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Beyond Good and Evil

Joseph Campbell

When you get down into the depths of mythology, [mythic] forms are beyond good and evil. With the Indian deities—this is the wonderful thing about them—the upper right hand will say. “Fear not” and below it is the boon-bestowing hand; and the upper left will have a sword, and in the lower a recently amputated head. These are the two aspects of power, the two aspects of being. in our traditions—and this is true even all the way back to the Greeks—the beneficent and the malfeasant aspects of power tend to be separated and contrary entities.

Is that when trouble arises?

No, not necessarily—provided the two are in play with each other. But when one is impugned, as in our tradition where the powers of the deep are consigned to Hell … It’s interesting that the symbols of Shiva and of Poseidon are exactly those that are given to the Devil in Christian mythology—the bull’s foot and the tridents. So the power which is symbolized in those forms has been pushed aside as though it should not be admitted.—Joseph Campbell, An Open Life

 

Muscle Beach Party

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Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello Hit the Beach

After lunch today, Martine suggested we take a walk. I suggested something that would include part of the Venice Boardwalk heading north along the beach to the Santa Monica Pier. As beach parking costs $9.00, we took the bus and got off at Brooks Avenue in Venice.

Martine does not much care for the Boardwalk because of the smells (burning sage and incense), anarchic bicyclists who brush back pedestrians, and crowds. Of course, there were the usual bums, drugged-out hobags, and crazies with Tourette Syndrome carrying on intense conversations with the Void

But, after about a half mile, we were able to pretty much shake the more picturesque denizens of Venice and walk along the beach at Ocean Park and Santa Monica. Along the way, we stopped briefly at the original Muscle Beach, just south of the Santa Monica Pier, to see a lithe young blonde maneuver back and forth on the rings. She was surrounded by tourists and picture-takers. (I would have been one of the latter had I remembered to bring my camera.)

There are now two Muscle Beaches, the original one, and another one about a mile and a half south, between where Windward Avenue and Venice Boulevard meet the ocean. The new one is enclosed and has a lot of weights and exercise machines, unlike the original site which is decidedly low tech.

It is pretty inconceivable today to imagine anything as wholesome as a 1950s beach movie taking place in Santa Monica or Venice. It might, for all I know, still be happening at places like Zuma Beach in Malibu or Huntington or Newport Beaches in Orange County. Santa Monica and Venice Beaches are a bit too downmarket for Frankie and Annette.

This afternoon was beautiful. The sun was out, but it wasn’t over 80° Fahrenheit (27° Celsius) with just a slight breeze. On the bus on the way back, we sat behind another Tourette crazy and just smiled.

 

Through the Streets of Los Angeles

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Endeavour Makes Its Way Through 12 Miles of L.A. Traffic

Los Angeles is not a city that has a great sense of community. It is spread out in all four directions, encompassing mountain ranges and flood plains, dense urban concentrations with deserts whose only inhabitants are Joshua Trees. Yet in October, it came together for the most unaccountable of reasons: The space shuttle Endeavour was going to take two to three days to gingerly make its way through twelve miles of L.A. streets beginning at LAX Airport and ending at the California Science Center in Exposition Park.

At first, the impact was negative. Several hundred trees along the route were going to have to be cut down so as not to damage the huge wingspan of the shuttle as it passed by. The City Fathers promised to plant two or more trees for every one that was cut down, but it still left a bad taste in the mouths of many Angelenos.

But that all changed with the majestic progress of the shuttle through the streets. Crowds gathered and cheered while teams of engineers maneuvered the gigantic space vessel past a minefield of trees, wires, buildings, and other potential dangers.

It didn’t all come home to me until I saw a video in stop motion of the Endeavour making its way through Los Angeles and being met with a cheering throng both day and night. The video, on Astronomy Picture of the Day, is well worth watching. Among other things, it showed me a picture of a city celebrating the era of space exploration as one, something that doesn’t happen very often in this sun-drenched clime.

“The Just Man Rages in the Wilds”

Frontispiece

Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burden’d air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep

Once meek, and in a perilous path,
The just man kept his course along
The vale of death.
Roses are planted where thorns grow.
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees.

Then the perilous path was planted:
And a river, and a spring
On every cliff and tomb;
And on the bleached bones
Red clay brought forth.

