(Today we officially open the site, which has been open for ages, with something quite different and particularly well done by Michael Bloor)
First Published in Sociology, 47(1): 30-50, 2013 doi: 10.1177/00380385112448568
PART I
It is a global Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
‘By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?
‘The centre’s doors are opened wide,
And Bourdieu got it right:
Consumption lends distinction.
So get you out my sight.’
He holds him with his glittering eye –
No Big Issue1 sale is sought,
But fifty yards from B&Q
The would-be Consumer’s caught.
So spake the doleful mariner,
Transfixing with his e’e,
In fluent, graphic English –
The language of the sea.
‘I had no wish to work on ships –
Filipinos know it’s hard –
Mouths were many, jobs were scarce,
From birth my life was marr’d.
‘From green island homes we travel,
As mariner, nurse, or maid,
And remit3 to our loved ones
The pittance we get paid.
‘Father scraped up money
For training college fees –
A scam of the local senator,
Whose throat I’d gladly seize.
‘The college had no equipment,
Just endless, pointless drill,
No qualifications either –
The news made my father ill.
‘Course passes gained no certificates,
Without some time at sea.
There was no ship to serve on,
But the senator had his fee.
‘Father paid a crewing agent:
Yet another fee required,
But at least I’d get a berth,
And that’s what we desired.
‘The agent sent me to train then
At a dismal-looking place
More fees and little learned,
Sad repetition of my case.
‘A lifeboat stood on davits,
By a creek filled-up with mud.
“For audit purposes only”,
That pristine lifeboat stood.
‘There’s so many schools for training –
Why’d the agent send me there?
The training was quite useless –
Why didn’t that agent care?
‘It seemed he got a “rebate”
(kickback to you and me)
For every trainee sent there,
A percentage of their fee.
‘They issued my certificates,
But their paper had a price:
My father’s hard-earned money,
Stolen once, then twice.
‘Ever since it’s been the same:
When I come home from sea,
The agent wants another course,
And I must pay the fee’.
[Enter Chorus of Greek Shippers]
‘O woe to us, and to our ships,
But what are we to do?
The wages they are paying now,
Won’t draw a young Greek crew.
‘So we take these global mariners,
Who’re really up for it,
But they can’t begin to work a ship:
Their training’s frankly s**t!
‘Someone, somewhere, should sort it out,
We’ve really had enough:
Inspect and close the colleges,
It’s time for getting tough!’
A globalised Mariner meeteth three gallants outside a shopping centre and detaineth one.
The Consumer protesteth against detention outside the shopping mall.
The Consumer is spell-bound by the mariner and constrained to hear his tale.
Proficiency in English is a requirement of a seafaring career.
The Mariner telleth of early hardships and how he and his parents were cheated by the maritime colleges and the crewing agents.
Filipino maritime training institutions are often controlled by persons with powerful political connections.
The academic training often follows a military model and is of poor quality. And it does not qualify cadets for certificates of seafarer competency without additional practical experience – ‘sea time’. Most colleges fail to arrange ‘sea time’ for their cadets.
Many ship operators out-source crew recruitment and employment to specialist crewing agencies with offices in the major labour supply countries. Cadets graduating from maritime colleges must pass a basic safety training course before they can go to sea. The courses are usually conducted at specialist training institutions with requisite equipment such as lifeboats. State regulatory agencies inspect the training institutions to ensure the requisite equipment is present, but not that it is used.
Corrupt crewing agents distort the seafarer training market
Specialist short courses must be taken to allow employment in particular trades, such as tankers. Usually, the seafarer must pay the course fee.
Ship operators moan that international standards of seafarer training are not being properly enforced.
PART II
Consumer groaned to Mariner:
‘So you each believe the same!
But if all think your training’s s**t
Then, truly, who’s to blame?’
‘Our union said, there is a law –
A real law, no invention –
That lays down training standards,
An international convention.
‘Government should enforce it,
End the bribing and the feigning,
Close-down the useless paper-mills
And give us decent training’.
‘Yes, yes’, the Chorus chorused,
‘Our ships need well-trained crew.’
‘So what went wrong?’ Consumer asked,
But the Mariner hardly knew.
‘There are no simple answers,’
Voice grated, knife on rock,
‘The true path’s no open highway,
Good governance no wind-up clock.’
A gaunt figure stepped among them:
He gave each a piercing look.
His boots were worn, his cloak was stained,
And he bore a calf-bound book.
‘Who art thou?’ they cried in wonder,
‘And what thing’s your burden there?’
‘I’m the Inspector,’ spake the stranger,
‘And the Law’s my burden fair.’
The Chorus shrank and muttered,
The Mariner downed his e’e.
‘I’ve heard tell of you,’ he whispered,
‘As have all who sail the sea.
‘You come aboard, unheralded,
You seek out the rusting hulks:
You cow the cruel masters,
Ships’ agents get the sulks.’
Consumer viewed Inspector,
Eyes lit with wild surmise:
‘It’s up to you to punish,
Right wrongs, and nail their lies?’
‘In truth, that is my duty –
The goal for all my kind –
But the journey is a long one,
And the road’s not paved, nor signed.
‘Those who inspect the colleges
In each poor country of the Earth:
They’re government employees
And are not paid their worth.
‘The owner is a man of power,
The inspector – he is not,
The one dines in his castle,
The other in his cot.
‘The inspector has a check-list,
To work through, line by line.
If a lifeboat’s at the college,
Then it gets a tick – that’s fine.
‘We know it can’t be launched:
It’s to be ticked, naught more.
Poor men must heed the letter,
Not the substance, of the law.’
The mariner had silent stood,
Hands clenched and visage pale,
Eyeing the Inspector,
As he ground out his tale.
‘I thank you’, cried the mariner,
‘Now I know the bitter worst:
No remedy in law books –
My mates and I are cursed.’
