***
1
Her house was like a big, messy mind. And whenever she cleaned up downstairs, which was extremely seldom now, she always ended up brushing things under the rug or behind the sofa, stacking unread magazines in some other corner scarcely disturbing their dust, and throwing most of that stuff she was going to sort out one day into an unused old trunk she kept just under the stairs.
She thought sometimes that there must be things living under there, some enormous, uncharted animal, or rats and roaches and things, a teeming bed of life all covered up and not often talked about. "It was as if the house were built on the sea and if you opened the little door leading under the stairs you'd see the living waters shimmering with never-ending movement and undreamed excitement." That, she thought one time, was eternity...living just under her stairs like a sleeping hypothalamus.
And she never really went under there or even downstairs anymore, no more often than she had to. It was dirty: that was it.
She stood up to survey her work. Gleaming and clean, the tiny room lay before her.
All was prepared.
Mentally she surveyed the lab one floor below - the electrodes, the meters and computer, the as yet lifeless woman-model itself. Yes, all there too was waiting, ready, as she had left it. All was quietly awaiting tomorrow.
She stepped again across the tiled floor, stooped to peer into the crevice between the slick wall and the bottom of the stool, genuflected briefly as her aerofoam sponge swiped across the cool and curving stone. The drying film of moisture sparkled in the light.
She straightened again, and turned. Yes, here too in the tiny third floor room, all was neat and ordered. The sink, the tub, the stool itself, the cabinet before it where alone on the shining shelf sat her black box of bank statements and stock reports. All shone and winked at her, and she felt calm and relaxed.
"It does a woman good once in a while," she used to say, "to get down on her hands and knees." (Did her old mother used to say that?)
It had been during one of the times when she was reading over those bank and stock figures (her grandchildren, she called them), then when her neat little bathroom was still on the ground floor, one day already so long ago, when she had suddenly thought of all the dirty little things crawling around in her under-the-stairs basement. Perhaps she had been thinking of insecticides and rat poisons, and she had very distinctly heard a noise. Not a very frightening sound in itself, but definitely she heard, or was she only imagining it? a peculiar little rumble, or a snarl.
She had become somewhat alarmed, and had left that first tile-smooth chamber, somewhat dingy and old in those times, to prowl the great downstairs floor. She hadn't gone far, however, when there was something, was it a sound? a vibration? something which guided her attention to the doorway under the stairs.
It was then, and immediately too, that she had decided to move upstairs. For from behind the shadowed doorway there had been, or she felt there had been - she told herself now, of course, she must have been imagining it, "her reckless imagination" - what was it? how did she perceive it? a deep, sighing, groaning moan.
It had been - her eyes glazed now remembering it, and her stomach felt empty - "it was as if the house were built on a windstorm and now the winds were whirling through the aging beams of a pirate's trusty schooner, listing and creaking as the masts trembled and the ship groaned before splashing down, down into the turbulent waters of the sea below."
She had gathered all her things, her then small collection of equipment too, and had moved entirely and unhesitatingly to the house's middle floor. And ever after, despite the filth which had met her there (she surmised that the under-stairs pipes had been somehow blocked), despite the days of toil she had been forced to spend cleaning the foul rooms of the excrement she'd found there, she had made her decision final, and almost never again descended to her house's lower floor...no more often than she had to.
And soon, of course, she had been forced to leave that entire middle floor for her burgeoning laboratory, forced again to move up a floor, to lose days of valuable time cleaning the filth-choked rooms upstairs. But she had carried on, knowing then, of course, that there would soon be her own porcelain suite, spotless, bright and clean.
2
By now she had left the bathroom for the bedroom, and had begun to prepare for sleep.
She sat there in her clean little chamber with the fluorescent lights on before bed. She sat there, holding a shoe thoughtfully in her nimble hand. "Tomorrow," she said to the shoe.
Tomorrow she would descend to the lab (and there was warmth in the thought of it), and she would finish it, the woman she was building, her mirror image. Then she could begin, "and all her works would praise her name."
That, she thought to her shoe, is eternity.
She occasionally thought as well, though she said nothing of it since she didn't want it to seem she was complaining, that it was rather unpleasant to have to work where it was so dirty. Her laboratory was on the middle floor of her house, though sometimes she worked out of hours in her nice little room upstairs. And she couldn't help noticing now and again that there was a door which led from one dark corner of the lab into that eerie little storage room under the stairs by means of a short narrow staircase leading almost straight down. She would, on occasion, throw furtive glances in the direction of that little door, though it had long since been bolted and barred, and sometimes wondered if, when the lights were out in the lab, though they almost never were, she couldn't see just a little bit of a glowing, showing from underneath the door. "As if the house were built on the sunset and the door was the last cloud the old sol would wink behind before bubbling its hot orange magic underneath the very mountains she was standing on." (Where did these words come from?)
It had been only after the second move - she was getting into her pajamas - when she had left the middle floor for her lab, that her work had taken its new and decisive direction. She was building another woman, a model of herself, a woman which would walk and move and have her being just as she herself did. A perfect replica of the human form, just what humanity needed, a woman-model to observe. The model would show her what they required, for progress. And there would be no involvement, no uncontrolled subjectivity. She would be like a test tube or a centrifuge, the algae, or a mouth-watering dog.
It was such a great idea!
She swung her legs onto the bed, and, sighing, lay back. The fluorescents above sparkled through the water in her eyes.
She was never quite sure whether or not she liked her work. Not that that was important, but it sometimes amused her to try to decide, "lying there waiting for sleep to invade, like Ethiopia over Mussolini."
There was, of course, the money. Reluctant governments were nevertheless paying dearly those days for research and construction perhaps destined to solve oh so many problems facing humankind at the moment, perhaps at any moment.
"I'm not doing if for that," she said to herself. "Oh I'm not working for the money." For indeed, she had no real need for money, her house, her equipment, her food and simple pleasures all so freely provided by the government or from privately donated funds. Yet there was the little black metal box placed carefully on the empty white shelf in the bathroom cabinet, before her when she sat; and she would often pass an hour or two there, reading eagerly the records she kept in the box, the increasing figures, the history of her prolific little grandsons and grand-daughters running around from bank to bank, from pile to pile, from hand to hand, making people happy while they bred a little more the months ahead.
"That too," she liked to think, "was eternity: coins breeding in a fertile pile of gold."
She knew she must like all that sort of thing - and the calculations too - but somewhere, somewhere beneath the while rubberized laboratory trousers she always wore or next to the superthin calculator she often carried in her breast pocket, somewhere where her eyes could not see, nor her microscope, nor her fluoroscope, there a voice "like a warm breeze wandering through the hot fingers of a dry summer night's grass fire" was telling her there was something else in the work, in the lab itself, "something dark and fierce like the uncharted waters in some Louisiana pool." There was something fierce and dark in the lab which drove her on "as a midnight blaze drives a mad, blind stallion charging into the darkness where he cannot see, but charging on and on."
She rolled onto her back; she was panting.
But her work was important, perhaps vital, she told herself, to all humanity; and she would go on with it day by day, carrying on cheerfully, even eagerly. And tomorrow, she would . . .
She yawned, and the fluorescents swam above her. Her eyes fluttered closed, and she dreamed of a racetrack and of herself clocking a speeding unicorn.
3
She had risen early that day, nervous with anticipation. She had stubbed her toe on the cold white stool while her eyes were still filled with sleep. She had dressed carefully, favoring her throbbing toe and concentrating on remaining calm.
She had descended from her little room...as usual, she had thought to herself; it's just a normal day. Yet the key had somehow crawled through her fingers and bounced to the floor when she began to unlock the lab door, and somewhere she knew.
She had entered the lab; there was nothing changed. Her equipment lay still before her, meticulously arranged and prepared. Yet she had not begun her work. She had been drawn instead to turn about the room, which was quiet and somehow unbalanced by the slanting rays of morning sunlight which were playing through the only little window near the back. She had paused there before the little door leading down to the under-stairs; she had carefully reached out her hand to check the bolts and bars, and could not now forget that they had distinctly felt warm to her cold, unsteady fingers.
It had been months since she had checked her small white cabinet just beside the outer door across the room. But now she did; today she felt it was important. She ran a short test on a drop she took from the small black vial she kept there.
It was still potent.
