“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”- Camus
After reading David Thomson’s The Fatal Alliance , I will never be able to watch a war movie as I once did, moved to respond by emotion, undiscerning in the flood, a willing participant in the common images and thematic patterns of most war movies. It is not that I have watched these movies with all the critical awareness of a potato. I catch the sentimentality of Spielberg and the bombast of Gibson. […]
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When I close my eyes at night, if it has been even a worse day than normal, volumes more MAGA venom spewed into the airwaves, more conspiracy, more raving about “scum” and “the enemy within”, more Nuremberg Rally vibes, more threats, then the visions come, the HG Wells stuff transmogrified, updated – concentration camps, dictators taking whatever they like, the end of Ukraine, women tracked during pregnancy, the country entering […]
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That house on Matinicus, 20 miles from the coast of Maine, an island that drops to about 50 human beings from September to June. For Sale: 3 South Rd, Matinicus Isle Plt, ME 04851 | realtor.com® There is the home that could be the end of distraction and the noise of 21st Century modernity, this post-democracy, post-intelligence, pre-just-another-few-months-away-cascade-of-catastrophes. The bunker, the haven, the last redoubt. There it is, the port of call to giving up on people, where the extremities of January […]
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At a certain age, maybe 60ish, when the immense vitality of the 50’s fades, some of us, metaphorically and otherwise, begin to hotfoot it away from death. That sounds dignified, doesn’t it? Actually, it looks more like an early chase scene from Buster Keaton , minus the skill and with death always gaining. I’ve been going to the gym 3 or 4 days a week since I was 38 and striding up […]
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