I am reading Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello. I thought Six Authors in Search of a Character might also be interesting. Or, since this is an election year, Six Politicians in Search of Their Character.

 

It always makes me happy to get comments on my Old Time Radio posts, by the way. Thanks.

 

I don’t move on to the next post until I get a comment on the last one. I don’t know why. I didn’t always do that – or, I didn’t do it at the start. Heck, when I started I didn’t expect anybody to read what I had written, much less comment on it. Or, if there were any comments they would be something along the lines of “I am girl from Russia, want to be nice for you.” My first commenter was TR. I guess he was surfing for new blood. He encouraged me. So I wrote another post. And another, and another.

 

What’s it going to be about, this thing of mine? Well, I still haven’t decided. It’s not really about anything. Do you know what an Edith Wharton novel is like? There is a story in the center of a circle. Wharton tells the circle, and as you read the circle you begin to understand the story.

 

Riding on the bus to my junior High School I remember as though it were yesterday passing this one particular house, a Greek Revival house, a white house. In my room at home I would draw plans of what the interior of that house might look like. I created model railroad layouts and maps of imaginary countries too. I suppose I was just becoming aware of the fact that someday I would have to live somewhere, and I started to imagine what such a place might be like.

 

Going farther back, we built a fort, my friends and I. It all started with a large wooden packing crate, into which we cut a door, borrowing tools and screws and hinges from Dad.

 

I’ve lived in a few places now. I owned property on Long Island. It was a disaster.

 

The setting of my dreams is almost always a house, a good house. It looks a little bit different every time, and sometimes I get the impression it belongs to me while at other times I seem to be a guest. But since it is my dream it must be my house, either way. Dreams are plays. They are performed on a stage, like any other play. The house is the stage for my dreams.

 

This house in my dreams seems to be infinite. It must go on for many miles. Often the story of the dream involves discovering new rooms, new wings, new towers, new staircases, new worlds. Open a door and behind it there is another dimension, or another house which is really part of the whole.

 

I don’t know exactly when I started calling it The White Lodge. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that I saw those words on a road sign while traveling around the country as a boy. Perhaps it is the name of an Inn or a Hotel somewhere in the Adirondacks, or somewhere out west, in Wyoming or Colorado, or Alberta. I don’t think it matters. I received from home a box full of my old sketches and lay-outs, maps of other worlds, and drawings, and plans. On one of the house plans I had drawn I had written “The White Lodge.”

 

Life is already one half fiction, if you think about it. How many of your memories are simply recordings, as if they were filmed with a camera, of past events? I suggest that none of them are like that. Memories are dreams you have while you are awake, stories based on real-life events, plays in which characters take on certain roles: mother, father, brother, sister, friend. These are not real people performing for you in your memories. These are your impressions of real people. All fictional characters are impressions of real people.

 

Most of us don’t think about memory that way, but I’m sure you realize that two different people’s memories of the same event will differ, sometimes dramatically.

 

Authors in search of characters – that’s what we are.

 

Everything we see, or experience, is filtered through the imagination. The imagination is not a thing that we turn on and off; it is never idle. One doesn’t have to purposely try to imagine a thing in order to say that his imagination is working. It’s always working. We may say that someone who is aware of this on a certain higher level has “an active imagination,” but everybody’s imagination is fully engaged, along with the rest of his mind.

 

I imagined writing this post this morning. You may say, however, that since you are reading it I really did write it. But without my imagination I couldn’t have written anything, and without yours you couldn’t possibly read anything.

 

Forming pictures in the mind – that is what we do when light bounces off things and comes into our eyes. We need to make sense of that reflection of light. We turn it into information. The information travels into our minds, and we assemble it in what we believe to be the right order and sequence.

 

Think about what it would be like to find a door in your house that you had never seen before, or couldn’t remember, and then open it. What’s inside?

 

Oh well, yes – this room. How could I forget?

 

 

 

 

I spent the weekend contemplating the gloriousness of my perfection.

 

Actually, I spent about five minutes doing that. The rest of the time I played Solitaire. Now I’ve just rearranged the library. I told you I don’t like to be idle.

 

 

I have to make a correction. Last week I lamented the lack of commercials in these Suspense! programs. Well, it appears Roma Wines took over the sponsorship of the show starting with this episode. Cary Grant stars in “The Black Curtain.” There is no mention of John Dickson Carr. My own collection must begin some time after this point.

