Jurors To Be Hung By The Hand of The Media Mogul Mob

What addles my mind is the fact that the jury for the Zimmerman vs. People of Florida (Martin) has been regaled with death threats for their decision.  I understand that a jury of peers is, by design, the faceless will of the people therefore when the will does not match the body, problems will arise.   This disconnect is a problem, but how this disconnect occurred is what I want to point out. 

I blame the media.  When the news sparked this conflagration realized that they had something that would grab the weakened sensibilities of their victims…er..audiences.

  TV-Land banks on the fact that a huge percentage of Americans are nothing more than overfed cows, constantly chewing on the heroine laced cud of the media, mooing on command.   When the news station tacticians started to fan the flames into an inferno, they knew exactly what they were doing.  Why else would they show Mr. Martin as a child, much younger than the incident that to incur the wrath of mothers and those that daily fight or are the victims of racial oppression? What about the pictures and stories put up on the screen to prey upon ‘white guilt’?  

Why did the media do this?  In the Tampa area, lawyers were approached with this statement:

TV-Land: “Hey there Mr.lawyertypeperson, how would you like to be the top expert on the Zimmerman case for the leading News organization in Tampa?”

Mr.lawyertypeperson: “Of course I would, I have a lot to offer on this as I have been studying this closely.  I would start off by first looking at locutionary appeal…”

TV-Land: “Oh, ah, yeah, of course sir, yes, very interesting, locomotion fruit peels, very good, so you would do this?”

Mr.lawyertypeperson: “Yes.”

TV-Land: “Great, we are glad to have you aboard, now we will accept a check made out to ‘TV-landdoesn’tcare’ for the sum of Ten Thousand dollars.” (this is an actual amount asked for this spot)

They did this and they got bites, a lot of them.  This is how they pay the bills, because the rent for pocket-lint tenants of the TV-Land owners’ suits just went way up. These moguls simply need more money lining their coats and look at you sternly when you ask, “why for the need for more money?”, and angrily when you ask, “why the dirty tactics?” Why did they turn our most serious social glue, the court system into a racial sport?

This need for money then has a profound effect on society.  What the news did for this trial has created a doppelganger of the jury; a jury consisting of all the people who watch TV or read the paper.   They created a schizophrenic, multi-personality mind that is in direct competition with the real jury.  This News-Jury does not deliberate, they judge.  This News-Jury does not follow instructions containing the statutes they need to compare to the evidence, they follow what the ‘I paid for this spot’ experts say.   You know what we call someone who has two personalities, hears voices, and acts on those voices? 

Crazy—and dangerous.

While I don’t like the fact that an innocent kid died based on what really does seem to be started by profiling and circumstance, I do accept that the system did what it needed to, and that the jurors did what they needed to.  They looked at the evidence and felt that there was at least a shadow of a doubt that murder from a malicious mind, and that self-defense/stand your ground was warranted. Isn’t it enough that Zimmerman, while free, will exist in a living hell, a prison much more dangerous than what the state runs?  There is nobody that will make him their bitch and eventually protect his

mopwig-wearing-ass.  Now, his entire family is in peril, not just him.  The judge is under fire, the prosecutor is hated, and the jurors are facing a death sentence by the public all because the mob was summoned by the unscrupulous greed of the hand that directs the media. 

I agree a hot story is a great thing to behold.  But didn’t we all learn to not play with fire lest we be burned…..or let the neighborhood burn down?   I guess it doesn’t matter when you don’t live in the neighborhood, or when your house burns down, you can just buy another.  But for those of us without that luxury, beware of playing with this fire; you’re going to get burned while you are burning others. 

We Don’t Stand a Chance—Unless The Hero is Broken

People like to be convinced of things. We like to convince ourselves of almost everything. Many people actually need to live in a world of self-delusion in order to attain a measure of happiness.  This is because there seems to be a problem with responsibility.  In Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, Tayo seems to take on the responsibility of there being no rain because of his reaction to the constant precipitation in another part of the world, but he fails to really pierce through the shroud that was constructed by his very own society, which over time became more than just a series of stories intermingled with history, this manipulative force is the shroud of myth. 

One of the ingredients of myth is mystery.  The keynotes of the mystery are held within symbols. The symbols then act as a signifier that act as manipulative directives that seem to hold an insidious power to program the people who are especially attuned to them. This insight leads into an important question: how do people become attuned to these insidious signifiers and what they signify? The media.  In the days before the existence of the internet and the television, there was radio, before radio, there was literature, before literature, word of mouth; it all boils down to the communication of commonly held beliefs of the majority, and the mere fact that the majority holds onto the beliefs of the signs they invest themselves in gives a value to them that become an intrinsic part of society.

Look at the obvious signifiers in other myths, like the Holy Grail.  The Holy Grail is not confined to one token instance.  In an epistemic sense from pretty much any camp of logic, the Holy Grail should not be knowable, since it never really seems to hold one true form, and its purpose seems to morph with the people who interact with it.  This untouchable entity that is the Holy Grail exists in the twilight of reality, is known, but at the same time, is unknown. Yet, it is referred to repeatedly with enough power to command the people to adhere to a certain realm of beliefs, shaping those people to become even more attuned to the message of the church.  This is myth. In Ceremony myth is a horrible cycle that has been repeated throughout time.  Tayo was lost in many ways.  He was not wholly Native American and not wholly Caucasian. This put him in a place where two worlds of norms and mores collide. Tayo, because of his actual geological position in life was more steeped in the ways of the Native Americans.  Their myth began to vie with the American dream.  As the story began to play out, a certain binary between the two myths began.  The Native American Myth was grounded in history, songs, ceremony and the world whereas the American Myth is grounded in a dream, but enforced by the agency of violence.

