Tag Archives: books

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

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ocean

I’ve loved fantasy since my earliest childhood days of hearing stories read aloud.  Growing up I lived on The Wind in the Willows, Godzilla, Norse mythology, science fiction, Frankenstein and the folklore of many cultures.  In college, I discovered Tolkien, The Odyssey, C.S. Lewis, as well as Jung and Campbell, who served as guides to the often trackless realms of the other worlds.

If you follow fantasy literature for any length of time, you notice that authors who bring forth new visions are often followed by scores of knockoffs by writers looking for bandwagons to ride.  Neil Gaiman is an exception to that rule; he sows his unique personal visions across traditional genres in a manner that can’t be imitated.

How would you follow the Hugo and Nebula award winning American Gods, 2001, a dark, modern day Iliad that pits old gods like Mr. Wednesday (Odin) against new deities like Media, the goddess of television?  A year later, Gaiman published Coraline, sometimes compared to Alice in Wonderland for its unflinching look at the terrors of childhood and winner of Hugo and Nebula awards for best novella.

Neil Gaiman, 2009, by Kyle Cassidy. CC-BY-SA-3.0

Neil Gaiman, 2009, by Kyle Cassidy. CC-BY-SA-3.0

In June, Gaiman released The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which he called “the most serious, dark, weird and personal thing I’ve ever written” in an interview called “The Illusionist” in the June 24, 2013, issue of Time.     

Illusionist is the only possible title for the creator of Ocean, which began as a short story and grew.  You reach the end of a nail biting ride with a man recalling a summer of terror and beauty that happened (or probably happened) when he was seven, and you realize that although you have been in his head and his heart for 180 pages, you don’t even know his name.  You know the name of Lettie Hempstock, who lives at the end of the lane, an 11 year old girl who claims that her duck pond is really an ocean.  You know Lettie’s name, but you don’t know what she is, and when you ask how long she has been 11, she gives you a smile but no answer.

Like Dr. Who’s TARDIS (Gaiman wrote an episode this year), Lettie’s ocean is bigger inside than it appears from without.  When he ventures in, Gaiman’s protagonist says, “I saw the world I had walked from my birth and I understood how fragile it was, that the reality I knew was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger.  I saw the world from above and below.  I saw that there were patterns and gates and paths beyond the real.  I saw all these things and understood them and they filled me, just as the waters of the ocean filled me.”

One of Gaiman’s numerous strengths is his ability to remember “extremes of horror and ecstasy that children experience.”  He read books as a child and realized the adult writers had forgotten.  He vowed not to, and The Ocean at the End of Lane proves that he has not.

Gaiman resists “fantasy” as a label, but for convenience I will use it to say this is one of the finest fantasies I have ever read.  In the Time interview he also said, “I’m now more famous than I’m comfortable being.”  Though I understand his concern, I have to say, “Dude, you brought it on yourself – learn to deal with it.”

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, by George Packer

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In the first sentence of The Unwinding, George Packer tells us what his title means:  “No one can say when the unwinding began – when the coil that held Americans together in its secure and sometimes stifling grip first gave way.”

Packer is a staff writer for The New Yorker, the author of an award winning book on American involvement in Iraq, two novels, and a play.  You could almost guess it would take someone with Packer’s chops to weave together the disparate threads of change that have irreversibly altered the country we thought we lived in.

It began in 1973, when the mid-east oil embargo coincided with models showing American had reached peak oil production.  And in 1977 when the steel mills in Youngstown, Ohio, that once stretched side-by-side for 25 miles, shut down.  When an idealistic young man named Jeff Connaughton, got an MBA and then decided to go to Wall Street, because by the early 80’s, getting a business degree and going to work for a company “that actually made things,” was viewed as failure.  When, according to Packer, concern over exported jobs prompted Wal-Mart to hang “Made in the U.S.A” signs over racks of clothing from Bangladesh.  When Connaughton became a Washington lobbyist and one of his colleagues told him, “Four-hundred thousand a year just doesn’t go as far as it used to.”

Poets see things before the rest of us, and Packer quotes Bruce Springsteen, who put it like this in 1984:  “Don’t you feel like you’re a rider on a downbound train?”

