I wish it would rain--rain like it never does here in the high desert. Rain for a whole day. Hard rain for a whole day. Just today. One day. One whole day.

"Tragedy, comedy, farce, do not exist but are aesthetic judgments of human life, which differ according to the person, the time, and the place. Emotional responses are probably also like this, and what is felt now and what is felt at some other time can fluctuate between being perceived as sad and being seen as absurd. And there is no longer any need for mockery, for it seems that there has been enough self-ridicule and self-purification. It is only in the gesture of tranquilly prolonging this life and striving to comprehend the mystery of this moment in time, that freedom of existence is achieved. It is through this act of solitary scrutinizing the self, that others' perceptions of one's self lose relevance." (Gao Xingjian, One Man's Bible,410-411)

Since the plane ride from San Antonio a couple of weeks ago I've been reading Gao's One Man's Bible. To say that it is just a work about the Chinese Cultural Revolution would do it an injustice. The book, I think, transcends that specific period of time and seems to be more about our era--everything from a confusion of narration (the text continually slips back from third to second person, since the novel seems to be written not for the reader but more for the writer who we as reader become a part of) to the stark presentation of life in very troubling times. The novel itself has these motives since the narrator states (to himself, no doubt) that he has become nation-less and lacks any "ism" to adhere to.

One particularly striking passage (near to, but not the one quoted above) is a conversation with the ghost of Mao who, it would seem, by force of his own will dictated to a billion people how to behave and even how to talk. I think the paradox the narrator confronts is that how could he have such little control over his own life--his own urges--his own needs and one man can have control over a billion other people. The book is a harsh criticism of Mao's self-serving behavior who's only purpose in causing the Cultural Revolution was simply to maintain his own power and rid himself of bothersome people like Liu Shiquai and Deng Xioping.

Somehow it really isn't even ironic that one man's power-plotting is played out on a grand scale and affects the lives of countless others (leading to their gruesome deaths and/or terrible lives) and he ends up enshrined in a nuclear-bomb-proof mausoleum (complete with night-time refrigerator), and that his prime enemy, Deng, took China in the opposite direction of his so-called revolution, but who in his own turn smashed young Chinese students who were calling for democratic reforms built of the struggle against Mao that Deng had prommulgated.

One Man' Bible strives to understand the complexity of that situation, and, I suppose, find a reason to live through it all. The same feeling is created by Ha Jin's The Crazed. There is something disquieting about all of this; how we in the West are so obsessed with individuality and ourselves; yet perhaps don't recognize the individuality of others. Perhaps it is the solipsism of our age?

A long time ago I went to a lecture/reading by the poet Charles Wright. During the reading he got to talking about his writing and said that he never took up fiction because he really didn't have a story to tell. You see, kind reader, back then I thought of myself as a writer of short stories. I had a few of them that had gone through the college fiction meat grinder a.k.a. workshop. The stories were passably ok, but ultimately boring I think--full of desolate people with desolate lives trying desperately to make sense of it all. My real last foray into story writing was an unfinished piece about a college student making a film about a somewhat famous painter who lived in the woods of New Hampshire with his decades younger sixth wife. The painter was famous not for following the trend of abstract expressionism, but more by sticking to his guns and painting stark landscapes, and , of course, nudes of the various women he had slept with and/or been married to or just seen passing on the street.

The film maker was a graduate student doing his thesis project (whatever that is called), but is fairly non-descript in the story. He seems to want to be in control of both the situation and perhaps of his life, but, in reality, isn't. Of course because of his character everything goes awry in getting there--his Vanegan breaks down several times, he forgets some of his equipment, and he manages to piss off a throw-away character--his sound man. The sound man, I suppose could have developed into something, and I would have liked it to have happened, but, like the filmmaker, I don't think I was necessarily in control of my story (not that I should have been anyway.) In any case the filmmaker interviewed (unsatisfactorily, he felt, the Artist, and then his wife). Since it was late, the Artists asked them to stay the night, and the sound man and he agreed (after much protest from the sound man who wanted to get back to a party). After dinner the wife took the filmmaker on a long walk.

The wife, as I recall, was quite exotic--a former ballerina (I had dated a ballerina for 3 weeks just prior to writing the story), and a photographer herself, the went to the woods to talk shop.

The decades younger than the artist wife was quite older than the student film maker. Now that I've said that, of course, you know what is going to happen. I don't think I necessarily telegraphed it in the story, but there is an amount of sexual tension that I recall catching in their conversations as well as a telling touch or two. Ok, ok, I plead guilty to having the fantasies of a horny 22 year old college boy, but HEY THIS WAS ART.

So of course the deed was accomplished when she came to the film maker in the night in a gossamer night gown.

The next morning as he was packing to leave he found the sound man making fun of him. I think the sound man said something like "Glad you got your stock exposed." Of course he was suspicious, but didn't delve into it. Perhaps, he thought, the sound man had just heard them in their room.

As he was leaving, however, he noted that the Artist was furiously painting in his studio. "Come in! Come in!" The Artist said. "I've been working on this all night!" And then the Artist showed him the painting. It was, of course, of the film maker and the Artist's wife, wrapped in gossamer--embraced for WHITE HOT SEX. (God damn what is google going to do with my poor journal now?)

The film maker was stunned of course, and leaves the Artist and the wife with his snickering companion.

I remember agreeing with Charles Wright when I heard him speak. I too felt I didn't have any stories to tell.

They're taking all the fun out of duct tape. Curse them.

"Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." ("Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US", 10)

I've never been much of a fan of GW but, despite his rather obvious shortcomings, I never thought he was as incredibly incompetent as the now infamous PBR makes him out to be.

It would seem that he is losing a great deal of his voting base lately too. I'm surrounded by hyper-conservative Republicans here in Utah, you see, and when talking to some they are grief stricken by the prospect of voting for GW. They talk about him in embarrassed tones. I know know one staunch family that actually removed their autographed GW picture from their refrigerator. Now that's cold, man. Real cold.