The Dredge Cycle

Criminal Elistism

How many times has this hap­pened? You want to deepen your under­stand­ing of some­thing. You get a book. You start read­ing. The writ­ing is so dense, or need­lessly com­plex, you can’t get through it, much less enjoy it. This is crim­i­nal elit­ism. Shit’s gotta stop.

What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate

Toward the end of Pat’s book, Wee­t­a­moo has some hard con­cerns about writ­ing, itself. Young Meta­com has learned to write the fig­ure A. He pro­nounces it for her, and explains the white men’s util­ity in writ­ing  –  and the Indian need, there­fore, to be con­ver­sant in it. I had to stop read­ing a while after I saw her response: …What if, when­ever we wanted a story, we could just reach out and read it from a paper, instead of wait­ing for the right time and place and…

Next Levels of Dramatic Irony

Your expe­ri­ence as a stan­dard reader: Toward the end of Pat’s ren­di­tion of Weetamoo’s diary, the sachem-​​​​to-​​​​be is finally called for her adult­hood rite. The year is 1654. She’s been antic­i­pat­ing it most of the book; she’ll spend sev­eral days and nights in a sweat­lodge, tend­ing a fire and wait­ing for con­tact from the non­ma­te­r­ial world. In her two visions, a deer she’d uncer­e­mo­ni­ously killed leads her through the win­ter night to an impor­tant fish­ing area to the Pocas­set, down­stream from a water­fall. The sec­ond night, the deer…

Redemption

Just now, read­ing Sex at Dawn in the Captain’s Chair in the liv­ing room, I had one of those Impor­tant Moments. A few years back a friend asked if and how my writ­ing redeems its dark premises. While I stared through the wall, he sug­gested “beauty.” That answer always sounded like a copout. The words can dress the sub­ject ten­derly, but the sub­ject remains dark, bit­ter, dis­turb­ing. Untrans­formed. But all this talk of humans fight­ing and caging our sex­u­al­ity by insti­tu­tion­al­ized “pair bonding”  –  on top of making…

Flintstonization

I’ve been read­ing Sex at Dawn: The Pre­his­toric Ori­gins of Mod­ern Sex­u­al­ity. Along the path to claim­ing that humans are really bad at monogamy, authors Ryan and Jethá make a very impor­tant point about fram­ing and per­spec­tive: we can’t pro­duc­tively cast old worlds in the mold of the present. It’s like tem­po­ral hege­mony. In the same way we can’t pro­duc­tively look to other cul­tures exclu­sively through the moral frame of our own, we can’t the­o­rize about ear­lier ones with cur­rent behav­ior pat­terns as a guide.…

I miss you, Pat

I’m read­ing my late editor’s Wee­t­a­moo (pro­nounced Weh-​​​​táh-​​​​moh) book, Heart of the Pocas­sets. It’s a heavily-​​​​researched, 95% imag­ined diary of the Pocas­set sachem at 14. Pat wrote it for Scholas­tic, for those lucky eighth-​​​​graders with an Indian His­tory unit. It’s sim­ple and refresh­ing, if light-​​​​weight for my needs. An easy lit­tle recap after the over-​​​​saturated and dis­turb­ing Mayflower. Weetamoo’s par­ents man­date that she find time each day to learn patience. Because the his­tor­i­cal Wee­t­a­moo didn’t read or write (her cul­ture didn’t use those tech­nolo­gies) it’s a…

So Many Questions

Almost done with Mayflower. Help­ing me: I know a tremen­dous amount more about the region and the 17^th cen­tury than when I started. Not help­ing me: the absence of infor­ma­tion about the area I’m most inter­ested in. This morn­ing I’m look­ing for a map (or five) of tribal lands in 1605 (and 1620, 1650, 1675, 1690). I just want to know the names of what and who the hell I’m look­ing for. This absence of acces­si­ble infor­ma­tion may be a core moti­va­tion of my book, but…

In Which I Reject Your Stories, pt. 2

« Part 1 I think our cul­tural rela­tion­ship with our dreams rep­re­sents our rela­tion­ship with spir­i­tu­al­ity. Let’s talk about some depic­tions of the uncon­scious in recent cul­tural mem­ory: Other Mother (Cora­line), Drop Dead Fred, Mau­rice (Lit­tle Mon­sters) and Betel­geuse. Of course, through them all, I’m think­ing of Mor­pheus, Hansel, Gre­tel, and the Witch. Since I’ve already cov­ered the Other House, let’s start with Drop Dead Fred. He’s the invis­i­ble best friend incar­nate. After a bad end to an unhealthy rela­tion­ship, Fred reap­pears to rein­voke Lizzie’s child­hood. Ultimately…

In Which I Reject Your Stories, pt. 1

I saw Incep­tion the other day. Hon­estly, dis­ap­point­ing. Read on for spoil­ers. Granted, I’ve been read­ing a fuck­ing trea­tise on the uncon­scious, but sev­eral things bugged me, of their own right: It’s a heist flick mas­querad­ing as sur­re­al­ist phi­los­o­phy. There was lit­tle human­ity or insight. Dom Cobb and his mot­ley, intre­pid crew of dream-​​​​invaders assem­ble to break into someone’s head. They have to get in, plant their sub­ver­sion (the “Incep­tion”), and get out, unno­ticed. They’ll all get paid might­ily, and every­one has their own moti­va­tions for…

Off the Hook

One of the bet­ter bios I’ve read in a long time, in the back of Sand­man 6: [next to his pic­ture] This is Mark Buck­ing­ham, so you don’t have to be. Clever and, in a bizarre, almost round­about way, hum­ble. Appro­pri­ately, I’m think­ing today about an anony­mous man­u­script I got a few years back, that never panned. “This is this book you couldn’t write, so you don’t have to.”