MADNESS: I bought a nook on eBay

MADNESS: I bought a nook on eBay

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MADNESS: I bought a nook on eBay
Note: I paid far less than double. But I did pay a premium.
The sad thing is that I added a nook to my bn.com shopping cart on the day it was announced. But I couldn’t bring myself to complete the transaction. I wanted to feel one in my hands, read the reviews, and consider the Kindle. Then December arrived and with it, nook frenzy. I read some rave reviews of this latest delectable gadget. I started scouring eBay for one for which I wouldn’t have to pay double.
I tell myself it’s market research, because I’m an author.
The truth is, I read voraciously and lickety split fast, and patience is my growing point, not my strong point. To be able to read anything right away without walking the three blocks to my local Barnes & Noble will be a treat for me.
Ecco, the nook has been in my grubby palms for several hours. Here’s the scoop.
Bad news first: the nook is heavy. Heavier than it looks. And it’s definitely slow. Pages lop over like a turtle crossing a finish line. I purchased a novel to read tonight so I’ll blog on how annoying the slowness is when I finish the ebook.
Also, the reading screen seems one shade too dim, to my eyes. It’s simply not white enough. It’s real gray. Not light gray, but gray gray. I get that backlighting causes eye strain and reflective light is the way to go, but real paper is pretty white. Open a book and check it out. So why not make the eink page whiter? To heighten the contrast between the black letters, which are crisp, and the page, which is just so gray? It would boost this ereader’s appeal.
The next negative point that must be stated: the buttons and touch screen are not immediately intuitive. They take some figuring out. If you’re like me and you want to open something and use it right away, this obfuscation will be annoying. I downloaded the pdf of the manual onto my macbook pro.
Now, the positives: The touchscreen is way cool. In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to buy the kindle, though I parked one in my Amazon shopping cart and stared at it for days on end, because I just didn’t like those clunky looking buttons on the bottom. I’m a dedicated iPhone user. I like virtual keyboards. User interface matters to me.
It’s great to scroll along those covers, like walking along a case full of candy. And my purchase went through immediately. For the record: I bought Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. I could pretend that it’s because he went to Amherst (was he the source of one of those gargantuan donations to the school this fall?) and my beloved eldest daughter attends Amherst so I am biased in favor of Amherst grads. But the truth is, for as mediocre a prose writer as Brown is, he can tell a whopping good story. Sure, there’s no character development, and the diction of some of the sentences should make Amherst ashamed that he earned his degree there. (Why doesn’t he have a better editor or copyeditor, someone who can politely point out the most egregious of his lines, where he’s just godawful clunky and infelicitous???) But Brown has a sense for conflict and suspense and mystery, and I enjoy his work.
Next I will probably buy Sue Grafton’s U book because Grafton’s prose is extremely beautiful, and she can also tell a great story!
That is, I will buy it IF it turns out that the gray reading screen doesn’t detract from the reading experience too much. Fingers are crossed.
One other reason I jumped and bought this device now: I’ve been following the Apple Tablet rumors, and the latest one said that the Tablets, which will feature ebooks (and Apple is making excellent deals with publishers) will be here in the spring. And that they will run $1000. As diehard an Apple fan as I am–one whole grand to read books, more than twice what I paid even on eBay, is just too damn expensive.
So I indulged myself, and now it’s in my hands. More tomorrow, after I find the symbol. Anyone else take the leap that I did, into a molto expensive nook?
C. Stephen Baldwin’s SHADOWS OVER SUNDIALS
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C. Stephen Baldwin’s SHADOWS OVER SUNDIALS

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C. Stephen Baldwin’s SHADOWS OVER SUNDIALS

I love New York. People here are fascinating. I start a discussion with someone and he or she turns out to have a dazzling, heart-palpitating personal story of love and loss, victory and humiliation, exalted communion and dark nights of the soul. Is there no one in this glorious, feral, bursting city who is ordinary?

