The work of Billy Collins.  Interesting as well as pleasurable, although not heartwarming.  Not quite reassuring. The first may be the best.  It's all a caption for days when it seems everyone, just everyone, clerks of the court, the face across the table, everyone is angry and unsettled, done in, and now leaving home or husband or wife or sensibility and sense, and for what?  

     "No, that's not the way it happened at all," said Magnus's wife, looking around the table and then finally at her husband. "I remember it exactly.  She called you in the middle of the night, said they were at Pitcairn Island, and there was a problem with the boat."
     "His name is on the tip of my tongue," said Magnus.
     "Somebody Bixby found to sail his boat,"  The wife looked at the person sitting next to her for help, it was the neighbor of this woman once maroonned in the south seas.  But that person shook his head.
     "And didn't she say she'd been raped?" Magnus's wife went on.
     Magnus hauled up his worried expression. "I just remember I had to go down there and sail it back."
     Somebody else at the table spoke up. "I heard they stopped in at Bali. Isn't that partly muslim?"
     "Yes," said a young college graduate who had been silent all night, and added, "They never let a baby's feet touch the ground for the first six months of life."
     The somebody else waved that aside. "And the customs official did a search and found marijuana. I think somebody from the State Department to get them both out. But maybe she told people one story to hide the truth...."
     What about the boat? someone asked.
    "Ah ya, well you know it wasn't such a good boat," said Magnus. "Very long, 60 feet, but cheap materials.  You wouldn't want to go 'round the horn in that thing. That constant knocking, it would fall apart. Not like a Swan, not that quality at all."

Behold the coming of drone swarms.  Think what this will do for the rejuvenation of noir.  The aging detective with his fleet of quadrotors tailing the unfaithful spouse; the industrial espionage that will become so much easier; and with a larger version what a boon to drug smugglers; not mention a new way to carry out  bio-cyber-terrorism attacks. Think of how much more reason we'll have to be paranoid. On the other hand, no one will ever get lost; because everyone will be under constant surveillance. The slightest misstep will be recorded. People will become much more self-conscious. A new makeup perhaps. And there'll be 'droney', your assistant shopper-drone.  Drones will be ever smaller; and finally someone will slap their cheek thinking it's a mosquitoe when it's a drone. When people call you a drone it will have a whole new meaning.  "Why don't my drones do a flyby with your drones." Maybe for the ladies, a drone landing hat. Color-coordinated drones. Doppelganger drones. And twitter drones, and we'll be available to be seen at every moment, and how fascinating it will all be.....

Winding stairs lead up to the front door. It's half open. I enter. There's a brief ante way, and just to the right, a room, completely dark, save for a rickety looking little fire under the mantle. I call out. Suddenly, he appears in front of me.  He's smiling, always so jovial.
   We go into the kitchen where he has everything prepared. Fresh fish, cauliflower, an enormous pan with paella, bread, hummus, a Greek salad, naturally. "Would you like a glass of wine?" he begins. I shake my head. It's a work day, I say. He is undeterred. "This is excellent. Try it."
   He pours me a glass. "To my play," he says, and he goes on to tell me about how he has prepared the food, and asks if I like this or that. We go outside where he has several ovens cut into the rock. One for bread, one for fish. Finally, we sit down in his diningroom, which is cluttered with small boxes on chairs, stacks of magazines, and on the wall a relief of Aphrodite's head in profile.
   He chatters on, tells me his wife is somewhere about. A man in his 30s appears and disappears. I have no idea who it is. "I do what I want," he tells me, and from the beginning he's drinking quickly. "If I like someone I let them know. I may have them or I may not. You know at this age, you should be able to do what I want."
   Finally, we get to the subject of the play. "What do you think?" he asks me.
   The play is based on a true story of a woman living in a small town. Think of Kalavryta. Nearly 20 years ago she threw herself off a bridge. She was then in her 70s. Here is what happened. During the war, when the Germans reached her town the captain called the people into the square and said what a shame it was that the war had come to this and he certainly took no pleasure in this occupation, and he went on at great lengths to praise Greek culture.  He promised — many times — that no harm would come to the town's people.  His very warm manner was all part of his presentation, and he kept repeating that he would do anything he could to make this period pass without incident.  But of course, there were partisans and remnants of the Greek army; eventually several German soldiers were killed and then the captain called the people into the town square once more and this time his persona had completely changed and that was when the massacre started.

   And so this woman could never get over the way this officer had made her believe that everything would be fine.  She could never get over the way he changed and the way she had been so drawn in.

   "I think the story is extraordinary," I tell him.

   And now he brings a second bottle, and he doesn't want to talk about the play at all.  He wants to tell me he's going to have a pacemaker put in. Again and again he rubs his face with his hand.  As though he's going to stretch it into some new shape, some other identity, mold some new person without all of these problems.

   I draw him back to the play and make the point that perhaps the woman killed herself for some other reason.  After all, why would she wait 50 years?  Why wouldn't she be able to resolve this in that time? Or else kill herself much earlier. And what was the ignition? Something must have happened. I suggest that needs to be part of the play; that he needs to explore the psychology of this woman, not focus on what happened in the war.  And especially considering Greece now.  

