#211

Finished Cell just a couple hours ago, a very good King book, one of the short ripcords, like Cujo. This is to speak well; While It is without question my favorite, I've read Cujo many more times. My girlfriend's favorite may be, besides The Stand, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, another snappy one and a pretty fucking incredible book. At the end of the day, we bow to the inexorable nature of King's sprawlers, but given the choice during the day, more often one reaches for the ripcords. Cujo can be read in couple of hours; the book radiates the cocaine energy with which it was penned.*

Anyhow I am glad I did not read Cell when it came out. As it was, I could not be convinced to own a cell phone till I was past eighteen, whereas my peer group had them grafted to their bodies** by the time we were twelve. Almost all of them. If I had read Cell at a more formative time in life, never would I have put one of the fuckers to my ear, guaranteed.

*

Well, if you'd like to read Cell and haven't, this is where I warn you to skip to the next section; what I have to say constitutes spoilers. I mean it; I am going to give away a huge part of the book in one sentence, and most of the rest in the sentence following. I try to never spoil things in this blog, can't remember how decent I am at it, but when I go there, I take it all the way. Another warning I guess I can say is that these ruminations get macabre. So it goes.

Probably it is not helpful in a critical sense or a practical sense--practical in terms of really truly learning something useful from what you are reading, no matter what it is--to say exactly what you would do differently than a protagonist or set of protagonists for the simple reason that you cannot really know. You cannot know for true and real how the group dynamics, weather conditions, how your last meal is sitting in your stomach, or any other good-as-infinite combination of factors might ramify into your thought process or affect your decision matrix. The safest way to think yourself into situations is to attempt to keep your reactions open and not get married to your big-ass brain figuring shit out so much better than the characters, said brain after all sitting extremely safe on its biscuit with a book in its paws. 

That said, really putting yourself in those kozmic othershoes is why we are here, and seeing how they fit teaches us pretty important shit, and it does this by tricking us into dealing with it, by making us believe not only that it could happen but that it is happening now; a good book puts you there, which is magic, and then compounds into a miracle: really good books can do it again. Some will do it every time you read them. That is some fucked-up shit.

So, you read and you live and you work on hitting your skill ceilings in your desired proficiencies, grind adaptability and what you consider to be the virtues, and you find yourself in many situations, real and imaginary. The characters in Cell use fire to destroy part of the a hive mind that has invaded a huge portion of the global human population through a signal broadcast simultaneously through all cellular communication devices; that is to say, human beings whose minds have been for all intents and purposes replaced by something parahuman. For this they are marked as insane and untouchable, and the book concludes with a repeat of their transgression on a yet larger scale.

Question. Would you have used fire on these bodies, which were once people?

It is, as I have said, sort of pointless to say that I wouldn't, because you never truly know, not when you're really in the corner. I've known a corner or two, done enough things I didn't think I would do, been the kind of person I never believed I would or could be. But hey, I would not do that thing. 

Using fire on another living thing is something I find really abominable. It is in a way the very worst of humankind, that we use fire on each other, on other creatures while they're alive. To take the gift of Prometheus and turn it to such a purpose is the essence of a Fall, definitely Capital, Mortal type deal we're talking about. At the juncture that the group of protagonists were deciding how best to kill these not-people (but are they not people? It is a question), before they thought of fire, I thought of the knife--for you see, these not-people were sleeping, and would not wake. 

Using fire was expedient. Fire was easy and got the job done with aplomb and extra credit. Expediency was certainly the keystone of the endeavor, that human drive to be as efficient as possible, doing the most with the least, twitch a finger, watch a man die a mile away, press a button, watch the missiles fly on perfect target every time. 

If you get busy, though,and know what you're about, if the throats are real close together as they were in the situation, you can slit probably four or five jugulars a minute for stretches at a time, and pacing yourself, get maybe two thousand sleepers in a night. If there are four of you, as there were in the situation, so much the better. It's old-school, it's messy, it's not really better than fire, but it's not fire, and that makes a difference. It makes a difference to do it with your hands, to touch and feel, to make the decision each time and see the features and maybe say you're sorry it had to be this way a few thousand times, till your throat bleeds maybe. These things have to make a difference. If they don't, what the fuck are we, anyway.

