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Literature

Of Courage, Consciousness and Coconuts.

Phew, just in time. Needed a birthday present for a young woman dear to me, an avid and thoughtful reader. Having waded through more junk than I cared for, I finally chanced on a beautifully written, riveting saga that tackles about everything under the sun, from colonialism to capitalism to technology and tyranny of corporations, from independence and interdependence in human relationships to courage and coconuts. Actually that last pairing should be the first in the list, both are corner stones in this multi-generational epic, and the former a decided trait not just of the main protagonists but of the author as well. She did not shy away from tackling multiple existential issues with breathtaking bravura.

Happy birthday, Shels, I hope you are drawn in by The Immortal King Rao as much as I was!

Vauhini Vara‘s debut novel is informed by both her own Indian heritage and her deep knowledge of the American tech and finance domain from her years as a technology correspondent for the Wall St Journal and editor and writer at The New Yorker‘s business section. Her familiarity and insights into the workings of that world provide the basis for the first of the three main storylines winding through the novel: the effects of colonial power and capitalism as systems of exploitation and extradition. It is embedded in the story of a man belonging to the Dalit caste of Untouchables, growing up on a coconut plantation in South East India and becoming a tech tycoon in the US (his corporation is called Coconut, not Apple… and located near Seattle in the near future, thus today’s photographs.) He eventually develops technology and algorithms that run the world as a share holder system which assigns “social capital,” with a governing Board that he chairs until his downfall. Instead of accomplishing its stated goal of enabling people to live in harmony, the shareholder system perpetuates and exacerbates economic divisions, with the global South falling into complete disrepair, poverty across the world unabated.

The man, the King Rao of the novel’s title, is both a victim and a perpetrator, conceived in violence and killed the same way. Before it dawns on you how he adapts to the hardships of his life by becoming transactional and rapacious himself, you have already been emotionally drawn into championing this underdog who is courageously fighting against seemingly overwhelming forces. This is remarkable when considering that his story is told through the eyes of his 17 year old daughter, Athena, who is herself a victim of his exploitation and narcissism. The relationship between father and daughter, and various other marital, familial and collective (dis)connections, is the second strand of the narrative. Sensitively explored but without pity, we are made to witness how love and despair can live hand in hand, longing for connection is mitigated by desire for independence, fear of loneliness transformed into possessiveness.

By the time we enter this story, the world is approaching its own demise as Hothouse Earth, with no scientific tools available to remedy what the Anthropocene’s despoliation produced. Small groups of resisters have decoupled from the system and live on small islands trying to be self-sufficient as collectives, facing rising sea levels with defiance. They are joined by Athena who escapes a life in isolation on another island where her father, outcast himself after scientific research produced tragic results, raised her completely alone. As it turns out, and this is the third main strand in the complex weaving of this novel, she is never able to completely disconnect from her father. His desire for immortality – his own consciousness transferred into next generations – led to his decision to implant a mechanism in his (embryonic) daughter that forever allows his memories and thoughts to appear in her mind. She, in turn, uses the tools he provided, to access the mind of others to exploit them for needs of her own, until that is put to an end, canceling “immortality” once and for all. Perhaps. We’re left hanging, confronted with hubris all too familiar, and the unanswered question of what life is really for.

If all this sounds too complicated, a convoluted mix of Bildungsroman, Sci Fi leanings and history lecture on the evils of colonialism/capitalism, rest assured: it is a romp to read, with no didactic finger wagging, just subtle invitations to think through some of the big issues that have affected the course of history. Vara’s depiction of the downfall of India’s flourishing economy and independence with the arrival of the British East India Company in the 18th and 19th century leave out some of the most horrifying statistics: Scientists now estimate that at the height of British Colonialism, more than 100 million people died prematurely as the result of institutional exploitation. That is more than the combined famine deaths in the Soviet Union, Maoist China, North Korea, Cambodia and Ethiopia. The way colonialism changed production, consumption and export is made visible (and graspable) in the description of the fates of coconut plantations.

The author’s description of the perils of technological advancement are balanced by depictions of some of its gains. Her’s is not a moralistic voice, strident declarations from a pulpit, but one of warning about hubris. The fact that she manages to give the various narrative strands equal weight is reflected in the reviews of the novel. Some focus on the economics, some on the relationships (men and women both nurture and abuse power, remarkably balanced depictions,) some highlight the unwillingness of the world to heed the warnings of science. All agree that this book is a marvelous accomplishment.(1, 2, 3, 4)

I find myself still thinking about the whole issue of seeking immortality, a desire not just now emerging when we’re facing the end of the world as we know it. Why, I asked at the dinner table, are people so obsessed with it, the early pharaohs of the world awaiting the next move in their gold filled pyramids, the Elmo Musks of the present investing their fortunes into neurotech companies like Neuralink, hoping to fuse brain content, memories and all, to machinery? For the foot soldiers, the rest of us across history, there’s always been an offer of “immortality” that doesn’t require imperial or tech billions: just buy into belief systems of rebirth, or religious visions of eternal afterlife in paradise, in corporal form, if so desired. All you have to do is obey, submit, and never challenge the hierarchy.

“What don’t you understand,” was the laconic reply. “People don’t like to think of their plans, hopes and desires will meet a final point of no return. The mystery of what happens after death might very well be filled with optimistic visions of renewed (or continued) existence until we have solved the riddle. And besides,” I was told, “neuroscience is nowhere remotely close to being capable of providing any of the things needed to transfer consciousness. We don’t understand how it is produced in our own minds, much less how to spread it amongst other living beings or computational machines. Write a blog,” I was encouraged, “on the promises and limitations of the field of neuroscience as it stands now. “

I’ll get to it, one of these days. First I have to wrap a book and come up with a birthday cake!

Indian Music today by Anoushka Sankar, Ravi Sankar’s daughter, playing the Sitar.

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Cheating

I am knee-deep in several independent writing projects and so, this once (or once again?) I will cheat and put someone else’s review of a book (Orwell’s Roses) I recommend up here, instead of my own. You still get the photographs of last week’s wonders in the mystery garden, though. And, in case you missed it, here are my own thoughts on Orwell, gardening and the disappearance of marital labor, from some time back.

Here is the link to the review of Rebecca Solnit’s Orwell’s Roses by Gaby Hinsliff. I am attaching the full text below for those who do not have access to The Guardian where it was published last year. If you have read it already, you might also be interested in the 2022 winner, announced yesterday, of The Orwell Society‘s Political Writing award: Sally Hayden’s My Fourth Time, We Drowned. Here is a review from March.


Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit review – deadheading with the writer and thinker

Inspired by George Orwell’s love of gardening, Solnit’s suitably rambling book should appeal to the green-fingered and the politically committed alike

The roses are in dire need of pruning. My rambler in particular is getting very tangled; too many whipping tendrils snaking out haphazardly at all angles. But it’s so pretty it’s hard to be properly brutal with it, even though it would probably benefit from some judicious thinning. And yes, it is the experience of reading Rebecca Solnit’s Orwell’s Roses that has jogged my memory.

The book simultaneously is and isn’t about George Orwell, just as it is and isn’t about roses. It belongs in a whimsical category of its own, meandering elegantly enough through lots of subjects loosely connected to one or the other; more of a wildly overgrown essay, from which side shoots constantly emerge to snag the attention, than a book. But at its root is the fact that in 1936, the writer and political thinker planted some roses in his Hertfordshire garden. And when Solnit turns up on the doorstep more than eight decades later, she finds the rose bushes (or at least what she takes to be the same rose bushes) still flowering, a living connection between past and present.

From this blooms the most enjoyable part of the book – a reflection on what gardening may have meant to Orwell, but also what it means to gardeners everywhere; beauty for today, hope for tomorrow, and a desire to create something for those who come after – all of which find an echo in the best of politics.

To make a garden is to feel, in Solnit’s words, more “agrarian, settled, to bet on a future in which the roses and trees would bloom for years and the latter would bear fruit in decades to come”. By the time Orwell’s roses flowered that summer, the Spanish civil war had broken out. As they grew, Europe spiralled closer to conflict. But the buds would still swell and the petals would still fall, and in the midst of death there would be new life, a cycle that helps explain why gardens and nature more generally have been such a comfort to so many through the grief and loss of the pandemic.

But roses, in Solnit’s story, don’t merely symbolise the eternal. They also symbolise joy, frivolity and a kind of sensual pleasure not always associated with Orwell, so often presented as a rather dour and austere figure; a chronicler of hardship in his writings on the low-paid and exploited, and in his fiction a prophet of doom, warning against the evils of totalitarianism. By choosing to focus on the gardens he planted – in Hertfordshire and, later, on the farm he bought on the Scottish island of Jura – and the happiness they brought him, Solnit restores something often missing not only from Orwell but from the political tradition of which he is part.

But not all the branching diversions of this book are so successful. A chapter on coal, which ends by arguing that Orwell’s planting of a garden half a century before climate change entered the public consciousness could be interpreted as the nurturing of “a few more carbon-sequestering, oxygen-producing organisms”, feels at best tortuously grafted on to the rest. I could have happily taken the secateurs to Solnit’s musings on the coincidence between being served Jaffa Cakes on her British Air [sic] flight to Britain and then reading an article about Palestinian children visiting the beach at Jaffa – an anecdote that tells the reader nothing of any significance about either.

But then into every garden a little bindweed creeps. The green-fingered and the politically committed alike will want to curl up with this book as the gardening year draws to a close and we reflect on a time during which nature has been more of a solace than usual. It’s been a good year for the roses, at least.

“A rose is a rose is a rose,” said Gertrude Stein. Well here is a musical bouquet of a rose and a rose and a rose. Fauré, Schubert in a Fritz Wunderlich performance, and Berlioz.

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Disaster Porn

Disaster-porn: “to satisfy the pleasure that viewers take in seeing other people’s misfortunes, as by constantly repeating vision of an event, often without commentary or context”. – Australia Macquarie Dictionary

My morning readings include the news from Europe, brought to me among others by Der Spiegel, a German weekly and the country’s largest news platform on the web. All photographs but one today were seen on their site last week, and elicited decidedly mixed feelings. They lure with beauty while depicting disaster, simultaneously drawing attention to human suffering as well as away from it.

An ice vendor waiting for customers during the worst heat wave in decades. In neighboring Nawabshah (Pakistan) the highest value ever recorded: 128.7 F on May 1st.

Somehow the term disaster-porn came to mind. It is a phrase often used to define depictions of suffering in the developing world, but also applied to the increasing number of end-of-world or other catastrophe movies coming out of the film industry, and not just in Hollywood. Is it ethical to depict, create and watch all this stuff? Let me put the answer right in front: it can be, theoretically. At least this was what I concluded after reading the essay that I am summarizing today while trying to solve my dilemma.

The remnants of a container depot in Bangladesh that stood in flames and then exploded, throwing heavy objects through the air for hundreds of yards. Dozends dead, hundreds injured. Foto: picture alliance / dpa / AP

The term disaster-porn can be found as early as 1987 when a Washington Post editorial about the stock market crash. It described that those of us doting on the disasters in cinematic action dramas are lured into believing that it is either all fake, or that we personally will escape bad fate in the end, never mind the millions we watch dying in catastrophic scenarios. The term has been popularized ever since, sometimes in specific ways, like in Pat Cadigan’s 1991 Sci-Fi novel Synner which used “porn” as a suffix denoting an excessive, overly aestheticized focus on a single topic. (The award-winning novel, by the way, envisions a world where the line between machines and reality becomes porous, a possible disaster scenario now in the real-life news 30 years later…just google AI.) The phrase is thus applied not just to fictional descriptions of disasters but also to round-the-clock depictions of round-the-world catastrophes by the media.

Iraqi boys herding sheep in a sandstorm. They are not allowed to enter into the province of Najaf, to avoid spreading the Crim-Congo fever. They are stuck at the border in the middle of the storm. Foto: Quassem Al-Kaabi / AFP

What is the problem? On the one hand, in an ever more interconnected world where we might be called on or able to help with disasters even at distant locations, information about them helps our collective mind to make decisions. In other word, the depictions might elicit empathy and understanding, which can turn into human solidarity.

On the other hand, there are multiple problems. Disaster-porn can be gratuitous and exploitative – published to sell clicks, or used as justification to simplify complex geopolitical realities, and thereby encourage military operations under the guise of humanitarian action.

In addition, over-exposure to images of doom can lead to a muting of your reaction, draining our reserves of pity, desensitizing us to others’ pain. It can be experienced as damaging our own sense of well-being, thus having us turn away from the suffering in the world. Compassion fatigue elicited by a pity crisis.

Boy amidst storks sifting garbage in the Indian province of Guwahati. Dangerous because of the extreme heat – several garbage dumps have spontaneously caught fire and combusted. Foto: Biju Boro / AFP

There is some inherent psychological truth to the fact that we better protect ourselves from too much exposure to bad news. If we feel that there is absolutely no way we can interfere with the starvation, drowning, imprisoning, wounding, torture, and killing of people, seeing them exposed to these situations will create a sense of anxiety that we will try to resolve by averting our eyes. A barrage of doom scenarios leads to feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, both associated with depression, and subsequent paralysis when we think about possible action – just no sense left, that we could make a difference. Here is just one of the studies that lays out that scenario.

Another way to cope with extreme heat across Asia.

