I Have Always Been Like This

I could have sworn I had already made a post with this title, but a search can't even find the phrase anywhere in my blog. Go figure.

Context time: What follows is my response to someone else's lengthy post about Depression on a different "social media" platform.  I spent enough time writing it that I thought I should "preserve" it here, but I often think stupid things.

I like to think I am good at hiding it. I know I am especially good at hiding all of myself. Hell, back when I was able-bodied enough to do so, I built a room inside my garage that is literally lightproof and soundproof, and that is where I am right now, in the middle of a nest of clutter I know I will never clean. SSRI meds didn't work. MAOI meds made it worse. TMS treatments didn't work, but the people were nice. Despite assurances that the methodology has improved greatly, I am still, for now, more afraid of ECT than I am of just being like this. I have always been like this. My memory is bad, but I have artifacts, things I wrote and drew, not just as a teen but also as a child, and I have some of the concerned notes sent to my parents from my teachers. I have always been like this. I don't expect I will ever feel suicidal again. Life is pain but it is also short, and it keeps getting shorter the longer I live, and I have never really been on good terms with Death. The only good thing Death has waiting for me is a final silencing of the infernal ringing in my ears (not really my ears, they can't hear pitches that high, but rather my broken brain seems to be stuck in some kind of feedback loop in my auditory cortex). But enough about me, how are you?

Addendum: This is a remarkable demonstration of the problem I have previously described as "The Prison of 'I'" or "The Problem of 'I'".  I seem to recall having postulated a solution.  I should go back and read it before I write anything else.  A particular clip of a particular scene from the final episode of The Prisoner always pops into my head when I use "I".

Serious Errors In My Favorite Film that I didn't notice until I turned 60

Already with the disclaimers: the title of this essay is a convenience which ignores that, while "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968, Stanley Kubrick, Director) has been, for most of my life, my favorite film, even with the proviso that it cannot be well understood without also reading the novel of the same name (Arthur C. Clarke, also co-author of the screenplay), it has been surpassed in my estimation as both film and science fiction by "Arrival" (2016, Denis Villeneuve, Director), not to be confused with "The Arrival" (1996, David Twohy, Director), which is fun, but doesn't fit in this discussion. Even further, I recognize that the film is even better understood and appreciated if one reads the sadly out-of -print "The Lost Worlds of 2001", a 1972 paperback-only book also by Arthur C. Clarke.

 The reasons for now preferring "Arrival" over "2001" are more about what is good about "Arrival" than it is about shortcomings of  "2001", nonetheless, it had been a few years since I had really sat down and gave the Kubrick film adequate attention, and I was bothered by a number of things.

I'm going to limit myself to a few problems that I think should have been obvious to, and avoidable by, Kubrick and his collaborators and advisors at the time, not based upon new knowledge obtained since the beginning of pre-production on the film, which is estimated to have begun sometime in 1965.

Importantly, note that Project Mercury was complete, and Project Gemini had already flown the majority of it's missions and returned many color photographs, before 1965.  Note that these photographs were all in the public domain and many of them widely distributed at the time, and would have been easily obtained by anyone involved in the production of the film, along with eyewitness accounts from the Astronauts.

 I was going to include photos from Gemini and screenshots of the film to illustrate my points, but anyone sufficiently interested can easily obtain these, and can take my word for what I have to say here, or not.  Best Google Image Search keywords for relevant Gemini photos are "Project Gemini Photos of Sun" and "Project Gemini Photos of Earth".

Opening title sequence:

I will set aside any nit-picking about relative size of the Moon, Earth and Sun from the fictional point of view in this opening shot, as well as the amount of luminosity of the far side of the Moon when the three bodies are in this configuration.  I have no idea, nor do I particularly care, if the stars shown from this point of view, or in any other scene, are correct.

The literally "glaring" problem that takes me right out of the film is the depiction of a yellow sun with a a vastly expansive corona of yellow/orange.  The sun, as viewed from space, is intensely white and any "bloom" effect seen in photographs are due to interactions between sunlight and the optics in the camera, and remain white. This scene looks exactly like what it is: a spotlight aimed at a camera in a room full of air, perhaps even with a yellow "gel" in the spotlight.

