I, Claudius

I, Claudius by Robert Graves
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Why "I, Claudius"? It's a good question. I, Forrest, typically hate biographies, even historical biographies (and I am, by training, a historian). When I lived in Italy, as a young child, I was mostly ambivalent about the place, outside of the amazing food (which is only vaguely like 99.9% of "Italian" food served in America), some of the architecture (we found pillars to old Roman shrines out in the artichoke fields and WWII bunkers on the beach when out exploring), and my initial exposure to Asterix & Obelix. Later in life, as I reflect back on it through nostalgic glasses, Italy was alright. In fact, I'd like to go back and visit.

So, naturally, I should study some Italian, right?

No.

I'm studying Latin. Slowly and haltingly, much in the way Claudius spoke. And I find myself not just trying to learn the grammar and vocabulary, but poking around the language itself and exploring it's origins, it's metamorphosis over time, and the cultures which spoke and wrote it. That is reason number 1.

Reason number 2 is a little more banal. I really liked Robert Grave's book The White Goddess. It's not perfect, but it is compelling enough, warts and all, that I will revisit and reread it again in the future. I can't say that about a lot of non-fiction, if I'm being honest. I wanted to see what Grave's did with a fictional book, based strongly on historical accounts (many of them fictionalized, no doubt).

Reason 3 is Caligula. Who isn't interested in Caligula? If he doesn't at least pique your interest, I don't know if we can be friends. He's one of the more intriguing crazed megalomaniacs in the historical record and if even half the things that are claimed about him are true, he makes even contemporary crazed megalomaniacs (take your pick from any of the superpowers) look tame in comparison. Besides, I don't know if you know this, but Thomas Negovan has worked on a team that has re-done (not "restored," but actually "re-done") the titillating movie about Caligula into something coherent that showcases actor Malcom McDowell's greatest performance, the "Ultimate Cut".

Now, my assessment. It continually held my interest, which is not something I can say about most biographies (fictional or, ha-ha, "non-fictional"). I had listened to the History of Rome podcast some time ago and got to Diocletian or so, so I had a little bit of an idea of what was going to happen. Still, already knowing the end, Graves held my interest enough that I blasted through the last third of the book fairly non-stop. As is usual, I was reading two other books at any given time while reading "I, Claudius," but the lame, stuttering emperor kept me coming back for more, taking up more of my "spare" time than I'd care to admit. Most of the time the book read as smooth as butter.

I attribute this to the voice that Graves breathed into Claudius. Claudius comes across as very human, full of foibles and fears, but with a good sense of humor. Wise, witty, and clumsy as an oaf. I felt for the guy, or at least for his fictional representation. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised. After all, as he points out in the ultimate non-sequitur of an ending, he considered himself, first and foremost, a historian.

And were the Claudius parts juicy? If by "juicy," you mean bloody, yes. If you mean "sexy," there's nothing sexually graphic in the novel. Graves uses hints, allegations, and some colorful allusions to hint at the debauchery that was happening (mostly) behind the scenes. But if you're allergic to violence, you might want to reconsider. You think horror movies are violent? Brace yourself.

Overall, though the language was very straightforward (and I like my prose a little more stylized), this was an extremely satisfying read. Graves shows a light touch in the areas that are speculative and chooses to emphasize certain aspects of the historical record (which may or may not be factual, but are at least based on fact) in order to "wow" his readers.

I have to add that my copy of the book is a 1953 paperback that I bought on Ebay. This book has seen some years and, while it arrived in great condition (i.e., I got what I paid for), the thing literally fell apart in my hands as I read it. I can't think of a more apt representation of the slow crumbling of the Roman empire under a trio of despots, the broken chunks of which were put into the hands of the man who chronicled its decay, Claudius himself.
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If you're interested in more Latin language and history books, try SPQR: An Ancient History of Rome or Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin

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A Perfect Vacuum

 

A Perfect Vacuum by Stanisław Lem
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is, admittedly, the first time I have read a work by Stanislaw Lem. I'll be reading more, after this. Much more, in all likelihood. Of course, Lem has been lauded for decades by critics and colleagues alike, so he was always on my list of authors I ought to read. But, stubbornness being what it is, it wasn't until I listened to an episode featuring Lem's work on Weird Studies a couple years ago that I felt I needed to read his work. As usual, Weird Studies pushed me again into uncharted territories. More on that later.