And yet…

“Disaster porn, then, in all its iterations and for all its flaws, is a vital political terrain in which publics are at least implicitly asked to struggle with the social significance of the suffering of others. It connects public issues like war, famine, earthquakes, and terrorist attacks to the private lives of those they affect, and shows us how disruptions of social structure become disruptions in individual biographies. This is the case in even the most seemingly stereotypical news reports of suffering in the developing world, and in even the most outlandish Hollywood disaster epics as well.” (Ref.)

Literature and disaster movies contribute in an odd way: they do describe the role chance plays with some people being more endangered than others, some surviving when others don’t. Yes, there are heroes (or villains) who manage to suggest that with some amount of smarts and vision you can still control the outcome (echoing our sense of exceptionalism in U.S. culture), but there are all the others who are not so lucky, because it is often determined by the vicissitude of geographical location alone, rather than specific talents or skills. Chance confers the privilege of survival. It might make us think about our own privilege and so raise compassion, since so far chance has spared us, amidst the forest fires, or floods or infectious diseases.

The Clark Ford River flooded the houses of many of the inhabitants of Fromberg, MO. This is a lawn ornament submerged in the waters. Foto: David Goldman / AP

Leave it to me to read and watch these kinds of novels and films, if only to spare you to have to do it yourself…..

My current target is a 1973 science fiction novel by Sakyo Komatsu, Japan Sinks, which took 9 years to write. It has been made into numerous films, a highly praised animé version among them. Some had altered endings, some were withheld during certain time periods because they were too close on the heels of real life disasters in Japan, given the exposure to earthquakes and the Fukushima catastrophe. The latest, a Netflix production, is so bad that I recommend it on a day where you need help to erupt in laughter – the acting – if you can call it that – guarantees that you will.

The book, however, is worming its way into my brain. The basic story concerns a scientist’s discovery of the likelihood that all of Japan, the entire archipelago, is going to go under due to earthquakes, ocean floor faults, and what not. One of the narrative lines concerns how the government is handling the crisis, from negligence to obstruction to panic. Don’t look up, this year’s U.S. disaster movie that I discussed here, probably took a page out of that book. Another line focusses on the distribution of millions of people around the world, with nationalist impulses against immigration vying with empathy for a drowning people. The philosophical question it raises, though, is one that we will have to think through in climate change migrations to come: what does it do to your identity, as member of a nation, or a tribe or a culture or a language group, when the place that defines you ceases to exist? Literally is no longer there to return to? Is it destructive to lose that connection to place which is a base for underlying sense of self, or is it empowering because you can shed the debt you incurred as a member of the nation (say of an imperialistic or fascistic past) and start from scratch?

Think it through – time not spent doom scrolling…

We could also focus on the message conveyed by a random stranger who was kind enough to let me photograph her t-shirt 2 days ago.

Here’s to The End of Time, in music at least.

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Windows to Worlds

There are good days. Last week one of those saw two of my interests – art and literature – aligned, when these images arrived in my inbox while I was contemplating writing a review of a spell-binding piece of literary fiction, The Actual Star, by Monica Byrne. The novel provides windows into past, present and future worlds, all shaped by entropy, directly or indirectly related to cosmology, our planet’s exposure to climate change and humanity’s love affair with to power. Sounds heady? It’s a stunner!

Michel Saran Begegnung/Encounter (2020) Acryl on Canvas

Paintings first. Michel Saran is a German painter, trained at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts in the late 1950s. (The academy boosts an incredible list of alumni, Otto Dix, George Grosz, and Gerhard Richter among them). Saran came from East to West Germany in 1961 when the wall was built, and continued his studies at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, known among others for Joseph Beuys and, again, Gerhard Richter.

The artist and I have been friends since 1969 when he taught me art history, and we managed to sustain the friendship despite having lived on different continents for over 40 years now. Friends or not, I have always had strong reactions to his art. The new series is no exception: the works embrace a dialectic, feeding on the tension between serious, sometimes grave underlying themes, but expressed with a visual joy and playfulness that let you forget the darker thoughts.

Michel Saran Diagonale und Rechtecke/ Diagonal and Rectangles (2020) Acryl on Wood

The rectangles remind me of windows, as individual motifs or as groupings pointing to more collective associations. Windows are cross-culturally symbols of so many things, again capturing a dialectic – letting light and fresh air in, but also the opposite, allowing access to dread (window of vulnerability). Come in by the window represents romantic but also illicit access. A window of opportunity points to gains, out the window, on the other hand, refers to an escape route but also loss, something non-retrievable. In painting and literature alike, they have often represented hope, or freedom (Caspar David Friedrich and Leora Carrington among my favorites here,) the longing for and ability to escape (think Rapunzel, or Wuthering Heights). Windows, of course, also frame the border between outside and inside, and for those of us aware that the longest stretch of life lies behind us, a reminder of a choice of time focus: we can look out to a past, or focus on the present view, or dream about an unknown future, a window to a veiled existence if only in our minds.

Michel Saran Ländliches Fenster/Rural WIndow (2017) Acryl on Wood

And then there is the window on the world. This brings us squarely, pun intended, to today’s book review about a novel that helps us view different cultures with powerful strokes of imagination, matched by an equally astute intellectual analysis of history and our role in shaping that history. The Actual Star spans 2000 years, from the ancient Maya kingdom in 1012 B.C. in what is now Belize, a depiction of events in the U.S. and Belize in 2012, to a fictional society in 3012 that is formed by some 8 million humans left over from climate catastrophe, trying to fashion a life on earth that is sustainable.

Each of the three time periods are introduced through a trinity of characters: a pair of twins and a (de)stabilizing third corner of the triangle, a sibling, a lover, a child. Each twin represents an opposite, one who favors the status quo and preserves tradition, the other who is a risk taker and pursues the necessity of change. The eras are depicted within their contexts – the Mayan kingdom is on the brink of dissolution due to climate emergency droughts (giving rise to extreme violence within and beyond human sacrifices). The contemporary Belize is affected by its history of colonialism and capitalist exploitation. The future humans are struggling with the conflict that despite all attempts to prevent previous societies’ errors and eliminate violence, some deep seated psychological needs cannot be eradicated. Common to all three cultures is a longing for knowledge about a place that extends beyond the realm of the real – call it rebirth, paradise, Nirvana, Hades, Xibalba (the Mayan place of fright where the Gods (of death) reside). Humans simply cannot accept that there is finality to our existence and so forever search for the window (as knowledge and passage) into the workings of an afterlife.

Michel Saran Freie Rechtecke/Free Rectangles (2020) Acryl on Wood

The novel is intensely sex-positive, there is not a type of sexual interaction not included, and described in detail. None of it is sordid, and much of it helps to question taboos, given that we are hooked on sympathizing with almost all of the protagonists from the start (who are clearly having a good time in this regard.) It becomes particularly interesting in the future world, where scientific advances have given all humans the relevant body parts of both sexes, and they can choose which gender expression or sexual preferences they’d like to have dominant, with the ability to switch frequently.

