The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality

 

The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality by William Egginton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Anti-nomy: 1. a contradiction between two beliefs or conclusions that are in themselves reasonable; a paradox. 2. William Egginton's favorite word.

A work on logical brilliance requires a text that is logically brilliant. While most would agree that Jorge Luis Borges, Werner Heisenberg, and Immanuel Kant were among the most beautiful minds the human race has expressed, putting their works to the general public in a clear manner is a fool's quest. Or, at least I'm too foolish to try such a feat.

Egginton does. And while he excels in examining the biography of each of these thinkers, the explication of their insights becomes long-winded to the point of confusion. There is a reason the words "clear and concise" often appear together. Meandering about in such already-troubled waters as quantum physics, late-stage philosophy, and high-concept literature only causes paths to cross so many times that the reader can become lost. They recognize the path's they've already crossed, but approaching them from so many different angles in rapid succession is dizzying (for us dumb people).

Perhaps this is why I appreciate works such as Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid or Hierarchy Theory: A Vision, Vocabulary, and Epistemology so much. They are as long as they need to be. No longer. And while I admittedly do not fully grasp those works, I could always sense the thrust of their arguments - their beginning, progression, and goals - even if I didn't fully grasp the final product. There is a certain . . . pardon the pun . . rigor in these works that I found, not absent, but muddied in this book.

This is not to say that I didn't enjoy reading the work. On the contrary, I greatly enjoyed the biographical sections on each of these men, in particular. I've always loved Borges' fiction, for example, but knowing what I know now (from reading this book) about his biography, I think I've found a kindred soul in many ways. I won't go into details because I don't want to impugn anyone I might inadvertently "expose" (past or present). Let's just say that when you're in a foxhole "together," you become friends fast, and Borges feels like a friend now.

The sections on Heisenberg and the Nazi question are also insightful about the human desire to live and survive under a regime that is so far out of the norm of human decency; the ways that one "makes do" and subverts such regimes by subversion and careful deflection. While never excusing facism or its adherents, Egginton provides a nuanced analysis of Heisenberg's choices as a scientist and a human vis-a-vis the Nazi regime.

And Kant is presented as a man on borrowed time performing a philosophical race against the clock before death inevitably takes him. While somewhat speculative, the author does an admirable job of getting inside the philosopher's head and heart, turning one man's quest for the ultimate answers to being into a bit of a thriller.

In essence, though, the thesis of the book can be boiled down to Heisenber's quote: "We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning". This is repeated in many ways throughout the book, but the essence remains the same. We are only as smart and observant as our observational tools. We do not see reality, we see our sight of reality. I am reminded of the argument that in order to prove there is or is not a God, one must see everything, but one must do it all at once, in all times and all places, in order to prove, once and for all, that there is or is not a God. In other words, one must become God to prove or disprove God.

And that, my friends, is an antinomy.


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I Foresee the Wild Ahead

 I'm not much of a homeowner. I often ask myself why I even own a home. The neighbors probably do, too. I'm not that guy who manicures his lawn with nail-clippers (those are the people across the street). I wouldn't survive a week in an HOA. Besides, I have no desire to deal with the politics of an HOA. Sounds like my idea of hell. 

I'm lucky enough to have a pretty "cute" home. Kind of a gingerbread bungalow. It needs work, and now that I've finally (after eight years - thank you California legal system) got my deceased parents house off of my hands (and out of the $800/month rent I had to pay to keep it on the trailer park's land), I can focus a little more on the house. Yeah, I know, I'm very, very lucky and privileged to own my own home; I get it. I look at my kids and wonder how they will ever be able to afford a home with the billionaire's cards stacked against them (and the other 98%). But, like I inferred, I am a horrible house manager.

And I really, really, REALLY hate mowing the yard. I mean HATE with a visceral passion. Might have something to do with my upbringing, where military housing is meticulously watched and people are ticketed for the slightest infractions - hey, I just discovered why I hate the idea of an HOA! Cool! Anyway, I hate mowing the yard. It has all kinds of bad associations for me. The only good association I can think of is when I was 12 and I got a walkman and a copy of Black Sabbath's Mob Rules album and listened to that full blast for the first time while mowing my yard. That . . . was cool. 

But back to my hatred: I might have found a solution. I've posted on here a few times about my (nearly daily, on weekdays, at least) wanderings on The Ice Age Trail here in Janesville. The particular stretch that I haunt the most is a restored prairie, replete with native prairie grasses and wildflowers, an incredibly diverse range of birds, one mink, and at least 11 deer, as of my last count (a week and a half ago). All of this in the city. 

So, I figured, hey, I hate mowing the yard, and I can do with it what I want because: no HOA! I've also seen others do what I'm about to do: plant native Midwest wildflowers and tall grasses. So long as I don't kill them the first year, they're perennials, so they should seed and grow themselves, more or less. No muss, no fuss. Not quite sure what I'm going to do in the fall, though, because I can't burn them down like they do on other prairies. Might burn the house down, which is a neighborly-limiting maneuver. I'll have to figure that one out.

We're going to start small. You can see the little wedge we're targeting in the photo above. We'll be expanding that and creating a sort of triangular lot alongside our house to start with. We've tried and failed a couple of different experiments there (mostly due to critters getting in and eating our squash - too bad I can't fire my .357 within city limits, or there would be a bunch of hollow rabbit and squirrel skins littering my yard), so let's see what we can do here. If it works well, then we'll expand next year. Who knows, there may come a time when I am surrounded by nothing but wildflowers and knee-high native grasses? That can't be all bad. 

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The Wander Society

 

The Wander Society by Keri Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Pretentious? Yes. But I like pretentiousness. But I actually LIKE pretentiousness in writing. Sure, it's a little "twee" at times, but so what? Keri Smith is living her best life. Get over yourself.

What he have here is non-fiction disguised as fiction. It's a handbook, really, an eclectic mix of false story that entices one into the Wander Society. There is a touch of armchair philosophy and a lot of practical types on how to be impractical, which is a wonderful undertaking. Whimsy is the heartbeat of everything you'll find in this work. If you take yourself really seriously, you are going to be seriously disappointed.

