Email Correspondence: JJ, Jason, Dave

From me to JJ, Jason, and Dave

Hey gents,

Loving my summer so far. Not too hot, not too cold, some rain and wind. Lusty signs of bounty IMO. I'd like to thank Sarg for somehow assembling this small group of friends that have become significant. because it feeds my soul. 

Whenever I feel down, depressed, malaised, or disheartened, I try to recall the moment I first put two and two together regarding the mysteries of this life. It's not always been a tactic I’ve had at my disposal in defense against my tendency to self-sabotaging my own happiness. That is to say that happiness is not the end all be all of it, nor should aspiring to harness it permanently be our pursuit. Taking up bandwidth and processing power toward this endeavor is paddling upstream in a headwind, you'll get somewhere, but probably not the way you'd've imagined and most certainly not the intended destination.

It's supposed to hurt, so says Camus and Jerry Seinfeld. It makes about as much sense to moan and despair over one's circumstances as it does to rejoice when things are going well. They're both finite and fleeting circumstances whose comings and goings are largely out of our control. And don't forget, it's not a binary, either or equation, it involves a very many other feelings to feel alongside happiness and despair. I needn't name them, as you've begun counting the ways already. Happy, gleeful, joyful, mirth, enlightened, purposeful, hopeful, you get the idea. The stone is multifaceted.

I first read Camus in California. I worked at a Jamba Juice in Belmont Shore. It was nuts. I was working the early morning shift at UPS in Cerritos and living on the Orange County and Los Angeles County line, on the Long Beach side of Belmont Village. My apartment was a couple blocks away from the university. I was making ends meet, but I told myself that living is better than working. And I got this job at a soon-to-be-opened Jamba Juice at a brand-new mall along one of the canals that ran through this part of Belmont Shore. There was Tower Records, a state-of-the-art movie complex, and like a Whole Foods, but back before Whole Foods existed, a kind of organic, natural foods grocery store, a Starbucks, and a big box hardware store of which the name escapes me. Eventually, I was able to support myself with just Jamba Juice and quit UPS. I lived my life within the 2-mile radius along the stretch of road that connected Long Beach proper and Belmont.

Everyone that worked there was cool as shit. We were all friends. Friends with these two or three in one way and to this degree, and some other two or three in another way and degree. This little ecosystem mixing and blending perpetually. It was as turbulent as it was effortless. Mercy was a co-worker, the one who told me about Camus. It was on the beach, late at night, the closing crew from that night, and a couple of others who weren’t on shift joined us there. Mercy, short for Mercedes, a name, which when I learned it, endeared me to her at once, told me this, just us two, standing apart from the group.

You need to read Camus," she said. "The Stranger."

I was enchanted. Of course, I read it and then again years later, in some literary survey class. I also wrote an essay about it. Not for nothing, but my professor told me, at the one meeting I'd have with him, that my interpretation and analysis of the book were the best he'd seen from a student. I realize now that he likely says this kind of thing to any student entering his office. And I don't mean in a "hashtag me too" sort of way, I mean he was, and probably still is, a great teacher and probably said the things his students needed to hear. My idea was to analyze the structural aspects of the story through the lens of a carpenter building a house. I honestly don't remember the details or even the logic, the only reason I remember the thesis is because I'd tell the story many times thereafter and this was how I explained it, analogous to the carpenter. And then I'd launch into the specifics, which were varied according to the needs of my audience, thereby my recollections begin to dissolve into memories and false recollections.

Now, much later in life, I'm teaching it in my IB language and literature class. I see the path here and it didn’t have a driver or a destination when it manifested. I didn’t nurture it to make it go where it did. Mercy has not thought of me in 15 years and it was only that one time and only because she ran into Tsuri, a friend from the Jamba Juice crew back in the day, and they talked about those days over a couple, three rounds at the pub.

"You know," she says to Tsuri. "I told him he should read Camus. It's so funny though. He missed the point completely," and they laugh out loud without saying the letters L O L. Should this dialogue be included in the path that my Camus has taken, I wasn’t there for this conversation, I’m not even sure if this is how it actually happened, it likely never even happened.

Then Tsuri says, "He was the only one at that place who could pronounce my name correctly." Surely that’s not part of the path. It doesn’t have anything to do with Camus, aside from the much later association via an unrelated brief statement that included the word Camus.

They laugh. And again, I never actually witnessed this conversation, but that was the last time she thought of me. And the same equation can be applied between us all, even if we never actually "run across" one another, these “conversations” are going on all the time, about everything, and connections are being made between people separated by infinite possible times and spaces.

Neither do I mean to imply, that I have utilized a significant amount of bandwidth and processing power in sowing this path, aside from within the confines of my own head. When Mercy gave me this little advice, I was getting all my reading suggestions from people I actually knew. There was no internet or social media directing everything. It was not uncommon to strike a conversation up at the coffee shop, bar, bus, or what-have-you, and by the end of it, have a new title or author recommendation available to me.

