June 16, 2026 · 4:07 pm

I gaze at the messages coming in

I gaze at the messages coming, one after another, as if following a militant command. It seemed like a rally, like they were all of a like mind for once; that they all cared. Then I read each one. Rachel was as she often is: floundering, her stabbing at buttons capturing a fluttering mind, ever torn from a competing distraction, like her kids pawing at her legs, a dog nuzzling into her groin. “I have plans for Saturday…I’m…not sure I can be at your memorial,” she wrote, clearly multi-tasking. Paul was predictably gruff and terse, like he was typing out his thoughts in the moments before passing out: “I’m not available on the 13th” is what he managed before sandwiching himself back in his headset. He won’t have read the whole message, was only half-getting the context that I’d introduced. Memorial? What the hell’s he talking about? Dean was a bit more clued in. “Call me if you wanna talk”, he’d offered, if haplessly. Actually, it was more forced than hapless. He didn’t wanna talk. Dean never wanted to talk. He wasn’t sure he even meant what he said. He just thought it was something you’re supposed to say in these situations—situations where someone is dying, he meant. And that was what was happening, despite all the denial. The rest of Dean’s text betrayed his awkwardness. He might be able to attend the memorial, but only if it was in the afternoon, and not bleeding into the evening. Yeah, bleeding. Also, what was going to be served? He asked. His new partner was vegan, he explained, and he, as ever, had an issue with dairy products.

              These are my friends, my inner circle. I know. Who needs enemies, and all that. They mean well. I know because they say so on X, on their Instagram pages, and with all the effort that goes into a periodic “like”. Dean’s emogees are clever at least. So, too, are Paul’s voice messages, though I think the last one was from an AI thing that he was showing off—something to do with his job. I figure he’ll call me again with that new toy of his, ask me for some money, as a prank. I’ve thought about holding off this thing until I’d gotten an AI replacement myself. That would maintain continuity, keep the business and social circles going while things were in transition. Perhaps my substitute could hand residual calls from my customers, explain that I or someone would get back to them, take care of their orders, answer their questions. Gotta keep selling til’ the end. Meanwhile, I’d dispatch someone or thing to handle Rachel’s birthday gift, whatever that might be. I just feed in her info, patch in the profile from her something page and then it all take care of itself. Come to think of it, this reminds of what the doctors said as they slid me into the MRI tube, only to then watch with sighing dismay when the results weren’t quite what they’d expected. What a bummer for them. What a drag it must be, being oncologists. They had to stay late that day, take some time to say that my days were numbered. And the friends: I told ‘em, sort of. I told ‘em the numbers, as in the something something cell count (yeah, you’d only half listen if you were being told this shit, also), and the days left count—that landed with a bit more of a thud.

              Lucy was the last to call after my text announcement. She’s always been the last to know things, my darling Lucy: my erstwhile hook-up, my prior-to-that crush. She cared about my feelings once, though she was slow to catch on that they were, in fact, feelings. “Oh my God,” she started, like she always started conversations, as if she were ever catching on late to a dark joke. “Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad”. That’s another thing I love about her. There’s nothing she can’t or won’t blame another for, especially when it comes to dying. She knows because she’s dealt with a lot of people dying, she says, usually in reference to people who love her. It’s dangerous to love her, I inferred once upon a time. It’s more dangerous now, I think. “Sorry to bother you with this,” I said to her. Shamefully manipulative, I know. “I knew you were struggling,” she replied, speaking past my lame effort. Pity sex. It’s never too late to get some, I figure, still thinking in sales pitches. It always worked for Lucy to not really listen, somehow. “I knew what you were going through with the…ya know…but I didn’t know it was as bad as…ya know”. She didn’t know it was as bad as this because she didn’t really know what it was. Denial is useful that way. Anyway, then came the advice: “You should have taken a mental health day. That’s always worked for me”. This is where our age difference comes in, kinda how it came between us before, which meant I had no chance. Lucy is of that generation that thinks stress entitles a day off from work or school. To have stress and deal with the day to day—that’s unhealthy, she thinks.

              Then she made her move, her intervention. “Can’t you delay your plan or whatever until…I don’t know…can’t you just hold out a little longer?”

              “What’s the point?” I moaned.

              “I don’t know. I read the letter you sent to the group, and I get it—don’t try to talk you out of it. But seriously, just put if off for a while. Take a one day at a time approach. That’s how I stopped drinking, just one day at a time. I got two years clean now, did I tell you?”

              “Yeah, congratulations. I’m proud of you”

              “Yeah, thanks. Anyway, when I have my next birthday, I want you there to celebrate, plus the others”

              “You’ll never get us all together like that”. Now I was sounding bitter. “We’ll forget. We’ll pay lip service to it, all agree on the idea. But no one will step forward, actually make it happen. See, none of us is really here. That’s why I can plan something and send out an invitation to a fake event. It’s like everything else—it’s just something that might happen.”

              “You don’t know that. We may surprise you”. She paused and fell silent. For idle seconds, I could just about make out her stutter, trying to think what to say next; whether to really care. “You don’t really mean it, do you? You wouldn’t do it.”

              “Nah, of course not. I just wanted to see what you’d all say if I made a threat. I wanted to see if it would change anything, disrupt anyone’s schedule, or force you or anyone to say something you’ve never said before”.

              “What do you want us to say?”

              “I don’t know. I just know I don’t want to request what I want you to say”.

              “I don’t know what to say”

              “Don’t worry, you said it already”

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , ,

May 24, 2026 · 7:16 pm

Hot Minutes of Time

Four-thirty in the afternoon on a Friday in a quiet if uncomfortably warm office space atop a four-story building. This is not a school, a playground, or a deserted trail wherein the transient or marginal hold territorial advantage. The era wherein my mind was ever on the alert for the intrusions of the wild is well behind me, I complacently think. I have no tense readiness in my chest, my limbs, my mind. I have no flexed startle response to unfurl at the sound of disquiet. Work is scheduled neatly from one hour to the next. The spaces in between are fixed within easy parameters. A genteel, professional atmosphere prevails amongst others who have likewise arrived and long settled into civilized existence.

At home, away from the office which is suburbanly-situated, I feel nature’s playful and unthreatening incursion. Squirrels chase one another at dawn, scratching away upon rooftop tiles, acting like naughty children on Christmas morning. At night, an owl hoots with a haughty attitude and watches stolidly from a high tree. At some other time of day, woodpeckers thrash their bullet-hard heads against wood and sometimes pause, unperturbed, because their heads play a different game than mine, and have some manner of airbag behind the eyes to absorb impact. Ducks fly down upon a nearby pool, appearing to dive bomb one another, separating runts from leaders, creating havoc, but eliciting little more from me than, “hey, get over here…you gotta see this!” It all seems like a delightful spectacle until the eye catches sight of a less welcome visitor, a long-tailed rodent that scurries away like the other creatures do, but with slightly greater knowledge that its presence is somewhat more hateful and stirring of disgust.