In one regard our future descendants have no choice, though. They have to adhere to a kind of religious/moral/ethics code that requires the absence of any personal possession, a life of nomadism, and a separation from birth family, so there is no hoarding of goods, land or emotional tie to lovers and even blood relatives. If they reject those choices, they become stigmatized outsiders, deprived of much the society has to offer. In fact, all are not allowed, except for special occasions and festivals, to ever congregate with more than a few people in their steady wandering across the face of this earth. Conflict ensues, wouldn’t you know it.

Michel Saran Toscana (2020) Acryl on Wood

It is no coincidence that Byrne salutes her favorite SFF authors, Ursula LeGuin and Kim Stanley Robinson, in her preface. She has absorbed much from them, the painstaking research of historical and scientific facts, the focus on human psychology within the political parameters that shape parts of it, the generating of languages that serves multiple purposes. (The novel uses a lot of Spanish and pretend-Spanish, invented words helpfully explained in a glossary. Dialog in the contemporary segment is sometimes in Kriol, not translated, and hard to understand even if sounded out loud. A perfect choice for a Western readership: we can completely intuit the meaning of the language of the colonizers, but the speech among the colonized is somewhat inaccessible.) The role religion – its dangers or promises – plays in the works of all three is surely no coincidence. The authors’ works also all acknowledge the importance of place, both locally, geographically and in a cosmos that reacts to physical changes.

Michel Saran Dämmerung/Dusk (2020) Acryl on Wood

What is all her own, is Byrne’s imaginary power to envision worlds, past and future. A lyrical voice when describing the joy and sorrow of emotional attachments. A probing of entropy. A willingness to upset, to judge, to question. And, importantly, in this novel an instantiated promise that there can be hope attached to loss, and promise to painful change. It is a remarkable book.

(PS: She also has a nicely sarcastic sense of humor – here she reads excerpts from bad reviews of her novel. Stellar review in much more detail can be found here.)

Music today is Joaquín Rodrigo’s symphonic poem A la busca del más allá (In Search of the Beyond).

Michel Saran Verwoben/Interwoven (2020) Acryl on Wood

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Discovery

Discovery

I believe in the great discovery.
I believe in the man who will make the discovery.
I believe in the fear of the man who will make the
…. discovery.

I believe in his face going white,
his queasiness, his upper lip drenched in cold sweat.

I believe in the burning of his notes,
burning them into ashes,
burning them to the last scrap.

I believe in the scattering of numbers,
scattering them without regret.

I believe in the man’s haste,
in the precision of his movements,
in his free will.

I believe in the shattering of tablets,
the pouring out of liquids,
the extinguishing of rays.

I am convinced this will end well,
that it will not be too late,
that it will take place without witnesses.

I’m sure no one will find out what happened,
not the wife, not the wall,
not even the bird that might squeal in its song.

I believe in the refusal to take part.
I believe in the ruined career.
I believe in the wasted years of work.
I believe in the secret taken to the grave.

These words soar for me beyond all rules
without seeking support from actual examples.
My faith is strong, blind, and without foundation.

by Wistlawa Szymborska
from View With a Grain of Sand
Harcourt Brace 1993
translation: Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

I wonder if this poem seeded the idea of a book, a remarkable book that looks at the consequences – intended and unintended- of scientific discoveries. Benjamin Labatut’s When We Cease To Understand The World is a small volume describing mathematical and scientific research, ruminating about the psychological states of those engaged in the work, and weaving fact and fiction in ways that meander between horror story and lyric poetry.

The last time I felt like this when reading a novel grounded in history, was decades ago when I couldn’t put Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy down, never mind babies screaming for attention, house wanting to be cleaned, lectures needing to be written and exams to be graded. Both authors share the skill of sending readers on two parallel paths, leaving it to us to drop and pick up the strands where truth ends and imagination begins, where facts are overshadowed by psychological analysis or feelings discarded in the light of facts. Both also excel in alternations of intensity and subtlety, in itself a weird combination.

Barker succeeds in sustaining our attention to history, social structures, identity (before that became a political concept) across three complex volumes, never letting up tangential brilliant confabulation,. She thinly veils her portraits of historical people behind pseudonyms and graphically imparting on us the horrors of World War I and what they did to the soul of artists.

Labatut, in contrast, keeps it short – perhaps aware of contemporary attention spans. His subjects are famous scientists, although the pages are sprinkled with some names less familiar, and some characters are completely made up. He has a knack to impart scientific facts in ways that do not frighten even the math- or physics-phobic reader, partly because the narrative swings endlessly back to the human interest story at the heart of the tales – how do you accept the fact that your discovery brings suffering and ruin to the world? Do you continue to proceed?

Both authors do not shy away from delving into details of horrors, yet the texts themselves have a certain serenity as if we are watching our own history unfold from the safe location of a distant star. That in itself is, of course, a trick, since it indirectly suggests that our own responsibilities need not be considered when focused on those who wreaked the actual havoc, or do they? The wishful thinking of Szymborska’s lines (admitted to be without justification in fact,) should it not be headed by us, in the ways we should be willing to obstruct, to risk, to endanger our standing by unpopular but necessary actions?

Szymborska’s “I believe in the refusal to take part” is less wish than command. One that is faintly echoed in the last chapter of Labatut’s work which introduces us to a night gardener, a former mathematician who has given up on the world, too clear-eyed about the catastrophes awaiting us, in a society that uses the principles of quantum mechanics without ever truly understanding them. The very last parable of the book describes the final demise of lemon trees cut down by their own excess riches. It somehow all came together, and I felt humbled by it.

Szymborska, again, sarcastically:

“I am convinced this will end well,
that it will not be too late,”

How many more reminders do we need by brilliant writers that clinging to this belief simply won’t do?

On a more upbeat note, here is a fun compilation of unintended, positive consequences of scientific discoveries.

Music today by Bartok who was enchanted with mathematical principles and symmetry, particularly the Golden Mean. The ratio appears in this piece. Give it a chance, it grows on you.

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Elective Blindness.

“Magic consists in this, the true naming of a thing.” – Ursula Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea (1979)

There I was, making my way through throngs of revelers who had just disembarked the Santa Express, with another queue waiting to get on. Almost none of them wore masks, so I can be forgiven for thinking I had entered a wormhole – the very same thing had happened to me some years back. I was off to walk quietly at Oaks Bottom on a late Friday afternoon, not expecting anyone, and there was the spectacle of the steam engine, the Santas and reindeers climbing on board, the anticipatory joy in children’s faces.

Well, an occasion to photograph something other than herons and eagles and deer, although they did appear later in the afternoon in my field of view as well, with a howling pack of coyotes (heard, not seen) answering the locomotive’s whistle as a bonus.