Many of my neighbors in my apartment building are like this: possessed of extraordinary life histories. A decade ago in Steamboat Springs, my former husband and I and our two children got trapped on the top of a mountain in a white out. We made it into the restaurant near the peak and sat at a table with hot cocoa. Our downstairs neighbor Stephen Baldwin skiied in, looking for the same warm respite. He’d been the one to recommend Steamboat to us, and he was there with some of his teenage kids and his wife.

The three of us–Stephen, my former husband, and I–fell to yakking, sharing anecdotes to pass the time. At one point I looked across the table and asked, “What is it you do at the United Nations, Stephen? I don’t think you ever told us.”

Stephen grinned and started to talk. His dad was JFK’s ambassador to Malaysia. Stephen himself, as a boy, was lost in the jungles of Peru and tattooed by head-hunters in Borneo; as a young man, he wrestled a Bengal tiger and ran with the bulls; as an adult, he set up an underground railroad for Bengali revolutionary leaders to escape a brutal Pakistani regime…. What unfolded was the tale of a brilliant and peripatetic soul who held a vision of the world as a community, and who was committed to world service. My former husband and I were spellbound. It wasn’t just the adventures, it was also the keen and wondering sense of curiosity, of observation, with which Stephen so deeply engaged his life.

“There’s a book here, Stephen,” I said finally. And he took me at my word, and wrote the book. SHADOWS OVER SUNDIALS Dark and Light: Life in a Large Outside World has arrived. I recommend it to everyone.

see Stephen’s website at www.cstephenbaldwin.com

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Leverage

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Money is good and I like it.

That’s one of my mottos. It has arisen out of my observation of the good uses of money: good health care, great education, travel that uplifts and inspires, the ability to charitably help others, good food, beautiful objects that enrich the environment and exalt the soul. Having abundant resources allows life to have a certain ease and facility that relieves stress and facilitates self actualization. Money gives free time in which art, sport, charity, and conviviality can be pursued. Money can be a great blessing.

It can also be a source of evil, cruelty, and pain. I’ve seen parents use it as a weapon against their own  children, such as in families where one child is disinherited as an act of destructive communication; inevitably such acts cause lingering pain and bitterness. Parents who do that are always remembered through the taint of their unkindness. Money can be used as a drug to keep people dependent. It can be used to bribe, manipulate, or exploit people. Money is power in and of itself, and there will always be people who abuse power. This doesn’t even take into account what the lack of money causes people to do.

Money can also be used to make people feel special. I know a man who inherited great wealth, and was consistently helped by his mother before her death, so he never had to live exclusively on what he earned. Because he votes Democratic instead of Republican as so many recipients of ‘old money’ do, he cherishes a self image that he is profoundly ethically correct. He sees himself as morally right and superior all the time. Meantime, his family has fallen apart and he pays no attention to the disintegrated emotional bonds, how siblings don’t relate, his wife doesn’t talk to his son, his granddaughter wants nothing to do with her grandparents–because she saw them reject and act parsimoniously toward her little sister, after they had been loving and generous to her. But he is morally superior, because he’s rich and he still campaigned for Obama.

This isn’t the only example of the hypocrisy and self-delusion that money engenders. Living in New York, I have met a lot of Wall Street types. Bankers, brokers, and the wives of such. What struck me about so many of them (not all!) was how convinced they were that having a lot of money made them special. Especially the successful ones. The bigger their bonus, the more special they were. I suppose we all need to feel special and every human finds qualities about themselves to designate as special.

Having met so many Wall Street people, I can say categorically that Wall Street used to nurture a culture in which people prided themselves on being assholes. They were convinced that being an asshole was valid because they were so rich and successful. There was even a term some people used: “BSD,” which stands for “Big Swinging Dick.” They were proud of being BSD’s. I can remember a conversation I had with someone about a man who was then a partner at Goldman Sachs.

“He’s a jerk, his own wife has to take valium to go on vacation with him,” I pointed out.

“Who cares, he’s rich,” said the other person.

I would like to point out that, by all appearances, the man in question has reformed. He’s much kinder to his wife and has mellowed in the years since retiring from Goldman. Everyone can pursue better paths; each of us has the ultimate freedom to pursue our better self.

