Andrew Culver’s Weblog

It was hot, and we weren’t allowed to wear a hat or sunglasses. It was hard to approach people if they couldn’t see your face. I didn’t feel like doing warm-ups that morning because I hadn’t had a good week. But Cliff picked me for a practice round while we stood in our circle.

“Andrew, let’s try one.”

“Okay. Hi, would you like to help get rid of George Bush?”

“I don’t have time for that.”

“Oh, well, it’ll just take one minute. It’s really easy.”

“Well, how can you help me get rid of George Bush?”

“Because I work for the Democratic National Committee and we’re raising money to support the candidate in the fall…”

“Alright, I don’t have time for this, where do I sign?”

“Oh, we’re actually asking for contributions.”

“Okay, here’s a dollar…”

“We’re asking for a minimum of twenty dollars.”

“Oh my God, are you trying to eat me out of house and home??”

“It really helps.”

“Okay, here you go.”

“Thank you so much.”

“Good job, Andrew.”

I got a round of applause from the group.

“Always get their name and address,” Cliff reminded us. “And remember what Andrew did. Don’t just take one dollar – up-sell them. Get as much as you possibly can from these people.”

On the way to our location David, the Jewish kid from Cleveland, wanted to do some role-playing. He was our field leader. He was a little ambitious, and I could see him being the next George Stephanopoulos. But nobody wanted to play. One girl was a punk-rock chick with a nose ring and one guy was in his late thirties, going through a bad patch and in need of money. He must not have had any job skills. None of us felt like practicing what we would be doing for six hours in the sun. But David was relentless.

“Guys, this election is really important. I don’t need to tell you that. And every dollar counts. Wait, hold on a sec, am I going the right way?”

Thank God. Since he didn’t live in Los Angeles we could take up the rest of the time giving him directions.

“Get off the freeway here,” said the punk girl with more than a little boredom. We were on our way to Sherman Oaks, to stand along Ventura Boulevard and ask for money. We got to the area without any warm-ups and David posted me in front of the Galleria by a fountain. For the first hour hardly anyone walked by. Just a few fat office women on their coffee breaks. It was already in the high eighties and I was squinting and sweating in the sun. A few office men walked by. I hated asking them because I knew they would have their smart-ass remarks. And a lot of them were Republicans. But I had to. It was my job.

“Would you like to help get rid of George Bush?”

“No,” one of them said. The others laughed.

“Why aren’t you mentioning John Kerry?”

“He’s not the nominee yet. I’m just raising money for the Democratic National Committee.”

“Google Swift Boat Veterans,” said one of them. “Your John Kerry is gonna fold in the fall.”

They walked on, laughing, making fun of me. I hated Republicans. Especially Republicans that wore suits everyday. I supposed the middle-American, farming Republicans weren’t so bad. Salt of the earth types. Even Bible thumpers had an earnestness I admired with a touch of nostalgia. But these ones were the worst. They were sales managers, lawyers, regional managing partners, whatever they were…they had money. Republicans with money were worse than liberals with money. I loved Santa Monica. Whenever I went there I got money, if not sympathetic nods from every passing soccer mom and granola type. “Fight the good fight,” they would say to me if they didn’t donate. “Keep it up.” But there was nothing like the smugness of the winners, the smugness of the young and wealthy Republicans.

Here was an old lady. Why not?

“Would you like to help get rid of George Bush?”

She looked at me with horror.

“He is our Commander in Chief!“

“I work for the Democratic National Committee.”

“You Democrats don’t care about America, and you don’t care about Vietnam, and you don’t care about anything!!”

“We really need your support.”

She came right up to me.

“We are at war, son.”

“I am aware.”

“My husband fought in Vietnam!”

“John Kerry fought in Vietnam.”

“John Kerry is an asshole!”

It took every ounce of strength in her to get that out.

“We’re asking for a minimum of twenty dollars,” I said, holding my clipboard out towards her. She slapped the clipboard in rage.

“I would NEVER give you money!”

She left.

“Have a great day! Try to stay cool! Don’t get too angry!”

She turned around and shook her fist.

“Damn you! Damn you!”

Wow. That was rare. You didn’t see angry old women too often. I turned around and saw a suit huffing and puffing towards me, sucking on a cigarette, cheeks red with heat. Chubby, overstuffed guy sweating like crazy. I didn’t have time to think. I pounced.

“Would you like to get rid of George Bush?”

He stopped and took his cigarette out.

“If one more piss-ant little college kid asks me that question, he’s getting my fist in his face. If you kids are so confident, why aren’t you asking me to help elect John Kerry?”

“He’s not the official nominee yet. We’re raising money for the Democratic National Committee.”

“That’s bullshit. You know he doesn’t have a chance in goddamn hell of getting elected, and you’re asking us to vote against George Bush? Get out of my face, you twerp. I’m gonna smack the next one of you that asks me that.”

