Ozma Links

I Had All This Crap To Tell You

First, I was going to tell you what was wrong with the Lost finale.

It is: That it was exactly like the buildup to the war in Iraq.

All the unanswered questions. Why can't we wait to find out from Hans Blix, U.N. inspector, whether or not there are WMDs? Why do we have to invade now?

Who made up those yellowcake stories?

What about the Downing Street Memo?

WAIT...EVERYONE IS FORGETTING. You are all forgetting!

Oh, and then it KILLED ME that people were content. Absolutely no reason why anything happened and instead simple absurdity and the absurdity is defended. 

And there's me, infuriated, sitting in my chair, computer at hand. WHY DOESN'T SOMEONE DO SOMETHING?

Someone must be held accountable for this...Lost Finale...Who is going to pay for all the holes in the plot.

Who is going to pay for all the wrong of the war? Are we just going to pretend that all that stuff never happened? The Polar Bears? The lootings of the greatest archeological legacy that existed on the planet? 

But I never quite got a chance to tell you that.

And then I was going to talk about some people I think are wise and how wisdom is horribly underrated. We don't even pay attention to the wise in our culture. Wisdom is invisible but we've never needed wisdom like we need wisdom now. Well, maybe we have needed it.  But as a species, we tend not to run up against utter catastrophe like we have lately--over the past 75 years or so.

We've had our crazies but they are kind of globally enabled in a way they've never been.  Genghis Khan did pretty well for himself though, considering.

And then I was going to discuss the depredations of age. 

But no! No, I do not have time for that. I have things to do, people to see. Mostly: Things to write. Things almost no one will read. 

Here's an article about quitting the internet. Something I'm not in a position to do but something which I pathetically think will make me superhuman. Until I remember those years I lived without the internet and how the NY Times and other books and magazines simply stood in for it in terms of time-wasting.

HAVE A GREAT SUMMER EVERYONE. And don't forget (1) We might be doomed (2) We should try to save ourselves anyway. Because what the hell.

 

Conversation Faux Pas #1: Talking about The Wars

One thing I've always had a problem with is the conversation faux pas of discussing horribly screwed up things about the world with a high level of emotion in social situations.

Not all the time. But, sometimes.

One place I particularly remember this not going over well was the Grateful Dead. When everyone is stoned on pot. However, I did meet a very brilliant African dude who was getting a Ph.D. in sociology. And we had a good conversation about the Dead and about what function it might serve in society. He said it was 'an escape valve.' 

So I am not sure if it is an American thing or what. We're allowed to talk about immediate current events. But one thing people really don't like to talk about is the wars. We're in two wars. It's like that Steve Martin routine. When you are on trial for not paying your taxes, you just say 'I forgot.' 

That is what the war is like, now.

This has to be new. I do remember, in Peru, people did not like to talk about the ongoing war against the (domestic) terrorists The Shining Path (and a few other, more obscure, groups). They were afraid all the time and it just wasn't a good topic to bring up. For one thing, you never really knew for sure who was in the Shining Path. Many people were involved and everyone kept their involvement secret. And they often randomly attacked people they imagined to be their enemies. So best to keep quiet.

But we don't have anything like that going on now, here. So I suppose people simply don't want to be reminded of the wars. They are unpleasant to think about. And there is no need, perhaps? There is nothing we can do about the wars. We can't seem to stop the wars. We vote for a president who says he will stop one of the wars. And then he does not stop that war. 

And he also gets us embroiled much more in the other war--the war in Afghanistan. 

We aren't genuinely involved in the wars. And that's a good thing. Who wants to be involved in wars? Thank goodness we are not involved. I don't feel bad for not being involved. Do you? 

I think this is extremely good evidence that Americans are extremely detached from their own government. Our government is having two wars and it feels as if they are wars of another country. 

There are two things that have always made it difficult for me to completely avoid ever talking about the wars--even if I primarily talk about it with my husband. The first thing is just, wars bother me a lot. The people getting killed. It's awful to think about. I don't know why this is. I even remember crying over the Faulkland Island's war that happened when I was in grade school. This makes me laugh now. 

The second thing is the sheer stupidity of the two wars we are in. The insane waste, the uselessness and destruction for something completely unnecessary. It's the most infuriating thing I've ever seen in my entire life. It truly drives me batshit crazy to think about how avoidable and pointless these wars are.