Native American storytelling relies heavily on the shroud of myth in order to create signs that are recognized and obeyed throughout the generations.  The storytelling of Native Americans defies the boundaries of the page by relying on word of mouth, ritual, music, and the world as a very interactive stage.  For the culture, these stories were not only a form of entertainment and sometimes propaganda; they were a way of living. The very people who told the stories were trapped by them. It is an interesting twist that the storytelling of the Native American people in Silko’s Ceremony was confined to the page.  This in and of itself is a way of breaking the traditional myth cycle of the Native American heritage, but also at the same time represents how Manifest Destiny started to confine the Native American culture.

 The most obvious sign of Native American culture was how Silko gave the Native myth a voice through poetic expression.  Poems have long been regarded as powerful, full of signs and still yet not totally definable, they reflect the nature of myth itself, powerful, yet untouchable.  “The words gathered inside him and gave him strength. He pulled on the corporal’s arm; he lifted him to his knees and all the time he could hear his own voice praying against the rain.  / It was summertime / and Iktoa’ak’o’ya—Reed Woman / was always taking a bath. / She spent all day long / sitting in the river / splashing down / the summer rain. / But her sister / Corn Woman / worked hard all day / sweating in the sun / getting sore hands / in the corn field. / Corn Woman got tired of that / she got angry / she scolded / her sister / for bathing all day long.” (Silko 11-12). This passage shows how the narrative and poetic forms interact with each other. The narrative is in touch with the poetic form, it seems that the poetic form, by the way it is inserted in a moment of action at the height of emotion, seems to be happening inside Tayo, like an inner narrative, the narrative of his culture, his Native American side’s myth.  This shows how the myth, embedded in him, makes him seem to act irrationally against the rain. It is this very primitive irrationality that myth needs in order to be the most effective; it needs to garner blind trust.

Silko does a great job in breaking the myth of the hero.  She definitely created Tayo as the main character that would live up to the hero status quo.  Just about everybody has become attuned to the myth of the ‘hero’.  Bad stuff happens, bad (usually male) guy is the cause, hero arrives, battle, hero wins, people are happy. Tayo is something else.  He was crafted to look so very much like he could be the mythical hero, but he at the end, refused to wear that mantle.  The myth of the hero literally called out to him to kill Emo with a screwdriver. 

At this point, there must be a short discourse on names.  The symbology of names is a powerful tool of myth, and Silko flaunts this.  She is a bit crafty, but at the same time obvious. The name Tayo is a crafty choice of a name. It sounds native, but it also phonetically is the same of Tao.  Tao means ‘way’. I argue that it is no mistake that Tayo is symbolic for ‘way’, since he has literally lost his way, “For a long time, he had been white smoke.  He did not realize that until he left the hospital, because white smoke had no consciousness of itself.  It faded into the white world of their bed sheets and walls; it was sucked away by the words of doctors who tried to talk to the invisible scattered smoke.” (Silko 13).  It must also be noted that there is no page number marking that it is indeed page 13.  This is because there is nothing on the page. Tayo is nothing, for he has lost his way, which, if his name means ‘way’ then he has lost himself, thus he would be nothing.  The quoted line also illustrates how Tayo’s white half seems to want to believe what is happening in the hospital.  This is a powerful attack on the myth of doctors.  Contemporary North American culture tends to believe doctors, never really realizing that doctors are just really good educated guesses in a white coat.  This leads me to ask, would people be more apt to believe someone in a black coat, or better yet, a red coat? Disney color codes it’s characters for a reason: the myths that make us believe from the time of toddlerhood that dark is bad and scary, and light is good and safe. The shades in between are for when one grows up, and is indoctrinated by religion and media, like Disney, who paints red to be an evil color, within the eyes of villains, and the fires that burn villages to ashes. This white mist is the signifier of white culture, and how white culture is commanded by white culture. When white culture enters the hospital, the white coats rule everything, and there are rarely questions.  Any questions that do arise are quickly ignored because the one asking the question is not wearing a white coat.

Emo is the character that forces Tayo into the role of the hero.  This is perhaps the goal of Emo as the protagonist.  His actions, and even his torture of Harley are only tools to force Tayo into the role of the hero. Emo is Silko’s embodiment of emotion, his name is the first part of the word. Emotion is the direct opposite of rational thinking, so it is fitting that the power of myth, the witchery has chosen the embodiment of irrationality to force Tayo into the role of the hero it needed.

“The wind made his sweat go cold. This was the time…The moon was lost in a cloud bank. He moved back into the boulders. It had been a close call.  The witchery had almost ended the story according to its plan; Tayo had almost jammed the screwdriver into Emo’s skull the way the witchery had wanted, savoring the yielding bone and membrane as the steel ruptured the brain.  Their deadly ritual for the autumn solstice would have been completed by him. He would have been another victim, a drunk Indian war veteran settling an old feud; and the Army doctors would say that the indications of this end had been there all along, since his release from the mental ward at the Veteran’s Hospital in Los Angeles. The white people would shake their heads, more proud than sad that it took a white man to survive in their world and that these Indians couldn’t seem to make it.” (Silko 235).

