Dark and Stormy Night

I’m driving down a steep road in San Francisco. The road ahead of me appears to descend precipitously to the edge of the bay. Parking is packed and the road is narrow. I slow to a stop at a stop sign right in front of a dive shop. I’ve got nowhere to go so I look inside. In static stances are mannequins in wet suits and buoyancy control vests. The mannequins are all wearing huge afros atop their fake heads.

Driving forward will only serve to put me in the bay now. I’m at the end of the road. What I need to do is a three point turn, but there are cars on each side of the road and space is very tight. There are so many cars but not a soul to be seen walking around. I look out upon the bay to see several dive flags and bubbles floating to the surface of the darkened water. Throwing it in reverse does not seem an option to me.

Interpretation:

Common anxiety dream brought on by the climax of the electoral primary season.

Action agenda:

Relax. Take up surfing.

Recorded 7:55 am, April 18, 2008

On the surface, H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds is about a Martian invasion of Earth. Well actually Southern England seems to be the target of our rivals from the war god planet. As to be expected, the Martians wreak havoc over the countryside, using in a very literal sense scorched earth tactics and, in scenes eerily prophetic of the first world war, chemical weapons. Presenting a narrative of the lives of two brothers witnessing the penultimate breath of human civilization, this is apocalyptic prose at its highest apex - at the point at which there appears no hope, only resignation.

As a suspenseful tale of Martian vs. Earthling conflict, the story is satisfying. The action is persistent and the tension builds as the Tripods approach London. However, again this is the story as it appears to the reader on the surface. Further examination forces this reader to conclude that Wells aspires to explore the same lines of metaphysical conjecture as both Gottfried Leibniz and his satiric critic Voltaire. The telling clue is on the very first page of Chapter 13.

Wells mentions the destruction of the city of Lisbon from earthquake, compounded by tsunami, compounded by fire. Perhaps in a comical sleight, the narrator believes the destruction to have occurred a century ago, but as we all know the date of the catastrophe was 1755, nearly 150 years preceding the setting of the novel.

The sudden destruction of Lisbon and the great suffering in its aftermath are important and vital scenes in Voltaire’s great satire Candide, a cutting criticism of the metaphysical optimism put forth by Gottfried Leibniz, the mathematician, philosopher and general polymath in his 1710 treatise Theodicy. It is title character Candide’s and his tutor Pangloss’ visit to Lisbon just after the earthquake (so soon after that their ship is nearly swallowed up by the ensuing tsunami and their traveling commrade the Anabaptist is lost to the rising waters of the bay) that begins sewing the seeds of doubt in Candide’s belief that this world is indeed “the best of all possible worlds.”

According to Leibniz, our reality, our world, is the best off all possible worlds - the very optimal that God, in his omnipotent concern and care for us, could create. Since God is good and omnipotent, and since He chose this world out of all possibilities, this world must be good–in fact, this world is the best. Even suffering and evil has its place in this best of worlds, because if there could possibly be one better, with a little less suffering and not as much evil, then God would have created that. Voltaire thought this idea to be ludicrous, and he sends his naive yet thoughtful protagonist Candide on adventures throughout Europe and the New World to reveal the very weaknesses of Leibniz’s argument. We witness the great suffering and evil that Candide witnesses, and consequently our own belief, if we had any, in the optimism of Leibniz is all but crushed like a monk under a huge stone hurled from the roof of a cathedral in Lisbon in 1755.

The events in Lisbon caused seismic tremors all throughout the intellectual strata of Europe. The earthquake struck in the morning, killing many Catholic celebrants at mass on All Saints Day. Who would blame any citizen of Lisbon for resigning himself to the revelation that this was the end of time? The horrific events of these few days would force many to ask again those ageless questions:

Why does God allow suffering?

If God is all-seeing and all-powerful, why is there evil?

These are the very questions at the root of Theodicy. This is what Leibniz attempted to answer through reason, and it is toward Leibniz’s answer that Voltaire, by way of his fictional ego Candide, thumbed his nose at.

It can be argued that Voltaire, like most deists of his era, believed that God simply did not care about the plight of man - that he had set the clockwork of creation in motion but then had left it at home by his bedside to enjoy some rest and recreation down at the beach. Many came around to adopt similar paradigms of reason and enlightenment. Events like the great earthquake in Lisbon had shaken the very foundation of faith in 18th century Europe, but what does this have to do with Mars?

In War of the Worlds, London is the new Lisbon. Instead of a comprehensive faith in the almighty, there is now faith in industry, in technology, in the projection of power, all things that have made the British Empire king. The sun does not set on the empire. Religious conviction has been subjugated to commerce, the smokestack and the exploitation of colonial possessions. Little do the imperial subjects realize that they are being watched by an intelligence far more advanced than their own, an intelligence that has plans upon their blue-green world.

What once was the best of all possible worlds for a Martian, is no longer suitable at all. Due to entropic decay, it has become a cold world depleted of the necessary resources to keep Martians free of suffering. Naturally the dark, black eyes of the Martian looked upon the warm Earth with jealousy. Plans were put into play.

