“That which we can find words for is something already dead in our hearts, there is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking.” — Nietzsche (touching upon something very close to Hamlet’s heart, but farther than far from Falstaff’s soul)…preparing the reader for this article (and many movies by Stanley Kubrick)…without ever having intended to do so.

If you live in Turkey you don’t talk about “The Forgotten Holocaust” (http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=74&ItemID=13660  ). And if you hang anywhere on “civilized Earth” you don’t speak about “The Cell Phone/Laptop Holocaust” (as per Chellis Glendinning, Keith Harmon Snow et. al.). Past, Present abominations that would interfere with mouths going blah blah, socializing.

Among my sweet, very small immediate circle –replete with educated, well-meaning souls– one stays away from what’s verboten too. To wit, everyone’s gearing up for a trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium (1). Excitement in my quarter respecting the ops for kids, the ops for the kid in adults, the photo ops…. Ooops, my loved ones are going to be reading this! Mustn’t poop out.

No, one makes the trip down the coast if one wants to have human interaction. Goes down that slippery slope of Camraderie, precarious if not inexorably disasterous. Of course, there are other people, but…these are my people. The ones here today, the ones who love Marcel, tolerate me. Light up with us.

Someone close asks me if I’ve seen the film “Why We Fight” (which he obviously liked), and I don’t say that in spite of the positive aspects of the flick…I stick to my guns respecting the fact that such fare reinforces the notion that it’s the last fifty years wherein the U.S. has been feeding lies to the public to justify attacks/interventions, AND shortchanges U.S. (rotten-to-the-core) history…which has repeated examples of institutionalized (and other forms of) mendacity creating the climate for…forced conflicts. Scratch “repeated” and substitute incessant, if you will.

Yes, I nod yes…or provide some positive feedback. Delve into this or that or don’t is the demand of Camraderie. After all, lighthearted rapport is the core of most of what’ll bring a smile, a heartfelt connection. And one might ask –pun intended, indeed– “Why fight it?”.

The last thing I would say is “Yah, I know why we fight. ‘Cause we’re stupid.’” It’s the last thing I would say, but the first thing that comes to mind.

It’s ok to have friends. At almost any cost sometimes. Most will wilt without, it’s clear. But that doesn’t mean the downside to keeping silent ’bout abuse doesn’t drain. The pain of others –once observed, once felt causally– kills slowly. When you know it’s avoidable.

The Mouth Wide Shut Syndrome also touches upon why there can be no wide-ranging solidarity involving anything but narrow issues. Among like-minded lefties. Ah, anyone.

One friend made reference to the 1999 Kubrick film, “Eyes Wide Shut” recently. I have reason to believe she liked it, and I kept my mouth shut…as I steered the conversation to other films by my man Stan. I am nuts about much of Kubrick, but that last work was a huge disappointment for me. And I didn’t want to lash into…and, possibly, lose out. Taut me.

Still I got the title for this article from that tension. Taught me. (2)

Life is like the last line in “Eyes Wide Shut.” “Fuck me,” I believe is what the Kidman character says to (excitable) Cruise Man. Something like that. The whole film is like life itself, in the limited sense of not turning out to be what you want it to be.

Also, “fuck us” is –certainly in two senses– what life does. Sometimes –even– with our ostensible consent.

“Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.” (3)

When I left my friends’ place the other day –the two sweeties noted above are partners– I asked whether or not they had checked the mail that day. I had been sending funny cards to one of them via the postal service…in an effort to encourage her to stop smoking. They were walking me and Little Marcel to the door, and the hubby exclaimed, “There he is now!” He had just noticed Anton, the postman from Nicaragua who also serves our vintage furnishing shop with missives in the mornings we’re working.

Marcel took off like a bat-out-of-purgatory, screaming “Anton, Anton!”, as he headed for their mailbox. After I had caught up with the happy couple, and Anton introduced me to one of the residents of my friends’ complex…il postino waxed enthusiastically about Marcel’s talent with geography…letting his customer know what a bright kid she was standing next to at that moment.