Till the villain left the paths of ease,
To walk in perilous paths, and drive
The just man into barren climes.

Now the sneaking serpent walks
In mild humility.
And the just man rages in the wilds
Where lions roam.

Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burden’d air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.—William Blake, opening of “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”

Crisp and Lightly Sweet

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Fuyu Persimmons

For someone like me who cannot get through the day without fresh fruit, November provides some interesting alternatives. Because I am in Southern California, some of what I describe may not be available to those of you who inhabit colder climes.

Specifically, I am talking about two fruits that come into their own around now: the Fuyu Persimmon and the Asian Pear. Today, at the Westwood Farmers’ Market, I bought a couple of pounds of each.

Unless you are familiar with them, Fuyus look squat, hard and unripe. If you’ve ever bit into a hard Hachiya Persimmon and got a mouthful of alum, you are unlikely to experiment with Fuyus lest you repeat the negative effects. Fortunately, Fuyus taste good hard. Plus, having no inedible seeds or pits, you can just slice off the stiff top leaves and bite into the whole fruit like an apple without seeds.

You will notice two things right off: First, the Fuyu is quite crisp. And second, it is only lightly sweet. In contrast, a ripe Hachiya is, to my mind, too sweet. I rather like fruits that are not too sweet; that’s why I prefer Deglet Noor dates to the grossly sweet Medjools. Fuyus will keep for a week or more in the crisper of your refrigerator.

Asian Pear

Asian pears are very similar: They are crisp (somewhat like a Honey Crisp Apple) and lightly sweet, though they do have seeds like normal apples and pears. The main difference is that they taste best when peeled.

Predictably, Martine does not like either fruit; though I can’t seem to get enough of them. Not everybody likes the variety of fruit that I eat.

Just to show you how much variety there is in the produce throughout the year, check out this month by month list of what’s in season put out by the Southland Farmers’ Market Association. In contrast, here is what I imagine the offerings are in the Midwest, from which I originally hailed:

January – French Fries
February – French Fries
March – French Fries
April – French Fries
May – French Fries
June – Cherries, French Fries
July – Lots to Choose From
August – Lots to Choose From
September – Melons, French Fries
October – French Fries
November – French Fries
December – French Fries

Okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, considering that California and Florida are busy shipping fruits all around the country—especially citrus fruits during the winter months—but the picture tends to be pretty bleak in general.

Mitt on Superstorm Sandy

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I Think Now the Race Is Romney’s To Lose

I am beginning to feel better about the Presidential race. The thought of a President Mitt Romney is sufficient to cause my insides to curdle. But now, with Superstorm Sandy and Barack Obama showing just how presidential he could be, Romney might just be stranded in left field sucking on a mop.

Do you recall the race between Daddy Bush and Bill Clinton in 1992? George H. W. was accused of being too patrician for the White House. If he was too patrician, what about Mitt?

The following tweets from #MittStormTips #Sandy show more about Romney than he would like to have the public see. Read ’em and laugh:

  • If you haven’t already, move money from Cayman Islands to Swiss account.
  • People, this is why we only build houses on top of cliffs.
  • No generators at Home Depot. I have ordered Paul Ryan off the campaign trail to power my home with a stationary bike.
  • This is a time for bipartisanship, despite the President’s bungling of this preventable natural disaster.
  • Hurricanes are best spent overseas, visiting your money.
  • President Obama has not once referred to this storm as a hurricane. (This one is a bit more subtle: Think Libya and the Second Debate.)
  • Remember, the most important threat facing the east coast is and always will be Russia.
  • My thoughts and prayers go out to 53% of you.
  • What are you people complaining about? This wind is no stronger than one of my medium sized helicopter rotors!
  • Shucks, I hope FEMA isn’t the third agency Perry is getting rid of. (Think back to the GOP Primary debates.)

For more of the same, click here

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“The Beast Not Found In Verse”

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Borges and His Tigers

As you may (or may not) know, I am and always have been a devotee of the stories, poems, and essays of Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges. Here is a poem in which he tries to bring a tiger to life through sheer artistry, but fails—or does he?