It isn’t nice to think this of any creature, one of God’s creatures, after all. But it’s not quite the same as the mustering of rage or fear that arises from human provocation. Recently, a friend of mine received a sobering, zeitgeisty lesson from one of his daughters, straight from the frontlines of feminine trauma. It seems that a casual discussion of day-to-day life yielded an earnest question about whether women might prefer aloneness in the woods with a grizzly bear in proximity versus the same scenario with a stranger man. The daughter said the latter scene would be more unnerving, and added a touch of duh to her commentary when her father expressed surprise. The rationale was logical; that is, historically evidence-based. The daughter had never been assaulted or harassed by a stranger bear, she asserted, implying a woman’s norm. The father was disturbed yet galvanized, and moved to an empathetic awareness of women’s physical vulnerability in this world. As is my wont, I poked a hole in the message (having heard this second hand), pointing out complicating factors: of course, this fear of men versus bears bears being taken seriously by men, but what also bears observation are the flaws involved in comparing apples and oranges, as women generally do not get their intimacy needs met by, ahem, bears, so there is little emotional conflict involved in keeping a distance from them. Yes, that situation in the woods, like many, is dangerous. But most situations are dangerous in part because of the desires that place us there.

Exceptions? Hard to say. My destined-to-be-misunderstood-by-someone point presumes a heteronormative baseline, plus a belief in the inherent agency that people (okay, children excepted) feel in this world. Wait…is that view…humannormative? Am I overlooking the power that children exert over adults, as in what actually happened to me a week or so ago? I don’t get my intimacy or professional (mostly) needs met by adolescents currently, but that didn’t stop a pair of them from penetrating my complacent and privileged silo and giving me a lesson in…something. See, that’s the thing with animals and kids—neither of whom use words when exhibiting their natures—for what they have to teach me is not intended per se, but instead merely unleashed. I didn’t ask them to loiter in the hallways of my office building, looking for someone to harass or assault. And the boys in question on the fateful day I’m about to describe were not cute, as far as I was concerned.

It started, as I started with my retelling here, around about four-thirty in the afternoon when a rather diffident-looking boy of about fifteen walked before one of the windows to my office suite. This was unusual because to do this the boy was traversing a pathway that runs around the perimeter of the building’s top floor level and is only about a foot-and-a-half wide around the stretch that surrounds my office. As he passed, he made no eye contact with me and seemed impassive, as if he’d simply lost his way and was looking for a proper exit. I thought little of it and proceeded with my then telehealth-heavy day which often has me looking into my computer monitor and sometimes above it to gaze out of my window, mostly to see bucolic sights stretching towards the hills, and ever so rarely to see someone—if so, typically a building workman—navigating this narrow path, attending to some repair job or other.

When the boy disappeared from view, I shook my head, briefly distracted and bemused, if not quite amused, and then I went about my business. But within the hour I felt a commotion beyond my office door in the hallways. Someone or thing was scurrying about, creaking the sturdy boards beneath the well-carpeted floors. If it could talk, the foundation would say, we’re not used to this, but we can take it. At that moment, I thought I could take it also, because it hadn’t yet impinged upon me. That changed moments later when I heard and felt a violent rapping upon my office door. Someone was banging their fists upon its mid-riff. Were they alerting me to an emergency? Was it an assailant looking to crash through the barrier and do me harm? Was it ICE coming to get me? Actually, only that third possibility did not occur to me in that fleeting spell of inquiry. Amidst the shock of intrusion, my head spun around and then back again to my computer screen, to the nonplussed expression of my meeting visitor, who apparently had not heard the noise. Did you hear that? I asked. He shook his head uncomprehendingly. That added to my disbelief. Had it really happened? I excused myself momentarily, went to door, opened it, and looked about the hallway, which was foolish if indeed this was a violent assault still in process.

Nothing. The hallway was empty, the miscreant gone. At the end of a long stretch, a door at the far corner was ajar, revealing the escape, plus a warning: the intruder was still around. They could come back, do what they just did, again. What did they want? What had I done to deserve this? It’s interesting to note how fear and guilt mingle in such moments, as if random incidents are an indictment from the cosmos, yielding a Hitchcockian turn of events. In the realm of the unconscious, which encompasses all, such incidents have meaning. Actually, nothing is random. Everything is purposeful, I’m reminded. Crazy thought, I then self-reproach. Moments later, with my poise recovered, I resumed the meeting with lighthearted references to the inexplicable interruption—my fellow meeting participant still as undisturbed as he’d been throughout. Such privilege, I now envied, to be so undisturbed.

It will have seemed an aberrant event save for what happened the next day. This was worse. This time, a visitor was in my office, sitting opposite me, and adjacent to the window that looked onto and past that thin slice of pathway through which my intruder—soon to seem like my stalker—had snaked his way by. This time, there was no scurrying footwork rumbling beyond my door and through the hallways, heralding a violent assault upon my office. This time, the intruder appeared in the corner of the window like an intent spy performing a reconnaissance of his latest mischief. His beady, rat-eyes poked into the frame of the window, meeting mine as I immediately caught glance of him. He darted backwards, just like a rodent that sees itself being seen, that then must retreat to its dark hole. “Excuse me”, I will have muttered to my visitor who, just as in the previous instance, had not seen a thing out of the ordinary. It was as if others were simply not destined for whatever lesson I was being taught.

I opened my door, again inspecting the space in the hallway, though looking to see now what could be done—what might be done differently this time. Soon, after the current meeting, I’d make a call, alert the property manager that a problem exists in the building: we have intruders, stalkers, something like that, and something must be done! I nervily resumed my meeting, informing my visitor of the truth but reassuring that no danger existed…as far as I knew. We ended a few minutes earlier than scheduled with my offer to escort the person—a woman who may or may not fear bears, rats, men, or adolescents—to the parking lot. This belied somewhat the prior reassurances, but the gestured was appreciated. What a nice, understanding man I am. Upon my return via an elevator, I calculated that I had spare minutes in which I’d could make that call to the landlord and level my complaint. Exiting the lift, I turned left and rounded the corner to the stretch that led to my office suite. There in the short distance I saw a lithe, floppily t-shirted figure stood before my door, his fists raised. Then he launched them against the hard wood, matching the ferocious sound and impact of the day before. “Hey”, I yelled, and then dashed towards him. Without turning fully, the youth spun to his left and leapt towards the fire escape door that was four feet across from my office. By the time I’d slipped through the same gap, he and his conspirator—the beady-eyed boy who had performed the spying task minutes earlier–were already two-thirds down the staircase, cackling excitably. I stopped at the second landing and barked a profanity, feeling bold yet suddenly restrained. Who am I kidding? What would I do even if I did catch them up?

I plodded back up the one flight of stairs, catching my breath and nursing the feint twinge in my middle-aged right knee. Time for a phone call. No more messing around. My sense of entitlement was further emboldened when moments later I was speaking to a property manager who took the call as if summoned from a magic lamp. She was sympathetic yet restraining a guffaw. Kids? I felt her wanting to say, reminiscently. She advanced a theory, suggesting the mischief-makers were from the family therapy agency on the second floor: teens who were enrolled in that program were meant to sit patiently in waiting areas, and behave. Who are we all kidding, we were both thinking? Still, decisive action would be taken and an officious finger would be duly wagged at the boys in question via the agency that held the mooted responsibility. With my voice calmed and my heart no longer pounding with indignant rage, I thanked my landlord’s agent for the adult attention that would restore my world to its much-earned (not “privileged”) order.

