Chilean Writer and Poet Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003)
It’s a pity that Roberto died so young! Only fifty years of age! Over the last ten years he has brought so much enjoyment to me with his novels, stories, and poems. Here is one of his poems of which I am particularly fond:
The Memory of Lisa
The memory of Lisa descends again through night’s hole. A rope, a beam of light and there it is: the ideal Mexican village. Amidst the barbarity, Lisa’s smile, Lisa’s frozen film, Lisa’s fridge with the door open sprinkling a little light on this disorganized room that I, now pushing forty, call Mexico, call Mexico City, call Roberto Bolaño looking for a pay phone amidst chaos and beauty to call his one and only true love.
Martine has generally not been interested in travel. Lately, however, she mentioned the possibility of two Southwest road trips: One up U.S. 395 and other to Tucson, Arizona. Years ago, Martine had fond memories of a visit to an aunt who lived in Tucson.
I, myself, have never been to Tucson or even Phoenix. My knowledge of Arizona is mostly the area north of I-40 along the Kingman-Williams-Flagstaff-Winslow axis.
Today, I took my car in for its 39,000-mile service so that if we went to Tucson in March or early April, I would not be forced to make any last-minute decisions. Since I am also due to visit my brother in Palm Desert in two weeks, I will try to talk Martine into coming with me. It seems that the Coachella Valley is on the AAA preferred route to Tucson, and it would be killing two birds with one stone.
I will write more about the upcoming trip after I do a bit more research.
My middle name is Alex, which is my father’s first name. Originally, because he was born in what is now Slovakia, it was Elek. In the U.S., he was Alex James Paris. I am James Alex Paris.
The following paragraph was pretty much self-contained in Renata Adler’s Speedboat, which consists of hundreds of similar paragraphs, some of which are loosely linked.
Kate was walking along Forty-second Street from the subway station. She saw a tall, young, scholarly-looking man obviously about to say something to her. “Excuse me,” he said at last. He said he was from the Stanford urban-contaminations study. Kate said nothing. “Sidewalks,” he went on, frowning slightly. “Sidewalk contamination.” He said they were working on the right shoes of pedestrians. He wondered whether he might take a slide from hers? Kate nodded. She felt a flash of unease the moment she leaned against a wall and raised her foot to take the shoe off. He was already on the sidewalk, quietly licking the sole. No passerby took any notice. In another moment, he had stood up and walked away.
As I get older, I am increasingly unwilling to interact with strangers. Chatting with people I do not know is just something I would rather not do any more. I don’t even like sharing an elevator. The absolute worst is having to interact with American tourists when I am traveling abroad.
And yet I remember helping a group of French tourists in Iceland get guesthouse accommodation in Höfn, Iceland, when they couldn’t find any locals who understood them.
The difference was they didn’t have any expectations of help, whereas many or most American travelers, on the contrary, would. It is at that point that I reply to their question(s) very politely in my off rural Hungarian dialect from the 1930s. I could be telling them in Hungarian to get stuffed, but I actually try to answer them politely in my native language.
There is always the danger that the person accosting me knows the Magyar language. That actually happened to me once in Vancouver’s Chinatown, when the beggar asking for spare change recognized what I was saying and answered me back in Hungarian. I immediately melted and gave him a five dollar bill. He actually invited me for coffee, but I was on my way to a movie screening and didn’t want to be late. Else I would have obliged him.
I am not that way, of course, with my friends and acquaintances. Or even with waiters or cashiers. It’s just that I have a phobia of dealing with demands placed on me by strangers. That even includes the unsmiling visage that I characteristically assume—all to avoid having to deal with the public at large.
In my previous post, I mentioned three Roman Stoic philosophers. One of them was Epictetus (50-135 AD). Here are the opening paragraphs to his most famous work, The Enchiridion:
There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power. Within our power are opinion, aim, desire, aversion, and, in one word, whatever affairs are our own. Beyond our power are body, property, reputation, office, and, in one word, whatever are not properly our own affairs.
Now the things within our power are by nature free, unrestricted, unhindered; but those beyond our power are weak, dependent, restricted, alien. Remember, then, that if you attribute freedom to things by nature dependent and take what belongs to others for your own, you will be hindered, you will lament, you will be disturbed, you will find fault both with gods and men. But if you take for your own only that which is your own and view what belongs to others just as it really is, then no one will ever compel you, no one will restrict you; you will find fault with no one, you will accuse no one, you will do nothing against your will; no one will hurt you, you will not have an enemy, nor will you suffer any harm.
