Running for Your Life: Faulkner Fix II

Reading “Go Down, Moses” by William Faulkner is like coin-mining an ancient plain, ever so periodically, while stirring pools upon pools of patience that in the early pages seems beyond human capacity because so much of what is put down seems, at first, aimless, even inert, you come upon a gold doubloon, an object of such perfection that your heart skips a bit, to wit:

“Then suddenly he knew why he had never wanted to own any of it, arrest at least that much of what people called progress, measure his longevity at least against that much of its ultimate fate.  He seemed to see . . . a dimension free of both time and space where once more the untreed land warped and wrung to mathematical squares of rank cotton for the frantic old-world people to turn into shells to shoot at one another, would find ample room for both – the names, the faces of the old men he had known and loved and for a little while outlived, moving again among the shades of tall unaxed trees and sightless brakes where the wild strong immortal game ran forever before the tireless belling immortal hounds, falling and rising phoenix-like to the soundless guns.”

Next: Running for Your Life: Concrete Utopia

Running for Your Life: Prospect Park Shoot

On alternate days I run, typically for about 45 minutes – five miles more or less – and like to take a route to the skating rinks in Prospect Park.

For years, from the mid-90s to the late ’00s, M and I would go for morning skates, back when there was an outdoor facility, called Kate Wollman Rink.

Now, it’s a swishy two-rink affair, one under a skylight cover, the other in the open air.

The second ice surface will, from time to time, be commandeered for product photo and video shoots.

I’ve seen Martha Stewart signs, but typically there is nothing outward that would identify the client.

On this day (Dec. 6), I noticed the shoot but kept running along the path near the ice, a route I like because as an avid skater I admire the skate cuts in the surface of the ice, and perchance, be drawn back into memories of mornings past.

Just as I get to the middle of the outdoor rink wall, a woman starts cursing like a sailor, slashing my reverie to ribbons. F-words, S-words, a cascade of muck, pierces the morning cold, the “talent” in the shooting pen is a girl in expensive-looking winter wear, eight years old max, looking wanly on.

When I return on the same path, two members of the shoot crew block my way as I attempt to return along the public route I take every other day for months of the year. Like a good doobie, I retreat and look for a second best way to run home.

Turned away – yet another example of how in our profit-obsessed culture, “your options have changed.”

Next: Running for Your Life: Concrete Utopia

Running for Your Life: Simply “Reporter”

When it comes to making a difference, try this:

Being a reporter.

Not a journalist, not a pundit, not someone who would distinguish oneself through ambition to establish some home truth that separates and divides, builds yet another data and opinion silo that forces the genuflection of the media.

Rather, trust the path followed by Seymour Hersh in his simply titled book, “Reporter.”

I’ve been in a news business awhile. Since 1979, the first four years as a reporter, the balance as an editor.

But there’d be no news without reporters. And rarely is there a book about one dedicated to getting the story with the tenacity of a junk yard dog.

“Sy” Hersh shows the way in this book. Consider this essential reading.

Next: Running for Your Life: Faulkner Fix II

   

Running for Your Life: Harari Heard From

Tech appears to be so awash with guilt for what it is doing to the common good that it would pay thousands in fees to an Israeli philosopher, Yuval Noah Harari, and call him a futurist in order to tag his analysis as commercial rather than academic.

Alas, in America, serious science and fine art must pay homage to entertainment.

Imperial orders organize surrounding bread and circus. Harari ain’t bread, so he must be circus.

Harari, author of “21 Lessons for the 21^st Century,” sees a near future of two classes: elite and useless.

We are so quick to adopt the convenient path before the moral one. We don’t protest or be dubbed a luddite, the phrase, “Your options have changed.” Instead, we regard it as being material to accommodating to the tech-facilitated world.

By this standard, those who go and stay off line accept a lesser life.

Harari rejects this precept. Why? Because he predicts artificial intelligence will disrupt to the point of dissolution of what it means to be human.

Does Silicon Valley clap its ears, or challenge this doomsday message?

No, Silicon Valley invites Harari to speak to its workers.

Why? Surely in order to develop a vaccine to inoculate the virus.

Smart people in power seek a way – above all else – to stay in power.

How best not to neutralize the threat that Harari’s ideas pose but to co-opt them.

Inside, he is pitched to workers as one of them, something to be hacked and, then, exploited.

Even when he preaches the terrible destruction that thrives in the core of the social media tech virus that is bigger than all us.

Next: Running for Your Life: Simply “Reporter”

Running for Your Life: Required Reading

When it comes to writing for a blog, or writing in general, there’s an imperative that lurks unspoken.

That is the writer, as a creature of habit, not of Google algorithms, makes unconscious demands of his readers.

Call it hubris, or nerve, an unrealistic  expectation, but in all things to get the best out of something requires a little work.

It’s actually not selfish but unselfish. You know, the common good, sort of thing.

So, in that spirit, I’m asking you to read two books (or at minimum look them up on Google Nation):

“21 Lessons for the 21^st Century” by Yuval Noah Harari, and

“Reporter” by Seymour Hersh

in preparation for blog posts to come.

P.S. Buy the books if you have the money. It’s part of the message.

Next: Running for Your Life: Harari Heard From