I've been a fan of Science Fiction for many decades now, a habit I picked up from my father, who also read a lot of Science Fiction (I have to note that one of my proudest moments as a son was when I was able to call Dad up and let him know I had been published in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine). I don't recall seeing a Lem book on his shelf or his bedside stand, but then again he worked for the US military, so I'm not sure how it would look for him to read Lem's work, given the Cold War and all that rot. All that aside, I have to credit Lem with causing me to question, yet again, the definition of Science Fiction. These are not works of spaceships and laser-blasters. It's not even about aliens, per se, though there are times where the humans in these pages act or at least think in truly alien ways. These stories are, first off, not stories: They are imaginary reviews of imaginary pieces of literature. Fictional reviews of fictional books. The "science" comes in through the imaginary books themselves, in large part, and one might even say that the science involved is actually the philosophy of science and the philosophical implications of science itself.

We start, though, with a purely literary focus. Well, not purely literary, I suppose, if you view comedy as "unliterary". If you're seeking a laugh-out-loud (at times) story rife with self-deprecation and a surprising depth of philosophical thinking, you want to read "Les Robinsonades". It is absolutely brilliant. Right from the get-go of this collection, I could why so many people love (and hate) Lem. He has a cutting wit, which he combines with a sometimes laser-focused logic to create a sardonic, but philosophically-sound critique of a variety of "sciences" that may or may not live up to their "scientific" claims.

One of the funnier notions of "Les Robinsonades" (or the critique thereof) is that the titular Robinson has dismissed his servant Snibbins, a corollary to "Friday" of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, only to find his thoughts haunted by the servant and completely unable to escape the need to avoid Snibbins at all costs.

Poor Robinson, who wanted so to avoid shoddiness, who intended to surround himself with chosen ones, has befouled his nest, for he has ensnibbined the entire island.

Later, upon encountering Snibbins again (unavoidable on the island, one supposes):

Why does Snibbins, who previously only spat at the whales, turn out to be their ardent admirer, even to the point of requesting metamorphosis (Robinson says of him, to Wendy May, "He wants whaling")?

"Gigamesh," which Lem opines in the first introductory essay of this book "was to the least of my taste," is a labyrinthine chain of literary analytic drivel so abstruse as to drive even the most seasoned of academics mad. Reading it drove me through a safari of emotion, from respect to fascination to skepticism to anger to fury to hilarity. It felt a lot like being in graduate school again. In the end, it's so intentionally bad as to be comical. "So bad it's good"!

"Sexplosion" is, as the title implies, a view of what society might become if all the stops were pulled on the intersection of capitalism and sex. Want all the sex you can have? Be careful what you wish for. And what happens if a catastrophic event suddenly makes sex not only undesirable, but downright anathema to happy living? Well, let me tell you about the intersection of rampant capital and the vice of food . . .

"Gruppenführer Louis XVI" is every bit as crazy as it sounds: a cadre of SS officers flee to South America after WW II and create a kingdom based on bad third-hand history. Yes, the whole story is a fake review of a book never written, but I would read it, for sure. The premise is a fascinating social train-wreck and I can't peel my eyes away. Calvino and Sarban smashing into each other, face-to-face at 100 MPH!

Lem tries to out-beckett Beckett by taking the central conceit of the Irishman's imploding narrative in his famous trilogy and pushing it (or pulling it like a black hole) even further. "Rein du tout, ou la Conséquence" is a review of a book that not only was not written, but indeed cannot be written: a literary perpetual negation machine in which language itself utterly collapses.