The horrible reality of this passage is that if Tayo had killed Emo with the screwdriver, he would have possibly been the hero to Harley, but Tayo would have just been a victim, the next scapegoat, the next step in the myth, or the next cycling of the witchery.  Emo was clearly steeped in the white man’s culture, as he was supposedly defending his own culture by torturing a half-breed, but he was also drinking wine and beer, decidedly white agents of culture.  Emo had filled himself with the white man’s culture via alcohol, that he filled himself with the  emotional and irrational feelings that allowed the witchery to continue to manipulate him.  By not acting at all, some would say that Tayo was being a hero, but this is not so.  If Tayo were a hero, Harley would still be alive, because that is how the stories end. Tayo did not confront the villain, he did not save the needy. He did nothing.  In doing nothing, he broke the cycle of myth, of the witchery, by not becoming the sacrificial lamb for white sensibilities. While this seems heroic, it is not, Tayo had just found his way, he is human, weak, scared, and sick, just a small part of everything else, no hero.

            Christa Wolf author of Cassandra chose Cassandra to be a non-hero.  She is cursed with the ability to see the future, but nobody will believe her. She is the witness that gets to see the horrible truth of the future visit twice. She is the literary embodiment of myth itself, and the people trapped by myth. Cassandra knows that Helen, wife of King Menelaus of Sparta, is not in Troy, and that the people are fighting for literally nothing.  Cassandra knows that the fighting is really over land and power, and not Helen, but Helen has become the scapegoat, because it is so much easier to fight for a beautiful dream rather than the wants of the greedy. Norman Birnbaum writing for The Nation cited Wolf who wrote, “Anxious and unbelieving, we continuously denied ourselves, forever lying, celebrating, bowing, insulting others but we could not get enough pleasure at our own submissiveness”.   She was writing allegorically since she was Jewish and living through the Nazi regime. She was using Cassandra to illustrate how the government had made scapegoats out of the Jewish people and perpetuated their myth through the manipulation of irrational fear, and for the attainment of a dream, which is the very same thing that the people trying to bring the walls of Troy down are experiencing.  The fact that Cassandra can see into the future, and has to suffer twice because of her ‘gift’, is an allegoric statement showing how history repeats itself.  People might be able to see what is coming, but do nothing about it. The people who seem to not be a part of the myth have little effect on the myth. The war in Vietnam was built on a myth. At the time, the cold war was in full swing. America wanted to stop the spread of Communism.  When France needed some help, the Americans fueled their continued colonial occupation.  This at first glance should be confusing, since America should have opposed colonial activity since its very history revolves around being free from being a colony. Yet, by just giving France money, America is not actually yet firing any shots. This is what the Proxy wars were, a bunch of financing between China, Russia, Britain, and America.  Then the great myth of democracy versus communism was built up this way. The hero myth was also used.  France was the needy, and America finally shrugged on the mantle of hero, wading in to save the day.  The only problem is that it did not work out as intended, and the myth was broken. 

            The Gulf war is yet another myth driven act.  By making people believe that there is a great evil, terrorism, and the imminent invasion of countries like Israel, who actually boasts one of the most deadly militaries in the world, and Kuwait, then having America come in to help is nothing less than the call of the hero again.  When the myth starts to falter a bit, then weapons of mass destruction were brought into the mix.  After that, then the war on terrorism began. In war-time, people don’t think, they react. The reaction that the people in power want to foster is not irrational, and more importantly, it is emotional.  Much like Cassandra throughout the text, finds that her people keep changing rituals to fit the new needs. No longer were the ancients venerated, the rituals had to serve a purpose, not a memory.  This was more allegory towards the rituals of everyday people, such as learning history became bogged down with propaganda, so in effect the ancestors who made history were no longer the focus, rather it shifted the rituals of learning to be grounded in the everyday propaganda to attune people to the new signs in the new myths.

            In the end, Cassandra was right, “Dear one. You did not say that it would not happen to you. Or that I could protect you from it.  You knew as well as I did that we have no chance against a time that needs heroes.” (Wolf 138). Cassandra is saying that living a life of just reaction instead of reflection will bring only a cyclical doom, just like what she sees.  This is why she is accepting of death, because at least she won’t have to keep seeing the cycle repeated.  Wolf’s Cassandra and Silko’s Ceremony both attempted to break the myth of the hero, because really, we don’t stand a chance against times that needs heroes.

Works Cited

Birnbaum, Norman. "Remembering Christa Wolf ." The Nation December 2011. Web.

Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. New York: Penguin Classics, 2006. Print.

Wolf, Christa. Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc., 1999. Print.

The "Hero" in Modernism With Some Classic Support

            Linking anything to T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland is bound to bring up a meaningful discussion, since the very basis of Modernism is making the present include the past with the same effort that people put into their worship of the texts of religion.  Bringing up the subject of the hero is not only a topic that garners appreciation, it is a bulls-eye for the modernist reader.

            The title, “The Wasteland” is the first nod to the past, by inciting Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, the classic tales associated with the myths that have surrounded the famous Knights of the Round Table.  This series of tales is so famous that many other authors have written poetry about Morte d’Arthur, such as Tennyson, who has been a huge influence on T.S. Eliot. 

            Linking the tales from Morte d’Arthur with The Quest of the Holy Grail is by no means a stretch. 

When looking for the connection of the hero and the quests they go on within The Wasteland one has to do some digging, as modernism demands.  While examining T.S. Eliot’s poem, it is so immense in verbal scope that it is hard at times to really think of it as a poem. Yet, one must adhere to the ‘rules’ of poetry in order to try and tease out the deeper meaning that is in lurking in the shadows.  One of these rules is to identify a speaker. Tiresias identifies himself in line 218, within III. Fire Sermon, “I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,” (Eliot, 218).  Now that Tiresias is known as the speaker, how does one link him/her to being a hero, and also on a quest much like the Knights of the Round Table? 