My favorite sections were "The Wander Society's Tactical Guide" and, most importantly, "Assignments/Research/Field Work". These are were the rubber (of your soles) hits the road (or the dirt or mud or gravel). This is what I was looking for when I first heard about this strange little book. Before reading the book, I had already implemented my own brand of "Leave Behind," as Smith names it, a calling card, if you will, and a tribute to life, death, and the struggle between the two. It's been exactly a year since I started the practice of beautifying death on the trail, and, in fact, I laid a garland on a critter this afternoon. Poor little guy! If I don't memorialize his little life, who will?

This book has also helped me as I do my best to go analog and ditch the smart phone. Walking, especially wandering (there is a difference) is a great way to immerse oneself in analog, as long as one is willing to turn their phone off or leave it at home while on the trail. It's a beautiful, horrifying, lovely world. Look up from your screen for a while and take it all in. The Wander Society can be used as a tool to help you learn how.

Remember "Solvitur Ambulando" and "non omnes qui errant perditi sunt"!

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Aurorae

 I've seen the Northern Lights a few times in my life, all of them since I moved to Wisconsin in 1996. The most spectacular displays I saw were back in the early-2000s. Unfortunately, phones didn't have cameras back then and digital cameras were expensive and finicky, so we never got pictures of those. But they were visible enough in the middle of Madison that we woke our kids up to come out and see them. I think we were home-schooling them at the time, so we could let them sleep in the next day. There were vivid blues, bright greens, and the occasional pink, and they fluctuated wildly across the sky. We could see all of this with the naked eye, they were so intense.

A few weeks ago, we caught a display, this time with our phones. Unlike the flashing display we saw back in the early aughts, these were difficult to see with the naked eye, but looking through our phone cameras, we were able to catch them. I'm including a couple of the better pictures below, along with a short video, for your viewing pleasure. It's worth staying up late and going out and seeing these displays (though we caught these right in our back yard). Enjoy.

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Deadmau5 aut Mus Mortuus?

 My work allows me an hour lunch. I try to consume all my needed food (gotta get that protein in) before lunch, if at all possible. That way, I have an entire hour free to mentally decompress. My workplace is about a one minute drive from a beautiful branch of the Ice Age Trail on one hand, and, across the street, the Janesville Optimist Community Park. The Ice Age Trail is a paved, slowly-winding path through prairie (with restored prairie grasses) and wood (with deer that are so tame, they don't spook until you are very close to them - I've wondered if they might eat out of your hand, but haven't been brave enough to test this yet). The Optimist Community Park has dirt and grass trails that cover 35 square acres.

On my lunch breaks, I like to take a half hour or thereabouts (or even ten minutes, if I have errands to run) and read while I walk. That's how I read the book I most recently finished, Ad Infinitum. I'll also occasionally turn on the Derive App and see where it takes me. And sometimes, I just walk in, stand, and listen to the birds (it's a bird-watcher's paradise). Whatever it takes, I go there to reconnect with my inner self during the work day. I'm dreading winter, when temps and conditions will make this walk far less likely. Maybe I'll use some of that time for writing.

Recently, like within the last two weeks, I came across a dead mouse in the Optimist Community Park. I felt sorry for the little guy, laying there with flies buzzing around him. So I gave him a little private funeral. My Latin is not great, so I had to settle for the (probably incorrectly-structured) text: Mus mortuus non respirare. I then gathered a few prairie flowers and laid them by him. The next day, the flowers were still there, but Mr. Mus was gone, likely eaten by crows. Of course, I knew that he (honestly, I have no idea how to check for a mouse's gender, nor do I want to know) was going to be eaten, whether by bird, bug, or bacteria. But I wanted to celebrate his little life, really celebrate life itself, as I am closer to the end than the beginning of my own. 

Truth be told, I hike the Ice Age Trail more than the Optimist Community Park trails. So fast forward a couple of days and, lo and behold, I find another mouse dead on the trail, likely stricken by a bicycle. Well, that was odd, I thought. What are the chances that a mouse would be schmucked by a bike while crossing an eight-foot wide paved path?

Apparently VERY high.

Over the course of the last two weeks, I've found five dead mice on my short hikes. And I just happened to get there before the scavengers did. Five dead mice in two weeks on the same stretch of tales. This is how conspiracy theories start. It's like the beginning to an X-Files episode. 

So, in all, I held five very brief mouse funerals. I admit that I checked the trail both ways before plucking prairie flowers. I know how prairie flower aficionados are. Had I been caught by one of them, I likely would have ended up paralyzed, stuffed into a bearskin to be burned alive. But I was able to dodge the prairie flower inquisitors and gave my little bit of homage to these little guys:

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The Trickster Goddess of Family Cervidae

[Trigger Warning: Dead animal mention and photo]

 I'm going to get a little personal here. Don't like it? Go somewhere else. Take me as I am, as they say. Here I am:

Back in 2019, the company I worked for was bought out. Now, one of the companies I had worked for previous to that job went through three different buy-outs in five years. Yeah, not a great track record. I left that company before it sank, and oh, did it sink. It's gone. Dead to the business world. A has-been. Even the IP has been flushed down the toilet. I watched as the investors made mistake after mistake, had the heartbreaking task of handing out nearly 40 pink slips to people, some of them good friends, because the investors made some really poor business decisions, and when the third buyout happened and I saw the company culture that was being imposed there, I took off. On my last day, when I walked out (and I literally walked home the five or so miles, because I knew I'd need that long walk to clear my head), I felt like I was sitting on a cliffside overlooking the ocean, and seeing a cruise ship, on fire, slowly sinking beneath the waves. I was right. That's about how it went down. So fast-forward a few years, and I find I'm in the middle of yet another buy-out. Only with this one, I was assured that my job was not in any danger, that while there were now two buyers, where there had been one previously, that my position was safe as houses, as they say. 

They lied.

I found myself, at fifty years old, unemployed for the first time in my life. I diligently looked for, and found, a good job doing purchasing for a major player in the food industry (why not? I had just been "let go" by the water industry). This was in late 2019. Covid happened, and I found myself working from home, which was a good thing, because unlike many of my friends who were out of work, I found myself waking up at around 7, rolling out of bed to get started at 7:30, working through to 5:00 or so (I may or may not have taken a 15 minute lunch during that time - some days I did so, most I didn't), eating dinner, then getting back on for another 2-4 hours, depending on how crazy the day was. This went on for many months. Every day, I checked in with my boss for a call, maybe 20 minutes or so, to report on what I was doing. This was fine, as we needed to communicate regularly, given how absolutely insane the food industry was during Covid. People discovered they could actually cook burgers at home, and our customer base (the meat industry) went stark raving mad with production. One of our customers, also the world's single largest producer of beef, was running at 400% capacity. So anything that required preventative maintenance, like motors, for example, which I bought, was wearing out four times more quickly than usual. And I'm here to tell you that the meat industry doesn't like the idea of buying spares until their machines are down and they are suddenly losing $10K an hour - then, and only then, they'd think "we should have bought a spare". Duh. 