The Greeks had been quite nervous
While yet the Inspector spoke,
But confidently dealt with
The Mariner and such-like folk:
‘Don’t blame the law, nor malice,
Nor trade that’s getting slack,
Global economic forces
Strapped these burdens to your back.
‘Colleges could train you better –
With lifeboats working too –
But higher costs would close ‘em down,
Then where’d we find a crew?’
The Inspector laughed most harshly,
And turned to face the Greeks:
‘He who looks for truth
Must beware of that he seeks.
‘Good training’s too expensive:
The poor can’t pay the fee.
You state the matter clearly,
And I cannot but agree.
‘Yet I can well remember
When companies paid the fees,
Time-Past – they paid for training,
Invested in their employees.
‘You complain of training standards,
Cackling like geese
You want action to be taken,
But you don’t pay a penny piece.
‘It seems to me, hypocrisy,
When the poor turn-out their pockets,
To criticize their training,
While adding up your profits.’
The Mariner relateth that there are international standards on seafarer training.
But these international standards rely on national enforcement.
An Inspector calls.
The Inspector concurreth with the mere lip-service maritime colleges pay to international training regulations, but believeth that the local inspectors are powerless to obtain fuller compliance.
The ship operators see poor-quality training as an economic consequence of the seafarers’ need for cheap training.
The Inspector recalleth that 40 years ago, it was commonplace for ship operators to pay for seafarer training through cadetships and apprenticeships.
Part III
The Chorus blushed and shuffled,
But still they stood their ground.
They’d got their MBAs,
They knew their case was sound:
‘You’re talking of the past,
Dim, distant days of yore,
We don’t train our seafarers –
We don’t employ ‘em any more!’
Consumer quizzed the Chorus:
‘You don’t employ your crew??’ –
‘Our labour’s all outsourced,
‘The late-modern thing to do.
‘If a shipper paid for training,
He’d have an extra cost,
He’d be under-cut by others –
His business would be lost.
‘Pay for training? Better wages??
Remember shipping’s quite anarchic:
We’d love to be more generous
But you cannot buck the market.’
The Inspector gave a mirthless smile:
‘The market’s always cited
As a sovereign power and reason
Why wrongs cannot be righted.
‘But the remedy is simple here:
The flag-State of every nation
Shall charge a levy on each ship,
Paid at each ship’s registration.
‘The levy would pay all training costs,
A burden shared without distortion.
It would pay for good inspections too –
No need for doubts or caution.’
The Mariner did slowly nod:
‘The scheme would work – I see –
My last ship flew Mongolia’s flag,
For a three-thousand-dollar fee.’
‘Mongolia?’ quizzed our Consumer,
‘That’s surely rather queer?’
‘Not really’, saith the Inspector,
‘Some think a proper flag too dear.
‘Each ship is like a piece
Of far-off, sovereign soil –
Its flag denotes allegiance,
Republican or royal.
‘The flag-State has a duty,
Be the country rich or poor,
To check each ship is ship-shape –
As laid down in the law.
‘But flags can be commodities,
And flags can be for rent,
To businessmen and lawyers,
Who’re out on profit bent.
‘When ships are policed badly,
Their seafarers should beware.
Policing ships for profit
Is a mighty strange affair.
‘Some run their business well,
Some run it as a racket,
With only one objective:
To make themselves a packet.
‘Now, compliance is expensive,
So compliance is a sham
When the flag a shipper flies
Really doesn’t give a damn.
‘A shipper heeds his costs,
A shipper looks to save,
But if he flies a cut-price flag,
Consequences can be grave.
‘Ships that fly a proper flag,
And meet their obligations,
Incur much extra cost
To comply with regulations.
‘They’re under-cut, bankrupted, bust,
When complying as they should.
There’s an iron law all must obey:
Bad ships drive out the good.’
The Chorus sighed and scuffed their feet:
‘What the Inspector says is true,
But the fault is not all ours –
Ship charterers are guilty too.
‘If they wanted well-found ships,
And skilled, contented crews,
They should have thought to ask us,
Or given us some clues.
‘Truth is: they don’t want “good,”
Or freight rates getting steep.
We skimp, they save –
Truth is: they’re wanting “cheap.”
The Inspector sighed in turn,
‘Some charterers do care,
Oil majors first and foremost,
Others – rather rare.
‘Inspectors board all tankers –
For days, they sniff around –
Ensuring chartered ships
Are those that pass as sound
‘Oil majors don’t like bad headlines
When tankers hit the rocks
And oil pollutes the beaches
Because the ships are crocks.
‘The public doesn’t like to see
Seabirds black with oil;
Alas, for all the tanker crews,
The public doesn’t care at all.
‘So the tankers get inspected
With much resource and care,
But the crews of all the rest
Make do with me…and prayer.’
The Chorus confirmeth the Mariner’s tale that crewing agencies, not ship operators, employ seafarers. Agencies then contract with operators to supply crews with the requisite qualifications.
The Inspector proposeth a training levy to be paid when each ship is registered by the flag-State. See Afterword.
Although Mongolia is 850 miles from the sea, the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party granted a license in 2003, to a Mr Chong Kov Sen, a Singaporean businessman, to operate the Mongolian Ship Registry. Mr Chong previously operated the Cambodia Registry under license until 2002, when the license was withdrawn following international protests at Cambodia’s failure to police its ships. In 2008, 73 ships were flying the Mongolian flag.
An OECD report states that ‘a significant percentage of total vessel operating costs could be saved by sub-standard operations’ (OECD 1996: 27).
Thomas Gresham, a sixteenth-century Chancellor of the Exchequer, found it was impossible to improve the quality of the English coinage, by simply issuing good quality coins. People hoarded the good coinage. So it was necessary to also withdraw the clipped and debased coins from circulation. Hence Gresham’s Law: ‘Bad money drives out good’.