That we are in much deeper in Afghanistan than we were is very depressing to me since I voted for Obama and I thought he was smarter than that. 

I do think this is the ultimate reason people don't want to talk about these particular wars: This pointless evil mayhem boggles the mind and most of us honestly have absolutely no clue whatsover about what we could do at this point to stop these wars. But there are also people who are in favor of the wars. Which I cannot understand.

These people are in the minority, particularly over Iraq. So that too is odd--to have these wars that so few people genuinely want to fight. 

Sadly, This Is The End of Cult Month

I was trying to figure out the specifics of what cult leaders do. But someone already did it:

I guess there is much more to it than I thought! I thought it was simply family structure plus control plus emotional manipulation and removing the confusion of freedom and unanswered questions combined with the promise of personal perfection.  But you can also make people subservient by physical activity and a deprivation diet. It is like ordinary social interaction--particularly during adolescence--freakishly amplified. What we won't do to fit into our peer group.

There are still things I wonder about.

(1) There can't be a cult leader manual. Can there? Maybe there is simply a script that some manipulative people intuitively know.

(2) How much is this like other things? It's terrible because I almost want to be in a cult--just for a month or two--to see how it works and what it's like. Oh, and you know that kind of thing would be good for my memoirs.

What Explains The Bacon Effect?

Somewhere I was trying to articulate what I'm now calling 'The Bacon Effect.'

This is the attractiveness of something that people are told is bad for them and that they should not do.

The bacon effect seems to have these components

(1) Something is bad for the individual who consumes it or for other people or animals.

(2) There is some moral wrongness involved in this badness and someone, somewhere criticizes this badness. E.g., bacon is meat and meat is known to be a morally sketchy thing in some people's eyes. But I think it is primarily the unhealthiness of bacon that leads to the bacon effect. People don't really think much about how their bacon comes from a pig and that pigs are smart and create ecological nightmarish pools of pig shit and massive quantities of methane gas, which is the most serious of all the greenhouse gases in terms of warming the planet.

They just know they aren't supposed to eat fat. And bacon is pretty much all fat.

(3) Some people begin to embrace their love of this thing and regard this love of it as a badge of honor.

Among the things most likely to cause the bacon effect are: Bacon and unhealthy foods like bacon, shopping, consumerism and irresponsible spending, SUVs and other gas guzzlers and pretty much anything people moralize about that is also interwoven into our lives and that we've learned to enjoy.

There are other things about the bacon effect. For example, there's nothing genuinely rebellious about one's love for bacon or SUVs or shopping. Instead, it's really just part and parcel of some stuff that you are told to love and that is branded and sold to you. It has to be a capitalist product to really be subject to the bacon effect.

Perhaps not. The burdens of motherhood are also subject to the bacon effect. Mothers trumpet their violation of the code of conduct and gleefully discuss their transgressions at times. I gave my kid a donut! I let her sit in front of the TV for hours and hours! And so on.

I suppose the effect is partly just a result of people not liking to be told what to do and hating moral arguments telling them they can't have what they want without doing something wrong.

Morality seems oppressive. But I think this is mostly because people doubt their ability to live by the standards, and the nebulous nature of the standards. People don't trumpet their pleasure in stealing other people's stuff. We know we shouldn't steal and we know how not to steal.

Giving in to the bacon effect is an incredible decadence. Not so much: A piece of bacon is decadent. But just the idea that the person who is genuine worried about not destroying the planet or animal suffering or the desperation of someone's poverty is just a pill who needs to be put in their place. And the reason is that their stance might limit some small pleasure of yours. 

It really is a kind of 'burn dollar bills while people around you starve' kind of stance. Drink the champagne in your wine cellar before the mongrel hordes invade with their starving children. A thumbing one's nose in the face of dreary morality and the sanctimony of others.

It's better--or more socially acceptable--to indulge oneself than to comment on people's indulgence that causes harm to others or grossly ignores harm. In some contexts, anyway. In some places, driving your hummer and just being a consuming nightmare is a kind of charming statement of individuality.

In that sense, it is simply a protective mechanism. Don't tell me not to chop down the trees. I'll show you what a badass I am, what a manly man and chop the fuck out of this forest until there is nothing but ashes and stumps.

It is the response of a child and oh, so very, very American. I've done it myself. I've reveled in the air conditioning and the general decadence, all the while knowing our days are kind of numbered as a result of all this reveling.