It was foolish, she thought cynically to himself, to keep it there. Yet she did not trust the glowing, snarling, softly waving under-stairs, and the poison she'd distilled from monkey urine would kill any beast or monster she might have to face. Perhaps it was - yes, she smiled at her hesitancy, it was foolish; but she had humored herself that morning and had found there a sort of confidence.
She had moved on and on about the room, and had finally begun.
And just as the woman was born, just as the model began slowly to stir, to blink her glazed eyes and to scowl, then - she could not now forget it - then, she had felt the floor shift "like the deck of a faltering vessel." The room was suddenly warm, and from the little door - she must have been imaging it - there was a glowing like the sunrise and a moaning like a strange imprisoned animal.
The model-woman now sat before her, and knew why she'd been made. The model was wise, and her creator quick to note all her motions and thoughts, though the noting mind often clouded with a dark thought of the cabineted vial.
"I am empty,” said the model-woman.
And she knew that it was true.
Just then, as the model-woman had begun to speak, the floor started to shake and the walls rattle. The fluorescents flashed and died, but the room was light.
There was a rumbling, a snarling, a roaring like the wind in a fire, and the bars on the little door glowed with heat, then fell away.
There was fire everywhere, the floor, the lights. The model- woman's eyes flashed in wonder and in terror as her creator vomited and writhed in her burning rubber pants.
The door smashed open. The model-woman fled, and, running out and up the stairs to the clear white room, she gulped greedily from the foul vial.
But she herself, she did not flee, and knew she did not want to go. She was standing then, awaiting it, and it washed over her in a boiling bath. She stood fast, her hands raised high above her head, knowing that she did not want to run, exulting savagely and painfully in the violent burning of her flesh as the uncharted animal, the swimming seas of boiling unction, the blind, wind-blown, charging stallion, and the flames crashed upon her like black waves on a sunny rock.
And as she died, as she perished in the awful sea from the under-stairs, her house fell to ruin about her, an innocent victim of the dark savage fight between the flowing sunsets from below the floor and the piles of excrement on the roof.
Her house had fallen into smoldering rubble, floating like smelly scum on a sunlit sea.
And today the wet, charred ruins of her house cry out to the never-ending skies: "One day, oh humanity, let there be built a house where seas and stools can live united, as in the well-ordered mind of a rose!"
***
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
The "Too Big to Fail" Discussion: the National Interest (essay)
***
The cardinal American values are peace and prosperity, equality of opportunity, liberty and justice for all. These values should be pursued, supported, and honored above all others. Actions that threaten or diminish them should be avoided or prohibited, vilified, or at least highly taxed. Public leaders praising these essential values should be supported; those whose decisions undermine them should be hounded out of their positions of influence.
Peace and prosperity, equality of opportunity, liberty and justice for all: the most persistent threat to these essential values is the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few. Equality of opportunity is not possible when power – social, political, or economic power – is highly concentrated. Justice is undermined. Liberty is diminished. Peace too is endangered when power is concentrated, because a means of perpetuating the hold on power by the few is demonizing so-called enemies, promoting fear, and pursuing social conflict at home or war abroad. Prosperity depends on peace and equality of opportunity. Concentration of power – as the Founding Fathers clearly understood – threatens our pursuit and attainment of all that we value.
When political and economic leaders are forced to admit that failure of this or that individual company threatens the viability of the entire national economy, it is clear that such companies have become too large and too powerful, in other words that wealth and power has indeed become too concentrated. Care must be taken to prevent such concentration of corporate power, through rigorous fiscal and taxation policies and through prudent management of the economy in general.
*
The value of a nation’s economic system is measured by the degree to which the system benefits the nation including its public institutions, its businesses, its workers, and its families. A prudently managed capitalist economy has proven its ability to benefit a nation more effectively than any other kind of economic system. Capitalism is the most reliable means of making progress toward our essential values; to continue functioning efficiently and effectively, a capitalist economy must find a right balance between (a) reward to the most successful and (b) protection for all from a high concentration of power – economic or political – in the hands of the few. One might say, for example, that if the richest 5% or fewer of the nation’s population controls 50% or more of the nation’s economic assets, then the capitalist system is prevented from sustaining the most consistent and effective achievement of equality of opportunity, prosperity, justice, and liberty for all, as well as the stablest peace possible in an uncertain world.
High-minded and unselfish people do exist, but as our founding fathers realized, the most common motive for one’s actions is self-interest. As the wealth of a nation becomes overly concentrated in the hands of the few, experience has shown time and again that members of the wealthiest group, acting rationally, use their economic power to insure the continuation of their own financial advantage, including even that of future generations of their families. Although a relative few rich people give generously to those needing help, many – perhaps most – grow more and more motivated by selfishness, greed, and the pursuit of political power. Also, a nation in which a significant number of its poorer citizens are held in a perpetual state of dependence on charity is clearly not experiencing what might be accurately called prosperity.
*
As Lincoln wrote, “Labor precedes capital.” In a healthy capitalist economy, workers make products and provide services. Owners of the firms employing the workers are paid by customers for the goods or services they purchase, and earn profits according to the ratio between the price paid and the cost of materials and labor employed. In this system most individuals receiving income are either business owners or their employees; a relative few use money itself – rather than goods or services – as a means of earning income; in a healthy capitalist economy, those few make their money by providing loans to or investments in the businesses that make the goods or provide the services. Their role is solely to facilitate the efficient production and exchange of goods and services.
The long-term health of an economy and the prosperity of a nation depend in no small measure on the degree to which income earned results from the production of goods or services, rather than from the manipulation of money. The greater the proportion of income earned resulting from money manipulation, the more vulnerable the economy is to disruptive cyclical swings from times of great prosperity, created by money’s making money, and great privation resulting from the distortion of the healthy capitalist economy caused by such a high level of dependence on money itself to generate income, rather than on the production of goods and services.
A high level of concentration of wealth in the hands of the few makes it inevitable that the economy will be characterized by a relatively high degree of dependence on income from money manipulation rather than on producing goods and services or directly facilitating such production. This is true because, in this unhealthy system, the few controlling the economy have a surplus of money that they control directly, in contrast to the businesses manufacturing goods or providing services that they control somewhat less directly. When wealth and power is highly concentrated, it is to be expected and rational for the wealthy to find it more and more convenient and vastly more efficient to make their additional income more and more from finance than from production. But in excess, this practice has disastrous consequences.
Concentration of wealth thus creates distortion of a capitalist system that threatens the nation’s prosperity.
*
The value of a tool lies in the skill and competence with which it is used. A capitalist economy is a tool for achieving the highest level of prosperity possible for a nation and its citizens; the value of our economy lies in the cleverness, the skill, and the wisdom with which it is managed to the benefit of a nation’s citizens. As a complex and always changing tool, our capitalist economy requires careful and skillful management in order to create enduring and widely shared prosperity. Over-managed or over-controlled, a capitalist economy has the tendency to stagnate, to impede technological innovation, and to bog down in paperwork and bureaucracy. But, left without sufficient managerial control, a capitalist system has the tendency to create greater and greater concentration of wealth and economic power and to produce greater and greater dependence on finance rather than production. In any case, the economy must be considered a tool which can be used, consciously and deliberately, rather than a force of nature which can only be observed and endured.
*
For a democracy to work as it is intended, creating the conditions under which the citizenry – through elected representatives – may govern themselves, it is necessary for citizens to learn the facts, not merely to exchange opposing opinions or hear others do so . The most critical function of the public media is to acquaint the citizenry with the facts, which those in the media must come to know and to report as objectively, as fully, and in as disinterested a manner as possible. This is insured by the media’s taking seriously its core mission as conveyor of fact rather than opinion and by a diversity of individual media outlets which when taken together can cancel out the subjective residue that may remain in each other’s reporting despite good-faith effort.
When economic, political, and social control of the media becomes concentrated in the hands of a relative few, the chances of such disinterested reporting of the facts and actual conditions is significantly reduced. Social and political diversity will be diminished, and narrow partisanship will be increased. Biased readers, viewers, and listeners will come to use the media as the drunk uses a lamppost, for support rather than illumination.
Seeking arguments for support of one’s bias or for opinions supporting one’s self-interest is not to seek the truth in order to make reasoned decisions, which is the approach needed for a successful democracy. Concentration of media control undermines the effectiveness of democratic processes.
