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Monthly Archives: November 2013

“A Frail Jetty Facing North”

Oedipus and Antigone

Oedipus and Antigone

What is unwisdom but the lusting after
Longevity: to be old and full of days!
For the vast and unremitting tide of years
Casts up to view more sorrowful things than joyful;
And as for pleasures, once beyond our prime,
They all drift out of reach, they are washed away.
And the same gaunt bailiff calls upon us all,
Summoning into Darkness, to those wards
Where is no music, dance, or marriage hymn
That soothes or gladdens. To the tenements of Death.

Not to be born is, past all yearning, best.
And second best is, having seen the light,
To return at once to deep oblivion.
When youth has gone, and the baseless dreams of youth,
What misery does not then jostle man’s elbow,
Join him as a companion, share his bread?
Betrayal, envy, calumny and bloodshed
Move in on him, and finally Old Age—
Infirm, despised Old Age—joins in his ruin,
The crowning taunt of his indignities.

So is it with that man, not just with me.
He seems like a frail jetty facing North
Whose pilings the waves batter from all quarters;
From where the sun comes up, from where it sets,
From freezing boreal regions, from below,
A whole winter of miseries now assails him,
Thrashes his sides and breaks over his head.—Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus (Trans. Anthony Hecht)

Shooters, Shooters Everywhere

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Shooter Paul Anthony Ciancia

Airport Shooter Paul Anthony Ciancia

Just as the Christmas shopping season is about to begin, people are newly afraid to go to shopping centers, airports, and other public places because of the growing trend of what the New Jersey police call “Suicide by Cop.” Some unbalanced person gets a cache of firearms with enough bullets to depopulate a mid-sized town and then goes on a shooting spree until he is felled by the police. In the meantime, a number of innocent people who just had the misfortune of being there at the time lie dead or wounded on the ground.

For this trend, we must thank the members of the National Rifle Association (NRA) for their desire to promote the sale of firearms to certifiable loonies and, in general, to deteriorate the quality of life in America. The pudgy-fingered, middle-aged members of the NRA are accessories to murder and mayhem, which they defend by referring to themselves as a militia per the Second Amendment. Since when are militias created to thin the population of innocent men, women, and children? I am sure that Wayne La Pierre and other gun whores have what they consider to be a perfectly legitimate argument. To which I counter thus: There was a time when this sort of thing didn’t happen. You gun fanciers made it possible and, in fact, easy. Therefore you are responsible.

After November 15, I avoid visiting shopping centers and other places where people congregate to buy gifts. I feel sorry for the so-called brick-and-mortar retail establishments because I feel that their influence on American culture will eventually wane. For years now, I have done virtually all my holiday shopping on the Internet. It is just not worth exposing Martine and myself to well-armed fruitcakes in large target-rich public places. And, besides, the parking has always been a major hassle.

So, is it possible that the shooters will put an end to most public manifestations of Christmas? That’s something to think about. After all, the trend is nowhere near dying down. If there’s one thing the United States is richly endowed with, it’s lunatics.

A Two-Tiered Highway System

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Bus Accident in the Andes

Bus Accident in the Andes

Peru is a major destination for international tourism. It can also be a deadly one. While the nation has improved the highway system connecting such tourist magnets as Lima, Arequipa, Nazca, Cusco, and Arequipa, many large towns in the Andes are linked by roads that are unsafe. This is compounded by the fact that not only the highways, but also the long-distance bus lines, are also two-tiered. A point-to-point Cruz del Sur, Oltursa, or Ormeño bus will generally get you to your destination safely; but a second class bus plying the roads between such cities as Huancayo and Ayacucho takes much longer, picks up and drops off passengers whenever requested, and is likely to have an overtired driver who has been at the job for over twelve hours. When that is combined with night driving, inclement weather, and bad roads, the result can be a fatal accident such as the one illustrated above.