The Other Tiger by Jorge Luis Borges

A tiger comes to mind. The twilight here
Exalts the vast and busy Library
And seems to set the bookshelves back in gloom;
Innocent, ruthless, bloodstained, sleek
It wanders through its forest and its day
Printing a track along the muddy banks
Of sluggish streams whose names it does not know
(In its world there are no names or past
Or time to come, only the vivid now)
And makes its way across wild distances
Sniffing the braided labyrinth of smells
And in the wind picking the smell of dawn
And tantalizing scent of grazing deer;
Among the bamboo’s slanting stripes I glimpse
The tiger’s stripes and sense the bony frame
Under the splendid, quivering cover of skin.
Curving oceans and the planet’s wastes keep us
Apart in vain; from here in a house far off
In South America I dream of you,
Track you, O tiger of the Ganges’ banks.

It strikes me now as evening fills my soul
That the tiger addressed in my poem
Is a shadowy beast, a tiger of symbols
And scraps picked up at random out of books,
A string of labored tropes that have no life,
And not the fated tiger, the deadly jewel
That under sun or stars or changing moon
Goes on in Bengal or Sumatra fulfilling
Its rounds of love and indolence and death.
To the tiger of symbols I hold opposed
The one that’s real, the one whose blood runs hot
As it cuts down a herd of buffaloes,
And that today, this August third, nineteen
Fifty-nine, throws its shadow on the grass;
But by the act of giving it a name,
By trying to fix the limits of its world,
It becomes a fiction not a living beast,
Not a tiger out roaming the wilds of earth.

We’ll hunt for a third tiger now, but like
The others this one too will be a form
Of what I dream, a structure of words, and not
The flesh and one tiger that beyond all myths
Paces the earth. I know these things quite well,
Yet nonetheless some force keeps driving me
In this vague, unreasonable, and ancient quest,
And I go on pursuing through the hours
Another tiger, the beast not found in verse.

Last year around this time, Martine and I were in Buenos Aires. Because she was curious about guanacos, we visited the Buenos Aires Zoo in Palermo at Sarmiento and Las Heras. Now that was the same zoo where Borges would visit before the days of his blindness set in to see the tigers.

He would write frequently about tigers, even titling one of his books Dreamtigers. The above poem is probably my favorite of all.

Ghosts and Goblins and Skeletons, Oh My!

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Halloween Exhibit at the Grier Musser Museum in L.A.

It’s that time of year again: Halloween, becoming an ever more important celebration in the calendar of the year, is almost upon us. I have prepared for the festivities by reading four horror classics: The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells and a trio of stories from Edwardian horror writer Algernon Blackwood, namely The Willows, The Wendigo, and The Listener.

Then Martine and I capped it off by visiting the Grier Musser Museum on Bonnie Brae Street close to Downtown L.A. Ray and Susan Tejada have purchased a Victorian mansion with which they have family associations and filled it with collections of antique and recent decorations pertaining to the seasons. At this time, it is full of eldritch Halloween exhibits, including animated figures, dolls, puppets, old greeting cards, and horror film tie-ins. The whole place is jammed full of ghosts, goblins, mad scientists, monsters, skeletons, and demons.

As for Halloween itself, it’s a working day. In the evening, if it’s anything like the last fifteen years, there won’t be any trick-or-treaters. The schools have been very effective at alerting parents that the practice is dangerous, what with so many child molesters about. Parents are afraid their children’s candy will include rusty razor blades or strychnine. Instead, there are Halloween parties at the schools which include a distribution of “safe and sane” candy.

I remember going trick or treating when I was a kid. I had an old blue cub scout shirt, to which I had my mother sew some impressive epaulets, and wore a Union army cap. My disguise: A Civil War and Old West Cavalry officer. I didn’t bother wearing a mask—too uncomfortable! I liked the costume because I was a devoted fan of such TV series as Rin-Tin-Tin and F-Troop. And I got a ton of chocolate, candy corn, popcorn balls, and apples.

A Tale of Three Restaurants

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Bertha’s Famous Tamales

Generally speaking, I do not cook on weekends. It’s a special treat for Martine to be able to go out from time to time, and Saturdays and Sundays are usually it. Now you would think that Martine would not be a tamale person, and you are right! While she lolled around in bed resting after an all night bus ride the night before. (She had taken a Greyhound Bus to Sacramento to see her doctors, her old friends from her days working at the old Sacramento Army Depot, and her mother’s grave.)