*
The greatest thing about our great nation is the ideals upon which it was founded. If we are to continue America’s noble tradition and live up to our great mission in the world and in human history, we must do everything in our power to nurture, sustain, and pursue our essential values. Highly concentrated wealth and power threatens all that we hold most dear in the United States of America: peace and prosperity, equality of opportunity, liberty and justice for all.
***
The cardinal American values are peace and prosperity, equality of opportunity, liberty and justice for all. These values should be pursued, supported, and honored above all others. Actions that threaten or diminish them should be avoided or prohibited, vilified, or at least highly taxed. Public leaders praising these essential values should be supported; those whose decisions undermine them should be hounded out of their positions of influence.
Peace and prosperity, equality of opportunity, liberty and justice for all: the most persistent threat to these essential values is the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few. Equality of opportunity is not possible when power – social, political, or economic power – is highly concentrated. Justice is undermined. Liberty is diminished. Peace too is endangered when power is concentrated, because a means of perpetuating the hold on power by the few is demonizing so-called enemies, promoting fear, and pursuing social conflict at home or war abroad. Prosperity depends on peace and equality of opportunity. Concentration of power – as the Founding Fathers clearly understood – threatens our pursuit and attainment of all that we value.
When political and economic leaders are forced to admit that failure of this or that individual company threatens the viability of the entire national economy, it is clear that such companies have become too large and too powerful, in other words that wealth and power has indeed become too concentrated. Care must be taken to prevent such concentration of corporate power, through rigorous fiscal and taxation policies and through prudent management of the economy in general.
*
The value of a nation’s economic system is measured by the degree to which the system benefits the nation including its public institutions, its businesses, its workers, and its families. A prudently managed capitalist economy has proven its ability to benefit a nation more effectively than any other kind of economic system. Capitalism is the most reliable means of making progress toward our essential values; to continue functioning efficiently and effectively, a capitalist economy must find a right balance between (a) reward to the most successful and (b) protection for all from a high concentration of power – economic or political – in the hands of the few. One might say, for example, that if the richest 5% or fewer of the nation’s population controls 50% or more of the nation’s economic assets, then the capitalist system is prevented from sustaining the most consistent and effective achievement of equality of opportunity, prosperity, justice, and liberty for all, as well as the stablest peace possible in an uncertain world.
High-minded and unselfish people do exist, but as our founding fathers realized, the most common motive for one’s actions is self-interest. As the wealth of a nation becomes overly concentrated in the hands of the few, experience has shown time and again that members of the wealthiest group, acting rationally, use their economic power to insure the continuation of their own financial advantage, including even that of future generations of their families. Although a relative few rich people give generously to those needing help, many – perhaps most – grow more and more motivated by selfishness, greed, and the pursuit of political power. Also, a nation in which a significant number of its poorer citizens are held in a perpetual state of dependence on charity is clearly not experiencing what might be accurately called prosperity.
*
As Lincoln wrote, “Labor precedes capital.” In a healthy capitalist economy, workers make products and provide services. Owners of the firms employing the workers are paid by customers for the goods or services they purchase, and earn profits according to the ratio between the price paid and the cost of materials and labor employed. In this system most individuals receiving income are either business owners or their employees; a relative few use money itself – rather than goods or services – as a means of earning income; in a healthy capitalist economy, those few make their money by providing loans to or investments in the businesses that make the goods or provide the services. Their role is solely to facilitate the efficient production and exchange of goods and services.
The long-term health of an economy and the prosperity of a nation depend in no small measure on the degree to which income earned results from the production of goods or services, rather than from the manipulation of money. The greater the proportion of income earned resulting from money manipulation, the more vulnerable the economy is to disruptive cyclical swings from times of great prosperity, created by money’s making money, and great privation resulting from the distortion of the healthy capitalist economy caused by such a high level of dependence on money itself to generate income, rather than on the production of goods and services.
A high level of concentration of wealth in the hands of the few makes it inevitable that the economy will be characterized by a relatively high degree of dependence on income from money manipulation rather than on producing goods and services or directly facilitating such production. This is true because, in this unhealthy system, the few controlling the economy have a surplus of money that they control directly, in contrast to the businesses manufacturing goods or providing services that they control somewhat less directly. When wealth and power is highly concentrated, it is to be expected and rational for the wealthy to find it more and more convenient and vastly more efficient to make their additional income more and more from finance than from production. But in excess, this practice has disastrous consequences.
Concentration of wealth thus creates distortion of a capitalist system that threatens the nation’s prosperity.
*
The value of a tool lies in the skill and competence with which it is used. A capitalist economy is a tool for achieving the highest level of prosperity possible for a nation and its citizens; the value of our economy lies in the cleverness, the skill, and the wisdom with which it is managed to the benefit of a nation’s citizens. As a complex and always changing tool, our capitalist economy requires careful and skillful management in order to create enduring and widely shared prosperity. Over-managed or over-controlled, a capitalist economy has the tendency to stagnate, to impede technological innovation, and to bog down in paperwork and bureaucracy. But, left without sufficient managerial control, a capitalist system has the tendency to create greater and greater concentration of wealth and economic power and to produce greater and greater dependence on finance rather than production. In any case, the economy must be considered a tool which can be used, consciously and deliberately, rather than a force of nature which can only be observed and endured.
*
For a democracy to work as it is intended, creating the conditions under which the citizenry – through elected representatives – may govern themselves, it is necessary for citizens to learn the facts, not merely to exchange opposing opinions or hear others do so . The most critical function of the public media is to acquaint the citizenry with the facts, which those in the media must come to know and to report as objectively, as fully, and in as disinterested a manner as possible. This is insured by the media’s taking seriously its core mission as conveyor of fact rather than opinion and by a diversity of individual media outlets which when taken together can cancel out the subjective residue that may remain in each other’s reporting despite good-faith effort.
When economic, political, and social control of the media becomes concentrated in the hands of a relative few, the chances of such disinterested reporting of the facts and actual conditions is significantly reduced. Social and political diversity will be diminished, and narrow partisanship will be increased. Biased readers, viewers, and listeners will come to use the media as the drunk uses a lamppost, for support rather than illumination.
Seeking arguments for support of one’s bias or for opinions supporting one’s self-interest is not to seek the truth in order to make reasoned decisions, which is the approach needed for a successful democracy. Concentration of media control undermines the effectiveness of democratic processes.
*
The greatest thing about our great nation is the ideals upon which it was founded. If we are to continue America’s noble tradition and live up to our great mission in the world and in human history, we must do everything in our power to nurture, sustain, and pursue our essential values. Highly concentrated wealth and power threatens all that we hold most dear in the United States of America: peace and prosperity, equality of opportunity, liberty and justice for all.
***
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Reminiscence: My 30th Class Reunion
***
1
Once, after I had lived away from home for several years, I visited my parents in early June. While I was at home, my Dad and I went to a bank or the post office; a young woman came up to me and spoke to me as though we were old friends. As we chatted, I realized she was a girl whom I had known in high school – and liked – but who had never been a close friend. “Betty” asked, “Are you in town for our tenth Reunion tomorrow?”
Frankly, I would have timed my visit to avoid coinciding with the Reunion if I had paid any attention at all to the materials I must have been sent. I said sadly that, Alas no, I was only in town for a day or two and would be leaving in the morning. As we left I apologized to my father for lying, since he knew that in fact I would be there for several more days, and as I explained to him that I had not wanted to hurt “Betty’s” feelings, I began to realize just how much I really (I mean, really) did not want to see my high school colleagues again. The idea gave me an unpleasant feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Was I embarrassed for some reason, or did I think I was somehow better than they? No, I think instead that perhaps they were part of “the old me” I had been in stressful times (socially speaking), and I didn’t want to think of myself that way again. Come to think of it, the new identity I thought I had fabricated by then must have still seemed vulnerable if I feared the old identity would overtake me again just by associating with a lot of my old acquaintances.
2
Anyway, it was quite surprising to find, twenty years later, that when I received information about our 30th Reunion I kind of wanted to go. I had rediscovered only one old high school friend living near me in that time, but when he told me that he was going, I said I would too.