The Earth and moon look exactly like what they are, static paintings, vastly underwhelming compared to available contemporary photography of Earth from orbit, the Moon from telescopic photos, or the Ranger and other probes, or better paintings based upon the same.

The Dawn of Man:

This is just a potential continuity problem: When the ape-men are examining the monolith, they are in a small depression in the ground which is not very well lit and the sunlight in the projected background photo appears to be coming from a less-than-noontime angle.  Suddenly we jump cut to a view looking straight up the monolith and the sun is directly overhead and the moon very nearly so.  So, maybe the jump cut also indicated a passage of time to when the alignment of objects in this view was possible.  I honestly don't know where in the world, or at what time of year, one can look directly upward and see the sun, but I am sure it happens, so, I should let this one go, or at least defer to someone who knows more than I do about such things. 

First Scenes from Earth Orbit:

My main complaint here is just how flat and boring the painting of the Earth is, especially when presented in relatively close temporal proximity to beautiful telescopic photos of the Moon.  Look at the Gemini photos of Earth from orbit, how much more colorful they are, and how land-masses are often easily seen, along with the thin envelope of atmosphere along the edge.  There is a palpable sense of a spherical object in view, even in two-dimensional photos from very low orbit.  Certainly a better painting could have been done than the washed-out mostly-white flat disc we are offered by the film, given, again, the easy availability of Project Gemini color photos at the time of production design.

From late stages of moon lander approach through the end of the TMA-1 sequence:

In addition to a carryover of my complaints about the plain appearance of Earth from space, here I just have another bunch of continuity complaints, that reflect what I can only explain as simple laziness.  It is reasonable to assume that the entire time Heywood Floyd is on the surface of the moon as depicted in this film is only a few hours, an Earth day or two at most.  Further, it is important to note that the Earth is frequently seen in the background in many exterior, and at least one spacecraft interior, shots in this sequence, thus it can be safely assumed that all fictional filming locations are on the tidally-locked near side of the moon, the face we always see from Earth.  Also, keep in mind it takes over three weeks for the moon to orbit the Earth, thus no significant change in the "phase" of the Earth as seen from the Moon should be observable within even as much as a couple of Earth days.  So, it is beyond curious that in successive shots in which the Earth is visible, it is alternately lit by the Sun, sometimes from camera left and sometimes from camera right.  These are simply and inescapably errors made in the production which could have been avoided if adequate attention were given.  The final shot before the cut to the Jupiter Mission is simply absurd.  After showing sunlight bouncing between left and right of all scenes, and the Earth always low in the lunar sky, suddenly, looking straight up from the bottom of the monolith, the Sun is directly above and the Earth very nearly so.  A pretty composition, but one which cannot be reconciled with the relative positions of these large bodies depicted immediately before the jump cut. 

Jupiter Mission:

For the remainder of the film, I can mostly leave any other observable oddities to artistic license.  I will note that the portions of the spacecraft that are in shadow would be in very dark shadows with virtually no hope of being photographed without supplemental lighting, and even the lighted side, at this distance from the Sun, would be very dimly lit, but that wouldn't be very nice looking, so, artistic license.  I will also note that the side of the antenna array directed towards the sun keeps changing between the front and the back, with no explanation. Finally, the size of the pod bay and the pods, and the size of the circular habitat area, all of which are supposedly inside the spherical front portion of Discovery One, don't seem to be able to fit.  I have yet to see diagram that makes sense of the internal use of space.  

 Beyond The Infinite:

Once Dave leaves in his pod the final time, to the end of the film, much if not all of what is shown is more allegory than literal, so just enjoy the ride and look forward to reading the book.

Finally:

I apologize for my gross inconsistency in the use of capitalization, but I am just too lazy to go back and fix it. Go figure.  Oh yeah, and it is really worth the trouble to watch "Jupiter and Beyond The Infinite" while listening to "Echoes" by Pink Floyd, instead of the original audio, especially the quadraphonic mix, if you can get it.  It is almost exactly the correct length, and this may not be a coincidence, but that is a whole other story.

It took me 60 years to begin to understand this...

I have always been a very self-involved person, and have not considered history to have much relevance to me personally.   The Baptist Church in which I was raised was very keen on various forms of "Sins of the Father" guilt-mongering, and I rebelled against this with a vengeance.  Having been named first, middle and last after my Father, I even went so far as to go through the legal process of changing my entire name.  I did not consider myself in any way connected to the actions of my ancestors, and thus did not have any great curiosity about them.  This was made easier because something about my origins were considered shameful by my extended family and they treated me accordingly.  I still can't be sure I fully know why, and have always maintained that I don't care.