"Pericalypsis" is science-fictional prophecy at its worst. Lem essentially foresees the proliferation of bad information that buries all good, meaningful information by its sheer mass (internet and A.I., I'm looking at you) along with the mountains of trash choking the landscape and seas. The solution presented by the fictional narrator is the worst possible solution. I'd leave it to your imagination. But you can't imagine just how bad it is.

"Idiota" is a side-wise examination of Dostoevsky's similarly-titled work. It is at times a condemnation of the Russian's work, and at times laudatory; Lem, tell me you're trying to critique The Idiot without critiquing The Idiot.

What happens when the "sanctity" of classics is besmirched by a tool that allows the easy disassembly and reassembly of great pieces of literature into penny-dreadful, even pornographic content? Ladies and gentlemen, I present "U-Write-It". Lem lambasts the uneducated and the academic elite all in one fell swoop! My, oh my, would he have hated US politics in the 21st-century.

"Odysseus of Ithaca" follows dungeoneers of the trash stratum (note another Weird Studies reference) in a quest for hidden genius, the type of intellect so profound that it is completely unrecognized by geniuses of the second order. You can probably see where this is going . . . or isn't going. Come read a tale of genius eternally undiscovered.

"Toi" outlines the logical impossibility of writing a book about the reader and an author's (failed) attempt to write the impossible. It is the weakest piece in this collection and yet, compelling.

"Being, Inc." presents the impossibility of each person on Earth selecting their fate, down to the fine details, from a catalog administered by corporations that arrange events such that everyone, eventually, has their desires arranged for and met. Of course, things get complicated when one considers capitalist competition in such an economy. One wonders where Lem, who lived through communism and the Solidarity movement in Poland, might fall in his preferences of economic systems. I suspect it was a bit of a sliding scale for him.

I think, in "Die Kultur als Fehler," the critic convinces himself, over the course of the review, that the author of the book is completely correct, which is the exact opposite of what the reviewer implies at the beginning. We see what seems to start as the opening of a Hegelian dialectic, but straightaway jumps to the opposite conclusion, leaving Hegel (and all supporters of "Civilization") behind. I'm reminded of a skeptic on youtube recently flipping his opinion about whether or not the moon was . . . brace for it . . . an artificially-constructed celestial object.

Right at the crossroads of philosophy and physics, "De Impossibilitate Vitae and De Impossibilitate Prognoscendi" examines the intersection and collision of probability theory and existentialism. What is the likelihood that you, as an individual different from all other individuals, exist at all? It's a rich question and Lem tackles it with a great deal of understated humor. You really are amazing!

. . . and so, but for the diarrhea of the mammoths, Professor Benedykt Kouska also would have not come into the world.

I can't understand why people were giving me weird looks for laughing out loud while I was reading this.

In "Non Serviam" Lem asks "the big questions" about life, morality, faith, existence, and God. He does this by positing what would happen, in terms of philosophical discourse, among virtual beings created by humans wielding computers with sufficient programming ability that the programmers become, effectively, gods. It's a compelling read, to say the least. I strongly suspect that the Brothers Quay were influenced by this story (they began their careers in Lem's native Poland, after all), and one cannot avoid comparing this work with the works of Philip K. Dick.

As for the concluding review/story, "The New Cosmogeny," I'll leave you to the Weird Studies examination of the same story. They explore it in much more depth and with more erudite insights than I can provide. Hopefully their analysis will also drive you to read A Perfect Vacuum.

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Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life

 

Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life by Kenneth Gross
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Puppets and I go way back. I want to say that the Muppets and Sid and Marty Kroft shows (HR Pufnstuf, Far Out Space Nuts), though the latter was more costumed humans than puppets, I admit, introduced me to bodies animated by unseen humans. But, outside of television (and that P movie by that D company), I quite fondly recall my mother making little puppets out of felt and doing little puppet shows for me. She was a drama-girl all the way. Furthermore, I remember seeing street puppets when I lived in Italy as a boy and at least one Punch & Judy show in Brighton, England, when I lived in the UK as a teenager.