He threw his cigarette at me and crossed the street. David was over there talking to some women. I saw them giving him money. How did he have such good luck at this? Was he more persuasive? Maybe he cared more. The fat cigarette smoker approached him as he turned around. I saw David ask the question, eagerly, with a bright college kid’s idealism. I couldn’t hear anything above the traffic but I saw the man yelling. He pointed at me and gestured maniacally, pointing a fat finger at David as he yelled. David spoke brieefly to the man, then turned around, looking for his next possible donor. We weren’t supposed to engage people who wanted to argue politics. Don’t spend more than five seconds with people who had no intention of donating. David was a much better salesman than me. He brushed off the crazies, the old women, the angry businessmen, the snarky young Republicans…I needed a frappucino.

I walked off to look for a Starbucks. It was so damn hot. I couldn’t raise money in this weather. Maybe if it was in the low seventies, with a nice ocean breeze blowing. After a few blocks I found the wonderful Starbucks and sat in the air-conditioned room drinking my four dollar iced beverage. Then my friend Matt called. He was on his break from Starbucks, where he worked downtown.

“Are you guys hiring?”

“Dude,” he said, pausing, “you…do NOT want to think about that. I work here, and it’s fine, but I am warning you – do not enter this world. I got up at four this morning, and I was at work at five o’clock. I’m not complaining. I’m not a victim. But it’s not a life you want to live. How’s fundraising?”

“Bad. Just bad. I don’t know what’s more depressing– the direction this country is going or the direction my life is going.”

I sat in the Starbucks for about an hour, then went back to the corner. I got ten bucks from some high school kids, which I wasn’t supposed to do because they were under eighteen. Then I went to lunch. The afternoon was better. One soccer mom gave me fifty bucks, which was a major jackpot. I wouldn’t get commission unless I got over two hundred, but I would still get my regular paycheck.

On the way back to the office in Westwood we didn’t talk much. It hadn’t been a good day for anyone. The valley was not a good place to raise money. Even David had only made seventy bucks, and that was small for him.

“Remind me to tell the other field leaders that Sherman Oaks was a bust,” he said. “All together we only made two hundred. The home office won’t like that. We should just keep going to Santa Monica.”

“Yeah,” I said with a laugh. “If only the whole country was Santa Monica.” The more I thought about it, the more I laughed. “If only the whole country was like Santa Monica! What a world we’d live in! We’d all have organic granola for breakfast. And instead of gas, we’d use vegetable oil in our cars! Ha ha! And we wouldn’t fight any more wars!”

I guess I had a mild form of heat stroke, because no one else thought it was funny. What a bunch of sour grapes. Couldn’t they laugh at defeat? The whole country, aside from the coasts, was red – a sea of Republicans and a few islands of people like us. We were hopelessly outnumbered. So why try to change things?

I stared out the window, not talking, the rest of the way to the office. After awhile it didn’t seem very funny anymore.

I walked out of my place. Glendale Boulevard was packed with cars, not even moving. There was no way I would drive to Joe’s place, not with this traffic. So I walked up to the monorail platform and waited. There should be one in five or six minutes. I could barely hear them from my apartment, even though they were practically feet away from my bedroom. I love those things. The screen above me flashed the location of the next train. It was in Glendale going southbound.

“Next train in three minutes,” said the computerized woman’s voice. I went to the fingerprint ID, flashed my thumb, and waited for the reply.

“Thank you Mr. Jones, have a nice trip.”

I had a year-long pass and I took the monorail everywhere. When the train whooshed into the station, the doors silently opened and I walked in. Some cholos were sitting there drinking iced cappuccinos next to a business man watching the news on his TVpod. At the other end of the train the Starbucks was open so I went to get a drink, passing literally hundreds of advertisements flashing on the porta-screens on each chair. You could buy a TV show or songs or whatever you wanted, and download it to your pod. It was a rip off so I never did it. We careened over the hills of Silverlake, stopping and letting some bohemian types on, with all their crazy facial hair. One of them was carrying an acoustic guitar and sat down to play an old Bob Dylan song. One of the cholos called him a hippie. I had read about hippies in history class. There was a neo-hippie movement going on, and hipsters were sitting around playing old protest songs in old-fashioned coffee shops around town.

In a few minutes we were at La Brea. I got off and looked up at the skyscrapers. Traffic was horrible. People were just sitting in their cars, honking. The poor rode bikes through town and the car people had to sit in traffic. I don’t know why they didn’t take the monorail. They just couldn’t stand being around other people I guess. Old habits die hard.

The sky was full of floating ad screens, and ads were projected on low-hanging clouds from powerful projectors on the ground. Music and TV blared at me from TV screens along the sidewalk, telling me to buy things. I could hook my pod into any outlet and order what I needed to be delivered today at my apartment. I forgot what high-rise Joe lived in so I got out my pod.

“Joe,” I said, and waited for it to connect.

“Hey man,” came his voice.

“Where’s your place?”

“Dude, you’re always forgetting.”

“All these buildings are the same.”

“It’s 4300 Sunset. I’m on the 81^st floor.”

I walked up to Sunset, past crack dealers, men in suits, transvestites, taco carts, guys selling incense, high school students cutting class, smoking weed. Car horns blared on the street. Joe didn’t even own a car. You couldn’t really get anywhere anymore in a car. Traffic was just too bad. The freeways were parking lots, and finding parking was a joke. The city was like New York but ten times as wide – skyscrapers from the ocean to East LA, from Orange County to the Valley. A giant bed of high-rises and people sitting in traffic and waiting to drive. Every last inch of space had been built upon.