My sense of duplicate experience was doubtlessly triggered by the book I’d been reading. Notice the past tense – the novel was so gripping that I finished it within a couple of days. The Anomaly by Hervé Le Téllier, translated by Adriana Hunter, winner of the 2020 Prix Goncourt, France’s highest literary honor, is a novel of dizzying complexity. It is a romp through various genres, sci-fi, mystery thriller, human comedy, romance, philosophical tractate, you name it.

The book also brims with literary allusions, thoughts about religion and politics, skewering with equal measure American and French politicians, the French and American media circus, evangelical crazies, the relentless hunger for fame and riches, the obscene black holes of capitalism, the emptiness of scientific prediction and discourse, the malleability of religious proscriptions, shall I go on?

Importantly, it asks us to think through how we construe reality and what would happen if we find out that we were completely wrong.

The author offers reflections on human psychology in considerable depth, and the possibilities of getting a second chance to do stuff over. None of it, amazingly, overpowers or interferes with the other – you can read this book simply as an amusing exercise in science fiction, or you can see it on par with serious philosophical texts that explore the notion of free will and the origins of consciousness. That in itself is a hard thing to pull off.

It looks like, and I would not be able to judge, that there is also linguistic slight-of-hand embedded in the pages. Le Téllier is part of a group called OULIPO, (Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle founded in 1960,) which explores the possibilities of verse written under a system of structural constraints. Founded by mathematicians, they ride on funny mathematics formulas, like “N+7,” in which the writer takes a poem already in existence and substitutes each of the poem’s substantive nouns with the noun appearing seven nouns away in the dictionary.” Lots of smoke and whistles. (Professional NYT review here. )

So what’s the set-up of The Anomaly? (Caution, some spoilers inevitable…)

The book introduces us to a cast of characters seemingly unrelated, ranging from young children to aging Romeos, professional assassins to Ivy League lawyers, some famous, some not, some struggling, some successful, some sympathetic when first encountered, others not. Their various fates converge, in slow rhythm, with a shared airplane ride that turns out to have a true Doppelgänger – an Air France machine lands after experiencing some turbulence in the U.S. twice, about 3 months apart. The very same people, doubles of the earlier arrivals, with just a quarter year-span of life events between them that are not shared, are crammed into a military air base in New Jersey, and later released back into society.

The novel proceeds on two basic levels. One is the overall reaction of governments, countries, the superstructure of science and religion, clambering to make sense of it all and contain the potential revelations or consequences of this inexplicable event (which turns out to be less singular than first assumed.) It is on this level that much sardonic humor occurs, originally overshadowing the more serious question what one would do when encountering possibilities that shatter everything we believed to be true. The number of answers offered, from religious elders to scientists of all kinds, mathematicians, astro-physicist, molecular biologists, computer scientists etc. are mind boggling. The author’s background as a mathematician and science journalists makes it all sound plausible but also graspable for a layperson like me. The work of the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom concerning the dangers of unconstrained Artificial Intelligence and the possibility of virtual reality, living in a simulation, is also making an appearance in moving the plot forward.

The other level is the human interest aspect, in itself enough for a book of its own – how do you react when your double appears? Do you share, do you fight, do you integrate or destroy, do you want to continue as the same or take on a different persona (helpfully offered by authorities who seem to have the endless resources to double pensions, bank accounts, housing, job opportunities etc.)? What if there is one husband and two wives, one child and two mothers, one secret now shared by two with different motivations to reveal it? What if one of you got pregnant in the 3 months interval and the other didn’t? Additionally, how does the public in general react when confronted with the possibility that their entire world view is based on false assumptions? Will humans be violent, will they reform, will they reconnect with others in more humane ways when they are confronted with the explanations for this event?

The Doppelgänger theme is, of course, not entirely new to literature. Think of Vladimir Nabokov’s Despair, Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Sharer, Dostoevsky’s The Double, Poe’s William Wilson or Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. They all, though, had a way out, because it was really a different person that impersonated or was created to impersonate one’s own existence, if not an illusion to begin with. Le Guin’s protagonist in Earthsea is able to get rid of his evil double by finding out his name (sort of like Rumpelstiltskin, I thought.) None of this is applies to those who were created in the apparent anomaly during the transatlantic flight of the novel. They are exact copies of each other to the infinitesimal specs of DNA and experience, and here to stay. Moreover, it is not a scenario implicating two people, but one that affects the entire world.

How doubled individuals solve the dilemma is one question, answered by observing them. WHAT or WHO created this dilemma, and WHY, is the larger question and I will refrain from providing clues (assuming I came to the correct conclusion in the first place, which I would LOVE to discuss with anyone who is going to read this book.)

Let me just say that my brain had to digest some amount of moral philosophy and its role in a digital age that worships technology as well as military violence. A brain that was still humming from the shifts in perception when you get closer to the individuals faced with changing fates, a brain that was tickled by a lot of truly funny literary and cultural allusions to science fiction movies that made me laugh along the way.

One of the key figures in The Anomaly, a writer named Victor Miesel, answers the question about what he believes the true explanation of this doubling might be and what will change if an incredible revelation should turn out to be true: “Nothing. Nothing will change. We’ll wake up in the morning, we’ll go to work because we still have to pay the rent, we’ll eat and drink and make love, just like before. We’ll carry on behaving as if we’re real. We’re blind to anything that could prove that we are fooling ourselves. It’s only human. We’re not rational.”

The true naming of a thing, the magic of this book. Le Guin had it right. Again.

Music about our earth (Herbie Hancock) and a parallel universe (Bikram Ghosh.)

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Sauvie Grand Central

It. Was. Insane. On a single early morning walk, less than two hours long, I saw more birds coming and going, resting, feeding, or just passing through, than I would usually photograph in a whole month. It was the first day after a few days of rain, the light ever shifting with clouds still lingering, and the noise in the air was a cacophony.

Canada Geese arriving
Canada Geese

There were geese. Sandhill cranes. Ducks. Pelicans. Red-tailed hawks. Bald eagles. Kestrels. Egrets. Finches, sparrows, jays and red-winged blackbirds. All concentrated in one area where water was to be had – so much of the island’s ponds and canals are still empty elsewhere due to the drought. By the time it was around 10 a.m. lots of other people appeared, often looking from their cars on a one-lane road where I walked, so I was ready to get out. Mixed feelings. I love being alone out there, but I also appreciate when large numbers of people take an interest in nature and enjoy it, however it works for them.

Bald Eagle Pair
Egret
Pelicans

Which brought my thoughts to a somewhat related topic, environmental concerns – you guessed, didn’t you? Oh, to be predictable… A slight variation, though. I came across an insightful and smart essay by an author who specializes in reviewing children’s literature. (Alas, only in German, which is why I’ll summarize in English. For my German readers: Christmas is coming, all the kids need books!) Julia Bousboa has a website with reviews and a fun podcast together with a friend where new children’s literature leads to sometimes surprising discussions.