Now, almost 30 years later, when we all know we’re on a downbound train, Packer turns a light on some of the hydra-headed influences that led us collectively down this road.  He also shows us where positive change is likely to come from.  And where it is not.  It won’t come from the power elites, though it may come from disaffected refugees from those elites.

Jeff Connaughton, who made it into the outer circles of the inner circle, as a legal council for the Clinton White House, left Washington after being “radicalized by a stunning realization that our government has been taken over by a financial elite that runs the government for the plutocracy.”  Connaughton is now writing a book called The Payoff:  Why Wall Street Always Wins.

Packer also profiles Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who co-founded Paypal and helped bankroll Facebook as a startup.  Thiel put it like this:  “…the deep secret is there’s nobody at the steering wheel at all…People pretend to be in control, but the deep secret is there is no one.”  Thiel now looks for unusual entrepreneurial projects to fund.  Claiming that education is “the latest U.S. economic bubble,” he compares university administrators to sub-prime mortgage lenders.  In response, he began awarding Thiel Fellowships, two year grants of $100,000 each, to 20 people a year under the age of 20, willing to leave school to work on projects that “could make the world a better place.”

Packer doesn’t just profile movers and shakers in the post-unwinding world.  He details the story of Dean Price, son of generations of tobacco farmers, who overcomes multiple obstacles, including personal bankruptcy, to establish a working and profitable biodiesel refinery after learning about peak oil and taking the message to heart.

George Packer

author George Packer

In writing the book, Packer spent a lot of time with Tammy Thomas, an African-American woman who was 11 when the mills closed in Youngstown.  A few years later, she found herself an unwed mother of three, with a fierce determination, which she attributed to her grandmother, to get off welfare, even as jobs evaporated and gangs took over the neighborhoods.  She succeeded in doing so, and is now a community organizer and advocate, but her story makes clear that the odds were stacked against her.  She survived for 19 years in a car parts factory but is scornful of politicians who attach the label of “good jobs” to such work.  “Mitt Romney would be dead in week,” she said.

Packer interweaves the individual stories in a way that keeps you turning pages, like a novel with a large cast of characters that you care about.  Not all the stories have happy endings, and the suffering of individuals, cities, and regions is palpable.  By giving so many seemingly separate events the name, Unwinding, Packer helps clarify connections I had been sensing but unable to articulate.

“Alone on a landscape without solid structures, Americans have to improvise their own destinies, plot their own stories of success and salvation.”

A problem has to be named and described before we can begin to imagine solutions, and for this reason The Unwinding is a profoundly important book.

The North Wind’s Gift: a trickster tale from Italy

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If you haven’t already done so, I suggest you read the preceding post, Notes on Trickster stories, which provides a background and context for this article.  Both posts were inspired by “The North Wind’s Gift,” a tale from Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales, 1956.  The story came to my attention in Allan Chinen’s discussion of tricksters and appealed because of its relative simplicity and relevance to our own times.

Italian Folktales

Here’s a synopsis of the story:

Once there was a farmer named Geppone who toiled in his fields every day of the year but could barely feed his wife and three children.  The North Wind blew at harvest time and ruined his crops.  Finally Geppone had enough and set out to find the North Wind and demand justice.  He reached the North Wind’s castle.  “Every year you ruin my crops,” he said.  “Because of you, my family is starving to death.”

“What can I do?” the North Wind asked.

“I leave that up to you,” Geppone replied.

The North Wind’s heart went out to the little farmer.  He brought out a box.  “This is a magical box which will give you food when you open it, but tell no one else about the magic or you’ll lose it.”

Geppone thanked the Wind and set out for home.  On the way, he opened the box.  Instantly a table appeared, piled with food.  When he got home, Geppone opened the box again and treated his family to a feast.  He told his wife not to tell anyone, and especially to say nothing to the priest, who was their landlord and a greedy man.

The next day, the priest spoke to Geppone’s wife and wrung the story out of her.  He summoned Geppone and  demanded the box on pain of eviction, offering seeds in return, which proved to be worthless.  As bad off as he was before, the farmer returned to the North Wind’s castle to ask for another boon.

At first, the North Wind refused, saying, “You ignored my warning.  Why should I help you again?”  Geppone pleaded, and reminded the Wind that he was still the cause of the family’s ruin.