I finally got to his place and went into the elevator.

“Joe Lexington,” I called out.

“Thank you, Mr. Jones,” the voice said pleasantly, and in about ten seconds the doors opened up to a hallway. I walked down to his apartment. I had finally arrived for the party. It was a retro style party, like in the old days when people would get together in the same room instead of just hooking up their pods like nowadays. It’s all pod parties now. I guess the reason is that space is so scarce that no one has room in their apartments to get more then five people together.

I walked in to his place and saw a room full of people. I had pod-partied with a lot of them before but never actually met most of them face to face. Joe was one of the few friends I actually hung out with in person. I worked from home, partied from home, talked to my parents from home, shopped from home, ordered coffee to be delivered from home, got my groceries, bought books…you get the point. There’s just no point in leaving your house these days. It’s too easy to stay in. And the world is too crowded out there. I guess that’s what the neo-hippies are all about – getting people out of their apartments and into social gatherings like they had in the sixties. I thought that was weird, I mean, I went to school my whole life from home. I didn’t meet most of my classmates in person until I had known them for ten years.

The party was pretty fun, but I was feeling weird being away from my apartment for so long. I took the monorail home and bought some groceries on the way. When I got home they were waiting outside my door. I went in and looked out the window. All I could see was the building next to me, an eighty-story high-rise. It had just gone up a month ago and it was already full. It had several schools, some businesses and a lot of apartments. I used to be able to see the Silverlake reservoir from my window, but now it was just another skyscraper.

The next day was a no-water day. The drought had gotten so bad that sometimes there were no-water weeks now. Luckily I had some stored in my fridge. I had learned to ration my water so I didn’t get fined. I was only allowed a gallon a day.

To add to that it was an Smog Emergency Day– that meant no going outside. No driving, no walking, nothing. Normally traffic was so bad you couldn’t drive anywhere. But smog was approaching unhealthy levels so they instituted the Smog Emergency Days. 

I was trapped inside. It was for my own good, I know, but it was pretty annoying. I couldn’t afford gas anyway, so it didn’t make a big difference. It was either gas or food for me. I looked out my window and saw the brown smog ring hovering at eye level. Since I lived on the twentieth floor I was right in the middle of it. It was strange to look down on the freeway and not see any cars. You could be arrested and thrown in jail for at least a month if you went outside on a Smog Emergency Day. If you drove it was worse. The few exceptions were delivery trucks and cops. They could drive. I was getting cabin fever sitting inside. My air purifier was broken, so I had the windows open and a fan blowing. But the air was so dirty I was coughing and my sinuses were all backed up.

I took a laser shower. No one took water showers anymore, just laser showers. It blasted you with a thousand purifying anti-bacterial laser beams. It only took a minute and you were clean.

After my shower I couldn’t take it so I put on some clothes and went downstairs to the lobby. If I could hail down a truck quickly I could maybe get out of town where I could get a hotel somewhere for a few days, until the smog emergency passed. The lobby was empty and the security guard was off duty for some reason. I walked calmly out onto the street. No cars, no cops, no pedestrians.

Then I noticed a giant corn syrup delivery truck barreling down the street. That was what most people drank on no-water days, and it was where all the country’s water went – the corn farmers. I waved frantically. The driver saw me, made a bewildered face, and slowly pulled over.

“You ain’t supposed to be outside, my friend.”

“I know, I’m trying to get out of town, can you give me a ride?”

“Alright, but I’m going to Bakersfield.”

“That’s fine.”

“Hop in.”

I got up and sat down and we drove away, just as a cop pulled around the corner and cruised down my street.

“Thank you so much,” I gasped. The air had me wheezing. Most people in the city had asthma and died early from it.

“No problem, pal. Gets boring without company. Want some jerky?”

He handed me a bag of dried meat.

“Is this beef?”

“Sure is.”

“How did you get this? It must’ve been two hundred dollars a bag!”

“My cousin sends it down from Canada. He buys it for cheap, in bulk.”

“Jesus. I haven’t had beef in years.”

I took a bite. It was the taste I remembered from my childhood, before the beef crisis. I would go get burgers or steaks with my mom at the fast food places.

“How can you get it cheaper from Canada?”

“They can feed their cows. We can’t. It’s that simple.”

“Yeah.”

“All the water we have goes to corn, and all the corn goes into our food. It’s either we eat, or the cows eat. There ain’t food enough or water enough for the two of us in this country.”

Since no cars were on the freeway we got out of the city limits pretty quickly.

“Are there any little towns around here I could stay in for a few days?”

“Not unless you like prisons.”

“What?” I hadn’t left Los Angeles in so many years I didn’t know what the rest of the state even looked like.

“See all this?”

He waved at the Central Valley, which we had a nice view of from the top of the Grapevine. It was a bed of giant gray buildings, offset by a few farms here and there.

“This is all prisons. I make most of my deliveries to prisons nowadays. This whole state is covered north to south with prisons. There’s only a few farms left.”

“You deliver corn syrup?”

“Corn syrup, corn meal, corn mush, soy meal, potato meal.”