Who would blame any citizen of the empire, his stiff upper lip quivering in fear, for believing that what he was witnessing with the death throes of human progress, eventually of all humanity? It must have felt something like a quaking in the earth to see the artillery batteries melt under the Martians’ mysteries heat rays. One would wonder what Candide would have thought surveying the ravaged towns and the mass of humanity fleeing, tearing at each other for advantage . . . Oh screw it, I liked War of the World best for all the ‘spolosions. I give H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds five tentacles up.

The psychopaths watch as Ferris Bueller hands his son a map of the New York subway system

Ferris says it’s all there kid

There’s a day game Ferris adds

The son looks up at the balding father and asks

What am I supposed to do Dad

You do freedom son, freedom says Ferris

Why couldn’t we do this on a school day the kid says

And then the subway doors slide closed between them
and one of the commuting psychopaths straightens up in his seat
remembering that his workout videos say to always keep his
core tight

There are preemptive wars,
glorious wars,
fruitless wars,
asymmetric wars,
cold wars,
world wars,
tribal wars,
culture wars,

R.O. Shipman

It is a shocking thing to realize you know a killer. His name is Joseph Njonge, but until only a few days ago when his name was uttered by a chorus of news anchors, I had known him as just “Joseph.”

I took to Joseph as a friend almost instantly. He was one of two nursing assistants most often assigned to my 93-year-old grandfather’s wing at Garden Terrace Care Center. My grandfather was being rehabilitated after some serious health problems last year, and Joseph could always be relied upon to help with dressing him, cleaning him up, assisting him in the bathroom and other services indispensable to the helpless and infirm. I was thankful to have Rose, the other nursing assistant, and Joseph around. They always came promptly when I pushed the help button.

The quality of care was heads above the chronically understaffed care center we had had my grandfather in before Garden Terrace. After that first experience, we were naturally wary of what would happen to my grandfather once we left the facility for the night, so several nights we would stay at the center well into the evening making sure grandpa wasn’t sitting in his own waste or had rolled off his bed and onto the cold linoleum below. After a couple of weeks of seeing Joseph and Rose in action, and getting some feel for their approach and attitude toward care, we felt a more at ease leaving grandpa in their care.

We still spent many hours at Garden Terrace wheeling Grandpa to and from the rehab room, around the rhododendron gardens outside, and between his room and the communal dining room. As I am the “free son,” working as a freelance writer and a part-time fitness instructor, I became my grandfather’s care advocate and often helped with many of the functions normally done by the nursing assistants. Joseph and I became something of a team.

During lulls of activity, we talked of his life back in Kenya, cars (he was proud of his BMW), sports and music. He was always friendly with me, had a fantastic smile and seemed to move through the day with a swagger and ease that to me meant his mind was still moving to the rhythm of the savanna - a welcoming embrace off all events and people around him. Our conversations did much to inspire the writing of Three Frames of Africa.

I remember one time when we were both sitting in the dining room at dinner time. The residents of our wing all were wearing their bibs. Some were capable of shoveling food into their mouths. Others needed help guiding spoons full of mixed veggies over lips in tremor, to clean up occasional spills of fruit punch, or to wipe threads of drool from slumbering mouths. If the Mariners game wasn’t on, we would turn it to the Discovery Channel and watch Cash Cab, the game show that takes place in a New York taxi cab. Joseph and I were a team, an invincible duo of Manhattanites trying to get to a swank watering hole in Soho from some corner uptown. Where I lacked an answer to a question, Joseph would provide. When Joseph didn’t know the answer, I always did. Talents combined, we never missed any of host Ben Bailey’s questions nor a video bonus.

Just at those points when we were most pleased with ourselves for keeping our streak of success alive, Gladdis at the near table, who was a Broadway dancer in the 40s (she’s shown me the pictures as proof), would wake up and say she knows such and such building that was passing outside of the cab’s window, or that a man by the name of Harold Perriford kissed her on the exact corner on which a team of cab-conveyed contestant was being delivered either victorious or defeated. At such moments, Joseph would turn and smile at the thought of this angel who can remember a romantic rendevous from 1947 as if it happened yesterday but can’t remember what she just had for dessert.

So what transpired that mid-March evening that has put Joseph, wearing an orange jumpsuit and whispering to his counsel, up there on my TV? Someone strangled a 75-year-old grandmother named Jane Carol Britt and shoved her body into the trunk of her Mercedes. The authorities say they have a positive DNA match between tissues found underneath Jane’s fingernails, probably the result of struggle, and my friend Joseph. I did not know the victim though I imagine we might have passed each other some time in the halls of Garden Terrace during my grandfather’s two-month stay. Another report I read indicated that they had found Jane’s Costco membership card in Joseph’s wallet.

I cannot imagine what would drive Joseph to kill Jane Carol Britt. What does it take for one man to kill? I still try to work out such machinations in my mind. Did Jane utter something carelessly and in so doing, flipped a switch in Joseph and turned him into something other, something capable of strangling the breath out of the?

By going through all the possible scenarios that would come closest to making sense, I, in fact, put myself in Joseph’s place. I become for a moment the kind killer. The real question I am asking is what would drive me to kill. I don’t know the answer to this one, so this is my street shout-out.

KOMO News Coverage of Jane’s murder and Joseph’s arrest

Oh, and if you are not familiar with Cash Cab . . .