Two Sides of Denial

The lst British edition cover 1957

In preparing for my next planned post in my Soul of the Future series--which will conclude the posts covering atomic apocalypse movies with the more direct films of the late 50s through the 1980s that followed the indirect atomic monster movies--I began to re-read a novel upon which one of these movies is based.

The novel is On The Beach by Nevil Shute.  As an end-of-the-world novel, it has a particular resonance right now.

Nevil Shute was a British engineer and mid-20th century novelist, popular in the UK especially though little remembered now.  Several of his novels have been made into movies and television mini-series over the years, including this one.  Disillusioned with his native UK, Shute moved to Australia, and this novel is in many ways a descriptive tribute to his adopted country.

Its premise is ingenious, for it enables Shute to write about the consequences of nuclear war without actually depicting the devastation.  When published in 1957, it was a near future novel, set in the early 1960s.  About a year before the novel starts, the world suffered a brief but supremely devastating nuclear war.  Many if not all of the bombs used were "cobalt" bombs, atomic bombs that pack extra radiation.  Such bombs were theoretically possible, and theorized as Doomsday devices. In Shute's novel, radiation has killed everyone in the northern hemisphere: North America, Europe, Asia, northern Africa.  Its deadly radiation is slowly moving south and around the globe.  The novel, set in Melbourne, begins when that city has about six months left.

So when the story starts, Australia has had six months to absorb and confirm all this.  The government has manufactured and distributed suicide pills to its citizens, suggesting they be taken at the first signs of radiation sickness.

The novel follows an American submarine captain in Australia, and the people he meets. These Australians are coping as best they can with their ordinary lives.  There are some everyday changes--mostly that there is little gasoline, since it all came from the northern hemisphere.  (There's no Mad Max in this book.)

The style of the book is straightforward, almost pastoral at times.  Many of the characters are in the military or work with it, and their respect for facts is absolute. They continue to seek knowledge and don't shy away from what they find.  They face having no future with the absurd but almost beautiful and certainly touching combination of accepting it while ignoring it. A young couple plans their garden, and their child's education.  A farmer plants his crops.

The US Navy captain knows his family in Connecticut is probably dead but acts as if they are not. He buys his children presents.  Everyone speaks of the faraway dead as if they are still alive, faraway cities as if they are still functioning.  Yet no one is deluded.  The young Australian officer makes sure he will be home from sea duty in plenty of time to spend the last months with his family.

The 1959 Signet edition I'm reading 

What does this have to do with our current situation?  It got me thinking about denial, and how there are at least two kinds: there's the toxic denial that leads to tragedy, that had something to do with our lack of preparation for this crisis and certainly has a lot to do with the current muddle.

But there is also healthy denial, and the Australians in this novel illustrate it.  The US captain and an Australian woman friend are discussing the young couple who are planning their garden for the next ten years.  They speculate on what's going through their heads, but the captain finally says: "The thing is, they just kind of like to plan a garden.  Don't you go and spoil it for them, telling them they're crazy."

"I wouldn't do that."  She stood silent for a minute.  "None of us really believe it's ever going to happen--not to us," she said at last.  "Everybody's crazy on that point, one way or another."

"You're very right," he said emphatically.  

Certainly there is an underlying desperation to what some of the characters do, but mainly they face the end with grace.  Part of what enables that grace is an active, healthy sort of denial that allows them to act, to share, to give and to perceive, without becoming paralyzed by anxiety and despair.  That includes acting and planning for an illusory future, because that's an activity of the present that defines their lives.

These days we are living the ongoing consequences of toxic denial.  But without some healthy denial, it might be impossible to get through the day.

Today's Headlines

Jennifer Rubin's column in the Washington Post was about all the national news I could stomach.  It is a succinct, cogent and therefore frightening summary of the chaos and craven corruption of this administration and the Republican leadership in confronting the Covid 19 crisis, and it is only getting worse as more corrupt practices are applied to relief efforts.  That includes political favoritism in doling out deliberately scarce live-saving resources and further attempts to turn the $2 trillion bipartisan economic rescue bill into riches for the favored few.

