Escape as Illusion: THE FORGIVEN

Under a shattering sky

Lawrence Osborne, I can't decide if I want to shake your hand or slap your face. 

Your new novel, THE FORGIVEN, has done the unforgivable – and great thing – of shattering one of my last illusions. The belief that – should everything go tits up – I could flee urban America and be healed in some cheap, foreign idyll. 

The nutshell plot:  David and Jo, a middle-aged couple on the skids, head off from London to see their stylish gay friends, Richard and Dally, at their Moroccan compound. Along the way, something terrible happens. Upon arrival, they join a gaggle of ambitious pretenders and hedonistic fatalists, hash in the air, too-loud flirtations on offer, and everyone deciding whether to even bother asking themselves:  Where do we go from here? 

It's a wrenching, worthwhile read. 

I met Osborne maybe seven or eight years ago. Enormously tall with a wooly mop of curly hair and a throaty laugh that shook the rafters, I wonder how he could ever be an unobtrusive observer anywhere. But he's clearly mixed in this desperado ex-pat milieu. 

From page 108:

They went past an open space with people dancing. David watched them as if he were deaf, as if the music didn't exist, which made it a horrible sight. People jiffing about like epileptics. He loved only the smell of the expensive perfume on the women's bodies, sweated off and floating free. Why hadn't they gone to Rome instead? This very moment, they could be sitting down at Ristorante 59 on Via Angelo Brunetti and ordering a nice cold bottle of Greco di Tufa. What a mistake he had made in coming here. But he had made it for Jo, and he was sure it would "mend her," as he so often put it to himself. Everyone can be a fool. 

She needed a break, a real break. She hadn't written anything in years. She was bitterly unhappy, and maybe it was mostly because of him, but there it was – one should never deviate from what one really likes. The whole idea of "exploring" as an earnest moral project is pitifully ridiculous, and it always leads to failure, if not acute suffering. What a fool he'd been. There was no need to travel at all, really, except to go somewhere more beautiful, which for David meant an Italian or a French city with a better way of life than London or New York. Places with better food, calmer dynamics, better architecture. You went there and recharged your batteries. You drank and ate unreasonably, with no though to what you would look like next week with fatter love handles, and that was good. Life was better for a while, so you got your money's worth. Most of the rest of the world, on the other hand, was just hassle. Perhaps he just didn't understand it.

I'm afraid Osborne's internal dialogue for Jo on page 142 is eerily similar to occasional visits to my own rubber room upstairs. It's just too close to reprint. Read it yourself.  And perhaps weep. 

Can't Delete the Street

Protesting outside Indian Consulate 9 January 2013

How many people does it take to create an international incident?

Eight, judging by the Indian consulate's skittishness on Wednesday.

VS, a friend and Indian national, had been distraught for weeks about the gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh Pandey. She organized a protest via Facebook. About 12 others and I signed on for some picket duty on 64th Street across from the New York consulate. 

As I turned the corner from Fifth Avenue, I could hear VS and her crew of maybe five others chanting, "India: Save our sisters!" Selma, it wasn't. But it was important. 

I took a poster from her hand-drawn pile and added my voice. "Fast-track justice!" "India:  Prosecute rape!" "Justice now, India!" 

Honestly, we were a pitiful little cluster. We were infinitely more powerful, however, than an online petition with a thousand signatures. The folks rustling the consulate's curtains – sneaking peeks – could not just hit delete and be done with us. 

Somebody called the cops instead. 

NYPD rolled up and respected our right to assemble and shout. Refreshing!

CNN India took some b-roll; maybe we were on New Delhi TV. No matter.

Our group shape-shifted, adding and subtracting, throughout the afternoon. Being present. Being heard. Being real to the officials across the way. 

Sometimes that is the best we can do. And it far better than fuming in front of screens. 

Mr. UnGoogle-able

No computer bug was going to catch me unprepared. As the Y2K crossover hour drew near, I knew I'd done all I could. The case of garbanzo beans stashed under my bed, the three sets of flashlight batteries, the $500 cash in the desk, the plan to join a mob of fellow Chicagoans along the frozen lakefront for midnight fireworks (or shared gobsmacking as Burnham skyscrapers go black and crumple), yes, I'd done the best that I could under these strange circumstances. 

And I would not be alone. I would hug and kiss someone special no matter what happened. 

He would toss back his grey Jew-bro, and laugh his hoarse, grizzled laugh – product of far too many Marlboros and cognacs. He'd make cynical asides. He'd scream it was entirely too cold and entirely too herd-minded to be outside in the first place. He'd rush back in and taunt my basset hound, to their mutual delight. And he'd take me to bed. 

Not a bad night.  One of 100 or so we had together. He was a significant other. 

So why do I not know if this man is alive or dead today? 

I have zero desire to rekindle a romance or even a friendship with him. But I have a nagging need to find out if he still walks the earth. Two other significant others died within the past three years. One death was well known; one accidently discovered via a related (but not direct) Google search. A similar search will not yield information on this man. 

His name is similar to a Hollywood actor. He would never be on Facebook or participate any self-promotional tripe. Others have written of his work, but many reviews are over 10 years old.  He is unGoogle-able.  A situation that the Mr. Greene I knew in 2000 would have found most satisfying. 

Incandescent

The 75-watt lightbulb goes dark. Like a candle in the wind...

