999

Today I started rereading Pale Fire.

A lot of Nabokov's novels start with author's notes warning the reader not to apply the theories of Freud (identified as "the witch doctor from Vienna" or some such) to the book. This always seemed a little weak to me. If you've written a compelling work, you needn't fear fashionable critical theories. You can wait them out until they're no longer fashionable. 

Pale Fire has no such warning. You could read that as a sign that Nabokov was really in the zone with this one, which he was. What it does have is an epigraph from James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, which sets the tone and gets you scratching your head. But I repeat myself.

John Shade, the author of the 999-line poem within a novel, does in one stanza provide a list of things he hates: aside from Freud and Marx, there's also jazz. The same things Nabokov hated, in other words. For all that, there's a certain irony between the real author and the fictional one. Charles Kinbote, another fictional author providing commentary on the poem, is a whole kettle of fish in himself.

Cabin fever

Huh. Okay.

Being stuck indoors all day, and apparently limited to maybe a few blocks tomorrow, is certainly not fun. How are the people who lost power making out, I wonder? 

One odd distraction. There's a car parked in front of one of the houses across the street. It's had its taillights blazing all day, and seems like it will have them going all night, too. If the car has the juice to keep them going. No one seems to know what to do about it, or why the owner has left it like that.

Peak experiences

I read a crime story today. It was about a modern day expedition climbing Mt. Everest, a client determined to reach the top, and someone else in the party looking for revenge against that person. It's a good story in itself―the author's name is William Hall―but it also started me thinking about those who climb big mountains like that.

Some Sherpas do climb Everest without bottled oxygen. Ang Rita Sherpa did so ten times. No sane Western climber would attempt that. It's also true that the the Sherpa culture's religion holds that the Himalayas are sacred. 

There's probably a connection between these two things. Sherpas revere the mountains as loci of godly activity. This encourages a certain carefulness. 

Little black and white birds

As has been said elsewhere, they sound somewhat like they're laughing. They seem to be social birds, as well. These little auks are congregating, as they do, in the Norway's Svalbard archipelago. Svalbard didn't really have a population until the 17th century. I wonder what the first human settlers made of these cackling birds.

Impact

Recently confirmed: in the aftermath of a violent event like a random shooting, those immediately effected are traumatized. People on the periphery go through something different. Some are rubberneckers, of course. But a lot are just trying to get through their day and avoid the wreckage. 

For my part, I was on a RIPTA bus, coming back from a light shopping trip to Rumford. The bus driver stopped when we were in sight of downtown Pawtucket. Detour, end of the line. He didn't tell us how to get to our destinations. We were just on our own. The Pawtucket/Central Falls commuter rail station wasn't far off, but any halfway direct route was blocked off by police. I followed a mother and adult daughter who lived near the station and thus were going in the same general direction. They kindly gave me directions when our paths diverged.

When I was on the bus for home, a guy got on a few stops after me. He was already talking about the shooting. I didn't learn anything from listening to him except that the rumor mill was still in good working order.

Only after getting home did I look up any media reports on what happened. It was bad. Every time I read about it, it seems to get worse. Condolences to everyone who was close enough to it to be considered a survivor. Peace to those who didn't make it.

Up and out

The bottom line is that space is a frustrating, ungiving environment, and you are trapped in it. If you're trapped long enough, your frustration metastasizes to anger. Anger wants an outlet and a victim. An astronaut has three from which to choose: a crewmate, Mission Control, and himself. Astronauts try not to vent at each other because it makes a bad situation worse. There's no front door to slam or driveway to speed out of. You're soaking in it. "Also," says Jim Lovell, who spent two weeks on a loveseat with Frank Borman during Gemini VII, "you're in a risky business and you depend on the other guy to stay alive. So you don't antagonize the other guy."

from Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, by Mary Roach

Space travel and the preparations people go through in order to get into space are always interesting. In a way, the Gemini program was the last great moment of midcentury American culture. And certainly there are still people willing to take the risks needed for space travel.

One wonders, though, how far this thing can be taken. As a species we evolved for the conditions prevalent on Earth. Some have taken a step or two off the planet. But colonization is a whole other basket of fish. Does anyone really want to live in the void? In theory, there are plans to settle Mars and then move on from there. This would require long periods, maybe lifetimes, of voyagers denying their human side. In practice we're not really exploring space as much as we're throwing our toys into it.

Good vibes

It's been about eight and a half years since I put some Milt Jackson on this blog. Looking at that post now I see a notice on the square where the video should be telling me that it's unavailable. On the internet, as in life, pleasures are often ephemeral.

Anyway, this is the Modern Jazz Quartet, and they seem to like what they do.