But it was later in life that I learned to appreciate the uncanny nature of puppets. In the early 90s I discovered the movies of Jan Svankmajer, which sometimes featured marionettes, then, in the early 2000s, I discovered the stop motion films of The Brothers Quay, which have become an obsession of mine. Back in 2003, I believe it was, I saw another Punch and Judy show (this one in Minneapolis, of all places), I took my kids to a live puppet show (with puppets more reminiscent of Frank Oz's early creations, than anything else) not many years after. Then, in 2019, while on vacation in Europe, my wife and I visited Salzburg, Austria and attended the Salzburg Marionetten Theatre. And just tonight, I signed up for a Domestika course on making wooden marionettes.

I think I'm becoming a little obsessed. Maybe I was obsessed all along and am just now admitting it.

Back in 2021 (it feels strange to say that - has it really been that long?), I read and reviewed Victoria Nelson's outstanding book The Secret Life of Puppets, which I had stumbled on at Goodreads, if I remember correctly. Then, my favorite podcast, Weird Studies, did an episode on this same book in November of 2022. They followed this with an episode about the movie Evil Dead II, which also dipped into the uncanny nature of puppets. This is where I first saw reference to the book being reviewed presently.

It is this uncanny aspect of puppets that Kenneth Gross examines in Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life. All the while I was reading, I felt as if I had the voice of Mark Fischer whispering in my ear. His book/essay on The Weird and the Eerie could have formed the skeleton for Gross's essay, though Gross's work preceded Fisher's by five years. So, perhaps it is the other way around? However, I find no reference to Gross's work in Fischer's bibliography. Maybe this is just another magical synergy that seems to happen so often with these sorts of confluences.

The movement and intelligence that are apparent in a puppet is "weird" (in Fisher's sense) because there should be no movement or intelligence or intention in unliving material, yet that intent seems to come through the unliving (perhaps undead?) material of the puppet. There is movement in what there ought not to be. This offends our logic while simultaneously spiking our curiosity, a morbid curiosity for that which is incapable of morbidity, strangely enough.

It feels quite natural for humans to view these artificial beings as artifacts with some connection to the past. I've seen countless cast off dolls in the mud, for example, and it piques my sense of wonder. How did this get here? Who lost it? Is there some latent connection with a past owner? This begs the further question: Are puppets, dolls, and marionettes some sort of mana batteries, storing energy from some past life force? Perhaps the mystery of these unseen lives that live behind the figures is what we hope to see through to, with the "little people" serving as scrying devices into past lives, their joys, and tragedies. But are our visions clouded and warped by looking through these anthropomorphic lenses? Could some malevolent spirit twist or visions of the past if we are not careful? Do we dare look into their eyes?

Puppets and the stages on which they come "alive" ae not like us. They are exaggerated and often missing many of the subtle and not-so-subtle things that make up life. This creates what Fisher termed "the eerie". Much that should be "there" is not, yet some law of puppetry seems to govern their universe, laws that do not apply in the same way to us. Nor do our laws apply to them. So which reality is real? Which laws actually inhere?

Just as the paradox of life seemingly manifest in dead things causes unease and fascination, the utter unknowability of what it feels, tastes, smells, or sounds like to be a dead thing that was once living simultaneously terrifies us and fills us with curiosity, longing, even, to know and, with much fear and uncertainty, to experience what the dead experience. It is the age old push and pull of existential dread, brought to life(?) by the infusion of seeming intent into dead matter. The puppeteer possesses the puppet with life-force, animating it, the living possessing the dead in a reverse-seance. Who is the medium here?

Puppeteers I have met indeed often speak of waiting for some impulse from the puppet they hold, a gesture or form of motion that they can then develop often being shocked by what emerges.

The act of puppeteering blurs the line between tool and wielder. yes, the human informs the dead material, but the dead material imposes its own limitations, resisting, even fighting back!

The unliving puppet is, of course, innocent, as it can only react to others' manipulations. Yet many puppet shows are transgressive and anything but innocent (go watch a Punch and Judy show, if you don't believe me). Here the inherent innocence of the puppet allows for a buffer to the audience. Hence the shocking nature of the horror trope of puppets and other artificially animated human stand-ins possessed of self-realized inimical animation.