“Very well,” said the North Wind at last.  He gave Geppone a magnificent gold box, but said, “Open this only when you are starving.”

On his way home, Geppone stopped and opened the new box.  This time a ruffian with a club jumped out and began to beat the farmer, who struggled to close the lid.  When he did, the ruffian vanished.  Geppone limped home, sore and bruised.  When his wife and children clamored to try the golden box, Geppone left the room.  This time two ruffians jumped out and began to beat the family.  Geppone slipped back into the room, closed the box, and the assailants vanished.

“This is what you must do,” he said to his wife.  “Tell the priest I brought home an even finer box, but say nothing else.”

Geppone’s wife understood and did as her husband instructed.  When the priest called the farmer and demanded the golden box, Geppone feigned reluctance, but at last agreed to trade it for the original box.  The priest rubbed his hands.  The bishop was due to join him for Mass the next day; a feast would be just the thing to win the approval of his superior.

The next day, after Mass, the priest, the bishop, and their retinue gathered for supper.  When the priest opened the box, six ruffians jumped out and beat the clerics.  Geppone, who was waiting at the window, took his time in closing the box to save them.

No one objected when he carried this second box home.  The priest never bothered Geppone again.  The farmer was careful to guard the North Wind’s gifts, and his family lived in ease and comfort for the rest of their days.

You can read the story as it appears in Italian Folktales here:  The North Wind’s Gift

***

It’s clear at the start of the story that we’re in a post-heroic fairytale world.  Geppone is not out to slay a dragon, rescue a princess, or win a kingdom – he just wants to survive.

Allan Chinen speaks of the different life stages that different fairytales address.  While the majority center on young people venturing into the world,  “middle-tales” like this have older protagonists with different kinds of problems.  From a Jungian perspective, Chinen notes that tricksters usually don’t show up in our dreams when we’re 18 and planning to take the world by storm – they visit us when we’re 40, with a mortgage, a couple of kids, and a car that needs an engine overhaul.

Geppone works from dawn until dark but can barely make ends meet.  His wife doesn’t listen to him, and the landlord threatens eviction.  This setup makes his story seem contemporary – if we’re not in this situation ourselves, one of our neighbors probably is.

We get the feeling Geppone has been down on his luck and taking it on the chin for a while.  Something finally awakens within him and spurs him to action.  As a result, he meets the North Wind, a wild spirit who will become his guardian and mentor and teach him the wiles of the trickster.

The North Wind is invoked in the Song of Solomon, in Aesop, and in Greek and Norwegian folklore.  He shows up in George McDonald’s novel, On the Back of the North Wind, in the stories of Hans Christian Anderson, and in Pokemon.  The North Wind is also associated with thunder gods like Zeus and Odin.  It’s not surprising that he is a shadowy trickster in Italy, where invaders and winter both arrive from the north.

Almost every successful fairytale character wins the help of a guiding spirit, and the North Wind’s help is just what Geppone needs.  It prompts him first to stand up for himself and ask for what he needs and then to learn enough strategy to overcome his oppressive priest and landlord.  To Jungians, fairytale allies like helpful animals, fairy godmothers, and nature spirits represent parts of the unconscious mind that are older and wiser than ego, which gets us into trouble in the first place.

What this means in practical terms is a vast subject, beyond the scope of a few blog posts.  Jung would suggest to patients who were comfortable in a religious tradition to return to it for guidance.  Much of Jung’s work aimed at helping people estranged from existing traditions who still needed to tap inner sources of wisdom.

In the “Power of Myth,” Bill Moyers asked Joseph Campbell where ordinary (i.e., busy) people might look to experience the wisdom of myth.  Campbell suggested we take 30 minutes or an hour a day in a quiet place where we can read what inspires us and perhaps keep a journal.

Just like this story, the psyche is home to ruffians and riches, and the old stories are not to be taken literally.  James Hillman, a prominent Jungian thinker, always insisted that literalism is the greatest enemy of inner wisdom.  So how does trickster wisdom manifest  in our world right now?  I don’t think we have to look very far.