According to the Peru This Week website:

Congresswoman [Veronika] Mendoza has highlighted the inequality inherent in the consistent state of disrepair of roads in rural Peru. “It absolutely cannot be that only roads on tourist routes are in a good condition while the internal transport highways that Cusquenos use aren’t being cared for in the same way,” Mendoza stated, later adding that “We also have to consider the additional difficulty for transportation that the arrival of the rainy season will bring.”

Statistics released by Sutran, Peru’s national government land transport authority, reveal that road deaths have risen dramatically in the past year. According to El Comercio, deaths caused by road accidents from January to August 2013 have risen 36.5% compared with the same period last year.

Many American tourists are interested in following the line of the Andes and visiting the highland cities with their spectacular mountain views and native arts and crafts. While this is not impossible, there is considerable risk attached to such an itinerary.

Photo of Serrano Boy

Photo of Serrano Boy

Part of the problem is that, as in other countries that are racially divided, Peru suffers from racism against serranos and cholos, descendants of the Incas and other peoples inhabiting the Andes. We tend to think of the Andean tribal peoples as being the majority in Peru, but that is not the case: The narrow coastal desert zone holds the majority of the population as well as the economical and political power. The result is that the rural Andes are underserved by good roads and public transportation.

If and when my planned trip to Peru takes place, I will be careful to take the first class buses to major tourist destinations—at least until I have been able to scope out the situation myself.

Inspiration Point

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At Will Rogers State Historical Park’s Inspiration Point

At Will Rogers State Historic Park’s Inspiration Point

Tomorrow is the 134th anniversary of Will Rogers’ birth. In commemoration, the Will Rogers Ranch Foundation had a birthday party for him, complete with music, an art show, and free cupcakes. After the music, which was mostly 1930s vintage (Will died in a 1935 plane crash in Alaska), Martine and I hiked up to the top of Inspiration Point. The trail is along a relatively easy fire road with a 116-foot gain, about 1.25 miles in length. From up top, you can see a broad swath of Los Angeles extending from downtown to Westwood to Santa Monica and south along Santa Monica Bay to the Palos Verdes Peninsula. You can see the bay behind me and a piece of Will’s polo field just to my right.

Will Rogers State Historic Park is the nicest stretch of greenery near where I live. For a $12.00 day use fee per car, one could watch a polo match (the season is over for now), barbecue some hamburgers, tour Will’s ranch house with a docent, loll aound on the lawn, or take a hike. The Inspiration Point hike is more in the nature of a stroll, but branching out from it is the Santa Monica Mountains Backbone Trail, linking Will Rogers with Topanga State Park, Malibu Creek State Park, and ultimately Point Mugu State Park in Ventura County—some forty miles up and down the ridge line of the Santa Monica Range.

Martine and I usually wind up visiting the Park three or four times a year. Even on the hottest days of summer, its proximity to the ocean usually means there is an occasional breeze. (Farther inland, there is no such relief.)

It was a good day.

 

Omigosh, What Have I Done?

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Saint George by Dosso Dossi (ca. 1515)

Saint George by Dosso Dossi (ca. 1515)

Today Martine and I drove to the Getty Center and looked at the paintings, special exhibitions, and decorative arts. What particularly interested me was a painting by the Italian Dosso Dossi (born Giovanni di Niccolò de Luteri) around 1515 of Saint George immediately after slaying the dragon. It’s not an expression of joy or celebration by any means. Almost, it seems as if the saint is asking himself, “Oh my God, what have I done?” Perhaps some ancient knowledge of the dragon’s has been conveyed to the Roman soldier, and he foresees that the world will never be the same again.

The painting is a small one, measuring 27½ x 24 inches, and by no means in a dominant location in the exhibition hall. Still, the facial expression drew my attention immediately and held it. I would have liked to photograph it (without flash, of course), but the guard in that particular hall forbade it; so I noted the name of the artist and luckily found it on the Getty Center website, which describes the oil as follows:

Dosso Dossi depicted the aftermath of Saint George’s battle with the dragon, in which he wields the creature’s bloodied head and the lance broken during the fight. Under an emerging rainbow, the victorious patron saint of Ferrara, Italy, emerges from the darkness of the battle. Dossi poignantly expressed his subject’s recent emotional turmoil in the saint’s penetrating expression. He appears weary yet resolute in his triumph.

