b12.the reverend.james perry walker

i will have a paragraph blurb posted about this on image's website. soon, and very soon.

done. follow this link.

the crying of lot 49 / thomas pynchon

i hope to say more about this book on my normal blog, but for now here's my quick first impression:

i wish that there was a market for re-edited, even partially rewritten, books. i know this is awfully hubristic sounding, but i feel like i could have significantly improved this book. i really liked it's crazy, interwoven themes. i really liked how tp has moments where his odd images suddenly coalesce in bright lights of clarity and are so well put. but i think that the work is dated. i doubt thatt ehre are many readers today that would pick up the crying and relate with o, the other characters, or even much of the plot. for this book to be meaningful, i think that we must have some connection with the narrator. unfortunately her bewildering sexathon in the beginning of the book spoils that for me. and i don't think thtat i'm just speaking as a moral conservative. there really is very little that connects o and i. consequently, there is nothing sane to keep me anchored to the book itself...

i wonder what happens after the book ends.

if you just linked here from my rated items, you're probably accustomed to finding actual non-andrew sites at the end of the link. well, here you go::

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_lot49.html

annotations for heart of darkness

without my edition of the book (it's green; has a balding, bearded guy and some jungle on the cover; and starts with the secret sharer) these comments may not make much sense. oh, well.

65

“sea and the sky were welded together without a joint…”

name of where they are: Gravesend

Captain is like a god

66

“Marlowe sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the mizzenmast. He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with his arms dropped, the palms outwards, resembled an idol”

Bhudda plus three crosses…JC

“serenity became less brilliant but more profound”

“Reach Rested unRuffled…”

glorification of the past (ed: is it really glorification? Probably quite the opposite in retrospect)

67

“the dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs o empires.”

All light, except the town…

“and this also,” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.”

This?

Marlowe not like this (ed: the narrator claims that Marlowe not the typical seamen but is instead a wanderer…)

Sea=sameness=simplicity

68

first storyteller vs. marlowe

“a casual stroll or a casual spree on shore suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole continent, and generally he finds the secret not worth knowing”

how marlowe believes you find TRUTH (ed: Marlowe believes that something’s meaning isn’t inherent but found from outside) how to interpret it, it’s a murky process

TIME

Eng was like the Congo

69

Q: is Marlowe talking about English history or his own experience?

“darkness”

“and in some inland post feel the SAVAGERY, the utter SAVAGERY, had closed around him—all that MYSTERIOUS life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of WILD men”

“fascination of the abomination…the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate.”

Another Buddha pose

“men going at it blind—as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness.”

Marlowe: conquering (the darkness?) is also a black deed.

70

“one of Marlowe’s inconclusive experences.”

LIGHT

“it seemed somehow to throw a kind of LIGHT on everything about me…no, not very clear. And yet it seemed to throw a kind of LIGHT”

71

hee hee: “well, we won’t talk about that.”

“…but could not shake the idea. The snake had charmed me.” Mystery/charm vs. darkness

“I had an aunt, a dear enthusiastic soul.” Nate asks, “a cheerleader?”

72

senseless death and terror

73

“…a dead silence, grass sprouting between the stones…” compare to dead captain.

Danger=fascinating “I was going into the yellow. DEAD in the centre. And the river was there—fascinating—deadly—like a snake.”

74

“a white-haired secretary…beckoned me into the SANCTUARY.”

“and there was something OMINOUS in the atmosphere…I don’t know—something NOT QUITE RIGHT;”

“The swift and indifferent placidity of that look troubled me.”

(ed: compare these europeans at the beginning to something later in the text…)

-big section marked

75

“..though the house was as still as a house in A CITY OF DEAD…”

foreboding

Dr.’s theory of insanity

76

Stay CALM

“Something like an EMISSARY OF LIGHT, something like a lower sort of APOSTLE.”

Sexist?

77

“Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thing about an enigma. There it is before you—smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, ‘Come and find out.’”

78

ABSURD! (ed: referring to the shelling of blank countryside)

79

sounds fun! (ed: referring to “the general sense of vague and oppresive wonder grew upon me. It was like a weary PILGRIMAGE amongst hints for nightmares)

something gets in yer’ head (ed: referring to a suicide)

80

“The thing looked as DEAD as the carcass of some animal. I came upon more pieces of DECAYING machinery…”

“They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, DEATHLIKE indifference of unhappy savages.” I can’t believe I’m reading this for fun—must need my daily dose of death and decay.

81

“After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings.” Presence=participation.