Covid came and went. But the stressors didn't. Long story short, I found myself, last winter, burned out and extremely sensitive to criticism. I was putting in "all the hours". I was pushing to get everything done that needed to get done. I made some mistakes, as one does when one is over-worked and burned out, but nothing critical. In fact, in the last year, I saved my company upwards of three times my yearly salary in one year of purchasing negotiations. I paid for myself and then a lot more. The numbers were clear as day. I received praise from the plant manager and international director of sourcing for my work. And yet, the pressure never let up. 

It was in the midst of this pressure cooker that I was driving home from work one night on a stretch of country road, and I saw a deer jump out onto the county highway. I was going at about the speed limit when I slammed the brakes and the deer jumped off the road, but I thought - and I was right - there's got to be other deer nearby.

Then, there she was. She bounded out and in a split second, I knew I was going to hit here. I knew also, that when hitting a deer, it's a bad idea to have your brakes clamped down, as the deer is then more likely to go under your car and tear up everything on the underside. So, I let off the brake and hit her at about 40 MPH.

As I saw her body fly up over my hood and fill my windshield, I thought "this is it, I'm going to die". Then, miraculously (for me, at least), she kept going up. I think my car met her rump just as she was bounding upward, as deer do, and she simply flew over the top of my car - completely over the top - and landed in a ditch behind me. 

I didn't have the wherewithal to do anything but glance back. I didn't see her. I had no idea if she had survived or not. My car was crumpled and I was shaking like a leaf. My airbags did not go off, for which I am very grateful, and any whiplash I suffered was minimal. After a panicked call to my wife ("I just hit a deer. I have no idea what to do. I've never hit a deer before.") and my wife's calming response that I should call the insurance company, I did that. Then I called 911. The Walworth County Sheriff's department arrived, and the deputies were awesome. They checked on how I was doing, asked what happened, of course asked if I had my seat belt on at the time of the accident ("I was raised in the military. You ALWAYS have your seatbelt on when you're raised in the military!" - they laughed at that), then checked my car. It was munched on the front, but drivable, and there weren't any fluids leaking. 

The police gave me a card with a case number and told me "if you get pulled over for only having one headlight, just give them this card and you'll be fine". Then they got in their SUV and backed up behind me, maybe fifty feet or so, shone their spotlight into the field to check for the deer, I presume, then drove off. I made it home, of course, took the car in and eventually it was totalled.

To say this was a stressor I didn't need is an understatement. But I kept coming back, in my mind, to that moment that deer rose up and filled my windshield. I was strangely calm when I thought "I'm going to die". I wasn't panicked at all. Endorphines are wonderful gifts! But I kept coming back to that thought. "I'm going to die."

Of course, I've thought that before. My deepest philosophical explorations (if they can be called "deep" at all) have been my delves into Existentialism. I've faced the possibility of death a couple of times before (once having narrowly avoided being in a fatal airplane accident - the plane taxiing behind me ended up being hit by a microburst on the tail of the plane on takeoff, flipping upside down, and killing all 16 people on board, I learned upon landing at my destination - and I've been shot at at close range once, as well). But this one was weird. I was so calm. Almost like I was just receiving a message: "I'm going to die".

Needless to say, this got me thinking a LOT (and driving much more slowly and cautiously at night in the country - yeah, I've become "that guy" at night. So, go around me if you're in such a hurry) about my then-current situation with work. I was not happy. In fact, I was much more unhappy and not mentally-well than I could have admitted to myself before the accident. And I had been putting up with a lot of stress and what in a later conversation I figured out was extreme micro-managing, and I had had enough. So I started sending out job applications. I had been approached by head-hunters before, but had told them I wasn't interested at that time. Now I was interested. I needed a change and I needed it bad. After sending out eight applications, I had two offers. in comparison, when I was "let go" at the job previous to my last, I sent out 65 applications and ended up with two offers.

Since I left my job and took the current job I am in, I've spoken with a few employees at the place I left and have discovered that others felt the same way about their experience there. I won't go into details, but the culture there is . . . languishing, shall we say? Two nights ago, I was sitting on the couch just staring at the closet door, feeling at peace. My wife asked what I was thinking about, and I said "I'm thinking about how I'm not panicked about going back to work after this long weekend. And how I didn't have to work on my days off, like the last job." I realized that, for the first time in a long time, I was at peace. No, this job isn't perfect - no job is. But it's much better than my last place, MUCH less stressful, and, frankly, just as rewarding. A side note - this job is a ten minute drive from my house. We're now a one-car family, which, while it requires some juggling, actually makes life feel a lot simpler, in some ways. And I'm close enough that I've been able to walk home a couple of times, when my wife needed the car. It's actually helping me be more fit. Four mile walks will do that for you. 

And the weird thing is, I have this dead deer to thank for these, dare I say it? Blessings. This might sound morbid and perhaps a touch cruel, but I feel like she sacrificed herself for me, in some ways. Yes, I feel badly about hitting her and killing her. I'm not mad at her, though. In fact, I'm extremely grateful, truly, honestly thankful. I think of the old myths of trickster gods that would sometimes lead people to the edge of danger, where they then found some sort of reward for their endangerment, narrowly escaping the potential for that Final failure. I've seen the pit of doom, and picked up a gold coin on its edge.

The next day, after the accident, I drove my wife's vehicle in to work. On my way home, I made sure I drove home that SAME way I drove when I hit the deer. I considered it a sort of banishing ritual, undoing what had been done the night before, closing the circle. Besides, I needed to get some confidence back about driving at night! In fact, I drove past there many times, as I drove home to tune up my resume, get applications in, and do phone interviews. 

I looked for the deer each time, but didn't see her carcass. We had had some nasty snowstorms, and if the deer was indeed killed, it was in a steep-ish ditch off the side of the road, covered in snow. 