But there was definitely this swaggering, self-congratulatory arrogance about Wall Street. However much Wall Street helps Main Street, Wall Street was convinced that it was better than Main Street. That’s what the New York Times article this morning about the antipathy from Main Street toward Wall Street failed to mention: the air of superiority with which Wall Street indulged itself. We in Main Street tolerated it when Wall Street was helping us, even though we weren’t as stupid as Wall Street assumed: we KNEW that Wall Street was helping itself $100 for every $1 that it helped us. It’s that quality of condescension that has made us loathe Wall Street now, when our tax dollars are rescuing them from their runaway greed.

Which brings me to a great new TV show, LEVERAGE. It airs on TNT. It’s a Robin Hood show of the most satisfying kind. We get to watch greedy bankers, greedy real estate types, greedy corporate types of all kinds GET THEIR COMEUPPANCE. It’s a show for this moment, now. It’s enjoyable to see the greedy, selfish bastards take a fall.

Too bad it’s only a television show…..

Who do I read?
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Who do I read?

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People ask me what other authors I like to read. Richard North Patterson and Sue Grafton, for starters: two of the classiest writers of prose in the English language today. Line for line, Grafton’s prose stacks up against anyone’s in the history of the English language, and she’s a virtuoso with character development and story. Patterson is bringing to life ideas that we as Americans need to face, and he does it with elegance and heart-palpitating suspense. In “The Race,” the question is, Can an honest man become president?–And for those of us who voted for Obama in the primaries, as I did, the answer is: I sure hope so.
Lately I’ve been reading Daniel Silva. Another elegant writer who can tell a story. His painting restorer/secret agent Gabriel Allon is three-dimensional, human, and mesmerizing. I read Silva’s book and think, I wish I’d written that.
I read for pleasure and knowledge, I read fast, and I read everything. There’s plenty out there that I can’t believe actually got published. There’s a lot that’s great, too. I’ve become wary of current books touted as ‘literary’ because that usually means they are precious, self-congratulatory and unreadable, with unlikable characters. But if I look back fifty years or more, that wasn’t the case. Dickens is full, rich and satisfying, and Jane Austen never gets stale. And there are occasional evenings when I kick back with a glass of red wine and the Complete Works of Shakespeare in my lap, and I read aloud from his plays. What could be more fun than that?
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“Come with me if you want to live”

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The Sarah Connor Chronicles

I can’t watch a movie or television show without analyzing for story. Occupational hazard. I wonder if dentists find themselves examining teeth when someone smiles at them, or if dermatologists inspect complexions of faces, however innocently, turned toward them. Somehow when your profession becomes deeply grafted into your identity, the profession becomes the lens through which you experience the world, people, events, and relationships. Writers are terminally infected with this. We’re always looking for raw material, for primary life experience, with which to create, and creation is the ultimate imperative.

Years of laboriously re-inventing the wheel have taught me that story reduces to three things:
1. What does your character want?
2. What keeps your character from getting it?
and 3. How does your character solve that problem?
Out of these three questions arise character and plot.
So it was with pleasure that I watched “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” last night. I readily confess to being a long-time “Terminator” fan. The first “Terminator” was a perfect movie that observed all of the unities of time, place, and action, and in which every detail was exquisitely honed to reflect the theme of the evil of machines taking on intelligence. The message of Sarah’s answering machine: “Even machines have feelings….” Well, no, they don’t, that’s why they were out to annihilate the human race. The bar into which a desperate Sarah fled when she thought Kyle Reese was stalking her: “Tech Noir.” It’s a virtuoso performance: the streamlined perfection of detail in this movie.
Television never shows the same level of craftsmanship, but it can entertain with flair and drama, and “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” do that. Sarah’s introductory voiceover was intriguing: “What if the only dream you can share with your child is a nightmare?” Sarah wants to save humanity with an apocalyptic intensity, and the show wastes no time getting into danger, conflict, struggle, issues of trust and fear and hope. Enjoyable, watchable. I hope the show makes it, that it survives all the obstacles new shows face: trigger-happy executives who yank a show before it can build a core audience, finding it’s voice and perfect time spot, and right now, the writer’s strike. I want this show to live.
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The Internal Triangle, and the Failure of Psychotherapy