The Oil Companies International Marine Forum (OCIMF) has set up and funded its own private inspectorate, SIRE, to ensure the seaworthiness of tankers under charter. Those tankers deemed satisfactory on inspection can expect more business and better terms from the oil majors, eager to avoid the bad publicity of marine pollution incidents.
PART IV
The Mariner then spoke up:
‘Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Turk,
Many pray who sail the seas,
But their prayers concern their work.
‘We do not fear a foundering –
Hull pierced, stove in, or rent.
Such a thing may happen,
But it’s a very rare event.
‘Pirates may seize the ship,
And hold us on foreign soil,
But what we fear most is different:
It’s the endless, grinding toil.
‘Each and every ship we join,
Seems there’s fewer crew,
An officer gone, a rating gone,
But there’s still their jobs to do.
‘The master now must take a watch,
Though there’s paperwork aplenty.
So many crew have disappeared,
The vessel’s almost empty.
‘The master’s nodding on the bridge,
His tired eyes are red.
He’s still to call Head Office,
Before he gets to bed.
‘The mate then takes a watch,
Though it’s two days since he slept –
Problems with the cargo –
But his watch must still be kept.
‘Turnabout, the two must watch,
There is no other way,
Six hours on, six off,
Twelve hours in every day.
‘In sickness and in health,
Each watch they duly take,
Dog-tired, red-eyed, grey-faced,
Four months, four months, without a break.
‘No gentle couch our cabin:
The ship is pitching in the waves,
There’s engine noise, vibration,
Yet we sleep the sleep of babes.
‘Too soon, too soon we’re wakened,
We scarcely catch our breath.
An ignoble thing, this tiredness –
As if we slowly bleed to death.’
Increasingly, ship operators have been seeking to save crewing costs by reducing the number of watch-keeping officers. Where second officers have been dispensed with, then watches must alternate between the master and the first officer (mate), although each of them has many other duties to perform. An OECD (2001a) report instances a saving of $37,000 pa by under-manning a 20-year-old 30,000 dwt bulk carrier by two crew.
PART V
As ever when the Mariner spoke,
The Greeks did swell with pride:
‘There is no law that’s broken there,
There’s nothing for us to hide.’
‘You surely lie,’ Consumer cried,
‘I know little of the sea,
But to have a master standing watch –
That’s folly, plain to me.’
The grim inspector then did speak:
‘In truth, they break no law.
The law itself is here at fault –
Therein we find the flaw.
‘The law on Minimum Manning
Lays down for every ship
The crew that must be carried
On each and every trip.
‘What is the minimum manning?
This is what we’re taught:
It’s the smallest competent crew
To bring a stricken vessel safe to port.
‘To make that stricken vessel safe,
Huge effort they’ll expend,
Yet must they slave thus daily?
Til their contract’s at an end?’
Consumer scratched his head:
‘If some members of the crew
Exceed twelve hours each day,
Surely that’s illegal too?’
‘We falsify our working hours’,
Replied the old seadog,
‘To keep the owners happy,
Each day, we flog the log.’
‘Then change the minimum manning law –
No more idle chatter –
Require crews to be larger,
It seems a simple matter.’
The mariner sighed and shrugged.
The Inspector took-up the tale:
‘Flag-States must vote the change,
Or else the measure fails.
‘Flag-States that exist for profit,
And take the operators’ gold,
They can’t increase the crewing costs –
They’ve reputations to uphold.
‘The flag with the greatest tonnage
Flies o’er the Panama Isthmus,
When Panama votes for change,
Then turkeys’ll vote for Christmas.’
In fact the maximum number of daily hours of work for watch-keepers is specified by the IMO as 14 hours, and the maximum number of weekly hours is 91.
Falsification of working hours is so widespread in the industry that it has entered everyday slang as ‘flogging the log.’
Consumer doth not understand why the flag-States at IMO do not change the international legislation to provide adequate crewing numbers, allowing shorter hours.
Part VI
[All in chorus: …]
‘So come all you kind consumers,
Who the honey’d wine have sipped,
Take pity on the mariner,
Beware how your goods are shipped.
‘The crews are outsourced workers,
A study in dejection –
Casualised, long hours, poor training –
And the law is no protection.
‘If charterers thought the public cared
How seafarers are mistreated,
They’d pass the message down the line:
“Our consumers are quite heated.
“It’s bad for our public image,
Like seabirds and pollution,
So get your act together,
And find a true solution.
“We’ll pay your higher freight rates,
If you’ll deploy more crew.
Or we’ll contract your opposition –
See if they know what to do.”
‘So the shippers get the higher rates,
Increase the crews and cut the hours,
Strike the flag of Panama,
And so, at last, they smell of flowers.
‘One day it really just might happen,
A fairy tale come true,
It’s even very possible,
They’d employ and train the crew!’
It is suggested that public concern for seafarers’ welfare might act in the same way as public concern about marine pollution and be transmitted down the supply chain from charterers to ship operators. Operators who could ‘brand’ their vessels as well crewed could then command premium freight rates.
For an ‘Afterword’ describing in detail the political economy of the global shipping industry, issues of seafarer training, industry regulation and enforcement, please refer to the original publication in the journal ‘Sociology’.
In Mark 6, we can read the story that is sometimes called “The 5000.” In terms of word count, it’s the length of a modern flash fiction.
Five thousand people come out to hear him. They listen all day. At night they are tired, drained, elated, and far from home. And they are hungry.
His twelve disciples are distressed. The very pressing question on their minds is, “How the h-ll are we going to feed all these hungry people?”
The Teacher does not get upset. Bring me what you have, he says.
They collect what they have. It consists of a few loaves of bread and a few fishes.
The disciples are now even more stressed. How will this ever be enough for all these people? Utterly impossible. And he tells them that they are fools to get concerned.
He starts distributing the fishes and bread to all the hungry ones.
And it turns out that there is enough.