Remember, though, that's it not always the humans facing the puppet that have need to fear that strange intersection of life and death, of immaterial energy and material existence. As Gross implies, this liminal zone is fraught with danger for all:

Then there was the marionette of Antigone who had hung herself with the very strings that had earlier given her life. That had its own kind of truth.

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Reading Challenge 2023

 Since 2015, I've participated in the Goodreads reading challenge where one sets a goal for how many books they will read in a year. Your reading results are tabulated as you complete a book. In previous years, my totals have been:

2015  Goal: 25  Read: 68 (to be fair, I read a lot of graphic novels that year)

2016  Goal: 15  Read: 31

2017  Goal: 17  Read: 27

2018  Goal: 18  Read: 32

2019  Goal: 19  Read: 40 (starting to sense a pattern here . . .)

2020  Goal: 21  Read: 37

2021  Goal: 25  Read: 36

2022  Goal: 24  Read: 25

So my average goal was 20.5, average read was 37.

For 2023, I have set my goal at . . . 

10.

Yes, 10 measly books. "You must be getting old," I hear you say. While true, that's not the reason. "You must be busy with other things". That's . . . not true. Not really. I had a lot more going on in previous years, to be honest. 

So why only 10 books? 2 reasons.

1. I want to be writing more. I'm currently working on a novella, and, frankly, it feels good. I love the rush of writing. And while I've never fully stopped writing for an appreciable amount of time (three or four months, but that was before I started keeping track of reading goals), I don't write as quickly as I used to. At one point, I was cranking out a significant short story every couple of weeks. Now I tend to write longer stories (the novella is my favorite length to both read and write), so I need more time to write more material. Besides, I'm more careful about editing and crafting than I was, say, 20 years ago, and that editing and crafting takes, you guessed it, more time. 

2. I have some challenging works ahead of me. As I write this, I am in the middle of Heidegger's Being and Time. This is not a minor work. I also have, staring at me from the shelf, Joyce's Finnegans Wake. I've read excerpts from this before, but never the full work. And given how Ulysses was, I'm expecting this to be an uphill climb. Proust's Swann's Way is also on my shelf and, well, you likely know the reputation of that one. Meditations on the Tarot is another thick one squatting on my book pile. That brick is going to take a while to get through. Now, I'm not guaranteeing that I will read all (or any) of these books, but they are physically present on my shelf and I've been wanting and meaning to read some of them for a long time.

3. Most importantly: I am hoping to do some thematic readings this year, which means re-reading many works I've already gone through, as well as some I have not. For example, I have Kenneth Gross's Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life on my shelf, as yet unread. I am very excited to read this one alongside a re-read of Victoria Nelson's outstanding The Secret Life of Puppets, as well as a re-listening to an episode of my favorite podcast, Weird Studies, in which the hosts interview Nelson. With these two pieces, I will re-read The Quay Brothers' Universum, The Quay Brothers The Black Drawings, The Journal of the London School of Pataphysics, #21, and Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist's Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets, and I will be sure to re-watch Phantom Museums: The Short Films of the Quay Brothers. I anticipate that I will revisit two RPG posts I've made here, as well: What's in the Quay's Wunderkamer? and Experimental RPGing: Help, Opinions, and Insights Needed! Part I and Part II. All of this work, then, will "count" as only 1 read book for the year. And you can see that this is a months' long endeavor, in all likelihood. I have another, similar deep-delve planned for Gaston Bachelard's On Poetic Imagination and Reverie (thanks go to my oldest son for gifting this one to me for Christmas), which is new to me, and Gary Lachman's Lost Knowledge of the Imagination, a re-read, with a potential sidestep into Fiddler's Green Our Bogeys, Our Shelves. Yet another set will center around Mark Fisher's The Weird and the Eerie and David Peak's The Spectacle of the Void, both of which I've read, though I've never reviewed Fisher's book fully, though I did riff off of it in one of my more . . . morbid posts. In any case, you can see the dilemma here: For every "new" book that "counts" toward my goal, there will be anywhere from one to five books (plus a podcast episode, a Blu-ray, and a lot of thinking and writing on things TTRPG) that I will need to complete.