Rubin's column ends:
"The chaos, confusion and incompetence at the federal level magnify our daily anxiety and uncertainty. We have lost control of our lives, and those supposed to lead us through this ordeal are deepening our national trauma. Years of contempt for expertise, for competent government and for truth itself on the right now haunt us all. God help us."

Regionally, the most painful place is the horror that is New York. I keep track of what I can in my current home state of California, and my birthplace of western Pennsylvania.  In both places--and I'm sure in many others--many people are struggling just to feed themselves.  In both states, long lines of cars to food banks now needing the National Guard to distribute an eight-fold increase in the food needed.

Locally, virus testing has identified 10 new cases in the past three days, for a total of 39 active cases and two patients hospitalized.  Per capita, Humboldt is testing more than the national average, and the percentage of positives is less than half the national average.  The average age of the positives is 44, which suggests students are among them but neither Public Health nor HSU has anything to say about this directly.

My current coping mechanisms include: walks with Howdy, backyard hoops, "NCIS New Orleans" (a series I don't see ever coming back on the air) with Margaret, Mind and Life videos and Tony Hillerman mystery novels.

R.I.P. Adam Schlesinger

Covid 19 induced deaths are mounting, including artists and public figures in every area.  Making news Wednesday was the death of Adam Schlesinger, known to some as a performer in the Fountains of Wayne and others as one of the better pop songwriters of our time, particularly songs for film and TV.

Probably his most famous composition is one you've heard about here recently: "That Thing You Do," the title song of the Tom Hanks-written and directed movie of 1996.

Schlesinger was 52.  His death is described as a consequence of complications arising from covid 19.  He had two daughters.

His death is tragic, but if in his life he left behind nothing more than this irresistibly joyful tune, he did very, very well.  May his rest in peace, while the joy he brings lives on.

The video above is one of a couple on Youtube shot by audience members at small venue performances by Schlesinger (on bass and backup vocals) and Mike Viola with lead vocals and guitar, both of them reprising their roles on the soundtrack recording, which they also co-produced.  I've chosen the one with the best sound.

Afloat with the Spelling Bee

At the end of February, I wrote about my ongoing obsession with the New York Times Spelling Bee daily puzzle.  A month ago of course now seems like life on a different planet.  So what was a dubious but mostly harmless recreation has now, in the midst of stay-at-home edicts, empty streets and external horrors, a different kind of lifeline.

It's become a thing for many people, I read: a hobby or hobby-like activity to anchor the day and the pulsing in and out of sanity.  So I am called to do a brief update on mine.  (For those who don't know the game, check my first post on the subject.)

Although I previously expressed a desire to resist the need to meet my twin goals of reaching Genius level and getting the 7-letter Pangram every time,  I have in fact added more than another 30 days to my previously unbroken record of doing so (excuse me if this is becoming a broken record) though I'm not sure how long it actually is.  Over 130 straight days (or, in my case, nights) anyway.

By this time, new puzzles are giving me deja vu--I feel I've done them before.  But if so, this prior experience hasn't resulted in faster results, or at least not much faster, particularly when the puzzle is troublesome.

Some of my blind spots remain remarkably consistent.  The worst case was a Pangram I worked hours on, including reverting to pen and paper to jot down words that don't include the center letter but might be used in compound words, but also because I've found that if I just string out the seven letters in a line I can see patterns I missed when the letters are arrayed in a circle.  Except this time it didn't work.  I was back working with the wheel when I got the word ("typhoid.")  Then, when I glanced back at the letters I'd written in a line, I saw that they pretty much spelled out that very word, with just one transposition. It took me hours to find what was staring me in the face.  Very humbling.

Though I've become a bit faster in finding the words that these puzzles often repeat, at other times I manage to find new words while not finding words I had found in earlier puzzles.  And I remain puzzled by some of the words the puzzle-makers accept and especially the ones they reject.  I really don't understand why they accept "Panhellenic" and not "Hellenic."