Back to nature, or more precisely the environment under climate threat, or the real topic: the way children are encouraged to be our saviors. Bousboa lists a plethora of Children’s books starting at age three that try to persuade kids to be climate heroes and save the world. There are scores of biographic books about Greta Thunberg, there are non-fiction books about climate change and sustainability, and there are books that ask kids to become involved in protecting our planet, and doing the right thing.

Red Tailed Hawk
Ducks

The advice given has not changed much since the 1980s – save electricity, avoid flying or vacations abroad, bike to school, take short showers, wear sweaters instead of overheating the house, and buy local food, preferably organic and avoid meat. Bousboa notes correctly that these admonitions really fall within a decision-making pattern for the middle- and upper classes, who can decide where to spend a vacation, who have cars that could be used less and who have the economic means to buy more expensive food. A convincing observation that was new to me also argued that the appeals will only convince those who have learned since early childhood “that their voice counts and that they will be heard. For a lot of kids (and their parents) that is not true due to their origins.”

Sandhill Cranes

While fully acknowledging that it is a good thing to familiarize children with the climate crisis and instill a love for nature that will eventually make them stewards of our planet, the author wonders about the justice of burdening young individuals with obligations that are really those of politics and international corporations, the real culprits when it comes to earth’s destruction. This parallels the argument made for adults: Individuals can at most be responsible for their own behavior, but governments have the power to implement legislation that compels industries to act sustainably, given the planetary-scale of the threat. But for kids there is an additional reason not to be convenient scapegoats for corporations that deny their own responsibilities:

“Kinder und Jugendliche sollen lesen und lernen und spielen, sich mit ihren Freund*innen treffen, Quatsch machen, sich ausprobieren, groß werden und dabei ganz selbstverständlich ein Gefühl für ihre Umwelt entwickeln, vom Regenwurm bis zu den Mitmenschen. Doch bei all dem müssen sie Kinder sein dürfen und keine Held*innen. Sie sind zu klein, um die Welt zu verändern. Kinder sollen die Erde retten? How dare you? Das müssen doch wirklich wir Erwachsenen übernehmen!”

“Children and youth should read, learn and play, hang out with their friends, clown around, try on new roles, grow up and of course grow awareness of the environment, from earthworm to fellow wo/men. Through it all they should be allowed to be kids, not heroes.They ARE too small to change the world. Children shall save the earth? How dare you? It is truly the responsibility of adults!”

Couldn’t agree more.

Music is a perennial favorite. Here’s the Children’s Corner by Debussy.

House Finches

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Into The Vanishing Point

Van·ish·ing point/noun

1. the point at which receding parallel lines viewed in perspective appear to converge.

2. the point at which something that has been growing smaller or increasingly faint disappears altogether.

– Merriam Webster

Heads up. I’ll be thinking out loud today to formulate why I had such strong, differing reactions to two books I tackled across the last weeks. Hear the brain gears creak….

I picked up Siri Hustvedt‘s Memories of the Future partly because I had adored her previous novel The Blazing World for its wonderfully perceptive and sarcastic skewering of misogyny in the art world. I was also curious how the experiences of the protagonist in the new book, a transplant from rural Minnesota arriving in New York City in 1978, would compare to my own experiences of arrival at the same time and place coming from Germany. A slight nostalgic twinge was soon overshadowed by a growing irritation.

The story moves back and forth between the thoughts and actions of the young protagonists in the late 70s, revealed in diaries recently discovered during a move, and the contemplations of the same person now old and an established author. The reader is invited to share the explorations of selves across time in complicated structure, a piece of auto fiction, given that the protagonist bears the same initials as the author of the novel in hand, S.H., laced with Hustvedt’s usual mediations on what constitutes truth. Eventually the focus on male entitlement emerges, but it is buried in the desperate search for autobiographical as well as fictional selves who are fused to provide meaning for her current existence.

As someone who has spent the bulk of her academic career with research on issues of memory, I am curiously immune to reminiscing. Instead, my days are spent with thoughts about how to make it through the day (on bad days) and how to make a difference (on good days,) anchored in present and future then, rather than the past. Although I understand why reminiscing gives pleasure to people or raises hopes that they might discover unknown patterns, I simply have no interest. Part of that might be the fear that it often veers into navel gazing, defined by Merriam Webster as useless or excessive self-contemplation, for which they helpfully provide tons of synonyms:

egocentricity, egocentrism, egoism, egomania, egotism, narcissism, self-absorption, self-centeredness, self-concern, self-interest, self-involvement, self-preoccupation, self-regard, selfishness, selfness.

Note, these concepts are reserved for excessive contemplation – there is nothing wrong with simple self-reflection if it leads to clarity about purpose or understanding of what needs to be done to shift a burdensome status-quo. To trust memory of younger selves, though, might not be the way to go, given that these are often reconstructions based on our current understanding of world and needs and self. They also are prone to favor psychological interpretations, rather than acknowledge the role that external factors and chance play in one’s development across time. The actual selves across a life time have really disappeared into the vanishing point, no matter how much we long to resurrect them.

Part of my negative reaction to the convoluted focus on self in this novel is likely derived from a different source, though – the sense that the notion of individuality, ones’ role in the world, one’s specific being and accomplishments, feeds into or is exploited by the western ideology of individualism as a higher goal. The notion of being the master of one’s fate has been used – still is, just look at current legislative budget wrangling – to justify a system that favors those who have succeeded, seemingly by their own strength rather than structural factors that empowered them. It is an empty promised designed to maintain a status quo of inequalities.

Which brings me to the other book that has captured my attention, this time with awe. I was alerted to Gayl Jones‘ first novel in 22 years, Palmares, by an exuberant review in the NYT by Imany Perry, (followed by an inane one by Hilton Als in the New Yorker.) The novel is narrated by Almeyda, starting in 1670 when she is an enslaved child in Brazil. The story unfolds like stories of old, linearly through time, laced with magic when suffering becomes unbearable, full of unflinching descriptions of unimaginable brutalities and tales of heroism, cleverness and endurance.

Along the way we get educated about real life history of enclaves that were built by escaped slaves, only to be destroyed again by colonial powers. We learn about a surprising amount of education and knowledge – including the fact how many slaves were multi-lingual, referring to Latin as the language of Horace and Virgil rather than the proselytizing priests – helping the rebelling slaves to build their own communities. We get to know how exposure to scores of traveling explorers, pirates, artists and scientists influenced the growing knowledge of a world beyond the colonial empire. We also are made to understand that Palmares, the free republic, was not an island of the morally intact – human nature in its force to oppress, sanction, or punish driven by inferior motives, rules there as anywhere.