There is more than enough.
Everyone gets enough.
Everyone is able to eat until they are full, and satisfied.
In the space between the impossibility and the outcome lies “the miracle.”
No one really knows what happened in that space.
Jesus was not the only miracle-worker of his time. There were many such. They roamed the countryside, visited the towns, and drifted through the cities all the time.
He was not the only miracle-worker by a long stretch. Back then, it was “a thing” they did, kind of like indigenous peoples in other places would transform themselves through shamanistic rituals and the use of drugs like magic mushrooms or peyote.
The lesson of the story is what matters.
And the lesson is this.
There is enough.
There is more than enough for everyone.
Modern science has proved this many times over.
It is not a matter of producing enough food and shelter for everybody.
The earth can provide, even now, when the population is 8 billion and climbing.
It’s all a matter of how things get distributed.
And it’s all a matter of what people want.
If people’s wants remain simple, and real, and if we all share what there is, there won’t be any problems any more.
Or at least there wouldn’t be the kinds of problems we see now: war, disagreement, stress created by greed, conflict created by desire. All of these things are rampant everywhere right now, from East to West, from North to South, and all points in between.
But there is enough, both materially and spiritually.
How we choose to use what there is – that is the message of the story.
He is the great messenger. But so is the anonymous writer, called “Mark,” who wrote the book of Mark. And so are all the ordinary people who came out to hear him. And so are all the readers of good faith who have studied his works and words over the centuries, no matter what their specific beliefs on other issues (like the afterlife) are, or were.
(Socrates said, “I believe in the afterlife because it makes me feel better to do so. If it isn’t there when I’m dead I won’t know it.
“If we live good lives, the times are also good. As we are, such are the times.”
– Saint Augustine
“The Drifter” wishes to complain this week.
Out of respect for potential hyper-sensitive readers, he shall limit himself to three brief topics.
His two kids and his three dogs can fairly attest to the fact that complaining is one of his fave hobbies.
Some folks call it “letting off steam,” so a gasket doesn’t blow.
They say Henry Miller was still complaining about his mother on his death bed, when he was 89, even though she had died 75 years earlier, when he was 14.
And yet, Miller always called himself the happiest man alive.
…
The other day on NPR I heard some clown (a well-known, well-paid clown) say that the “tech bros” are the “cool kids on the block,” and I almost chucked up the lunch I hadn’t eaten.
(The seven cups of coffee that were in my stomach began to swirl around. It’s usually half-caf since I had a stroke a year and seven months ago. FYI, zero side effects from the stroke and I’ve also given up any and all smoking of anything. But I still enjoy second-hand smoke whenever I can find it, like walking through the halls of my Chicagoland apartment building any time of day or night.)
The term “tech bros” is itself an absurd and ridiculous thing (even though, or especially because, “everybody” seems to be saying it now).
And yet, to say that these folks are “cool” is even more ridiculous, when one thinks of where the term was born.
MILES DAVIS was, and is, cool.
His album, Birth of the Cool, came out in 1957, the same year as On the Road.
Miles Davis was so cool that even Bob Dylan said he was the coolest.
Jack Kerouac was cool.
Charlie Parker was cool.
Shirley Jackson was cool.
N. Scott Momaday was cool.
I saw him live one time in Chicago, reading some of his things and giving a talk. I met him for two minutes afterward and it was more than enough for me to assuredly confirm that N. Scott’s coolness was at Miles Davis levels.
The “tech bros” are highfalutin, ruthless industrial capitalists (to the extreme in a world (seemingly) without accountability for the rich).
But they are not cool.
The NPR guy himself is “slick,” but not cool, as in: a bullshit artist. (Which is why Hemmie said the most important thing an artist of the real needs is a good BS-Detector.)
…
In the nineteenth century, the German philosopher Fred Nietzsche wrote, “The public permission to choose between five main political opinions insinuates itself into the favor of the numerous class who would fain appear independent and individual, and who like to fight for their one-sided opinions. After all, however, it is a matter of indifference whether one opinion is imposed upon the herd, or five opinions are permitted to it. He or she who diverges from the five public opinions and goes apart, has always the whole herd against him.”
In the USA, we ain’t even got five. We have two. And one side is controlled by the generic corporate capitalists. And the other side is also controlled by the generic corporate capitalists, which is why they failed to enforce accountability when they had power, i.e. 2021 to early 2025, which is why we’re in the situation we’re in now, at the end of 2025. How in the hell can this be called “freedom” any longer?
Dr. Cornel West, if you’re reading this, PLEASE keep doing what you’re doing. Your admin skills may be lacking like some of them say, but you’ve got more soul than the entire US Congress put together. And SOUL is what is needed now.
(After Nietzsche lost his mind, he sent a letter to someone saying that he was traveling around Germany executing all the antisemites. He saw IT coming even then, and even though he was (according to “them”) insane.)
…
The last thing the Drifter wishes to complain about today is all the people who are in a hurry to get nowhere. They will run over innocent children or old ladies on the street without looking backward just so they can get home faster to sit on their fat asses doing nothing (fat asses are fine if you’re doing something). If you have done this or are doing this, please slow down and give it another thought, if you ever have thoughts. Also, Henry David Thoreau said, “When in doubt, slow down.” I can also recommend Leonard Cohen’s song “Slow” to all the folks who are in a hurry to marry themselves off to someone else. Living alone ain’t a sin. It makes you an outlier in our society, but some of the best people have been outliers.
Jesus, Buddha, Shams of Tabriz and Joan of Arc would be four examples.
…
THE DRIFTER’S SONG RECOMMENDATION FOR THIS WEEK (December something ’25):
The Drifter recommends the song “Still Think About You” by A Boogie wit da Hoodie, from his 2016 mix tape titled ARTIST (his real first name is Artist).