Just before I got on the plane, my wife said: “Oh, ‘Byron,’ don’t wear your glasses. If you wear your glasses, no one will recognize you.”
I pointed out that if I didn’t wear my glasses, I wouldn’t recognize any of them!
So I wore my glasses that first night to the pre-Reunion party. No one said anything about my glasses. Most of them said the same thing:
“Well ‘Byron,’ you still have all your hair!”
3
Our high school by this point in time had been replaced by a much larger and more modern building in a much different location; it was surrounded by parking lots. The old buildings in town still stood, however, though they had now become a community college. The next morning the Reunion planners had put together a little reception at the old school. A few of the old teachers came, including my favorite English teacher, Dr. “Ross.” I did enjoy seeing him again, looking remarkably unchanged although he had by then been retired for a number of years. I felt so comfortable chatting with him I told him my most memorable experience in another teacher’s English class at an earlier grade level.
Mrs. “Grable” had assigned for homework one day a short story about a barber in a European city who used to love his work; he would sing while cutting hair, and he played the violin from time to time for the amusement of all. Then the city had been bombed, and the barber had been trapped underground, in utter darkness, with a substantial crowd who had taken shelter together. He sang to them and told funny stories about various townspeople, keeping their spirits up until they were finally rescued.
As light began to dispel the blackness, they were horrified to discover that this barber who had kept them all from despair had himself been buried, his hands and arms completely crushed under the rubble!
This exciting story had been told as “Three Times I saw Giuseppe” (or whatever the barber’s name was). Mrs. “Grable’s” assignment was to write a story of our own telling of the fourth time “I” saw Giuseppe.
The next day, as we turned in our papers, some students told of their narratives of Giuseppe’s having become a successful music teacher, or the next mayor, or something else wonderful. Then the next day after that, Mrs. “Grable,” visibly upset, told us she was going to read us one of our papers; afterward, we were to tell her if the paper should receive an A or an F. I just knew this was my paper, and I was right.
In my little story, Giuseppe had been fitted with prosthetic hands but had lost his mind, and all day, every day, he would move from side to side behind an empty old chair, singing loudly the same songs over and over while pretending to cut someone’s hair since he could not manage the shears themselves anymore.
I concluded that he had lost his mind because “he had nothing left to live for!”
Of course, the other kids loved it. “A, they said; it should get an A!” But I suspected they all knew, as I did, that it would get an F (my first ever). But why?
Mrs. “Grable” handed back the papers as class ended. On mine, next to the F, there was only one comment: “Why can’t you conform to the English Department’s way of doing things?” I rewrote the last page of my paper that night, revising the last sentence to: “He realized he had nothing left for which to live.” She raised the grade to a D.
I had told that story to others before. Most people laughed. Dr. “Ross” didn’t say anything negative; in fact, he said nothing at all.
4
That morning too I had a good chat with a guy with whom I had gone all the way through elementary school, junior high, and high school (the ghost of Mrs. “Grable” should be happy). “Al” and I had been real buddies in elementary school, but had drifted apart in junior high and high school. He had become a major sports star, both in football and in basketball (in which we had won the state championship one year). I had been involved in other things. But it was really good to reconnect with him; he had become a doctor, like his dad, and lived in the nearby city where he had attended med school.
But the most fun came after that morning reception with the teachers. Several of us who had been in the drama club together gravitated toward one another and spent hours laughing and talking. It was a little odd that one man, whom we had hardly known, hung around with us and participated in our chatter. A little odd perhaps, but great, as it turned out.
5
The big banquet that second night was all it should have been, I suppose, but it seemed anti-climactic. Anyway, the whole experience was good.
I didn’t go back to the 40th Reunion. I don’t remember why or even if I wanted to at all. I think I will go to the 50th. After all, I still have all my hair.
NOTE added in June 2010:
The 50th reunion was also great, enhanced this time by the attendance of my wife. If the theme for me of the 30th was "Why 'Byron,' you still have all your hair," the theme of the 50th for me was "Why 'Byron,' you look just like your Dad"!
***
1
Once, after I had lived away from home for several years, I visited my parents in early June. While I was at home, my Dad and I went to a bank or the post office; a young woman came up to me and spoke to me as though we were old friends. As we chatted, I realized she was a girl whom I had known in high school – and liked – but who had never been a close friend. “Betty” asked, “Are you in town for our tenth Reunion tomorrow?”
Frankly, I would have timed my visit to avoid coinciding with the Reunion if I had paid any attention at all to the materials I must have been sent. I said sadly that, Alas no, I was only in town for a day or two and would be leaving in the morning. As we left I apologized to my father for lying, since he knew that in fact I would be there for several more days, and as I explained to him that I had not wanted to hurt “Betty’s” feelings, I began to realize just how much I really (I mean, really) did not want to see my high school colleagues again. The idea gave me an unpleasant feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Was I embarrassed for some reason, or did I think I was somehow better than they? No, I think instead that perhaps they were part of “the old me” I had been in stressful times (socially speaking), and I didn’t want to think of myself that way again. Come to think of it, the new identity I thought I had fabricated by then must have still seemed vulnerable if I feared the old identity would overtake me again just by associating with a lot of my old acquaintances.
2
Anyway, it was quite surprising to find, twenty years later, that when I received information about our 30th Reunion I kind of wanted to go. I had rediscovered only one old high school friend living near me in that time, but when he told me that he was going, I said I would too.
Just before I got on the plane, my wife said: “Oh, ‘Byron,’ don’t wear your glasses. If you wear your glasses, no one will recognize you.”
I pointed out that if I didn’t wear my glasses, I wouldn’t recognize any of them!
So I wore my glasses that first night to the pre-Reunion party. No one said anything about my glasses. Most of them said the same thing:
“Well ‘Byron,’ you still have all your hair!”
3
Our high school by this point in time had been replaced by a much larger and more modern building in a much different location; it was surrounded by parking lots. The old buildings in town still stood, however, though they had now become a community college. The next morning the Reunion planners had put together a little reception at the old school. A few of the old teachers came, including my favorite English teacher, Dr. “Ross.” I did enjoy seeing him again, looking remarkably unchanged although he had by then been retired for a number of years. I felt so comfortable chatting with him I told him my most memorable experience in another teacher’s English class at an earlier grade level.
Mrs. “Grable” had assigned for homework one day a short story about a barber in a European city who used to love his work; he would sing while cutting hair, and he played the violin from time to time for the amusement of all. Then the city had been bombed, and the barber had been trapped underground, in utter darkness, with a substantial crowd who had taken shelter together. He sang to them and told funny stories about various townspeople, keeping their spirits up until they were finally rescued.
As light began to dispel the blackness, they were horrified to discover that this barber who had kept them all from despair had himself been buried, his hands and arms completely crushed under the rubble!
This exciting story had been told as “Three Times I saw Giuseppe” (or whatever the barber’s name was). Mrs. “Grable’s” assignment was to write a story of our own telling of the fourth time “I” saw Giuseppe.
The next day, as we turned in our papers, some students told of their narratives of Giuseppe’s having become a successful music teacher, or the next mayor, or something else wonderful. Then the next day after that, Mrs. “Grable,” visibly upset, told us she was going to read us one of our papers; afterward, we were to tell her if the paper should receive an A or an F. I just knew this was my paper, and I was right.
In my little story, Giuseppe had been fitted with prosthetic hands but had lost his mind, and all day, every day, he would move from side to side behind an empty old chair, singing loudly the same songs over and over while pretending to cut someone’s hair since he could not manage the shears themselves anymore.
I concluded that he had lost his mind because “he had nothing left to live for!”
Of course, the other kids loved it. “A, they said; it should get an A!” But I suspected they all knew, as I did, that it would get an F (my first ever). But why?
Mrs. “Grable” handed back the papers as class ended. On mine, next to the F, there was only one comment: “Why can’t you conform to the English Department’s way of doing things?” I rewrote the last page of my paper that night, revising the last sentence to: “He realized he had nothing left for which to live.” She raised the grade to a D.
I had told that story to others before. Most people laughed. Dr. “Ross” didn’t say anything negative; in fact, he said nothing at all.