But the woman didn’t need to hear any such laudatory rundown of my runt. She had had previous contact with Marcel, as it turns out, and had been quite impressed enough already with the way in which he was able to identify the precise variation of her particular breed of dog, the love of her life that was with her when she first met Marcel.

“Oh, he’s so smart,” said she, “he’ll be able to be President one day, if he likes.”

“That’s the last thing he’d want to be,” said I, unthinkingly. Well, not unthinkingly, but you know what I mean, I think.

Woops, but I don’t think I lost anyone there. (4)

Factor in business concerns, however, and watch how the bottom-line warps and woofs one’s obsession with…socializing, having friends, and the like.

What one will say from day to day has a troubling correlation with whether or not one has to take a cut in pay. That obvious. But it’s worth considering in the context of this article, I believe.

I’ve had several wives. One of them, one time, scalded me with hot water from a kitchen faucet…unintentionally. However, when I screamed bloody murder ’bout her carelessly swinging the faucet over the tender part of my inside forearm, she quickly retorted (in her usual defensive mode), “Hey, you turned the water on!”. I continued to wash the dishes, and we’ve remained “friends” to this day.

Nothing more to say, I must say. I write.

Footnotes:

(1) If one were to simply read Derrick Jensen’s last chapter in THOUGHT TO EXIST IN THE WILD: AWAKENING FROM THE NIGHTMARE OF ZOOS, particularly its focus on the San Diego Zoo (considered by too many to be in the forefront of so-called conservation), it would be very difficult to support excursions to incarcerated animals anywhere. Sans that, most conversations ’bout those in captivity hover above the facts, and –for the most part– compound ignorance with ignorance, repeating ad infinitum the misinformation that’s been spread by (and serves the interests of) the powers-that-be.

(2) Kubrick’s work, in general, is worth considering with regard to my concern with human connection here. At random, from the top of my head (no pre-planning here, honest): Paths of Glory (warriors getting shafted by their own in conditions which don’t allow for many sweet memories), Lolita (built-in distance for HH vis-a-vis both mother and daughter), Dr. Strangelove (two-dimensional figures on a battlefield), A Clockwork Orange (in-and-out mentality throughout doesn’t make for much closeness ‘midst the violence), 2001 (the great stilted dialogue and lack of human interaction is of paramount importance here), Full Metal Jacket (more people with brains and bodies blown apart…alone), and The Shining (close once, J and his wife –they had a child, after all– but not during the intense footage, which includes others who couldn’t connect either) all avoid…intimacy. My allusion re EWS in the title, then, speaks for itself. One could actually tell that Cruise and Kidman –the real people– were headed for divorce. And Kubrick’s use of symbols greatly overrode any inkling of tenderness, any faith in its…importance.

(3) In other (than Shakespeare’s) words, our fates are antithetical to our characters, and what we think to do has no relation to our…conclusions…harvests…ends. Desire and destiny are contraries, and all thought must undo itself*. Hamlet’s nihilism is transcendant, surpassing what can exist in Dostoevsky, or in Nietzsche’s forebodings that what we can find words for must already be dead in our hearts, and that only what cannot be said is worth saying. This latter point is, in great part, why I write the way I do. AND touches upon our various forms of futility, forms of distraction, unformed character, and uninformed, ineffective action…in living out our days…according to The Explicable.

*None of this, of course, will make sense to a teenager who just made the cheerleading squad. Or to…the Silicon Valley Silly who just got a raise (in or out of the bedroom).

(4) Few who would say such a thing are extremely unlikely to allow the notion that all popular presidents from the U.S. have been murderers…to penetrate. Or that the job itself is clearly unhealthy, etc., only embraced by those with a (unc)lean and overly hungry mind. Stars in eyes preclude seeing blood-red stripes. Or talking about it all. At all.