“Are there any little towns anywhere that aren’t so hot this time of year?”

“The one place that comes to mind is Las Placitas. It’s real nice. Beach town. Some nice places to sit on the beach and drink a margarita.”

“Where is it?”

“Out on the coast. North of Santa Barbara. If you can get there.”

“How do I get there?”

“Train. But it don’t run too often. Most times it’s broke.”

“Where do I get the train?”

“Up here,” he nodded at an old disused train station by the side of the road. A sign said “Las Placitas-Sacramento.”

“This is it?” I asked, incredulous. “Are you sure it still runs?”

“I’ve seen it. Not too often, but I’ve seen it.”

“Can you let me off here?”

“Are you sure? It’s about a hunnerd degrees out there.”

“I don’t care. I have to get to that town.”

He pulled over.

“You might be waitin’ a long time.”

“That’s okay. Thanks for the ride.”

Jesus Christ it was hot out there. I sat on the bench in the station by myself the whole afternoon. Eventually an old Mexican woman showed up, old and wrinkled.

“When does the train come?” I asked her.

“Train?”

“The train – when does it come?”

“Train come…soon.”

She smiled. After awhile the train appeared far in the distance.

When I woke up it was dark and the ocean was on the right of me. I panicked for a second. Where was I? It had been so long since I’d seen the ocean it scared me. Did I miss my stop? Where was a porter when you needed one? I looked around and saw no one on the train with me. Then an old man in a train uniform came walking down the aisle slowly.

“Sir! Where are we? Have we passed the town, Las…Las…”

“Las Placitas is next stop,” he droned without looking at me. “Half an hour.”

The ocean was dark and it rippled gracefully next to me. Why weren’t more people on this train? We entered a curved bay and I saw, on a small peninsula, the sparkling lights of a little town up ahead. My heart pounded as we approached a tiny train station.

“Last stop, Las Placitas,” the conductor said over the PA. I got up and bounded down the stairs and into the warm night air. The sea breeze was fresh and clean and the smell of the sea mingled with some desert sagebrush. I walked through the station and found myself in a town that sloped down towards the sea. I walked down the street, past houses, towards the ocean, maybe ten blocks away. An old man sat on a porch, rocking back and forth as he looked at me strangely. Old-fashioned televisions blared in old people’s homes. It must be a retirement community, I thought. These people probably don’t even have pods or email! They probably still have radios! It was comforting. Like being in a place that was preserved before the world went crazy.

Down at the beach there was a main street packed with restaurants and bars. Teenagers were making out on the beach and old people walked slowly down the street. At the end of the downtown area there was a small hotel with a courtyard that opened onto the beach, directly facing the waves. An empty, glistening swimming pool sat unused in the middle of the courtyard.

My room was small, but it faced the ocean and I could lay there listening to the waves crashing. It was amazing to hear something natural, instead of helicopters and the constant beeping of my pod with messages, news alerts, advertisements, advertisements, advertisements…it was all too much for me. I must’ve fallen asleep because I woke up to the sound of a mariachi band playing in the courtyard. I went out and found the other guests dancing by the pool, drinking margaritas. The hotel was serving free margaritas, so I had one and started dancing when a young Mexican woman came up to me to dance. She was an employee of the hotel and she smiled as I did my ridiculous white man’s dance.

After a few margaritas we ended up on the beach, trying to talk in broken English and Spanish. She taught me some Spanish, which I should really know better, seeing as seventy-five percent of the state’s population speaks it fluently. But that didn’t matter. I was free, at last. I was living large, unfettered by the freeways and the smog, the skyscrapers and the traffic. I remember falling asleep with my head on her shoulder, wishing I could live at that hotel and never go back to my regular life.

That town doesn’t exist anymore. The prison system bought it a couple of months ago and a prison is currently being built there. It is being touted as the largest and most escape-proof prison in the country. That is saying a lot.

I did have to go back to my regular life, and my regular job, and my air-sealed purified apartment on the twentieth floor, but I know there is somewhere out there that is free from the noise and the glaring lights of advertisements. It might be in my mind, or there might be some real town out there that hasn’t been converted to a prison, but what matters is that it’s there somewhere. And you can’t convince me otherwise.

One grey old woman,

An uptight boss character,

And me, all acting.

Backpack, socks and books

On hardwood floors, the scattered

Objects that I own

Friday, July 3

After a swim in the pool, we went to the airport at about 11:00 or 11:15 and waited until 12:50 to get on the plane from Tampa straight to Chicago. At the Chicago O’Hare airport I got on the plane to San Francisco by myself. Mom and Phyllis stayed in Chicago. The flight took four or so hours, and Dad picked me up at the airport. 

Then we had dinner at a Chinese place.

This morning I was in Florida, across the whole country, and now I’m here, across the country.  

A young boy named Billy lived with his family in a large castle in the mountains. His father, a mad scientist, worked in the basement all day long, making strange robots and potions. Billy always heard weird sounds from the basement, like booming and crashing, and cursing from his father. He was strictly forbidden from going down to his father’s workshop. His mother had tea parties in the garden all day long with her friends, and they all played bridge together all afternoon.