Strange that late on February 18th, I submitted my application to the place I eventually ended up working for. On February 21st I was called by them and had my first phone interview. On February 22nd, the snow had temporarily melted, and on my way home I saw something I had been looking for since January 4th, the night of the accident. I took the following picture:

Coincidence? I don't think so. The older I get, the less I think there is such a thing as coincidence. Meaning is where it's at. And maybe it's all we've got.

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Heilung Ritual at Riverside Theater, Milwaukee, WI 20 April 2024

 I love music. Particularly live music. I'm not rich, so I have to be choosy about what shows I go to see. I do, however, have some bands on my "must see a live show before I die" list. These are, currently:

Sunn O)))

Om

Heilung

Bohren und der Club of Gore

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Well, now I can scratch one off that bucket list. On April 20th, I drove to Milwaukee, all on my lonesome, to see Heilung live. As soon as I saw that they were going to be playing Milwaukee, I assessed my finances and sprang for tickets. 

Let me start by saying that Heilung does not perform concerts. They hold rituals. You'll see this clearly in the video below (which I did not record - my point of view would have been about ten rows back from the stage - which I thought was a great spot to be able to see the whole show from, honestly). It all began as a classic "opening the circle" ritual, but with a strong emphasis on man's interface with nature (listen to the prayer): 

I did get this snapshot of the opening of the ritual, but I was too enmeshed in the ritual to take videos. This was an immersive event. Some of the howling and yelling you hear are me! 

As you might imagine, this "show" was trance-inducing and more participatory than any other show I've been to. And that isn't because the band was trying to get people to participate ("Scream for me, Cleveland!"). On the contrary, Heilung doesn't have to elicit anything from fans. We were all participants. Here are dome of the photos I took:

A couple "closer up" pictures of two of the main leaders of the ritual, Kai Uwe Faust and Maria Franz.

More shots of the ritual. You'll note that this show was not for children (and I didn't see any younglings at the show). Though the spear-women were, um, painted, they did not have tops on. Given that this was to reflect a bronze-age viking/germanic ethos, this makes total sense. But, fair warning, don't bring your younger children to a Heilung ritual! And if you're offended by such, stay away.

 

I am singling this picture out because it epitomizes just how beautiful a Heilung ritual can be. I passed up dozens of opportunities for beautiful shots like this because, as I have already said, I was "all in" on the ritual and the music and only allowed myself to snap a photo when something shocked me into a need to capture the moment. This was one of those moments.

These are the last two pictures I took, the second one being that of Kai drumming on a shield with a lit torch. This ushered in the closing of the ritual, which was a dionysian free-for-all with a din of screamingand howling, fire lighting up the night, bursting through the darkness, and body-surfing spearmen carried aloft by the crowd like heroes! 

On a personal note, when I bought the tickets, I did not know that two days after the ritual, I would be giving my two weeks notice at my then-current job. Given the circumstances that pushed me to leave that job for another, which I will explain elsewhere (but involve, at it's heart, a deer), this is a stunning convergence to me. In many ways, this event was a ritual that was, in part, for me, and gave me courage going into that uncomfortable conversation wherein I gave my notice. Am I finding meaning where it's not there? You decide for yourself. I know what I know and I feel what I feel. This was the closing to a chapter of my life that I am glad to leave behind. Thank you, Heilung, for providing the bridge between two worlds.

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The Immortality Key: Uncovering the Secret History of the Religion With No Name

 

The Immortality Key: Uncovering the Secret History of the Religion with No Name by Brian C. Muraresku
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

At the risk of sounding like a 1950's B-horror movie title, I was a teenage drug-fiend. I was 12 or 13, I can't quite remember, when I started experimenting with pot, speed, cocaine, opium, depressants, and, of course, one of the most insidious drugs of all, alcohol. By the time I was 18, I had pumped enough chemicals in my body for a lifetime, so when I came about one judge's signature away form a term in federal prison, I quit. Cold turkey. Everything. And I've been clean since.

One thing I never tried was psychedelics. The war on drugs and the (now comical) portrayal of psychedelic's use on '70s and '80s television frankly scared me away from them. I "knew" that PCP made people think they could fly and LSD could make you crazy forever. I'd been brainwashed really good. Thanks, Nancy.

Fast forward several decades. I have a much more "measured" view of drug and alcohol use. There are plenty of people out there who can safely and responsibly use drugs and alcohol without becoming an addict, like I did. And I realize now that medications have their place and can really benefit people's lives. Then again, as an aside, I think there should be MUCH stiffer penalties for drunk driving, but that's a rant for a different time. And I avoid alcohol like the plague. I know that its no good for me and I'm not good with it.

Now I've done a fair amount of research into psychedelics, mostly being interested in micro-dosing after having listened to a couple of podcasts that touched on the subject. Pretty soon, I started seeing articles popping up here and there - my UW alumni magazine, for instance, or Discover Magazine - about the efficacy of psychedelic treatments for PTSD, in particular, and in easing the fears and worries of terminal cancer patients. It's been a bit of a revelation, so much so that I think we might be on the edge of a revolution in medicine.

I was discussing this with my oldest son this past Thanksgiving as he was visiting from grad school. He told me about a podcast interview regarding this very subject . . . well, sort of. I asked for a link and took some time to listen to Lex Fridman's interview of author Brian Muraresku about his new book The Immortality Key. After listening to that, I put the book on my Christmas wish list, and my son obliged. I raised that boy (well, he's a man now) right.

The general premise of Muraresku's thesis is this: There is a possibility, a strong possibility, backed by some thin threads of evidence, that the history of psychedelics in societal use may be the backbone of the history of religion, particularly sacramental religions like the cult of Dionysus or even Christianity.

Of course, he's crazy, right?

I don't think so.

That's not to say that I'm fully convinced. The evidence is oftentimes tentative, with much more research needing to be done. Or it's based on what I will call "negative historiography," the notion that a certain things absence from the historical record proves its existence by the very void created in the process of the intentional removal of such evidence by the winners of history; in this case, the Catholic Church.

But that's not to say I'm not fully convinced, either. I'm taking a tentative lean towards believing Muraresku's thesis, partly because he acknowledges, in the end, that this is a work-in-progress. I will say, though, that some evidentiary gaps that are "leaped" in the middle of the text, are later given some logical breathing room, some more critical looks, in the afterword.