A world that’s increasingly dysfunctional serves as a magnet for trickster energy, for good as well as for ill.  A Facebook friend mentioned that he once loaned out a book on trickster mythology and never got it back.  That fits the myths of trickster gods like Hermes who are also patrons of thieves.  Hermes may be the supreme image of the trickster.  As fluid as the metal which bears his Roman name, Mercury, he was the messenger between gods and humans who also conducted souls to the afterlife.  Patron of travelers, herdsmen, poets, orators, athletes, and inventors, his herald’s staff, the caduceus, is the symbol of healing to this day.

I find myself watching for positive manifestations of trickster energy, which usually turn up under the radar of corporate and government organizations which carry a vested interest in the status quo.  When you look, quite a few individuals and groups are trying out new solutions.  I’ll post at least one example in the near future.

In the meantime I would love to hear where you find trickster energy in yourself and in those around you.

Notes on Trickster stories

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Many of you will have heard the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”  We do, beyond any question.  With a longstanding interest in folklore, I often find myself wondering which, if any, of the old tales can speak to us now and illumine our situation?  I always come back to the trickster stories.

Br’er Rabbit, an Americanized African trickster, from an 1881 book cover by Frederick S. Church. Public domain

Trickster tales are told around the world and may be among our earliest stories; in some traditions, tricksters create the world and bring fire to humans.  Sometimes benefactors and sometimes criminals, tricksters are contrarians, rule breakers, restless beings who disrupt and disturb, who keep creation moving, dealing out life and death in turn.

Groucho Marx, Loki, all of Shakespeare’s fools, and many animals, from Coyote, to Spider, to Br’er Rabbit are tricksters.  We named our first rescue dog Kit, short for Kitsune, which is Japanese for “Fox,” another famous trickster.  The reason should be obvious in this picture:

Kit

Kit

We have to lock the windows when driving with Kit because she knows how to hit the window button with her paw to roll it down so she can hang her head out, bark at other dogs, and catch the breeze. If Kit had thumbs, we’d be in serious trouble!

Establishments have little use for tricksters, and it’s easy to see why.  We may like them in the movies, but no one wants the Three Stooges to work on their plumbing. Schools are ruthless in their suppression of tricksters.  And yet, in times when the norms break down and the culture looses its rudder, trickster energy may be what we need.  Free of cultural norms and concern for what is polite or even legal, tricksters focus on what will work in the here and now.

After interviews with twin tower survivors, researchers discovered that people waited an average of ten minutes before deciding to exit the buildings.  “Do you think we should leave?”  “Will we have to use vacation time if we go?”  “What about the report I have to finish?”  Once they decided to exit, survivors spent several more precious minutes logging out of their systems and locking their desks and file cabinets.

Researchers concluded from this and other studies, that the human brain is often dangerously slow in reacting to radically different events or disasters.  These are the times when we need trickster energy.  Unbound by convention, the trickster jumps on a desk and yells, “The sky is falling – get the f**k out!”

Allan Chinen, M.D., a psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry, wrote about tricksters from the Jungian perspective.  In 2012, I discussed his Once Upon a Midlife, an analysis of folklore aimed at that stage of life.  In 1993, Chinen published Beyond the Hero:  Classic Stories of Men in Search of Soul.

beyond the hero

Chinen argues that despite popular concepts and movies like Man of Steel, The Hero is not the core masculine archetype – the Shaman/Trickster is an older, wiser, and more primal energy.

Like most Jungian’s I have read, Chinen regards tricksters as primarily masculine archetypes.  I’m not sure how opinion stands in currently folklore studies; much work has been done with women’s tales in the last 20 years.  It is Gretel, after all, who uses trickery to kill the witch and save her brother.  Only by wiles can Bluebeard be defeated or brothers saved from various enchantments.

I suspect the difference is that full-time tricksters like Coyote are usually male.  You see it in children at play too, and sadly, it is overwhelmingly boys who get dosed with ritalin when they’re not docile enough for the modern classroom.  As Jung and Hillman both observed, what a culture defines as pathology may say more about the culture than the people it labels as defective.

Guardians of the status quo are wary of tricksters and with good reason.  They are almost always subversive – the Stooges only throw pies in the homes of the 1%, and Charlie Chaplin was no friend of the captains of industry.