   "Perhaps, there's some broader truth here," I tell him. "Perhaps, the idea of not being able to change has some sort of resonance."

   He shakes his head. He swirls his nearly empty glass. He looks at me for a long time. The plates are ravaged and empty. It's not about the play at all.  

   "I feel I am at the bottom of the void."

  

2012, the film, is based on "bad science", an inaccurate premise, and a silly script. Moreover, the subplot dialogue, between the protagonist and his ex-wife, as well as their children and her new husband, has the white-whine whinny of a forty-something quiche eater in a mall-gym confession. The subplot reminds you of Californication, that other disaster movie, literally and figuratively, but without the pornography or the depression bound hero, or the interest for that matter.
In 2012, the hero lives in Santa Monica, as opposed to Venice Beach, and lives in his head but after a few days on the edge of extinction, he finds his humanity. He also gets his wife back, his children, and the word family is preserved, we can see how suburbia will be emerge from the swamp of Namibia. But perhaps the film is worth seeing if you haven't thought about the idea of mass extinction lately.
There's a moment late in the film when the great flood has returned and an Indian couple is looking up at a monstrous tsunami, the heighth of several skyscrapers, and here they are, about to wash them away, and the multitude with them, like ants down the drain.
It's a stunning realization of the old disaster theme but perhaps a foreshadowing after all.  Because sooner or later there will be a meteorite, no bigger than a tennis court or half a tennis court, that will remind us of real calamities,  not hunger in Ethiopia, not war in Waziristan.  We have the lost any sense of real extermination, or fear from something beyond us, and yet we are thrilled by the possibility.

She wakes up in her dreams. That's the dream.  And it's the same dream in whatever continent she is traveling through.  She wakes up and she is in her coffin deep under the ground and there are coffins in every direction as far as the eye can see. And not the musty scent you would think, something else, sweet. She can hear the sound of the ocean coming from somewhere.  She is under the ocean or over the ocean; she cannot tell.  She sits up in her coffin and stretches.  Most everyone is dead to the world, but a few others in the distance, are sitting up as well, combing their hair or looking for a toothbrush.  She herself is tired of this place.  It's as though she had lain in bed too long.  Time to get up but someone a few coffins over is saying that nappy time is not over yet. "Go back to sleep," somebody orders. "We'll wake you when it's time."  But in the dream it's never time.

After the funeral there was a reception in the church hall. A short, blue-haired woman with quite a jaw suddenly appeared. She was very short and I am not tall but for a moment I felt like a giant. She wanted to know if I were the husband of the departed.  No, I said and looked around to point him out but he had disappeared.  Do I look like a man in my 80s, I wanted to say.  But then perhaps, I do, I thought.

Then I saw the priest.  I waited until he was finished eating and was talking to just one person, a widow I was told. I sat down next to him as the woman was saying, "pray for me father. I'm doing this surgery next Wednesday."

"I certainly will," he said. "Now which surgery is this again?"

"The growth I told you about," she said.

"Ah yes," said the priest. "But it's not malignant. Right?"

"No, thank God," she said. "But 've been seeing a man who would like me to have it removed."

"Why does it bother him? It's on your back, isn't it?"

"Yes, but he thinks it's unsightly.  Even though he doesn't see it, just knowing it's there bothers him."

The priest turned to me.  "Makes you think of Steve Jobs, doesn't it?"

"Well," he said turning back to the woman. "I'm sure he has some unsightly things about him, doesn't he? He may need me to say Mass more than you."

She nodded and asked once more for divine help.  The priest promised he would intercede as best he could, and then turned to me and bore into me with his look. "So what is your name again" he asked in his brogue.

I told him.  And I told him that I was touched by his eulogy for the departed.  "Sure," he said, "Well, we're all at the station, aren't we.  The train is always at the station, we're all there, looking down from the train happy or sad we're leaving, or else looking up at the people about to leave and happy or sad we're not going too."

And then he went on to tell me his whole life story in about 20 minutes.  You understand we'd never met.  And although we agreed to lunch, I don't suppose we'll meet again.  I even told him his church was  in danger of becoming irrelevant.  He was the first to agree.

Then, suddenly, I was the confessor and he was telling me about growing up in the old country and how his father beat the living bejesus out of him, and drank himself to death and it was Frank McCourtville if there ever was, all the cliches, and how he couldn't forgive his father until much later, and he described the scene exactly, how he was trying to help some man who reminded him of his father and somehow the moment drew out his compassion and that was the end of his hatred.  Almost.  And he went on about his father's legacy, all of his own drinking and carousing, even as a priest, and how he hasn't had a drink in a long time, but how long wasn't clear, but of course it's still a constant danger and then one night he was at a restaurant I think it was, and he had his hand on a woman's knee under the table and her husband was across the table.  Both parishoners.  When this was wasn't clear but it seem recently.

"Not a good situation," he said to me, his eyes glistening for some reason.  "But like I said we're all either on the train or standing at the station."

"Sure," I said.

"And which are you?" and he was looking right through me with those eyes, say what you will, doubt them if you like, but the eyes that see it all.