That I can trace this one little thread back through time is a fortuitous break for me. Admittedly, I can be slow to interpret and analyze these aspects of life. I’ve known of this inadequacy for a long time. I try to think of it as a necessary cloak shielding me from something I’m not supposed to see or know until the time is right. But, having seen this one thread’s lifespan and relevance that its had is meaningful. It reminds me that there is good in the world.

This is what I’ve come to understand now. And yes, it’s thanks to Camus, because he said life is absurd, of course, we’re going to struggle and stumble through it, it’s no use getting all worked up about it. It’s similar to Buddhism that way. So, when I am distraught, down and out, I remember that I’ve always known this, back to the age of 5 or 6, when it first occurred to me how preposterous my existence is. When I put two and two together and I remember wondering how in the world I ended up in my mom’s belly. She had to meet and marry my dad. Then it occurred to me they both have parents who had to meet and get married. Then I followed that to its infinite beginnings and was befuddled by the conclusion. I believed, at 5 or 6, that I had some agency in this life, from before swooping down inside mom’s womb.

Not so much as a god though. My agency is probably more like teaching The Stranger in an English class at age 54 having read it at 25, studied it at age 35, and thinking about it innumerable times in between those points. It was not a conscious effort or purposeful goal, and yet there it is. It may as well be drawn on a map, but I had no idea of the route, or even the map, and certainly couldn’t have conceived of the architect. I must look for more of these.

I knew, at age 5 or 6, that we came from a vast black pool and that being chosen to pick a mom and dad was a gift. I knew that even when I was cursing my own and my parents’ existence. I knew I was lucky. So, whenever I feel malaise, ennui, discomfiture, or what have you, I try to go back to that. It’s a meditation that allows me to slow down and get outside the confines of my head. To see real people in front of me.

I appreciate you disparate lot, you each take up unique and valuable real estate on my hard drive. This writing session was inspired by Jerome K. Jerome's opening pages of "On the Care and Management of Women." I'm certain there's a direct connection between JKJ and Albert Camus. The Stranger, the very first time I read it, seemed more slapstick/satirical than social commentary to me. 

Dave, I remember visiting you and Jeff (I don't remember the neighborhood) while I was living in LA. Took a bus. You guys picked me up and we went to a bar. I know I remember this. After the bar, we went to your house, I just remember grey, and I know I saw this in you, your demeanor or embodiment, a resolve that none of this is personal. Like I could see the despondency of it, its impact on your soul. But that was a long time ago and I was high and drunk. It wasn't until I saw that, that I allowed myself to admit it, that none of this is permanent and the only sure thing is that it will never be like this again.

Jason, I recall with love and gratitude, your friendship from its inception at PCC, through our M.Ed. cohort, and up to today, for your patience and acceptance of me now. You put up with too much from me, I appreciate your unwavering faith.

JJ, you are the best editor I've ever known. You are a true student of the art. You came to see me in Yankton, and I first learned the phrase, "When in Rome do as the Romans." You have introduced me to so many strange new ways of thinking about life, and each of them has born strange and wonderful fruit. 

Love to each of you,

Otto

_____________________________________________________________________

From Jason

Don’t let my limitations be those for whatever might transpire in this plane.

By the way, good sir, have you read The Book of Mormon?

_____________________________________________________________________

From me

no, but I saw its premier on Broadway back in 2011. Alec Baldwin was in line at the bar during intermission. Just like the rest of us poor suckers. I nodded to him. 

______________________________________________________________________

From JJ

Mt Rainier / Emmons Morraine

The water of White River the color of chalk

Chalk river, almost blue, ashen gray, imagine

White though, it certainly is white though, like milk

Almost. Mother’s milk? Poppie sap? The first of autumn’s

Fallen leaves, yellow with spots of green and brown

Take the ride downstream in tumbling, some half

Sank, the other half almost floating. From the 

Flat rock on which I sit I play a game in trying to

Catch one. Got one! If Van Gogh’s daughter 

Were to paint a poplar leaf, what glorious colors.

-

The scale, Mt Rainier seen from outer space

The play of light upon the eye, of eyelids closed

Or peering out across glaciers we must name 

And know, comprised of rock, ice and snow

And centuries, the scale of time, the size of

The earth, the size of Mt Rainier seen from

The valley below. Blue flies, yellow bees,

Dark brown ants almost black, all excitedly

Explore the newly introduced soft green camp blanket.

The headwaters of the White River is the termitus 

Of Emmons Morraine, the largest glacier of the 

Lower 48. Where the glacier melts two caves have

Formed, as is observed through binoculars from

The opposite ridge: Ridges, rails, spikes, steps,

Stairs, ribbons, folds, crevasses, ravines, cracks.

-

Microcosm vs macrocosm

The universe dances along a landslide 

As if the glaciers held life and death and

Resided in the newly landscaped backyard of

How we pray to forest fire smoke 

And the gentle fold, to wake each morning.

My tears upon a thread, as though.