This song is rap as ART, and the piano in it will break your heart, as will the lyrics and the content of the song. The word on the street is that his girlfriend got preggo with another man, and left him, inspiring this beautiful, intense tune.
Boogie also worked as a pizza delivery person at one point. The Drifter sympathizes; he did the same thing (in the 1990s).
THANKS to Tressa and Elena and their friends for the knowledge of this song.
The worst punishment I ever received at that place was being locked in a broom closet, in the dark, for three hours.
The school was Our Shepherd Lutheran Elementary located in a suburb of Detroit. The time was the mid-1970s.
I was in third grade when she locked me in the broom closet.
I say “she” because it was her who did it – my third grade teacher, Ms. Caul, who actually wasn’t that bad most of the time and who I even thought of as a friend some of the time.
But this time we knocked heads.
She wanted me to go up to the front of the class and join the other five kids who were serenading the rest of the class who were sitting at their desks.
She requested that I join the singing, that I head up front and begin to bust out in passionate song, singing hymns to the rest of the class as if I were some sort of transported hymn-singer, which I wasn’t. And far from it.
I was the kind of kid who wasn’t too good at joining, or singing (except when I was alone).
I had been sitting there at my desk looking at the happy hymn singers and thinking how pathetic and sad they were when she requested that I leave the security of my desk, head up front, and join them.
When I said no, she told me again to get out of my desk and march to the front of the room, pronto, buster.
When I said no again, she started walking down the aisle toward me, and she was here (which was there) before I even knew what hit me.
She was hovering over me, helicoptering above me, pointing at the front of the room and demanding that I take my place with the singing group.
I crossed my arms, turned my head away, and said no again.
Now she grabbed me by the arm, yanked me out of the chair, and dragged me to the front of the room.
Then she swung me around and slammed me (accidentally) into the kid at the end of the hymn-singing line.
Next she informed me that I would now be singing, not with the group, but as a soloist.
I had refused to sing in the group and it astonished me that she believed I would now consent to busting out in a solo for these fools.
I set my jaw shut tight, crossed my arms, and stared out at my classmates in their desks, all of whom seemed more horrified than I felt.
She began yelling, telling me to sing.
The truth was, I could not have sung at that point even if it had meant my life.
That was when she yanked me out of the room by the arm and marched me straight down the hall to the broom closet. For some reason, the light switch for the broom closet was on the outside of the little room, in the hall.
She threw the door open and with a great shove she fairly hurled me into the tiny room filled with brooms, mops, buckets, and cleaning supplies.
Then she slammed the door shut tight, locked it from outside, and turned the light off from outside.
I was alone in the broom closet, locked in, in the dark.
Like I said, I was in third grade, so that means I was either 8 or 9 years old.
I state my age as a reason for why I spent my time silently weeping in there, in rage and terror.
I felt like I’d been locked in a dungeon and, indeed, to this day I almost feel like I know what it’s like to be locked in a dungeon because of my refusal to join the singing fools.
Some people enjoy being cheerleaders for the system.
Some people see absolutely nothing wrong with groupthink, following the herd, living the life of a passive approver of the ways things get done around here, no matter how they get done, as long as the group gets what it wants and the majority rule, in a societal system that wants slaves for its great devouring jaws, and not even IT knows why, except that’s the way it goes.
“Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson, and, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
The three hours might only have been thirty minutes.
When she let me out, she said, “I’m sorry Dale, but you had it coming to you and I hope you’ve learned your lesson this time.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald called Joan Crawford the quintessential flapper (which, for Fitzgerald, meant the quintessential literary woman) because she combined two qualities into one.
She had a desperate-hearted love of life, or a love of life that was tinged with desperation, and she had it more intensely than anyone else.
He also disparaged her acting abilities. He said it was nearly impossible to write for her. (He was a screenwriter who usually didn’t even receive writing credits.) It was nearly impossible to write for her because of the tendency she had to overact, he claimed.
But there’s a very fine line between overacting, on the stage or screen, and over-re-acting, which happens in life.
To me, when I watch it now, much of Joan’s overacting on screen seems like nothing more than the OVERREACTING that certain people are all-too-capable of when they find themselves in emotionally charged situations.
Joan overacts on screen because she overreacted in life half the time.
She did both because she was an artist. And artists are people whose moods sometimes, or even most of the time, get the better of them.
Because it comes with the territory.
Art is about emotion, moods, atmospheres, feelings (as well as thoughts and ideas but here we’re focusing on mood).
Joan Crawford had a genius-level intellect on many levels.
And one thing she understood far better than most people was the ways people’s moods get the better of them.
And she understood this even as her own moods would get the better of her.
All of this comes out very clearly when you watch her, with close attention, on the screen.
It’s best to do it in a partially darkened room when you’re wide awake in the middle of the night with good creative energy but not creating anything, just absorbing more for later.
Try to find your own sweet spot regarding medications that can keep you buzzing while not taking you over the edge.
Breathe the midnight deeply, relax, and be very alive.
It’s best to focus on some of the movies she made during the 1950s.
For me, this decade is Joan’s high point.
Before that, she hadn’t fully matured. After that, she started to become a bit of a parody of herself. (There are exceptions in her work in either direction in time.)
It doesn’t have to be a great movie (in technical terms). All it needs to do is have the great Joan Crawford in it.
Watch the way her face moves.
The beautiful way her face moves and never stops moving.
And what it shows. (And she knows it.)
Joan Crawford understands (all too well) when people are playing her (or trying to).
She’s always willing to give other people a chance to be their best selves (but watches very closely when they veer off the track – because she’s been hurt before).
She knows that the world is made up of people who need one another but also can’t live together (or not peacefully).
She can read the reactions to what she says as deeply as if she were reading a book (which she also did much of during her life).
She knows that more sadness is up around the next bend.
But she also communicates the Dickinsonian fact that hope springs eternally.