Now the episode is over. The villains are gone and the disturbance has passed, swept back into an unconscious narrative that will dissolve until ducks, squirrels, possibly rats and men and bears, come to resurrect it. What protests exist that stir from the cracks, taking revenge and flipping the scripts of who or what has power, if only for a hot minute of time.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , ,

April 27, 2026 · 6:15 am

White savior narrative

They pulled out of a parking lot, satisfied by their purchase, anticipating a reparative task ahead. Ahead in a literal sense was a young woman crossing the street, her back to them us as they turned right. The unclothed legs of the woman disappeared up a sweat-top, which brought a comment from the passenger seat. “Oh my God, are you serious?” Leslie asked. David sped into the turn muttering “hmm”, pretending to have not seen the eye candy. Scratch gravel white wind, he thought, pulling away.  “Girl, put some shorts on!” she added. David smirked, in part because he finds humor in almost anything, and asked a stupid question: “How d’you know she’s not”.

“Too short, if she is”. The commentary was on. “I mean, I’m just saying you’re taking a risk, wearing them like that”.

“Are you victim blaming?”

“No, but she’s asking for men to make comments. Why do girls do that?” Leslie knew why girls do that, so did David, though neither would entertain the matter further.

“So, we’re gonna get to this tonight?” He was referring to the chicken wire they’d just bought from a hardware store that was meant to reinforce the apparently porous fence that had been in place previously. Myrtle, poor Myrtle, their blessed, caramel-colored pet chicken, had not flown the coup, but had left it and wandered away far enough to have been victimized by an intrepid fox that lurked on the far side of the creek beyond Leslie and David’s property. Heartbroken as she inspected the debris of Myrtle’s scattered feathers, Leslie caught a glance of the presumed culprit as it peered through a bush, still stalking the area. No doubt it was coming back for Myrtle’s partner, Martin, who by now was locked tight into its coup, clucking and stomping about, surely wondering where his partner had gone. “He’s traumatized, poor thing”, Leslie lamented. When she saw the fox, she called out to David, who often had a firearm nearby, but needed some minutes to find something more appropriate—in this instance, a bb gun. Soon, he burst into the garden, carrying his weapon, determined to exact revenge, though neither of the shots he fired seemed to hit his target.

Staggering back from the creek, he shook his head at Leslie, frustrated, and then climbed back over the six-foot high fence that was meant to prevent things like this happening. “Mangy, greedy fucker”, he snarled. Leslie lay near the coup, stroking the head of Myrtle’s disemboweled corpse. She was crying. Martin was behind her clucking, its beak agape while it flicked its head about, bemused. “How the fuck did it get in?” David asked, performing a quick scan of the area, but seeing no obvious sign of intrusion. Leslie pointed to a spot flanking his right: an invisible division where a sheet of wire met with another but was not tied together. She explained that the unbound, not-heavy-enough sheets would allow an intruder to protrude the fence and then enter. “It’s obvious what happened”, she concluded bitterly, a hint of reproach in her voice.

“You blaming me for this?” David replied. “I told you we needed a bigger coup and thicker wire”.

“No, you didn’t! You bitched about the cost, said we should wait before getting a second chicken. Well, now you got your way”.

“But I was right about the coup. It isn’t…wasn’t big enough for the two of them. Why did we get a second one anyway?”

“I told you why. It isn’t natural to just have one. Martin needs another chicken. We should buy several”.

“Okay fine. Let’s go…”

“Go where?”

“Back to the store. Let’s get more stuff—more wire, more wood. We’ll—I’ll stay out here as long as it takes, and build the fucking coup! Then we can get more chickens, get ‘em tonight if necessary”

Leslie sighed heavily, got up from Myrtle’s body and looked around herself, searching for a spade. “Don’t be stupid. We need to bury Myrtle, get her body away from Martin. We can get more stuff later. You’re just looking to bury your guilt, anyway”.

“My guilt? Listen—”

“Okay, fine. Our guilt. That doesn’t even matter now. I’ll take care of it”.

But she didn’t take care. After a further hour of pouting and crying within their two-bedroom house, she barked aloud for her partner to appear from a backroom lair he’d chosen for a sullen withdrawal.

“David!” she called again, now with a distinctive whine. Moments later he appeared at the door to their living room, sporting a cowboy hat above a black mask.

“What the fuck?” she said, nonplussed. He stifled a quip about Martin thinking something similar in his chicken mind when he either saw or heard the horror of Myrtle’s death. “What are you doing?” Leslie followed up.

“Nothing”, he answered. “Found this hat earlier, plus the mask, in a closet. It was my grandfather’s. It’s…never mind. It’s a joke. A bad joke, I guess”.

“I guess”. Leslie sniffled, affected a conciliatory tone as she asked, “are you still up for going back to the store, to get more stuff”.

“Sure”, he said briskly. Relieved, and with no-nonsense attitude, he was ready in a minute, good to go. “I’ll go start the car”. It was parked at the end of the driveway underneath a stretch of small white pebbles, some of which had been transferred away to embroider the area beyond the coup. As Leslie entered the passenger side, he glanced at the gravely stretch, thinking the association might stir another burst of tears in Leslie. She’s so sensitive, he thought, observing how difficult it was to make life easy-going and fun in his free time. She’ll get over this, he hoped. A bloody death, no doubt, but shit happens. He’d seen worse, known worse. As a police officer by trade, he saw worse stuff almost everyday. You gotta…chill, he wanted to say. Gotta see the bright side, learn to cheer up after shit like this. “Scratch gravel white wind”, he said as he launched their car forward. It was his catch phrase when heading out, a reflexive gesture usually. Only this time he thought it a slip.

An hour later they were back in the car, heading home. With an hour or two of daylight left, they’d immediately set to work on reinforcing the fence and the coup in their back yard. Martin, their one surviving white-feathered chicken, would be relieved to see them. Back in the passenger seat, Leslie was quiet, though just re-emerging from her protracted, distraction-seeking sulk. The woman with the shorts was still on her mind, perhaps. Meanwhile, she was integrating loss, realizing she will get over Myrtle, and focus on protecting Martin and repairing something else—she didn’t know what—her issue with David, maybe. Then, as they approached their neighborhood, she conjured their gravel driveway herself, and a further link came to her. “Oh, I get it. Scratch gravel white wind—the Lone Ranger thing—your grandfather’s favorite show. So, the hat—the white hat and that weird mask. I’ve never seen you wear that before. Were you making fun of me, or what?”

As she turned to face him and attempt eye contact for the first time over an hour, she saw that he was chuckling. “I don’t know”, he said, shrugging. “I don’t know what I was thinking”. Ahead, there was a cross-walk before the last turn towards their house. Sauntering along was a young man wearing a tank-top that hung low over a pair of tight shorts. With measured drollness, David observed, “That guy needs to wear longer, not-so-revealing shorts. I swear, does he understand that he’s just asking for women to make comments? Why do men do that?”

Leslie clucked half-disgust, unamused if unsurprised by her partner’s black humor. David thought, I can’t help myself.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , ,

March 29, 2026 · 6:51 am

Kes

Turning from the shadowy fantasy of an exclusive and moneyed boarding school, Ken Loach’s Kes, released a year after Lindsay Anderson’s If, presents a next level of grim to late 60’s social commentary. Here, the focus again is on British education, though not so much upon its sadistic homoerotic quirks or militaristic anachronisms, but rather its more basic, woeful inadequacies. The setting is a northern rural village, or possibly the edge of a sooty industrial town—Britain’s Pennsylvania-like heartland—tethered to waning occupations like mining or textile operations. As the film begins, a camera hovers intrusively over a dawn image of two boys asleep in a bed together, but this is no post-coital morning after.