Almeyda bears witness, describes the fates of a people rather than focus on self. We barely know her other than through tangential descriptions with the sole exception of a declaration at the half-point of the novel: Asks what it is she wants she says, “Liberty, safety, solitude.” All withheld by slavery. Even in her unfolding love story there is never a reported communication of her emotions, just the facts of her commitment under the worst of circumstances.

Her name – yes I’m stretching here – struck me as al(l) before me, a soul (alma) that holds collective memory, the sum of all experience, knowledge and feeling, rather than the relentless preoccupation with individual self. It serves the memory of a group that needs the guidance of stories as a repository of its history, given the dispersion into the diaspora through sales and forced relocation, before it disappears into the vanishing point. And rarely has that story been told in more gripping ways than in Palmares.

For those interested in current psychological research on cultural memory, here are two interesting sources:

One talks, among other issues, about how children are taught to remember events with a focus on factors outside of self in different cultures, the other talks about the impact of collective memory compared to individual memory on groups.

Music today by a composer who was born in 1939, the incredible Annea Lockwood. ‘Into The Vanishing Point’ is a piece developed with New York piano and percussion quartet. Its starting point was a text on the collapse of insect populations, and the sound world frequently conjures the clacking of mandibles, the frictions of exoskeletons, the piano a monstrous human imposition upon the brittle percussive sounds. Or, as mentioned before, the likely noise of the gears in my brain….

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Got Wire?

· Woven cultural patterns. ·

The wires in my head got all crossed. So many different associations triggered by the sight of swallows congregating on steel cables, perhaps getting ready to leave for warmer climes.

There was the train of thought associated with one of my favorite childhood fairy tales, Thumbelina by H.C. Andersen, the story of a tiny girl conceived through magic. Many a critter plays a role in this story, toad kidnappers, mouse guardians, mole suitors, and last but not least a swallow, coming to the rescue of our thumb-sized heroine who bravely survives attempts at forced marriage to a furry creature. Eventually, heartlessly, she dumps the infatuated swallow in favor of a flower-fairy prince. Growing wings herself, she happily-ever -after bumbles with him from blossom to blossom.

Oh, being picked up by a swallow and released in Africa – this then imaginative German girl could think of nothing more exciting! (Swallows from Northern Europe did indeed migrate to that continent.) Finding a prince and no longer being an outcast almost felt like an after-thought, but one that raised some pleasant goose bumps nonetheless. It seemed like a story capturing my own sense of being different during childhood, and one of isolation overcome, and also one of agency – the girl did things, however secretly, that suited her, and had the gut to disobey instructions.

Second train of thought fastened on a different tale of surviving isolation, this one decidedly for adults, and literate ones at that, since it revolves around allusions to Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and many other literary characters of the Western canon. Jane Gardam (the book blurb correctly proclaims her Britain’s best writer you have never heard of – certainly true for this reader) weaves a spell around another outcast girl raised in rather lonely circumstances, finding an anchor in the willpower of Defoe’s stranded protagonist when she seemingly has none of her own. Crusoe’s Daughter (1985) is a small book, describing nuances of psychological interiors of people caught in or between two world wars in Britain, faith lost and found, and love becoming an afterthought to purpose. It, too, describes the solipsistic power of a woman who defies instructions, social mores and in her case the demands immanent to the last gasps of a struggling empire. An old-fashioned, comforting book, on one level. One that slyly sinks into your brain to make you face some hard truths that you tried to forget and that ultimately shifts to a novel structure of narrative, on another level.

Third train of thought revolved around the fact that age, experience and education really do provide perspectives that were previously missing. Take Anderson’s tale, for example, read for adventure and romance then, and understood now as an attempt of retelling even older tales – Persephone’s travels through the underworld and her reemergence come to mind. There is something of a Christian underpinning as well, the acceptance of the lepers and the grotesque, every outcast being worthy of a happy ending. But his narrative was also a moralistic warning: stick with your own own – hierarchical worlds of upper and lower classes or races (the dark, the brown, stay underground… ) should not mix.

Which brings us to the final train of thought elicited by all those birds on a wire. One of the most exciting discovery of recent months for me was a young South African artist, Igshaan Adams, who is not only a spectacular observer of his environment and a committed bridge-builder between divided groups, but a creative visionary when it comes to weaving wires. His first solo show in the UK, Kicking Dust has recently closed at London’s Hayward Gallery, for me, of course, only digitally available (photos from their website.)

It displayed tapestry and three dimensional installations that allowed you to walk paths between them. The artist was raised in Bonteheuwel, a former segregated township in Cape Town, and his work draws on the country’s history of Apartheid, as well as the behavioral patterns of its inhabitants – whether defined by poverty, customs, segregation or indigenous tradition.

In other words, here is an artist who is willing to witness what defines his environment, able to see the patterns that are laid down, and willing to reach across divides by creating representations full of connections (rather than stay rigidly with one’s own like H.C.Andersen would have us.) He does this with a tool kit of wires, ropes and twine, beads, trinkets and household dyes, all materials easily available at your neighborhood hardware store, with neighbors and family members helping with the weaving process.

The large installation represents the mapped spaces of different townships, connected by “footpaths” that were spontaneously trod by people from diverse, often hostile neighborhoods. The latter were created by an actively segregating government that did not wish to see solidarity between and politically aggregated power among the different ethnic groups – the Khoikhoi, Basters, Xhosa, Tswana, Cape Malays and Indian South Africans. Above the lines of these paths are representations of dust clouds – configurations that pick up the forms of clouds that are made when people performing indigenous dances kick sand.

“One of the oldest indigenous dancing styles in southern Africa, the Riel is traditionally performed by the San (also known as Bushmen), Nama and Khoi people of South Africa. Adams’ grandparents are Nama and as a child he would often join them to see young people dance the Rieldans in rural villages in the Northern Cape. Described as ‘dancing in the dust’, the dance is a courtship ritual where clouds of dust erupt from the ground as performers energetically kick the dry ground.”

You can see the dance and the artist’s explanation here. It’s short and worthwhile!

A state-bound exhibition of his tapestries,Veld Ven, depicting the selectively worn-out linoleum of his township neighbors’ floors, just closed at New York City’s Casey Caplan Gallery.

Here is a good visual overview of the individual tapestries and arrangements, photographed by Jason Wyche. Looking at the photographs, I found the patterns reminiscent of good translation, with all the hard work to capture the essentials in both content and form barely visible beneath the impression of likeness and flow. Then again, he could also be called a kind of cartographer, mapping movement onto two-dimensional patterns, serenely sharing presence and absence of design. Below are samples of the work.