She knows that humans are beautiful and ugly by turns, and that being ugly inside is much more important (in the wrong way) than being beautiful on the outside.
And she knows that outer beauty is what Jesus called “the light of the body.”
This exists for those can see it. It is an inner radiation that travels outward even when the subject (its source) is unaware that it’s doing so.
It’s the reason Joan was just as beautiful at 70 as she was at 20, even though she chain-smoked and chain-drank for most of her years.
“I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.” – Bob Dylan
The person in these pictures is a poet in action.
She’s a poet and she does know it, but she does not show it, at least not in any overt kind of way (or hardly ever).
She’s 18 now, recently graduated from high school (she went to Hemingway’s high school), and she tried the poet clubs and poet readings at the school.
But she couldn’t really stand any of them.
Because she is horrified by any sort of insincerity. She can even feel it approaching before it’s there. For her, insincerity is akin to the proverbial fingernails screeching across a chalkboard. For her, most formal poetry readings and poet gatherings and poet clubs, and so forth, have the same sincerity value as Amber Heard’s testimony at the Johnny Depp trial which she, like her father, could not stand watching because of how blatantly insincere, false, and totally FAKE it obviously was.
(We were watching the trial because we’re Johnny Depp fans, big ones. And even though I couldn’t stand watching Amber make a fool of herself, or maybe because I couldn’t stand watching her make a fool of herself, she reminds me very much (physically included) of someone I once knew (and dated, and almost married), a stage actress and theater professor from Chicago, Illinois, which has more theater than any other place in the country except NYC).
To be a professional academic poet in the USA of today, one has to give professional poetry readings, and attend professional poet gatherings, and join poetry clubs, 99.999% of which have about as much sincerity as the testimony of Amber Heard at the Johnny Depp trial.
Hemingway, as a famous writer, was terrified of formal public speaking, so much so that he rarely, or never, did it.
Bukowski, Hemingway’s most famous direct heir, gave the greatest poetry readings of any poet in American history.
He could hold an audience of hundreds in the palm of his hand for hours. Almost literally.
And yet he hated doing it – hated it unto the death; because he said it made him feel like a fake, a freak, and a fraud.
The person in these pictures is a poet, but she almost never shows it, not in any overt way. (Although if you’re a sensitive human who’s a good judge of character and an artist, or artistically inclined, you may be able to tell it from a single glance.)
“You’ll find it when you stop looking.” – D.W. Barrigar
At 18, she doesn’t quite know it yet, but the way she walks, the way she talks, the way she thinks, and the way she acts all indicate one thing: writer.
Just who and what a writer is now is undergoing great flux and change, great challenges and readjustments. It’s been happening very dramatically since around the year 2000. We live in a period of rapid and sudden uncertainty, and we, of course, don’t know how things will pan out.
Edgar Allan Poe, it’s often said, was the first American writer who actually tried to make a living from his pen and nothing but his pen.
He failed miserably, had to work mostly as an editor instead, and died in the gutter because of it.
Before that, it wasn’t as if America didn’t have writers. Most people wrote and read letters, for instance, every day. (If they were “illiterate,” they dictated their letters and had letters from others read aloud to them from someone around them who could read and write.) It was simply the case that making a living as a creative writer was fairly unheard of. There were zero copyright laws at that time, among other reasons, many other reasons.
Geoffrey Chaucer, of England, author of the Canterbury Tales, is considered the first actual, individual author in the English language, in the modern sense. (Rome and other societies had their own versions much earlier than that.)
And making a living as a writer, as nothing more than a writer, never crossed Chaucer’s mind.
He had a million other jobs instead, while also completing the most lasting work in the English language outside of Shakespeare. And we all know how Shakespeare supported himself.
So even if she never publishes a word, and even as she also does other things, too, this is a writer in action – not tomorrow, not in a few years or decades, now.
America thinks everything is about money.
The best-seller mentality has poisoned the well of the minds of so many writers that many, or even most, of them have stopped writing seriously even as they still dream of writing.
I taught in the writing schools of the Midwestern USA for over twenty years, first as a graduate student, later as a professor and lecturer.
It gradually dawned on me that there was a mindset that was killing the creativity of many of my students.
Too many of them believed that if they didn’t become rich and famous writers overnight, then they weren’t writers at all.
And they quit doing it. They stopped writing. Because they thought the lack of instant “success” meant they weren’t good enough. So they bowed out, with embarrassed smiles on their faces. It was sad to see, sad that so many had (and still do) fallen for the lie. The big lie.
Writing, creative writing, is something you do if you’re called to it. Any outward success, or lack of so-called outward success, is never going to stop you if you’re a real writer.
We are all writers today, in many ways, inventing personas for ourselves, using words to text and email each other all the time every single day.
Jesus was a writer, even though he never wrote a word, except one known time, with his finger in the sand.
But who told more lasting, wide-ranging stories than he did? Short stories, usually very, very short stories, so powerful they turned him into the most famous human being who’s ever lived or ever will live – bar none. It was his words that did everything, including bringing back the dead. (“Lazarus, come out!”) And that makes him a writer. He was never paid a pittance for it, not even a single cent, ever, not even one time.
(He was never directly paid, but he was given free food, lodging, and wine from his audiences and hearers.)
The person in these pictures is a writer in action, even if she doesn’t quite know it yet, even if she never “publishes” a word.
“Nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’, but it’s free,” wrote Kris Kristofferson.
(Co-Ed note–We once again proudly present another high quality and brilliant “fictional essay” by Co-Editor Dr. Dale Williams Barrigar. This is extra special because it makes its world debut, right about…now!–LA)
“Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” – Hemingway
DISCLAIMER: The advice in this essay isn’t for everyone.
It’s up to the Reader to decide whether you’re one of those this was meant for, directly, indirectly, or not at all.
Part One.