Billy’s sister did little besides trying on dresses all day, while looking in the mirror and combing her hair. She would say to Billy, “Am I the prettiest girl in the whole town?” If Billy didn’t answer she would glare at him. “Am I the prettiest girl in town, or not?”

“You are,” he would stammer, and she would smile and go back to her mirror.

Billy was a peaceful child, and would spend long summer days wandering through the woods thinking of poems about the trees and the hummingbirds. One day he was walking through a thick forest and saw, in the base of a very large tree, a little door. He had never seen this door before. He walked up to it. The door was small and only came up to his chest. He twisted the handle and tugged at the door. It was very heavy, but eventually it came open. He bent down and looked inside. To his surprise he saw another forest inside the tree!

He got on his knees and crawled inside, finding himself in a strange forest that was not the one he was in before. The door he had come through was attached to a similar tree in this new world, and it slammed shut behind him. He stood up and saw that he was in a very lovely meadow filled with blooming purple flowers and fragrant green grass. He liked this forest much better than the one he lived in with his family.

Suddenly a little midget man ran by, with a sack on his back. He stopped when he saw Billy out of the corner of his eye. He glared up at Billy in disbelief.

“Are…are you a human?” he asked.

“Why, yes, I am. What are you?”

“I am a subject of the King, King Fazul!” he exclaimed, putting out his hand. “Very pleased to meet you!”

Billy shook the little man’s hand.

“What have you got there, in the sack?” Billy asked.

“Oh, I’ve been out hunting rabbits.”

“Oh…”

“Would you like to join my family for dinner? I’ve never met a human before. It would be quite an honor.”

“Of course!”

Billy’s new friend led him through some trees, up a hill, over a stream, through a tunnel, and up into a treehouse. It was a very cozy little treehouse and Billy barely fit his big body up the tree.

When Billy peaked his face into the little home he saw two little children and a plump woman standing in a little kitchen.

“Guess who I found over in the meadow?” the little man said to his little family. They all looked up and saw Billy. Their eyes widened with amazement.

“A human!!!” the kids screamed.

Billy sat down in the little house, ducking his head to fit under the low roof. They served him some strange fruity wine and he told them tales of life in the human world. After awhile dinner was ready and they all sat down to eat. Billy had a wonderful time listening to their stories of King Fazul, who was a wonderful king and lived in a castle very far away. The wine made him very relaxed and happy. Apparently there was no such thing as sadness in their land, for no one ever died in their kingdom. They had never heard of a funeral and they didn’t know what “crying” was. People in their land got old, but they never got sick and they lived forever. They never got angry either. Billy felt that he never wanted to leave this world.

“Oh no!” Billy said suddenly, looking up at the sky. “It’s almost dark! My mom is going to be worried about me!”

The nice little family said their farewells and bid him off. He almost got lost on the way back to the tree, but made it just in time before the sun went down. He opened the door and got back to the human world, then ran back to his family’s castle. At dinner he was going to tell his family about the strange little family and the door in the tree but he realized that no one would believe him. So Billy sat quietly at the table and ate his mutton and custard while his sister talked and talked and talked, and his father brooded.

The next day he went back to the giant tree and the door was still there. He pulled open the door and crawled inside. The moment he entered the meadow he saw that something was different. The flowers weren’t blooming anymore. The grass was still green, but there were strange little patches where it was dead. He walked through the meadow, up the hill, over the stream, down the tunnel and up to the tree to his friend’s house.

“Hello?” he said. “It’s me, Billy! Remember? From yesterday?”

But something was wrong. The nice man was lying in his bed, sick. He looked over at Billy.

“What’s wrong?” Billy cried.

“Go away, human,” said the little man with bloodshot eyes and a pale, deathly face. “You have brought death into this land.”

“What? How could that happen?”

“You have brought your human disease here…you must leave.”

Oh no, Billy thought. What have I done? Just then his hand brushed against some flowers in a vase and they all wilted and died.

“They are cutting down the tree you used to come in here,” said the little man. “You should leave soon.”

Billy hurried down the ladder and ran back the way he came. He looked back and saw that everywhere he had stepped there was a patch of dead grass. He ran to the tree as a bunch of little workers were approaching it with saws.

“The human!” they cried. “The death-bringer!”

They crowded around him, shaking their saws and shouting angrily.

“Let me go! I promise I’ll never come back!” Billy shouted. He broke through the angry mob and ran to the door in the tree, pulling it open just as they closed in on him. He jumped through, shutting the door. He sat on the grass in the meadow on his family’s property, thankful to be back in the human world again.

The next day Billy went back but the tree wasn’t even there anymore. He wondered if maybe he had imagined the whole thing. But later that day he found a flower in his pocket. It was one of the flowers from the beautiful meadow on the other side of the tree. He had never seen such a pretty flower on his family’s property before, or anywhere in this world. As he held it in his hands it slowly withered and died, turning into a dry, colorless twig.

Billy never found another door to the little people’s world again. He always believed it was real, but he didn’t tell anyone about it- not even his best friends and his family.  Because people didn’t belong there. 