I did not consider the imperialism torture and slavery my white ancestors visited upon the world, nor the continuing actions of my contemporaries, to be in any way connected to me.

These convenient pretenses have been eroding very recently.  Within my own selfish life I began to realize that the past is as real and important as the present or the future.  Eventually, it occurred to me that my life as it is, including great privileges that I take for granted, cannot exist other than within the context of a vast web of history and current events, people of the past and present, which I can only hope to understand in the smallest way.

I am beginning to feel that it is important for me to understand as much as possible, for my connection to it cannot be denied.

In particular, I have been trying to fill in the vast gaps in my knowledge of the history of the United States of America in which I have lived my entire life.   Part of this comes from being old enough to be horrified at how little generations of adults younger than myself really know about the small span of history through which I have lived. 

The earliest curiosity I developed about the ongoing economic imperialism of the U.S. was when I left the hard but necessary work of farming and moved to the city to do the dehumanizing and needlessly dangerous work still being done, back in the 1980s, in factories here.  I was aware of the great amount of regulation that had been developed over decades and even centuries to make working conditions in U.S. factories safe, humane and fairly compensated, but the "ground truth" of life on the factory floor fell far short of the ideal. Then I noticed how most of the manufactured goods used in this country, in my life, were made in other countries where the scarce worker protections I enjoyed might not even exist.  I could only imagine how much worse it was for those workers.

I had long been vaguely curious about monuments in the downtown Portland, Oregon park blocks celebrating the bravery and heroism of local soldiers who fought in a war in a place called The Philippines.   I was previously unaware that there had been such a war, and the name of the place where it happened only sounded slightly familiar.

Then a few years later, I find myself in a long distance internet friendship with a kid who lives in The Philippines and shares, even exceeds, my great enthusiasm for a surf-punk band called "Man... or, Astro-Man?" (and many typographical variants of the same).   For many months I have been providing what small help I can for his grand project of re-creating the rather complex staging and sound design of the band, very specifically, during their 1999 tours.   

I began to get curious about a history that includes some kind of past war between his country and mine, and ends up with his passion for an American band that has never even played in his country.

I turned to YouTube and a history educator for whom I had developed some trust for telling the whole story as best as his own research, often involving multiple consultants, could allow.  I recently watched his video on The Philippine-American War, which as it turns out, was a sort of spin-off of the already ongoing Spanish-American War, about which I also knew almost nothing.  The Philippine war started in 1898 and lasted until... well sometimes it's hard to set a specific date when something like this ends.  Sure there are dates for treaties and such, but those don't always mean terrible things just stopped happening.

If you want to watch it, the video is here:

https://youtu.be/SbH8D381J-I?si=pjRL-Mi4_p5SKBDW

And of course, as with any important subject, seek your own sources as well.

At this juncture I don't know how to reconcile my horror and shame about my own country and my realization that these same horrible and wrong things make the life I mostly sort-of enjoy possible. 

Side step in world and personal history a few years, and I was briefly working for a sub-contractor for customer service for the shoe and fashion company Nike. During training for this job, we are treated to many videos, including one that features a very positive story about the wonderful work being done at one of the Nike factories in The Philippines.  Even with all of the positive spin, I could tell this was not a manufacturing workplace like those I had known here in the U.S., and the vast contrast between that sweatshop and the gleaming modernist dream of the Nike corporate headquarters just a few blocks away from where I live, is hard to express adequately.

And all of this is just a small sample of the atrocities of the relationship, past and present, between The United States and The Philippines. 

I haven't even touched upon the vast sources of shame based upon just the internal history of the country that made me who I am.   

I don't know what to do with this, about this.  For now, I am just trying to learn as much as I can about the country, world and history I have for too long considered mostly irrelevant to my life.

Of one thing I am increasingly sure: there were no "good old days", much less any past standard of "Great" to which we should return.  The farther back in time one looks, the less "great" things were for pretty much everybody, but especially anybody without my privilege of being a white heterosexual male. 