The older of the two springs to his feet, is ready to leave for work within minutes. He is an older brother, an early twenty-something, perhaps, who may be the main income-earner in the family, which includes his bed-mate, the younger Billy, and their mother, a much-aggravated woman who presumably sleeps in a bed of her own. The boys’ father, barely referenced in this tale, is an absented figure. Billy, who looks about twelve, is slower to rise, apparently dreading the day ahead at school. He has good reason, for hardly a moment will pass when he isn’t subject to either peers’ bullying, ridicule from adults, or standard classroom procedure that is mis-attuned to his needs and deadening to his mind. For one thing, teachers and administrators only thinly speak the dialectic tongue that spins amongst the locals. If this film did achieve a distribution within the United States, it would have needed subtitles as much as any other foreign film of 1969. The thick accents and idioms pervade the dialogue, challenging literal comprehension, yet this is only a short-lived distraction because the drama, more a coming-of-destiny as coming-of-age, is so evident, and the feelings conveyed are unmistakable.

I must admit to a tinge of nostalgia watching some scenes, especially those which take place upon a muddy, uneven field whereupon pupils play a game of football (soccer), supervised by a phys ed teacher whose ugliness borders on the sociopathic. I was born in England, living there until the age of ten, so I recall grey rainy days and eagerly running around to keep warm and avoid being shouted at. At turns impassive yet impish, Billy finds a way in such moments to amuse himself, find private solace in a reverie before a teacher’s rebuke, or a taller boy’s brutality cuts him down again. Sadly inarticulate, Billy is hapless when asked to speak his mind. Like most of the children or even the adults in this milieu, he has little more than a shrug and a blank stare to offer when invited to explain himself, or to declare an aspiration. Teachers scoff with disgust, or express broad incredulity at the miserably apathetic state of modern youth. Unlike the aloof, complacent adults who inhabit the world of If, the adults of Kes are beleaguered, desperate people, misapprehending their universe as much as the kids they’re supposedly teaching.

As for life after school, for Billy’s brother, or his mother: it’s even worse. The brother heads off each morning to the local mine and likely centerpiece of regional economy. He’s destined for union disputes, limited opportunity, or the cruelties of black lung disease. Meanwhile, odd scenes depict life after hours, in unglamorous pubs and dance halls, or the squat quarters of enclosed living spaces. Snatches of chatter capture life’s morbid concerns: someone is drunk, embarrassing themselves in public; someone is the subject of gossip because they’re pregnant and out of wedlock, or unemployed and without prospects. The brother is ever spoiling for a fight, if not with Billy, then otherwise with his mother’s boyfriend who props up the bar but is not appreciably more present than the boys’ father. Implicitly, the British educational system, or the class system as a whole, is much at fault for this state of affairs. Visiting career counselors have little more to offer than brochures about the local factories and mills. One even chastises our hero, Billy, for appearing more than unprepared for this preordained future. Indeed, Billy just seems…elsewhere.

Billy is our hero, not because he has rebellion in mind (like Mick Travis in If), or a future plan—a dream—that will rescue from this existence. Instead, he has escapist fantasy which, paradoxically, represents his realistic coping. Plus, the escape he chooses is the endearing adoption of a wayward Kestrel (hence Kes the title, plus allusion to freedom via flight) he’s discovered at a nearby derelict castle. Away from school, or his argumentative family, Billy retreats to an open field to nurse the injured bird, coax it back into flight, soon to let it depart and soar away. Why? Because unlike our protagonist, such a hopeful future is possible for the bird. Unhappily, this doesn’t come to pass because the brother, truly a frustrated figure with an Oedipal jealousy problem, kills the bird in a fit of displaced rage. Broken-hearted, Billy buries the corpse in the field wherein he’d been training it to fly, and upon that sad finale, the film rather abruptly ends. Ken Loach, the film’s director and noted socialist, has said that he has little faith in social change as initiated by the privileged because only those who are disadvantaged are truly motivated for change. For this reason, a kinder, gentler ending to works of revolutionary art are not possible. They are less about fantasy, sentiment—the wish for something better—than simply what is.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , ,

February 15, 2026 · 6:05 pm

Run in the corridor

“When do we live, that’s what I wanna know”. A rather pretentious line, I’ve thought, delivered by protagonist Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson’s surrealist film, If, from 1968. A bell rings out, signaling a call to assembly. Mick and his mates must stand to attention, looking glum yet dreamy as they ponder escapes from an oppressive boarding school that offers religious fervor, military training, instruction in increasingly irrelevant Latin, plus—more secretively, homoerotic sadism, all wrapped in Bach chorals and platitudes about England’s present and past greatness. Clearly, Anderson, the director, had gone to schools like this unnamed fixture ensconced somewhere within a bucolic Gloucestershire countryside. Many of the boys he depicts, ranging in age from about ten to eighteen, all cut from upper class cloth, will proceed to universities like Oxford and Cambridge, and will ultimately land in the gentries of medicine, the law, or politics. Otherwise, they will be groomed for the military, destined to be officers ordering lesser privileged or innately ill-equipped men to suffer. That’s why I thought Mick a lucky and therefore self-pitying boy: he’ll be alright one way or another, I figured.

The school is a training ground for either side of an equation. It will separate the perpetrators and the victims, with the latter faction earmarked for a passive existence, such as the lives we once associated with accountants, insurance agents, or the back corridors of civil service. They will be studious but not ambitious, because public school will have (literally) beaten it out of them. One imagines a character like Jute, a roughly ten-year old newcomer to the school who looks nonplussed throughout the story, living a depressive, deadened life hereafter unless he is rescued from this hell and guided elsewhere. In the opening scenes, the viewer is introduced to him as though he will be the protagonist: the obvious underdog who will at some point rise up and discover himself. However, the film more or less abandons him midway, casting him as a minor figure in the revolutionary scene that will climax the action. A touch of reality, perhaps, for only Mick Travis, played by the already mischievous and sinister Malcolm McDowell in his introductory role, has the charisma and strength to lead an uprising. And this rebellion shouldn’t be so difficult in one sense, as the adults in charge are a curiously diffident group comprised of stuffy preachers, idiosyncratic professors with perverse leanings, plus a complacent headmaster who seems to think he has his finger on the pulse of youth, but instead seems hopelessly deluded and lost in his own dream of glorious England.

McDowell’s Mick is the figure that will burst the bubble of this hoary establishment, though he won’t be alone in his fight. His tight and loyal posse features a small cross-section of 1968’s idea of the disenfranchised: a fellow individualist/intellectual who shies away from militarism, a closet homosexual plus his beauteous underclassman and lover; on the periphery are the likeable runt, Jute, and then finally, and anomalously, a surly if lovely girl who will shoot the obtuse headmaster in the forehead in the last scene, thus representing militant feminism. What this drama lacks are the kind of figures we might expect to feature in a film about revolution: a rugged, working-class hero. Or if it were being made today: a person of color character, representing what would be better represented in general today. But this film is not futuristic, so even though it plays with reality as much as it does, injecting events that may be happening or not due to the boys’ fantasies, the inclusion of characters from the other side of tracks or overseas would have stretched historical credibility. That said, surrealist elements invoke foreignness: in his private study, Mick admiringly pins images of guerrilla warriors, or a then-fashionable poster of Che Guevara, to a wall, and repeatedly listens to a recording entitled “Missa Luba”, which features sacred chanting of an African tribe. However, as viewers, we are mostly exposed to conflicts between the relatively privileged, featuring their strange hierarchies: so-called whips, for example, who are peers to the fellow students to whom they exact punishments and cruelties, yet when they’re in class or in the pews of the school cathedral together, their after-hours authority dissolves into invisibility.