Berns stopped by for a drink the other night.  He was wearing his famous, tattered cashmere coat and not looking well.  "I feel like Greece," he said. "I am Greece."

I proposed some old Polish Vodka out of the freezer and he agreed.

"Everyone I know is still looking for work and not finding any," he went on. "Most are giving up."

"Get a grip," I said. "You didn't think you were going to get a job at your age, did you? It's all rigged. Haven't you figured that out?"

"I still have certain skills."

"What are they? List them."

He shrugged his shoulders. "Branding expert; illustrator; mechanic; furniture designer, 'idea man', zoo keeper....I was also a bon vivant once.  And before that, a jokesmith."

"What happened to that?"

"It didn't lead to anything substantial. Well, marriage if you count that. And now I can't remember any of the jokes.  But worse than that I just feel like Greece. I feel like everything is collapsing. I feel like my Parthenon is in ruins."

"What's your Parthenon?"

"My mind, basically."

I told him he needed to stop being so I-I, me-me.  Get out of yourself, I told him.

"No," he said. "I am.  Actually I did find a job.  Doesn't pay anything, but it keeps me out of trouble and actually it's a way where I feel I can go a and get a high dose of common misery?

"What is it?"

I've become a full time activist.  And then he went on to tell me how he goes over to Oakland every day to be with the occupiers.

"Your father was a banker," I said.

"Don't you think I rue the day?"

"But so what do you do over there?"?

"We have 'mike check' and I talk to these kids about the old days.  A lot of people are paranoid."

"You must feel right at home."

"I do and I don't."

"How long can you keep this up?"

"I can't; I'm done with it."

"Why?"

"You know why.  Because it's fucking boring.  I realize I can't stay with causes because they're so fucking boring."

It's what old people say, "I'm glad I'll be long gone before that happens."  Or, "That's something your generation will have to deal with, thank God, not me or mine."  This is always in the context of some  future shock: global warming, meteorites, or the terrible inequalities that go with population growth, or just now the notion that the United States is committing social and political suicide.

This is Pat Buchanan's latest call to despair, a wish-fulfillment based on the notion that America has been caught in the worldwide vortex sucking everything down the drain: a world never more fragmented and a country never more adrift.  Nothing holds us together is the thesis: not language, religion, state, or common history; nor a sense of a common destiny, nor the means to achieve the American Dream.  Not even capitalism itself.

And if you don't believe it, why just look out the window at all those protestors down in the street.  Whether Occupiers or Tea Partiers isn't that all symptomatic of 'end times'?  Isn't it in the air?

Everything is askew and the most forbidding proof of gloom is that in 30 years whites will be a minority in America, And just think of it —130 million Latinos; 66 million blacks — the house will be run by minorities and 'darks' and darkies: the uneducated, gardeners and short-order chefs, check-out counter types, and we won't have that calm, all-clear, now-don't-you-shout-because-daddys-home, assurance that everything will be alright, we won't have Reagan's voice, God love him, to help us remain steady and thoughtful. And hopeful.

We'll have to do it ourselves and whatever parts of life aren't already self-service, will be.  We'll have to find some new hope, some unknown, unforeseen reason for optimism.  We'll be living in like-minded communities, of course, and we'll have to reach out; and one day, sure enough, a meteorite will come and a dirty bomb will go off, and people will remember the good old days, they'll scold themselves that they weren't more careful, and mindful, and they'll come up with drastic new plans, and their kid's kids will get old and they will be ever so glad they won't have to deal with the future as they imagine it.

And that's all true. Every bit of it is true.  And it all means absolutely nothing, nothing at all, next to a cliche I suppose, but still, there it is, the sunlight coming in the window, just this minute, right now.

Here is a place to begin. You are whoever you are, "Sheenasakai" or  "SheenaBaby" , apparently. I have only the screen name, along with the photo of a half-faced, one-eye young woman.The image is reminiscent of the Tai-chi symbol of eternity.  Perhaps, that was your intention.

     And so you threw out this note in a digital bottle, to drift across the algorithms, and in the space of a Max Planck millennium, it washes up on the beach of my interest.

     My interest is memory and here is my question: apparently, you were recently in love, then not. Something happened. Right now on 9/20/11 at 21:59 your revelation is that "love is short, forgetting is longer."  

     But does whatever pain you're in now deter you from falling in love again?  Probably not.  

     This is my point.The forgetting, no matter how slow, is already beginning.  You can't stop it.  In weeks or years, or lifetimes if you are so unlucky, you will lose this memory.  It will be no different than trying to remember a face you saw in the next car on the way home from work today. 

     And then sooner or later you will fall in love again, and it will be long or short but eventually it will falter, it will become a ruin, and worth a visit from time or time or not, but you'll remember the sensation of having been in love and the pain you felt until you forget, and you start all over again.

     This is not an argument against falling in love.  On the contrary.          And you know all this already anyway. I am merely reminding you.  I am merely a messenger whose message will last only as long as the next funding round for this site or until whenever.  