         

   

In line 218, Tiresias says he is blind, since he is the blind man that can see everything, and throbs between two lives.  This line alone can bring up many dualistic and binary relationships, such as past and present, which is the focus of modernism; good and evil, which is a classic religious motif; or man and woman which is brought up throughout time in myths such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses.  Tiresias then clears up this question with line 219, “Old man with wrinkled female breasts” (Eliot, 219). This just means that the scope of Tiresias’ telling of this story brings everyone into its scope.

            The hero of The Quest of the Holy Grail is Galahad, which is a departure from the usual heroes which

~Statue of Galahad in Ottawa, Ontario~

were Lancelot and Gawain. This is because Galahad was essentially Jesus, and could not have his life marred with the victories and human fallibilities of his father, Lancelot, and Gawain, sadly was also too human.  Galahad in his pureness went on a quest to find the holy grail, but since the title of the text was Quest of the Holy Grail, this entails that finding the grail was not the terminus of the quest, it was becoming a pure enough soul with the ability to hold the symbol of God up.  The Grail was a vessel, just like the body is a vessel, so, in order to hold the vessel of God’s grace, then one must become a vessel for God’s grace. So the quest, in and of itself was a quest for purity, and to become a symbol for others to look up and likewise become more apt to live a purer life.  Galahad is also somewhat divorced from his father, becoming an example of knighthood, God’s symbolic and all too real warrior of the medieval ages that Lancelot could never approach.  This switch is shown by the recognition of Lancelot’s place as this example by Guinevere, the authority on these things in Arthurian legends, when she says, “’In God’s name,’ she said, ‘if you will not name him, I will.  He who begot you is known as Sir Lancelot of the Lake, the fairest and best and more gracious of knights,” (Quest, 48) and then later when a ninja-like monk enters the path of Lancelot, and Lancelot identifies himself, the monk replies, “’Lancelot,’ said the other, ‘in God’s name you are the last man I was bent on meeting: for there is no sorrier knight than you.” (Quest, 135).  This establishes that Lancelot is not the hero. The text establishes it is because of his sins.  Galahad has no such sins since he does not have much of a life, or nor history. How does one really be that pure?  It is impossible, and the text pretty much supports that this is impossible.  Galahad is the impossible form of humanity, yet by having the other knights try and follow him this becomes an example to the readers that they too are less perfect than even the knights, or at least have something in common with them, making the quest for a purer soul not so out of reach.

            The very steps of this quest is full of conflicts.  These conflicts look like they are outward in nature, yet they are always internal, since each action is being weighed not only by themselves, but by God. These series of quests and stories illustrates how everyone can be a hero in God’s eyes, and empowers the readers through these lessons.  Each story in The Quest of the Holy Grail takes on a particular set of human traits and talks about them.  Thankfully there are monks, which represent the priest’s place in the world as the interpreters of the Bible and the other religious texts and ideas. These monks make things much clearer, and help develop understanding of each knight’s failings and successes in their quests.

            Tiresias is also preaching purity and cleansing.  Throughout the poem, there are seemingly different narrators.  This confuses the readers, but when Tiresias reveals himself (or herself?), he shows that he/she is both the female and male thus is the narrator no matter what gender is evidenced.   

            Throughout The Wasteland, strong imagery is employed to give a dark picture of what the society is like in post-industrial England.  It starts with, “I. The Burial of the Dead” which seems to be talking about memories. The darkness of the scene is brought to fore by the description of the weather, then the use of the Tarot cards adds mystery along with a foreboding feel by using the “Hanged Man” card.  The scene painted in the first portion of the poem is dire, and is perfect for a feeling that something needs to be changed to be seeded in the mind of the reader.

       The second scene, “II. A Game of Chess”, three women are conversing.  This story tells of the wasteful nature of sex and sexuality in the current era further deepening the pall of depression that has gripped England.  The woman who has taken the drugs for an abortion has no teeth, and is being harassed about this, “Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart./  

He'll want to know what you done with that money he gave you/

To get herself some teeth.  He did, I was there.” (Eliot, 143-145). This both shows how women were trying to express their sexuality, but was still under the oppression of male dominance.  This dominance was not only the male’s doing, but was self-defeating by the women too, in their unhealthy and un-reproductive forms of sexuality.

               The third scene, “III. The Fire Sermon” is where Tiresias shows itself.  He is not exactly a hero, but he starts to show that there is a hero.  Through the love affairs that actually had no love associated with them, a warning of acting out of lust rather and love is provided.  In the shortest fourth scene, “IV. Death by Water”, Phlebas is drowned in the symbol of live and picked clean by its inhabitants. Warning that even those with perfect physical form cannot outlive the karma they have built up. These two acts, like in The Quest of the Holy Grail, show skin-deep sentiments will not get one far.

     The last scene, “V. What The Thunder Said”, then lets us see who the real heroes are: 

the readers. 

“After the frosty silence in the gardens / After the agony in stony places” (Eliot 323-324), is a line that represents the image of what silent people are like and what happens to them. Eliot then shows the readers that they have something that God has given them which is their voice.  Through the illustrations of sound via the water, cicada and hermit-thrush, (hermit being a great choice of words, since they were the bringers of understanding in The Quest for the Holy Grail), Eliot shows how God gave us, the readers, voice, and we should use it. He goes on to show how that everyone actually knows was is wrong but can’t seem to speak up, which is represented by this: 

“We think of the key, each in his prison / thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.”