Fire is life. We cook on fire, and cooking makes us more human than killing. The least of what we build with fire is worth more than every method we've ever developed in order to destroy with it. The sun is the head and center of the life-fire, all the stars in the galaxy burn, the universe is kindled with fire, which is light, and light is the core of all being, the weave of what is, the first and last Word, and what we choose to do with it means something. It is significant, it is the most significant thing, for fire is the first Sign, and it in its light that all other Signs can be Seen.

Definitely never burn a person. You can't do justice that way. The book asks and answers and leans on this question a few different ways, and I don't think there is a wrong or right answer to the question--perhaps you are familiar with how much I have problematized justice for myself, should you have had the misfortune to dwell long on the questions I raise in my own books--in the end I have no objection to what the protagonists chose to do, for something did have to be done. 

That's the fucking problem. Something always has to be done. Justice. Christ alone knows, in most cases. Maybe all. Yet something must be done. 

Although in this case, was killing even necessary? Should I be glad I thought of the knife, like I'm supposed to feel better than another or good about myself given this detail? I would say not. I have always tried to live by the idea that the further you can go in distinguishing yourself from murderers, the better off you're likely to be, so I hope I can learn to better think beyond the knife. I am not a good protagonist in the plot-driving sense. Too often I answer "no, probably we can come up with something else--something less risky to our bodies and our own immortal souls."

Ha, but the actual lesson is, as it always is, that nothing, nothing, nothing, can really prepare you in the slightest for the actual situation.

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One of the things that makes Stephen King brilliant and true, is the elementality and honesty with which he plies his foremost and strongest symbols, of which there are three: fire, blood, and shit. Three lenses through which perfection can be glimpsed. Formes of Red, White, and Black. Fire's destructiveness is part of its perfection, just as one is water and cannot be without water and can drown in and freeze in and be poisoned by water.

Nothing is anything, morally speaking. It takes us to make evil. Shitty but true. And even our evil, which is the most despicable thing we can see in the universe, is a perfect element in a larger perfection.

*

Never played Minecraft, but from observation it seems like that game has somehow captured that very literally.

*

Watched Hell or High Water last night. That shit was fucking perfectly made from tip to top. Perfect fucking western. Maybe my favorite ever. God damn flawless. You can break it down and build it up from zero. One sloppy cut, too close. That's all. Perfect otherwise. Everybody did such a job that no teacher in the world would mark them down a single point. I can't stop thinking about this movie.

Another incredible western that I love and have even mentioned in this blog (I think?) is The Proposition. That movie was scored by Nick Cave, and who should have been on the score for Hell or High Water but the Caveman himself. Also Warren Ellis. I don't listen to these dudes myself, but the music for both movies is exquisite magnificence, perfectly chosen and boldly composed, masterpieces of restraint and release. The correlation is established: if Nick Cave worked on the soundtrack for a western, I will watch that movie with no further information. 

Advantage number two for Hell or High Water was a cast composed of two dudes who I'll watch anytime in anything if the other factors balance. This is Jeff Bridges' most believable and, I think, truly patiently and lovingly realized character in a western to date, though I may have missed some. Ben Foster is phenomenal as always and reminds me that I need to watch Hostiles. Also Galveston. I like crossed sets of data points, movies are really good for that. Chris Pine had thus far failed to make me care about him but he did as good a job as anyone else, super damn good, and in one moment of brilliance enacted some of the best physical performance I've ever seen in my life. 

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Next post, a list of other things I have watched in the last while. I don't remember if I've made a list like that. The vacation seems to have stripped me of my "blog awareness". Or, pretty tired. Purty tarred.


--JL

*I have never tried cocaine. That stuff seems like it fucking sucks. A drinking problem doesn't need that kind of company, and I am super lucky to be wired this way.

**they didn't really. I only clarify because in this the year 2019 I believe we are pretty close to that reality, maybe three years out from the iImplant and its counterpart, the Android Be, with the brave little Google Chip bobbing in their choppy wake. I might even be right about one or all these names, which would suck a lot, but we'd get used to it.