4
That morning too I had a good chat with a guy with whom I had gone all the way through elementary school, junior high, and high school (the ghost of Mrs. “Grable” should be happy). “Al” and I had been real buddies in elementary school, but had drifted apart in junior high and high school. He had become a major sports star, both in football and in basketball (in which we had won the state championship one year). I had been involved in other things. But it was really good to reconnect with him; he had become a doctor, like his dad, and lived in the nearby city where he had attended med school.
But the most fun came after that morning reception with the teachers. Several of us who had been in the drama club together gravitated toward one another and spent hours laughing and talking. It was a little odd that one man, whom we had hardly known, hung around with us and participated in our chatter. A little odd perhaps, but great, as it turned out.
5
The big banquet that second night was all it should have been, I suppose, but it seemed anti-climactic. Anyway, the whole experience was good.
I didn’t go back to the 40th Reunion. I don’t remember why or even if I wanted to at all. I think I will go to the 50th. After all, I still have all my hair.
NOTE added in June 2010:
The 50th reunion was also great, enhanced this time by the attendance of my wife. If the theme for me of the 30th was "Why 'Byron,' you still have all your hair," the theme of the 50th for me was "Why 'Byron,' you look just like your Dad"!
***
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Compromise: Good? Bad? When? (essay)
***
1
We seem to agree that it is bad when an undercover police officer’s identity is compromised or for a relationship to compromise a person’s integrity; but we also seem to agree that it is similarly bad for an individual to be known as uncompromising. Also, when discussing a negotiation of some kind, we seem to agree that compromise is not only normal but essential (both good), and the much-admired antebellum Senator Henry Clay – Lincoln’s idol – was called “the Great Compromiser” as a term of praise. So it seems clear that, while not ideal in some circumstances, in resolving political disputes compromise is particularly important.
In decision-making processes generally, however, there are at least two outcomes preferable to compromise.
The first is agreement. This should be the conscious goal of any serious engagement among proponents of differing viewpoints. In Getting to Yes, their best-seller of forty years ago, William Ury et al. demonstrated that you should not assume that your opponent disagrees with your most highly held values, and vice versa. The two sides – or for that matter, the various several sides – may see different aspects or portions of the issue under consideration as the critical ones.
The standard, highly simplified illustration of this point has to do with a fierce argument between two strong-willed individuals over who will take the only orange available to them. A compromise, of course, would be for each to take half of the delectable fruit… but that way, both may be left unsatisfied. In this standard story, humble as it is, the two individuals state just why each wants that orange so much and so urgently. One is preparing to cook something special and needs all the zest of the orange peel, while the other has been for a run on a hot day and is desperately thirsty for the juice inside. A mere compromise is not necessary in this case. An agreement is obviously preferable, by which the one would take the peel including the zest and the other would take the insides including the juice. Both would get what they wanted and needed.
In real life, disputes are much more complex, but agreement is still a worthy goal, the preferred outcome. If the discussion begins with an assumption – on one or both sides – that agreement of some kind is not possible, the opportunity for doing better than compromise, for ending up with more than half an orange apiece, would be lost. The secret to reaching agreement, and thus avoiding a dreary compromise, lies in coming to know just what the other party, or parties, wants and why.
2
The second outcome of dispute-resolution preferable to compromise is consensus, which is not the ideal – agreement – but an arrangement that all parties to the dispute can live with, perhaps more comfortably than with merely balancing one’s own wishes off the others’ with no one’s getting what is most important to her or him. For multi-party disputes, consensus is probably the best alternative that can realistically be achieved, and it should be the objective of the discussion once it has been determined that a full agreement is not possible in that particular case.
Reaching consensus is often time-consuming, but it can be reached without too much pain if all parties to the dispute analyze and articulate early on not only all that they want to achieve but also just why each objective is desirable and how much it is desired. That is, one must be both willing and able to explain to the others how the interrelated objectives are prioritized. Self-understanding, honesty, and candor are needed for the prized consensus to be reached.
In the ideal version of such a consensus, all parties end up achieving many of the objectives most critical to them, as well as a sufficient number of the less critical objectives so that they can feel that the values of the gains, taken as a whole, outweighs the disadvantages of not gaining everything desired and of giving up what they may have preferred to keep.
If resolution of the dispute is honestly the goal of the decision-making process, it is surprising how often self-aware, articulate, and candid individuals can reach consensus.
3
Compromise itself, of course, is a bargain according to which each party gains something valuable by conceding something valuable to the others. The satisfaction level of a compromise is lower than that of an agreement or a consensus, but a compromise can still be satisfactory, even though the dispute under discussion may come up again relatively soon.
A good example of a very significant compromise was reached in establishing the U. S. Constitution. A majority of the framers wanted to eliminate slavery within a relatively few years, but a significant minority – all from the South – would have been willing to put up with the status quo under the generally ineffective Articles of Confederation rather than concede something of such high value to them. In other words, the very highest priority in the negotiations for the southerners was maintaining slavery.
The others’ highest priority was making significant improvements in the status quo, but the prospect of maintaining slavery was particularly onerous because the slaves – despite having no civil rights – were to be counted in determining each state’s number of congressional representatives. The now notorious compromise was for slavery to be maintained, but for only 60% of the total number of slaves to count in the census in determining the state’s representation in Congress. The southern states benefitted to some degree from the improvements made and also gained their highest priority, while the other states could live with the improvements made, perhaps as Lincoln said anticipating the slow disappearance of slavery, and in the negotiation had made maintaining slavery more nearly tolerable in the short run.
4
The question of timing is very important in any form of dispute-resolution. To reach an agreement, it is important to share with each other what advantage one is seeking at the outset of the discussion. To reach a consensus, it is also very important to say at the beginning what one is pursuing, why, and what matters the most. Proceeding in this manner is helpful also in trying to reach a compromise – presumably after the hope of agreement or consensus has withered away. But it is also of critical importance to avoid offering to give up something one desires too early in the process.
Doing so, even if what is given up is less important than what one gains, short-circuits the process which if allowed to take its course might allow limiting the final concession to only a portion of the valuable objective; whereas offering the major concession too early guarantees the loss of that desirable gain and – even worse – causes the negotiations to start with the assumption that the other side will make a minor concession, as a response to the offered bargain, and will go on to seek further concessions from the first party. The key in seeking compromise, as in resolving disputes through agreement or consensus, is to start by asking for everything one hopes to achieve and only then being willing to make compromises – first on minor objectives – only in return for significant concessions from the other side.
Frankly, the result may turn out to be the same when a concession is offered from the beginning, but to remove all hope of achieving all one’s objectives in the final compromise before conversations even begin is to despair of making the significant progress that may have been possible despite appearances to the contrary.
***
1
We seem to agree that it is bad when an undercover police officer’s identity is compromised or for a relationship to compromise a person’s integrity; but we also seem to agree that it is similarly bad for an individual to be known as uncompromising. Also, when discussing a negotiation of some kind, we seem to agree that compromise is not only normal but essential (both good), and the much-admired antebellum Senator Henry Clay – Lincoln’s idol – was called “the Great Compromiser” as a term of praise. So it seems clear that, while not ideal in some circumstances, in resolving political disputes compromise is particularly important.
In decision-making processes generally, however, there are at least two outcomes preferable to compromise.
The first is agreement. This should be the conscious goal of any serious engagement among proponents of differing viewpoints. In Getting to Yes, their best-seller of forty years ago, William Ury et al. demonstrated that you should not assume that your opponent disagrees with your most highly held values, and vice versa. The two sides – or for that matter, the various several sides – may see different aspects or portions of the issue under consideration as the critical ones.
The standard, highly simplified illustration of this point has to do with a fierce argument between two strong-willed individuals over who will take the only orange available to them. A compromise, of course, would be for each to take half of the delectable fruit… but that way, both may be left unsatisfied. In this standard story, humble as it is, the two individuals state just why each wants that orange so much and so urgently. One is preparing to cook something special and needs all the zest of the orange peel, while the other has been for a run on a hot day and is desperately thirsty for the juice inside. A mere compromise is not necessary in this case. An agreement is obviously preferable, by which the one would take the peel including the zest and the other would take the insides including the juice. Both would get what they wanted and needed.
In real life, disputes are much more complex, but agreement is still a worthy goal, the preferred outcome. If the discussion begins with an assumption – on one or both sides – that agreement of some kind is not possible, the opportunity for doing better than compromise, for ending up with more than half an orange apiece, would be lost. The secret to reaching agreement, and thus avoiding a dreary compromise, lies in coming to know just what the other party, or parties, wants and why.