 

This is not the greatest performance of Cary Grant’s career, by the way.

 

This story has an interesting ending. Now I run the risk of giving it away. Behind “the black curtain” this character did something quite special. He can’t remember the details, but he knows he did something.

 

I’m looking out my window at the hill. I know that it is south east of me, and I know the names of the towns behind it. I’ve been there. But just for a moment let me imagine that the hill marks a boundary line, and beyond it no one has ever ventured and returned alive. Beyond the hill is a “Forbidden Zone.” Perhaps it is a vacuum or a void. Perhaps it is a desert composed entirely of quicksand. Or perhaps it is a place where monsters live. Who can say?

 

Do you have any idea how eagerly I anticipate returning to work tomorrow?

 

 

I’m thinking of a song my Dad used to sing about a gold prospector who could never be warm enough, not until he froze to death and his remains were put in the oven. That’s me today. 90 degrees and I’m just beginning to like it.

 

He’ll be here on the 10th, maybe. Or maybe I’ll grow an additional eyeball on my butt. I shall have to ask him if he remembers the song.

 

Yes, we were a singing family. To some people singing comes as naturally as speaking does, but I think we learn to repress the urge to break into song when we are in the company of non-singers. Here it comes: There are two types of people in the world, singers and non-singers…

 

Anyway, there are people who will call the police if they see (and hear) you singing on a street corner. There are also people who will give you money. It’s a good idea to put a cap on the sidewalk, either way. There’s nothing sadder than a man being toted away to jail without his cap.

 

Dad wanted to bring his camper up and park it on the grounds of my new house. I had to explain I haven’t bought it yet. I was waiting to hear his opinion about it. He seemed to think it was a good idea just on the basis of my description of it. Well, that may be so. I’ll have to get an inspector in there. I do believe the chimney wants a liner.

 

But my any-where-but-here mentality of a few weeks ago, or a few days ago, (or a few hours ago?), has been alleviated by this lovely warm day. This house ain’t such a bad old place to have a home in.

 

The upstairs lady tenant left me a $5 gift certificate to my favorite coffee shop because I helped her to find the breaker box in the cellar the other day. Today I bought her a $20 hanging plant to put on her porch – which is on the other side of the house from mine. I’m interested to see if a competition will develop, and how far our resources will allow it to be taken.

 

I should go upstairs and ask if she wants to come out and play. I’ll be the Indian. I called it first.

 

Asking adult neighbors if they can come out and play is a little like singing in the waiting room of the dentist’s. There’s really nothing wrong with it, but if you do it you may be considered eccentric.

 

So what if we are in our forties? I have an Indian feather and a band. I think I may be able to demonstrate a belt of wampum if I dig into the wardrobe where the boys’ old Halloween costumes are hidden. And I’ll bet you anything she has a pearl handled revolver and a hat. If it’s not registered I won’t tell.

 

I don’t date. I play date.

 

We can go skinny dipping in the river if we want to be reminded we’re not kids anymore. Ouch. Actually, if I were to make such a suggestion I might just see that gun. It’s a fine soft day for it, though.

 

 

The fellow from Ecuador who lives upstairs (next to the naked cowgirl sharpshooter) just walked in with a new computer. I wonder if that means he won’t come knocking on my door to use mine anymore. Not that I minded. The other night I found myself able to relax outdoors while he was here doing whatever he was doing. When I’m alone, and the house is empty, I don’t sit for very long. I pace. I move from room to room. I pick up a little bit of this book, a chapter of that book, a line or two from Donne.

 

When the boys are here I may read a whole book through.

 

Sometimes, when I am alone here, which is most of the time, it seems as if I am looking for somebody. Maybe in this room, maybe in that one. Where are they? Where are my playmates? Perhaps they are in the bath.

 

I often sing along with music. Elizabeth hears me sing on the job. She tells me she likes it, but I do pay her. Not that it matters what she thinks… Well, I suppose it does. But I am not always aware that I am doing it.

 

Let’s see – did I write anything worth writing today?

 

 

Who cares?

I grokked Elizabeth yesterday. Stop snickering. The word means to empathize so completely with a person, animal, principle, language, or concept that one seems to enter into union with it. You knew that, of course, being well-read.

 

Hey – if you can read the White Lodge without developing a wart on your fanny you can read anything.