[Editorial note: I have done a pass through this to correct some of the most embarrassing errors in spelling, syntax and readability.  Along the way I found a tangled web of tenses that, if I were to try to untangle it, I would give up on this essay entirely.  In a way, shifting and conflicting tenses are intrinsic to one of the central ideas I am trying to put forth here: that the past, present and future, as well as the individual and their small place in the world, are all inextricably, interdependently connected, like it or not.  For a lot of my ongoing "awakening" process, I would also like to thank Roccie Hill and her powerful book of historical fiction "The Blood of My Mother", which I am still reading, but can already recommend.]

An Old Man Falls Down

Halfway through writing this, I feel compelled to add this preamble, explaining that much of what follows is excessive in detail that does not contribute to a tolerable, much less entertaining, narrative.

I have fallen down three times in the past week or so.  This is considerably more frequent than usual.

There has been a late resurgence of winter weather recently. "Resurgence" is not the right word. Winter had been mild until it suddenly wasn't in mid/late February.  It might yet not be done.

Fall One:

I was out in the most extreme of the snow, at about 5AM, trying to get a large round segment of tree from my side yard into my house, to burn in the fireplace.  Our heat pump has been out of service for a few years, and in any case, even using electrical heat is dodgy, and expensive, because the heat exchanger is rather clogged with pet hair and such.  

So, I was out in the extreme cold trying, as I was too weak and lazy to simply pick it up and carry it, to roll a large chunk of wood towards the front door.  It accumulated snow as I rolled it, much like a snowball in a cartoon or when children are building a snowman.  I'm not entirely sure what happened, but I think I was pushing on it with my foot and lost my balance.  In any case, I ended up face down in a little more than a foot of cold powder snow, with no gloves and no obvious way to get back on my feet.

The snow was so cold on my bare hands that it felt, paradoxically, like they were on fire.  White hot needles of ice tore through my bare hands as I crawled towards my car.

Fortunately, I had the forethought to bring my car keys with me in case I wanted to use it as a warming shelter.

 Eventually I made it to my car, started it up, and waited for it, and subsequently my hands, to warm up.

The pain was amazing.  The time immeasurable. Eventually, I was able to get back in the house, but without my burnable prize snowball.

I would eventually find that I had somehow scraped off a large patch of skin from below my right knee. Diabetes slows healing, especially in my legs, so regrowing this skin is a long-term work-in-progress, but infection has been avoided.

Fall Two:

This was during the cold weather, but doesn't really count as a weather-related fall.  I was leaving a small room in my garage.  A space I had created for myself after the demise of my recording studio, intended to be a smaller studio for smaller projects.  It is extremely well insulated regarding light, sound and heat, so a very small heater keeps it almost too warm in the coldest of weather.  I can't imagine physically constructing this space, from the scraps of my old studio, with the body I have now.  I am glad I did it back in 2004. 

I had a sudden notion that there was something I left behind that I wanted to go back and get.  An attempted turn on the cluttered floor of my garage and I was suddenly on my back, painfully lying on the metal edge of a discarded, inoperative, 24-channel mixer.  Not much more to that story.

Fall Three:

I ventured out into the world, one of my least favorite things to do as of late, to secure supplies which had proven difficult to acquire through delivery services.  In a Fred Meyer parking lot, I failed to notice a patch of ice near where I had parked, and down I went.  The bizarre aspect of this experience is that I found myself once again crawling towards a place where I could pull myself up, but this time it was in a public place in what passed for full daylight at the time.  There were people all around going about their own business as if there wasn't a 60 year old weakling trying to find a way to make right his figurative capsized tortoise shell.  In retrospect, I think people rushing to help would have been more horrifying than being left to my own limited devices.

In any case, I obviously solved the problem and completed my errand with only a smaller patch of missing skin next to my left elbow.

 In Conclusion:

I think writing this all out was a strange and pointless thing to do.  What do I want?  Pity? Empathy? None of the above.  I just have an inexplicable urge, occasionally, to document the mundane events of my decaying life.

Perhaps my mundane documentation, along with those of others, may eventually help some future archeologist form some marginally realistic understanding of common life in this era.

I also like to feed birds that don't really need me to feed them, and one very old feral cat who very much needs me to feed her if she is to continue becoming older.  I also do the laundry and take care of my two indoor cats. Life could be worse, and it will be.