Guttersnipe Bookshelf: Renata Adler, SPEEDBOAT

Renata Adler, Speedboat
originally published 1976
republished by New York Review Books, 2013

By the time Speedboat was, at last, republished, at least a dozen people had ordered me to read it, including some of the very smartest people I know.  The book is a legend among writers of fiction, especially among those of us who aspire to fiction that is more open, more directly responsive to life and the present moment, and less tied to plot.  (I apologize for not being able to say it any better than that.)

I worry that I started imitating this book before I ever got the chance to read it.  Reading it and rereading it, I feel vindicated, helped and championed: yes, this is a thing which is possible, which I hoped would be possible, but didn’t quite know how, or didn’t have the nerve.  What a pleasure it is to experience Adler’s victory, a book which succeeds because it never lets up with brilliance, wit, and truth-telling till it stops on a dime.

The crisp, dead-pan voice of the narrator is made for satire.  Yet, when the book succeeds in this way, sending up life in the university or the newsroom, is also when the book risks ordinariness.  You’re at a cocktail party with a brilliant friend and she’s telling the deadly and hilarious truth -- it’s a thrill, but it’s a known thrill.  I like Speedboat better when it’s most fragmented (the last chapter) and best of all when it’s most strange.  For me, the best moment in the book, the point from which it commands my utter allegiance, is the chapter which begins:

“The camel, I had noticed, was passing, with great difficulty, through the eye of the needle.  The Apollo flight, the four-minute mile, Venus in Scorpio, human records on land and at sea -- these had been events of enormous importance.  But the camel, practicing in near obscurity for almost two thousand years, was passing through.  First the velvety nose, then the rest.  Not many were aware.  But if the lead camel and then perhaps the entire caravan could make it, the thread, the living thread of camels, would exist, could not be lost.  No one could lose the thread.”

Annex #2: Additions to ARTIFACT PANEL

Here is the second of two sets of additions to the novella Artifact Panel.  If you’d like to see the original 10,000 word excerpt, click here.  The other set of additions is here.  You're also welcome to contact me directly.  Again, these additions are NOT in any way a sequel or linear continuation of Artifact Panel.  These are all pieces that would be arranged among those existing in an order as yet to be determined.  The hope is that the finished, final version of Artifact Panel would be a small odd book or chapbook, full of white space.

Annex #2

Additions to ARTIFACT PANEL

Until I joined the ritual during the day, I had no idea that the abuelas, aglow, are always carried in using antlers. 


The gringos grieve.  Someone’s beloved sister, not yet old, had just received a lung transplant, but as soon as she got home she fell and broke her hip.  Back in the hospital, she up and died, off-handedly, it seemed.  An accidental death: she didn’t mean it.  She suffered, struggled, died, but now all anybody says is, She had just gotten entirely new furniture.  Everything.  The very best!  Entirely new.


I apologize for not being a better devotee, a real one.  For drinking red wine at noon even on the day of the ritual.  I promise not to erase, not to knock out.  It’s just -- if I have any chance of making it through this day -- the volume has got to go way, way down, at least for a few hours.


The Red Onion has bumped its price for a cooler of beers (that’s 6) from 100 pesos to 120.  Now the Canadians must do research.  I am a slow person.  A person who only figures things out much later.  Therefore it is only now dawning on me that -- the Canadians are not actually so relaxed.  Don’t the Canadians seem relaxed?  I thought so.  But this is just the time allotted for relaxation.  And these are the allotted beers.


Certain gringos have adopted me as a sort of mascot.  Me and my adorable earnestness.  A limp, lopsidedness, and just 3 sets of clothes.  They buy me beers and shots.  I am their queer performing dog.  See how the dog speaks correctly.  The dog speaks so correctly it’s funny!  Today my patrons buy me lunch because they are thinking of going to India.  (Because they drink Bombay Sapphire?)  At the mention of Bodh Gaya, Varanasi, Dharamasala they do not even perk up.  And so I ask them, How good are you at being cheerfully uncomfortable?  And right there, that’s the end of India.


No, that’s too bitter.  It’s only fair if I admit how very much better I am at being a dog than at being a man.  Not only am I more successful as a dog, I’m also more comfortable.  Almost all my qualities are better suited to a dog than a man.  I am a good dog.  Doggishness suits me.


I am what is called a white person.  These people also are called white people.  Therefore, it is expected I will naturally belong to them, understand them, and not find them bizarre.  Something has seriously broken down.  What is the problem with white people?  Over the centuries, many answers have been suggested.  I refuse to believe there’s something inherent.  I just wish to hell they could find something to talk about besides their ongoing struggles with the cable company.


Most of these poor blanched gringos, living from one Tangueray to the next, think that any topic the least bit interesting is highly controversial.  Thus I’m careful always to refer often to drugs, orgies, moneyboys, the sauna.  Not that I’ve done any of that lately, but, you know, it means SO much to them!  It is my karma yoga, my sacred duty, to be a bad homosexual.  Yes, it gets exhausting sometimes but -- CONSIDER THE ALTERNATIVE.  


I remember a friend, also a husband, describing the depression he fell into when, after 7 months of intensive Japanese study, he could understand, at last, what Tokyoites were actually saying.  In the same way, perhaps it is unfair that I esteem more highly my Mexican friends, whom I seldom understand in full.  For all I know they’re congratulating themselves on having made canny real estate decisions, same as the fucking gringos.  I don’t think so though.  I can say with certainty that I have not heard the word chardonnay.


Sunday night at Anonimo, the lawyer and the ink brush bear are there, drinking up 10 peso beers for the umpteenth.  In the absence of the angel, some scraping is necessary to come up with the semblance of liking me.  They make an effort to be pleasant.  Is that not commendable?  “I pretty much like you,” says the ink brush bear.  (“Twinkie bear” is what the miniature drunk Irishman at the bar calls him.)  The lawyer thinks I’m a dumbass and he’s probably right, but his world-weary shtick, too, is well-worn.  They do have some specific tortures they practice: about every 8 minutes they take a group selfie, angled in such a way that I am cut out of it.


Protagonist, summary: Despite being so sensitive it might qualify as an actual disability, he reliably seems too dumb to notice anything.  


When I am, at last, awarded my own personal psychiatric nurse, that strapping professional -- a compassionate soul possessed of encyclopedic knowledge, tight white pants, enormous biceps, as well as a few stubborn, stiff, dark hairs which jut from the collar of his tight white uniform -- is going to know that I am no more allowed unlimited coffee than I am allowed unlimited cocaine.  My wise nurse will require me to wear dark sunglasses.  And just the same will bark: no leering!  Please keep in mind: just because I am depraved does not mean I am a bad person.  It’s just that I need a lot of strictness.  An awful of strictness.


My brain makes its own drugs -- how convenient is that!  After trying a few of the manufactured kind, my brain appears to make its own more nimbly, more potently.  What I mean is that I have absolutely no problem putting myself out of my own mind.  It only takes time.  And often no time is needed. 


I remember years ago, in Chicago, strolling through a market with one of my artist friends.  (ALL my friends were artists, naturally, but he was one of the real ones, one of those who, you know, actually got down to it.)  I pointed at a massive display of gingko biloba and asked, Does that stuff really work?  My friend shuddered and said, I couldn’t stand to be any smarter than I already am.  I swear to you, he wasn’t arrogant, wasn’t an ass, he really meant it.  In myself I note the false assumption (is it definitely false?) that if I thought and felt less I would be more able to live.  Therefore: liquor, pills, poppers, coke, meth, meat, insomnia.  The downright pursuit of damage.  A muy, muy bad idea, for sure -- but very understandable, innit?  