(We sit and feel guilty for it, which is absurd. The whole point of it is to make money for someone else. We barely benefit. Almost all of us are entirely on the tail end. And we are also obeying, in some sense, the advertiser, who puts the bacon effect to great use in manipulating us to buy what it is the advertiser wants us to buy.)

Maybe it's a fatalistic helplessness as well. Because morality's thrown in our faces and we wearily think there's almost nothing we can do. Which is not true. But what we can do is teeny tiny in the face of all the bacon eating.

The problem for me is that indulgence, when it's connected to the destructive lifestyle forced upon us, creates anxiety. And the only relief I find are in things like never buying cleaning supplies but washing all my counters with vinegar. Re-using water and other strategems. I drive the hell everywhere. I'm not talking up my own virtue. I'm just pointing out that the bacon effect has limits. Although you will reach out to people to confirm the OK-ness of your bacon-eating, at the heart is that quiver of uneasiness.

The Cult of Gadget Hackwrench

Check out the photos in National Geographic: Inside a Cult

I'm telling you: For cult-leader wear, white is de rigeur. Nothing else works.

Cults make me curious but I suppose they shouldn't. First, you want to know why people are so eager to give up their freedom and then you want to know how people get the idea of organizing people in such an odd way.

And who got the idea? Or is it simply a natural thing for people to collect around a figure or idea, create rituals and a way of life with something sacred at the center.

It's a blurry line between religions and cults--and perhaps both repeat family structures in some way and that's why they are so compelling.

But it's not just that. It's not only giving over your freedom to some leader. There is also the promise of (1) knowledge and (2) control.

All cults come along with theories of the world. Religions too purport to explain the randomness of the world, the universe's sheer indifference to us, the fickle finger of fate and so on. And, as in Hinduism, the explanation can be very similar to science in that it isn't an agent or person directing all the bad shit going down. The bad shit is just a karmic response to some bad shit that someone did. A bunch of cyclical shit.

There are rules. Sometimes the rules are simple. In the Iglesia Maradoniana, the cult formed around the Argentine soccer player, Diego Maradona, the rules are things like:   "Love football over all things"

Simple! They even thought of a rule that says you have to obey all their rules. Which is wise, if a bit recursive.

I discussed religion in depth with a Hindu priest as part of a class I was teaching. He was, as far as I could tell, a fundmantalist. And his rap was amazingly similar to the rap of Christian preachers in that it took our human confusion and discontent and attempted to dissolve it in a warm fizz of comforting explanation. The universe is a reasonable place where all the utterly horrific things that happen are simply punishment for some prior karmic debt we don't remember.

But in addition to preventing us from freaking out at how completely bizarre and unpredictable actual reality might be, if viewed from a detached perspective, a good cult narrative will give someone something to do and sometimes even tell them how to live their lives at virtually any second. Even down to how many times to chew your food.

Thus, you have structure, explanation, an explanation for senselessness, etc. Then, you often have the comforting idea that you as an individual are significant to the universe and in the universe. Not as significant as the cult leader, by a long shot. But you do matter.

Now this is true of course...You do matter. Kind of. We all do. And we also kind of don't.

Then there is also the familial tie and the sense of belonging that cults give us. People to turn to.

But I am now remembering how I liked to start clubs when I was a kid. Cult-like clubs. So maybe I get it a bit more than I should. One of these cults--started in the 4th grade--was about the Greek gods. I got another kid to believe that we were descended from them and arranged a series of religious rituals worshiping. She was might pissed when she realized I kind of made it up. But my grip on reality has never been that strong.

I remember conducting elaborate funeral services for my friend's hamster, 'Hillary'...I was a budding cult leader. At least until 9th grade.

Here's a list of the 8 craziest cults. The Raelians are #1!

I've been trying to keep it light here. And it's hard to keep it light when writing about cults because the most fascinating cults are also the scary ones, like Jim Jones.

Supposedly there is a cult of the Disney mouse Gadget Hackwrench (picture above). But I'm not sure I believe it.

Have I Got A Cult For You!

The French and their former colonized subjects are not known for their cults. Wines, cheeses, sneering existentialist dismissals of starry eyed sincerity, yes.

So when the French make a cult, you know it's going to have some good stuff in it. It's not going to be one of those self-deprivation, celibacy type deals.

Hence, the Raelians.