Charlie Chaplin in "Modern Times." CC-by-SA-2.0

Charlie Chaplin in “Modern Times.” CC-by-SA-2.0

To personify self-preservation; to point out the shadow of a dominant culture; to keep the flame of hope and spirit alive; to demonstrate the power to wit to those who are disenfranchised.  Scholars now believe the Br’er Rabbit tales performed such functions for slaves as the Coyote stories did for Native Americans on the reservations.  In all likelihood, these are the gifts tricksters have given for untold millennia.

Next time I’ll look at a classic trickster story that Allan Chinen told, with an eye to it’s relevance for the 21st century.

Sleepless in Hollywood by Lynda Obst

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Have you been to the movies lately?  Like what you see?  Wonder if it’s a trend?

Today’s edition of Marketplace clued me in on the answer to question three via an interview with Hollywood insider Lynda Obst, producer of The Fisher King and Sleepless in Seattle.  Obst realized something had changed when her son said, “Mom, trying to get movies made because they’re good is so 2003.”  The interview concerned her new book, Sleepless in Hollywood:  Tales from the New Abnormal in the Movie Business.  

sleepless in hollywood

Obst says the “old abnormal” was when she could get movies made because they were good.  DVD sales financed half of studio profits and allowed production of the “smaller” movies she loves, like romantic comedies.  Then domestic DVD sales tanked at the same time as foreign viewership rose, particularly in China and Russia, where there’s an endless demand for our blockbusters and special effects.  You can make “small movies” anywhere in the world, she says, but so far, you can only make blockbusters here.

Which may explain why I’ve been to so few movies this year – when the trailers assault my senses with digitized special effects, I tend to give them a miss, with the exception of movies like Star Trek, because…well, it’s Star Trek.

Sleepless in Hollywood is now in my book queue, in part because Obst’s final chapter is called, “Does the future have a future?” and I want to know her answer to the question.

And a final note on 2013 movies to date – they’ve finally pushed us into the 21st century, with a subscription to Netflix, so there is at least one happy outcome.

Inferno by Dan Brown: a book review

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Inferno

I am one of the millions who couldn’t put The Da Vinci Code down when it was published in 2003.  Dan Brown’s breakout thriller went on to become the second best selling book of all time, trailing only The Bible.  Yet after reading his next offering, The Lost Symbol (2009), I swore off the author for good.  Information overload and a two dimensional, comic strip villain made it a disappointing read.

Time weakened my resolution, and happily so.  With Inferno, published this month, the author has found his stride again.  Weaknesses remain, but Dan Brown can tell an enthralling story.

The code that Robert Langdon must decipher this time comes from Dante’s Divine Comedy, and especially the first book of that trilogy, The Inferno.  It’s safe to say that everyone in the western world, Christian or not, has been influenced by The Divine Comedy, which gave us our graphic geographies of hell, purgatory, and paradise.  Artists then painted Dante’s vision, shaping the devils and angels that still lurk in imagination.

One of those paintings, Botticelli’s “La Mappa dell’Inferno” or “Map of Hell,” is a key to the mystery Langdon must decipher in his race to stop the release of an engineered plague designed to “cull the human herd” and prevent over population from destroying us all.

La Mappa dell'Inferno by Botticelli

La Mappa dell’Inferno by Botticelli

There aren’t many thrillers with stakes higher than this, and all the elements of it are real.  The threat of ever more people struggling for fixed or diminishing resources can hardly be exaggerated.  The threat of bio-terrorism is here.  Will genetic engineering open the gates of heaven or hell?  Into this nail-biting mix, drawn from the headlines, Brown adds a pretty and brilliant sidekick for Langdon, an equally brilliant mad scientist, and black-uniformed spooks in pursuit.  We have all the elements of an engrossing thriller, but Dan Brown has ways of subverting himself.

His most obvious flaw is excessive information dumping.  Inferno has two primary speeds, fast-forward chase scenes and slow motion data uploads.  When the pacing is off, both can become tiresome.

In one scene, Langdon searches for a clue in the 25th canto of Dante’s Paradiso.  He borrows an iPhone from a tourist to google the relevant passage, but then, although all the police in Florence and a surveillance drone are on his tail, the action stops for a treatise on different translations of Dante.  Robert Langdon, aka Brown, should take a page from Sherlock Holmes and not crowd his head or ours with facts that do not bear on the case at hand.