“…sort of life I had blundered into. I’ve seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! These were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men—men, I tell you.” (ed: racist or actually condemning westerners…or both?)

okay, this is a sane and moral man’s reaction (ed: uh-oh, that was from my initial reading…perhaps I missed the racist tones on the first reading…uh-oh)

hee hee: “I avoided a vast artificial hole somebody had been digging on the slope, the purpose of which I found it impossible to divine. It wasn’t a quarry or a sandpit, anyhow. It was just a hole. It might have been conneted with the philanthropic desire of giving the criminals something to do. I don’t know.” (ed: he’s sarcastic, right? So racist?)

“Inferno” = opposite

82

DEATH = disease, freedom…

“…a kind of blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs, which DIED OUT SLOWLY.” Parallel to true death (ed: should I be interested in the WHITE flicker…?)

“…he kept up his appearance. That’s backbone.”

84

“Mr. Kurtz…he is a very remarkable person.”

86

“I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting.”

87

“Everybody had behaved splendidly! Splendidly!”

!

something faintly mysterious (re: manager)

88

“He was great by this little thing that it was impossible to tell what could control such a man.”

Hmmmmmmm….(re: “he sealed the utterance with that smile of his, as thought it had been a door opening into a darkness he had in his keeping.”)

89

“I flung out of his hut…”

“They wandered here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot of FAITHLESS PILGRIMS BEWITCHED inside a rotten fence.”

“…waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion.” Could be either…

what are staves?

90

it is both powerful, profound, and ALIVE…as opposed to the dead man.

91

he he: “anyway, it could not be found there and as it was not liely to be sent from Europe, it did not appear clear to me what he was WAITING for.”

Mixed up: “but very soon I became awfully curious to see what he would find out from me.”

92

a Kurtz wanna’ be

93

thus 2 candles go dark “he blew the candle out suddenly”

“…this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe”

95

“It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream—making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams….”

Wow! The narrative breaks!

Narrator talks: “I listened, I listened on the watch for the sentence, for the word, that would give me the clue to the FAINT UNEASINESS inspired by this narrative that seemed to SHAPE ITSELF WITHOUT HUMAN LIPS in the heavy night-air of the river.”

96

rivets. STEVE!

97

the meaning in work

98

ooh, someone’s having fun!: “I tried a jig. We capered on the iron deck.”

END OF PART I

PART II

100

even language grows absurd: “ ‘Make rain and fine weather—one man—the council—by the nose’—bits of absurd sentences that got the better of my drowsiness…”

plotting, talk of kurtz

101

“Anything—anything can be done in this country…The danger is in Europe…” but

“Each station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a centre for trade of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing.” –someone else talking. The role to be ‘good’

102

at news of donkey deaths: “They, no doubt, like the rest of US, found what they deserved.”

“Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest....

103

inner reality vs. exterior reality

“I felt often its mysterious stillness watching me at MY MONKEY TRICKS, just as it watches you fellows…”

104

good cannibals eat hippo meat

 “Phoo! I can sniff it now…”

“Sometimes we came upon a station close by the bank…and the white men rushing out…with great gestures of joy and surprise and welcome, seemed very strange—had the appearance of being HELD THERE CAPTIVE BY A SPELL. The word ivory would ring in the air for a while—and on we went again into the silence…”

105

“We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.”

“We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings…”

“…this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their HUMANITY—like yours—the THOUGHT OF YOUR REMOTE KINSHIP WITH THIS WILD AND PASSIONATE UPROAR. UGLY.”

Racist?! Yes, but grappling with it?

106

be TRUE. At least the natives are TRUE.

“The mind of man is capable of anything…”

107

uh-oh

108

“the simple old sailor, with his talk of chains and purchases made me forget the junge and the pilgrims in a delicious sensation of having come upon something unmistakably REAL.”

Cipher? (even the boat is dieing.)

109

“What did it matter what any one knew or ignored? What did it matter who was manager? One gets sometimes such a flash of insight. The essentials of this ffair lay deep under the surface, beyond my reach, and beyond my power of meddling.”

110

scary

“The rest of the world was nowhere, as far as our eyes and ears were concerned. Just nowhere.”

111

how unfair to the cannibals!

Steve

112

“One can’t live with one’s finger everlastingly on one’s pulse.”

113

all this in a seemingly frightening ordeal (re: the attack)

RESTRAINT

114

the boat brings grief

115

crazy creative descriptions—[?]

116

! the quiet attacks !

117

“ ‘Keep quiet!’ I said in a fury.”

119

“…his ability to talk, his WORDS—the gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible, the pulsating stream of LIGHT, or the deceitful flow from the HEART OF AN IMPENETRABLE DARKNESS.” (ed: yet we only hear kurtz speak less than twenty words or so in total)

120

“I couldn’t have felt more of lonely desolation”

shoe comment

its like a disembodied voice of the wilderness

121

first reference to the girl.

“The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of DARKNESS CLAIMED HIM FOR THEIR OWN.”