Here is what you will need:

Beef broth

Tomato Paste

Frozen Vegetables

Noodles (I suggest rotini)

Parmesan Cheese (pre-grated)

Minced Garlic (optional)

Directions:

Put equal parts beef broth and tomato paste in a large pot and heat, stirring frequently, until the two have become one, inseparable and irrevocably intermixed. Add the noodles and turn down heat. Simmer, adding vegetables (and garlic if you dare). Once the noodles are soft, and the vegetables are heated to your personal satisfaction, serve and enjoy, topping with parmesan cheese.  You might want to serve with a side of french bread and butter, but I will leave that up to you.  

NOTE: The following is based on a dream I had several nights ago.

Manhattan whirled noisily around us as we walked to the subway station. My family and some friends we were staying with. I looked up at towering monoliths of steel and glass, filled with thousands of bustling humans. Then we were on the subway and we were heading towards the river. We were over the river and then we descended, the glass subway entering the water. Soon we were submerged, the rapids swirling over and under us. Terror as I watched for creatures under the water. All was dark except for the occasional mystified face of a fish or larger amphibian, pressed against the window with huge dumb eyes.

The subway stopped and we were getting off, and we were in a cavernous room filled with people shouting and talking and playing chess and pulling books off of shelves. Is this a prison? I wondered. It seemed like hell.

“Where are we?” my mom asked our hosts.

“This is the New York public library,” the man said – the faceless man with the anonymous voice. Who was he? Why were we here?

My dad stood awkwardly, looking at the mass of hideous people around us.

“I don’t like this,” he said. “We need to leave.”

Just like my dad, I thought, always making us leave right after we arrive somewhere. But as we descended the stairways deep into the gloom of the subway station beneath hundreds of feet of earth, I couldn’t wait to get out. And later, as we sped through layers of city – highways, overpasses, tunnels, streets, over parks and under the roads – I wondered why we were here, and when we were going back to California.

NOTE: The following is based on a dream experienced by my girlfriend Elizabeth.

Elizabeth loved staying at Uncle Mike’s house. The beach came up to the big glass walls and she would sit in the easy chair, curled up with a blanket at night, watching the waves come in and out. She especially loved the beach when it was dark because the waves were so black and huge. She felt safe inside with her family while the endless waters raged outside the house.

“Want to go for a walk on the beach?”

Her dad was coming down the stairs, putting on a jacket.

“Who’s coming?”

“Mom and Patty.”

Patty came out to Laguna Beach to stay with the family a lot because she was just like family. Elizabeth got up to put on a sweater and walked outside, hugging her dad. Mom was already out there, with a funny look on her face.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” Elizabeth laughed. “You look like you’re smelling something bad.”

“It’s a special night, isn’t it honey?” Her dad looked knowingly at mom.

“What? What do you mean?”

“You’ll see, Elizabeth.”

Patty came out to the deck.

“Everyone ready?”

They all went to the beach and Elizabeth felt a strange wind blowing. It was a hot wind and she thought she noticed phantom figures floating through the sky. The moon was huge and full, dead center in the sky, casting a rippling blue reflection on the waves. As they walked Elizabeth started to feel uneasy. Something was weird about tonight. She couldn’t tell what it was.

“Are those bats?” she said, pointing up at something dark above her. She felt dizzy.

Her parents and Patty just laughed. An empty, echoing laugh. The beach was empty and the lights from the pier twinkled magically on the dark waves. She looked up at the moon. A dark, silhouetted figure passed through the moon, riding on a giant stick. Horror rose in her throat and she could not speak, so she pointed up at the moon.

“That…that…”

“Oh, Elizabeth,” her dad sighed. “Should we tell her?”

“Okay,” Patty said, bending down to speak face to face with Elizabeth. Things were never good when a grown-up had to get down on a knee to explain something.

“No…no…” she stammered, stumbling back and groping for her mother. “Mom!” she ran to where her mom had been standing but fell on sand instead. She looked up and an unmistakable figure rose into the air above them. And as the dark female form crossed the moon she knew without a doubt it was her mother. She ran into the dark as an inhuman, mad cackle echoed in her ears. It was the laughter of all the mothers, soaring through the night with insane and evil freedom. They were not mothers tonight. They would not be tucking anyone in tonight. They would not be telling bedtime stories tonight.

Elizabeth saw nothing but darkness, heard nothing but crashing waves, and felt nothing but sand on her arms and legs.

“No,” she tried to scream, but got a mouth full of sand. As the world turned black and silence descended, the dim sound of a witch’s evil laughter reached her ears.

I was watching Extreme Makeover the other day, and I wondered, why do I feel like this is not very good for me? I remembered a co-worker of mine, Carmen, telling me I should watch the show. “You will cry, Andrew,” she said in her thick Guatemalan accent. But I didn’t cry, because I felt manipulated. Basically the show concerns a different family every week. Each one has some hard luck story – storm destroyed their house, mom has cancer, kids are autistic, you name it. The family gets a complete renovation of their home and someone cries every time. The family concludes the show by thanking the cast and crew of Extreme Makeover. Sometimes the host himself cries. This shows that despite being a seasoned, professional host, he can’t hold his emotions back. It is just too moving. At this time millions of Americans are also crying, sitting in their living rooms and moved beyond words.