Then there are rules and norms that make little sense to conventional observation. An officious upperclassman yells, “run in the corridor”, to stir a manic response amongst his younger charges, who then run amok within the hallways, beating or scratching at one another, discharging an ever-rumbling angst. Run, not walk? Meanwhile, the youngest, or newest pupils on the totem pole are dubbed “scum”, suggesting the boys grant status, ala Lord of the Flies. “You’re a scum, aren’t you?” says an irritable whip. “I don’t know”, Jute replies. He doesn’t know who he is, what he is, and he is as yet unoffended, for as a Lacanian might observe, language here is a trauma that a child must assimilate as it invades us. Soon, as adults appear from behind closed doors, ready to sermonize and deliver pedantic edicts, the boys still themselves, become frozen in mind and body. “Stop talking!” the whips continually berate, to consolidate order, for they are not just ill-tempered scolds working for the man, they are the de facto governors in this realm. Stop thinking, we might infer is the meta message here. Just keep running, moving from one action to another without reflection, without consideration of either history or a future. Is it any wonder that one character, a stoical, decent, outlier-like teacher played by the eccentric Graham Crowden, pauses to critique the impact this dire education is having upon youth? “If you insist on staring at me like a row of Christmas puddings”, he moans at them, half-sympathetically, for he knows that the crusty institution that employs him is killing souls.

It’s well over fifty years since If first came out and became a cult hit from then onwards. The romanticized rebellion, replete will darling acts and phrases, blended with xylophonic musical pastiches, seduced my late adolescent mind and stirred a dream of roaming insurrection once. But it is a dream that embarrasses as much if not more than it does inspire. The problems of privileged youth in leafy rural England of yesteryear yield as much envy as they do sympathy, so the end result is something of a neutralized halting—a sense that as a viewer you are taking a pleasant hallucinogenic drug, not prepping for a cause. If you are middle or upper class and herald from a westernized society wherein food is plentiful, infrastructures are sound, atrocities are something heard about but not directly witnessed or felt personally, its message is for a siloed constituency recalling a cultural artifact–something of a wet dream. Still, the film is far from a shallow entertainment. Among its indelibly-expressed lessons is the idea that authoritarianism is not simply an external force to be defeated. It’s an internalized phenomenon that manifests in peer systems, and lives on intergenerationally. That’s the horror of these boys’ prison—there despite the wealth that affords it and the lack of apparent existential threat. If reflects one version of youth rebellion, one that is solipsistic, grounded in material comfort even as it battles false austerity, and reeks of the primitive. Above all, it depicts a world in which choice is limited but still so much vaster that what might have been put on celluloid.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , ,

January 21, 2026 · 8:19 pm

Absolutely Nothing

Hello next-level America. Happy New Year. Have I come to the right place? It’s high upon a hill, this party destination, at the end of a sinewy road that snakes unnecessarily to the topmost view in the city. I guess someone has to be there, I muse. I’m early, unfashionably first to arrive. That’s good in one sense, as I’ll catch a few moments of one-on-one time with the amiable host. His name’s Ed, which doesn’t feel like it fits his stately abode. He’ll be pleased to see me, says I’m one of his favorite people, after all. He wants to gather me amongst his new yet disparate clique, showing us off to one another, pulling us from our separate tracks and reflecting the magnetic pull of his life, which full of…something. Ushered along a high foyer, I glance at the artwork that adorns his home, some of which is his work. The area is lavish, colorful, psychedelic in flavor, and it draws the visitor to a center that offers luxury and warmth to counter a sparse, vaguely industrial feel. Within minutes, other guests arrive and before long, talk of art, dance, sculpture, and music fills the air. Smiles abound beneath twinkling eyes, winning laughter, and garrulous demeanors. Most of these people: they know one another, see other at work, or else in work-peripheral endeavors. They’re on committees together, share lawyers, doctors, and financial advisors. They invest in projects, patronize the local arts council. A woman Ed wants me to meet is from Russia and will blow my mind, he says.

           She doesn’t. Or her body does, for she has piercing green eyes within a scalene face, ala Taylor Swift. She’s half amazon, half-muse, undecided as to what works best. A gothic necklace around her sturdy branch draws my eye but it’s nothing compared to what’s happening below. No, not the middle. Past the midsection, which is mostly obscured by furs, she wears a mini-skirt from which two muscular legs stretch out, poised for a stomping. These trunks could jackhammer the earth beneath us all if she wanted and she wears the knowledge of this with a serene yet arrogant look. As for her mind, it doesn’t so much blow as whisper with expectation. What she does is speak in a quiet voice as the sound of chatter amid clinking glasses gets steadily louder. She speaks haltingly of finding “free” space in her art, which has something to do with churches and rockets, is spiritual in nature yet possessing of a wild, nihilistic fervor. Gingerly now, she laughs as she offers a leading query, wanting my thoughts on the nature of the wild in the modern…what was it? An exuberant shout of another partygoer has drowned out the question so I lean in, perhaps appearing to steer a kiss at her before turning my ear and appealing for repetition. This conversation, plus the effort it’s taking to make it happen, much less divine understanding of my fellow guest, is yielding a great strain in me. This will be a long night, I surmise, now aiming a look past the woman’s shoulder to a collection of guests forming in pockets. Everyone here is situated in a social bath that has enveloped them with ease and it will carry them through the night, and time will seem to pass unnoticed. Indeed, they will pass the night unnoticed, because that’s what it’s like when you’re fitting in nicely and feeling good. You’re invisible.

           “Are you hungry?” I ask the woman before me. She still wears an expectant expression, as I’m yet to supply sustenance of another kind—to be interesting or juxtaposing in return. Her face twitches in confusion as if to suggest that food and drink, the impressive refreshments that our host has laid out, is nothing compared the quest for free space in the realm of art, or something like that. I politely recede, gesturing to my nearly empty glass, suggesting a refill is necessary. She nods, lets me go with faint hurt, but appearing more sympathetic, because intoxication is closer to the spirit of artistic bliss, or at least the more apt physical regression for this end of year context. Next, I am circling a teak-topped island that houses the array of delicacies, appetizers, aperitifs, bottles of sprinkling soda water and sundry delicious edibles. A plate of salmon pieces upon toothpicks entices me to the other side of the island so I inch along its perimeter, meeting flickering looks from other guests. Here, people assess within a nanosecond whether you’re recognizable, whether you’re worth talking to, and if you’re not, there’s a thin smile, an obligatory nod, or possibly a blank gaze on offer as you nudge by them.

           By the time I’ve reached the salmon, I stake out a spot that might suit me for the remainder of the evening. A foot of space either side of the plate is mine, so anyone encroaching will have to reach past me, or request entry into the zone. Then, as a bonus, I notice the champagne and wine bottles are flanking the fish section, so I can load up for another round of snack and drink, keeping my mouth occupied without having to speak. The only problem is the conspicuous gap all around me, like a moat of air, or “free” space, perhaps, as that woman might have put it. Now she’s in the distance, speaking much louder than she did with me, calling out in barking Russian a bray of greetings towards a new pocket of guests. Soon, this art gallery cum luxury home will be overrun with rich, interesting, attractive and sociable people who are all in their element, it seems—all feeling quite at home, or else comfortably or confidently stepping out of their homes to take in this celebration, this gathering of pleasure and hope that’s happening while society is collapsing. Yeah, that’s where my mind went. Will it sink, this fixture of glass and steel, artwork and luxury furnishings, under the weight of the oblivious rich and go tumbling down the hill on which it lives. Then, will it plunge into the tented development down at sea level and crush the poor that sleep there?