My biggest issue with the book is connecting the dots from the Dionysian cultic use of psychedelics in the Middle East to the early Christian house churches of Anatolia. In the midst of the presentation of evidence, Muraresku's arguments sound like they apply to all of Christianity, even if he doesn't explicitly say so. But later he acknowledges that it may have been only a very small part of the initial Christian movement across the Mediterranean. The evidence is scant, but Muraresku's eagerness to get the point across makes his arguments sound like there is tacit proof that the use of psychedelics in the early Christian sacrament was a given. Over-enthusiasm sometimes clouds the argument. A little more restraint might have gone a great way in easing me into accepting the trail of evidence more readily.

Time will tell if archaeobotanical and archaeochemical analysis can fill the gaps. I sincerely hope they do. Because what Muraresku is talking about here is not a bunch of stoners sitting in the basement with a bong listening to Phish. He's talking about humans finding real meaning in the psychedelic experience. He's talking about "dying before you die," which has an absolutely profound effect on those who experience it - he goes over this extensively. He's talking about experiential religion, the type of real life events that can make real life changes in the way people view themselves, each other, nature, and reality, seeing the cosmos, the earth, and all humans anew. There is an optimism here that "the religion with no name" can bring some fundamental changes to the whole of the human race, Aldous Huxley's dream come true.

And he might just be right.

Time will tell.

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Revenants & Maledictions

Revenants & Maledictions by Peter Bell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Last month, my wife and I took a holiday to Europe – England, Wales, Germany, and Austria. We had a fabulous trip, and I hope, someday, to make it back again. As with any vacation, choices had to be made, and potential destinations had to be dropped. If we go back again, Scotland, Ireland, and more of Germany are on the list. Alas, I had to take my trips to Scotland and Ireland via Bell’s book. Or maybe “alas” isn’t quite the right word. And maybe it’s best to leave well-enough alone, to specifically not travel to the areas that he’s written about so as to preserve my imaginary view of these ancient, strange places. Bell paints an evocative series of pictures of the British Isles (and one of Iceland). Let’s explore:

Our first stop is "Apotheosis,” a somber, moody piece about a visit to a Hebridean isle. The narrator finds that he is or was an unknowing stranger visiting strange shores. I can't say it was "heavy handed", but the fingers fell just a touch too bluntly on the "X" of the plot map, and I like more subtlety in my reading material. Still, a four-star story and well worth the read.

"The House" is clever, with the perfect amount of creepy. Much is left to the imagination in this self-referential mobius-strip of a meta-story, pulled off to perfection! The story is a trap for the characters, but not one the reader can anticipate. Five stars to this excellent tale, a primer on how to creep your reader out! Fantastic!

Having been lost, alone, on an unfamiliar mountain at night, I had a strong reaction to "The Executioner". While not everything correlated internally, I know the sense of fear that comes with that situation. California or the Outer Hebrides, that fear is the same! This story is a horror of nature, along the lines of some of William Hope Hodgson's work. Respect nature, because it won't respect you, haunted or not! Four stars.

"Many Shades of Red" is a prettily written story set across a stretch of sea, in Iceland, but it was not very effective at pulling an emotional reaction from me. Three stars.

"The Virgin Mary Well" gave me shivers. Stories don't often do that to me. Reality maps on phantom reality in spite of efforts to contain or banish malevolent spirits. Not precisely the ending I expected, but a nice (that is, nasty) bit of a surprise. Bell caught me off-guard with this one. I shall not look at wells in quite the same way now, especially when young ladies are present. Five twisted stars.

"The Island" was well-written, but standard fair for an English-isles ghost story. Bell did well, James did it better. Three stars.

"Wild Wales," with an introductory quote by Aickman, is on the border of what I might call "Aikman-esque," but not quite up to the same standard. Still, what struck me is the strength of the voice in the story. The narration itself heralded the predilections and preferences of the narrator himself: His likes, his comforts, his dislikes, his fears. It was a view into the soul, through a glass, darkly. For this, and a story well-told, four stars.

Maybe "Sithean" wasn't the right story for me to read on the same day I had browsed travel information on the Isle of Skye and just returned from holiday in the UK AND the same night my wife is flying home from having visited her mother. Now I'm spooked. Five annoying stars. Thanks a lot, Bell. (P.S. She made it back here safe and sound. Still . . .)

Anyone who fell deeply in love in the summers of their youth will feel the sweet tugging of old joy and the profound sadness of loss upon reading "Blackberry Time". I can't tell if the ending was too abrupt or exactly terse enough. I'm leaning far enough toward the latter to call this a five-star story. Uncanny and melancholy, this story might set its hooks (in the form of blackberry thorns) into you, too.

Here, in "The Robing of the Bride," all my expectations for what I was anticipating when I bought this book are met - gothic atmosphere, a revelation of hidden things that ought not to be, an unholy masquerade un-veiled. Or, rather, veiled. To quote the sound advice of one character "it is best you do not see". Also, the history here correlates closely with what I am currently reading in Robert Grave's The White Goddess, which has added some verisimilitude for this particular reader/ing. This story, previously unpublished, shows that often in collections, the new works are the best. Five stars

Not a bad trip at all. Outside of a couple of flat spots that seemed all-too familiar, the scenery here is (darkly) beautiful. Stamp your passport and take the trip!

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Analog Europe

I am approaching a once-in-a-lifetime trip (once in a lifetime for me because I doubt I'll be able to afford to make one like this again) for Europe: One week in England (mainly in the Cotswolds) and one week in Austria. One of my goals on this trip is to go mostly analog. Yes, I will have my phone with me, but outside of emergencies, I am hoping to use my phone only as a camera, GPS, and maybe for a little musical interlude here and there (but not often). In fact, I've been getting calls to upgrade my smart phone for a couple of weeks now. I'll pass for the moment. My reasoning is that when I lived in England as a teenager, there was no such thing as a smart phone, there was no internet, and, outside of a few dumb choices that I made that led to grim consequences, I really miss the feeling I felt there - often - of being fully engaged in life: hearing the trees and grass, smelling rain on the air, feeling heat and cold and wind wet and dry, talking to humans, walking in the landscape and feeling the Earth under my feet, all as a participant, rather than an observer. I want to be fully in this trip!

Today, the day before the release of Stranger Things 3 (which I intend to watch, digitally, on my Fire TV - which, incidentally, I won at a drawing at work: I didn't buy it), out comes another episode of my favorite podcast, Weird Studies, this one using a fabulous series of essays by J.F. Martel entitled Reality is Analog.

