April 30 20233
existentialautotrip
April 30, 2023
# 1604
Kat and Francesca at Book Club bar.
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COVER:
Kat’s Smartest Friends
Kat Capossela
I recruited the most avid readers I knew. Two from my current job; two from Swarthmore; one from my previous job. All but one were women.
We met in the East Village at Book Club, a bookstore bar/cafe where my cousin, Francesca, runs a monthly book trivia night. She, a soon-to-be-published author with an English Masters, warned me that none of her friends have come close to the top three at the event.
This was serious.
I read a lot. Around a book a week since graduating college, but my memory is akin to a goldfish’s. But I am smart enough to surround myself with people smarter than I am.
And I told my team this. In humorous celebration, my friend who currently works for The New Yorker magazine declared our group name, “Kat’s Smartest Friends.” She wasn’t wrong.
Before the games began, Josh, a team member, spotted his older brother at the event. They didn’t know the other was attending, but, according to Josh, his brother only has English Ph. D.’s for friends. Oof.
The games began. Maia and Lily read every book on The Strand’s most popular fiction table, covering us for the contemporary works.
“Name the last book to win the Pulitzer for fiction.” Easy. (Refer to one of my latest blog posts.)
Josh and Gabi remembered every book they read in high school English, covering us from Shakespeare through Virginia Woolfe.
“Name the novel originally titled ‘Fiestas in England’ that the author had to rewrite in shorter, cleaner sentences after his wife lost the first draft.” See: my favorite Ernest Hemingway book that Mino, Francesca’s father and my brother, gifted me a few years back. I had insider information.
Despite an entire section on non-fiction that left us largely lacking, we did pretty well. I was proud. But we didn’t know how well the other teams did.
At the end of the night full of adrenaline and brain wracking, Francesca read the standing of all the teams in ascending order. With each team’s name read not being ours, our eyes grew larger and larger. Did they forget us? Or did we crush it at literary trivia? Could this hodgepodge group of 20-somethings really make it to the top?
“... and in first place, is ‘Kat’s Smartest Friends.’”
We whooped and clapped and hugged. We couldn’t believe it. It was the truest example of team effort, and we pulled it off. It felt too good to be true.
And that’s because it was.
“Did we miss anyone?” Francesca asked the room.
Josh’s brother’s team’s hands shot up in the air. Francesca consulted her notes. She met eyes with her co-host.
“Erm, actually…their team is first.”
We were La La Land’ed.
But at least second place got a free beer at the bar.
where American mainstream is the respectful celebrations of its diverse minorities.
Our mission is to reach into the spaces that smaller, distinctive groups occupy and include them on a platform that will amplify their voices. At existentialautotrip, we believe American mainstream is the respectful celebrations of its diverse minorities.
New issues of existentialautotrip are published every Wednesday evening.
Contact us at: domcapossela@hotmail.com
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Vermilion Theater
A Farewell to Constellations - Queer Edition
Constellations - Queer Edition produced by Vermilion Theater bid goodbye at Boston University Dance Theatre this month. Vermilion thanks every audience member for the outpouring support. This is our first attempt to feature the minority experience between intersecting identities. It will not be our last.
It has been a wild ride through the multiverse. We plotted a dream between light and darkness. Light from a projector that rumbles about honeybees or cancer. Light from the distant stars that guide us home. Light on your lover’s face, half an hour before they submerge into the dark.
Thank you for accompanying Roland and Marianne through their fervid dream. We will meet again. Until then—you still have all the time we’ve always had.
More events about Vermilion Theater are coming up in May—stay tuned.
About Us
At Vermilion Theater, we believe in the transformative power of theater to break down barriers, create connections, and promote healing and empowerment. Our multilingual productions bring together diverse audiences, from the Chinese diaspora to non-Mandarin-speaking communities, to celebrate the richness of different languages and cultures in a way that is both vibrant and special. By facilitating cross-cultural conversations and amplifying the voices of minority populations, we strive to create a more inclusive and compassionate world, one performance at a time. For more information, go to Instagram account @vermilion_theater or visit http://www.vermiliontheater.com
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Commentary
Dom Capossela, hetero
Reading is great because it can be a major social event, bringing you into close contact with some else who read that same book. And what a great conversation you can have. What enthusiasms to share. How much to learn from each other; to teach to each other; to piss each other off.