2
The second outcome of dispute-resolution preferable to compromise is consensus, which is not the ideal – agreement – but an arrangement that all parties to the dispute can live with, perhaps more comfortably than with merely balancing one’s own wishes off the others’ with no one’s getting what is most important to her or him. For multi-party disputes, consensus is probably the best alternative that can realistically be achieved, and it should be the objective of the discussion once it has been determined that a full agreement is not possible in that particular case.
Reaching consensus is often time-consuming, but it can be reached without too much pain if all parties to the dispute analyze and articulate early on not only all that they want to achieve but also just why each objective is desirable and how much it is desired. That is, one must be both willing and able to explain to the others how the interrelated objectives are prioritized. Self-understanding, honesty, and candor are needed for the prized consensus to be reached.
In the ideal version of such a consensus, all parties end up achieving many of the objectives most critical to them, as well as a sufficient number of the less critical objectives so that they can feel that the values of the gains, taken as a whole, outweighs the disadvantages of not gaining everything desired and of giving up what they may have preferred to keep.
If resolution of the dispute is honestly the goal of the decision-making process, it is surprising how often self-aware, articulate, and candid individuals can reach consensus.
3
Compromise itself, of course, is a bargain according to which each party gains something valuable by conceding something valuable to the others. The satisfaction level of a compromise is lower than that of an agreement or a consensus, but a compromise can still be satisfactory, even though the dispute under discussion may come up again relatively soon.
A good example of a very significant compromise was reached in establishing the U. S. Constitution. A majority of the framers wanted to eliminate slavery within a relatively few years, but a significant minority – all from the South – would have been willing to put up with the status quo under the generally ineffective Articles of Confederation rather than concede something of such high value to them. In other words, the very highest priority in the negotiations for the southerners was maintaining slavery.
The others’ highest priority was making significant improvements in the status quo, but the prospect of maintaining slavery was particularly onerous because the slaves – despite having no civil rights – were to be counted in determining each state’s number of congressional representatives. The now notorious compromise was for slavery to be maintained, but for only 60% of the total number of slaves to count in the census in determining the state’s representation in Congress. The southern states benefitted to some degree from the improvements made and also gained their highest priority, while the other states could live with the improvements made, perhaps as Lincoln said anticipating the slow disappearance of slavery, and in the negotiation had made maintaining slavery more nearly tolerable in the short run.
4
The question of timing is very important in any form of dispute-resolution. To reach an agreement, it is important to share with each other what advantage one is seeking at the outset of the discussion. To reach a consensus, it is also very important to say at the beginning what one is pursuing, why, and what matters the most. Proceeding in this manner is helpful also in trying to reach a compromise – presumably after the hope of agreement or consensus has withered away. But it is also of critical importance to avoid offering to give up something one desires too early in the process.
Doing so, even if what is given up is less important than what one gains, short-circuits the process which if allowed to take its course might allow limiting the final concession to only a portion of the valuable objective; whereas offering the major concession too early guarantees the loss of that desirable gain and – even worse – causes the negotiations to start with the assumption that the other side will make a minor concession, as a response to the offered bargain, and will go on to seek further concessions from the first party. The key in seeking compromise, as in resolving disputes through agreement or consensus, is to start by asking for everything one hopes to achieve and only then being willing to make compromises – first on minor objectives – only in return for significant concessions from the other side.
Frankly, the result may turn out to be the same when a concession is offered from the beginning, but to remove all hope of achieving all one’s objectives in the final compromise before conversations even begin is to despair of making the significant progress that may have been possible despite appearances to the contrary.
***
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Lucy Meets a Count
***
1
Her house was like a big, messy mind. And whenever she cleaned up downstairs, which was extremely seldom now, she always ended up brushing things under the rug or behind the sofa, stacking unread magazines in some other corner scarcely disturbing their dust, and throwing most of that stuff she was going to sort out one day into an unused old trunk she kept just under the stairs.
She thought sometimes that there must be things living under there, some enormous, uncharted animal, or rats and roaches and things, a teeming bed of life all covered up and not often talked about. "It was as if the house were built on the sea and if you opened the little door leading under the stairs you'd see the living waters shimmering with never-ending movement and undreamed excitement." That, she thought one time, was eternity...living just under her stairs like a sleeping hypothalamus.
And she never really went under there or even downstairs anymore, no more often than she had to. It was dirty: that was it.
She stood up to survey her work. Gleaming and clean, the tiny room lay before her.
All was prepared.
Mentally she surveyed the lab one floor below - the electrodes, the meters and computer, the as yet lifeless woman-model itself. Yes, all there too was waiting, ready, as she had left it. All was quietly awaiting tomorrow.
She stepped again across the tiled floor, stooped to peer into the crevice between the slick wall and the bottom of the stool, genuflected briefly as her aerofoam sponge swiped across the cool and curving stone. The drying film of moisture sparkled in the light.
She straightened again, and turned. Yes, here too in the tiny third floor room, all was neat and ordered. The sink, the tub, the stool itself, the cabinet before it where alone on the shining shelf sat her black box of bank statements and stock reports. All shone and winked at her, and she felt calm and relaxed.
"It does a woman good once in a while," she used to say, "to get down on her hands and knees." (Did her old mother used to say that?)
It had been during one of the times when she was reading over those bank and stock figures (her grandchildren, she called them), then when her neat little bathroom was still on the ground floor, one day already so long ago, when she had suddenly thought of all the dirty little things crawling around in her under-the-stairs basement. Perhaps she had been thinking of insecticides and rat poisons, and she had very distinctly heard a noise. Not a very frightening sound in itself, but definitely she heard, or was she only imagining it? a peculiar little rumble, or a snarl.
She had become somewhat alarmed, and had left that first tile-smooth chamber, somewhat dingy and old in those times, to prowl the great downstairs floor. She hadn't gone far, however, when there was something, was it a sound? a vibration? something which guided her attention to the doorway under the stairs.
It was then, and immediately too, that she had decided to move upstairs. For from behind the shadowed doorway there had been, or she felt there had been - she told herself now, of course, she must have been imagining it, "her reckless imagination" - what was it? how did she perceive it? a deep, sighing, groaning moan.
It had been - her eyes glazed now remembering it, and her stomach felt empty - "it was as if the house were built on a windstorm and now the winds were whirling through the aging beams of a pirate's trusty schooner, listing and creaking as the masts trembled and the ship groaned before splashing down, down into the turbulent waters of the sea below."
She had gathered all her things, her then small collection of equipment too, and had moved entirely and unhesitatingly to the house's middle floor. And ever after, despite the filth which had met her there (she surmised that the under-stairs pipes had been somehow blocked), despite the days of toil she had been forced to spend cleaning the foul rooms of the excrement she'd found there, she had made her decision final, and almost never again descended to her house's lower floor...no more often than she had to.
And soon, of course, she had been forced to leave that entire middle floor for her burgeoning laboratory, forced again to move up a floor, to lose days of valuable time cleaning the filth-choked rooms upstairs. But she had carried on, knowing then, of course, that there would soon be her own porcelain suite, spotless, bright and clean.
2
By now she had left the bathroom for the bedroom, and had begun to prepare for sleep.
She sat there in her clean little chamber with the fluorescent lights on before bed. She sat there, holding a shoe thoughtfully in her nimble hand. "Tomorrow," she said to the shoe.
Tomorrow she would descend to the lab (and there was warmth in the thought of it), and she would finish it, the woman she was building, her mirror image. Then she could begin, "and all her works would praise her name."
That, she thought to her shoe, is eternity.
She occasionally thought as well, though she said nothing of it since she didn't want it to seem she was complaining, that it was rather unpleasant to have to work where it was so dirty. Her laboratory was on the middle floor of her house, though sometimes she worked out of hours in her nice little room upstairs. And she couldn't help noticing now and again that there was a door which led from one dark corner of the lab into that eerie little storage room under the stairs by means of a short narrow staircase leading almost straight down. She would, on occasion, throw furtive glances in the direction of that little door, though it had long since been bolted and barred, and sometimes wondered if, when the lights were out in the lab, though they almost never were, she couldn't see just a little bit of a glowing, showing from underneath the door. "As if the house were built on the sunset and the door was the last cloud the old sol would wink behind before bubbling its hot orange magic underneath the very mountains she was standing on." (Where did these words come from?)