I originally read this essay several months ago, around the time that I posted a blog entry entitled Analog Kid (yes, after the song by Rush). In that post, I tentatively posited my thoughts on how I desired to return to a more analog existence. That notion hasn't diminished and has, in fact, grown stronger. I have begun the Snail Mail RPG I referred to, have written more letters since then than I did in the previous twenty years combined, and am spending a lot less time on social media. Yes, I'm still there, but in a passing way. I can "unhook" from social media much more easily now than in the past. I am also writing more, again, just having finished another short story.

Now, I am a believer that when one writes something down and presents it to the world, one is more committed to it. That's why we sign written contracts, n'es-ce pas? There is something like a covenant with oneself that one makes when one seriously puts a commitment down "on paper". In this case, I want to put a commitment on my blog, so it's publicly known, so I'm accountable.

While in Europe, I will not use my phone for social media. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram, no Mewe, no nothing. Two weeks. Even though I've been leaning this direction for some time, this is a painful thing to type. Really, this is extremely difficult to commit to, and it makes me downright nervous. But I want to do it. Take a "fast," if you will, from social media. I reserve the right to contact my children through Email and text, but I am not going to post anything for the last two weeks of July.

One thing that I am hoping will help: When I'm travelling, I usually do the social media thing at night, when I'm getting ready for bed. Instead, I have purchased a pair of beautiful Rhodia Landscape Webnotebooks (yes, I am aware of the irony here), within which I will take notes, jot down thoughts, maybe even do some sketches (thought I am not a visual artist, by any means). I'm not even taking something to read, which is near-blasphemy to me. Now, I am very likely to pick up a book or two, especially when we visit the booktown, Hay-on-Wye, in fact, I have a list of authors for whom I will be a-hunting. But I am really hoping to fill my time and brain with writing; creating, not consuming.

 Two weeks.

Who's with me?

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Copsford

Copsford by Walter J.C. Murray
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As a child, I roamed. I was born to roam, I suppose – an American born in Germany who lived in Germany, Texas, the Philippine Islands, Italy, and Minnesota all before the age of ten. Lived – not visited. I have a difficult time remember all the places we visited as a family during that time. Like most children of that day and age, before over-protectiveness stifled wanderlust, I wandered on my own a fair amount, too. After Minnesota, we moved to Nebraska and, when I was 15, we moved to England, where I wandered far and wide, rarely with family, sometimes with friends, often alone – me, on foot, bike, bus, or train, all across England. This summer, my wife and I are planning to travel back there (tickets are already bought) to spend a week in England, then a week in Central Europe (mostly Austria, where my wife lived for a year and a half in her early twenties). But we are avoiding, as much as possible, the glitz of London, the dance halls of Manchester, and spending the vast majority of our time in the area I learned to love by wandering its hills: The Cotswolds. I am planning on doing myself the favor of shutting off my smart phone, save to take photographs or get directions. I long to unconnect, then reconnect. I am fighting to regain my right to roam untethered, if only for a short time.

What do I mean by reconnecting? I struggle to know if it is the vanity of trying to connect with myself or some idealized connection with the world that I strive for, that I enjoyed so much in carefree hours as a child and that I only get today in snippets. It is manifest in a return to the sense of the smell of the fields, the feeling of sun on my skin, the sight of wind combing long grasses, the various voices of wind through the trees. While the sensations are brought from the far reaches of the world (or possibly even beyond, at least in my romantic imaginings), I am the receptacle of the sensations. So, whether the search is vanity or altruism – I cannot tell.

Copsford came at a fortuitous, unexpected time. I am a steady consumer of Tartarus Press books, but this one is significantly different for them – a naturalist work with no supernatural elements at all, a non-fictional work (if Murray is to be trusted, and I think he is). While it takes place in east Sussex, far away from the Cotswolds, I also recall hiking on the High Weald, very near where the book takes place, so I have an affinity for that area, as well. When I first read the notice that Tartarus was producing this work in hardcover, I jumped on it and ordered it as soon as I could, not arguing with the magical timing of the release vis-à-vis my trip back to a place I have not been in over thirty years.

The truth of the matter is that I was legally banished from the place that I had lived in England at the age of 18. It was the late ‘80s, the war on drugs was in full swing, and I lost a battle. Faced with the possibility of a long prison sentence, I count myself blessed that the judge only banished me from the Air Force Base on which the laws were transgressed. Now, the base has been decommissioned, and I will get to go back without fear of the law, to visit the place I once loved. Of all the places I’ve lived in the world, I miss England the most and most especially, the English countryside.

Keep in mind, also, that the last time I lived with my parents for any appreciable length was when we lived in England. With the passing of my Mother last February and my Father last April, is it a coincidence that life has favored me now with the opportunity to go back, just at the time this book was released? You decide.

Copsford recounts the stay of the author, Walter J.C. Murray, at a derelict cottage on a farm, far to the south of London, where he had resided before then. He only stayed there for a spring, summer, and a winter, but it was obviously a profound event for him. Were I not married, with obligations to children and a grandchild (and another, before we leave on our trip), I might be tempted to take the pauper’s course and do something similar, odd as it may sound. But Murray lived in a time in which he could harvest and sell herbs at a good enough rate to actually survive (with some of his savings, from his employment in London), whereas I would stand a good chance of starvation, should I try the same.

It was characteristic of the place that I heard it before I saw it. As I approached, the blustering wind brought to my ears the forlorn rattle of ill-fitting windows that had not been opened for twenty years. There was, too, the thump-thump of a door that swung heavily but never latched: And then I saw it. Grass grew up to the very door-step. The walls were bare, hideously bare; no ivy, rambler, not a plant or shrub nestled against them, just stark brick from grey slate roof to the ground. It would not have been Copsford had bowers of honeysuckle overhung the port or sweet clematis smiled about the sills. There were four windows and a door, not in the usual childish arrangement, but three on the upper floor, and one on the ground floor to the left of the front door. They were square-cornered and grim, and several broken panes gaped darkly at me. There was an ugly grey chimney-stack at the south end, the cottage face east, and on the north wall was a half-ruined brick-and-slate shed to which the door was gone. There had been a wood fence between what should have been the garden and the field, but only the uprights remained and one or two tumbled cross-bars, crumbling in their slots. The rough grass of the field swept in unhindered, lapped the walls of the cottage, washed round behind it. Like a flood-tide, it swamped everything; the cottage stood, a barren, inhospitable rock in the midst.