On December 9, 2009 I wrote an entry based on an article I read in a local newspaper in San Mateo.  The article was about a woman named Suzanne Caadium, a Stanford graduate and just then apparently homeless.  She'd also had a run-in with the police. I did some research, found out more about her, and added what details I could.

I've never met Ms. Caadium, but my blog has apparently become a kind of home base for those who know her.  Occasionally, people comment on the original story, or a subsequent one I wrote some months later.

Today, I received this anonymous message:  "This person is sick and needs help immediately so she cannot put her family thru hell any more!!!! Running from the law and your problems is not the answer Suzanne! You are not in the CIA nor any other gov group for that matter, you are a mom who left her children. Get Help.... "

I would only say that if I can help any of the people involved in this case, I would be glad to do it.

Beyond the planes hitting the towers, which so resembled a special effect, and even the buildings collapsing, the most indelible memories of 9/11 to me were the scenes of people jumping out of upper floor windows. Forced out by the infernal heat and perhaps also by the sheer horror around them. Forced out by what the body couldn't stand and what the mind wouldn't accept.

And so from time to time, sometimes in a dream, sometimes not, my mind holds fast to the thought of the couple stepping out into thin air hand-in-hand, or by the sight of the man in the Drew photo, the 'falling man' portrayed by the performance artist in the DeLillo novel.

Or there is the moment a policeman described to me once. A teenage boy with a gun sitting on stoop. This was in the docks of Marin. The policeman approaches the boy, tells him to put down the gun, but the boy is locked. The cop says what you're trained to say in such a situation. But at some point the boy and the cop realize that there is nothing to be done, the force of destiny or just a broken down mind, something has gone too far, and somewhere in that moment the boy kills himself.

Or the scenes that keep repeating, where you under the surface of the tsunami, where human life is deconstructed, and at the same time blown apart and held in place. the sea's plunder, and in that vast black realm of oil and junk, from a toothpick to a two-story house, inside the real Godzilla, the bodies: patients from the Sendai hospital; the elderly couple whose daughter came to the rescue but couldn't quite them into the car in time; fisherman floating inside their boats; a child inside a car

Great americans are not doing well at the tennis courts over on Vicente and 24th Avenue.  A lot of bad blood lately.  Again, it's this devilish economy.  Just the other day two men got in a fight during the beginning of a doubles match over who should serve first.  They were supposed to be partners.

"Look, you always serve first," said one, a caucasian whose shorts were probably too short. "But today I'm going to serve first."

"No, I want to serve," said the Asian gentlemen, who wore a baseball cap and sweatpants.  He kept raising his racquet above his head, doing a stretching exercise and holding it with two hands like Charleton Heston used to do at NRA meetings.

"You're not," said the caucasian pointing at a spot near the net. "Now just go on."

The Asian gentleman didn't move.  "No, I want to serve," he said with a smile and in a friendly voice, although high and squeeky.

"How do I get this across to you?  You always, always serve first," said the caucasian. "Today, I'm going to serve first."

"But I still want to serve first," said the Asian who was absolutely unflappable and would not take no for an answer.

"I'm telling you that this time you're not.  It's okay. Today, you're not.  You just have to grin and bear it."

This went on for nearly 20 more minutes and by the end of it the light had fallen.  The two players on the other side of the net quit in disgust and went home.  The park ranger closed up the bathrooms.

Things are going awry again. You can tell by the strange calls coming into the Taraval Street police station. All over the Outer Sunset, people are afraid. It’s the fallout from the debt limit crisis, of course. It’s just what the pundits have been saying. Krugman insists we’re all to blame for going along with this Tea Party claptrap. Laura Ingram says that anybody that goes along with Obama is an idiot and a Marxist moron and should be committed.

The point is that the public is to blame and now we're beginning to realize our foolishness. I know I do. The truth is that we're all going crazy out of remorse and self-hatred.

In the Outer Sunset husbands are threatening to throw their wives off the top of buildings, although less because of the economy then because their wives don’t have sex with them; wives are coming after their husbands with kitchen knives. Or even stranger stuff. For all the old reasons. "You never cook, you never clean. You never wipe the toilet bowl. What about you doing the laundry once in a while?"

Then this happened just down the street. It could have happened to any of us. A suspect came up to a 74-year-old man claiming to be a prince who needed to give money away before he went back to Africa. It's the old story. He told the old man he could keep $15,000 if the old man would help him donate $70,000 to charity. That's a good deal, thought the old man. Charity to help all the jobless in America and the destitute in the new country of Southern Sudan, and the Japanese who have been irradiated.

The suspect/prince told the old man that it was all but a done deal but that he would need some ‘good faith’ money, just to make sure the old man was on the up and up and could be trusted. The suspect then showed the man a roll of money with $100 bills on top, but the old man does not know what was underneath. Could have been just green toilet paper. But at the time the old man had his lust eyes on that money. It had been a long time since he'd felt that much longing.

The prince had to step away for a moment to adjust his feathers and restack his bangles. He pulled a gray hair out of the top of his head. In the same moment he received a phone call from his “lawyer”, whose entire practice is focused on the problems faced by African princes in America. The prince shook his head and approached the old man saying, ‘you talk to him’, as though to say, 'I can’t understand what he’s saying, you Americans are all weirdy-white, three-dollar bill types.'

