the news makes a lot of people feel guilty. Nobody ought to judge or forgive in that area. I think we need another name for the sense of responsibility & shame that the news brings about. Any thoughts?
BTW, there’s a great piece on that EditorMom site about Bush living on a planet called Earth II - strongly recommended.
I’m off to bed. Happy feeling of animation sweeping through your limbs as you wake tomorrow. Merry sense of pleasure / pain as you assess the way life & the world looks. In other words, enjoy another day.
Posted by Chris Wood on from Jersey 12/24 at 08:26 PMRe my last post & judgement - I wasn’t saying we should all judge each other rabidly in areas outside the news. Not sure what I was implying about the rest of it. I suppose, overall, if you do feel guilt at the shit going on then you qualify as having a good heart - a pity these feelings often hurt so!
Posted by Chris Wood on from Jersey 12/24 at 08:29 PMyou got the suggested progression correct.
Posted by michael on from scotland 12/24 at 08:31 PMHere’s two quotes (Thanks, EditorMom!) from Bush:
“I think younger workers—first of all, younger workers have been promised benefits the government—promises that have been promised, benefits that we can’t keep. That’s just the way it is.”
“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”
I think instead of guilt we should all feel a very real sense of total bewilderment. If anyone has a translation could post it here, I would be obliged. Many thanks!
Posted by Chris Wood on from Jersey 12/24 at 08:32 PMHi everyone.
Sorry I’ve been absent. My life gets in the way, sometimes…
Hey I’d like to wish a very Merry Day to:Mickey Z. - and a huge thank you, to you, Sir…
Ameolpsis - as in - Our Canadian Vine
Cart!
Chris!
Christine Hamm
Frank the Kitty
Glen - as in Old Glen, the poster formerly known as
Harry - wherever you are
Hawk!
Helga!
Hope from Denmark
James I, as in JOS, as in Big Country JOS
James of Hell’s Kitchen
JNR from Portland
Katherine
Keir - Saxophonist extraordinaire and person of the world
Lee - as in Lee Hall
Luna_C - from the North
Lurkers - Merry to you, too…
Mew
Michele - as in Michele and Mickey Z… one last congrats, Michele
Michael!
Mr. Mudge - as in our wordsmith from dear, dead Austin
Owen - as in - from Barcelona and Ireland
Peter ( the other )
Punkin - as in Mudge and…
Rev. Joe
Rosemarie - as in our very own Rosemarie
SK
Suzanne - as in Suzanne and joe; thank you, Suzanne
TM
Tris McCall
Trolls - as in - the…
ZootAnd an apology and a Merry Something or Other to those I missed…
Posted by joe on from Oregon 12/24 at 08:47 PMI had a funny feeling I should check in and voila Joe from Oregon is in the house. I don’t know if you got everyone (on a quick check, I notice Jim Shanahan is missing), but the point is clear. We have a great, growing crew here and for that, I am immensely grateful.
(P.S. Hello Chris...)
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/24 at 08:55 PMAnd Frank the Much-Less-Blocked-Up Kitty rolls over on his back and bares his belly for all the love he’s been getting from all of the Expendables this week… while his older brother Roddy has been turning into an extreme right wing conservative, perhaps out of jealousy of the attention his brother’s been getting. Ah well…
And to all, a good night!
Posted by James on from Hell's Kitchen 12/24 at 09:07 PMChris:
I think you’re right. It’s critical to make the distinction between the general impotence most of us feel when faced with the real terrors of global capital and being legitimately responsible. A small modicum of guilt is fine, I think; who among us doesn’t enjoy a few luxuries that we only have because we’re First Worlders? That doesn’t mean we are complicit in a worldwide system of oppression; the fact that we post here shows that much, at least. We need new terminology beyond “guilty” and “innocent”, but part of the reason we don’t have that terminology is because of the false dichotomies that the real chiefs of global capital develop, organize, and deploy. When I talk to many of the people I meet when I’m in urban areas, they tell me that they want to help the poor--that’s why they’re DEMOCRATS (!). I have to stifle my initial surge of contempt, because it is not their fault that they conceive of the Democrats as a party of the working poor. In much the same way, they rarely consider themselves part of the working poor that they purportedly help with their party affiliation. Instead, they’re “middle class,” even if they are working for $8 at a department store, because they have been carefuly tutored to believe that virtually everyone with a “real job” must be middle class.
I apologize for the inconsistent rambling of this post, but I do believe that there is some connection between these sort of “dichotomies"--between Democrat and Republican, middle-class and poor--make it harder to talk in useful ways about who is “guilty” of standing side-by-side with the stormtroopers of Western hegemony.
Thanks, everyone, for the kind posts--with so many erudite, thoughtful people posting on this blog, it took me several days to work up the courage to post! Thank god (note the secular, lower-case “g” in these “War on Christmas” days) for saturday storytelling ...
Posted by Kendrick on from santa cruz 12/24 at 11:07 PMThanks, Kendrick...and welcome to the site.
G’Night, all…
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/24 at 11:24 PMMerry Sunday ckeyZ and all the Expendables!
I was absent yesterday (Sat.) but thanks for all the great stories and updates and well wishes of the season; it’s a very nice way to start the day.
I hope this day, (like all others) finds everyone enjoying at least a peaceful few moments; whether in the densest of regions, or in the most quiet solitude of the countryside; whether two legged and with purchasing power, or four legged and domesticated or feral.
And now I’m off to dispense some celebratory catnip…
Posted by Amelopsis on from the land of reindeers and...rain! 12/25 at 08:24 AMThanks, Amelopsis...so glad you found this site.
Got any extra catnip?
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/25 at 08:30 AM
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