This introduction is symbolic of the push and pull between beauty and decay that Murray moved between. It was not all flowers and birdsongs (though there if plenty of these, as well). Writers interested in giving a realist bent to post-apocalyptic fiction should read this chapter about Murray's war against the rats. There is grist for the mill here. Now I see why giant rats were a thing in Dungeons and Dragons.

Much of the heartbeat of Murray’s experience had to do with his keen awareness of his surroundings: The weather ruled all, and I often thought of all those millions in London, and indeed in every town and city, to whom changes in the weather meant no more than carrying or not carrying a gamp to the station, office, or workshop; all those for whom work went on just as ever it had done, no matter whether skies were blue or grey, no matter whether the sparkling dew drenched the awakening countryside, no matter whether the wind set hard and dry in the east or wet and billowy from the west. And I wondered, wondered at the artificiality of their lives, cut off from natural loveliness, variety and life . . . Being a city-dweller now for some years (right on the wild edge of a major city), I do miss that connection, or at least a fullness of it, that one feels when one lives in the landscape. Some of this has to do with not having the time to wander like I did as a child, to feel the land in you.

For a time, in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, I worked at the largest canoe and kayak shop in the US (at that time, anyway). My house is a block from one of the main lakes in Madison (a city built “on” four interconnected lakes) and I was able to canoe to and from work each day, so long as the water wasn’t yet hard. During those commutes, I often felt locked in with nature, that my human body was once again a part of the Earth from which it arose (and to which it will return). One of the primary reasons for this was the connection I felt with the light of day and its energizing effect on me. Murray puts it this way:

. . . during those summer months at Copsford, when I was oppressed by no anxieties or worries, when no evil bore me down, when I lived to the full every carefree hour, when perhaps my eye was single, it was then that light had its strongest hold upon me. Do not we take light too much for granted? Is not light the only chain that links universe to universe at last?

Because Floss (Murray’s dog) and I rose early to greet the sun on those happy summer mornings, it must not be thought that I was one of those unbelievable persons who can always spring on waking, from their beds, fresh and energetic. In those Copsford days, it was natural; it would have been unthinkable, impossible, to lie in bed with the July sun rising high in the heavens . . .

One reason for my distance from nature must have to do with driving. When I lived in England, I did not drive, but bussed, rode my bike, and walked everywhere. I walked a lot. I still take great joy in walking when winter has abated. But time is limited now, and I cannot wander, as I did as a child, for hours on end. I am, sadly, more connected with pavement than with dirt, though I do take opportunity to hike when I can. Because of this, I have a great deal of jealousy for Murry and his summer on foot:

We walked on regardless of time and distance. That upland turf is a carpet which never seems to weary those who tread it. So short it is, so compact, so springy; and the view and the sea and the distance hypnotized us; and the roll of the hills, fold on fold, lured us on. There should be no end to such travellers’ joy.

I could not agree more. I am ready to wander and not be lost. Catch me if you can!


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Moby Dick

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wanna know a secret? Lean over here and I’ll tell you: This is the first time I’ve read Moby Dick. No lie. 43 years old, never read it. That assignment in high school? Skipped it. Faked the report. Thank you, Cliff Notes. By that, I mean the guy named Cliff in my English class. He owed me a favor. A whale of a favor . . . And college? Bachelor’s degree in Humanities – I had to have read Moby Dick, right? Wrong. Just snippets. Excerpts. Then, feeling the guilt of being an educated American who had not read the book, I sat down to finally read it. This was, oh, about twenty years ago or so, I don’t rightly remember.
 
I started. But I didn’t finish. Why not? Because the book had a reputation, a monstrous reputation. It was big, boring, and scary, at least that’s what I was told. While I was reading comic books, fantasies, and role-playing game rulebooks in any spare time I had, my friends were reading Moby Dick. Or they had read it already and they were brooding on it. For years. I saw what that book had done to them. It didn't look very pretty from the outside.
 
But I have an addictive personality. Sometimes, I just can’t stop myself from reading. My curiosity – well, it gets me into a lot of trouble. And so it was that I was led, nay, possessed by some evil entity beyond myself (or maybe it was just embarrassment) to finally crack the spine and eat the marrow of, er, I mean, to read, yes, read what is considered by many to be Melville’s masterpiece.
 
Even then, I kept it a secret. I’m a multiple-book-at-a-time-reader (why does admitting that make me feel dirty?), so I’ve conveniently used the cloak of a few other books (even one, ironically, that involved whales) to disguise the fact that I’ve been covertly reading Moby Dick alongside these others. I know. I’m a creep, a literary lurker. Some kind of intellectual pervert. I can hardly help myself.
 
So it’s confession time. Time to repent and face up to reality. And the reality is: I really liked Moby Dick. It’s not nearly the daunting Leviathan that some led me to believe it was. Nor was it as boring as my little dalliances within its excerpts had initially indicated. No, actually, it was good. Really good.

And the book is not as "heavy" as you might think, at least not all the time. Melville’s sense of humor comes through, from time to time, in the book, and is rather endearing. Here, for example, he describes a painting of a whale and a narwhale appearing in the 1807 version of “Goldsmith’s Animated Nature”:
 
I do not wish to seem inelegant, but this unsightly whale
looks much like an amputated sow; and, as for the narwhale,
one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in this nineteenth
century such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine upon
any intelligent public of schoolboys.
 
There’s a sort of learned snarkiness in the narrator’s voice, though it’s not sharply critical. The kind of thing you’d appreciate around a table drinking tea with close friends, rather than the public humor of a stand-up comedian. This sense of talking with a (very erudite) friend makes the book “warm” in just the right spots, such as the point where Ishmael is getting to know Queequeg a little better than he'd like to. In time the narrator’s accepting attitude help us to accept not only Queequeg, but Ishmael himself, as well. We learn to trust him as our narrator.

Granted, there are moments, like the exhaustive (and exhausting) taxonomy of whales that tried the nerves (the optic nerves, in particular), and, yes, the language is archaic and even a bit esoteric at times. The alliteration can get a little tedious, too, even for a Dr. Seuss fanatic like me, as in this sentence:
 
It was while gliding through these latter waters that one
serene and moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like
scrolls of silver; and, by their soft, suffusing seethings,
made what seemed a silvery silence, not a solitude; on such a
silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the white
bubbles at the bow. 