I post a link to their own website below, where you can experience the wonders of their flash intro, where the founder discusses his encounter with aliens or something. Both creepy and amusing. 

According to their website, a French journalist, named Rael, who wears the requisite white space age costume of a genuine special person we should all trust very much met an alien who told him that:

Human life is "not the result of random evolution, nor the work of a supernatural 'God'. It is a deliberate creation, using DNA, by a scientifically advanced people who made human beings literally "in their image" -- what one can call "scientific creationism.""

This begs a certain question, which is, who made these scientifically advanced people? Or is it turtles all the way down?

Anyway, there are Elohim, special beings, all the religious figures were Elohim. And guess what? RIGHT NOW WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT? It's the Age of Revelation.

A flashing light in 1973s and you were given a message? Dude, no one  gives credence to anything that happened in the 1970s.

Also, I have to ask the obvious question: Why believe it just because an alien told you?  You can't even go off facial cues or tics or anything to tell if the alien is lying.

But I understand. If an alien told me something, I would probably also believe it. What accounts for this gullibility towards aliens? Aliens have as much reason to lie as anyone, I am sure.

The Age of Revelation thing though? I feel that! It feels like the Age of Revelation to me.

Cults tend to use either complete sexual freedom or sexual deprivation or some combination thereof and the Raelians use hot young people to entice new members.

The Raelian Hug and Love Festival in South Korea 

But that's not the best part. The best part is that the Raelians are defying a number of national and international laws and attempting to clone human beings.

Why, exactly? They don't say. The Elohim want us to do it probably.

Really cool Elohim embassy (not built yet)

According to this wildly positive article in Time Magazine, they don't just clone but they also manage to make divorce amicable.

Which is the greater miracle, I ask you?

Anyway, they seem to be into the peace and love thing and so we should hope they don't do a Heaven's Gate or Jonestown move anytime. The only problem was that The People's Temple was also peace and love for quite some time. Anti-racism was a centerpiece of the Jim Jones' cult. Some cults start out nice, with lots of relaxing chanting and group meals and then sadly devolve into something more sinister.

Rael, formerly Claude Vorilhon, was once a pop singer. Apparently, he was also a racecar driver. Now, he's just a humble messenger of Elohim. Apparently, he was also a bad husband who terrorized at least one of his wives.

He also looked a lot like one of the Bee Gees:

 

I always thought that Barry Gibb looked like the nice one.  Maybe that was just because he didn't need as much dental work as the others.

In 2002, there was something of a buzz about the Raelians successfully cloning a child. And this is clearly where the Raelians most amazing success lies: Public relations. That Time Magazine article! Who is their publicist? Lindsay Lohan needs that publicist.

Besides cheese, tightrope walking and hip theorizing, the French are extremely adept at biotech. The Raelians do appear to have their own company Clonaid, which claims to have cloned someone. Brigette Bosselier, the head of this company, has an actual Ph.D. Which isn't saying much.

So the question is: How did Barry Gibb/Claude Something or other/Rael manage to start and then disseminate this group of people?  Sex may have been part of it. The Raelians are very sexually open, active and maybe if you get enough hot people in a cluster who are sexually available, anything is possible.

One man, who claimed Rael was breaking up his family and involving his children in orgies, attempted to murder Rael.

Also, they give meditation classes. And you know people will do anything to relax.

Vorilhon has the usual legal problems and government problems. Cult leadin' ain't easy

So there you have it: Promise the world aliens coming down to solve all their problems, and give them some nude yoga classes and you're pretty much halfway there with your own cult. Website flash and white jacket optional but highly recommended.

Cults!

 

I don't want to pick on either North or South Korea. I wrote on North Korea and the religion of Juche now I'm writing on some Korean cults or cult-like organizations. But this is a coincidence.

Speaking of North Korea:

Here's a article on B.R. Myers book 'The Cleanest Race' about North Korean propaganda

Cultlike groups aren't confined to any one type of people. The U.S. is an utter hotbed of these groups. I only want to understand a bit about how people control others, how a nexus of social control springs up. And just the general weirdness of humanity.

I am speculating wildly and feel a bit guilty about that. I feel guilty because it is so much more fun to speculate than actually know what I'm talking about.

And I feel sad that I can't get a job where I get to make shit like this up all the time, read books about random weird things I'm not an expert in and write about that. Instead of having accountability for what I say. 