In private notes that were discovered and released after his death, the great psychologist Carl Jung pointed out that there are two ways of consuming drugs, i.e. (in this case) illegal substances, or alcohol (a hardcore drug if there ever was one).
The first way involves bombing out your mind, becoming numb, killing your spirit, getting wasted, forgetting about life, escaping your responsibilities as a human among humans and other living things, and so forth.
This is the mode that gets all the press in the modern US, even with (or especially with) two revered comedians such as Mr. Cheech and Mr. Chong.
But the second way, much less popular and much less talked about and much less believed in, too, is much different.
And the second way can be called the true way.
The second way is the way of the shaman, the way of the mystical monk or nun, the way of the spiritual seeker.
The second way was and is the way which can be symbolized by seven representative American writers (at their best, only at their best), none of whom died shockingly young from drugs or anything else, except Kerouac (at 47): William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Charles Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson, and Bob Dylan (among many other heroes).
The first way involves deadening yourself – putting yourself to sleep.
The second, much less popular way, involves a search for enlightenment, the seeking after an awakening, the belief in greater human possibilities of the imagination, the longing for unity, the knowledge that deliberately changing your consciousness (temporarily) (and being out on the edge) can lead to a change for the better in Consciousness – permanently; when done right (only when done right).
In this formulation, for example, and which I can very much attest to personally, the use of marijuana can make you feel two ways.
One: tuned out, drugged out, apathetic, tired and with the munchies.
Two: Awakened, heightened, more alive, more ambitious, more energized, more open, more adventurous, more bold, more spiritually attuned at every level, hungry for more life and not just mere food.
This essay is about pursuing the use of drugs for the second mode.
It should surprise none of us that in America, Land of the Vulgar, the first, bad way of using weed (and other substances) is the one that gets all the press.
After all, we’re also the ones who proudly elect the worst (or best) snake oil salesman in history to be our supreme leader.
But there is, as Carl Jung pointed out, another way, a way Jung secretly called (knowing it would be released later) “sacred pharmacology.”
A way that, despite its sacredness, or because of it, can very much get you in big trouble or even “ruin your career” (which is one massive reason why Jung never released his research on drug use while he lived; he saw what had happened to Freud and cocaine and had the same rational self-protective instincts of a Galileo, or anyone in their right mind).
Part Two.
In another essay, as a sequel to this one, I will list and briefly discuss the first time I ever tried every drug I’ve ever done and where I was when that happened and who I was with (if I was with anyone), starting with coffee and ending with magic mushrooms, sometimes known as psilocybin, which are being widely tested now by Western science for their medicinal properties. (They can also have properties that feel the very opposite of medicinal, depending on your mood, take it from humble yours truly, and still known today among the youth of America as “a bad trip.”) Warning: discussions of hard drugs like crack cocaine, cocaine, LSD and certain opioids (no needles) will be included in this future essay.
Needles will not be included because I’ve never used needles. I’ve never used needles because all my experiments have been deliberate, and even careful, if it’s possible to use something like LSD or crack cocaine in a careful way (and, at least partly, it is possible, say I).
I won’t talk about alcohol in this list, which is the drug I have the most lifelong experience/s with, by far. (This topic is and will be further covered in greater detail in other essays.)
I also won’t talk about (for the most part) prescription drugs like Depakote and other bipolar medications which have been a big part of my life since 2015, since they aren’t generally what are known as “recreational” drugs (although there can be some serious cross-over here with things like Gabapentin and benzodiazepines).
And the term recreational, for me, is a big part of the problem.
When I use drugs, it is never for recreation at all, just as I never take vacations.
Whenever I travel anywhere, even if it’s just down to the corner again, I think of it as a small journey that’s part of the long journey of life itself – not a vacation.
I’m 58 now (born in 1967, three months before the Summer of Love).
I’ve done so many drugs in my life that I’m sure I’ll be forgetting a few of them, despite the list I’ve made ahead of time by hand before I type it whenever that happens.
This essay doesn’t talk much about ADDICTION, either, which is a separate topic, and one of the possibilities when you play with fire.
But, again, it’s possible to play with fire in a careful way and it’s possible to play with fire in a reckless way that isn’t careful at all.
There is nothing in this world that isn’t dangerous, even traveling down to the corner, even taking a shower, even boiling water for tea (or especially all of the above).
You avoid the danger as much as you can but NEVER to the point where your life is paralyzed (or even well-nigh nonexistent) with fear.
Because we are given life by the Universe (for me it’s God) in order to live life and not living life (in a genuine and authentic way where you actually try, or Don’t Try, as Bukowski said, which amounts to the same thing) is the greatest sin of all.
Sometimes quality is more important than quantity, too.
What good is it if you live to be a hundred and ten and were one of the most boring people to ever walk the Planet, even (or especially) to yourself?
If you already have visionary or artistic tendencies (often but not always the same thing), taking drugs sometimes, in the right way, can enhance your visions, especially in the middle of this sickeningly over-civilized, overly-tame, overly-sheltered, overly-comfortable (for far too many of us) world we’ve created.
Drugs actually aren’t The Way but they can be a ticket to the way just like Dr. Hunter S. Thompson claimed they could be.
He was right about Nixon, he was right about the death of the American Dream, and he’s right about this, too.
Enhanced visions lead to spiritual expansions and augmented consciousnesses (plural) within yourself, and greater imagination, memory, and intelligence, too – not just the munchies.
And the dizziness of having your worldview turned upside down in an instant can be liberating, especially when it happens frequently.
The effect/s are cumulative, for the most part; and it’s a process, a road, a path, a way, not a destination: and getting stuck in a rut is to be avoided whenever you can.
Part Three.
I started attending Wheaton Central High School in Wheaton, Illinois, USA, almost exactly five months after John Belushi, the great comedian and actor, died.
It was Belushi’s high school and it sometimes seemed like his name and even his picture were everywhere in the halls.