Why does our entertainment consistently leave us feeling manipulated and hollow? Perhaps we aren’t making high demands on what passes for entertainment. Consider John Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale, written when the poet was only 24. The poet’s brother had just died of tuberculosis, a disease that took his mother and would take his life a year later. He knew he was dying, and he wrote a poem about the desire to go into a dark forest and commune with a mournful nightingale. This poem isn’t meant to cheer us up, so why is it great art? We don’t feel any better about ourselves after reading it, but we have been moved.

Before we praise Keats, though, we must know that Plato himself would be deeply disappointed by the poem. To understand our own disappointment with modern entertainment we must explore the clashing values of previous writers and thinkers.

At first glance it may seem as if Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale satisfies Platonic conceptions of beauty. The speaker addresses an eternal nightingale and seeks comfort and release from his mortal, painful world. He clearly addresses the “immortal bird” as an ideal creature that reminds one of an idealized beauty. To the untrained eye it would appear that Keats is using his poetry to get closer to the Platonic ideal of the nightingale singing in a dark forest. This bird, and the song she sings, is represented as permanent and seen by the ancients as well as the moderns. The nightingale is clearly not in the realm of the changing, mortal world we live in. But if we take a close look at Plato’s true ideas of poetry we would see deep dissatisfaction with this style of poetry. A true Platonic critique of this work would reveal it to be a poem which appeals to the “irrational, useless and cowardly” part of the soul. Sadly, John Keats would be banished from Plato’s Republic. Perhaps this reveals the inadequacy of a Platonic critique of great poetry. But it also raises issues important to poetry and criticism.

Plato’s Socrates has a dim opinion of poets, as he states in the Republic: “And so if the tragic poet is an imitator, he too is thrice removed from the king and the from the truth; and so are all other imitators.” This is bad news for John Keats, since he is trying to poetically represent a nightingale. He purposely uses his imagination to craft this image. “Away! Away! for I will fly to thee,/ Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,/ But on the viewless wings of Poesy,/ Though the dull brain perplexes and retards,” he cries out to the nightingale in desperation. This not only serves to imitate an imitation of the nightingale, but to purposely avoid reason. The speaker’s reason is like a shackle from which he flees to seek comfort. In Plato’s complex philosophy the dual parts of the soul are presented as antithetical – one is rational and one is emotional. Since our senses are imperfect, we rely on the “arts of measuring and numbering and weighing” which “come to the rescue of human understanding.” The other part of the soul, which “has an opinion contrary to measure” is clearly the part Keats is using in his ode. Keats would have to overcome Plato’s prejudice that “painting and drawing are engaged in productions which are far removed from truth, and are also the companions and friends and associates of a principle within us which is equally removed from reason, and that they have no true or healthy aim.” Unfortunately Keats seems determined to do the opposite. “That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,/ And with thee fade away into the forest dim.” This desire of Keats’ narrator calls to mind his theory of negative capability, which directly contradicts Plato’s philosophical goals. This theory is in evidence in Ode to a Nightingale and demonstrates “when man is capable of being in uncertainties, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” Keats believes that in poetry aesthetic beauty supercedes the moral and reasonable demands of everyday life. This leads him blatantly open to Plato’s harsh incrimination.

Plato’s Socrates convinces Glaucon that in life, a real man in great sorrow would stay quiet and patient rather than expose his emotions in a display of passion. We must, he says, use reason to keep our emotions from getting out of control. However, “the pity which has been nourished and strengthened in the misfortunes of others is with difficulty repressed in our own.” Plato understands the uncontrollable tide of emotions that is liable to be loosed if crowds of people are encouraged to feel the pain of others. Poetry “feeds and waters the passions instead of drying them up; she lets them rule, although they ought to be controlled if mankind are ever to increase in happiness and virtue.” So poetry has little chance of increasing happiness and virtue, unless it deals reasonably with makes a man moral and what makes a society work like a well-oiled machine. But Keats, who is merely seeking beauty, uses his imagination to create a world that comforts him. “Fade away, dissolve, and quite forget/ What thou among the leaves hast never known,/ The weariness, the fever, and the fret/ Here, where men sit and hear each other groan.” He replaces the sorrows of the world with the idealized, beautiful sorrow of the nightingale.

Keats happily abandons reason and patience in the poem. He almost willfully subverts Plato’s demands in favor of a imaginative retreat into a sorrowful vision. He puts all the emphasis on sensual delights, spurning Plato.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet

Wherewith the seasonable month endows

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;

White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;

And mid-May’s eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Keats fuses night and the forest with death (embalmed darkness) and the spring, in a fine example of euphony. The words not only describe a beautiful scene but sound sweet and sensual. The references to wine suggest an intoxication with the language and the image he has created. Keats’ narrator seems to understand the unhealthiness of his vision. He revels in the invisible “fast-fading violets covered up in leaves” and the “murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.” He literally cannot see them and is left to imagine them. The imagination is central in Keats’s poetic value system. He calls out ecstatically for a “draught of vintage! that hath been/ Cooled a long age in the deep delved earth,/ Tasting of flora and the country green,/ Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!” He beautifully uses synesthesia to convey his inebriation. There is nothing in this poem that would please Plato. This poem appeals to the part of the soul that “inclines to us to recollection of our troubles and to lamentation, and can never have enough of them, [which] we may call irrational, useless and cowardly.” According to Socrates, grief, which is so present in Ode to a Nightingale, “stands in the way of what is most required.” In Plato’s rationalism there is no room for emotional weakness. His business is to create the perfect state.