The lawyer told the old man that he was waiting for the princes. They were supposed to have lunch at the Slanted Door and they would lose their reservation if the old man didn't quickly accept this stunning opportunity.

The old man, having no idea what the Slanted Door was, bowed his head and allowed the suspect prince to get in his car. They drove around and picked up another suspect. An assistant prince, in full regalia. The assistant told a fable about the animals who come to the watering hole for refreshment but then get eaten.

"It's a sad world, is it not," said the prince.

Then they all went to the old man’s house to look for the good faith money. He lives a few streets away. One of these dreary streets all cemented up, no trees, no grass, no charm whatsoever. But the old man couldn't find the money, he couldn’t remember where he’d put it, he looked in the rice bags and under his mattress, in the crawl space above his wife's closet and in the old Toyota gas tank he’s kept all these years. But no money. He called his wife who polishes toe nails up on Irving and 20th. She didn't know what he was talking about and hung up.

The princes said that was no problem, the Slanted Door would hold their reservation for a little while longer, and now if the old man could just go to the bank and get a cashier’s check along with some cash, everything would be, how you say, hunky dory.

So the old man dropped the suspects off at the street at their request, near their ‘day castle’. Not their night castle, which is down in the Filmore District. The old man obediently went to the bank and withdrew $9,500 in cash and a $9,500 cashier’s check. The old man then went back near the 'day castle' and gave the prince and his assistant the money and the check.

Now the old man has lost all his money but he does have the memory of having met two princes in one day, albeit an assistant prince.

Again the analogy to Obama. Sean Hannity would say, “so you see this is what happens when you deal with Africans; you get fleeced. You fall in with them because they seem well spoken, they're well dressed, but as my sons could tell you — and did I mention what terrific tennis players they are — these black immaculates are all just corrupt.”

* * *

Meanwile, back in the neighborhood, more chaos. A man reported that someone is calling him on his cell over and over again. He can’t find out who it is.  This has never happened before. A woman said someone broke into one of her vacant homes and didn’t take anything or damage anything, but did use the toilet.

Speaking of feces, a man said he found two sacks full of feces in the back of his pickup truck.

A woman said she saw a man defecating into a bag near her car. She honked the horn to drive him away; he spit on her windshield and fled.

A woman said that when she was sleeping in her boyfriend’s room, his roommate came in. He French kissed her and left. She was scared and pretended to be sleeping. He was cited.

A woman said that she received text messages on her cell phone. The messages from the unknown person gave detailed information about her. Other text messages had statements about raping her.

An officer met a female student who said that she was asked by a male student to perform a sexual act. The student showed her his genitals. The male student said that he did ask, but she asked to see his genitals first. No sexual act was performed. The parents of the students involved were notified.

But wait, that’s not all. This is also true. People called the police because a neighbor knocked on the door yelling that he “needed to get laid.” The neighbor was cited.

What was that all about? Rumors in the neighborhood are that the man had exposed himself to so much Internet porn that he was unable to control himself. He didn’t know where to turn and so flipped a coin to decide whether he would go to the neighbors on the left or on the right to see seek relief.

Someone else said he was misunderstood. He was yelling that he needed to get ‘staid’. Not laid. He had come to Jesus and wanted to get "staid."

Scrap

It’s the post-modern life of a maestro. Just back from Switzerland and Germany. Catch a breath. Play full-on dad with the children, under the cherry trees in the garden. Talk to your wife about her work, about architecture and the orchestration of space. Invite people down from London. Talk about how the Arts are being undermined by uncultured polticians and what ever will become of this island.

Then back in the cab. A quick change of personalities. Heathrow, please. The transition from familial tones to orchestral tones is tart. You cannot be loyal to both at the same time. “Have a pleasant trip, Mr. Goodwin.” And before you know it North America is off the starboard wing.

The Mastro is coming to Carmel. To direct the Carmel Bach Festival. Mr. Paul Goodwin, it is: the oboist turned conductor, the “energetic master of gesture”, well known for his baroque-era interpretations. Best known for giving clear cues.

And to himself, perhaps best known for his love of both ‘ancient’ music and contemporary. Best known to himself for his appreciation of musical nuance, and showing those nuances: but also the intersection of competing artistic forms, the endless weave of the Arts, and for fulfilling his notion of what a good conductor should always be, above all — a magician.

I ran into my old friend Bernard coming out of Java Beach this morning. He looked exuberant. He had coffee in hand and was singing something. We said hello. I asked what he was singing.

He went right into it. “We all come from the goddess. And to the goddess shall return, like a drop…. of rain, flowing to the ocean….”

He sang it again —a little too loudly for that time in the morning, but that’s Berns — and when he got to the word “drop”, he made a conductor’s gesture, with thumb and forefinger, as though to enunciate the word. “‘like a drop’, then hold it a beat. ‘of rain.’ ”

What’s that? I asked.

“A little pagan thing.” He sang it through still again.