 

The word grok is a creation of Science Fiction author Robert A. Heinlein for his 1961 novel, Stranger in a Strange Land. It’s a Martian word meaning to drink. (I know most of you know this, and some of you are fluent in Martian, but I’m explaining it anyway.)  The Martians believe that when they drink they are entering into a union with the water on a particular level which changes both the water and the one drinking.

 

Well golly, that’s actually true. Taking anything into our bodies changes both us and it. Normally, our consciousnesses so utterly subsume whatever the it is that we are unaware of it. But our lack of awareness is a human trait, according to Heinlein, which the Martians don’t share. They are more in tune with this process of molecular union.

 

Good Lord, I’m a nerd.

 

Grok means a few other things too, but the popular usage – meaning the way it has passed from one generation of nerds to another down through the centuries – is just as I have described above. Now, if I say I grokked Elizabeth yesterday, you will know what I mean.

 

I was upstairs, she was on her way down. As she passed me I grokked her and began heading down the stairs. That is to say, I was heading down the stairs inside of her body and seeing things through her eyes, while my own – bless its perfect beauty – remained right where it was. Or, right where I was. Or, not quite where I would have been if I were somewhere other than where we were, which is…

 

Where was I? Oh yes! – grokking. It’s so frighteningly dull as to be interesting. Now, if you can read, write, and speak in a foreign language – that is, one that is not your own – then you are experiencing that language in the normal way we humans have of experiencing reality. But, once you begin to understand that language as though it were your own, and beyond understanding – without translation – and it becomes the language of your innermost thoughts, then it may said that you have grokked that language. You see?

 

Just to give you warning, by the way, the term grok and a few other coinages of Heinlein’s were frequently used by Charles Manson, who was a fan. Oh, goody.

 

OK. So, when it comes to grokking a person, as opposed to animal, principle, language, or concept, one experiences a change in physical perception because both entities are self-aware – or, because both entities are actual entities.

 

Anyhooo, it’s not the first time it’s happened, but it was a far more frequent occurrence when I was younger. What led up to it was my commiseration, or identification, with her discomfort over a matter to which I was able to relate. Specifically, her pants kept falling down. She had neglected to wear a belt, and now regretted it. It was terrible. As she passed me at the top of the stairs, and she hiked her blue jeans up by putting her fingers through the belt loops on either side for the hundredth time, a subconscious memory of having done exactly the same thing myself, and of having felt the same uncomfortable way about it, made it seem as though they were my fingers, my blue jeans, and it was my body. And then suddenly, I was heading downstairs.

 

 

Her colors are not quite as vivid as mine, not as saturated, but she sees angles and the shadows of angles as if everything was bathed in special light. I never dreamed the world could have so many shadows.

 

Nerds have given us so much, haven’t they? – the computer, conspiracy theories, all kinds of great stuff. Did you know that there are people in the world who really do believe in a secret society called The Illuminati? – Who really do believe in the existence of a book called The Necronomicon, or Book of the Dead? – Who really do grok books written by Carlos Castaneda? (Yes, the lucid dreaming instructions do actually work. Try it, you’ll like it. Or, maybe not.) Nerds have contributed to pop culture in all sort of interesting ways, not least by perpetuating certain extremely imaginative fictional creations from philosophy-rich Science Fiction and Fantasy novels as if they were Non-Fiction realities which can be independently corroborated.

 

That isn’t to say they don’t contain elements of truth. For instance, the proposal that we are capable of extremes of empathy which compel us to alter perspective is not a fallacy. (Obviously - for it happens to me. Corroboration is anecdotal but compelling.) Heinlein created a word for it in order to advance the plot of his novel and to express his somewhat pantheistic point-of-view.

 

What lends credence to these things, which originate and are perpetuated outside of the mainstream, is the wholesome and perfectly natural desire of humanity to merge with the Infinite. There really is more in Heaven and on earth than can be dreamt-of in your philosophy, Horatio. So, there.

 

In other news, a trip to the Indian Reservation to buy cigarettes is indicated. I think I had also mentioned wanting to go to the garden center. It’s pouring down rain this morning, with thunder, but I hear that it may clear up. We shall see.

 

I have been enjoying a book given to me by my ex-wife of various dramatic works – one of these anthologies of plays you probably haven’t thought about since being forced to read them in High School. They span the millennia from the ancient Greeks to the modernist freaks. It is like a Billboard chart of the greatest hits of Western Civilization. I’ve noticed it doesn’t contain my play, a glaring omission which will no doubt be amended with the next printing.