Ideally of course there would some means of calming down that did not skirt death.  But this is a work in progress.


Not to excuse myself.  No way.  Simply to recognize that virtually every single fucked-up, obsessive, addicted thing I do is actually nothing other than an attempt to calm the fuck down.  Fucked up!  No excuse.  Just the same, I’d like to take this opportunity to extend my sympathy to the rest of human civilization, presumably struggling likewise.


3 acts.  The final act begins on a broken street.  A big man jumps: a glacier of pavement tips up, so massive I fear I’ll be crushed.  I shout, Why am I never told what to do?  But when I try to step back, I fall forward instead, the glacier falls and I am sealed, as though within a grave.  The grave, however, has a false bottom so that I fall through, into a world which is subterranean and benevolent, antipodean and hushed.  A trickster is there, in his violet vest and little beard, along with a sign explaining that we will be having tea for exactly 7 minutes.  “Your day and night are switched?”  He nods.  A rice porridge is prepared with vegetables and egg.  Eating it will restore me.  Also I am given pens, refillable pens, which reveal to me that death is not in any way a problem.


The other two acts are less clear.  In the first I am murdered by a flinty-eyed gunman and lie dead in the street thinking, that’s it, the dream is over now.  The plot to kill me had involved deceptions complicated and immense, exhausting to unravel, also boring. I was dead and no one minded, including myself.  I lay there feeling kind of disappointed. Honestly, I thought be more to death.  I might as well go on.  The second act is entirely lost -- though, who knows, it may yet turn up.  I know it included that tender, hushed, antipodal world, so that when I returned there in the third act it was both familiar and welcome.


That which is called Imagination -- if only for reasons of safety.  Jolting awake in the candlelight to hear the shaman sing and to note, That’s funny.  There are more invisible people here than visible ones.  I don’t have a problem with that -- it’s that kind of party.  I can’t actually see them, which is disappointing.  Don’t you, too, tire of making do with inklings?  I want to see with open eyes, straight on.  Sometimes that is necessary.  Otherwise you may wind up marooned in “reality”, the official and authorized version, which is all the time flashing its badge and acting like boss.


The very most lightening thing, the most cheerful, the essence of subversion, of escape: to abruptly find oneself able to perceive the screen, the space, the light and hum, and not just this mismatched picaresque, so nonsensical and so doomed!  It would just be too unbearable sad (too unbearably stupid!) if it were possible to take reality (“reality”) as seriously as reality (REALITY!) demands to be taken, like the stomped foot, in a shiny and responsible shoe, of a determined 6th grader giving a speech to seek re-election to the Student Council.


Temazcal at dawn to complete the ritual.  This handsome rat-faced man mimics the way the stupid gringo sobbed during the peyote ceremony.  Count the scars on his lean chest beneath his nipples: 4 times he has been a Sundancer.  Only in the morning, when it was all over, did somebody tell me, Peyote’s only really bad if you’re stuck in your own mind.  It’s perfectly fine this warrior makes fun of me.  Weakness is the husk of my strength, the first layer.  That rat-faced man is dancing for the whole world.


One thing I saw: the pretty young girl who knelt beside me after I’d been sobbing for a long time.  She showed me a bottle.  I’m not gonna lie to you, I was hoping it was something to drink, something no less than 100 proof.  But, no, it was for anointing.  She poured some of the oil into her palm, touched it to my forehead and at once turned into blazing light -- this slip of a girl!  She was brighter than the fire.  She was so bright I could no longer see her.  And, far gone as I was, I was with it enough to consider both sides of the non-sided thing: here she was, a goddess, arriving to remove in a flash all my pain, and, at the same time, a teenage blonde, with something she bought at the hippie shop, doing what she imagined might help.


 *  *  *

Redheaded widow in mourning, sunset on storm clouds, I look up from swimming to see the angel already standing on the beach, though he usually stayed in till full dark.  He seems uneasy when I join him on the sand.  Tres veces.  How dyou say?  Three times.  Bump.  OK.  Bump bump.  Follow!  Just a big fish.  Medusa maybe.  Maybe a sirena.  Man sirena.  The angel mimes being pulled out to sea.  A siren!  I say and (predictable, sorry) I mime a merman with tackle so immense he needs two fists for it.  The angel shakes his head.  Siren for you, no for me.  I’m top!  Siren no ass.


By accident, I swear, I bought Corona Mega instead of Corona Familiar, so that the angel and I were drunk in the waves, the beach nearly deserted, and the angel snuck off his shorts in the water, handed them to me and went off happily swimming, his smooth ass bobbing up now and then, then swam back and demanded that I do the same.  (Evidently this is the Mexican version of caution: one man naked at a time.)  The angel returned to shore, then carried his phone back into the waves to take pictures of me -- he almost dropped it -- is it conceivable that this is a mutual love we are having?


How sweet it is to swim on Sunday morning among families on holiday and hide from the sun beneath the pier.  I can swim a little now, at last.  No doubt it looks like flailing but -- I move from place to place.  Now, as the angel climbs onto one of the barnacle-encrusted pilings to dive, he stumbles, his goggles fall from his hand and, before we can reach them, they sink.  Listo!  says the angel 
listo 
listo 
listo. . .

New & Forthcoming

New Publications, Available Manuscripts and News.

My story, "The Right Way to be Crippled & Naked" is forthcoming in The Right Way to be Crippled & Naked: The Fiction of Disability: An Anthology which is due to be released on December 13th from Cinco Puntos Press.

“Autoportrait: Upon Returning to India” was published in Quarter After Eight #22, Ohio University.

“Why Are These Bears Having Oral Sex?” was published in Crooked Fagazine #6.

Lambda Literary.

In July I was one of Fiction fellows at the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ writers.  I had the chance to work with Andrew Holleran (so gracious! so generous! so lithe and bright-spirited!) and a cohort of writers who stunned me with their talent, intensity and aplomb.  (I loved it.  And I was scared shitless the entire time.)

In preparation for the Lambda Retreat, I spent a few months preparing a number of manuscripts, in case anyone wanted to see them.  Then I went to the Retreat and told nobody about them, not a soul.    


The following manuscripts are available:

An untitled manuscript of fictions old & new: approximately 180 pages.
Recently, At Orgies: A chapbook version of this manuscript: 60 pages.

77 Irish Love Stories.  A complete, revised version of the love stories.
39 Irish Love Stories.  A chapbook version of the love stories.

Artifact Panel (excerpt).  A 10,000 word excerpt of the assemblage/novella.

The following manuscripts will soon be available:

Artifact Panel.  An assemblage/novella of approximately 17,000 words.  (But which would require more pages than standard because of the acres of white space required.)

Please Lose & Forget.  A book-length novella of 108 short pieces.

The following manuscripts could be available, if anyone sought them:

A collection of non-fiction essays, metafictions and travel writing.  100 to 200 pages.

A new collection of stories or a new novella.  (Because these things just show up if I am fed, watered, patted on the head, and left in silence in the morning.)

A deep bow and warm thank you to all the people in the past, present and future 

who make the continuance of this nonsensical grizzled waif possible.  

Bless you and thank you.  

May all temporal and ultimate happiness be yours.

(All of the preceding is an example of the verb "to whisk".  
For full explanation, please see below, Annex #1, Additions to ARTIFACT PANEL.)