And we were lost suburban teenagers of the Ronnie Raygun 1980s who looked to Belushi as a hero not because he was funny or because he died of a drug overdose (with needles) at the Christological age of 33, but because he was a rebellious spirit at his core.
As one of the Blues Brothers, at least half the time he wasn’t funny at all (very much on purpose), but he was never not a rebel.
It was as if we were trying to resurrect the rebel spirit of the 1960s without even knowing we were doing so, and experimentation with drugs and alcohol were a huge part of all that.
Living with a purpose (if undefined so far), driving hard until you were out on the edge (and then hopefully reining yourself in), and making an impression on all the conformist dolts crowding our world (no matter their age or status otherwise) were all the name of the game.
It takes a Houdini-like delicacy and balance, the strength and fortitude of Hercules, the wisdom of Athena, the fearlessness of Achilles and the alertness of Odysseus.
And we learned that if you try hard enough without trying you can turn yourself into none other than a Chosen One.
(We continue with repeats of material first published by Dr. Williams Barrigar Williams on Literally Stories UK. I told my Co-Editor that he really should do a Book of Boo, who knows where a camera is better than Madonna. Both excellent images provided by DWB–LA)
by Dr. Dale Williams Barrigar
Imagine spending three or four years creating dozens of short stories by hand. No computers, so you do everything with your other tools: pencils, pens, piles of paper: and the typewriter.
For rough drafts, you mostly use pencils. When the pencil gets worn down, you have to sharpen it.
When you write through them all and your entire supply gets worn down, you need to sharpen them all.
Usually you spend your time standing up as you’re writing, although sometimes you write while lying in bed.
And the paper piles up: letter after letter, word after word, phrase after phrase, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph: story after story, as you make them, all by hand.
You get blisters on your fingers and your wrist aches from the effort.
You write for years, and you create much juvenile work, work you know is juvenilia, giving you that truly uneasy, hard-to-appease feeling.
But you also feel yourself getting better. And you begin to create a few things that almost look like masterpieces eventually, and then suddenly. At least when compared to the rest of your work.
Then your wife loses everything on a train. For some reason, you kept it all in the same suitcase, plus the typed copies, and entrusted it to her. Someone stole the suitcase. Or, your wife just lost it.
Your new best friend tells you not to worry. You can now rewrite only the best stories, AND: only the ones you remember. The tragedy with the suitcase was not a tragedy at all. It was a blessing. Whatever you don’t remember was not WORTH remembering, your friend tells you. Whatever you do remember will be written much better the second time around.
The writer was Ernest, the wife was Hadley, and the friend was Ezra Pound.
Ernest Hemingway’s first book, “Three Stories & Ten Poems,” was published in Paris in 1923 in an edition of 300 copies, and was the result of the true story above. While much of the work in this book is still considered juvenilia, this is advanced juvenilia of a very interesting kind.
The poems are mostly not worth much these days. Two of them can be said to be much better than that. But the stories, while perhaps not as advanced as much of his later work, are three of Hemingway’s most memorable pieces. Because he wrote them when he was so young (early twenties, in the early 1920s), and because he later became Ernest Hemingway.
“Up in Michigan,” the first story, upends many cliches about Hemingway, because it’s told, very sympathetically, and believably, from a woman’s point of view. It’s a story of young love gone horribly wrong, as young love will do. It describes an awkward, perhaps brutal, sexual encounter between two people. At times, the prose is almost as good as Joyce in “Dubliners.”
“Out of Season,” the next piece, is a husband-and-wife story which began Hemingway’s famous “iceberg technique,” when he deliberately truncated the end, thereby making the whole much more ambiguous and believable. In this piece, you can truly feel the future Nobel Prize winner beginning to come into his own as he reinvents the beginnings and endings of stories.
The third story, “My Old Man,” is a very curious case. While this piece is clearly juvenilia in most of its aspects, it’s also good enough, and well-developed enough, to have inspired two films so far, one a full-length feature from Hollywood, and one a tv movie starring the great and under-appreciated Warren Oates.
The two poems that are worth reading these days are “Along with Youth” and “Roosevelt.” The first poem, set in northern Michigan, captures the passing of youth in a wistful, sad and true manner. The next piece is about Teddy Roosevelt, the great adventurer, who much influenced the young Hemingway.
Its ending is prophetic: “And all the legends that he started in his life / Live on and prosper, / Unhampered now by his existence.”
Wallace Stevens and Ernest Hemingway once shared a bout of angry fisticuffs on the docks of nighttime Key West, Florida. Hemingway, twenty years younger, knocked the large and formidable Stevens down. Both were wildly drunk. Stevens later admitted that he started the fight, and Hemingway finished it.
And Stevens, one of America’s greatest poets, a true heir of both Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, also later proclaimed Hemingway one of America’s greatest poets in prose. Stevens had (drunk) wanted to fight Hemingway because of how good he was. (William Carlos Williams delivered Hemingway’s first baby and claimed the big tough guy went weak in the knees as he rushed from the room.)
Hemingway kept William Shakespeare’s complete works and the King James Bible on his nightstand. He called A Farewell to Arms “my Romeo and Juliet,” and the language in The Old Man and the Sea is biblical. When we look through “Three Stories & Ten Poems,” we can enjoy seeing a young writer begin to create a style that influenced everyone afterward, as American literary critic Harold Bloom and many others have pointed out, even if they’ve never read Hemingway. Hemingway took the stripped-back, colloquial American writing style and retooled it for the twentieth century and beyond in a manner that was infused with both The Bible and Good Will.
The clean line, the spoken word, the obsession with brevity and the vivid, telling detail had been there before in American writing, but Ernie was the one who captured the modernist moment and made it universal by adding the heavyweights into the mix.
In France, Albert Camus’ The Stranger had been influenced by James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and other hardboiled American crime novels – which in turn had been influenced by Hemingway.
Saragun Springs 