 (Eliot, 412-413).  

            The Wasteland is a quest to understand that the people can speak up, but must be educated in order to do so. Instead of a pure soul, Eliot is looking for a better society, and the heroes are the people of society where their voices are their swords. 

It Takes a Woman to Show the Woman’s Point of View—It Takes Everyone to Listen

             Helen Doolittle made no mistake when she picked out Helen of Troy to vicariously vent her life through. History states that she was friends, and a patient of Sigmund Freud, the famous psychoanalyst.  History also states that she was a bisexual in a man’s world that held little understanding or forgiveness for people who strayed not only from gender roles, but the expectations of sexuality. 

H.D., as she is commonly seen as today, has tried to cement her place in the world of modernism in the same hallowed halls as T.S. Eliot.   She was accepted, but she did not feel as if she had reached her pinnacle of expression in the fading world of modernism.  Through her final long poem, Helen in Egypt, she not only brought in the aspects of looking deeper into the art and linking it with its origins, but she added the dimension of having the readers look deeper into the text in order to look into the life of H.D. herself. Like many other works, the ‘big reveal’ is at the end of her text, under the collection of ultra-reflective stories in Eidolons, which cements the notion that Helen in the text is really a reflection of Helen in reality. 

The first lines of the poem place Helen not in troy, “Alas my brothers / Helen did not walk / upon the ramparts, / she whom you cursed / was but the phantom and the shadow thrown / of a reflection;” (Doolittle 5).  The overall plot of the book is ingenious, as Helen, who started the war with the beauty of her face, is placed in Egypt instead, so the people who are fighting the war are fighting over an illusion, which in modern feminism, could be translated into men fighting over the illusion of the male gaze.   By using the context of the actual geography of Sparta and Troy, and then looking at where Egypt is, H.D. has drawn an upside down triangle, with the pinnacle pointing down at Egypt where Helen is.  The upside down triangle has two meanings, one is an ancient depiction of the womb, symbolizing fertility and the feminine, it is called the chalice.  Another more contemporary meaning is homosexuality, as many people have thought that the Nazi’s would denote the upside down black triangle for unsociable types, which might have included lesbians or homosexuals. Lesbians today use a black or pink inverted triangle as a symbol.  Helen being located at the tip of that triangle is not only at the farthest point from Sparta and Troy, but is also at the focal point of femininity.  If this symbol is also a gay symbol, by having men fighting each other over her, and her being at the feminine point on the triangle, then her sexuality might also be on display. 

               The title, and the first lines of the poem have painted a scene where Helen can be very free in some ways. The narrative in the play is deceptive.  There are italicized paragraphs before each story.  One might think that these are paraphrased summaries of the poems that come after them, but they are only words to help paint the setting.  It is like using prose to describe poetry.  For the layman who does not want to delve too deeply into art, picking up this book may be an immense mistake, as gods get renamed over and over again, and the dizzying array of events told through poetry is painstaking at best.  This is the biggest challenge to reading, and effectively understanding the work of H.D.. Yet, for those who wish to delve deep into art and literally educated themselves through this text, it is a rich treasure that yields a flavorful depiction of the female recounting of events, which is largely an ignored point of view.

              The Iliad, men are the ones doing most of the talking.  Women are usually helpless, and can only protest vocally by appealing to a part of men that was unnatural: their unwarlike sides. The Iliad actually in many ways makes the women seems wiser for their protests, since they appeal to reason, and have very few lines, which gives more power to their appeals, much like how people will lean in to listen to a whisper.

~How women are at the mercy of the Male gaze~

H.D. empowers Helen through her trysts with men such as Achilles.  While rape seemed to be common and commoditized females, Helen wore them like badges of honor.  Instead of being called a whore, she instead is a hero.  In book two, H.D. talks about how Helen being removed from the war is actually a freedom that she not endures, but embraces: “I do not want to hear Agamemnon /  and the Trojan Walls, / I do not want to recall shield, helmet, greaves, / though he wore them, / for that, I might recall them, / being part of his first / unforgettable anger; / I do not want to forget his anger, / not only because it brought Helen / to sleep in his arms / but because he was, in any case , / defeated; if he strangled her / and flung her to the vultures, / still, he had lost / and they had lost — / the war-Lords of Greece.” (Doolittle 18-19). It must be pointed out that the last part of that quote has a “—“ in it next to lost.  This could be a phallic symbol, and by the defeat (by Helen) they are symbolically castrated.  H.D. by the very fact of being a woman gives her the inherent ethos to rewrite this reaction of Helen.  Her rewriting of Helen’s role in the war, or more aptly Helen’s role in her own life and the lives of others is uniquely suited to the growing need to understand the feminine point of view.  Originally, as seen in