Aiming, therefore, at such great things, remember that you must not allow yourself any inclination, however slight, toward the attainment of the others; but that you must entirely quit some of them, and for the present postpone the rest. But if you would have these, and possess power and wealth likewise, you may miss the latter in seeking the former; and you will certainly fail of that by which alone happiness and freedom are procured.
Seek at once, therefore, to be able to say to every unpleasing semblance, “You are but a semblance and by no means the real thing.” And then examine it by those rules which you have; and first and chiefly by this: whether it concerns the things which are within our own power or those which are not; and if it concerns anything beyond our power, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you.
Ever since I was a high school student, I pictured myself as studying philosophy and thereby improving my life. Very early on, I learned that most philosophers were too abstruse for the likes of me. I ran up against the likes of Kant, Heidegger, Sartre, Wittgenstein, and Hegel—and found myself considerably less smart than I thought. (However, I liked Sartre’s fiction and plays).
Recently I found myself drawn to the philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome. Now it seems that philosophy is several removes from everyday life. Read A. J. Ayer and Wittgenstein, and you’ll have no idea how to live your life. But read the ancient Stoics, and you can indeed feel better about your life.
Particularly interesting are the following Roman philosophers:
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC to 65 AD) practically ran the Roman Empire while he helped to educate the young Nero. Unfortunately, his pupil did not turn out well; and Nero ordered his tutor to commit suicide. Read in particular his Letters of a Stoic.
Epictetus (50-135 AD) was a former slave who wrote a very readable treatise entitled The Enchiridion.
Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD) was the last of the benevolent Antonine emperors. (As great a philosopher as the father was, his son Commodus was one of the worst emperors.) The Meditations are a highly readable journal of Marcus Aurelius’s thoughts while ruling a large part of the known world.
The amazing thing about the works of these Stoic philosophers is that they are relevant and highly readable today. Much more so than most of the present day philosophers.
When I used to write ads for the software company whose director of corporate communications I was, I was always running afoul of management, who always insisted that I put a positive spin on every point I made. Anything that could possibly be seen to be negative was to be avoided at all costs.
Being a bit negative is a part of my Hungarian heritage. When your country is on one of the two main invasion paths into Europe (the other being Poland), you can’t help a certain amount of negativity. It’s part of our nature.
I feel there is something wrong about always being positive. It tends to encourage the persons on the other end to be passive and accepting. Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, writing in The Captive Mind, a book about why people accepted the promises and lies about Communism, quotes an earlier Polish novel from the 1920s:
In this story, Central Europeans facing the prospect of being overrun by unidentified Asiatic hordes pop a little pill [the pill of Murti-Bing] which relieves them of fear and anxiety; buoyed by its effects, they not only accept their new rulers but are positively happy to receive them.
In an article entitled “Murti-Bing Conservatism” written for The American Conservative, Rod Dreher develops this idea:
For Miłosz, Polish intellectuals who capitulated to communism and Soviet rule had taken the pill of Murti-Bing. It was what made their condition bearable. They could not stand to see reality, for if they recognized what was really happening in their country, the pain and shock would make life too much to take.
This is why people who have no financial or status tied up in protecting abuse of corruption within an institution can nevertheless be expected to rally around that institution and its leaders. Those who tell the truth threaten their Murti-Bing pill supply, and therefore their sense of order and well-being. To them, better that a few victims must be made to suffer rather than the entire community be forced to wean itself from Murti-Bing.
In the United States, we are facing a similar situation today—all the way from the opposite end of the political spectrum. It is not Communism that is the cause, but Trumpism. Millions of voters who are either ignorant or disingenuous choose to believe that water runs uphill and that the current President is spouting truth when in actuality he is lying like a rug.
I recommend that anyone interested in what happens to this country read Milosz’s The Captive Mind. It is by far the best book about Communism I have ever read.
Oh, and the Tower of Babel? That’s what happens when our sense of reality has become so fragmented that our society begins to fracture.
Porcelain Tiles Decorate the Outer Wall of a Hungarian Building
In 1853, a Hungarian businessman named Miklós Zsolnay founded the Zsolnay (ZHOAL-nah-ee) Porcelánmanufaktúra Zrt (Zsolnay Porcelain Manufactory Private Limited) in the town of Pécs near the border with what is now Croatia.
Before long, the products of his factory started turning up in the most interesting places, such as the roof of the Matthias Church in Budapest’s Castle District:
Not to mention interestingly designed and wildly colored porcelain vases and figurines:
In a way, one can’t go to Hungary without encountering the works of the Zsolnay Manufactory. Their work has become one of the most characteristic looks in Hungarian architecture, furnishings, and knickknacks.
Tarnmoor 
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