Mind you, I'm not complaining. Not at all. But I suspect my book reviews and blogposts will be more spread out over the year than usual. On the other hand, I'm hoping they'll be more thorough, well-thought out, compelling, and useful to readers. This also means I probably won't be on social media nearly as much (that is also part of my goal here), so if you have a google account, follow me so you can be apprised of those times when I am posting something. I don't want to hide, and I love the interaction, so please, post comments and I'll be sure to respond!

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Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality

 

Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality by Federico Campagna
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I had high expectations for Technic and Magic, since it had come so strongly recommended by my favorite podcast Weird Studies. I was excited for the prospects the book held, but I must admit that, at first, the setup felt a little . . . pedantic? For some reason, the Ralph Bakshi animated movie Wizards seemed appropriate to the opening salvoes of Campagna's analysis. And while I do love that movie, I did not want to simply read a book that was a rehash of the overly-simplistic "technology bad, magic good" argument. Also, I am often suspicious of works that explicitly or implicitly identify themselves as Marxist or Neo-Marxist critique, mainly because these forms can so often be idealized and lacking nuance. But in this case, I can see the utility of these arguments because of the natural mapping of scientific to economic power structures and people's blind faith in those structures. Honestly, I felt the book was largely apolitical, or at least dismissive of both liberal and conservative attempts to subsume interpretations of "reality" under their respective rubrics. Not directly dismissive, but passive, really. I honestly didn't feel like Campagna was concerned with politics here. Or at least, he barely nodded in that direction. This is a book about an individual's view of and participation in "reality". If anything, it's a touch anarchic.

Campagna's outline and explanation of the basic structure of Technic's version of reality felt well-reasoned and organized. Of course, that's easier when one realizes that Technic's overarching "power" comes from the use of linguistic strictures as a way of describing and categorizing . . . well, everything. The logical extreme of the argument is that "if it can't be explained in words, it's not real". I'll leave it at that, but there Campagna does an excellent job of breaking down how this "power" (this is my word, not his) radiates out to encompass all aspects of the way we think about reality. And before you go asking "what is reality," I'm not going to go over it, as Campagna takes an entire chapter to describe in detail what he means, and I'm not about to transcribe an entire chapter of a philosophical work. He wrote the chapter so I don't have to. Sorry / not sorry.

i worried that the second half of the book would not provide some practical examples of alternative paradigms that can provide some kind of escape from the Technic-al world. Without this, this text becomes sheer nihilism, with an especial emphasis on how we are trapped en masse. If one were to finish the book halfway through, the end result would likely be deep depression. Campagna laid out the skeletal structure of the "Magic" reality system, and I was skeptical if he could clothe those bones with flesh (the unsubtle reference to Ezekiel is intentional, by the way).

The arguments on the Magic side seemed a little more subtle, a little less cogent than the arguments about the structure of Technic. Can we think / work our way into a Magic reality? Can we even picture, clearly, what a world outside of Technic would look like? I hoped so, but I had my doubts that Campagna could effectively lead the way.

The main reason for my distrust while reading the second half of the book was that the biggest weakness of Campagna's book was a lack of examples. Perhaps he felt that pulling discrete data out of context was too "Technic" of a move, but a couple of case-studies would have gone a long way in more fully understanding the theory that is the kernel and the whole of his "Magic" proposal.

However, in the last chapter, through the use of "Secret," "Initiation," and the "As If" motif, Campagna gives some hints (though not outright instruction) as to how one can begin to implement Magic reality while living in a Technic world. This saves the book from the pile of pseudo-philosophical texts that present all the problems, but provide no solutions; or, at best, they present the need for "further exploration". But this is not what I came here to seek. Thankfully, Campagna does provide some starting points for a new way of thinking, a magic way of thinking.