           I have nothing to say except that, I want to say. Only I won’t. I’ll keep that thought, like I’ll keep myself, to myself. At best, I remain in my lonely spot, clearly separated from any clique, an apparent runt in the social order: an outcast, someone who’s not reading the room, but stands there as if he is doing just that. As the minutes pass, I field the odd cold look from a disapproving guest. I’m not following the rules here. I should at least position myself in reasonable earshot of conversation and contribute a thought or two, or at least an indulgent chuckle at a guest’s half-drowned out witticism. A couple of feet, possibly a bit more, is surely the limit of distance before a separatist attitude becomes apparent. My unpartnered, refreshment-chomping presence will soon be getting on nerves, embarrassing the collective, compelling the host to step forward to make a polite inquiry: can I get you anything? I’d love to introduce you around some more. That would be the call, the right move on Ed’s part but for the fact that I seem fixed in my spot around the kitchen island, not budging from my seized property and hogging the wine, champagne and salmon, if not quite the cheese, which is on the other side of the island, out of reach. Oh well, you can’t have everything, I want to say to people who might disagree and think that some people can have nearly everything—if they try, if they really try. Meanwhile, as my cheeks fill with more food, my smile widens and now my own eyes are twinkling, for I am like a pig in shit, grinning as a greedy interloper, not interested in art, or culture. Only consumption, plus a little politics, I suppose.

           Finally, Ed approaches with a nervous laugh, like he’s about to intervene. But a pocket of silence seems to fall about us as it seems the party is backgrounded. The sound of chatter and movement seems to dissolve into a soft white noise as Ed locks eyes with me. A sympathetic chuckle prefaces his pally, “what’s up” overture. “Not much”, I say dully, as if determined to not try. “Absolutely nothing”, I then add, feeling spontaneously provocative. Enjoying yourself? I want to ask, with layered meaning. How did he get this life? That might have been my follow-up. Ed nods in a fashion that heralds a validating gesture. He knows exactly what I’m talking about. He gets where I’m coming from, etc. Suddenly, it occurs to me that where he’s from is pally and down to earth, not perched on a hillside looming over the world. As I find the question that fits the moment, I note that I’m adopting a touch of the southern drawl that matches Ed’s background—Tennessee. “What are yawl talking about tonight?” I ask. And this is where he seems to relate. “Nothing”, he says, still nodding, but adding a knowing, bond-seeking laugh. “Absolutely nothing”.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , ,

December 14, 2025 · 10:05 pm

Goodbye Columbus

You saved your panic for the last act, didn’t you? Roth, I’m talking to you. You had Neil, your stand-in, your man—your young Jewish protagonist—clutching for answers, calling on Brenda, the girlfriend from the other side of the tracks, to come clean and admit to all that would fit his projections: he’s unwanted, an outsider who never really had a chance. It’s unfair what just happened, by the way—that thought that just disappeared due to an errant stroke of a finger. What happened? Words just left, retrievable only by the technically adept. Anyway, it’s like what happened to Neil. His confidence: it just left him in the end. His sense of assurance, of being loved and having a future of his choosing, because that’s what was owed to him, had just vanished.

           Brenda wouldn’t cop to it, of course, the ulterior motive he assigned to her. She was in denial, like she had been from the outset, playing it cool, pretending to not remember Neil when he first called, full of chutzpah—there, that’s the word that got away. She sorta came clean in the first few passages, saying she liked him, wanted to sleep with him, steal away from under the noses of affluent parents, find herself in Short Hills, New Jersey, not Connecticut, where school and high society beckoned. In the middle act, they slip and slide, playing at love, making love, discreetly and with reticent suggestion, fifties style. Neil was pre-sexual revolution, all from the boys’ side of things: do it for me, he said, regarding the diaphragm that became the point of contention, the fly in the ointment for a silent class war. It would increase his pleasure, was his argument to her. Would it? They’d know it already, the kids today. Nothing new anymore about carnal knowledge, the defeat of sexual guilt. But this was a post-war, fifties neurosis being navigated, with sex as the battleground. Naivete aside, you’re made to wonder as a sympathetic reader where the story was headed had it not been for the sexual mishap. What’s the future of a young aspirant couple heading into the sixties, scratching at their pants, but with much to look forward to, it seemed.

           It all blows up like a sudden cold war crisis. Neil’s panic seems to have him looking backward to a fear that has sat dormant thus far, squeezed into the subtext of an otherwise bland coming of age tale. What happened? Did something disappear, like words from a screen in our digitally cloudy age? No, a discovery of a physical object was the problem: discovery of the diaphragm by a priggish parent whose attachment to decorum and probity is at once ignited, only that’s not the true crisis from Neil’s point of view. What’s on his mind is what’s on Roth’s mind having been in psychoanalysis and then decided to make the Freudian arts a motif in his stories. So, with that in mind, Neil has it out with Brenda about the diaphragm, about why she let it be found by her snooping, we-thought-we-raised-you-better mother. Why didn’t she take it to school, avoid the problem of it being found, Neil asks. A mother going through a daughter’s belongings: that’s to be expected, he chastises, perhaps thinking of Jewish mothers in general and his own burning sexual guilt. Brenda has an explanation, an excuse for her laxity, only Neil is having none of it. His sense of persecution is piqued, and is foregrounded as they fight, which leads to a deadened climax—their break-up. Now the chutzpah with which he once approached Brenda and later called upon her, feeling brazen and hopeful, is gone, displaced by a paranoia that was previously absented, but ever floating in the literary unconscious. Don’t you know? He says as she bristles at his insinuation that she’d deliberated this discovery. No, she insists. Now she’s estranged from her parents, having disgraced them with her sexual impropriety. Why would she do that on purpose?

           But what Neil experiences, what he feels and what he calls upon the reader to acknowledge if she won’t, is his rejection, as if this were all pre-ordained. Yes, she liked you. She wanted you. She might even have fought someone over you in the unseen, unwritten scenes of a middle act. But in the end, she can’t have you and you can’t have her, not even in America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, plus being equal. And worst of all, you can’t even get it straight, as in the truth, if there are blind spots. That this was her plan all along—a dalliance, but not a life due to her myopic self, which is foreshadowed in their first meeting—is his and our putative takeaway. She didn’t remember him, she first claimed, being demure and foreshadowing their unhappy end. She asked him to hold her glasses at the pool. She didn’t see him. Goodbye Brenda, and middle America. Goodbye Columbus is the name of the story.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , ,

November 16, 2025 · 5:09 pm

What’s wrong with my approach?

He sat down before his laptop, extending a finger to the screen like he was adjusting controls, a pilot making final preparations ahead of the flight. He adjusted his seat, making it higher, or at least higher such that he could aim his gaze downwardly at me. A requirement, I figured. “Good morning,” he said chirpily. I returned a tense greeting, feeling a bit like I did the last time I was in a dentist chair. Where are those torturous needles, I wondered? I always imagine that when I go there, my hygienist will start off lightly, performing a gentle prodding here and there with puffy, soft fingers. The only pressure I’d feel would be in my gums as they harden, showing off their sturdy endurance. Hmm…looks good, you’re doing well, I expect to hear.

“So, what’s your problem with my approach?”, my colleague asked. My colleague? Are we intertwined, at odds, collaborative in any way. I don’t know else to call him. My interlocutor seemed best in the moment.