So, instead of rustling breakfast up for myself as usual, I drove out to the Farmers’ Market in Santa Monica at Pico and Cloverfield. There, accompanied by a thermos of my own unsweetend Darjeeling tea, I had two pork tamales from Bertha’s Famous Tamales, well slathered with their fiery hot sauce. Then I bought some Deglet Noor dates, some Asian pears, and some Fuyu Persimmons.

Attari Sandwiches in Westwood

Lunchtime I took a chance with my little sweetie. We went to Attari Sandwiches in Westwood, a busy Iranian sandwich shop where I had a mortadella sandwich and their delicious home-brewed iced tea with lime and mint. Martine had a chicken sandwich which she did not much care for. If I were in Teheran, I would have no difficulty adapting to their delicious cuisine—except I would eat too much Basmati rice, which is more or less forbidden to me because of my Type II Diabetes. Martine, on the other hand, would have a rough time of it.

Attari Sandwiches is a key focal point for the busy Westwood Iranian community. The restaurant was really hopping when we were there, but the owner and his staff know me well and always give great service (and delicious food). Their osh soup is fantastic, but it was too hot for it today. (It got up to 90° Fahrenheit today.)

Pepy’s Galley (AKA Pepy’s Chili) in a Mar Vista Bowling Alley

I had to make it up to Martine for taking her to a lunch spot she didn’t care for, however much I love it. For dinner, we went to Pepy’s Galley located in the Mar Vista Lanes Bowling Alley on Venice Boulevard. Pepy’s is an American/Mexican comfort food restaurant where Martine could get her hamburger steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, cooked vegetables, and a salad for a reasonable price. The food is down-home good, with good American dishes and a chilaquiles plate that will knock your socks off.

For dinner, I just had a navy bean soup and a plate of cantaloupe with iced tea. I had eaten enough earlier. The important thing was that Martine was placated for making her eat strange “Muslim” food for lunch.

The Dancing Plague of 1518

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Engraving by Hendrik Hondius of Three Women Affected by the Plague

History is full of strange byways and seemingly unsolvable mysteries. Why is it that, for a period of hundreds of years during the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, and into the Renaissance, there were outbreaks of dancing fever. During these outbreaks people started dancing and kept dancing until they dropped dead, some of them from strokes and heart attacks, others from sheer exhaustion.

The worst outbreak is recorded in Strasbourg, Alsace, during the year 1518. The city fathers even hired musicians in hopes that the dancers would dance until they got tired and just stop. But many did not stop, and these died. Although I do not have the mortality figures from the Strasbourg incident, one source indicates that up to 400 people were involved in the frenzy.

According to Edward Waller, a Professor at Michigan State University, and author of a book entitled A Time to Dance, a Time to Die: The Extraordinary Story of the Dancing Plague of 1518, has examined all the evidence and, according to Discovery.Com, concluded as follows:

A series of famines, resulting from bitter cold winters, scorching summers, sudden crop frosts and terrifying hailstorms, preceded the maniacal dancing, Waller said. Waves of deaths followed from malnutrition. People who survived were often forced to slaughter all of their farm animals, secure loans and finally, take to the streets begging.

Smallpox, syphilis, leprosy and even a new disease known as “the English sweat” swept through the area.

“Anxiety and false fears gripped the region,” Waller said.

One of these fears, originating from a Christian church legend, was that if anyone provoked the wrath of Saint Vitus, a Sicilian martyred in 303 A.D., he would send down plagues of compulsive dancing.

Waller therefore believes a phenomenon known as “mass psychogenic illness,” a form of mass hysteria usually preceded by intolerable levels of psychological distress, caused the dancing epidemic.

If there is a scientific reason, why have there been no outbreaks in Europe dating from the time that the Christian religion ceased to play such an important part in the lives of the people? The anxiety and fears are still present to some degree. (Isn’t that why some people vote Republican?) But the religious trigger is absent.

According to the Discover.Com website cited above, there have been similar outbreaks in Africa as recently as the twentieth century, and even a strange reaction in Belgium involving hysteria over soft-drink consumption.

Now I know that, if Romney is somehow elected President, the ultimate cause will be a mass psychogenic illness caused by Karl Rove, Faux News, and Republican spin doctors.