“Catchy tune. I didn’t realize you'd gone back to your old pagan ways”

“Trying to,” he said. “Last night was the summer solstice. There was a little ceremony down on the beach at Taraval.”

We sat down, he told me about it.

“Three, four hundred people. Circle around a fire. You sing songs. Pray for a good crop. Acknowledge the four corners. Make a wish. The idea is to clear stuff out. Make room for the new. That kind of thing.”

“And the wreath goes around”, he added.

What’s that?

“Symbol of the cosmos. Universe, atom. We’re all electrons, right? Earth around the sun. Circle of life. The seasons. I suppose you could say ‘the vagina’ as well. Although that’s more my interpretation.”

‘Blessed be’. I said.

“You always have to be sarcastic. But I understand.”

I defended myself but he waved it aside. He doesn't like it when you don't take his interests as seriously as he does. He also considers himself somewhat of an expert on the subject. Many years ago he wrote a story for the New York Times Sunday Magazine about pagans. But the piece never played. If you have about 10 hours Bernie could tell you his whole sordid history with The New York Times and why they wouldn’t take a piece they’d assigned on Neo-Paganism and on which he’d spent about six months. He always claimed that was when he realized the true distance between New York and California.

“Was there a lot of wild sex?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“It’s not about that,” he said marmishly. And a little disingenuously considering the tales he’d told me of pagan annual gatherings up at Harbin Hot Springs. He’d once caught a bug in his privates after being in a pool full of coupling couples. His wife has always assumed he went biblical with some of the witches but he assured me that was not the case. “Do you think I would jeopardize an assignment with The New York Times to get laid by people I was interviewing? Plus the really voracious people were not pagan. You want to steer clear of those. There's a lot of pretenders in the pagan community.”

“Well what then? Did people take off their clothes at least?” I asked.

“Oh yes. Of course. I would say there were between 50 and 100 people who went into the ocean.”

"Last night? In that cold?"

“You feel better,” he said.

“Did you do that?”

“No, my wife did though.”

“Just took off all her clothes and dove right in.” In appearance, his wife looks not unlike the Woman of Willendorf. But blonde and very funny.

“Up to her waist”, he went on. “Mostly women went in the ocean. All shapes, ages. A few men. Who were mostly older. The men were definitely older.”

“But not you.”

He shook his head.

“How did your wife like it?”

“I don’t know you’d have to ask her. But I think she would tell you that it was very cleansing.”

I never understand how metaphor can be so powerful, how people can walk into 55-degree surf and think they’re cleansed of anything except their wits. I said that.

“I know,” Bernard said. But that’s you.”

And then he went off on the sociology of the evening.

“Starhawk wasn’t there. None of the old guard. That was sad. And what was her name who used to live down in Santa Cruz, who was always railing against Christianity, wondering why anybody would want to worship 'a little dead man on little dead sticks'. Her name won’t come to me. But anyway Starhawk’s the best, of course. Nobody knows more about this stuff than she does. No one is more talented in teaching ‘the ancient ways’.”

Bernard paused. “I don’t know what’s happened to her. It’s just mostly a lot of kids now.”

He went on.

“Explain to me what it does for you again,” I said. “What’s the appeal?”

“Oh,” he said with a sigh, as though if you have to explain it you’ll never understand. “Of course, it’s all silly and serious at the same time. It's not about ideas, that's what I like. You don't have to pose or be cool or be smart or be whatever you're being at the moment....I don't know it's really just about giving up everything...." He paused to let somebody get by.

"But I have to say when we were standing there, all the naked bodies in the firelight, skin the color of limestone, and everyone is singing, just a single note really. And as you start your voice automatically synchs with the voices around you, high C, was it, you're all on the same note and there’s something very interesting about that. It’s just for a moment but I found that very interesting.”

“Connected to the universe,” I said.

“I suppose.”

Bernard was anxious to go. But he wanted to add something.

“Apropos of nothing,” he said. “Or everything. Every once in a while I look down, I’m on a wire at the very top of the tent, and it’s just so far above the crowd and you could fall, there’s no net, and you’d be done for, but you don’t even care about that. You don't care about anything. With all that's happening. You know what I mean? You're just losing touch with life, you can sense the other side and suddenly you lose your drive, your appreciation, and that’s when the pagans can help you. They’re sweet people, the ones I’ve known. It’s all much simpler. You don’t have to be anything. That's what it is, you just don't have to be anything.”

He made a little moue, shrugged his shoulders and turned away, back humming his riff.

So let's say you're mentally unstable, you're a sick bastard, and you're finally up and at 'em at 9 a.m. with your breakfast of champions, listening to the Rush because how else can you waste time, how else can you torture and burn the little animals inside you.

Meanwhile, he's on his daily rant about the immorality of liberals, and how the president has this insidious plan to keep the recession going, and the fat man is being particularly vicious and vile, and insistent, a human gopher, and you finally feel guilty for listening, you do, you have to admit that, but then you're back to daydreaming — about getting through Mr. Snerdly to say to the Rushbow, "Thank you for taking my call, mega dittos from the belly of the liberal beast, thank you for all you do. I just want to know, is it true, as has been reported in various places, that you're gay? I have no argument if you are. But you seem to have such disgust for gays....