It must be said that "Magic" here is not about illusion, but there is a strong element of the trickster throughout this last section. It is more, however, about tapping into the ineffable in the way that only you, as a "self" can. This is strongly opposed to the Technic view of the individual as a cog in the machine of ever-more efficient production and becoming. It is about Being, not Becoming.

Campagna ends on a hopeful note, albeit an open-ended note. As with all difficult texts, the reader is left to ponder what is presented and start on the path to reaching their own conclusions.

I think this book is necessary. It's not a utopian piece, at least not on the societal level. In fact, Campagna makes it clear that Magic is just one more way to contextualize reality beyond that of Technic. And while he doesn't, alas, provide any other concrete examples, he has shown a way (though not the way) to reconstruct reality, along with a roadmap or intellectual structure of how one might find their own way. He's taught us, as it were, how to fish. It's up to us to outfit ourselves and find the best places to drop our nets.

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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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Red Shift

 

Red Shift by Alan Garner


"This is a 156 page paperback from the '70s, written for teens. How hard can it be?"

"Does the name Samuel Beckett mean anything to you?"

(not a quote from the book - this is my brain speaking to itself.)

Let me start by saying "don't read this book". At least, not yet. Trust me, you're going to need some help here. If I had not heard The Folk Horror Podcast (now defunct, I believe) episode about Red Shift, I don't know that I would have found this book as quickly as I did. I most certainly would NOT have understood what was going on. The gentlemen on that podcast did a great job of analyzing both the novel and the television version of Red Shift. Sure, they spoiled it like a renegade piece of shrimp left under the couch for a month, but, honestly, without spoilers, I don't know that I would have understood half of what was going on.

This is a hard book. Get some help, then read it!

My facetious comment about Beckett was, well, not really all that facetious. In fact, I'd say that most of Samuel Beckett's short stories are more easily comprehended (though not his "big three," which are among the most challenging works I've ever read). It's okay to have a help, a guide. Dante had his Virgil. I would recommend finding The Folk Horror Podcast episode on Red Shift, then reading
This is a book that will bear re-reading, at least for me. I had glimpses of a psychological and emotional depth that peeked out from between the lines every once in a while, but since I was struggling to "keep up," these were acknowledged and quickly darted away from my conscious mind. Next time I read this, I want to dive in headfirst, even though I know it's going to break my heart even more than it did the first time (thank goodness I didn't read this as a teenager - I don't think I ever would have recovered from that depressive episode). Next time, I'm telling Virgil to stay put. Next time, I'm going at it alone, going in without a crutch, facing this head on, and taking my lumps.

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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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If you like my writing and want to help my creative endeavors, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!

Glowburn, Episode 4: Stowaways on the Warden

Glowburn, Episode 4: Stowaways on the Warden

Please fasten your seatbelts at this time and stow any and all artifacts or adventuring equipment underneath your seat or in the overhead compartments: In this episode, we are taking off with the Starship Warden to explore Metamorphosis Alpha. Judge Forrest recounts Gameholecon and we hear an actual voice of the Ancient Ones! Judge Bill and Judge Forrest then unleash an unintentionally horrific pair of artifacts on Terra A.D. Opening and closing theme song is Juno by Chronox.

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If you like my writing and want to help out, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!

Glowburn Podcast Announcement

Yes, it's official: I am a podcaster! I'm happy to announce that co-host Bill Hamilton and I have released the first episode of Glowburn a podcast dedicated to the Mutant Crawl Classics RPG and post-apocalyptic roleplaying. You can hear the first episode by going to podcast.glowburn.org! I have to acknowledge the many hours of work put in by those behind the intro/outro/bumpers and sound engineering, so thanks to Bob Brinkman (of the Sanctum Secorum podcast) and Hector "The Missile" Cruz of Hectophonic productions.

You can also access Glowburn via iTunes. If you listen to it there, please leave a rating! And be sure to tell your friends!

UPDATE 2024: For some reason the episodes are disappearing from iTunes. Bill has begun uploading episodes on youtube, which you can find here. 

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If you like my writing and want to help out, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!