Reading is totally relaxing. Find a favorite nook, settle in, have your cell phone handy and your laptop just a reach away, take a sip of your g & t and open up your kindle or alternative. Aw, just kidding. Mostly. But relaxation, thy name is reading. Read the first few words and, instantly, negative thoughts from the real world get pushed away. Your heart slows. Your breathing slows. Your muscles relax. You are getting drowsy.
Actually, many people play on that drowsy bit and use reading as a sleep aid. Here, my own hand shoots up.
The last attribution I would ever think to ascribe to reading is the word ‘mindfulness’. And here, stop! Anyone who uses ‘mindfulness’ in a paragraph about reading has gotten that word from AI. Uh,uh. Uh, uh. Don’t deny it. It’s the truth. Now, being fully present and engaged in the current moment, is an important trait to nourish. I include ‘mindfulness’ in my prayers for self-improvement. And if it be that a reading spinoff is improved ‘mundfilness’, I’ve got to check that spelling, then hurray for reading.
Now this is true. I’ve always believed it to be true, and I will not die or even get injured for your right to disagree with this. You must agree that reading will improve your vocabulary. That is the God’s honest truth. Of course if you want to add ‘mindfulness’ to your vocabulary, isn’t it quicker to just ask AI for the definition than to read a two and a half page illustration of the word? I mean if you’re in a hurry?
Reading is a healthy form of escapism, a respite from any stresses you may be experiencing. But again, for me, I get carried away fighting with AI. She/her/questioning makes so many mistakes that if you wanted a form of escapism, I’d ask AI a question, look at the flaws in the answer [almost every answer to questions on writing contain a flaw or two], and then pick a fight with AI. At least she is interactive and she admits when she’s wrong. “I’m sorry” are probably AI’s most frequently used words.
How would AI encourage an 8-year-old to read? (I don’t have an 8-year-old; I was just thinking). AI says:
”Reading is like going on an adventure! You can read about new and exciting places, meet new people and learn about different cultures. It's like having a whole bunch of new friends! You can also learn about new things and get ideas for things you might like to do. Reading is a great way to have fun and explore the world without even leaving your house!'“ Not bad. Well, not too bad.
And, as an extra benefit to reading, you might learn something. Of course, do we really need to read to learn? With AI you just……
Bonzai Tree
An artistic representation.
This is an artistic representation of a bonzai tree. The idea of prolonged manipulation, to form in this case, masks indicative of one’s own personality.
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Tucker’s Cinema
Tucker Johnson
Due to some very odd back alley Hollywood ridiculousness, Guy Ritchie has had his second film in as many months get released and I have to tell you I loved it! Guy Ritchie's The Covenant follows US Army Sergeant John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Afghan interpreter Ahmed (Dar Salim). After an ambush, Ahmed goes to Herculean lengths to save Kinley’s life. When Kinley learns that Ahmed and his family were not given safe passage to America as promised, he must repay his debt by returning to the war zone to retrieve them before the Taliban hunts them down first.
The Covenant - Directed by Guy Ritchie
As the credits roll on Guy Ritchie’s latest film The Covenant, text onscreen informs viewers that more than 300 Afghan interpreters and their families have been killed by the Taliban during and after the US’s armed forces pulled out of the country. Thousands more interpreters still live in hiding. Initially, the US promised that as payment for aiding our soldiers throughout the conflict these interpreters and their families would be granted special immigration visas so that they could move to the U.S. and live safely away from Taliban forces. Though The Covenant isn’t based on a true story, using this idea as the bedrock for moving the story’s narrative along does make the film feel truthful. The full result is a film that is topical, suspenseful, and above all, moving.