A dark, intoxicating affinity with it all

122

you’re either stupid, heavenly, or prey to the darkness….hmmmm don’t even know you’re tangling with darkness. How do you “breathe dead hippo, so to speak, and not be contaminated?”

123

‘whites like gods to savages’ K becomes suject of rites, who’s transforming who? Irony.

“ ‘Exterminate all the brutes!’ ” yikes

124

“Whatever he was, HE WAS NOT COMMON.”

“He had NO RESTRAINT, NO RESTRAINT—just like Kurtz—a tree swayed by the wind.

125

“I had made up my mind that if my late helmsman was to be eaten, the fishes alone should have him.” (ed: Marlowe not so racist?)

126

“It’s all right,’ yelled back the other, as CHEERFUL as you please. ‘…I am glad.’ ”

127

“He seemed to be trying to make up for lots of SILENCE…(re: Kurtz) you don’t talk with that man—you listen to him.”

128

Hey, maybe this is a novel about being alone; maybe its travel essay!

Something becomes clear…maybe its NOT all absurd: “ ‘this man has enlarged my mind.’ ”

END OF PART II

PART III

129

“The glamour of youth enveloped his parti-coloured rags, his destitution, his loneliness, the essential DESOLATION of his futile wanderings. For months…his life hadn’t been worth a day’s purchase; and there he was GALLANTLY<>

See 69. This (desolation) which marlowe is fascinated by.

“…as though he had absconded from a troupe of mimes…” funny image

“If the absolutely pure, uncalculating, unpractical spirit of adventure had ever ruled a human being, it ruled this bepatched youth.” Pure adventure. (ed: and problems!). At first you think, ‘I like this guy.’ (ed: But) Kurtz = dangerous: “I must say that to me it (ed: his devotion to Kurtz) appeared about the most dangerous thing in every way he had come upon so far.”

(ed: notice its not nature, its not the natives, its Kurtz that marlowe paints as dangerous.)

130

rapturous conversation

“…never before, did this land, this river, this jungle, the very arch of this blazing sky, appear to me so HOPELESS and so DARK, so IMPENETRABLE to human thought…”

they penetrate physically but not mentally—(ed: remind me,) who’re the brutes?

“ ‘Ah, it was worth waiting for!—sometimes.’ ” dude, tell me the ‘nottimes.’

“ ‘To speak plainly, he RAIDED the country,’ I said.” (ed: notice how close raid is to aid…so close yet sooo different.)

131

“they had never seen anything like it—and VERY TERRIBLE. He could be VERY TERRIBLE.”

Kurtz addicted; he can’t leave.

“desolate”

132

Yikes! (re: heads on posts)

133

“the manager said afterwards that mr. Kurtz’s methods had RUINED THE DISTRICT.” Thinking in terms of money or life or labor…?

“…had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic INVASION.”

“It echoed loudly within him because he was HOLLOW at the core…” (ed: an actual ellipse!)

tells of Kurtz being fascinated by his own darkness.

134

?he’s pulled by two forces: logic and conscience as he once knew it…and the blackness that has become kurtz.

CRAWLING into excuses.

“his voice lost itself in the CALM of the EVENING.” Vs. the westerner(s)

135

“I resented bitterly the ABSURD danger of our situation, as if to be at the mercy of that atrocious phantom had been a dishonoring necessity."

(absurd?) You said it. He does a good job putting words together that don’t normally belong together (ie, dishonoring necessity)

“…I saw the thin arm extended commandlingly, the lower jaw moving, the eyes of that appartition shining darkly far in its bony head that nodded with grotesque jerks.”

Random thought: I just saw a picture of the statue of N. Korea’s dead king. This reminds me of it.

“It was as though an animated image of death carved out of old ivory had been shaking its hand with menaces at a motionless crowd…” You become what you crave.

Conrad connects metaphors: the forest breathes, Conrad breathes…they’re connected.

136

kurtz “I am glad.”

Then leave, return, woman.

137

“passionate soul” woman has power.

138

Kurtz rambles. Who’s he talking to. GREED.

“ ‘No method at all,’ ”

Ahhhh…(marlowe saying “nevertheless I think mr. Kurtz is a remarkable man….Ah! but it was something to have at least a choice of NIGHTMARES.” Tell me, please, exactly what nightmare you chose.

139

“And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also were buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets.” So tell the story and be resurrected? Oh. The secret sharer (wink)

“Mr. Kurtz’s REPUTATION.”

WOWZERS! : “Mr k’s reputation is safe with me.’ I did not know how truly I spoke.” (ed: and we don’t know how truly you spoke until the very END. Hmmmm…)

140

on the way to becoming another danny. Marlowe has more shoes.

he’s affected by kurtz but NOT the wilderness?