Guttersnipe Bookshelf: Padgett on Joe Brainard

Ron Padgett, JOE: A Memoir of Joe Brainard
Coffee House Press, 2004

A year or two ago, I sat with my teacher, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, as she spoke of her friend, Joe Brainard.  So much love and tenderness came into her face and her voice as she spoke.  “You two would have loved each other,” she said generously, and with real frustration, as though he’d just stepped out of the room.  She spoke of his kindness, humor, generosity and directness -- all qualities found abundantly in this book.

Hooray for Ron Padgett, for recognizing he had to write this book.  This is a book that had to happen -- and did.  How perfectly appropriate that the book is direct, soft-spoken, a little curmudgeonly, even occasionally awkward -- it’s the real thing, a life of Joe Brainard from the perspective of his straight best friend.  Brainard is well on his way to being canonized -- thanks in great part to the Library of America's Collected Writings of Joe Brainard -- also masterminded by Padgett.  If you love the work of Joe Brainard, get this book, and save it for a day when you are running low on hope for love and hope and art.

One more thing: as your bookish pal from the wrong side of the tracks, a word of explanation might be useful about Brainard’s “diet pills”.  Desoxyn.  Whoa.  Not only is not the usual diet pill, even the word “speed” feels a little too innocent.  Desoxyn is something hard to fathom: it’s meth by prescription.  Having seen this stuff in action, I can well imagine how it might rocketize creative life -- and bring it to a halt.  That Brainard was able to use Desoxyn long-term, have a multi-faceted creative life, and preserve his good and loving heart -- is more evidence of his truly extraordinary nature.  Do NOT try this at home.    

Annex #1: Additions to ARTIFACT PANEL

Here is the first of two sets of additions to the novella Artifact Panel.  If you’d like to see the original 10,000 word excerpt, click here or contact me directly.


It is important to note that these additions are NOT in any way a sequel or linear continuation of Artifact Panel.  These are all pieces that would be arranged among those existing in an order as yet to be determined.  The hope is that the finished, final version of Artifact Panel would be a small odd book or chapbook, full of white space.

Annex #1

Additions to ARTIFACT PANEL

3 martinis in, dirty, gin, combing my beard with a pretzel, trying to figure out just when it was that giving up became the cheerfulest thing in all the world.  Since turning 40 surely.  Before that I was striving, making brave, albeit always with a certain upbeat hopelessness which, like cilantro, is a condiment not universally adored.  An acquired taste.  Plenty of people in the well-to-do white world will tell you, Oh, that’s ETHNIC food.


Others make poor choices in love.  Me, I move from success to still greater success.  1st time: I chose someone I loved.  2nd time: I chose someone I loved who actually wanted to have sex with me.  3rd time: I chose someone I loved, who wanted to have sex with me, and who actually thought I was a good person, a good enough person, even this tremendously mixed-up, lopsided, besmudged person I actually currently am.  Is this not a stunning track record?!  I am going to teach seminars on my method.  Those who sign up now will receive a very significant discount. 


The angel is a dentist.  Despite Jalisco traffic he is very strictly punctual and always I receive notice -- a day in advance, 4 hours at least.  This morning, Saturday, for the very first time he asks, I come right now?  I agree and hurry to clean up.  He lives 20 minutes away.   20 minutes later he arrives.  When I open the door onto Madero he stands there looking sheepish, as though he has done something wrong.  Then I look at him again, abashed and unshaven in an old t-shirt and baggy pants, and see that he has so boner so large and so rigid that he has totally no place to stow it.  Hurriedly, I let him in. 


About the angel, and totally aside from fucking like a porn star: the fact that he does not seem all the time to be saying, with words and with deeds, “Frankly I can do MUCH better than you but you will do -- sigh -- for just now” the way most gay men do, like hotel guests who have been told they will get a free upgrade if they complain.  The angel is present, not just making do, just paying attention, attention which is like fresh water, which ought to be common and was once, or at least was rumored to be.


The angel is respectful, bless him.  He totally assumes I’ve got something going on in my life and just have not seen fit to tell him.  I enjoy this mistake, just as I do when people assume I must be very spiritual.  What a gentle and generous heart he has: he thinks I’ve got someplace to be.


When last I hazarded a visit to family (should the word be in quotes?) one elder brother intoned, “Bro, you need a plan.”  Part of being an adult, I am reminded, is financial planning, especially for a person such as myself, in life’s middle.  (But really it’s late, is it not?)  I must have a plan, like my esteemed siblings have, for which they use something called Spreadsheet, and will on occasion print out and display on the refrigerator.  As a responsible adult, I should do the same.  Therefore, here below, for public perusal, is my financial plan.  Let no one say that I am not responsible, in my own way. 


Continue as now until bank balance is reduced to $1500.  Then, purchase flight ticket to Cambodia.  Careful planning is needed because a ticket to PNH or REP can easily be 1000 bucks -- unless I happen to be next door in BKK and can just take the bus.  I will find a cheap room -- it must have a window -- and I will be a teacher of English conversation.  Cambodia is best because in Cambodia one is permitted to be simple and odd.  Even better, damage is understood, expected.  Unlike America, where everyone has to be somebody, all the goddamned time. Here are my qualifications, here are the ways I’ve been harmed, here are the sacred hyphens of my permanent and all-important identity, this is why I’m the best victim for the job!  This assumes that to matriculate in the visible world is still advisable, still tenable.  If not, the best answer’s still Cambodia, where barbiturates are cheap and widely available.


In regard to style: the thing is I like cranky, mixed, and uneven.  Crude and earnest are both welcome daily visitors.  Which is not to say that I fling open my doors to automatic or sloppy.  But the gun on the mantelpiece -- may do as it likes.  Mine is not the American pragmatism: so many advances, so many resources, so beautifully made, paid a lot for it, therefore someone must die, just so we know we got our money’s worth.


It is far more prestigious to be published in the literary journal of Bowling Green State University than it is to suck off a stranger in the shower at the baths.  However, at the baths you have a far better chance of being seen.


Friday at La Cueva with the angel and friends.  I am very careful with the friends of the angel.  Adjacent, they share in his radiance.  These are true and important friends, the angel spends less time with them because of me, and I am a non-rich, unhandsome gringo with very peculiar manners.  The chance of them actually liking me, methinks, is somewhere in the single digits.


The friend who is kindest to me is a sleek young bear, his hair and beard the blackest black, his eyes so large and dark he could serve as a comic book pirate.  To draw him you’d need a brush full of ink.  Like the angel, he invites the thought, I would like to be severely punished!  This appearance is a problem for him because, as he frequently announces, he’s totally a bottom.  Therefore he take care to wear shirts with sparklies, to sashay just enough, and to bat the abundant lashes of his adorable eyes.


The bear in ink explains, “In Mexico we don’t really have dating.  I keep explaining to Angie, Johnny is from the States.  In the States, you might go out with someone every Thursday for 3 years, even though you don’t really like him.  In Mexico, if you like someone, that’s who you’re with till it’s done.  But in the States you have dating.  Understand?”  “I do,” I say.  “I guess I should explain better.  I’m sorry.  This is so embarrassing.  You see, I have totally fallen in love.”  


I will now stand here in the stall for five minutes pretending to piss while the friends of the angel -- yes, they call him Angie -- explain to him that he has acquired a lovesick gringo.


Time is a disease I have.  Like any disease it gets worse the more that I think of it.  Actually time is really weird disease.  It’s not real, but it kills you.  And I am all the time counting, subtracting, dividing it: time is fake money.  Especially now I am that dizzy and precarious thing, whisper it: happy.