               H.D., by writing Helen in Egypt literally takes on the nearly voiceless Helen and gives her a life she never had in the original stories. She does more than give Helen the face that launched a thousand ships, she gave Helen life: her own life. By psychoanalytically inserting herself into the text, she infuses Helen with a life that she could never have had. This then adds to the overall strength of the retelling, since there is real experience behind the words.  It is in Eidolons that the truth starts to be revealed that H.D. is using Helen as her own Eidolon, but the prose and poetry do not make it immediately evident.  “Yes—Helen is awake, she sees the pattern; the “old pictures” are eternal, the ibis, the hawk, and the hare are painted in bright primary colours. But superimposed on the hieroglyphs is the “marble and silver” of her Greek thought and fanstasy.” (Doolittle 264).  This paragraph shows that Helen, H.D.’s true name, is Helen in the book.  It brings together the pattern, as in the quote. Marble is used perhaps to symbolize how the ideas of the past and the present have intermingled, like the striations of white shot through the smooth black. Being finished with Greek thought and fantasy really brings home the dream like quality of this passage. To the people who knew of H.D. in her life, and followed her, they would be well acquainted with her nuances and friendships, most notably at this point, her friendship to Sigmund Freud, who also likes to analyze dreams, since he believed they were repressed memories, or suppressed desires attached to a libido of the past.  H.D. through this assumption of communal knowledge of her was able to empower Helen in the text.  This is the most powerful tool she used in order to rewrite Helen’s role, and also the role of women in that time, and in her time.  If H.D. instead of being a notable woman at the end of her years was a man, then Helen in Egypt would not have the same power, or might not have any power at all, since they very gender of the author empowered by her own experiences lent the rewriting of the tale an urgency and importance that even in contemporary terms, is a powerful retelling of a woman’s experiences in a world full of men ruled by men.

               H.D.’s new outlook on Helen is a perfectly timed capstone to the Modernist era, since it shows how perspectives should not be overlooked.  There is also a feeling that she is saying something else that lends even more power to her tale. She is saying that art should be appreciated, but just delving into the past and making is present isn’t enough, the comprehension of the ideas needs to evolve with the times as well.  Just as contemporary readers in their own era are going to have to look at her work from their own viewpoints, Helen in Egypt is going to mean something different to an audience of another era. By using her own gender, her own experiences, and taking on the traditional male point of view and giving it a twist that is meaningful in a myriad of ways. H.D. has shown that the traditions of old may be a lesson: Don’t learn everything from them, because there is always another point of view. Sometimes it takes a woman to tell a woman’s story, but everyone should listen.

The BBQ Throne of Manly Men

 

   A man’s world is a wide place, but when it comes to the world of food, the unofficial throne lies before the almighty BBQ.  I have a strong belief that men have the innate ability to cook meat over an open flame.  Women scoff at this.  How hard can it be? 

Pretty tough actually.

     When we enter into the instinctual world of grease, meat, and the goodness of charbroiled flavor, we do more than just grunt and speak in a guttural voice, we become expert planners.   I might have more insight than others in this because I was a boy scout as a kid, and when we cooked out, we cooked whatever we could find over an in-ground wood fire.  When done right, it can be the best meal you have had in a while, but when done wrong, it can be so scarring that you will shudder whenever you hear the snap and crackle of fire coupled with the sight of meat.  Also my first job was in a steakhouse, so I have been formally taught the hows and whys of cooking steak.

What not to do:

1.)    Don’t use liquid flammables to start your fire. The flavor from the fluid will instill itself into the meat and you will have a new understanding of your car’s diet.

2.)    Don’t put your meat on the grill or over the fire when the

      flames are actually licking the meat. This will burn the meat

      and instill the wrong type of smokiness to your flavor.

3.)    Don’t be a TV chef and poke and prod your meat constantly, you will always undercook/overcook your meat because you are just being a wuss about being a man and just drinking your beer and waiting.

4.)    Don’t slather your meat in olive oil, if you marinate with some oil in it, make sure that it is not dripping the oil right into the flames, this can cause a flare up, and ruin your meat.

5.)    When your meat is done, DON’T CUT YOUR MEAT until it is served.  The juices will all run out, drying up your meat.

     That’s pretty much it.  Simple right? Yeah, sure, but you would be surprised at the number of people that screw this up.  Why are women not good at this?  Well, many women ARE good at this, but are not naturally predisposed for this kind of cooking.  They are wired to always DO something, or are always thinking about many things at once.   There is a difference in the way their brain works—women have a thicker myopic membrane between the two sides of their brain, increasing the flow of mental ‘traffic’, making it harder to focus on one thing, but makes them perfect multi-tasking super powers.  Men on the other hand don’t have this (gay men have been found to have a myopic membrane more like a woman’s, interestingly enough), and this allows them to stay on track with drinking their beer and letting the meat do its thing.

Now, there are some things that you might want to do:

1.)    Know your cut of meat.  This is important since where the meat comes from on the animal will dictate what flavors the meat needs and what preparation, if any, is needed.  Legends say that the closer to the middle of the animal is where the most tender meat is, and this means that you have to do much less to the meat to make it excellent.  While this is not always true, such tender meat cuts like the Filet Mignon require minimal preparation, but requires technique to pull off correctly. (A pan sear and slow finish in an oven with some garlic butter on top).  Top round and bottom round can be marinated.  Bottom round should marinate a good long time.

2.)    Know how your local butcher prepares the meat.  Some places will actually puncture their meat with a machine to tenderize it.  This is not a good practice as it really hurts the meat and has the chance to infuse it with harmful bacteria.  Meat is best when served medium rare, and this means that bacteria should not be introduced to the area of the meat that will be the rarest.  Talk to your local butcher and see what they do.  My wife almost died as a child because of this, and had to undergo a life-or-death surgery to save her.  She still has the scars to prove it happened, so ask a question, and save a savory life.

3.)    Dry rub salt your beef and brine your chicken. Pig is naturally salty.  It keeps the juices in.  Juices are the key to a good tasting meat. We are geared to enjoy them, so don’t let the veritable nectar of the animal escape! (make sure for pig roasts you have your slaughtered pig rest in a meat fridge overnight to ensure all the bad things are killed before the heat kills off the other ones.)