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My neighbor upstairs, Lucy Holmes, has written an interesting book called “The Internal Triangle: New Theories of Female Development.” Lucy’s a smart lady and the book crackles with life and intelligence. It’s well-written and absorbing. She’s also set herself an ambitious goal: to use Freud’s drive theory to explain female development. The back cover explains that she’s the first woman to attempt this in over sixty years. I haven’t read a lot of Freud, but didn’t he theorize that women long to have penises, and that’s why women are all so messed up?

This despite the archetypal message of the blind prophet Tiresias, who spent seven years as a woman. He tells the gods unequivocally that a woman experiences greater sexual pleasure.

For me, the most arresting part of the book was the exquisite attention to transference and counter-transference as Holmes relates anecdotes about women patients from her many years as an analyst. Some of her patients idealized her, some hated her, many did both, some wanted to kill her, some wanted to have sex with her. In response, Holmes worries, is tormented and feels inadequate. She wants to help them. Does she?

It threw me back into my years as a hands-on healer, and my years in therapy. When you lay hands on people’s bodies with love and the intention to heal, miracles happen. So does powerful transference. And wicked strong countertransference. A practicing healer has to be on her edge, standing with her toes touching the line every second. I made some big mistakes in my practice when I wandered off that edge.

And because we are all human, mistakes, blunders, errors, and inadequacies happen. A decade of my personal psychotherapy imploded in heartache when I divorced my first husband. My therapist was also my husband’s therapist, and our marital therapist, and it was all too fuzzy and intertwined. And when the negotiations between my ex and me grew contentious, I wrote a letter to the therapist saying it wasn’t right for me that my therapist was counseling someone with whom I might go to court. It was something I had to do to stand up for myself. She didn’t write back but she must have agreed, because she terminated her work with him. Of course, he blamed me. A lot of hurt and pain here, for everyone.

Which brings me to qualms about conventional talk psychotherapy. Does it really work? Can it? Therapists are all too frail and prone to err, even with the best of intentions. And, of course, therapists make their living through people showing up regularly, once or twice or three times a week. They have an investment, acknowledged or not, in their patients’ ongoing mental unhealth. Too many patients feed their therapists’ investment, falling into what Caroline Myss so aptly calls ‘woundology,’ cherishing their suffering. They don’t move on. They start every conversation with, “My therapist says….” Don’t we all know people like that?

And my most serious criticism of psychotherapy is that, largely, it doesn’t turn people into better human beings. Here is a the beginning of an imaginary, all too likely, session:

Therapist: “So, you’re an ax murderer, you lure innocent people into the woods where you chop them into little pieces. How do you feel about that?”

Accountability is anathema to psychotherapy. What modern psychotherapy has contributed to the zeitgeist, the way it is largely practiced, is the demolition of judgment and accountability. What psychotherapy should do is teach people how to hold their feelings without acting on them, and without shattering. If human beings can feel a range of emotions from -10 to +10, and can perform actions on a decency scale from -10 to +10, (-10 is genocide, +10 is risking or giving your own life to save someone else’s), then psychotherapy should help people feel and contain their feelings on the full scale, but limit their actions to, say, -2 to +10. But that’s not what’s happened. People who feel below -2 and over +3 are put on medications. And censoring actions is considered bad form.

We’ve become a culture, thanks partly to modern psychotherapy, that confuses prejudice with judgment. The pendulum has swung that far as we try to dismantle millennia of discrimination on the basis of gender, race, religion, sexual orientation. Discrimination is a great evil that I hope to see largely dissolved in my lifetime–though I probably won’t.

And judgment is still imperative. There are reasons why so many of the great, ancient, spiritual texts say, “Thou shalt not.” We need to be able to say, “That action is not okay!” The higher octave of discrimination is discernment, the wisdom to separate the chaff from the grain. Despite the moral relativism of psychotherapy, there is still chaff, and it differs qualitatively from grain.