I slip back to the table.  A fresh cold Corona is waiting, with its cheery tilted lime.  The eyes of the angel are very bright.  Awwww, he says.  Mi amor.


Now in love, officially, and also shit-faced drunk, the angel’s about to shove in.  Condom!  The poppers are empty, the lubricant vanished, it plain fucking hurts.  And, no, as a matter of fact, we still have not had that conversation.  How could a man so good at fucking while drunk still be negative?  If he’s on meds, then fine -- the big fear is that he expects to be cured with temazcal and salt water.


A book which contains so many references to alcohol -- as well as to other intoxicants and to behaviors which lend themselves to elevated levels of excitement and the alteration of consciousness, which should, like pants, be sized to fit, as well as to show off everything to its best advantage -- ought to contain at least one original cocktail recipe.  Therefore, voila, the Hickey Bliss.
6 to 8 ounces agua de jamaica, lightly sweetened
1.5 shots* pisco
ice (rocks)
lime (optional)
Stir and serve. Garnish with lime, mostly because deep purple and bright green look divine together.  Enjoy!  (*A shot is a variable/indeterminate unit of measurement, which may range anywhere from a tablespoon to a tea cup.  But, however you measure it, you may not have one shot, no, you must have one and then you must have some more.)


The Paris Review asks, Why note cards?
A: Because the napkins you get in Mexican gay bars just disintegrate.  Ever write something down in a dream?  Very nearly as bad.  Of course I still try.  But it’s like making literature out of lint.


WHISK.  I need this verb to do a little more and so I do hereby declare it.  To whisk is to make negligible accomplishments appear substantial, if only to oneself, to take the spittle of the very thinnest triumph and give it body, make it froth.  What other option is there for ne’er-do-wells to secure their own self-regard?  How else to matter, if only to oneself?  Once I survived for a month on a single friendly nod from a Puerto Rican muscle daddy at the gym -- we shared bicep strategies!  Someone said I was promising once: I got maybe 15 years out of that, before it turned to poison.  The admiration of septuagenarians, the love of indiscriminate dogs, or publication in the very most obscure literary magazines, in which nuclear codes could be published, without anyone ever discovering them, or coming to harm.  Because it’s arduous to always be nobody, particularly on Sundays.  Occasionally one feels the need to count, add up, matter, and therefore you must concoct, confabulate, whisk.  In order that you might continue and persist, so that you might seem like someone, if only to yourself.  Therefore, whisk!  The key, as to successful resentment and grudge-bearing, is repetition. 


The abode of the angel is one long room, divided by curtains.  I go beer, says the angel and hands me the remote control.  When he comes back I’m still just sitting there, in a straight-backed chair beneath one dull bulb, no TV and no music.  Meditación? asks the angel and I try to explain, in mixed and broken language, how the upside of being pathologically hypersensitive, muy muy nervioso, is that I can sit and enjoy -- this an orange wall.  As well as the contrast of the grade-school blue wall beside it.  Was it done with sponges?  Also: the agreeable din of the old a/c unit, the breeze from the fan, the gleam of the pans in the sink, the lamp in the shape of a star.  If the angel had been gone another 20 minutes, I might have gotten as far as admiring the goldfish -- as it was I didn’t have time.  Such are the wonders that open to me, on those rare occasions when I do not feel afraid.


For your reference, a 20 count box of Valium, generic, 10mg., set me back 350 pesos, which I’m almost sure was a rip-off.  I also awarded myself ibuprofen, though I suspect it’s why my brothers have almost no innards.  Jaw hurt, guts hurt, nuts hurt.  For connective tissue I had Edgar Allan Poe.  Ever notice: it never matters that you didn’t for so long.  Only that you finally did.  Give in.  What a shame.  Both pills together with a tall glass of water.  30 minutes later I had become a human being.  The world, too, had acquired central air.  The streets -- such innovation! -- were engineered so that even I could walk around in them.


High on drugs, doing things I would never ever do -- like volunteer to watch fireworks.  “Let’s go see the fireworks,” I actually said.  What next!  Instead of the scheduled trembling, I went with the angel to watch the display and, for once, I enjoyed the fireworks, instead of pretending to enjoy them while having to remind myself every minute, like some skittish pet, you are not under attack.  Later I will no doubt suffer, but, in the meantime, I would like to note here that it was lovely to feel, for once, like a human whose dials have been set correctly, and also to understand, at last, why people go to see fireworks.  The way it feels as though you are walking across the sky at night, through a garden of enormous flowers.

As some of my kind allies are aware, I am attempting to create a manuscript of stories.  Deep in the archive now, I found a few odd small comic stories that I thought were worth dusting off, revising, and considering for inclusion.  If any readers have suggestions about these stories -- or about the manuscript as a whole -- I am grateful for your suggestions and advice.  My peculiar solitude and senseless labor are most thankful for the solace of your company.

Mr. Gerber Is Living the Life He Always Dreamed About

(2016 revised version)


We never learned how Mr. Gerber maintained himself. He helped out here at the building certainly, he kept an eye on things, but that hardly could have been enough to live on.

Mr. Gerber was peculiar certainly. I do not doubt that he was somewhat mad. He may have been a pervert. A skim milk-looking middle-aged man, thinning hair, the kind of man you can hardly tell if he is 38 or 61. The sun seems to never shine directly on such a person.

In a crowd of people Mr. Gerber was useful as an end table. You gave him your drink to hold when you went to the toilet. Fifteen minutes later he hadn't moved. The ice hadn’t melted. I suppose you could have thrown your coat over him.

Mr. Gerber was part of the complex. He lived in a corner basement apartment. A made-over utility closet, I suspect, though of course I never saw it. In this building we're all good friends -- it is required. When we had parties we invited everyone. Inviting everyone meant inviting Mr. Gerber, too.

If you forced him to speak, Mr. Gerber would straighten up, tuck his chin down toward his chest, and say that he was grateful, grateful to be at a party like this one, among people such as these. Mr. Gerber was so strenuously grateful one wondered if he was grateful at all.

I should clarify some things about myself. I am a person who tells the truth.  I believe in Absolute Honesty. Thus people do not like me very much. I am not a sentimentalist. I am not a sympathetic sort of person. I am a pragmatist. I am an M T V person. Do you know what that means? That means: My Time is Valuable. All right.  Let's continue.

Mr. Gerber was extremely unobtrusive, but he was always around. If you came home early feeling under the weather, there was Mr. Gerber. Or late on Sunday afternoon when distractions were running low. At 3am when you couldn't sleep, there was Mr. Gerber, clearing away the junk mail, sweeping out the entryway.

If you caught him alone Mr. Gerber was chatty, in a style both humdrum and bizarre. He'd chat about the light that was out, about trash collection, about the weather -- and then he'd sigh and say, "For so long I dreamed of this and now I'm living it!" And an enormous smile would sweep over his face.

I am not impressed by poetic-type people. If you take a moment to investigate their self-conscious behavior, you will nearly always find an attempt to camouflage failure. Like women who gain lots of weight and become spiritual.

For all his false modesty, Mr. Gerber was extremely grandiose. His life appeared to be 10% of one's own life, which frankly was shoddy in some departments, and yet he talked like he was rags to riches, like his whole wish list had been delivered.

Mr. Gerber was delusional obviously.  He was probably actually severely depressed.  I'd seen a case or two of this before.

I suppose he was giving me some clue the afternoon we discussed Christmas shopping, while leaning up against the mailboxes. He said he was pleased to be finished with his shopping. (I have no idea who he could have been shopping for. I myself never received anything from him.)