Plato’s Socrates asks Glaucon whether Homer had ever been an educator, a legislator, or a great warrior. The answer is that there is no claim that he ever did anything besides imitating things he did not understand. For Plato, someone who does not perform a useful art in the political or educational world is a mere imitator of imitations, like a painter who paints a cobbler though he understands nothing of cobbling. If given Keats’s Ode, Plato would doubtless scoff at his emotional histrionics, saying Keats knew nothing of Nightingales and resorted to imagination to incite the emotions of his readers. Keats admits to his lack of reason, and seems to flaunt his imaginative fancy. “My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains/ My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,/ Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains. On minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk.”

The irony of Plato’s supposed disapproval of Keats is that the poet used many mythical Greek allusions in his poetry, which Plato also uses to prove his points. Plato’s Republic is full of mythical and poetical allusions, though he claims to be an advocate for reason. Keats peppers the poem with allusions to Dryads, Lethe, Hippocrene, Bacchus, and Flora to give a classical feeling to the poem and lend mythological significance to his melancholy. Plato’s allegory of the cave is nothing more than a metaphor – there is nothing rational about it. So we see Keats using the same poetry that Plato uses to condemn poets.

While it could be safely argued that poetry owes more to Aristotle’s Poetics than Plato, Plato’s methods are often poetic and poets often use Platonic methods. His ideas are intangible and his descriptions are not scientific. Plato concludes the Republic with a description of the three fates: Clotho, who weaves the thread of life; Lachesis, who measures it; and Atropos, who cuts it. His description of the birth of souls reaches the heights of poetry.

“They marched on in a scorching heat to the plain of Forgetfulness, which was a barren waste destitute of trees and verdure; and then towards evening they encamped by the river of Unmindfulness, whose water no vessel can hold; of this they were all obliged to drink a certain quantity, and those who were not saved by wisdom drank more than necessary; and each one as he drank forgot all things. Now after they had gone to rest, about the middle of the night there was a thunderstorm and earthquake, and then in an instant they were driven upwards in all manner of ways to their birth, like stars shooting.”

This reminds one of the forgetfulness Keats’s narrator longs for in his Ode. Similarities do indeed exist between the poetry of Plato and the poetry of Keats. The poetic arts lend mythical significance and aesthetic beauty to a subject. Plato would not be the captivating writer he is without poetry, so how seriously should we take his exile of poets from the Republic?

Keats not only uses Mythological Greek allusions but treats the mournful Nightingale as a Platonic ideal. “Thou was not born for death, immortal Bird!/ No hungry generations tread thee down;/ The voice I hear this passing night was heard/ In ancient days by emperor and clown.” The “plaintive anthem” of the Nightingale is a permanent, beautiful and idealized vision of melancholy as a Platonic “form.” His own earth-bound melancholy is contrasted to this. If he would die the Nightingale would go on singing beautifully. “Now more than ever seems it rich to die,/ To cease upon the midnight with no pain,/ While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad/ In such an ecstacy!/ Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain-/ To thy high requiem become a sod.” In Keats’s poem we find a daring appropriation of Plato’s ideals to a personal exploration of melancholy. He refuses to heed Plato’s admonitions to the better nature in us, which “allows the sympathetic element to break loose because the sorrow is another’s.” Keats joins his sorrow with the bird’s and revels in it because it is eternal and beautiful.

Plato will never read the poetry that was influenced by his lofty philosophy, so he will never get to pass judgment on it the way he did to Homer. But we still have his ideas and we are left to question how much we need them, if they refute much of what we consider good poetry. Clearly Keats benefited from the beauty and the scope of Plato’s philosophy, including the idea of a world of perfection we have forgotten through the trauma of birth. It is left to us to decide whether Keats’s poetry suffers because he is “capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” Do we expect Keats to help us learn how to live a better life, behave morally, legislate our towns, raise our children, educate our young, and decide who governs over us? If we do we are to be sorely disappointed. There is, however, something in Keats that conforms with Socrates and Glaucon’s idea of absolute beauty. “Take the case of the other, who recognizes the existence of beauty and is able to distinguish the idea from the objects which participate in the idea, neither putting the objects in the place of the idea nor the idea in the place of the objects – is he a dreamer, or is he wide awake?” Glaucon responds that he is wide awake. Keats as well wonders whether he has been a dreamer or wide awake.

Adieu! Adieu! Thy plaintive anthem fades

Past the near meadows, over the hill stream,

Up the hill-side; and now ‘tis buried deep

In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:- Do I wake or sleep?

Keats expertly straddles the line where idea participates with the object. How real is the Song of the Nightingale, and how real is his actual sorrow? Unlike Plato, Keats gives no easy answers. We have come to appreciate emotional, confessional works of art in our modern entertainment. So how useful is Plato? In today’s pop culture, where cheap emotion always rules over substance, we are certainly not pressured to take Plato’s criticism. But it is too valuable to ignore.