I've always been curious about cults and have known a few people in them. What reminded me how fascinating cults are was the coincidence of finding a brochure about 'Maum Meditation' at my local cafe.

I know nothing about it except that (1) They mention their leader/founder often in the pamphlet. They also mention his many, oddly titled books. He was South Korean.

(2) The pamphlet is very fancy and expensive.

(3) They promise you perfect bliss and happiness.

This last one is a tip off, I think. However, I don't have any evidence to suppose they are a true cult rather than some heavy-handed self-help organization trying to part us from our money. 

Some years ago a 'yoga studio' opened up in the neighborhood of the town where I lived. It was called Dahn Yoga. I paid money and went because I thought it was a normal yoga class.

Dahn Yoga wasn't a cult, exactly. A sort of 'cult lite,' a bit like Amway. I actually enjoyed the bouncing around you do there, which had nothing to do with yoga. It too was started by a South Korean. But it wasn't worth the bucketloads of cash I would have had to pay to do it regularly.

There was a local debate about whether it was a cult but it was inconclusive. It's rather difficult to say precisely what a cult is. It involves a personal control, unlike the control of culture, the standard groups, and it is organized to benefit to a ridiculous degree one very small group of people and completely fleece everyone else. Sort of like an investment bank, actually.

In some cases, you do know a cult when you see it.  I see no need to fuss over the borderline cases.

Dahn Yoga had many extremely attractive, young scarily enthusiastic salespersons who would try to sell you memberships of ever-increasing cost. They promised something called 'brain respiration.' They promised a lot of things. The usual things--peace, inner bliss, enhanced cognitive functioning. They promise, like all scams, something close to personal perfection and alleviation of suffering.

I ended up, as part of my first class payment, with one of the founders' books, full of platitudes, pointless snippets of advice, promises of personal perfectibility.

Given how often cult leaders and despotic dictators self-publish, you start to wonder if that's not the whole point. To see their name in print.

Here's the puzzling thing: Are we so very unhappy, that we can be fooled like this, time and again? And why? Most of us here in the United States have almost everything we need. What are we missing, exactly?

If there's one thing I am trying to teach my kid it is this: If anyone tries to sell you anything or involve you in anything that promises to make you better than you are now, to alleviate all your troubles and smooth away all your sorrows, then they are almost always lying to you. 

I mostly try to get her to see how this works in ordinary advertisements. In their own way, this is how capitalism gets us to shop. It's necessary for belonging. Buying crap you don't need is not really optional--you have to do it. To utterly refuse, e.g., during adolescence or college is to risk not finding love and few can (or even should) take this risk.

The most fascinating thing to me about the salesmenship of happiness is that the intense desire I have for something makes me much more receptive to the absurd results I am being promised. If you show something almost impossible to achieve, but which everyone desperately wants, the thing sells itself. The person's desire takes over and the salesperson doesn't much need to explain how they are going to get the longed for item. The initiate will discover for himself, etc.

When I was young, my hobby was going to the library. And at the library I would meet all kinds of weird and somewhat interesting people. There was a very dumb communist I used to argue with. And then there was this exceedingly sweet Moonie I used to talk to. I noticed even then he seemed happy, at peace. But I didn't want that happiness, I didn't want that peace. Like most people, I'd rather be tormented than give up my autonomy. 

But that is strange, in a way. We want happiness, but most of us don't want it that much. We'd prefer freedom. And I wonder how often these are at odds.

The term 'Moonie' is actually a derogatory term. It is called the Unification Church and I'm not sure what the followers are called. 

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon was in fact a North Korean who had a vision at 16 that he should be a Messiah like figure, later went to South Korea, and somehow (I need to find out how) managed to start this highly successful religious group.

 The one thread I see between him, Kim Jong Il, the Maum Meditation guy and the founder of Dahn Yoga is the claim that the person had some sort of vision, some type of special knowledge, a recognition of something that can save humanity forever.

So that's another thing to teach my kid: People can know facts. They can know scientific theories. They can even have a better view about how to treat other people. But closely examine other people's promise to know something amazing that you don't, especially when they are telling you how to live.

Here there, is another intense desire we have: The desire for someone who has all the answers. I really think that plays a partial role in the success of the cult of personality totalitarianism. 

This is strange. Why do humans tend to want this? Even I have fantasies of some Deus Ex Machina spaceship aliens coming down and saving our asses at the last minute from global warming, peak oil, overpopulation and our general fucked-upness.