It had been only after the second move - she was getting into her pajamas - when she had left the middle floor for her lab, that her work had taken its new and decisive direction. She was building another woman, a model of herself, a woman which would walk and move and have her being just as she herself did. A perfect replica of the human form, just what humanity needed, a woman-model to observe. The model would show her what they required, for progress. And there would be no involvement, no uncontrolled subjectivity. She would be like a test tube or a centrifuge, the algae, or a mouth-watering dog.
It was such a great idea!
She swung her legs onto the bed, and, sighing, lay back. The fluorescents above sparkled through the water in her eyes.
She was never quite sure whether or not she liked her work. Not that that was important, but it sometimes amused her to try to decide, "lying there waiting for sleep to invade, like Ethiopia over Mussolini."
There was, of course, the money. Reluctant governments were nevertheless paying dearly those days for research and construction perhaps destined to solve oh so many problems facing humankind at the moment, perhaps at any moment.
"I'm not doing if for that," she said to herself. "Oh I'm not working for the money." For indeed, she had no real need for money, her house, her equipment, her food and simple pleasures all so freely provided by the government or from privately donated funds. Yet there was the little black metal box placed carefully on the empty white shelf in the bathroom cabinet, before her when she sat; and she would often pass an hour or two there, reading eagerly the records she kept in the box, the increasing figures, the history of her prolific little grandsons and grand-daughters running around from bank to bank, from pile to pile, from hand to hand, making people happy while they bred a little more the months ahead.
"That too," she liked to think, "was eternity: coins breeding in a fertile pile of gold."
She knew she must like all that sort of thing - and the calculations too - but somewhere, somewhere beneath the while rubberized laboratory trousers she always wore or next to the superthin calculator she often carried in her breast pocket, somewhere where her eyes could not see, nor her microscope, nor her fluoroscope, there a voice "like a warm breeze wandering through the hot fingers of a dry summer night's grass fire" was telling her there was something else in the work, in the lab itself, "something dark and fierce like the uncharted waters in some Louisiana pool." There was something fierce and dark in the lab which drove her on "as a midnight blaze drives a mad, blind stallion charging into the darkness where he cannot see, but charging on and on."
She rolled onto her back; she was panting.
But her work was important, perhaps vital, she told herself, to all humanity; and she would go on with it day by day, carrying on cheerfully, even eagerly. And tomorrow, she would . . .
She yawned, and the fluorescents swam above her. Her eyes fluttered closed, and she dreamed of a racetrack and of herself clocking a speeding unicorn.
3
She had risen early that day, nervous with anticipation. She had stubbed her toe on the cold white stool while her eyes were still filled with sleep. She had dressed carefully, favoring her throbbing toe and concentrating on remaining calm.
She had descended from her little room...as usual, she had thought to herself; it's just a normal day. Yet the key had somehow crawled through her fingers and bounced to the floor when she began to unlock the lab door, and somewhere she knew.
She had entered the lab; there was nothing changed. Her equipment lay still before her, meticulously arranged and prepared. Yet she had not begun her work. She had been drawn instead to turn about the room, which was quiet and somehow unbalanced by the slanting rays of morning sunlight which were playing through the only little window near the back. She had paused there before the little door leading down to the under-stairs; she had carefully reached out her hand to check the bolts and bars, and could not now forget that they had distinctly felt warm to her cold, unsteady fingers.
It had been months since she had checked her small white cabinet just beside the outer door across the room. But now she did; today she felt it was important. She ran a short test on a drop she took from the small black vial she kept there.
It was still potent.
It was foolish, she thought cynically to himself, to keep it there. Yet she did not trust the glowing, snarling, softly waving under-stairs, and the poison she'd distilled from monkey urine would kill any beast or monster she might have to face. Perhaps it was - yes, she smiled at her hesitancy, it was foolish; but she had humored herself that morning and had found there a sort of confidence.
She had moved on and on about the room, and had finally begun.
And just as the woman was born, just as the model began slowly to stir, to blink her glazed eyes and to scowl, then - she could not now forget it - then, she had felt the floor shift "like the deck of a faltering vessel." The room was suddenly warm, and from the little door - she must have been imaging it - there was a glowing like the sunrise and a moaning like a strange imprisoned animal.
The model-woman now sat before her, and knew why she'd been made. The model was wise, and her creator quick to note all her motions and thoughts, though the noting mind often clouded with a dark thought of the cabineted vial.
"I am empty,” said the model-woman.
And she knew that it was true.
Just then, as the model-woman had begun to speak, the floor started to shake and the walls rattle. The fluorescents flashed and died, but the room was light.
There was a rumbling, a snarling, a roaring like the wind in a fire, and the bars on the little door glowed with heat, then fell away.
There was fire everywhere, the floor, the lights. The model- woman's eyes flashed in wonder and in terror as her creator vomited and writhed in her burning rubber pants.
The door smashed open. The model-woman fled, and, running out and up the stairs to the clear white room, she gulped greedily from the foul vial.
But she herself, she did not flee, and knew she did not want to go. She was standing then, awaiting it, and it washed over her in a boiling bath. She stood fast, her hands raised high above her head, knowing that she did not want to run, exulting savagely and painfully in the violent burning of her flesh as the uncharted animal, the swimming seas of boiling unction, the blind, wind-blown, charging stallion, and the flames crashed upon her like black waves on a sunny rock.
And as she died, as she perished in the awful sea from the under-stairs, her house fell to ruin about her, an innocent victim of the dark savage fight between the flowing sunsets from below the floor and the piles of excrement on the roof.
Her house had fallen into smoldering rubble, floating like smelly scum on a sunlit sea.
And today the wet, charred ruins of her house cry out to the never-ending skies: "One day, oh humanity, let there be built a house where seas and stools can live united, as in the well-ordered mind of a rose!"
***
1
Her house was like a big, messy mind. And whenever she cleaned up downstairs, which was extremely seldom now, she always ended up brushing things under the rug or behind the sofa, stacking unread magazines in some other corner scarcely disturbing their dust, and throwing most of that stuff she was going to sort out one day into an unused old trunk she kept just under the stairs.
She thought sometimes that there must be things living under there, some enormous, uncharted animal, or rats and roaches and things, a teeming bed of life all covered up and not often talked about. "It was as if the house were built on the sea and if you opened the little door leading under the stairs you'd see the living waters shimmering with never-ending movement and undreamed excitement." That, she thought one time, was eternity...living just under her stairs like a sleeping hypothalamus.
And she never really went under there or even downstairs anymore, no more often than she had to. It was dirty: that was it.
She stood up to survey her work. Gleaming and clean, the tiny room lay before her.
All was prepared.
Mentally she surveyed the lab one floor below - the electrodes, the meters and computer, the as yet lifeless woman-model itself. Yes, all there too was waiting, ready, as she had left it. All was quietly awaiting tomorrow.
She stepped again across the tiled floor, stooped to peer into the crevice between the slick wall and the bottom of the stool, genuflected briefly as her aerofoam sponge swiped across the cool and curving stone. The drying film of moisture sparkled in the light.
She straightened again, and turned. Yes, here too in the tiny third floor room, all was neat and ordered. The sink, the tub, the stool itself, the cabinet before it where alone on the shining shelf sat her black box of bank statements and stock reports. All shone and winked at her, and she felt calm and relaxed.
"It does a woman good once in a while," she used to say, "to get down on her hands and knees." (Did her old mother used to say that?)
It had been during one of the times when she was reading over those bank and stock figures (her grandchildren, she called them), then when her neat little bathroom was still on the ground floor, one day already so long ago, when she had suddenly thought of all the dirty little things crawling around in her under-the-stairs basement. Perhaps she had been thinking of insecticides and rat poisons, and she had very distinctly heard a noise. Not a very frightening sound in itself, but definitely she heard, or was she only imagining it? a peculiar little rumble, or a snarl.
She had become somewhat alarmed, and had left that first tile-smooth chamber, somewhat dingy and old in those times, to prowl the great downstairs floor. She hadn't gone far, however, when there was something, was it a sound? a vibration? something which guided her attention to the doorway under the stairs.