The symbols of Saint George’s Christian faith—crosses rendered in vivid strokes of red paint as though the blood of his opponent drips down its shaft—mark the weapon. The color of the crosses echoes the blood ringing the beast’s mouth and also symbolizes the blood of Christ.

I don’t altogether agree with Saint George appearing “weary but resolute in his triumph.” I guess each work of art speaks to different people in different ways.

There is a poem by Jorge Luis Borges entitled “Limits” which, to me, conveys the spirit of this painting:

There is a line of Verlaine I shall not recall again,
There is a nearby street forbidden to my step,
There is a mirror that has seen me for the last time,
There is a door I have shut until the end of the world.
Among the books in my library (I have them before me)
There are some I shall never reopen.
This summer I complete my fiftieth year:
Death reduces me incessantly.

(Translated by Anthony Kerrigan)

Can It Ever Get This Bad Here?

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Mariano Melgarejo, Dictator of Brazil 1864-1871

Mariano Melgarejo, Dictator of Bolivia 1864-1871

I have just finished re-reading Eric Lawlor’s In Bolivia. In the process, I found a political leader who was probably the most incompetent, yet tyrannical ever to rule outside of North Korea. I am referring to General Mariano Melgarejo (1829-1871), the 18th President of Bolivia. Following are a few anecdotes about his rule—some of which may be apocryphal—but all with enough truth in them to be believable.

At a diplomatic function in 1867, the British ambassador refused to drink a glass of chicha, a cloudy but potent drink made of fermented maize. This incensed Melgarejo so much that he made him drink a whole bowl of liquid chocolate and then had him mounted ass-backwards and naked on a donkey and paraded three times around the Plaza Murillo, afterwards ordering him back to London. When the ambassador explained to Queen Victoria how he was treated, Her Majesty promptly ordered the British fleet to shell La Paz, the capital. Fortunately, someone in the Admiralty had the good sense to remind Her Majesty that Bolivia was a landlocked country, and that his ships’ projectiles could not penetrate that far. Whereupon, good Queen Vicky asked for a map of South America and drew a big letter “X” over it, declaring, “Bolivia does not exist.” In fact, diplomatic relations were not restored until 1910.

During the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Melgarejo wished to come out on the side of Napoleon III and the Second Empire. Unfortunately, he had no idea where France was located, so he sent his army marching eastward. When some brave soul on his general staff commented that the army would have to cross the Atlantic Ocean, the generalissimo shot back, “Don’t be stupid! We’ll take a short cut through the brush!”

In another version of this story, which sounds equally apocryphal, the Bolivian army sent to relieve France ran into some rainy weather. As Lawlor tells it, “Melgarejo, jealous of his comfort, ordered his soldiers back to their barracks.” The rest is history: The Germans overran France and sent Napoleon III packing.

Lawlor continues:

Another told of Melgarejo returning to La Paz after touring the provinces to discover that a former president, Manuel Isidoro Belzú, had deposed him. Anticipating trouble, Belzú had filled Plaza Murillo with thousands of his followers. But Melgarejo was not cowed so easily. Drawing his pistol, he strode into the presidential palace and shot the interloper dead.

The gun still smoking in his hand, Melgarejo then addressed the mob. “Belzú is no more,” he said. “Who rules Bolivia now?” The crowd pondered the question but a moment. “Viva Melgarejo!,” it called back. “Viva la patria!”

From the comfort of our couches, we can laugh at Bolivia; but remember it could get that bad over here. If some miserably ignorant Tea Partier ever got to be president, we would have to look away from Kim Kardashian’s ass for a second to consider how far we have sunk.