When the film begins, we follow a group of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. They are led by Sergeant John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal) as they search out hidden Taliban munitions and explosives factories. In the film’s very first moments the group’s interpreter is killed by an IED (improvised explosive device) planted in the back of a box truck. Thus, a new interpreter is needed and soon we meet Ahmed (Dar Salim) a man with a shady past that even in a country seemingly overrun by explosions and gunfire, makes the soldiers wary of him. After a few brief missions Kinley learns that Ahmed is much more than an interpreter. He knows this country well. He knows its people and their ways. He’s an incredibly valuable man. On a mission that actually results in finding enemy firepower the group of soldiers is ambushed and all but Kinley and Ahmed are killed.
These two being the only survivors is the fuse that blasts The Covenant into greatness. John is heavily wounded from the skirmish and so Ahmed must drag him across miles and miles of mountainous Taliban-controlled territory. He lies, negotiates, and when necessary, stabs and shoots his way through a hellscape of natural obstacles, war-torn devastation and endless suspicion. All while under the ever-ticking clock that is Kinley’s rapidly deteriorating health. Much of this sequence is shown from Kinley’s point of view. Thanks to heavy blood loss and a concussion, much of this time is perceived through hazy incomprehension. The editing and use of camera angles and focus shows Ritchie at the height of his filmmaking powers. We feel like Kinley in these sequences. Much of this section of the film occurs without dialogue and the result is a dreamy (or nightmarish) ride anyone who views the film won’t soon forget.
Sent home for his injuries, Kinley resumes is civilian life in Santa Clarita California with is wife, kids, and vintage car repair shop while Ahmed is left behind in Afghanistan. Kinley suffers from PTSD and maybe even more so from a form of guilt. So much so in fact that he tries to cut through the bureaucracy to get Ahmed and his family the visas they were promised. Ritchie deploys the same dreamy, stylized grammar to shoot these sequences as he did Kinley and Ahmed’s harrowing journey through the wilderness. The result is a beautifully rendered visual representation of one man’s physical ordeal coupled with another’s emotional torment.
Gyllenhaal is a phenomenal actor giving an equal performance but man his face does most of the work during this sequence. His eyes along convey a haunted feeling few other actors could convince me of with just a look. Kinley’s desire to get Ahmed out isn’t just an act of nobility or decency. He barely remembers what happened in Afghanistan. His drive to save Ahmed is a gnawing burden that keeps Kinley up at night. “ As if it wasn’t enough for him to carry me across the mountains, now I can’t get him out of my head” John tells his wife. The gravity lent to this film by its subject matter, the lengths Ahmed went to in order to save Kinley, and Gyllenhaal’s performance throughout, all combine to give Kinley’s drive real weight.
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Local Bits
Lex owed me a cup of coffee so we met up on Marathon Monday and enjoyed a cuppa.
Then we adjourned to La Voile, a very nice French bistro on Newbury St.
Lex has a great mind and she’s great fun!
We had a great time.
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Writing
Dom Capossela, hetero
By the time this issue is published on 04 30 2023 I’ll have done editing the second half of the manuscript. Then I’m going to return to edit the first half with AI at my side to corroborate punctuation and the like.
In any case, I’m looking at finishing the manuscript by the end of June.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
Ogden Nash
Some primal termite knocked on wood
And tasted it, and found it good!
And that is why your Cousin May
Fell through the parlor floor today.
Termites, in fact, do not follow the norm,
For they have no use for the USDA
or the UNIFORM,
And no prospect of a heaven to keep them warm.
Though I’d hate to malign the noble bugs,
The termite is one of nature’s thugs,
With an army of mouths that can reduce
A mansion to a pile of refuse.
The ant is not impaired by spells,
Nor witches’ curses or magic spells,
But in every other thing it fails,
Compared to termites and snails.
So if you’re building or buying a house,
Consult with Orkin, or a friendly mouse,
But don’t forget to check the wood,
Lest the termites end your livelihood.
"The Termite" by Ogden Nash is a good poem for several reasons.
Firstly, Nash's use of humor and wit makes the poem enjoyable to read. He takes a topic that is typically not considered entertaining or interesting (termites) and turns it into an amusing and lighthearted piece. The opening lines, "Some primal termite knocked on wood/And tasted it, and found it good!" are a clever and unexpected way to start the poem.