I also had a problem with several late-in-the-story surprises.  In any good thriller, things and people are not what they seem.  Sometimes it takes a magician’s sleight-of-hand and clever misdirection to pull off major twists with characters whose thoughts we have shared all along.  Several of Inferno’s revelations were clunky in a “What the…?” kind of way.  

Even with these flaws, I can recommend the book.  It had been a long time since I’ve found myself carried away by a work of fiction; as I read, I put everything I could on hold to keep turning the pages.

Dan Brown, 2007, by Phillip Scalia, CC-By-SA-3.0

Dan Brown, 2007, by Phillip Scalia, CC-By-SA-3.0

Reading Dan Brown convinces me yet again of the absolute primacy of story.  I had the same reaction after a pilgrimage to the home of Jack London, a writer I loved when I was young.  George Orwell, among others, described London’s writing and use of language as “poor,” yet more than 50 movies have been made from his novels and stories.  Not bad for a writer whose life was over at 40.

Fortunately for everyone who enjoys a gripping tale, Dan Brown, like London before him, has every reason to continue following his own star and forget the whining of critics like me.  If he does, he will likely continue to bring us supremely engrossing fiction.

Where to find “Tales of the Elves: Icelandic Folktales for Children.”

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In December, 2012, I reviewed a wonderful illustrated book of Icelandic folktales, Tales of the Elves.  I’d brought a copy back from our trip to Iceland in the fall, but was unable to find ordering information.

Tales of the Elves cover

At the end of the post, I invited anyone who discovered that information to pass it along, and a reader named Kimberly just did!  Here’s a link to page for this book at Eymundsson, the premier Icelandic bookseller.  This page, in English, gives a price of 2,499 kronur – at about 100 kronur per dollar, that’s $24.99, what I paid in-country.  If you’re still interested, read on, because now the fun begins:

When you add the book to your cart and move on, the next pages are in Icelandic.  With the aid of an online Icelandic to English dictionary, I came up with translations of these questions you’re asked:

Nafn: name
Heimilisfang: address
Postnumer: zip code
Baer: town
Land: That’s country, and there’s a pulldown
Netfang: email address
Simi: phone

Kodi gjafabrefs: Kodi is code, and I couldn’t find the second term. I’m guessing they mean country codes, which from Iceland to the US is 00 + 1 + area code + number.  Here is a look-up table if you live elsewhere.

Okay, fine!  No one ever said navigating through faerie was easy!  Eymundsson says they’re working to bring their international pages online, so one option is to check back with them in six months.

Would I order this book from them if I didn’t have it?

I have a collection of half a dozen illustrated fairytale books I’ve collected over the course of many years and they have an honored place on the bookshelf.  Each one reminds me of some special moment or place when I found it.  Tales of the Elves is the only souvenir I brought back from Iceland, as the sweaters were too warm for this part of California.

The illustrations inside are as fine as the one on the cover, so if you like this kind of illustrated book and have read this far, you won’t be disappointed.

The Worlds Revolve

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As I scanned reviews of The Great Gatsby, I tuned in to one comment about the visionary quality of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book:  he saw the end of the roaring 20’s in 1925, before almost anyone else.

Almost anyone else…

I’d argue that T.S. Eliot, in Prufrock and Other Observations (1917), saw where our 20th century mode of life was leading even before the party began.

Here is how the title poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” begins:

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

And here is how Prufrock ends:

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweek red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

One of the best professors I ever had helped me engage Eliot with the visual imagination, which helped me see how radical he was compared to the literary establishment of the day.  A kind of tired, watered down romanticism was the norm before the war, so describing the sky as “a patient etherized upon the table” was shocking.  “Have you ever seen someone unconscious?” the professor asked.  “Or very sick or dead?  Eliot isn’t describing a postcard sunset.”

But perhaps my most unforgettable poetic image came from another piece in Eliot’s first book.  Regarded as a minor work, “Preludes” is even less cheery than Prufrock.  Here’s how the poem ends:

Wipe your hand across your mouth and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

“Picture it,” the professor said, so I did.  I imagined an empty field on the outskirts of London, on a dark winter’s day.  Old women with scarves, patched sweaters and faded coats circle slowly, eyes on the ground, looking for sticks or slats from a discarded crate they can burn at home to stay warm.  Half a dozen figures or more in slow orbit.  They might as well be 100 miles apart, even though they are next to each other, doing the same thing.