Mr. Gerber said, "I like things -- but most of all I like the space around things."

Well. It sounds a bit spiritual written down, doesn't it? Trust me, it wasn't spiritual at the time. He had one hand buried to the elbow in a crinkly bag of BBQ ripple chips, He had little orange specks around his lips.

Conspiratorially he leaned near me, breathing on me with ersatz barbecue breath. "Have you ever been in the train station at rush hour, shoving and elbowing along with everyone else, when, without warning, a gap appears? You've got 144,000 people in front of you. 144,000 in back. But nobody is quite exactly where you are. You're in a little gap. I love that."

I bet, if we looked into it, that we'd find out that Mr. Gerber really was a pervert.  Surely someone’s underwear was disappearing.  He fits the bill.  Perverts, it is well known, resemble skim milk and are careful always to be the nobody next door.

As for myself, I don't shirk responsibility. I believe in doing things. I celebrate achievement. That is why I live on the top floor, whereas Mr. Gerber lived in the basement. Both of us, it's true, live alone. But a top floor penthouse is obviously very different from a corner in the basement!

All religions of the world agree on one point: every little thing you do matters. All of us are born with a 'to do' list. We must work, procreate, ornament, etc. Like it or not this is the situation. When we die we go to Heaven, to the auditors, and all our exotic destinations, university publications, and tall youngish redheads are tallied.

You can pretend otherwise but that just means you are Afraid Of Life. At very least you must avoid blowing your nose on cloth napkins and eating potato chips on the train!

One night -- I admit I was having some troubles. I don't have nearly as many troubles as most people, but I do still have some. For some reason I was walking around in my t-shirt. And my underpants. I promise that this is not as inappropriate, or as abandoned, as it may seem. I am very fastidious about underwear, about its cleanliness.  All my underwear is very modest; it is more modest than what many people wear on the outside.

Anyway, it was the middle of the night. In one of my hands could be found a fifth of whiskey. I turned the corner and saw that someone was there. I began to apologize -- but there was no need. It was only Mr. Gerber.

"Whiskey?"

Mr. Gerber looked at the bottle. "It isn't really space," he announced. "Actually it obliterates space. But it feels like space." I thought this meant I could continue enjoying my liquor privately, but, no, he took the bottle from me, and he had a good long slug of it.

I remember he didn't shiver.  His eyes didn't widen any.  So maybe that was Mr. Gerber's story.

"Isn't this the very best time of night?" said Mr. Gerber. "I adore it. I like stumbling on these odd times when one can really live."

Well, this was nonsense, and certainly I would have said so, had I not been overwhelmingly intoxicated. And so instead I said, "Gosh, Mr. Gerber. You really like some unusual things."

"I like all the things that are likeable. And I like also those things which cannot help but be loved. Dust, for instance." Now he started counting things off on his thick stubby fingers. "I like train stations when the train is gone. I like gardens in winter. Nothing charms like the absence of charm! I like cafeterias. I am addicted to laundromats. I dislike traveling, but I enjoy being in transit. There's no place a man can really live, don't you agree, besides in a city, in a basement apartment, in a building where no one actually likes anyone!"

Obviously this was not Mr. Gerber's first whiskey of the evening. As you are no doubt aware, some people actually enjoy being eccentric and contrary. And they expect other people to find it just as delightful.

Personally, I dislike monologists. Don't you, too, dislike monologists? It's the back and forth of dialogue that enriches one, connects one to the species, even has health benefits. Mr. Gerber did not agree with us. He did not seek the back and forth, the to and fro. No, Mr. Gerber had his speech prepared. He was no doubt a deeply lonely man, and monologues, as everyone knows, are a hazard of that species.

"One of the joys of modern life," said Mr. Gerber, "Is the perfectly anonymous coffee shop -- not the most popular chain, but its cheaper, though still over-priced, imitators. Each shop is just like another and even the street corners on which they appear are so similar, so dull and gray, that you could never agree to meet anyone there, because you could never think of anything that might distinguish it from any other shop, its street from any other street, its city from any other city, until finally you cannot even distinguish yourself from anyone else: in such a place you can actually finally just live.

My fine diction doubtless makes Mr. Gerber's gobbledygook appear more distinguished than it was. I firmly decided to confront him about his evasions and to remind him that work and restraint are necessary, that the age of consent is 18. Unfortunately that drunken evening was the last I saw of him. For, shortly after this discussion, Mr. Gerber disappeared.

I don't mean that there was anything untoward about it. I don't think he ran out on the rent. He just isn't with us anymore.

The odd thing is, now that Mr. Gerber is gone, he has become a very common topic of conversation among residents here in the building. They want to know where he went. They want to understand him. This is a sentimental and foolish interest which Mr. Gerber does not in any way merit.

It disturbs me to discover that I, too, am unable to stop thinking about Mr. Gerber. Mr. Gerber is absolutely stuck in my mind. He appears to have become part of the structure, like train stations and street corners. Like dust.

I very much want to see Mr. Gerber again.  Even though I am a pragmatist, even though my time is valuable, I promise that I would greet him courteously. I would listen to whatever he wished to share. And at last I would be sure to tell him, "Mr. Gerber, we simply cannot forget you.  You are always on our minds.  No one we have ever met was as completely unique and special as you, my dear Mr. Gerber."

That is what I want to say to say to Mr. Gerber.  I am certain the look of disappointment on his dull skim milk face would be most satisfactory.

Strawberry Jam

(2016 revised version)


I am thinking of Miro, who once began a painting with a blackberry stain on a canvas, and from there his imagination extended -- but he needed that stain, that irregularity, to begin.

I thought of that when I got your note that you’d spent the night jacking off to porn on the Internet, that there was nothing to eat except strawberry jam and no money coming through until tomorrow. You wrote you’d had a big fight with your roommates over bills – indeed, that seems inevitable when the sum of one’s assets is a nearly full jar of strawberry jam and a train pass.

Please don’t bother apologizing for your English mistakes anymore. You won’t see me apologizing for mine.

And I am sorry – you obviously have not been informed of my rules for friendship. By now I should have prepared some document, which acquaintances graduating to friendship could sign and have notarized.

The requirement is this: although I am perfectly willing to have poor friends, I am not willing to have friends who do not eat. You are free to broadcast or disguise your poverty in any way you choose. However, actual non-eating is not permissible and is, in fact, grounds for dismissal.

Since you were not aware of the rules, your offense will be overlooked, just this once.

Strawberry jam does not qualify as food. Even with bread and peanut butter it barely qualifies. I prefer my friends to combine lean meats with dark leafy greens and whole grains. It is very important for my friends to eat well. Especially considering the mass of self-destructive habits nearly all of us are carting around.

This requirement for friendship is strict and will be enforced and there is no room whatsoever for negotiation. Happily, a delivery service is available. Within the local area and also internationally to the best of my ability. Call me in other words. You dumbass. I will show up with food.

If the thought of receiving charity is humiliating, please, don’t think of it that way. Think of it as prostitution. You need only say, when I arrive, “Sorry, buddy, I’m going to need to charge you 5000 yen to suck my cock today.”

Isn’t that reasonable? Considering that there are masses of people who would seek and enjoy this privilege and there are, presumably, only several dozen people actually currently enjoying it. Therefore it is natural to request a modest fee for admission.

Is this reasonable? Of course it is perfectly reasonable.

I hope I’m not embarrassing you. Am I embarrassing you? I embarrass some people. There are some people, specifically some spiritual homosexuals, whose entire spiritual practice, so far as I can tell, consists of avoiding me.