That dude (the clownish character) is cooler than kurtz (but just as misdirected)

I’m about to go see the 2 Towers at the cinerama. Is it fair to compare morodor with marlowe’s view of the congo?

141

he uses adjectives a lot…I wonder what dr. reinsma would think…

“the moral shock I received” ESCAPE?

Imminent onslaught = comfort? : “…the possibility of a sudden onslaught and massacre, or something of the kind…was positively welcome and composing. It pacified me…”

“it was WRITTEN I should be loyal to the NIGHTMARE OF MY CHOICE….the peculiar BLACKNESS of that experience.

“ ‘he can’t walk—he is crawling on all-fours—I’ve got him.’ ” Kurtz becomes an animal. Now who’s crawling?

142

“in that profound tone”

143

LOST

“he could not have been more IRRETRIEVABLY lost than he was….the ofundations of our intimacy were being laid—to endure—to endure—even to the end—and beyond.” Lasting

RACISM

“I tried to break the spell”

“He had kicked himself loose of the earth.”

He escaped—is this bad?

Kurtz’s dislodged self from reality YET marlowe describes reality as absurd too.

144

why such intensity to do anything?

A. being alone forces you to look soulward B. what’d he find? Nothing.

“But his soul was mad.”

Tension, tension, deadpan conclusion.

The boat: “splashing, thumping, fierce river-DEMON beating the water with its terrible tail and BREATHING black smoke…” who’s the demon?

“,,,strings of amazing words that resembled no sounds of human language…” except that’s what they were.

145

“…as if the words had been torn out of him by a supernatural power.” ?

“only the BARBAROUS an dsuperb woman…” racist

“and then that IMBECILE crowd…started their little fun, and I could see nothing more for smoke.” Evil!

A break in the text…why?

“the brown current ran swiftly out of the heart of darkness…” Kurtz=river?

146

I don’t think I quite understand the depths of what’s happening.

“…it had penetrated fourght for the possession of that soul satiated with primitive emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham distinction, of all the appearances of success and power.” Love and hate.

To marlowe, the role of the west: “this grimy fragment of another world, the forerunner of change, of conquest, of trade, of massacres, of blessings.”

Kurtz is battling with the wild: “ ‘oh, but I will wring your heart yet!’ he cried at the invisible wilderness.”

147

kurtz: “live rightly, die, die…” (author’s ellipse). Did he/does he think he did this?

“his was an impenetrable darkness.” M spends time with him but doesn’t know what he sees. You can penetrate the congo, but not kurtz.

“I saw on that IVORY face…sombre pride, of ruthless power, of crave terror—of an intense and hopeless despair.” Is this experienceing life’s emotions to the fullest and greatest extreme? You scrape all the pretense of humanity away and only horror remains?

“The horror! The horror!”

an epiphany BUT epiphanies are associated with light, NOT darkness.

148

“I blew the candle out…” DEATH. End of epiphany. And then k’s dead.

“the most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself—that comes too late—a crop of unextinguishable regrets.” Point of life=to gain knowledge of yourself. To realize your regrets.but marlowe says he got near death and had no epipanies. Thus k’s greatness (to m)

149

see the big pic.

“piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness…”

“I remember mistily”

now, snap, he’s back in europe. “…to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thougts. The were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretene, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew.” Because he’s set a part now.

150

“…from laughing in their faces so full of stupid importantce.” Again, the europeans.

“it was my imagination that wanted osothing.

151

“he was a universal genuis…”

“…he had the faith. He could get himself to believe anything—anything.”

“…and took himself off with this PLUNDER.” Europe even raids the coffers of their own dead.

152

“…no manipulation of light and pose could have conveyed the delicate shade of TRUTHFULNESS upon those features.”

HAUNTING

153

“he wanted no more than justice—no more than justice.”

“…she seemed as htough she would remember and mourn FOREVER.”

“…fair hair…an ashy halo from which the dark eyes looked out at me.”

154

“her tone of despairing regret, the summing up whisper of his eternal condemnation.”

“Intimacy grows quickly out there…I knew him as well as it is possible for one man to know another.”

“He was a remarkable man…”

155

“she talked as thirty men drink.”

Her “he drew men towards him by what was best in them.” I don’t know about that.

“…the whisper of a voice speaking from beyond the threshold of an eternal darkness.”

Faith is illusion is dark.

156

her “men looked up to him—his GOODNESS shone in every act…” !!!

maybe I’ll get this the third time around

157

she would have been just like the natives

“ ‘ the last word he pronounced was—your name.’ ” !!!!

see 66

“the heavens do not fall for such a trifle. Would they have fallen, I wonder, if I had rendered k that justice which was his due…but I couldn’t I could not tell her. It would have been too dark—too dark altogether.” The narrator forsakes darkness; the truth can be a weapon of the darkness (ed: really? Hmmm…)

158

“…and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth…seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.”