Allow joy to outweigh sadness,

Laughter above sadness in switchback paths.

The ash dust of the mountain, after centuries wed,

Makes its way into my nostrils, onto boot laces,

Into the woven threads of my shirt and pants.

Ants scurry about in your ash, young mountain

Thrown forth from the belly of the Earth, along this

Ridge where one awakes with watch time held firm

Between one’s thighs, the pages catching wind

Curling to each well-worn thought from upbringing.

Silence. The river roars in the valley below as though

A constant drone. Wake upon the distance on which

A glacier melts and refreezes. Rainier loves me like

A father loves a newborn. I am released in it’s bodily

Form. I am gathered like canned meat on bagged bread.

I am healed and held in the path that clings the slope,

That climbs the incline of the early morning rope.

What am I doing here? Taoist brother, so young in 

Our camping, so old as to know existence is a bead

Thread upon a string in climbing, each and every step,

Bootsoles making way, leaving print in the dry dust

Of earth, so many prints here, so soon to wash away

In the deep snow of the path, the freeze and eventual

Melting, where once I put my arm around your shoulder.

The river water so cold to naked human skin, 

The ecstatic drunk, meditating fool with blanket

Laid out beneath the waxing moon. When I think of 

You in this earthbound ring gathering I smile with

The old old man. Pop and click and a metallic 

Bell sound intoned along the wilderness ridge.

What was that within the earth that rang?

The wilderness within, the wilderness in a song,

The chords strum like a breeze through the branch

Intoning a conversation in the parking lot with

The stranger, along the day and well-worn path.

j.j. 

_______________________________________________________________________

From Jason

I read The Stranger a few months before I needed to read it for an ENG 300 Critical Theory class with Michael Clark (who would later become more of a friend than mere professor), and since I’d just finished it I suggested that I could read the original French L’Etranger in parallel, which Michael took advantage of throughout our class discussions.

We were all rather amazed to learn the great extent that richer, more-powerful active French sentences had been translated – in more than one English translation – to passive construction, almost as if Legal teams had been involved to increase ambiguity where possible, to reduce risk to translators and publishers alike.

Michael, having previously studied law, and I, having previously worked with a legal team writing contract addendums/addenda, were the primary people impressed by these discoveries.

Fast forward a decade and I began reading a Camus book, called The Outsider, that I’d discovered secondhand in Prague, and I was surprised after about 10 pages to realize that it was another name for L’Etranger. I stopped reading it, as I reasoned that, if they had missed the most obvious and accurate L’Etranger-to-The Stranger cognate for the title, the rest of the book would likely be a piss-poor reduction – or conflation – of meaning.

It’s been a few years since I’ve read it (and I doubt I’d remember enough French now to read the original). I remember an Arab, a beach, and a gun. And a song by The Cure, I think, though they weren’t a band that I was ever much into, unless it made me, to a love or lust interest, less of a stranger.

jm

__________________________________________________________________________

From me, addressing JJ and Jason specifically

JJ

love this set. did you write MIcrocosm Macrocosm after your backpacking trip with Ezra? I presume the little - dashes were separate poems, with one left untitled. They all seem to be reflections related to fatherhood. 

"I am gathered like canned meat on bagged bread." Ezra must certainly know this experience.

Jason,

"I stopped reading it, as I reasoned that, if they had missed the most obvious and accurate L’Etranger-to-The Stranger cognate for the title, the rest of the book would likely be a piss-poor reduction – or conflation – of meaning." I'm not sure (and crucify me for not knowing and daring to call myself an English teacher) what you mean  "accurate congnate" but it seems that this english version "interpreted" the overall meaning of L’Etranger. At least, that is to say, "outsider" is one possible interpretation of "stranger" in whatever language, but to impress upon the reader more precisely that Mersault is literally and figuratively perceived as an outsider. 

You stumble across three titles at the bookstore. You've never heard of Camus or the Stranger. You see "L’Etranger", "The Stranger," and "The Outsider". Which is best? Which more intriguing? Which wouldn't you read? Why? The title, "The Outsider" points the reader in a specific direction. We already know and are aware of all the tropes associated with "outsider" literature. Alienated, aloof, punished, tormented, etc. While stranger, whether in English or French, is ambiguous, neutrally charged, it doesn't point in a specific direction. "Outsider" screams rebel, it points very loud. Whether it's pointing truly is another question. On a side note, The Stranger in German is "Der Fremde", or "The Foreigner." That's pointing even louder, and not for nothing, this is a narrow interpretation "the foreigner" for the English "the stranger". It's true Mersault is a foreigner in the book, but it's complicated with colonialist issues in French Algiers. It's possible Camus stashes a political agenda, but what happens to Mersault, in my humble opinion, has little to do with him as a foreigner, or the Arab he shoots. Can you say Arab? What happens to Mersault could happen to anyone. 

Anyway, yeah man, Michael Clark, that's the same professor I mention in my story. Crazy man. Name dropper much? lol, just kidding man. 

Ozone out!