– From the Despicable/Lowbrow quadrant of New York Magazine's The Approval Matrix, 1/14/13

My love is true

Two weeks ago, friends served us a wonderful Christmas dinner at their apartment. It was the first time we had seen the place. Pretty huge by Manhattan standards, and, without being showy, had show-stopping views of the 59th St Bridge and Midtown. Our hardworking hosts had earned every glimpse.

So why did the dining room feel cold? Discomforting. Medicinal even. 

It wasn't what was on the table, or who was sitting around it. 

It was what was above and to the left of it. An unremarkable lighting fixture with an infernal CFL bulb hissing its icy blue death-ray over our faces. 

A wee dramatic, Ms. Bergmann, don't you think? I think not. A perfectly jolly evening upended (ok, only in my mind) by this twisted CFL snake. I'm not afraid of live serpents, but a future of nothing but eco-bulbs gives me the vapors.

Incandescent bulb-hording is a thing, and as GE is my witness, I'm giving every spare inch of closet space to bulbage. 

Maybe we shall have "special occasion lighting" alongside the Wedgewood, reserved only for Thanksgiving and funeral nosh. Maybe "she had 60-watters" will be the 2016's party boast. Maybe screwing in a freshie before screwing (of course with rosy silk scarf shade drape, thank you and RIP, Helen Gurley Brown) will be a notable ploy with the OK Cupidocracy. 

I don't know. But I will be glowing until you claw that last paper sleeve from my deservedly blue, dead hands. 

The Importance of Questioning Importance

I decided a while ago that I would only do things that are really important or really fun.

– Writer Lawrence Wright via profile published in NYT 

Well and good, Larry. But how do you determine what is really important?

Fun requires no interrogation. Fun makes us laugh, feel light and bright and free. It is the ultimate in Buddha via Oprah directive to be in the moment. The fun-maker experiences the fun in the doing, and in its afterglow. One may not be certain of an opportunity's fun-factor prior to participation – but careful observation of self and others gives pretty good odds going in.

Can't say the same for important. Let us count a few epistemological conundrums.

How do you know it's important before embarking? You must have a categorical understanding of important topics. I'm guessing Mr. Wright has such a list with big headers like Justice, Truth, Religion, War, Bravery. If the project falls under one of the eternal battles, it could be deemed important.

But why? If it is an eternal battle, it will by definition not be won or lost by blasting another book into the canon. So, is simply being in the fight what makes it important?

Important to the writer, sure. Important to the reader – if the writer does well – of course. Important to Society or The Way Things Will Happen From Now On? Maybe not. 

I envy Wright's (assumed) belief that something important to him will be important to readers. And the attendant belief that shared importance is enough. 

Best Android Apps for Studying Spanish

Need help with Spanish? Robert Muth, Ph.D., has developed some of the best Android apps for learning Spanish, including all those tricky forms of the Spanish “to be” verbs:  ser and estar.  Knowledge es delicioso, no?

For example, his Spanish Verbs Trainer app – available in free and $3.99 pro versions – reinvents the idea of drilling with flashcards. 

You select a drill, say imperfect tense verbs (imperfecto en espanol). The app will prompt you with a Spanish verb e.g. caber (to fit into). You then think through all the forms of caber, including the one asked for – in the example below, the first-person form: yo. Think you know it? Just tap the lower half of the screen to reveal the correct answer.

Now here’s the exciting part. Once the answers are revealed, you self-evaluate. If you rock-solid knew the answer, you rate yourself a 5 on that one. If you had no clue, you give yourself a 0. So-so, anywhere from a 1 to 4. 

App-tastic software engineer Robert Muth

The Android app then uses your self-evaluation to customize future drills. It will rarely ask you about the items you already know, and will keep asking you those toughies that you’ve been avoiding.

“I have a longstanding interest in learning Spanish,” says German-born Muth. “What I like best about my app is its voice output. You have the option of listening to the pronunciation of the word as you cement all the conjugations and vocabulary in your brain.”

Since developing his five Spanish apps, Muth has put his intelligent flashcards to work for students who need help with English, French, Italian, Portuguese and German. All are available at his Appicenter store on Google Play.

As for me, well, I found the apps easy to use, but also a humbling test of my true abilities. Vosotros? Ay, yay, yay. I’ve got some estudiando-ing to do. 

Sermon on the 49 MUNI

San Francisco is a walker’s paradise, but after three consecutive days of logging 20,000+ steps, my dogs were tired. 

MUNI passport in hand, jumped onto the 49 bus headed to Mission & 21^st where my friends would meet me for dinner. I’m obsessed with punctuality; I left the hotel with ample time to spare. A traffic jam snarling Van Ness was not in my plan. Be stoic, I thought. It will clear up. But it didn’t. Not for a very long while anyway.

“We told you this would happen,” a man said in the front half of the bus. I could see him, but heard him continue, “Nobody would listen. ‘You’re just a bunch of dumb hippies.’ But we were right. There are too many of us. Gridlock! Chaos! Despair. Too many people; too bad no one listened to us dumb hippies.” 

People are human treasure. But looking at the frustrated faces of my fellow riders stuffed into this aluminum can, it was clear:  we are choking on our riches. Paul Ehrlich had the timing wrong, but he and this dumb hippie may have been right.