THE END

Initial ideas:

Travel novel?

Kurtz

Rag dude.

devotional/confessional/psalm 143:1-12

i was going to try and do something cool, but now i think i'll just go through the verse. let it speak to me. see what happens.

before i read this psalm i kneeled at my bed and prayed. that's unusual for me. recently i've been more the type to throw hail marys out there (in the non-catholic sense). i haven't devoted time to praying. i haven't devoted time to reading the word. sure, i think about doing it, but whenever i try i get bored. or i feel unable to separate myself from the reading. if i could go away, things might be fine. if you could strip away the andrew and lay bare all my thoughts, then i could say, wow! that's the holy spirit! that's not me talking, that's God! the problem is i don't know that i could do that. it sounds like a counter intuitive budhist emptying of the mind. how else will i separate God's voice from my own? God, how can I hear you? I ask to hear you.

i believe. that's not a problem. and i spend a bit of time thinking about the nature of humanity, the role of God in creation, Christ's sacrifice for me, and how that's reflected in nature and in others. i'm careful to consider things that teach me about suffering, forgiveness, and faith. i read important works that speak to me in their eloquence, in their portrayal of the world as it is; works that reach out for the divine. works that do what i so unfrequently do. Lord, i feel like i sometimes find you there. but's it's a knowledge thing. just like reading the gospels and memorizing the stations of the cross or the ten commandments--i'm learning about you, but i don't know how to seek a relationship with you.

i think there's something more than belief. something more like faith. i believe in a trinitarian God. i believe in the incarnation. i believe in the crucifixion and the resurrection. i may even believe some heresies, like that you speak in subtle ways through others. the Truth is in the Bible, but there is truth everywhere. i believe these things, but it seems like faith is something more than that. it's believing that you will take action. it's believing that You will speak to me., or more accurately, that i will hear when you speak to me. it's believing that you're more than a background force that makes the world go around, makes the plants grow, stops a traffic accident here and there. it's believing that you will do the impossible--you will stop this patten of sin that i have created and can't seem to break. it's believing that i can one day desire to read your book, that i can look forward to a conversation with you because it feels like something more than me talking to myself.

i say that i believe and i tend to equate that will faith, but it's something entirely different; i'm no abraham. we all know the story, God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son Issac. we're told this is faith, but faith of what? the one thing that's clear is that abraham is obedient. he does what's he told, he's an amazing example of how we're to follow God. but Christ doesn't praise Abe for his ability to follow directions, it's faith not obedience. it's funny though, this 'faith' has been harder to tease out for me. perhaps it's that abaraham is able to be obedient BECAUSE of his faith. so what's he believe? perhaps because of the conclusion, i always thought that abe believed that God would just tell him to stop before the deed was done. "once i get up this mountain, he'll tell me it's all just a test," he'd think. or maybe he believed that God would perform another miracle birth. after issac's death, model two would be born to a 200 year old sarah. believing that would take some faith right? but maybe it's even more than that. check out soren kierkegaard's fear and trembling...


...

...that's faith. do i have that? do i believe in the impossible? Lord, help me be an abraham. you who can do all things, help me to have the faith that i can be an abraham, that i can walk so closely to you that i can have something that burns brighter than belief. right now i don't have that faith. i believe that you hear me but my doubt in self overwhelms that belief.

¹Hear my prayer, O LORD; yes, Lord, hear my prayer.

give ear to my supplications in your faithfulness; i don't know what it is that i ask, but Lord answer me, and help me to hear that answer.

answer me in your righteousness.

²Do not enter into judgment with your servant,

for no one living is righteous before you.

³For the enemy has pursued me,

crushing my life to the ground,

making me sit in darkness like those long dead.

⁴Therefore my spirit faints within me; Lord, you know how this is true. i thank you for forgiving me and giving me your Holy Spirit.

my heart within me is appalled.

⁵I remember the days of old,

I think about all your deeds, job, job, alive, alive, blessings of friends.

I meditate on the works of your hands.

⁶I stretch out my hands to you;

my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. Jesus, i don't know that this is true. i don't know how thirsty i am. perhaps i've swallowed so much sand i can't even tell i'm thirsty. give me the thirst.

Selah

⁷Answer me quickly, O LORD; yes, Jesus, I am of little faith, give me faith to wait.

my spirit fails.

Do not hide your face from me,

or I shall be like those who go down to the Pit.

⁸Let me hear of your steadfast love in the morning, i know you love me.

for in you I put my trust.

Teach me the way I should go,

for to you I lift up my soul.

⁹Save me, O LORD, from my enemies; from myself, from the internet...

I have fled to you for refuge.