Evidently they feel that I interfere with their disembodied lifestyle. And I would never want to interfere with anyone’s lifestyle, however disembodied, unless they were a friend of mine, and not eating.

If you perceive in yourself any discomfiture, it is because you cannot conceive of your own worth, and that may be because you are incapable of seeing the line of your back as it extends down across your furry ass. I could take a photograph, I suppose, but still -- you wouldn’t see it, not the way I do.

__________

After saying all this, did I invite you to dinner?

No. You invited me.

"I have only one plate," you said. "I'm pretty sure I have two forks." I would have shared a plate with you, of course.

We stopped by the 100 yen shop. You bought a plate and bowl. The plates and bowls all had smiling tomatoes on them. Which is not a bad thing. Personally, I am extremely, even strenuously, grateful to receive encouragement from any quarter. Especially here in Tokyo -- even a tomato that smiles is most welcome.

In your tiny kitchen you made pasta with eggplants. You had to bend over so far to chop the eggplants on the counter. Aren't these counters low even for Japanese? Everyone is getting taller now and the counters cower still down by the floor, afraid of big people with knives.

I've never known what to do with an eggplant. Of course not. I am American. Actually, I  honestly thought I was supposed to blacken them.

Your eggplant became translucent cubes of gold. You added Parmesan cheese you'd smuggled in your suitcase.

Just four things: pasta, oil, eggplant, cheese. And yet it was extraordinarily delicious. I praised you and your eggplant skills.

"Don't overdo it," you said.

Indeed I would never want to overdo it. And I will do my best to not overdo it henceforth. Whether it is praise or eggplant.

After all, it is also true that lovemaking proceeds this way, with what appear to be simple and earthy ingredients.

About the Difficulty of Making Good Choices

(2016 version)


After much deliberation, after contemplating and delineating their desires and expectations, as well their weaknesses, histories, and needs, along with the possibilities and limitations of their current situation, they decided not to become lovers. Because, despite their physical attraction to each other, they recognized a physical relationship would not likely lead to happiness, not for themselves and not for others, at least not in the long term. This was the choice that they had made and they had made this choice carefully. This was the right choice.  The choice was made.

They were still friends. Of course. And so they met for coffee. As friends do.

“Great to see you again.”
“Great to see you, too.”
“Thanks for meeting me.”
“My pleasure.”
“I think – is it okay to talk about this? I think we made the right decision.”
“Absolutely.”
“You’re feeling well?”
“Perfect.”
“And you’re -- comfortable sitting out here? Not chilly? You don't want a table inside?”
“No, it’s lovely out here. So bright.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Personal questions OK?”
“Well. Ask me and I’ll think about it.”
“Why are you wearing a face mask and a scarf and galoshes and industrial overalls and a motorcycle helmet? It’s a warm day – and you are not riding a motorcycle.”

“Just felt like it.”

The café was a little expensive, the coffee incredibly strong. They sat sipping it now.

“A face mask is a common sight in this city. Flu season after all. As for the winter clothes, well, plenty of people believe that winter begins on a certain day and so they wear their fur trimmed coat and snow boots even when it’s downright balmy. Overalls are always adorable but the overall effect – I hope it’s OK to say this – seems to me, frankly, outlandish. I’m not hurting you am I? You know I never want to hurt you. The motorcycle helmet seems particularly superfluous, since you came on the bus --”
“I’m comfortable.”
“That’s what matters. Are you comfortable?”
“I’m not comfortable at all. Physically. But I can say that I have a certain spiritual comfort as well as a hard-headed pragmatic satisfaction.”
“You’re quoting my letter.”
“I agreed with your letter.”
“I’m very glad to hear that.”

They sat together in silence for the next few sips of coffee. The man who asked questions bobbed his head around and nodded like he was checking off a list. Yes, it was Thursday morning. Yes, this was Tokyo. The sun was out and so were the high society wives, along with their ten thousand dollar dogs. He never stopped smiling.

The other man may or may not have been smiling. He kept his visor down.

“You’re okay?”
“Yes! I’m completely okay,” said the voice inside the helmet. “Of course I’m a little sweaty, but that’s to be expected.”
“Good, good.” He went on nodding at the air. “Listen, I don’t want you to feel like I’m pressuring you – because I totally respect you and your decisions and those decisions, we both agree, don’t have to look anything like what other people are deciding but – are you sure you don’t want to remove something?”
“Of course I would like! But no, absolutely not. Oh, hell.” There was a muffled sob from inside the helmet.
“Oh honey – I mean, dear friend. Does this have anything to do with what we decided?”
“I completely agree with what we decided. It’s definitely the right choice.”
“It’s good to hear you say that.  I agree.”
“And sometimes, when you make the right choice, you have to accept, it’s going to be a little awkward sometimes. For example, now.”

Another long silence.

“I am very interested in what you are saying. Please -- continue.”
“We made an excellent choice. A mature, thoughtful, and ethical choice. I will sleep better. Eventually. I assume. In the meantime, there may be, as I said, some awkwardness.”
“I think I see what you’re saying. You mean, despite the choices we made there are still residual feelings which – point in another direction.”
“Something like that.”
They nodded to each other, one hairy head and one motorcycle helmet. The natural opening was lost.  The moment passed. Their coffee was nearly finished and what was left was cold.

The man in the motorcycle helmet lay one gloved hand on the other man’s thigh. The other man looked carefully at that hand.

The voice behind the visor said, “I want to fuck you in bed. But only to start. Really what I want is to fuck you down on the floor. So we can really have at it.  I want to fuck you in the shower and over the arm of a sofa and in a public park. I want to spank your hairy ass.  I want to wrestle you.  I want to pretend to be an intruder.  Then you can be an intruder and I can be a cop.  I want to be pirates together.  I want to be buck naked with the blinds open and the sun streaming in. I want you to make me beg for it.  I want to make so much noise that nearly deaf punk kids will knock on the door to complain. I want to choke on your cock. I want to feel your balls resting on my beard. I want to put my tongue in your asshole. I want to drink your hot spunk.”

At tables all around them, Japanese ladies did not turn to look. Immaculate in linen, in the style, still, of Audrey Hepburn, those ladies did not turn and did not look. Perhaps a particularly sharp eyed observer might have noticed the muscles straining in their delicate necks. Perhaps they might even make an appointment later with their acupuncturist. To help them manage the discomfort accumulated over a lifetime of not turning. Because these were absolutely first-rate ladies, the kind who do not ever look.

Their dogs had no such qualms however. Naturally. The dogs were positively riveted, straining at the end of their leashes. Those little dogs were absolutely interested in finding out what happened next.

But anyone with even rudimentary knowledge of men, or dogs, will not require much elucidation.

The Necessity of a Precise Diagnosis

(2016 version)


After years of attempting to manage the problem with vitamins and acupuncture, with exercise and affirmations, Randy decided to go to an actual medical doctor.  One doctor led to the next and tests found tests were needed.  In a stream of vague explanations, the drugs kept flowing, but Randy did not get better.

At last Randy secured an appointment with a celebrated and accomplished doctor, an innovator, considered the very top of his field.  This doctor was able at last to pinpoint the source of the problem, the very origin and essence of the thing.  He introduced a finely-tuned treatment program which made use of cutting-edge medicines in quantities measured precisely according to Randy’s symptoms, weight, and age.  Even though the regimen was daunting, Randy was profoundly relieved to have located the source of so much suffering.  Here was a diagnosis, a treatment, a way forward.  Here, at long last.