4.)    Once you place your meat on the grill, close the cover.  Wait until you have definite grill marks branding the meat before your turn it or flip it.  After it is flipped, close the lid again.  When you check a few minutes later, you can test the doneness by how soft and springy the meat it when you touch it.  Feel that area of skin on top of your hand between your thumb and pointer finger.  Right in the middle of that area mimics what medium well is like on a steak.  Weird, but it works unless you are 110% hard muscle or a robot. 

5.)    Let your meat rest 10 minutes before serving.  This allows the meat to relax.  Remember, the meat will still be cooking a bit after it leaves the grill, so taking it off a smidgen early is fine.  If the meat is cut before it relaxes, the juices will literally spring out of the meat, drying it out and ruining the flavor.  Letting it set allows the juices to calm down and integrate with the meat again. 

     Follow these steps and you will be able to make us men proud and make your guests remember you for eternity (insert epic echo here).   This is a proven set of techniques that I showed my wife, and now she too is a wiz at the grillin’ business…though I have to distract her from poking the meat around too much and remind her to mind the times, but she cooks them up great!  More experience and she will be grilling like me! *gulp* should I worry?

An Age of Gaming Does Not Have to End with Age

Along with gender expectations being questioned in our era, there is another expectation that is being questioned if not utterly destroyed:  games are for kids.

Sure, we can all espouse the idea that we are “kids at heart” but I don’t want to have that sentiment take away what I pride myself on—being a man. 

This all started when video games started to come home on the PC or the Atari.  I remember playing old games like “Wasteland”, “Ultima”, “A Bard’s Tale” and more.  Those were the days of Basic programming, and I remember coding out my own text based games akin to “Zork”.   Then the world went crazy when Nintendo, Playstation, and XBOX hit the scene.  Our lives were in jeapordy!  We had to play such things such as Mario Kart and Final Fanstasy, but one thing kept creeping on us that was hedging us out of this world: our age.

Why the hell should our age have anything to do with it?  I say it is far safer to play a game with friends than sit at a bar getting drunk on over-priced swill allowing ourselves to be swayed into the clutches of bar-whores (both men and women) due to our ill-timed beer goggles?  This literally breeds stupidity.

Well, I am proud to admit that I am a gamer, and I love playing games.  I have a family, a degree, and manage to game, just like to men of old used to take time for whisky and poker.  Well, I still make time for whisky, but I'm Irish, it's all about honoring my ancestors!

 I have found that the online genre of games is the most satisfying because of the ability to play with friends and make new connections.   As we age, we should not give up games.  An old property law professor once told me, “As a man you never really ‘grow up’ when it comes to toys, they just get more expensive.”  This is not true since many games are free to play, but he has one point, there is no need to think that we need to “grow up”, when we realize we are men….we are already there—grown up, yet still with a love for what we grew up with….our toys/games. 

Here are a few games I am currently enjoying:

DDO, or Dungeons and Dragons online which can be found at DDO.com, is a great game for those who have played AD&D and like 3.5 edition.  It is based a lot on those rules and really tries hard to adhere to them.  Some sacrifices are made to enhance the style of game play, but it is a really great game full of rich story and a ton of things to do.  What makes it better is that I have some of my friends play with me every Sunday night, which makes it more like being around the table with “the guys”. 

Another great game that friends can stay connected on is League of Legends.  This game is a ton of fun!  It is a 3^rd person strategy/fighting game that makes teamwork and individual skill entertain quite the bloody marriage.  Using Skype to stay connected during this game ensures wins, the most amount of fun, and the ability to stay in touch.  Look it up at   http://na.leagueoflegends.com/.  The cool thing about this game is that it is free to play. The only thing that people get for paying money is basically cosmetics.   The kicker is that when you see a character that looks awesome and other than the norm, the player is usually a payer, and thus is usually skilled!  The other great thing about this game is that it boasts a real league!  Yes, this league showcases players that are actually paid to play as professionals.  The cool thing is that anyone can do this….with the right skills of course.   Riot Games is the mastermind behind this, and they do a great job.  What I like the most is that for most of their job positions, the applicants must actually have a certain skill level at the game!  Think of it, in order to write for them, the author must be accomplished as well.  Makes sense.   Come join me in a game.  My toon name is Mythanthalus on the North American server.

There is one more game that I have been trying out that has been growing on me: Mechwarrior Online.  It is a tough game to master….which I LOVE!  It boasts some of my favorite things….great graphics and mechs!  Anyone who is familiar with Mechwarrior will love this game.  It is free too.  The only thing I see lacking in this game is the storyline.  There does not seem to be any connection with the Mechwarrior storyline other than the availability of certain models of mechs.  I liked going on missions with a team and working out strategy while working my way up the ranks of my faction.  Sadly this does not seem to happen yet in Mechwarrior Online.  It is still an exhilarating experience playing the game.  It is still in Beta mode, but it is open to the public, so give it a try at http://mwomercs.com/landingpad.

What does being a man have anything to do with all of these games?  I feel that playing hard is a good thing to do, and that playing games is a great way to blow off steam.  The secret is to treat it like….a treat, and not an obsession.   In this day and age, I will gladly say, stay at home and load up a game instead of loading up at the bars.  Getting out is important, but playing games at home can save money while making those true outings all the more important because getting out will be more fresh, exhilarating, and worth the money you spend rather than making your times out nothing more than monotonous gettin’ drunk sessions. 