¹⁰Teach me to do your will,

for you are my God.

Let your good spirit lead me

on a level path.

¹¹For your name's sake, O LORD, preserve my life.

In your righteousness bring me out of trouble.

¹²In your steadfast love cut off my enemies,

and destroy all my adversaries,

for I am your servant.

amen.

the zombie nick licata's form letter

i'm really, really, really sad about the sonics. check out my real blog for more info. anyway, here's what nick licata, president of the seattle city council, thought about my sadness:


Thank you for writing me about the sale of the Seattle Sonics to a group
of investors from Oklahoma City. I have been saying for months that I
would like to see the Sonics stay in Seattle, but not at a cost of over
$200 million.

As I stated several months ago, there is no doubt about it, my glib,
foolish remark on the relative unimportance of professional basketball
in Seattle was smug and wrong. In my clumsy way I was trying to point
out that Seattle is a world-class city for a variety of reasons, not
just because of the Sonics.

Public leaders need to ask the right questions, and then listen to the
answers instead of providing good press copy. As an elected official, it
is my job to weigh competing interests and decide what is the best use
of taxpayer dollars. Let me give you some background on this issue.

In 1995, after a City Council vote, the former Coliseum was rebuilt into
KeyArena at the request of the Sonics. That same year, the voters of
King County narrowly voted down a baseball stadium. The State
Legislature and the King County Council overturned that decision. In
1997, state voters narrowly passed a measure for a football stadium.

Partly as a result of voter anger at the baseball stadium vote being
overturned, state voters then passed a series of anti-tax initiatives
that constrained the ability of local governments to pay for basic
services. This forced cuts in services, and has had a lasting impact.
Some governments, such as King County, have had to eliminate entire
lines of business, such as providing swimming pools and park
construction.

Right now the Seattle City Council is considering a tax levy proposal
from Mayor Greg Nickels to provide funding for road and bridge
maintenance. This is needed because a principal funding source for this
basic, core service was removed by an anti-tax measure. One goal of
anti-tax measures was to force local governments to put measures on the
ballot for voters to decide what they want government to do, so this is
in line with the intent expressed by the voters. That is why I believe
it is fair for the City Council to insist on a public vote for any tax
proposal for a new basketball arena.

These initiatives have forced elected officials to carefully choose what
items to fund. For this reason, the Council crafted a set of reasonable
conditions for negotiations, and the Mayor's office began discussions
with the Sonics former ownership.

The economic model for professional basketball includes a reliance on
public subsidies, The level of subsidy required for a NBA franchise has
increased considerably in recent years. The Sonics consider the 1995
version of KeyArena obsolete, only 11 years after its construction. This
is not an isolated case: Memphis built a new arena in 1991, and then
again in 2004. The economic lifespan of NBA arenas is decreasing and the
amount of public subsidy-formerly a small portion-is now expected to be
the overwhelming majority. This is the economic model of the NBA
nowadays.

Keep in mind, the bonds used to finance construction of KeyArena will
not be paid off until 2014, four years after the Sonics lease expires.

The current business model of the NBA depends not only on public
subsidies, but on generating revenues from arenas that are much large
than KeyArena, in order to generate revenue from restaurants and shops.
They want all the revenue the arena can generate, including from
concerts, which are more profitable than Sonics games. NBA arenas are
becoming as much malls as sports arenas. That is why KeyArena is
considered obsolete, not because of any structural defects, or lack of
good sightlines, for example. As the KeyArena business plan notes, it
was rated "Best Venue in the NBA" in 2004, and has won Facilities and
Event Management's "Prime Site" award three times since opening.

The question is, how much is enough? The proposal for a $220 million
KeyArena remodel, when including the remaining debt, and financed at 6%
interest, would cost an annual $40 million tax subsidy for 15 years.

I developed a proposal that would have provided $8-10 million in new
annual revenues for the Sonics. The Mayor of Seattle proposed three
options to the Sonics. One of the options would have provided a $20
million annual increase in revenues for the Sonics. The Sonics former
owners did not respond to any of the offers, and instead sold for $350
million the business they purchased 5 years ago for $200 million. This
was their business choice; they chose to take their profits by selling
the team, rather than accepting one of our offers and submitting it to
the public for a vote.

Sincerely,

Nick Licata

i need help - no metaphor and next paragraphs

this isn't prettied-up at all. but it's basically what i want to say. i'm also including a rough draft of a few of the next paragraphs...

The first step to treatment is diagnosis. Once a clinician is sure of someone’s diagnosis they develop a treatment plan. Unfortunately, the treatment of many psychiatric illnesses is not necessarily successful. While there is a great deal of research on improving treatment, perhaps it would be worthwhile to also take a second look at how we classify patients.