But Melville – first off, the guy has chops. He can write a great sentence.

Secondly, he weaves dimestore philosophy throughout almost seamlessly, and I love works with a bit of the philosophical in them. Even in the descriptions of decapitated whale’s heads, the narrator waxes philosophical:
 
Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there?
It is the same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles
in the forehead seem now faded away.  I think his broad brow
to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative
indifference as to death.  But mark the other head's expression.
See that amazing lower lip, pressed by accident against the vessel's side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw.  Does not this whole head seem
to speak of an enormous practical resolution in facing death?
This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale,
a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years.

Another example comes to mind, as the narrator holds a rope tied around his friend, Queequeg, who is rather busy working on a whale carcass in the water, all the time trying to avoid being bitten by the school of sharks that is feeding on the body atop which the poor laborer is walking. I love the implications of this "monkey rope", how we are, as humans in society, tied together and dependent on one another. There’s a simultaneous fear and warmth in the trust implied thereby. That tightrope between fear and warmth seems to be a comfortable spot for Melville. Not an easy trick!

And third, his characters are incredibly detailed, alive, even. Take, for instance, this masterful description of the genesis of Ahab’s hatred toward Moby Dick:

It is not probable that this monomania in him took its instant
rise at the precise time of his bodily dismemberment.
Then, in darting at the monster, knife in hand, he had but
given loose to a sudden, passionate, corporal animosity;
and when he received the stroke that tore him, he probably
but felt the agonizing bodily laceration, but nothing more.
Yet, when by this collision forced to turn towards home, and for
long months of days and weeks, Ahab and anguish lay stretched
together in one hammock, rounding in mid winter that dreary,
howling Patagonian Cape; then it was, that his torn body and gashed
soul bled into one another; and so interfusing, made him mad.
That it was only then, on the homeward voyage, after the encounter,
that the final monomania seized him, seems all but certain
from the fact that, at intervals during the passage, he was
a raving lunatic; and, though unlimbed of a leg, yet such vital
strength yet lurked in his Egyptian chest, and was moreover
intensified by his delirium, that his mates were forced to lace
him fast, even there, as he sailed, raving in his hammock.
In a strait-jacket, he swung to the mad rockings of the gales.
And, when running into more sufferable latitudes, the ship,
with mild stun'sails spread, floated across the tranquil tropics,
and, to all appearances, the old man's delirium seemed left behind
him with the Cape Horn swells, and he came forth from his dark
den into the blessed light and air; even then, when he bore
that firm, collected front, however pale, and issued his calm
orders once again; and his mates thanked God the direful madness
was now gone; even then, Ahab, in his hidden self, raved on.

I find the crazed prophet Gabriel of the ship Jeroboam to be fascinating, as well. In fact, all the certifiably crazy people in the story (Gabriel, Ahab and, later, Pip) are fascinating in their ability to lift the reader beyond the mundane with their mad, eloquent ravings. I’d love to write Gabriel's full story, or a similar one. Maybe someday . . . is there such a thing as “Moby Dick fanfic?"

Now, Melville’s seemingly erratic jump from 3rd to 1st person, back and forth, as well as his diversions into stage directions and drama would be considered the greatest taboo by many of the big-name book publishers today. Inconsistent narration? Crazy! Metafiction? No one will want to read that!
 
But they did. And they do. The popularity of Moby Dick attests to that. But if Melville were to submit his manuscript today, few agents would take it. “Too experimental,” they’d say, “try the small presses”. And some obscure small press, run from a kitchen table in a suburb on a shoestring budget, would eventually take it and publish it right into nothingness. Eventually, as word spread among a cult of readers, one of the larger presses might note that the book was getting some notoriety and ask for sales trends. “This is a whale of a tale,” they’d say as their pupils assumed the shape of dollar signs, “how did we ever miss it?”
 
If it was a whale, it would have bitten their corporate leg off.

Maybe that's what makes this book so good. It's a tough read. It requires some stamina. You'll probably need to grab a dictionary from time to time. Some parts will read incredibly slow and you'll need to re-read them. Others will be over before you know it and you'll need to re-read them. This is not a book for the casual reader any more than the Pequod's quest was a casual fishing trip off the coast. This book is deep water. But like any challenge that requires great effort, the results are worth it. Some might consider this read a quest in and of itself, even memorializing their participation in the quest. I don't blame them. Moby Dick is a sort of readers' rite of passage. Now I can say, with some sense of pride, that I am one of the initiated, forever baptized in the depths along with Ahab, Queequeg, Starbuck, Stubbs, and all the rest. I know these people, or I knew them. I have smelled the blood of whales, the salt of the sea, tasted the iron of the harpoon, stood atop the mast and taken in the rolling immensity of the sea, seen the white whale rushing up from the watery dark toward my boat. I have served my time on the Pequod. And I say, welcome aboard!

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Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology

Mr. Wilson's Cabinet Of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology by Lawrence Weschler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Somewhere between a Sotheby's catalog and a bizarre issue of McSweeney's, Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder is . . . well, a cabinet of wonder. If Devo, They Might Be Giants, and Talking Heads all ate way too much turkey, then had a collective dream set in a museum, this is the book they'd write. It's one of those great books where the line between fiction and non-fiction is blurred, both by auctorial intent and by the subject matter itself. This is a deliciously misleading book, full of subterfuge and teasings, a shadow play of fact and fiction mixing popular culture, philosophy, the history of science, and a touch of political intrigue. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what kind of writing this is. Is it journalism? Is it fiction? Is it creative non-fiction? Do I really care? This is unabashed writing; indulgent, with moments of brilliance. Alas, it was all over too soon. All the more reason to go visit the subject of the book, The Museum of Jurassic Technology, the next time I'm out California way (which will be a very long time from now, since my parents passed away). If you can't visit the museum itself (I have yet to do so myself, but will be remedying that), put on a beanie cap, play some Devo, eat as much turkey as you can handle, and read this book through a kaleidoscope while reciting aloud Pliny the Elder, Charles Darwin, and Hunter S. Thompson as if rewritten by Terry Gilliam and . . . well, you get the idea. Or not. It doesn't really matter, does it? Speaking of not mattering, are you aware that you can buy a Devo action figure? No, really!

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