              

It is a pretty morning. Tomorrow and this weekend I am taking some time off, to do what? I don’t know. I am told by caring friends to just relax, meditate. On what? I don’t know. What I do know, based upon prior experience, is that by Saturday morning I will be wishing for work to do. I am like a shark. If I stop moving I begin to sink.

 

At my second favorite coffee shop I noticed a woman working there whom I knew from years ago and haven’t seen since. At first I couldn’t place her. We made eye contact and it haunted me until the other shoe dropped – about half an hour later. It was in my first year sober, and my memories are rather scrambled. Well, they’re rather scrambled anyway. I make most of them up. I shall have to greet her properly when next I see her. I don’t mean to give offence.

 

Often I am greeted by name, sometimes warmly, by people I don’t know. That is, I don’t remember them. I have learned to reflect back to them an appropriate response (I hope) that doesn’t hurt their feelings.

 

Many times Dad would stop to help people broken down on the road side. Of course, when I was young it was a more common occurrence. Cars have become much more reliable since the 60’s. And there was no GPS, no cell phone. To be stranded on the roadside was to be stranded well and truly. I think our communication technology isolates us. That seems paradoxical but if you think about it we are more self-sufficient as a result, and fewer are the opportunities to depend upon the kindness of strangers.

 

Self-sufficiency is good, as far as it goes. I grew up wanting to be self-sufficient. Recently I have been writing about being “off the grid” in a variety of ways. But there is a caveat. There is a principle which will insure perpetual loneliness for a person, and that is self-sufficiency when it is opposed to God-sufficiency. To be sufficient unto God is preferable to being sufficient unto oneself. I learned that – and, it was a brand new concept for me – in the process of getting away from the booze.

 

Forget all the finer points of debate. One who is God-sufficient must have infinite resources. It may not seem that way. But if that infinity is going to demonstrate, what better way than in service to others? No, it’s not the works that get one to Heaven – and nobody ever said that it was – but it is through works that we naturally reveal our willingness to get there. When you see someone helping another person, say at the roadside break-down or something like that, you may surmise that person has a joyful expectation of salvation, and that this is the way it naturally plays out in his day-to-day life. Well, of course it’s not the only way, but it is one.

 

Death by misadventure: I love that mysterious phrase. A man arrives at the gate to Heaven riding an ostrich, with a piece of a fallen satellite skewering his head, and St. Peter says, “I see you’ve had a misadventure.”

 

May all your misadventures offer comic relief.

 

The M. Night Shyamalan film, The Village, is about people who live off the grid. I liked it. The movie raises some very interesting questions for discussion, as do most of this man’s imaginative, philosophy-laced cinematic offerings. It seems to come at us from an Atheist/Humanist perspective until we arrive at the ending, which features an extraordinary leap of faith, (and one must ask Faith in what?), and the intervention of a kind stranger upon which the story’s denouement entirely depends. How coincidental it seems that our heroine encounters this particular man, who turns out to be a Good Samaritan, rather than some other person.

 

 

Of course, the fact that the heroine is blind can be interpreted in several ways. I think of the faith of Saul, now blind, going into Damascus to find the man he had intended to kill (who might well be hiding from him, obviously) in order to have his sight restored by him. OK, that’s a stretch, except that blindness is often a part of stories about leaps of faith. In the movie the blind heroine, motivated by true love – that silly, wonderful, world-changing thing – must venture on her own into an unknown place, which she has been given every impression is hostile, in order to save the life of the virtuous young man to whom she is affianced. (And he has kind of a stick figure character, created to be merely symbolic, like an heroic Operatic tenor.) It is quite fanciful, or lacking in credibility, which further demonstrates the extent to which this filmmaker is willing to go to make his point.

 

Now, of course there is ambiguity in the film’s message, but I think the ambiguity is coming not from the story’s rather unambiguous moral but from the film’s setting, - the world the filmmaker has created. Life is ambiguous, yes. What we see is not necessarily what is, yes. These are true statements.

 

Now, I might have gone in another direction completely with my title and offered my impression of Blanche DuBois. I’m jolly glad I didn’t because my mind turned instead to that fascinating movie. I don’t own a copy. It occurs to me I should. I do own a copy of A Streetcar Named Desire, however. But, I don’t think I ought to be spending my weekend off by watching movies, do you?

 

I’ll probably write.

 

By the way, is that true about sharks? Or is it just an old wives’ tale? I mean, do they sink when they stop moving?