I guess if you were being Freudian, it's all kind of obvious---some sort of wish to be transported back to infancy, or whatever's close to infancy. 

If you were being existentialist, it's about our need to eschew responsibility, our desire to evade choice. 

I'm actually just full of shit here probably. 

Naturally, we're supposed to love freedom. That's a long story--why freedom is better than the bosom of a benevolent leader who always provides. Well, maybe not such a long story.

Oh this is sad...

But I have to stay off Twitter. And there are pee and poop toys.

This disturbs me greatly. I mean, the toys: http://allweirdnews.com/winner-of-the-most-weird-stuffed-toy-ever/

Fat Elvis

 

So it pays to be friends with cool people on Facebook like the most excellent and badass Grace Davis (who alas doesn't blog anymore). 

Grace said:

I was born in 1955 and this year I will turn 55. Is it my Symmetrical Birthday or is it called something else? Are diamonds involved? Or, am I just a geezer whose year of birth is matchy-matchy with her age? Discuss.

And some guy named Alan Fleishman, who I don't even know said:

Stop counting chronological years and start counting phases of your life. I think I'm on #11.

Which, it should be admitted, is somewhat brilliant. 

There are some wrinkles. How do we differentiate periods? It's all very arbitrary. With Elvis, it was easier. There were the films. The Blue Hawaii period. Vegas White Pantsuit Elvis. Fat Elvis.

I loved Elvis as a child. Oh, how I loved Elvis. The day Elvis died was one of the most shocking days of my life. I suddenly came face to face with my own mortality. I was 7 years old. 

My parents were young parents--more Creme and Rolling Stones than Elvis. But my best friend and next- door-neighbor's mother was older, and a devoted Elvis fan. She was like a second mother to me. I grew up at her house, listening to Elvis records, watching every Elvis movie that came on their TV, hearing from her about how Elvis would buy Cadillacs for his fans. 

And holy shit. Was Elvis young when he died! Only 42. I am almost the age Elvis was when he died. It did not occur to me, of course, that Elvis had died young. It only seemed that Elvis should be immortal. Elvis was the first person I'd known who had died.

Somehow I even ended up with an Elvis shirt, with the date of his birth and death underneath a picture of him. I slept in it every night.

There was a period where this neighbor and I clung to the brief hope that Elvis was alive, breathlessly discussing every reported Elvis sighting. 

I didn't have a romantic crush on Elvis. Rather, I had a fantasy that Elvis was my father.  Elvis had shot one movie in my state, in the town where I was born. Close (but not nearly close enough) to the time I would have been conceived. For me, this was enough evidence to prove Elvis was my father. To this day, I see Elvis-like traits in my face. I do a passable Elvis impersonation as well.

Even when I suspected Elvis wasn't my father, the smallness and obscurity of the town and Elvis's brief proximity to it sealed in my mind forever the idea that Elvis and I had some star-crossed destiny, some cosmic connection. 

42. Shit, mortality. Life is fleeting, etc., etc. Even now, if I want to get in touch with the transient nature of human existence and so forth, it helps to think of Elvis.

The Elvis periods were probably not apparent to Elvis. He probably didn't think 'this is my in-the-army period' or 'this is my dating-Ann-Margaret period.' 

We see Elvis's life as having some trajectory: A peak, and a decline. Most of us can't see our own lives that way. Are they that way? Was Elvis's life even that way or is this all imposed from the outside?

It seems worth a try to see our lives this way, at least once in a while, just for the hell of it. Maybe it will make us attend to where we are, to what we are doing, to what we have done--to name what we usually don't even notice. 

I suggest we go for more descriptive and less disparaging names for phases than 'Fat [Your Name Here]' though.

Some advantages to a 'Name Your Phases' approach to life

(1) One terrible problem we face is that we tend to assume we will live forever. We don't seize life, we don't direct it, we don't revel in our experiences in the knowledge that they are each unreproducable. We let each moment pass us by. And we are often waiting for things to happen, anticipating something we want in the future in a way that makes us wish the time would pass quicker. Which is NUTS, if you really think about it. Our life in time is a finite resource. And we squander. But humans always do that to finite resources.

And then we glance back at the past wistfully, a past we did not always live fully, we sometimes have to admit. 

(I'm not the first to notice this. Schopenhauer--who was kind of an Elvis of 19th Century German Philosophy--said all this, and said it better.)