OR

In any medical field, the first step to treating a patient is the assignment of a diagnosis. Once the patient’s symptoms have been catalogued and assigned to the appropriate diagnostic category, physicians can then work from within that diagnostic paradigm to arrive at a treatment plan. Despite this systematic approach to medicine, many mental health patients are unresponsive to treatment. As a scientific community we are diligently searching for more effective methods to reach these patients, but it is critical that we reconsider our diagnostic criteria: it is time that we permit etiology a say and acknowledge that a system of psychiatric nosology is incomplete without an exploration of causes.

OR

The first step to treatment is diagnosis. Once a clinician is sure of someone’s diagnosis they develop a treatment plan. Unfortunately, the treatment of many psychiatric illnesses is not necessarily successful. While there is a great deal of research on improving treatment, perhaps it would be worthwhile to also take a second look at how we classify patients.

AND THEN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH:

To understand this _____, one must turn back the clock to 1980, the year that Mount St. Helens spewed volcanic ash across the Pacific Northwest and the year that the APA rocked the nation with a third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III). By publishing this new diagnostic tome, the APA provided a universal—even international—language for psychiatrists; it instituted a focus on objective, precisely structured diagnoses; and it inaugurated the much lauded multiaxial diagnostic system. However, the makers of DSM-III and each subsequent volume employed a classification system that was atheoretical to causes. Indeed, the revised versions of the DSM concentrate so heavily on symptoms that they risk ignoring etiology. SPEAK ABOUT FORMER ETIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE. Thus, while useful in many ways, this shift in diagnostic practices may have misdirected the field of psychiatric genetics.

The completion of the Human Genome Project has ushered in a new era in psychiatric genetics. Specifically, successes in the identification of risk genes in schizophrenia (e.g., dysbidin, neureglin reviewed by xxx), these successes may be the turning point for genetic studies in depression, anxiety, substance use, bipolar disorder, schizohprenia, autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder....

i need help - no modest mouse fire metaphor

not done yet

i need help - modest mouse fire metaphor

so far i think this is the best. beth liked it, mark didn't...

In their album Good News for People Who Love Bad News, the alternative band Modest Mouse observes that “Everyone is a building burning, with no one to put the fire out.” To the casual listener these words may smack of pop-rocker metaphysical angst, but in the context of contemporary psychiatry, the lyrics begin to sound more like an indictment. While many mental health patients are successfully stabilized, countless others are treatment resistant—their fires rage on as mental health practitioners desperately fling pharmaceutical cocktails at the flames and hope for the best. As a scientific community we are diligently searching for more effective methods to fight the blaze of mental illness, but it is also critical that we step back and reconsider the nature of this fire. If every patient is indeed a “building burning,” perhaps it is time that we learn to differentiate between a garden variety fire and an electrical fire and then treat our patients accordingly: it is time that we permit etiology a say and acknowledge that a system of psychiatric nosology is incomplete without an exploration of causes.

since debby probably isn't familiar with modest mouse, i may give it a little different spin and rewrite it without the quote (see i need help - no modest mouse fire metaphor; you'll have to scroll up or down to find it--this isn't a link)...

i need help - candy dish metaphor

i wrote this in about five minutes. in my opinion it's super-freakin' ridiculous. but mark thought it worked best...

in the waiting room of every american doctor's office is a weathered stack of people magazine, a fish tank, and a dish of candies. if one day that dish was filled with antipsychotics, benzos, and anticonvulsants, i would be about as shocked as if brad and angelina suddenly climbed from my magazine and into the fish tank--besides breaking about a million laws, it would sever the traditional "present --> diagnose --> prescribe" formula that forms the backbone of medical practice. however, as a mental health practitioner, the candy-dish approach to psychiatry may sometimes seem more attractive than the hopeless trial of medication cocktails that is the routine for many patients. psyciatric research is chugging away at a more practical solution for the disconnect between diagnosis and treatment--new drugs are in the works (actually that's false, but something like that could go here)--but perhaps it is time that we rethink our methods of classifying patients.

i need help - algebra metaphor

this was my first try. beth thought it had promise but rebecca laughed at the simplicity and struck it down with an iron fist of fury....

The medical model treats patients like algebraic equations. Doctors take a diagnosis, apply the prescribed treatment, and then watch for an improved outcome—if x is diabetes, make y insulin; for syphilis, administer penicillin. But in contemporary psychiatry, mental health practitioners must contend with a frustrating disconnect between diagnosis and treatment. Indeed, patients are sometimes more responsive to a physician’s last-chance pharmaceutical blend than any regiment that is particular to the patients’ diagnoses.

excerpt from mari's 17 point scale guest post

Blue Scholars Lyrics!