The Dark Beast of Miami, From the Mind of a Buffalo

Being a man from the Western New York area, I have learned to love being a neighbor, and a good one at that.  This is most likely why Buffalo totes the “City of Good Neighbors” slogan.   The people in the WNY area seem to exude a calm intelligence, even the rednecks, and are just pretty much nice to everyone.  Now, I have to insert the disclaimer that there are nice people everywhere, but the WNY area is just packed full of them.  It’s most likely because of the legendary winters that feel like they last most of the year, so this means that there is little else to do other than eat, drink, and well…be a good neighbor.

Miami on the other hand is the complete opposite of the Buffalo region. It is almost always really warm, and the cold days are still nice.  (Buffalo boys would be wearing shorts and sweating up a storm on Miami’s coldest day.)  I have found that the driving here is INSANE!  Yes, I meant to flame that.  The people here are all cutthroat and I believe out to kill you, me, and everyone else.  The scary part is that a full 1/3 of the drivers don’t have a driving license and even more than that don’t carry insurance.  Did I say INSANE? Yes, I believe I did.  Not only do the people drive crazy in Miami, they all are packing heat in their cars…so nobody yells at anyone, they just honk. A lot. 

I often get honked at because I drive like I am still in WNY. This means going more or less the speed of the people around you, but keeping a healthy distance between cars, and letting people pass when they need to.  I just do the kind thing and wave.  Yes, I totally make believe that these people know me, and appreciate what I am doing.  My wife thinks it is going to get me shot.  Perhaps it will.

For all the mayhem on the roads and the spillover from the rage of the road to real life, I feel that there is another side to this area, a magic to Miami that is dark, wild, thrilling, and so full of life that it is addicting.  Let me introduce to you to a snippet of Miami life, an event called the Art Deco Miami Weekend. 

 

The Art Deco District of Miami is a veritable bastion of art and free thinking…well sort of. Old Classic Cars line the streets, street acts fill the road and the buildings are painted with murals ranging from actual studio paintings to brilliant graffiti.  Looking inside the windows will reveal a myriad of tastes in furniture and other adornments for living spaces all real works of art.  All of these items are handmade right in the district.  This is all well and good, but the real heart of the Art Deco District is the people and these people are works of art themselves. The performers do everything from playing the ukulele on a super high uni-cycle to break dancing in the middle of the road.  The warm ocean breeze tantalizes only the most beautiful people to be ushered onto Ocean Street.   On those streets music would blaze out of each block only to be pushed back and eventually taken over by another block of loud music.  I once looked between a wall of palms and did a double take.  I saw three women singing and they were all in skin tight costumes.  I of course just HAD to look again after making sure my wife was merrily pushing our son’s stroller, and after I squinted to get a better look I realized that the costumes were really just body paint, and nothing else.  When I looked back to assure myself that my wife was safe, I was greeted by a glare and I wisely picked up my pace.

I like to dress up, and I am usually overdressed for the places I go, but I felt that I should tone it down a bit for the walk through the Art Deco.  Jeans and t-shirt, check. Sneakers, check.  I was gold.  When I found myself on Ocean Street, I found that I was for once under-fashion.  Oh no, people were wearing the same stuff I was, in fact much less than I was, yet I was out of fashion because I am out of shape. Yes round is a shape, but not in Miami. Every man was chiseled to perfection and all the women were literally busting out of all the right places.  It was all…so fake.

 This is when it hit me.

  The smells of paella simmering in the wind and the Caribbean music smashing into my ears were suddenly dulled as I realized that the art lined up and down the road was nothing more than stalls selling bent spoons turned into rings, or beads strung onto cheap string.  There was nothing really artistic about it at all. This depressed me, and made me realize that most of Miami is only skin deep.  There is just not that much under that tan my friends.  Or so I thought.

My friends in the band Phantasm, who started out in Jamestown, NY, but now play out of Pennsylvania, were playing at the Art Deco Weekend.  They were invited by their friend Doug Wimbish, a veritable master of soul on the bass, who plays with Living Colour, after jamming with Aaron the bassit of Phantasm, he became friends with the band, and asked them to come all the way to Miami to play. 

Doug is a big name in music, and made it his responsibility to bring live music to the Art Deco. When I saw him he was wearing only a white t-shirt and shorts, and was very low key.  He talked to people passing by and acted normal…but deep in a subtle way that just drew people to him.  I think gravity itself was a bit stronger around him, just to give him more of a sense of depth.  This man was art. When he plays his bass, the funk soars to the clouds, makes love with them and then cascades through your ears and plants a forest of love in your heart.    

Phantasm was no less impressive.  They played some of their regulars like “two left feet”, and everyone, even the homeless people were helpless and they danced to the sounds that Phantasm was belting out.  How would I describe them? I can’t really. Their first albums used the concept of Phi (the golden mean) in their writing and somehow it worked.  They are just amazing.  The lead singer has a great voice and loves to pan, the drummer is crazy talented, and Aaron, my friend, is a ninja on the stage assassinating any doubts that he is a master of his craft.  

To wrap up my oh-so-long tale of Miami, I still think that the majority of people in Miami are skin deep, and this is ok, because Miami is beautiful. Yet I know now to search out those places where the sun does not tan, the places where dreams are Technicolor, dayglo and neon  where everything becomes all twisted together into some funkably delicious soul food for the heart.  This is that dark, wild magic I was talking about.  Miami, you dark beast, I think I could love you.