So the other day, I saw this #1 issue in a local comic book store. At first glance, it's a shocker. A girl dressed in a souped-up, hulking Iron Patriot armor, last worn by a crazed Norman Osbourne playing patriotic fascist superhero. A mustascioed Red Hulk, who may or may not be a lunatic general, golding two massive gatling guns and wearing star-spangled shorts. Squirrel Girl grinning vacantly on top of a curious, double-barreled tank. A weird, exploding man flying with a squadron of bombers, a female Captain America, a strange robotic lady, and a screaming, golden skull, all punctuated by an executive-looking individual in a suit, towering over the Statue of Liberty herself. And then, in maybe a parody of a G.I. Joe logo, the title: U.S.Avengers. See, despite the colorful, exciting cover, I couldn't help feeling as though someone was trying to capture the current vibe of the new administration's "America First" policy. As I studied this boisterously patriotic and seemingly militaristic new Avengers book, I found myself thinking about how Donald Trump had been angered that he couldn't have a full military parade for his shabby coronation. See, there's generally an Avengers book on the market. The book before this one was called All New, All Different Avengers, and featured classic archetypal characters such as Thor or Iron Man, but changed radically. In Thor's case, for example, a woman was wielding his mystical hammer, giving her his godly powers, while an old superhero, The Falcon, one of the earliest black Marvel characters, had taken up the mantle of Captain America. With Kamala Khan, the new Captain Marvel, a young, fangirlish Muslim teenager, and Miles Morales, the African American Spider-man, this was a diverse, fun team of new characters that opened up the Marvel Universe to new audiences. Sure, one could argue that we might be better served by having new characters to represent the diversity of the United States, but even if that is a valid point, having a black man step into Captain America's boots or a woman lift Thor's hammer, even if for a brief moment, sends a clear message. Additionally, by attempting to respond to the hope of the Obama years of expanding equality, there were successes that will last beyond the current status quo. While Jane Foster will inevitably die from breast cancer and her hammer will go back to its rightful owner, and Sam Wilson will eventually turn his shield back to Steve Rogers, I think it's clear that little Miles Morales will persist, perhaps becoming Marvel's only Spider-man someday, while Peter Parker may go on to become some other superhero. Little Kamala Khan will almost certainly be around for a long time, considering how deftly her creator has managed to establish her personality and trademark supporting characters, as well as how much fun other writers seem to have using her in their books. Moondragon she most certainly is not.
Ultimately, what I'm saying is that I'm sad to see this utopian longing fade from the comics world. Like, sure, some of it is pandering, but I prefer a sincere attempt that succeeds in a few areas to an ecosystem that is ever more and more of the same, as well as imperial in a way we haven't seen since Watchmen killed the superhero comic for a few decades. Maybe I'm making too much of a new #1, but when your crazy new president is talking about "American Carnage" and signing anti-abortion executive orders while teaming up with oppressive dictators to wage never-ending wars, well, a comic with grinning characters in a militaristic context is going to hit a nerve. Despite currently reading Vladimir Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading, I have a sudden urge of interest in the world of Conan the Barbarian. I'll explain in a minute. So first things first, New Years was a pretty stressful time. For one thing, Carrie Fisher had just died, and though I was still getting over Bowie's astral ejection from our realm, Princess Leia's death was the scarf that completed the macabre outfit that the manifestation of the year 2016 road off wearing.
Visiting with two friends with my boyfriend, I drank too much, and broke down in tears at some point. I know celebrities die all the time, and it's silly for someone who claims to be a nihilist to be shaken up by deaths or political revolutions spinning the zeitgeist like a merry go 'round, but I'm still human, and losing David Bowie, Christopher Lee, and Nimoy were like watching the moon get swallowed by a space worm or Mount Rushmore crumble like a cookie. These were people I didn't think of as people, who did the most people-like thing, the one thing that I share with all other people. I wasn't upset by the revelation that, surprise! I'm gonna die! Oh noes!, it was more a reinforcement of the sentiments that spurred me into reading Moby Dick: the yoke of adulthood looms, whether I like it or not, and if I don't seize the opportunities before me now, well, my adult life and my elderly life are going to be pretty shitty. The death of many of my erstwhile heroes, most of whom were from my mother's generation anyway, was a sign that my generation had rotated into the primary position. For me, this past election was truly my first election, even if I had voted in the previous two. Which brings me to my tears at New Years. I was crying because I knew that the world was changing, and not in a way I wanted, not in a way that I needed. My right to marry my boyfriend might disappear, my little sisters' access to abortion might take a hit, and even the national order of the world seems to be under assault. With the EU seemingly falling apart and a crazy person taking the White House, hell, even Paris might not even be here much longer. Which leads to my enigmatic title, "Blessed Are The Roaches...". I asked my friends if they thought the roaches would be kinder when they inherited our burnt-out cities and scorched farmland. Justin, my boyfriend, was pragmatic as ever. He suggested that the ants would survive also, and it would be those hive-minded engines of construction and industry who would truly inherit the earth. I shrugged, imagining sentient roach warriors doing ferocious battle against hordes of snapping, mindless ants. Maybe I'll read some Conan after I'm through with my current high-brow exploration of Nabokov and Camus. Sound off below if you want, I promise I'll reply. So last time (which was like 20 days ago, sorry) I started to talk about my chap book, Dream of the Ash, and got a little sidetracked talking about Norse mythology. It's hard not to get caught up in discussing the myths when my chap book utilizes their symbolism and motifs. As I was saying though, Dream will be a direct extension of my particular brand of secular spirituality. That being the case, I'm not quite in the mood to discuss it right now, despite recent developments.