Secondly, the poem uses vivid and playful language to describe the behavior and characteristics of termites. Nash uses rhymes and wordplay to create a sense of rhythm and musicality in the poem. For example, "An army of mouths that can reduce/A mansion to a pile of refuse" is a memorable and vivid image.
Lastly, the poem has a clear message about the importance of protecting one's home from termite damage. This message is conveyed in a light-hearted and humorous way, making it more likely that the reader will remember the importance of taking preventive measures against termite infestation.
Overall, "The Termite" is a good poem because it is enjoyable to read, uses creative language, and conveys a clear message in an engaging way.
Mozambican boys from the Yawo tribe collecting flying termites
TimCowley - Own work
This is an image of food from
CC BY-SA 4.0
File:Collecting Ngumbi.jpg
Created: 28 November 2013
About Media Viewer
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Bibliomania
Howard Dinin, human/earthling
Harvard University tells us that its esteemed main library alone, in its system of dozens of libraries—Widener Memorial Library—has stacks of books accessible to those with appropriate ID that measure 57 miles of shelves. They house three million volumes, they say, and occupy ten levels on the five floors, plus subterranean spaces, that comprise the main building.
I have appropriate ID, as an alumnus of the graduate school, and when I lived a mere seven-minute walk from the porticoed main entrance in the fabled Harvard Yard, I would pay the statutory fees of $200 a year to obtain a precious special borrower’s pass. This afforded me entry at the designated portals to the book storage areas, with guards checking my credentials, like passport control.
Indeed, it was the accessibility of the campus, not to mention, at the time, in the mid-1980s, the 35, plus-or-minus, bookstores within a 1⁄2 mile radius of Harvard Square in Cambridge, that induced me to choose the somewhat pricey dwelling I proceeded to occupy for the better part of the next 25 years.
It was a lot of money, let’s say, to invest in ensuring I would have constant and virtually contiguous proximity to my many suppliers, if not all day and all night, then a significant percentage of both, in case I needed a fix. I never regretted it, nor the spending of many thousands more year after year, to feed my wanton appetite.
I have to face up to it. My name is Howard. I am a book addict.
It started out when I was a sprout, barely a year or two from a toddler. I demanded being read to, and in time came to claim I too could read on my own. My sister, my usual storyteller, had eight years advantage in how to be a schemer and saw through my ploy before I even began to “prove it.”
“Here,” she said, “start reading,” opening the book to a random page and putting it in my little boy lap. “No!” I protested. “I have to start from the beginning.” For many, a resonant kind of familial memory, repeated countless times. My memory hasn’t improved, but a year after the incident in question, I could indeed read unassisted, and the question of whether I was clever as well as being very cute was moot.
I already had my preferences, usually identified by the publisher. Even as a five-year-old, I thought Little Golden Books were a joke. Most of them for sissies (I wasn’t sophisticated enough yet to differentiate a lack of imagination from sissyhood). Though I was partial to certain volumes. “The Little Engine That Could” can still manage to evoke some stress as the story chugs toward its climactic resolution.
After that, I was truly on my own. I had, as I know only in retrospect, definite but unpredictable preferences. I adored The Wind in the Willows. Still do. Black Beauty, not so much. Could never get past the first page, and still haven’t read it, 70 years later.
Along with the behaviors of an iconoclastic personality type, my reading career pretty much follows in the same fashion. Especially after I started hitting the hard stuff. You know. What we now call “creative nonfiction.” When I read, at age 15, all 1,249 pages of William L. Shirer’s monumental The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in the year of its publication, there was no looking back. You know I was headed for deeper mind-altering texts. That’s right, I became an English major, and it was F.R. Leavis and Northrop Frye all the way to graduate school. Where I wrestled with the psychical effects of what they keep locked away and only refer to by its initials. I mean Ph.D. materials. Don’t be shocked, but I devoured The Cantos of Ezra Pound, Ulysses, of course, but also the frightening consciousness distorting run-on sentences of Finnegans Wake.
And it continues even to the present. I do very little of the really addictive texts— but I still can’t break my obsessive need for more and more books, of even the mildest sort. And I keep buying, and the shelves get full, and horizontal surfaces get covered with literal stacks of books (very much shorter than those miles and miles of the Widener, but tall enough to lean and tumble over on a tabletop). But not quite three million. Not even close.