Perhaps you've noticed that a complete set of lyrics to the Seattle-based, thoughtful hip hop group Blue Scholars is unavailable on the internet. Well, let me be the first to congratulate Andrew for now having the first ever complete set of lyrics to the Blue Scholar's self-titled album!

Check it out; leave me a comment here if you have suggestions about words that don't seem quite right.

solstice: reintroduction (blue scholars lyrics)

We labored and debated while you waited for sabbatical
Bound to rock your body as we turn the party radical
I can see the game like the blind feel the pain
Both sides colliding with the concrete and rain
The pacific northwest take the spotlight now
My people pump your fists like your Manny Pacquiao
Mad child with the wild style right to be hostile
Folks feelin like a rottwiler in a dog pound, forward
In this generation triumphantly
Even wack sound boy speakers couldn’t muffle me
Its up to me and Sabzi to bring back the quality beats to rock the audience
Between the politics, I seek the knowledge that your colleges lack
While we always used to come late and sit in the back and crack jokes
Instead of takin notes wrote this line after line afterschool hit play press rewind

Blue scholars in the place to be, we got one DJ and one MC
And that’s it, that’s it, that’s it
Come on put your hands up and continue this shit
Blue scholars in the place to be, we got one DJ and one MC
And that’s it, that’s it, that’s it

On the youth of the solstice I wrote this, focused on a singular purpose
To get rid of the curses, that afflict us, we live what you only see in pictures
The biggest hypocrites usually quote the most scriptures
But my approach is a diligent task
and rockin shows pro bono is a thing of the past
Dr king said freedom at last and some interpreted that
To mean we’ve come to the end of the path
But instead the long march hasn’t even begun, yall
Political power, manifest once the guns drawn
Right like shit will pop off with one song
Watch what I feed to my seed and keep my son strong
And on and on the anonymous work,
And a modest compensation’s all they ask in return
It’s the passion that burns within, lets begin
My philosophy to win, is callin me to spit this shit

Blue scholars in the place to be, we got one DJ and one MC
And that’s it, that’s it, that’s it
Come on put your hands up and continue this shit
Blue scholars in the place to be, we got one DJ and one MC
And that’s it, that’s it, that’s it

blue school (blue scholars lyrics)

Microphone check, microphone check

I’m a blue scholar worker studying the art of labor to create
Flavor to relate to listeners, alleviate the danger associated with strangers
Isn’t it strange how we estrange ourselves from our neighbor?
Enables us through music to connect, releasing fluids in our neck
With the rhythmic forward movement of our heads and back again
Indeed as we succeed the pioneers
Maybe give back all that we’ve been taking through the years
I bleed, for what I believe to be the truth, nurturing the seed planted in the fertile youth
The poetry, hangin’ from the branches eat the fruit
Pluck the most succulent, and suck upon the juice
So what’s up with you, frequently they ask
Been hibernating writin’ till the last page cypherin’ the past days by
Bypassing the lies and the bullshit
Get up off the mic, and save it for the bull pit (pulpit?)

In the blue school, class is in session
Ask us a question, cause class is in session
(Repeat x4)

I’m an exile, motherland stepchild, metropolis dwellin’ middle Americas prisoner of war
Combat the paper till the blankness is gone
Listen now, talk about the beat after the song
Astronomical, cause that is just a modest measurement
Of my ability to represent my family correct because I be about it,
Ain’t no other way to say it
discovered my potential when I stayed late to tape it in the basement
with an ancient karaoke stereo in lieu of a studio, we made due with everythin’
layin around, and if I’m not mistaken isn’t that improvisation what hip-hop Is all about
if you poppin at the lip then I will sock you in the mouth
sonically to render you the opposite of loud
apology accepted in advance, I think its kinda cool at one point
that you thought you had a chance

In the blue school, class is in session
Ask us a question, cause class is in session
(Repeat x4)

a veteran’s fate written on pages of mixed tapes
I’m all about a government that citizens dictate
Sick of fuckin’ dealin’ with the presidents mistakes
To sit back and rant is just misplaced anger
So I cradle, pens, from now until the fable ends
Takin’ friends for granted, but now I’ve got to make amends
Callin out the big talk small walkin cowards
High above the ground yo we shakin down your tower
And demandin our money back, plus reimbursement
For parkin and shit, I put my heart in this shit
And all my arteries connect to the amplifier wire,
Music make the flames in my inner fire higher
I reinvent the language in the image of a dancer
Contorting where the floor becomes an answer
Blue school graduate dog, after this last verse
When the revolution comes we gonna shoot your ass first

In the blue school, class is in session
Ask us a question, cause class is in session
(Repeat x4)
..strapped for protection, whatever you do
whatever you say, step up front. Be good at what you do.
At least be good at something. Writing, reading, producing, DJing, umm, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, something. Learn an art, a trade, be somebody.