“Right, straight in, I see”. With the needles, I added inwardly. “Well, let’s see. Where to begin”. He chuckled, thinking this a friendly exercise. He opened his mouth, readying a statement. I think the question was a ruse. He didn’t really want me to start. He wanted to appear inviting, but actually spear in with his driving oratory, his oral assault. I opened up, bore my gums, my weakened incisors, and intoned, “I basically think that mental health treatment is a morally neutral exercise, as psychoanalysis prescribes, or has prescribed. And…”

“I guess that’s where we disagree”, he interrupted. He was still smiling. This was still a friendly exercise, though I knew what was coming next. “I mean, I understand that old school approach, taking a neutral position, but I think that has falsely justified a lot of neglect, especially of victims, over time”.

There were already balls in the air, forcing choices upon what to juggle. Old school? I mused. A pejorative term, I think, signifying a kind of philistine ageism: what’s old is out, or should be. What’s new is necessarily that and ought to be ushered in asap.

“We might, though you’ve stepped in before I’ve even named the alternative to neutrality. Should I yield and just…let you?”

“No, go ahead”

“By the way, are we recording?”

“Yes”. He was now terse: impatient to move on, or offended that I’d questioned his piloting skills.

“I think your approach is essentially moralistic. Dominantly so, actually. And I know what you might say, what you have said: that psychotherapy, or analysis, is an ethical framework. It is set up as an ethical entity, representing, if you will, moral values. However, it isn’t meant to be moralistic, I and many others think. It’s—”

“But what’s moralistic in my approach? I mean, I tell people it’s their choice, their decisions on what approach to take. I’m not forcing anything on anyone”

“For the moment, that’s besides the point I’m not yet making, because this part of the discussion isn’t about authority, as you’re suggesting. By moralistic, I mean offering the patient an idea, a lesson essentially, that is intended to leverage a change by appealing to their moral reasoning”

“Right”. More impatience, inflected with wary distrust.

I continued: “You, say such and such a behavior is wrong. You say it hurts others. You add that it hurts others in ways they haven’t noticed, either they didn’t know or didn’t want to know, and that distinction gets short shrift because the nature of their resistance is to be dismissed—”

“They’re narcissistic”

“—by assessment/partially diagnostic labels that are a shorthand for an explanation of why someone is acting in a certain way”

“Hold on, you don’t think that problem behaviors, the ones we typically speak of, are a result of narcissism?”

“I’m not saying that. I’m saying that labels like that are not motivational. If a person is stirred to an action that’s adaptive or not, they don’t go ‘well, I’m narcissistic’ as their half-conscious understanding of their desire in any given moment”

“Wouldn’t you agree that they’re not thinking of other people, specifically their loved ones, in such a moment?”

“We don’t know that, and I think you’re assuming that if they did think of loved ones, it would deter problem behaviors because that’s what thinking of loved ones does”

“Not necessarily. I know that people have mixed feelings towards loved ones, that they feel ambivalent. I get that”

“Well, I don’t hear that represented in your approach. As far as I can tell, it’s all about drawing attention to the negative effects of problem behavior with the expectation that your listener will then feel inspired to stop doing the problem behavior, thus healing can proceed. It’s like one of those TV ads that show half-starved, shivering animals laying in a shelter, looking miserable. You’re meant to feel sorry, get off your ass and either adopt one or make a donation. The ads not saying, what are your mixed feelings towards the neglected that might lead you to NOT act”

“Well, sure, you want people to act appropriately. What’s wrong with taking steps to elicit appropriate guilt?”

I stuttered, half-incredulously. Where to begin. “See, there’s the crux of your method: appropriate guilt. You think because you’ve called it that, and because your patient will consciously agree, as in agreeably if dolefully nod their head, that they will change their ways. What’s wrong with that? We don’t need therapists or analysts to play that role, is what’s wrong with that? That’s what preachers and social justice warriors are for, to persuade rather than explore thoughts, seeking to understand conflicting thoughts and feelings, not to vanquish them. You’re a mental health professional, and now I’ll be directive if not directly moralistic: it shouldn’t be that difficult to persuade you that persuasion as a tactic is at best limited as an intervention; at worst, it’s counter-effective. People resist being told what to do or manipulated in how to feel”

“That’s not what I do”

“I think it is what you do”

“It’s not. How can I persuade you?”

I paused. “Do you do case conferences with your colleagues, your team, as you put it?”

“Of course, we meet regularly, discuss cases, prepare a plan of action, discussion interventions”

“Do you each read transcripts from sessions, verbatim or near-verbatim notes, or make recordings, as we’re doing?”

“No”, he said tiredly.

“Then how do you really know how each of you is responding to patients’ process? How do you know how you’re persuading patients to experience appropriate guilt, as you put, or else being interested in their ambivalent feelings. And how, if you don’t hear instances of patient responses to your statements, how do you know if they’re really thinking about what you’re saying versus merely complying with your pronouncements? And why, for example, if they glean from the outset that you think they should feel guilty about their actions, would they even tell you about their mixed thoughts and feelings”

“Wait, aren’t you presuming that people will only share their feelings if they expect validation? I’d suggest that when people come to me, they already feel some guilt. I’ve not imposed that upon them, as you’re implying. They expect to hear push back. Secretly, I think—here’s an in-depth interpretation for you—they’ve longed for someone to take a hold of them and tell them what to do, persuade them that what they’re doing is against their values”

“That’s the authority piece, and you may have a point that people are looking for a version of parenting via the therapeutic relationship”

“Well then?”

Now I chuckled. “Interesting. You say that as if you think the matter resolved”

“Well, you seem like you’re affirming that a parent-like, values-validating approach is indicated, which would be healing. What’s next?”

“Indeed”

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , ,

October 3, 2025 · 5:01 pm

The Right to Cry Thunderbone

X: Can you believe what happened to Eddie J?

Y: Of course I can, nothing surprises anymore

X: Yeah, but I mean, it was way uncool after his dog died

Y: that doesn’t make him a good person

X: still, it’s about respect

Y: respect for who, Eddie J?

X: For the fact that he’s going through something…I mean, be human is all I’m saying

Y: It’s not all you’re saying. From your post it sounded like you thought people should be fired or even arrested for calling him out

X: Well, yeah. It’s totally inappropriate, don’t you think? It’s not the right time.

Y: Problem is, doesn’t that cut both ways? People who were fans of his had no problem singing his praises, saying what a great guy he is

X: What’s wrong with that?

Y: nothing, except it’s one-sided to say only speak positively, leaving out what’s critical or even insulting, just because it’s “not the right time”. When does it become the right time to accurately speak to a deceased person’s reputation across divides? People have a right to give an opinion

X: So do I and I say IT’S BULLSHIT

Y: actually, you’re shouting that, plus wanting people to be fired or arrested, which is more than giving an opinion

X: It’s my opinion that they should be arrested

Y: Okay, you have a right to say that

X: Well then…

Y: Well what?

X: Then they should be fired and arrested

Y: (laughing) no, there’s a difference between saying that and having the power to put it into effect

X: we can if enough people say so. That’s democracy, the social contract

Y: not really, it’s a matter of law whether someone gets arrested, at least

X: laws are democratic because we vote for people who make the laws

Y: right but we have certain inalienable rights that supersede the kind of legislation you’re talking about—one of them is free speech. People can say what they like about Eddie J as long as it’s not slander, as in factually incorrect, versus an opinion, like calling someone a jerk

X: or calling for violence

Y: nobody called for violence against Eddie J or his dog

X: they did, they used words that led to violence. It was…whaddya call it?