It didn’t work.  Not in the least.  Actually he got somewhat worse.  The celebrated doctor said not to worry.  Instead, they would use the “classic” treatment, which worked for nearly everyone.

Didn’t work for Randy.  Certain of his symptoms got better.  Others got dramatically worse.  He felt like a congested urban area that finally solves its traffic problems -- only to discover that its pleasant picnicking volcano is not actually extinct.

The celebrated doctor, surprised by his failure, suggested Randy had not followed the regimen faithfully.  Randy swore he had and located the celebrated doctor’s rival, a radical dissenter known for his out-sized ego and celebrity clientele.  This doctor found that, although the diagnosis itself was unassailable, the celebrated doctor’s treatment had been – lo and behold -- entirely wrong, quite dangerously so in fact, just backwards.  This renegade doctor placed Randy on an ingenious regimen that would make perfect sense to anyone whose reason was un-blinkered by convention and mistaken assumptions.

This treatment was likewise wholly unsuccessful.  The acute bad periods, which had been interspersed with periods when he was relatively all right, were replaced with a consistent and reliable blanket of grinding misery.  Randy felt like a loyal serf who knew he could trust in the absolute security of a thatched roof over his head, a stone floor under his ass, three meals of stale bread, and back-breaking labor each and every day of his life until death.  Stability and reliability is not enough, Randy discovered, when it’s pain you are counting on.

Lining up his medicines on his black kitchen table, Randy discovered he had every color of pill except turquoise.  The next doctor prescribed a turquoise pill.  The succession of doctors continued.  It seemed to Randy that they eyed him warily now.  He felt like a girl with a reputation for being impossible.  No treatment helped more than the one before.  In the pastel torture chamber of his problem, the machines just kept moving around.

Suicide, always attractive, now appeared downright ravishing.  After all, this was the only treatment which required no testing or referral and, while a prescription was certainly helpful, it was by no means required.  The treatment itself might be unpleasant, but it was bound to be conclusive if administered with care.

While he was planning his suicide, equivocating over gunshot versus drowning, a tree on the side of the highway versus a fatal plunge, he met a dotty silver-haired lady in the bulk foods aisle of his local health food market.  (In his quest for treatment, Randy had been told at one time or another to avoid meat, wheat, eggs, sugar, soy, nuts, raw and cooked foods.  The health food store had thus become a habit.)

Actually he had met the dotty silver-haired lady before.  Once when he’d been having a very bad day and had demanded, out loud, to be told, once and for all, just what the hell tamari was.  She saw him again.  She asked how he was doing.  Her name was Marti.  She was the kind of lady who asks her Tarot cards what to have for lunch.  That day she’d drawn “The Tower” and so she was making club sandwiches.

Marti didn’t wait for the full explanation.  “Why amplify the unfortunate?” Marti said.  “Why dwell on the negative?  Breathe out black smoke!”  She invited him for sandwiches with her friend Denis who just happened to be a Filipino spirit trance medium and reliable churchgoer.  She said Denis had fixed her up plenty of times.  She didn’t get her migraines anymore.  Even her fingernails were stronger.

Denis arrived for lunch with his own can of Spam, which he sliced, and added to each level of his organic vegetarian club sandwich, and didn’t offer to share with anyone.  After they’d finished their sandwiches, Denis told Randy to lay flat on the floor.  He lit candles to St. Rita, Hermes Trismegistus, and the Buddha.  He blanketed the area in rose water.  He called upon Melchizedek, who had vowed always to help the earnest aspirant.  He poured wax on Denis’ forehead, did a short dance with a feather duster, and instructed the evil spirits to get the fuck out already.

Afterwards, Randy lay on the floor for a long time without moving.  Marti and Denis were on their second cup of coffee before he even dared sit up.

Randy felt well.  He didn’t think he’d felt so well in the past twenty-five years.  He didn’t think he’d ever felt so well.  Marti and Denis didn’t seem particularly interested.  They were deep in a discussion about manifesting unlimited abundance.

For days thereafter, Randy remained very cautious.  He was careful to not lift anything heavy, or think about his childhood.

Despite his fears, Randy’s symptoms, his pain and misery, his appalling suffering, did not return and have not returned to this day.  If he has even the slightest hint, suspects a little twinge, he doesn’t panic.  He places sixteen drops of a certified organic flower remedy under his tongue.

Randy has become a tremendous source of positivity and good faith to everyone around him.  He is confident that health and healing are possible for everyone, once a correct diagnosis has been made and the correct treatment embarked upon.  He speaks of his gratitude to anyone who’ll listen, of his good fortune, and of the way he feels he has arrived, at last, right in the very center of this, the real world.

The List of 84 Values, According to the State of Kerala

2016 revised version


Late one afternoon at the ashram, when the teacoffee man had come and gone, after the singing of bhajans and the holy name, the swami read to us from the lives of the saints and exhorted us, as ever, to live lives of faultless diligence, purity and goodness.  In his talk that day, the swami happened to make reference to an official list of values, which had been created by the state of Kerala for the edification of schoolchildren.  Straight off I was curious.  Because: being good is a fuzzy business, is it not?  Is it not hard to know of what goodness consists?  And yet: the state of Kerala knew.  The State of Kerala had made a list.

As soon as satsang was finished, after a final round of Ramnam, prostrations, and the flower offering, I hastened to the swami’s side.  “Oh, pardon me and please excuse, dear Swamiji, that list you mentioned -- is it possible to get a copy of it?”  The Swami, effulgent, as ever, with generosity and with grace, acceded at once to my request.  An attendant was dispatched to make a copy of the list, which was done and presented to me at once.

The following discussion is intended for the benefit of those persons not in possession of the list.  Surely it goes without saying that we all wish to progress in virtue.  Any assistance in that task, from any source, is certainly most welcome.  

Seeking to boost schoolchildren, so that they may ascend in virtue as they rise in years, the state of Kerala has compiled a list of 84 values.  These 84 values, as delineated and enumerated by the Board of Education, are those which the state seeks to cultivate and nurture in its young people, in hopes that they might be assisted in the process of becoming upright and valuable citizens of Kerala, the Republic of India, and the World.

Kerala, as is well known, is one of the most thriving states of modern India.  The levels of health, public services, literacy and innovation in this small southern state are the envy of all India.  With a long tradition of religious diversity and tolerance, Kerala is well poised to consider the path of virtue.

Despite the fact that we are not, ourselves, children in South India, it is certain that we, too, can benefit from the contemplation of virtue.  Many will agree that nowadays it is difficult to pin down exactly which values to seek out and cultivate.  We are most grateful to the Board of Education of Kerala for their assistance. 

Without further ado, let us examine the structure of the list.  The list is divided into three columns, each with a heading.  The first is NCERT- Sr. No.  The second is Value.  The third is Brief Description.  In other words, the 84 Values are not only named, but also numbered and defined.  

The list of values is presented alphabetically.  No doubt state officials regret the constraints of the alphabet, which necessitate beginning the list of virtues with 1. Abstinence, which is hardly the most inviting virtue.  “Abstinence is a voluntary restraint from indulging in bodily activities that are widely experienced as giving pleasure.”  

As we all know, progressing in virtue is without question a strenuous task, with rewards that are not at all visible at the start.  Perhaps it is actually fortunate that Abstinence heads up the list, so that we might confront our reluctance head on, and thereby gird ourselves accordingly.