So, what if we added a little narrative? What if we reliably attended to the 'this shall not come again' aspect parallel to Elvis's peak, sometime around the filming of the movie 'Jailhouse Rock.'

When would that be or have been, for you?

Let us not mourn what has passed. Rather, let's acknowledge it. And the next phase. The trajectory. Otherwise, we risk not attending to the narrative, and failing to revel in it.

(2) Perhaps by naming the phases, we'll be able to write the story ourselves. Right now I'm in some crazy post-tenure unexpected nervous breakdown phase.' 

But I'm also in this 'my kid is endlessly fascinating and freaking awesome and a moment-by-moment miracle so I must soak up every moment phase.' 

While inexplicably losing my shit on the one hand, I am simultaneously taking little mental snapshots of these moments of painfully fleeting beauty. My kid, who wants nothing more than to sit on my lap sometimes and bug the heck out of me. The forced time at the park, where I have to--I have no choice--be in the moment. The very boring moment, the beautiful boring moment. A day that won't come again. With someone so alive, so utterly absurdly alive to everything. 

And of course, there's the never knowing when you're on the cusp of the Fat Elvis arc headed to the Dead Elvis end of story. So that's (3) Maybe we'll be more ready for what's to come.

The Girl Who Went To Orgies

Some sad and some very bad things have happened to the girl who went to orgies. She was a daring girl but she was also unlucky. She had been raped a few times, once as a child. She had also had a baby, which she gave up for adoption. Her parents found some friends who wanted a baby. TGWWTO found out, when the girl was five, that she was very sick and might die. After that, she tried not to find out anything more about her for the fear her heart would break.

TGWWTO was from a very wealthy Indian family, the kind of family that perhaps had some sort of royalty in their background. They were now diplomats. She had lived all over the world, spoke 5 languages, always wore clothes that you would have to take to the dry cleaners. And French perfume.

TGWWTO did things that amazed me. In the university library she made eye contact with this guy at the card catalog and had sex with him in the stacks. Later, she said he was ugly. She had sex with a stranger on a plane. Then she had the embarrassing moment of walking past him as if she never met him because he was greeted by his wife and children. She had many beautiful women friends, most of whom she slept with at least once. One was a beautiful Spanish woman whom she claimed sometimes wet the bed.

Some things she did I didn't understand. Often she slept with her friends' boyfriends or crushes. She did this to me. It would always be the girl she cared for--why did she sleep with the boyfriend? One of these sleazy paramours would come around to our place in secret, and give her very bad poetry that annoyed her. She despised him. She loved her friend. And yet she slept with him.

She was pretty and it seemed that could have any man she wanted but not only because she was pretty. She wasn't classically beautiful but she was sultry with smooth, cool dark skin and perfect white teeth. Incredibly confident. There was an edge to her--an edge of anger almost. A kindness also. At least for those whom she didn't hate. "Peasants!" she would call those whom she disdained. I always cringed at that one, since she was the daughter of the wealthy in a country where the peasants did not have it so good. But I think she got the phrase from rich Italians she knew when her father was some kind of assistant ambassador from India to Italy.

The good thing about having rich roommates is that they have good life stories. The bad thing is that rich people are a little crazy and have difficulty picking up after themselves.  Her haughtiness, her slovenliness, her endless smoking so enraged our other two quadmates (one from France, one from China) that they ended up leaving. The bond I had with her began with cigarettes but went far past that.

There were some embarrassing and terrible moments between us that I can barely stand to remember now.

She said she would never forget the first minute she saw me. I could not understand how she could be impressed with me and I cannot now remember the things she said to explain it. But she did say one thing about me which might have been true then but probably isn't any longer: "You are free of malice," she said.

I can still hear her voice. I am still slightly afraid of her, afraid she would ever read this. Twenty years later I can imagine the scathing things she would say in response.

And she went to orgies. For the life of me I can't remember where she heard about the orgies or how she ended up in them. She found them in New York City. I wanted to know the details. I thought an orgy was a kind of joke--that they never would happen in real life and could not imagine what sort of people would want to go to them. I was very innocent and for the most part stayed that way. I thought I might learn about sex or about life from her. I think the only generalization I could draw from our year of friendship combined with some other tougher roommate situations was: Don't live with people who grow up in rich families. They don't clean up much and if you don't also come privilege you will end up being bossed around. I must confess that more than once I did TGWWTO's dishes.