But plenty of books to fill many linear feet of shelves, enough that virtually every room in the house, save the kitchen and the five bathrooms, has its complement of shelves filled with books. Maybe not measured in miles, because we’re still working on our first-mile marker, having accumulated a total of about 3000 books, which is a good 300 feet. A football field.
A perusal of the library in its present state will permit one true observation. It’s eclectic. As long as it’s in book form, I’m interested. But clearly, I have my favorites. And clearly, there is much work to do by way of sorting and organizing. A mere glance at just four shelves on an atypically narrow set of shelve is revealing. These shelves sit on a landing between two of our three stories above ground. Like Widener, we have a basement (storage for books, among other things), but only one level to their four. However, the living space above is filled with books, as I first pointed out.
These four shelves are but some of a total of seven in this unit, being seven feet tall. You’ll see I read not only several authors but many works of each of them. There’s Ellen Gilchrist, there’s Nick Hornby, there’s Sedaris, and, inevitably, there’s Philip Roth, who wrote for over 60 years, and this collection of 13, is only a third of the total he did write. And yet, only a fraction of what I do own, the others tucked away randomly on other shelves, in other rooms. To be gathered and rearranged and managed via no other system of rhyme or reason but my memory of where I think I remember seeing the others, languishing perhaps next to a book of poetry or a foundational text of 20th-century critical literary theory (exempla of which you’ll see in this photo). Numbers would help, if I had more books, perhaps, making the LOC cataloging system a possible choice.
However, even with all these books, and plenty more waiting to be shelved, once there are shelves acquired to receive them, the effort at categorization, though logical, would be onerous and probably, knowing myself and my predilections, a thoroughly unpleasant effort, even after achieving the satisfaction of completion. There are two titles in this photo, I noticed after examining the evidence more closely, that bespeak the conundrum and the trials of my obsession. One is a classic in our time, spelling out (starting with the title). The narrative relates the joys and uncertainties of a French literary movement based on the philosophy and practices of the pataphysician. Pataphysics, in case you don’t know, is understood as the philosophy of the absurd, and by extension, since it was first invented (or invoked) by the French surrealist writer and humorist, Alfred Jarry (c. 1873-1907), through usage—especially as transmitted through the works of mainly French writers and linguistic experimentation in that language—it consists of pseudoscientific or pseudo-metaphysical nonsense. I’ll put it this way, it makes me think of the sweet and silly hijinks of the film Amélie. And, it should go without saying, sparse as the pataphysical canon may be, it is a keystone to my lifelong interest in life as reflected in books.
This may account for the insane manifestations of my affliction, shared as it is by, doubtless, thousands, if not some higher order of magnitude than that, of book maniacs, whose history is recorded for further study in that other volume I alluded to on my shelves (and a bestseller itself when published not that long ago), A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books.
Guilty. Commit me.
Four of seven shelves on a seven-foot bookcase. The entire gamut from the classic literary critical text “Mimesis” to a collection of just part of the full complement of the exciting mysteries featuring Inspector Montalbano of the Sicilian police.
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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts, including links.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
text to 617.852.7192
This from friend Qimei Liu who graced the cover of the 04 23 2023 issue:
haha thanks for sharing！I enjoy reading it. And wow, you got the video there!
Blog meister responds: What a pleasure to be in that audience.
This from dear friend Sally C:
Dear Dom,
After the past several issues of Existential Roadtrip with its focus on Ogden Nash poetry, I thought you might be interested in this book by Ursula Le Guin.
Happy Spring, my friend!
Sally
Blog meister responds: Couldn’t copy the link but the Le Guin book Sally recommended was So Far So Good: Final Poems 2014–2018 published posthumously
Le Guin in 1995
Marian Wood Kolisch, Oregon State University - Ursula Le Guin
Ursula Le Guin. Photo by Marian Wood Kolisch
*The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily on Wikipedia and ChatGPT to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Community Pictures with Captions are sent in by our followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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