AANKOMS (arrival), 2021
KOPPELVLAK (interface), 2021

NAGTREIS OP N VLIENDE PERD (a night journey on a winged horse), 2021

Maybe migration paths of swallows next? Connecting continents without a speck of xenophobia?

Music today is a bit on the romantic side – so be it.

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Giant Troubles

Some nights ago at the dinner table we once again joked about how utterly different we are from each other (you can do that safely after some 40 years of marriage.) These differences are nowhere more pronounced than in our approach to dealing with lurking disaster. Where my beloved tries to keep it out of mind until it HAS to be tackled, I like to stare the dragon in the eye well in advance, if only to communicate that he’s found a foe at eye-level… but really to prepare myself for all that might be in the wings. This attitude – rather than morbidity – is the reason why I read everything about cancer that I can get my hands on, curious about both the nature of the beast, and the nature of the medical system bent on fighting the scourge. (I’ve previously written about it from a cancer patient’s perspective here.)

Some of the most interesting writing comes from scientists who work in the field and share both of these questions; some comes from perceptive novelists who cloak their knowledge in tapestries of stories easier to comprehend. I’ve come across both types recently and thought I’d offer a summary of what I’ve learned.

Here is the good news: People live longer. Here is the bad news: geriatric populations are increasingly susceptible to cancer, and are often only diagnosed when the cancer has spread (metastatic cancer.)

Here is the good news: cancer research is laser-like focused on developing drugs that deal with this problem. Here is the bad news: we will have a market demand to the tune of 111.16 billion dollars by 2027 to treat global metastatic cancer, because the incidence of cancer, particularly breast cancer, is generally on the rise, independent of an aging population.

Here is the good news: there are more and more specialized tools aimed at spread and/or recurrence of cancer. In addition to traditional chemotherapy we have targeted chemo therapy with far fewer side effects, hormone therapy and immunotherapy. Here is the bad news: almost all of these new approaches cannot cure metastatic disease and extend life expectancy by, if you are lucky, a few years, but usually more in the ball park of months. We have not been able to eradicate the disease any more than we did over the last century, with minor exceptions, facing 10 million cancer deaths around the world each year.

It is, of course, nothing to scoff at to have more time to live – I am the last person to be casual about that. And maybe the advances in metastatic cancer research will lead to the realization of permanent remissions or even prevention, eventually. It is also understandable that a for-profit industry focusses on where the demand lies: in desperate patients’ plea for help, to the tune of $ 10.000 a month which these medications now cost in the majority of targeted approaches. Why explore ways to prevent cancer in the first place when that will affect the bottomline of an industry treating it? I guess, theoretically, you could make a fortune on selling preventative medications as well, should you be able to develop them, – never mind the favor to mankind to eradicate the scourge – but then again, people might have very different thresholds to spend money on a potential threat compared to spending money when the threat is actually consuming their bodies.

The good news: some determined scientists are nonetheless pursuing the holy grail: understanding the history of the first cell that eventually morphs into the disease. Here is a thought-provoking compilation of essays that help laypeople like me understand how the science proceeds. Azra Raza, the Chan Soon-Shiong Professor of Medicine and Director of the MDS Center at Columbia University in New York, lays out what we know about carcinogenesis, and reports on the obstacles faced by research into the way cancer comes into existence.

She describes in clear language (and delightfully poignant literary references) what cognitive biases drive medical research (independent of potent economic forces like grant money or market demands.) She explains why we are seemingly stuck in a rut, continuing to look for answers in places where we have not found them, late in the game of spreading cells. (I have been told that big pharma is now on to this, pouring a lot of money into curative or pre-causative research, contrary to her claims.)

Her suggestion is to focus instead on the pathways that first cells take before they morph into the beast that precedes the body’s breakdown, describing an “organized decay, consecutive and slow, sometimes taking years, slipping—slipping, until the crash comes,” located in one of the body’s immune cells.

“Cancer can be perceived as an independent life-form. It is not a parasite because it originates in the host tissue. It is not a “normal” tissue culture cell line that has been induced to grow in vitro, already half-way to transformation. And it is not like jellyfish and other lower order species that can revert to an earlier stage of their lifecycle under stress and restart as newborns. It behaves like a new animal that arises within an animal...I propose that the fertilization step involves the fusion of a blood cell with a stressed tissue cell that initiates the murderous journey. A Giant cell is born containing opposing, conflicting, paradoxical “multitudes” within it.“

Researchers who look into these cells found that they unexpectedly appeared when cells are under stress, for cancer cells brought on by chemotherapy, for example. More precisely, these giant cells are a state of cancer cell, one where cell division is paused during external attack; instead, the cell doubles or fuses its genome, protecting its DNA. When the stressor is gone, the cell reignites division and sends now more resilient progeny on their way to distant sites, more aggressively growing and invasive cancer cells – treatment-resistant metastases.

These giant cells happen under normal circumstances to protect us in times of stress and are benign. So what turns them into a malignant state? That is where research must be done – and incentivized – exploring that moment of transition and the causes that come before. (Or so it is suggested – I am not trained in oncology, so can just report what I read. )

I am not trained as a scholar of literature, either, but I do know what I like to read. And Margaret Drabble’s The Dark Flood Rising is among the best recent books capturing aging, disease and dying in not at all morose ways. In fact, it is witty, as is her wont, but also genuinely humane, and precisely observed. It had me laugh and cry in alternation. It also had me grateful for making me think about cancer not as some dire, biologically hard to understand, scientifically mysterious thing (as the medical literature does) but as a condition that requires an appropriate human response, be that determination, or patience, or courage, or humor, or tears, or …. I’ll won’t be able to list the whole repertoire. The point is, there are humanistic aspects of dealing with or learning to deal with illness that go beyond the understanding that would allow us to synthesize some miracle medication. These aspects are somewhat in our control which is the most comforting thought of all.

Photographs of jellyfish today, reminding me of giant cells, emphasize that blobs can contain beauty, too, not just destructive potential.

Music today is derived from a literature overview of how music affects cell growth, cell migration, proliferation, colony formation, and differentiation ability or death of cancer cells. Folks, I have no clue if these experiments are viable (although they are published in respectable medical journals.) It was just strange to read that different music has different effects. Note, these are done with cell cultures in the lab, under carefully controlled conditions, not in humans who listen to music, so it is unclear how much we can transfer anything of this to actually listening to music.

The first movement from Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, KV. 488 seems not to affect some type of human breast cancer cells (MCF-7) but caused cell death (apoptosis) in another one (MDA-MD-231.)

Ligeti’s first movement of Atmospheres, on the other hand, caused significant cell death in MCF-7 cells that had ignored Mozart….

Riddle me that.

PS: Just so you know how things work around here – this is the response I got across the breakfast table to today’s musings:

So here’s part of my view of upcoming disasters or threats….

You’ve heard this stanza from me before.

From Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
 And having once turned round walks on,
 And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

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