And if I could ask a follow-up: have you had sex with any of your four wives?  Your third wife says no, and claims that at one point you were into child pornography. Is that true and has anyone told you that you were separated at birth from Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter?"

But before you've refined that question, while you're deep into a 140-character novel about the murder of a talk show host, something terrible happens. You thought  you heard him say, "Mamet".  But that can't be right.  You turn up the radio and then you're hearing somebody talking about their new book.  Wait!  This isn't David Mamet. Is it?  It couldn't be.  Does David Mamet have a brother.  Are there any other public Mamets.

No, this David "Second prize is a set of steak knives"Mamet and he has just written a book about his transformation from liberal to conservative. And he's decrying political civility. And he's doing it on this program.

And then you listen to David Mamet, whose work you've largely enjoyed, some of it is brilliant — no Pinter, but he had some interesting takes on America, and suddenly you feel like the Donald Sutherland character at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the day is lost from there....

While everyone is concerned with Mr. Weiner's schnitzel, and whether tweet flirting is evil or merely strange crude, the scandal echoes down through the daily lives of Mr. Everyman — and woman — down and down,  right down to 18th Avenue and Moraga in the Outer Sunset District.  Which is known for block after treeless block, after cement driveway, on top of sand to which it will return.  Once upon a time, Irish; now Chinese: monochromatic, the city's somnolescent ward.  There are some streets so lifeless, so lacking in definition on a cloudy day that you'd think no one could possibly live there.  And they don't.


This from a police report:

"A wife reported that her husband’s co-worker has been speaking with him on the phone to discuss work issues more than usual in the past 2 months. The wife discovered the co-workers phone number in the husband’s cell phone and suspects that they might be having an affair. The co-worker has been calling their residence looking for the husband. On 6/9/11, the co-worker sat in her car in front of the house for several hours. Then she rang the door bell. The wife did not answer the door. The co-worker then left a back scratcher for the wife at a neighbor’s house."

The suicide note begins, "I lack personal integrity." This from a mother of two boys.  Both adopted.  She's a single mother at wit's end.  Boys are tough love and she has loads of excuses.  Her job is falling apart, her partner has left her.  She feels she's lost control.

And all the while no noticeable foreshadowing. No metaphors, no slip-of-the-tongue, no red-wine hint. The whole thing comes out of nowhere. Whim gone awry.

No one remembers another more subtle attempt a few years ago.  And there was something she said once in college years ago.

But no one remembers.

The only flag is a receipt for "Final Exit" on a side table.  Found after the fact.

And who should read this note first,  who comes across the scene first, up in an attic, no less — can you imagine this?  Her best friend, and someone who is herself fragile and who has survived big time doubt and isolation.  Who has herself helped so much to keep those two boys on track.

The words from the body on the floor are,  'Oh, and here's your thanks.  Tuck it in your heart forever.'

If you're going to commit suicide in a situation like this,  you need to run it past your supervisor first. But I can tell you now, talking about how you don't have any personal integrity will not get you out.  You fouled up.  And now a lot of folks have to clean up the mess. And your two boys will be among them.

You have no idea what it will take and how long it will take. And worst of all, how they'll miss you like mad.....

Mark Levin, the ever popular conservative talk show host, also known as "the Great One," has defined the standard for accuracy in the media for many years.  Just the other day he said, "I'm the only one that tells like it is. I'm the only one that tells the truth.  Hear that, you back benchers?"

Mr. Levin, who is meticulous with the truth and never exaggerates, has the fourth largest radio audience among living broadcasters. He's very proud of that, and by the tone of his voice you sense he has more contempt than respect for those with larger audiences.

He's a populist, although his critics say he is an intellectual skinhead — and actually he is bald and often wears a tan cap to hide the fact,  In photographs he has the dark circled eyes of a raccoon. Critics would have you believe that Mr. Levin belongs with all those lost souls in Dante's 9th circle, the bowge for fraudsters, the sowers of discord.

They would also insist that despite his claims to being an institutional scholar he's nothing of the sort.

Of course, his followers insist he is brilliant.  "I just want to thank you for all you do," they are always saying.  "The addicted", as they sometimes refer to themselves, insist Marky Mark Levin is a prophet who has rightly named America's clear and present danger: Obama.

This man is a true danger, Mr. Levin often says. He's driving this country into the ground, his whole intent is to destroy everything we hold dear.... He's akin to Nazis.  When Hoffas Jr. referred to people in the Tea Party as sons of bitches, Levin called Hoffa one of Obama's brown shirts.

Incidentally, Mr. Levin's daughter is a pop singer. Perhaps, she's the one who suggested he use part of  the opening of "Somewhere I Belong", by Linkin Park, in his promo.

Critics at "PMSMSNBCLSD", "The New York Slimes" and even "The Washington Compost" , the statists, might also point out that Mr. Levin's argument for showing photos of a dead Bin Laden to the public was that he, himself, simply wanted to "revel" in the goriness of the scene and by his own admission pin those photos on this office wall so that every day he could be reminded of how much he hated such a monster.