Y: a dog whistle?

X: no, smart ass. It was hate speech

Y: that’s not calling for violence. You’re allowed to hate, otherwise calling me a smart ass would be grounds for you being fired or arrested

X: that’s not what I mean. It was way worse than that, come on. I’m talking about words, certain words, equaling hatred, and therefore violence. Words are violence

Y: last week it was silence equals violence. Make up your mind

X: sometimes silence is violence if you’re not speaking up when you should

Y: should I lose my job or get arrested if I don’t say anything about issues you think are important?

X: No, I’m not saying that

Y: silence is violence, you said, so why wouldn’t it be punished

X: not in that way, I just mean you should be criticized

Y: or yelled at

X: I’M NOT YELLING

Y: I think your voice is hurting my foot

X: whatever, now you’re blaming me, playing the victim. There’s way too much blaming and fingerpointing going on right now. I blame the left for that.

Y: You see me as on the left?

X: No, you’re in the middle, but that’s bad too. Anyway, I’m outa here, not talking to you

Y: Or “liking” my posts anymore, none of which are political

X: That’s right. Maybe you should be fired, or arrested if you think it’s okay to mock someone whose dog just died just because you don’t like them for dissing on your favorite band, whatever they’re called

Y: Thunderbone. Greatest band ever! It should be so declared by the highest authorities, like chatgbt. To suggest anything else is false news, disinformation, or misinformation, whatever the difference between those things is. And it’s the only issue that really matters. It should be illegal to diss on TB, or even fail to invoke their name, like you just did: punishable by job loss, incarceration, public stoning, banishment to a leper colony…like a red state

X: Ugh, I knew it. You said red state, you hater! You’re on the left. Bye

Y: It was a joke. What, are you banning me?

X: yes, and your stupid blog

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , ,

September 14, 2025 · 5:58 am

Two attorneys chat about a child abuse law

Imagine a lead-up to the case of Harris, as in Kamala, representing the state of California, v. Mathews, Alvarez, and Owen: a case at least five years in the making; a case delayed multiple times because witnesses weren’t available at short notice, because one of the attorneys for either side became ill; because the judge in the case decided to go on vacation–who knows? And if you weren’t there for the projected week-long trial that became a day-and-a-half trial and ended abruptly, you won’t recognize so readily the elements outlined in this speculative dialogue. You might not know that a ten year old law that mandated changes to child abuse reporting law based on now 45 year old legislation had gotten bounced around between courts since 2019–officially remanded by the California Supreme court in 2020 with the decree that the state must demonstrate, via a trial, that the 2015 amendment to the 1980 Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act (CANRA) advances the cause of that earlier legislation. So, conjure two principals from the state attorney general’s office (I’ll call them A and B), chatting on the eve of the trial with one of them fretting yet plotting over what may happen:

A: So, a person does something that harms children, indirectly. They look at child porn. I know. I’m supposed to call it CSAM, child sexual abuse material. Whatever. But it does harm them directly, someone says–one of our witnesses: “It’s not a victimless crime”

B: Well, it isn’t

A: Question is, is that relevant? I can hear the other side, possibly the judge: “Oh, well then we must identify, locate, and then protect the victimized child, following those questions that appear on suspected child abuse report forms. And if this change to the law will achieve that, then okay”. Well, the thing is it won’t as far as we know, but it will stop the subject of the report from continuing the behavior.

B: And presumably deter however many others there are doing this behavior

A: No, that’s been increasing in a big way actually, not decreasing–what both our side and theirs call an “explosion” of CSAM on the internet.

B: So why’s that happening, the explosion?

A: It’s the technology…ya know, the growth of the internet, the sophisticated ways in which images can be stored and hidden

B: The internet? Not people’s desire to do the behavior, look at child porn?

A: Yes, but the technology has made it easier to find the images; meanwhile, the number of images are incredible so it’s hard to track them all. People who weren’t previously inclined to do this kind of thing can now. Or, the same number of people are doing it, roughly, but are able to do it more, gather ever more images, because of the technology. We’re not sure.

B: You mean despite us having this now ten year old reporting law to deter people. So, why have the law?

A: Well, the idea was that having the law, plus the amendment, would help us capture child porn users, not just those who produce, sell, or distribute–that was what the law previously said. But capturing porn users was never the purpose of the law–protecting children is–so we have to spin it that way somehow

B: I see. The plaintiffs will argue that there are more commonplace and more effective ways to capture child porn users, like acting on tips from the public, or by going through google, for example

A: Yes, and states do get thousands of tips per year from the public about child porn users, countless more than we get from psychotherapists reporting on their patients. Not sure about compelling google to violate privacy of their users, getting them to report, and of course they’d have tons more money to fight us in court than three therapists from California plus a pro bono lawyer.

B: Okay, well if we do capture them, the child porn users–let’s say we get better at that, or that more therapists report their patients to us–then what? Remind me, are we talking misdemeanors or felonies?

A: Depends on how much child porn they’ve been viewing or downloading. If it’s not so bad we can send ’em back to therapy, only we–meaning the state–would be in charge of the therapy at that point. Basically, we’d presume they’d lie about their behavior so we’d regularly use polygraphs to verify their disclosures.

B: So what if they tell the truth about more use of child porn?

A: Well, then they’d be in violation, which would lead to a custodial sentence probably. Or, if they lie about child abuse and they fail a polygraph, then the same result would follow

B: And if they’re not continuing to use child porn and they pass a polygraph, then what do they talk about in therapy?

A: I don’t know. Whatever else they talk about in therapy. They get reminded to not use child porn, I guess. Our expert witnesses don’t say much about that.

B: And what about the plaintiff witnesses. What might they say?

A: Well, they’ve just got the one, this forensic psychologist who says, or relays studies that say that breaches of confidentiality are damaging therapy efforts, that child porn users aren’t that dangerous to children in a direct way, according to research. Much of that testimony will be redundant since their attorney can get most of that info out of our witnesses in cross examination. Then, their witness might talk about what else happens in therapy, or what motivates child porn users, like medicating anxiety states, sexual traumas–theirs, not those of the children in the…ya know.

B: What will you ask him in the cross examination?

A: Actually, our best chance is if he doesn’t show, so I have an idea. Remember, the Supreme Court back in 2020 put it on us, the state, to show that the 2015 amendment to CANRA protects children, otherwise the limiting of confidentiality rights may be deemed unconstitutional. So, we’re in trouble here: we can’t show that therapist reports are even happening on this matter, let alone that they’re leading to rescues. We got an expert witness who says that child porn use directly harms children so it shouldn’t matter that we can’t locate victims via therapist reports, but that argument’s about increasing arrests, convictions, and mandated treatment, which isn’t the point of the reporting law. So, we need a get out of jail card and I think it’s in this “no more delays” decree that the judge ordered last month. If we finish up Tuesday afternoon because we limit to a bare minimum our questions for our witnesses–which their side won’t expect–we’ll rest our case and the judge will turn to them. Their attorney says their witness is coming on Thursday, which means he’ll have to ask for a continuance, which the judge will deny. Then, we object that we’re denied a chance to cross examine, so the witness testimony should be struck from the record. And, because he’s their only witness, we’ll move to dismiss, saying they’re not presenting a case, even though they will have asked most of the questions at that point. So…why are you smiling?

B: It’s ingenious

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,