For one thing, I just found out that one of the more ambitious poems from the chapbook, What the Devil Said, has been chosen by the print magazine, Devolution Z, to be published in the April issue, something I am ecstatic about. In the poem, I'm in freefall with Satan, having seen through his ruse to keep my soul down in Hell with several other poets. As we near the terminal flames at the bottom of the pit, he attempts to persuade me to stay; I'll link to the issue when it drops, but look for it in my chapbook as well when it's finished. Anyway, I've reached a point where I think my opinion of Melville's Moby Dick has changed a smidge. As much as I enjoy the whale chapters for their stark, sometimes horrific look at the brutal intricacies of the whaling profession, there are bizarre anomalies that take me out of the book. At the moment, chapter 101, "The Decanter" sticks out significantly. In chapter 100, "Arm and Leg", the insane Captain Ahab finally meets another captain who has done battle with the white whale. Further inflating Ahab's excitement, the other captain lost his arm to Moby Dick, and in a scene that made me imagine a kick-ass guitar riff, the two maimed captains crossed their ivory limbs. The narrative the captain tells Ahab about his encounter with the whale is fantastic, with Moby Dick chewing through a harpoon line that's embedded in another whale, and ending in the captains rowboat being shattered by his flukes, and, in a twist of a Jaws reboot starring a sperm whale, the helpless man's arm being snapped clean off in the whale's jaws. All of this drama is tempered by the way the British captain and his surgeon are written. Coming off as two boring codgers, they chat amiably with one another, all while Ahab impatiently screams at them to talk about the whale. It's funny stuff, and certainly a huge part of what makes this novel so enjoyable, but chapter 101 is like a brick wall. It's the backstory of the British ship, delivered in excruciating detail, and I am not misusing that word. He talks about how it got its name, the boring people who owned it, what it used to transport, and goes on ad nauseum about its cargo, the profits it brought in, etc. I'm a little ashamed to admit I skipped it, but there it is. I will put forward the point that most of the non-plot chapters, such as the various chapters on whale skulls like 75, "The Right Whale Skull", are really interesting and relevant to the novel in the sense that they enlarge the profile of whales in an exciting and poetic way. Sure, it's unconventional, but there's a reason this novel may be a classic, but perhaps not the greatest (although it is objectively better than Ulysses). I was going to make another political post, but then thought better of it. Sure, I'm still upset by the ascension of what the internet calls 'Trumpism', but I've written three poems about it, and I don't feel like talking about it at the moment. The thing is, I've been struggling with what to blog about, and I know I didn't post last week at all. Another post about the majesty of Moby-Dick seemed like just the thing, but I'm in the middle of chapter 43, and I'm grappling with what I've covered so far, and don't feel too comfortable writing about it at the moment. So here comes something a little different.