Nonetheless, we hurry on, with understandable relief, to 2. Appreciation of the cultural values of others.  Well, no one can argue with that.  It puts one in mind of folk dances and a smorgasbord of cross-cultural culinary delights.  Incidentally, this is the only virtue whose definition is the same as its name.  Brief description: “Appreciation of the cultural values of others.”  This is the only instance of this on the list.

There are four virtues where the space Brief description is left blank.  These are: 39. Kindness to Animals, 42. Loyalty to duty, 70. Solidarity of mankind, and 84. Value for national and civic property.  Kindness to Animals is, I believe, self-explanatory.  Loyalty to duty may pose some questions, particularly in how it differs from 19. Duty.  Solidarity of mankind is understandable – but exactly how is it to be practiced?  And, what does it mean: Value for national and civic property?  Is it enough to not graffiti national monuments and refrain from burning down national parks with carelessly strewn cigarette butts? 

There are also two values which have an identical Brief description.  10. Common cause and 11. Common good.  Both are defined as: “benefit of all”.  But then -- what is the difference exactly?  If they are one and the same, why have they been listed separately?  It is ardently to be hoped that the Board of Education of Kerala will, in good time, issue memoranda addressing these matters, as well as several others.  

Although we may admit some quibbles, this is not to disparage the work that the Board of Education has been done to name and define the virtues.  This is especially valuable in regard to virtues we may be prone to finesse or overlook.  For example: 48. Proper utilization of time.  Brief description: “List tasks, allocate, dedicate, do not postpone and review.” 

Truly, there are moments, while contemplating the list, that one feels oneself to be personally addressed, one’s failings ferreted out and brought into the light of day.  One cannot help but be grateful for this.  Also, despite the ambiguity of the text,  I assume that one is allowed to review, though certainly one ought not spend overmuch time in reviewing.

I am grateful, in particular, to be reminded of the value of 76. Simple living, for which is provided the second longest definition in the list of values.  Here, the brief description is less than brief.  “Simple living encompasses a number of different voluntary practices to simplify one’s lifestyle.  These may include reducing one’s possessions or increasing self-sufficiency.  Adherents may choose simple living for a variety of personal reasons, such as spirituality, health, increase in “quality time” for family and friends, work-life balance, personal taste, frugality or reducing personal ecological footprint and stress”.  The key word here seems to be voluntary.  In other words this lifestyle must be chosen.  It is not enough to simply be desperately impoverished.

The longest brief description is devoted to 23. Friendship.  No doubt it is a manifestation of the skill and wisdom of the Board of Education to devote so much space to such a lovable virtue, which is universally esteemed, even by those who may have second thoughts about virtue as a whole.

There are several virtues which might not occur on a list outside of India.  These include: 3. Anti-untouchability and 73. Socialism.  Kerala, it is well known, is the only place in the world to ever peacefully vote out Socialism, then peacefully vote it back in again.  It should be noted that 15. Democratic decision making is also listed as a virtue.

A pleasant sense of balance is found throughout the list. 78. Teamwork and 17. Dignity of the individual both receive nods.  However, there are, now and then, curious omissions.  For example, 30. Gentlemanliness is cited as a virtue, defined as “a man who is cultured, courteous, and well-educated”.  However, no feminine equivalent is found anywhere in the list.  Womanliness is not cited as a value.  The Board of Education may wish to prepare a response to what is surely an inevitable question.

One value comes with a brief description that seems pointed, perhaps unnecessarily so.  I am speaking of 18. Dignity of manual work, which “recognizes the dignity and intelligence of blue-collar workers (that is, that those workers as a group have just as much potential for dignity and intelligence, despite the fact that any individual workers may or may not display such traits), and it recognizes their civil (and civic) equality with white-collar workers.”

Ouch.  One wonders if the author of the brief description might not have had some mixed feelings about the inclusion of this value on the list.  On the plus side, perhaps this will finally provide an opportunity for everyone, myself included, to really learn, finally, the difference between civil and civic.

Of the 84 Values, fully twenty begin with the letter ‘S’.  Of these 9 values begin with the word self.  These include: 60. Self-discipline, 61. Self-help, 62. Self-respect, 63. Self-confidence, 64. Self-support, 65. Self-study, 66. Self-reliance, 67. Self-control, 68. Self-restraint.  No doubt this is an expression of the underlying pragmatism of the esteemed personages on the Board of Education in the state of Kerala, who recognize that, in a nation of 1.3 billion, people are going to have to look after themselves, and not expect a lot of hand-holding from an already burdened government.  After all, India is not Denmark.

Again, one must ask, what exactly is the difference between 67. Self-control and 68. Self-restraint?  Self-control we are told is, “the ability to control one’s emotions, behavior, and desires in order to obtain some reward, or avoid some punishment, later.”  Whereas, Self-restraint is: “Restraint of one’s emotions, desires, or inclinations, self-control.”  For that matter, what is the difference between 64. Self-reliance and 66. Self-support?  If one may hazard a guess as to the motivations of the Board of Education, it may be that they sought to re-iterate and re-state values which we might be prone to overlook, thus gently reminding us of the critical importance of that virtue.

The Board of Education of Kerala deserves credit for bringing attention to virtues that generally do not receive nearly enough attention or airtime.  It is to be hoped that the List may serve to bring about a renaissance of sorts for under-appreciated values such as: 32. Helpfulness, 34. Hygienic living, 54. Regularity, and 52. Purity in Public Life, which is stridently defined as: “Purity ●  Probity ● Sincerity ●  Decency” . 

In general, the definitions provided by the Board of Education are helpful in elucidating the nature of each value.  How excellent to have each value made clear, the real kernel of the thing laid bare.  8. Cleanliness, for example.  Brief definition: “Cleanliness is both the abstract state of being clean and free from dirt, and the process of achieving and maintaining that state.”  How convenient and satisfying it is to possess such clear meanings!  It is somehow tremendously reassuring.  

Some values may remain mysterious even when we understand them intellectually.  For example, 82. Universal Truth.  OK, understood, but – how is universal truth actually practiced?  Isn’t snuffling about for universal truth likely to result in all sorts of trouble?

In a few cases the definition raises more questions than answers and may even serve to render a common value unfamiliar.  46. Obedience, for example.  Brief definition: Obedience, in human behavior, is a form of “social influence in which a person yields to explicit instructions or orders from an authority figure”.  Even though I am not skilled in the practice of Obedience, I thought I at least understood it intellectually.  Now I am not so sure. 

How about: 50. Patriotism.  Brief definition:  “Patriotism is devotion to one’s country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term’s meaning upon context, geography and philosophy.”  I am grateful to be told what to exclude.  However, now that I’ve been told what to exclude -- I need someone to tell me what’s left.
                                                      .
In conclusion: to fully contemplate the list of 84 Values, to incorporate the list into one’s life, might truly said to be the work of a lifetime.  This discussion represents only the very first uncertain baby steps toward an understanding and implementation of these essential values. 

For this opportunity we unequivocally state our indebtedness to the Kerala Board of Education, as well as our gratitude to that much-esteemed Board. Though the mastery of virtue may remain essentially a solitary task, we cannot state strongly enough our thankfulness, and deepest respect for, those who seek to provide us signposts along the way.  It is no flight of hyperbole to suggest that the State Board of Kerala has created a valuable resource, not just for the schoolchildren of Kerala, but also for all of humanity.

Without a doubt, we will continue to contemplate the list with a humble and open heart.  In return, it is ardently hoped that the Board of Education of Kerala will continue to provide aids to understanding, as well as further explanations, as it deems useful, helpful, and necessary.