I notice that in my previous post I failed to mention the most alarming byproduct of doing these puzzles, which was that my brain continued to shuffle through a random series of words and spellings even when I wasn't doing the puzzle, even to the point where I caught myself doing so in my sleep.  That has fortunately lessened.

I do find myself tiring earlier.  After 25 words in the longer puzzles I'm usually losing concentration.  But all in all, it doesn't seem like a time to look a gift life preserver in the mouth.

Today's Headlines

Nationally, it couldn't be said more clearly than this quote from Slate:

“The administration’s response in general has been an abysmal failure, and he compounds that failure by regularly attacking the governors to whom he has passed the buck,” Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, told me. “I just don’t think we can allow ourselves to normalize a president who is politically attacking the very governors who are trying to save lives right now in the absence of real federal leadership.”

States are currently competing against one another--and with the federal government-- for equipment needed to detect and treat Covid 19.  Senator Elizabeth Warren tells of MA failing to get equipment it had purchased because they were outbid by the federal government.

In Politico:

“That is a Darwinian approach to federalism; that is states’ rights taken to a deadly extreme,” said Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor who served for eight years on the Homeland Security Task Force of the National Governors Association. “The better read of federalism is that the states and federal government work together when the U.S. is attacked, whether it is by imperial Japan or a pandemic.”

Globally, the current administration picked this moment to weaken air quality and CO2 standards on vehicles, as usual mostly because the Obama administration imposed them.  President Obama responded:

“We’ve seen all too terribly the consequences of those who denied warnings of a pandemic. We can’t afford any more consequences of climate denial. All of us, especially young people, have to demand better of our government at every level and vote this fall.”


Regionally, there's a good piece in Slate praising Governor Newsom of CA as well as Andrew Como of NY for their different styles of leadership in the CoVid 19 crisis.  This is one of several pieces crediting Newsom's early actions (and CA compliance) with bending the curve in the state's case rate.

Locally, Humboldt County has recorded its first cases of the virus believed to be community transmissions--that is, not as a result of foreign travel or contact with someone who was infected as a result of that travel.  There are now 26 active cases in the county, with one hospitalized and so far no deaths. Our first case has recovered.  Health officials currently expect our rate of transmission to peak in about a month.

We are concerned about the consequences of Humboldt State University's decision to allow students who chose to leave the area for spring break to come back, and specifically, HSU's irresponsible and dangerous decision just this past week to actually bus students back from high-contagion areas, namely LA and the Bay Area.  They returned for no reason, as all HSU classes this term are online only.

And very locally, Margaret and I are fine at home.  And, after a too close encounter with a bigger dog, so is Howdy.  So far, all the family members elsewhere we know about are also okay.

Poetry Monday: Air

Air

Naturally it is night.
Under the overturned lute with its
One string I am going my way
Which has a strange sound.

This way the dust, that way the dust.
I listen to both sides
But I keep right on.
I remember the leaves sitting in judgement
And then winter.

I remember the rain with its bundle of roads.
The rain taking all its roads.
Nowhere.

Young as I am, old as I am,

I forget tomorrow, the blind man,
I forget the life among the buried windows.
The eyes in the curtains.
The wall
Growing through the immortelles.
I forget silence
The owner of the smile.

This must be what I wanted to be doing,
Walking at night between two deserts,
Singing.

W.S. Merwin

Merwin published his first book of poems in 1952, and his last in 2016.  He won two Pulitzer Prizes--in 1971 and 2009.  This poem is comparatively early in the incredible span of his writing life, first published in his 1963 volume The Moving Target.  It is included in the collection The Essential W.S. Merwin, published in 2017.  It was included in the 1969 anthology Naked Poetry, edited by Stephen Berg and Robert Mezey, which is where I first saw it.  It is accompanied in that anthology by this photo of the poet as a young man.

The word "immortelles" means "everlasting" and is the name of a tree, and of papery flowers like those of this Caribbean tree, as the tree with orange blossoms in the top photo.