The Great One, not to be confused with The Annointed One, his nemesis, the president, graduated magna cum laude from Temple University and has written several best selling books, including Foot Men In Black and Libel and Tyranny.  He is often honored by strict constitutionalists and was once nicknamed "F. Lee Levin" by one of his mentors, Rush Limbaugh.

"He takes pride in being snide", is one his call lines.

Mr. Levin's other nickname, "The Great One", was bestowed by Sean Hannity, a former Chinese figurine, who often appears on the Levin show and begins his participation by asking Mr. Levin, "so what are you wearing today?"

Sometimes at home The Great One will turn on his friend and say to nobody in particular, "Did you hear what the Inanity said on his show tonight? That chubby coward." And then he'll say to his wife, "And you can tell him I said that."

Although many of his listeners might guess that "the Great One" is a short man by the sound of his high, shrill voice,  Mr. Levin is 6'4".  He also describes himself as "husky."

Mr. Levin, who has a signed picture of Robert Welsh above his tie rack, has become particularly popular among Tea Party activists and serves as the de facto voice of the Koch Brothers, who pay him a six-figure annual salary to promote their organization, Americans for Prosperity.  Critics claim that few of Mr. Levin's listeners realize the very close relationship he holds with the Koch family, particularly Charles. Both share a fascination with small rodents and bowler hats, as well as politics and meet regularly at a tiny Italian restaurant in an undisclosed mall in New Jersey.

Mr. Levin's role model is less de Tocqueville or Burke than the legendary conservative talk show host, Robert Ciro Gigante, also known as "Bubba" Bob Grant.  Over the years Mr. Grant has made a number of statements that might be considered racial slurs by people who pay attention to such things. "Bubba" was also one of the first conservative personalities to call for President Obama's long-form birth certificate.

Mr. Grant's radio style has been imitated by Mr. Levin, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, who Mr. Grant originally castigated as a radio host.

Mr. Levin's own radio style is much more refined than Mr. Grant's, although he has his own irrepressible style.  He refers to supporters of the president as "Obama thugs".  He refers to the president himself as a "moron" and a "liar."

"There, I said it," he'll say.

Or sometimes he'll say something that would raise an eyebrow at the FCC but then adds, "Can I say that, Mr. Producer?"  As though to taunt the censors.

He even expresses contempt for conservative callers, particularly those sympathetic to Donald Trump. He may say to a caller imploring Mr. Levin's support, "get off my phone you idiot."

On the other hand, if a caller offers even a bit of a kind word, or complements Mr. Levin's torch stories about his dogs, Mr. Levin will reply, "All right my friend, thank you for the call."

Last year Mr. Levin made $250,005.49.  He gave everything above $250,000 to charity.

As for 2012, Dr. Levin has refused to endorse anyone until the last moment.  He prefers Santorum and Bachman because they're the only "true conservatives."  He would like to get Gov. Romney on the show but his people say he's just too busy this week and in fact throughout this entire campaign cycle.

Above all, Mr. Levin is fair-minded, always careful with the truth, and reaches out to his listeners to find out what they think. He never cuts people off.  He believes in debate.  He loves firefighters and security personnel.  And soldiers.

On Fridays, to mark the end of the week, he plays Kate Smith singing God Bless America.  Then he goes home and weeps.  He literally weeps.  But actually before he goes home he stops by his favorite restaurant to have a heart-stopping cheese burger.  This is an everyman.  This is what endears him to millions.

He is actually not the petty, angry, foul-minded little psychopath he sounds like. (He's 6'4". And husky. He also has a club foot.)

Critics insist he has no heart, despite his claims he has had open heart surgery.  They demand proof of the surgery but so far nothing has been provided.

"The Great One" is also known for his sentimentality for dogs.  Three of his dogs have died in the last year or two.  No person has ever received more adulation or respect than one of his dogs.  No sorrow can match it. This was particularly true after "Griffen" died. About whom a book has been written.

However, questions have been raised about where the money goes in honor of "Griffen's" memory.  Mr. Levin uses his website to solicit money for a reputed animal charity. . But what is it really? A think tank for radical canines, perhaps.

None of those reports have been verified.

Mr. Levin once held a position in the Reagan administration, in the Justice Dept., or Injustice Dept. as he would say about the current department.   He was much beloved by the First Lady and also dated Betsy Bloomingdale! She later had some very unkind things to say about Mr. Levin, but then she said the same things about her husband, Alfred.

Mr. Levin, who apparently now refuses to step foot in Bloomingdales. He reportedly has a Reagan shrine in his study and on an old victrola listens to Fr. Coughlin speeches before he goes to bed. He knows them all by heart.

"Should I call myself, Rabbi Coughlin?", he'll ask his wife in the middle of the night. "I think I shall. That'll get 'em up in arms."

Several stories have surfaced recently that Mr. Levin's wife has had another nervous breakdown and has had to seek psychiatric help. Mr. Levin, himself, suffers from various bi-polar disorders.  What he most want you to appreciate is that he's someone the framers would like to have shared a cheese burger with, and he's a big man, he's not the little man he sounds like.