Which worlds revolve like ancient women?  I’ve entertained many answers over the years, but one came up this week that helped clarify a sensation I’ve had very strongly since the November election.

The May 20, Time Magazine cover story featured our current crop of young people who are tagged as “Millennials.”

Time cover, May 30

I’ve read such generational articles since the days when they were written about me and my cohorts.  If you don’t take them too literally, they yield some interesting insights.  In this case, when author, Joel Stein, wrote “Millennials aren’t trying to take over the establishment; they’re growing up without one,” I literally jumped to my feet and ran out to brew some coffee.  I do that a lot when a light bulb goes on.

Millennials are growing up without an establishment.  Bulls-eye.  We’re all growing up without an establishment!

The worlds revolve like ancient women,
gathering fuel in vacant lots.

We’ve always had personal areas of concern, particular to our interests, our regions, and the groups that we align with, but have we ever been so lacking in the kind of national ethos and ideology that used to weld us together as one nation under one official God?

When journalists wrote about my generation, the lines were clear.  We had an ugly war which you were either for or against, yes or no, no ambiguity.  Now it’s all too inviting to forget that we’re still in a war no one believes in anymore, and maybe hasn’t for years.  In earlier days, we knew who was good and who was bad.  Now our enemies change on a regular basis.  Who is our biggest threat this month?  The worlds revolve and I can’t remember.

This week, if you live in Boston, you are concerned with the dead bomber’s burial.  In Washington, you follow the Benghazi hearings.  If you’re in congress or one of the 1%, you care about the deficit, though polls show that 92% of the rest of us do not.

If you live in Pennsylvania, you’ve got a new worry.  The legislature decided it’s probably unconstitutional to ban guns from public college campuses.  Think of armed drunken students on Friday night.  A well regulated militia, indeed.

My own new biggest concern springs from a report that our CO2 levels are higher than they have been in three million years.  I drive a hybrid car and use pumps instead of sprays, but clearly that’s not enough.  Some still say it’s a made up problem, and a few believe these are the end-times, so it’s a moot point.  What do I do if I’m not convinced?  Does anyone write to their senators anymore about anything?

No establishment means no one at the helm.  We’re on a ship without a rudder, or rather, many ships, going in circles like women gathering fuel in vacant lots.  The guy next to you at the stoplight is either talking on bluetooth or talking to himself.  You hope that if it’s the latter, he isn’t too angry and doesn’t have a gun.

House behind vacant lot, 2008, by Samuel A. Love, CC by-NC-ND 2.0

House behind vacant lot, 2008, by Samuel A. Love, CC by-NC-ND 2.0

These days some of those ancient women have concealed weapons and none have had background checks.  You spot a piece of wood at the same moment as another who narrows her eyes as if to say, “Are you feeling lucky today?  Well, are you?”

Yesterday’s paper featured an article on the current generation of survivalists, who now call themselves, “preppers,” a terrible name that sounds like a table condiment or the slacks and sweater look for high school students.  They are getting ready for the big collapse, which they say is just a matter of time.  They make a compelling point – ships without rudders run aground.  One local prepper who teaches his skills to others asks, “What would you do if you hadn’t had any water or food for three days?”

Strictly speaking, I think you die after three days without water, but it’s a good question.  I know what I hope I’d do in a crisis, though I don’t think anyone knows in advance for sure.  I recall stories of people helping each other during disasters and others doing just the opposite.  What’s scary is that I think you tend to help people you view as neighbors, and we all have fewer neighbors than ever before.

The survivalists are right about one thing – you have to plan the future you want and practice for it.  Isn’t that the real question, “the overwhelming question,” as Eliot put it? What do we want our lives to be like?  What kind of lives are worth surviving for?

What would happen if those ancient women teamed up to help each other gather fuel?  That’s so un-20th century, but now that we have no establishment, all bets are off.  That kind of future is so foreign to our current way of life that even with the best intentions and effort, many of us won’t see it in our lifetimes.  But that doesn’t really matter.

Outcomes are not as important as the questions.  What do we want our lives to be like?  How do we want to live?  Better to start asking now, lest the day come when human voices wake us and we drown.