Hi there, my name's Daniel, although I sometimes go by the name Loke. If you clicked on the 'Publications' tab above, you'd see reference to something called Dream of the Ash, which is listed as in progress. That isn't a journal or a magazine; it's my first chap book, and I'm 2/3 of the way through it right now. The title is a reference to Yggdrasil, the World Ash Tree from Norse mythology. In the cosmology of the Poetic Edda, where much of our knowledge of the myths comes from, all of existence is divided into nine seperate states of a being, all of which are symbolized or incarnated in some form as a colossal ash tree. Norse mythology has been significant to me for much of my life. Judaism lost its appeal when I was a teenager, and every other faith-based religion sank with it. I turned towards philosophy and literature for inspiration, and found a kindred spirits in the ravings of the controversial German philosopher, Nietzsche, and the searing lyrics of Marilyn Manson. I realized that reality was limited by location and perspective, but imagination was boundless. In much the same way that Nietzsche proclaimed himself 'the philosopher with a hammer', evoking a mystical story about Abraham smashing his father's idols with a hammer, stories and legends can shape the way we think, and inspire us to peform great actions, for good or ill. As I grew and my writing style developed, the call of the powerful symbolism of the All-Father, Odin, and his son, the mighty, hammer-wielding god of thunder, Thor, was undeniable. The gods of Asgard weren't like the proud, cruel gods of Olympus, or even the capricious, tantrum-prone god of the Jews. They suffered for their mistakes, dying and even feeling such complex emotions as grief and loss. One of my favorite narratives was and still is the death of the god, Balder, a god who fell far short of what one might expect from a pantheon populated by operatic gods. Gentle and loving, Balder was a springtime god, and the tradition of burning a log on Christmas is a tradition that can be traced directly back to his cult. His death, and Odin's failure to win his soul back from the death-goddess was a sobering lesson for the gods of Asgard. Having said all of that, I'll leave you in suspense for my next post, where I'll talk about my attitude towards the Norse myths, as well as my vision for my chap book. Also, I've set Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass aside for now. Song of Myself proved too repetitive for my taste, and perhaps I'll pick it up again at a later date. I invite you to defend it in the comments, I would love to discuss it with you. Until next time, bonne nuit. Reading: Moby-Dick (Herman Melville), Watchmen (Alan Moore) I've become a bit of a cliche. I've reached the point in my life where I feel as though I am at a crossroads, creatively speaking. On one hand, I've always been interested in the concept of, let's say 'enlightenment'. I don't mean in a chemical sense, as in drug use, I mean cognitively. I feel as though there is a kind of mental singularity that we as a species can reach, where we are able to throw the destructive baggage of religion, tribe, gender, and other cults aside, (which isn't to say that no one should practice a religion or identify as a gender, but we shouldn't ostracise others for not sharing ours) and just be content to judge people on their temperaments and whether or not their emotional chemistry aligns enough with ours in order to associate with them. Human beings are like ants, our minds synch up with each other really quickly in order to accomplish greater tasks, and I feel as though if only these egalitarian feelings of mind could enter the mainstream in a palatable sense, maybe they could catch on.
As Michael Chabon wrote in his novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, it's a strange time to be a Jew. Buoyed by a wave of racism, toxic nationalism, stupidity, and base apathy, life-long New Yorker and Goblin Supreme, Donald Trump has taken the White House, and low and behold, anti-semitism is on the rise. When the Ku Klux Klan has a victory parade for a presidential candidate, it isn't a good sign.
The issue for me is that I have been content to develop my little craft from a hobby/outlet into something more spiritual and serious, in no small measure by affecting it with my personal connection with Norse mythology. I am a bisexual, atheist-pagan, ethnically Jewish poet; while I have been content to work on my chap book, Dream of the Ash, my last two poems have both been political in nature, and I'm sure there will be more forthcoming. It's funny, but my Jewish identity is something I never really tried to bury. Sure, the religion fell by the wayside, weighed down by its unquantifiable or justifiable truth statements and barbaric moral code, but I also realize that being ethnically Jewish is distinct from being religiously Jewish; they are not mutually exclusive, nor is one dependent on the other. It is like being Haitian, but not practicing Voodoo, or being Arab, but not a Muslim. We are an ethnic people who originated in the Middle East, and have been jostled all over, interbreeding and assimilating as all refugees and wanderers do. But all that is irrelevant; I always remember that I am Jewish because I know that when push comes to shove, no one will ever let me forget. Back in my Yeshiva days, I was surrounded by rabbis who insisted on the fact that in America, though we enjoyed a level of religious freedom then undreamed of anywhere else in the world, we were still nevertheless in exile, and that the political winds could turn on us at any moment, just as they did in Germany and Russia in the late 1930's. A few blocks from where my boyfriend lives in Philadelphia, someone spraypainted on an unused storefront the words, accompanied with a swastika, "Sieg Heil, 2016!", all in black. I feel as though I have been given a crash course in privilege, watching Trump and third party voters, as well as vote abstainers shrug their shoulders at me as I try in vain to explain just how much some people have to lose. Trump might have held up a rainbow flag at a rally, but that counts for nothing when he's appointing the most racist and bigoted Christian theocrats to his White House. Strange times to be a Jew, and a time of trial to be a son of Odin. To all the Muslims, Arabs, African-Americans, Jews, LGBT+, immigrants, and others threatened by this new administration, know that you have an ally in me here. |