It was then, and immediately too, that she had decided to move upstairs. For from behind the shadowed doorway there had been, or she felt there had been - she told herself now, of course, she must have been imagining it, "her reckless imagination" - what was it? how did she perceive it? a deep, sighing, groaning moan.
It had been - her eyes glazed now remembering it, and her stomach felt empty - "it was as if the house were built on a windstorm and now the winds were whirling through the aging beams of a pirate's trusty schooner, listing and creaking as the masts trembled and the ship groaned before splashing down, down into the turbulent waters of the sea below."
She had gathered all her things, her then small collection of equipment too, and had moved entirely and unhesitatingly to the house's middle floor. And ever after, despite the filth which had met her there (she surmised that the under-stairs pipes had been somehow blocked), despite the days of toil she had been forced to spend cleaning the foul rooms of the excrement she'd found there, she had made her decision final, and almost never again descended to her house's lower floor...no more often than she had to.
And soon, of course, she had been forced to leave that entire middle floor for her burgeoning laboratory, forced again to move up a floor, to lose days of valuable time cleaning the filth-choked rooms upstairs. But she had carried on, knowing then, of course, that there would soon be her own porcelain suite, spotless, bright and clean.
2
By now she had left the bathroom for the bedroom, and had begun to prepare for sleep.
She sat there in her clean little chamber with the fluorescent lights on before bed. She sat there, holding a shoe thoughtfully in her nimble hand. "Tomorrow," she said to the shoe.
Tomorrow she would descend to the lab (and there was warmth in the thought of it), and she would finish it, the woman she was building, her mirror image. Then she could begin, "and all her works would praise her name."
That, she thought to her shoe, is eternity.
She occasionally thought as well, though she said nothing of it since she didn't want it to seem she was complaining, that it was rather unpleasant to have to work where it was so dirty. Her laboratory was on the middle floor of her house, though sometimes she worked out of hours in her nice little room upstairs. And she couldn't help noticing now and again that there was a door which led from one dark corner of the lab into that eerie little storage room under the stairs by means of a short narrow staircase leading almost straight down. She would, on occasion, throw furtive glances in the direction of that little door, though it had long since been bolted and barred, and sometimes wondered if, when the lights were out in the lab, though they almost never were, she couldn't see just a little bit of a glowing, showing from underneath the door. "As if the house were built on the sunset and the door was the last cloud the old sol would wink behind before bubbling its hot orange magic underneath the very mountains she was standing on." (Where did these words come from?)
It had been only after the second move - she was getting into her pajamas - when she had left the middle floor for her lab, that her work had taken its new and decisive direction. She was building another woman, a model of herself, a woman which would walk and move and have her being just as she herself did. A perfect replica of the human form, just what humanity needed, a woman-model to observe. The model would show her what they required, for progress. And there would be no involvement, no uncontrolled subjectivity. She would be like a test tube or a centrifuge, the algae, or a mouth-watering dog.
It was such a great idea!
She swung her legs onto the bed, and, sighing, lay back. The fluorescents above sparkled through the water in her eyes.
She was never quite sure whether or not she liked her work. Not that that was important, but it sometimes amused her to try to decide, "lying there waiting for sleep to invade, like Ethiopia over Mussolini."
There was, of course, the money. Reluctant governments were nevertheless paying dearly those days for research and construction perhaps destined to solve oh so many problems facing humankind at the moment, perhaps at any moment.
"I'm not doing if for that," she said to herself. "Oh I'm not working for the money." For indeed, she had no real need for money, her house, her equipment, her food and simple pleasures all so freely provided by the government or from privately donated funds. Yet there was the little black metal box placed carefully on the empty white shelf in the bathroom cabinet, before her when she sat; and she would often pass an hour or two there, reading eagerly the records she kept in the box, the increasing figures, the history of her prolific little grandsons and grand-daughters running around from bank to bank, from pile to pile, from hand to hand, making people happy while they bred a little more the months ahead.
"That too," she liked to think, "was eternity: coins breeding in a fertile pile of gold."
She knew she must like all that sort of thing - and the calculations too - but somewhere, somewhere beneath the while rubberized laboratory trousers she always wore or next to the superthin calculator she often carried in her breast pocket, somewhere where her eyes could not see, nor her microscope, nor her fluoroscope, there a voice "like a warm breeze wandering through the hot fingers of a dry summer night's grass fire" was telling her there was something else in the work, in the lab itself, "something dark and fierce like the uncharted waters in some Louisiana pool." There was something fierce and dark in the lab which drove her on "as a midnight blaze drives a mad, blind stallion charging into the darkness where he cannot see, but charging on and on."
She rolled onto her back; she was panting.
But her work was important, perhaps vital, she told herself, to all humanity; and she would go on with it day by day, carrying on cheerfully, even eagerly. And tomorrow, she would . . .
She yawned, and the fluorescents swam above her. Her eyes fluttered closed, and she dreamed of a racetrack and of herself clocking a speeding unicorn.
3
She had risen early that day, nervous with anticipation. She had stubbed her toe on the cold white stool while her eyes were still filled with sleep. She had dressed carefully, favoring her throbbing toe and concentrating on remaining calm.
She had descended from her little room...as usual, she had thought to herself; it's just a normal day. Yet the key had somehow crawled through her fingers and bounced to the floor when she began to unlock the lab door, and somewhere she knew.
She had entered the lab; there was nothing changed. Her equipment lay still before her, meticulously arranged and prepared. Yet she had not begun her work. She had been drawn instead to turn about the room, which was quiet and somehow unbalanced by the slanting rays of morning sunlight which were playing through the only little window near the back. She had paused there before the little door leading down to the under-stairs; she had carefully reached out her hand to check the bolts and bars, and could not now forget that they had distinctly felt warm to her cold, unsteady fingers.
It had been months since she had checked her small white cabinet just beside the outer door across the room. But now she did; today she felt it was important. She ran a short test on a drop she took from the small black vial she kept there.
It was still potent.
It was foolish, she thought cynically to himself, to keep it there. Yet she did not trust the glowing, snarling, softly waving under-stairs, and the poison she'd distilled from monkey urine would kill any beast or monster she might have to face. Perhaps it was - yes, she smiled at her hesitancy, it was foolish; but she had humored herself that morning and had found there a sort of confidence.
She had moved on and on about the room, and had finally begun.
And just as the woman was born, just as the model began slowly to stir, to blink her glazed eyes and to scowl, then - she could not now forget it - then, she had felt the floor shift "like the deck of a faltering vessel." The room was suddenly warm, and from the little door - she must have been imaging it - there was a glowing like the sunrise and a moaning like a strange imprisoned animal.
The model-woman now sat before her, and knew why she'd been made. The model was wise, and her creator quick to note all her motions and thoughts, though the noting mind often clouded with a dark thought of the cabineted vial.
"I am empty,” said the model-woman.
And she knew that it was true.
Just then, as the model-woman had begun to speak, the floor started to shake and the walls rattle. The fluorescents flashed and died, but the room was light.
There was a rumbling, a snarling, a roaring like the wind in a fire, and the bars on the little door glowed with heat, then fell away.
There was fire everywhere, the floor, the lights. The model- woman's eyes flashed in wonder and in terror as her creator vomited and writhed in her burning rubber pants.
The door smashed open. The model-woman fled, and, running out and up the stairs to the clear white room, she gulped greedily from the foul vial.
But she herself, she did not flee, and knew she did not want to go. She was standing then, awaiting it, and it washed over her in a boiling bath. She stood fast, her hands raised high above her head, knowing that she did not want to run, exulting savagely and painfully in the violent burning of her flesh as the uncharted animal, the swimming seas of boiling unction, the blind, wind-blown, charging stallion, and the flames crashed upon her like black waves on a sunny rock.
And as she died, as she perished in the awful sea from the under-stairs, her house fell to ruin about her, an innocent victim of the dark savage fight between the flowing sunsets from below the floor and the piles of excrement on the roof.
Her house had fallen into smoldering rubble, floating like smelly scum on a sunlit sea.
And today the wet, charred ruins of her house cry out to the never-ending skies: "One day, oh humanity, let there be built a house where seas and stools can live united, as in the well-ordered mind of a rose!"
***
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