In Thrall to the Oligarchy

Watched an interview with Putin the other day. American reporter showed Putin indictment of Russians who hacked DNC, and Putin laughed. Then he said something like, “I want all Americans to know that Russia has never interfered with American politics.” I laughed when he said this because Russia has been spying on America and interfering in our politics for at least seventy years. That he would so baldly and obviously lie about it is simultaneously laughable and disconcerting. Putin is the figurehead, but Russia is really run by the oligarchs, the billionaires. Meanwhile, we are being run by a billionaire who laughs at the truth and lies more than Nixon and half our country applauds him. Trump and the Republicans in Congress pass bills that profit the billionaires because they are in the billionaire’s pockets. Now Trump is putting a conservative Republican on the Supreme Court bench for the second in as many years, putting ultimate control of the judiciary in the hands of the billionaires. I wish Americans would wake up and see through the lies the billionaires, the oligarchs, the top 1% feed them, but they won’t.

In other news, I got a laugh out of a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal by Purdue Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer and distributor of Oxycontin. They basically said they manufacture the opioids that are the cause of the opioid crisis in our country, but they want to limit the use of those opioids. Then they went on to list a bunch of steps they’re taking that really won’t help. They said nothing about the billions they made from their drug dealing (made legal and unassailable by the government of America in thrall to the oligarchy), nor did they say they would do the one thing that would slow down, reverse, and/or stop the opioid crisis. What is that one thing, you ask? Why, if Purdue reduced production of its opioids, or halted manufacturing altogether. No doubt as they run these full-page ads voicing their heartfelt concern for the opioid crisis, they continue to increase production of those same opioids. What a fucking joke. It’s the same as someone telling you, “I really care about you, and I really don`t want to hurt you,” while repeatedly punching you in the face. What a farce.

Writing for Writing’s Sake

Most of this blog has been writing to share my thoughts and feelings, to report on conditions of confinement within NDOC, to share my inventions, and to speak out in the hopes of making the world a better place if only by positively affecting one person out there. Those things lend themselves to a more technical style of writing that leaves little room for more lyrical writing, writing for writing’s sake. I have to be more direct in my writing to convey all my points and avoid misinterpretations of my meanings.

When I was a kid, English was my favorite subject. I love the way words could be moved around in an infinite variety of patterns to convey different meanings, to evoke different emotions, to make meaningless rhythms just for the sake of a sound pleasing to the ear when spoken aloud. All of the legal writing I have to do these days tempers my creative side and being aware that this blog is public makes me focus on specificity instead of the joy of painting pictures with words and grammatical flights of fancy. My favorite style as a kid was stream-of-consciousness, just jumping in the rabbit hole and seeing where my mind would take me with the words, playing with sarcasm and puns, not worrying about intent or meaning—just enjoying the words themselves. I`m a pretty big smart ass, but I don`t think that comes across in my writing in this blog because I`m always being so serious and literal.

This post, however, is just for fun, and to enjoy good writing, inspired by a July issue of The New Yorker. First, an excerpt from “Strays” by William Brewer.

“…you could hear all hell rattling in the cages,

thrashing the chains, could almost sense,

even from where I was standing

outside his window looking through a break

in the curtains, the drool shining on the teeth

bared in the black, dank holes, how

enough abandoned things screaming

could make a sound large enough to find

a rhythm in it, which is to say, something dependable—”

Man, that paints a picture, and I feel it in my soul. That is such an apt description of Ely State Prison: the drool shining on the teeth bared in the black, dank holes. Enough abandoned things screaming to make a sound large enough to find a rhythm in it until that rhythm, that screaming, as maddening as it is, becomes a dependable thing. That’s how it was for me this last time at Ely, losing my mind, depressed and anxious beyond description, feeling exactly like a forgotten, abandoned dog in a kennel, other snarling dogs all around me, a cacophony of terror and pain and madness that becomes a symphony of misery while I was shivering in the corner of my cage.

That poem was in the midst of a long article about Otessa Moshfegh, a writer who “sometimes gets the sense that she has the power to conjure reality through her writing.” I sometimes get the same sense. Is that hope? Is that madness? Is that hubris? Maybe a little bit of each combined with a desire to shape the world into a better place. Like the characters she creates, do I destabilize the readers assumptions about me? I hope so. Here’s part of a faux letter Moshfegh wrote to Trump: “Since age five, all of life has been like a farce, an absurd performance of a reality based on meaningless drivel, or a devastating experience of trauma and fatigue, deep with wonder, which has led me into such self-seriousness that I often wonder if I am completely insane. Can you relate at all? Do you feel like you’ve been chosen by God for a special task here on Earth? I do.” I don`t know about Trump, but I can relate. After reading this article, and excerpts from her books, I know I`ll have to read all her books. I wish I could hang out with her and her fiancé’, and my wife, talking about the tremulous strands upon which our realities rely and the beauty to be found in the ugly reality of life. They seem like the more literary, intellectual version of me and my wifey, a couple of fools in love with each other and the worlds inside their minds, wanting to be forgotten by the world but craving its approval nonetheless.

Winsome words winding down a serpentine path, redolent of red rain raining down on an alien landscape, dust tamped down by irrational anger and repression. Who reigns over these badlands under a bleak skyscape of purple clouds lit by lightening of colorless hues? Each of us in our own mad minds, kings and queens of endless empires of shit. Do we see beyond the pale of our own glass darkly? The universe is made up of more than these three dimensions and yet even more dimensions exist inside each one of us, but still people look at each other and see only one dimension while each of us silently screams that we are not one-dimensional.  See my dimensions! See my layers! See my pain and hope and fear and goodness beneath! What a world we live in, full of contradictions and carrion birds circling the abattoir, awaiting their next meal.

Those are my mental meanderings for the day, hope you enjoyed them. I`ll be back again soon.