Dancing With the Ghost of Albert Camus

Dancing with Ghosts - cell phone photo - 2023, DS.

“At that time, I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it.”

- Albert Camus, The Stranger

(I am being inundated with politics these days... and politics is not my place. My place is culture. My place is my artist's meditative Zone... where politics with its conflict, chaos, ignorance, violence, tyranny, & lies are, in general, not welcome.

Unfortunately, politics are as inescapable as the current heat wave this summer.

 I am now staying in Albuquerque. It appears to be a strangely unpopulated place... or, rather, a thinly populated ghost town. There are rarely people on the streets unless they're homeless. And, yet, there are lines and lines of cars on its dusty roads... passing through? I don't know. I'm still a stranger in New Mexico... a refugee although I've lived here for 8 years. There are places in the world in which you can never be anything but a stranger, but, there are people who can never be anything but strangers, too.

On the other hand, 3 nights ago, the 4th of July (Independence Day), I couldn't get to any official pyrotechnic events, but the locals put on their own unofficial fireworks display - the People's Display - with some fairly sophisticated rockets... which lasted for hours. I watched from a window over the patio as they shot up across the horizon... and I felt quite patriotic; a feeling I rarely have...especially these days... that is, unless disgust and anger are symptoms of patriotism. Maybe, in a sense they are. It means you care. 

My current "backyard" - which really isn't mine - consists of a small fenced-in patio with very little green to be seen... but, upon closer inspection, enough green to support a small colony of grasshoppers! It's these little bits of natural life which anchor me to the corporeal world. Like the juvenile grasshopper - inset left - they bring me joy and, unlike everything else clamoring for my time and effort, they're refreshingly tangible and real. And, if you pay attention to them, they'll reward you in many ways. For instance, you can learn things. I learned that grasshoppers grow in a similar way to caterpillars. That is, they shed their skins to become much larger creatures... which somehow were illogically enfolded inside their former selves; a magic trick more interesting, more satisfying than you might imagine.

(7/24/23 Note: After a number of moults, the grasshopper became large, brown... and developed wings. While not as attractive as a butterfly it, too, transforms into a flying creature.)

In the photo, posted above, I am standing in the center of the patio on what is fondly referred to as the "launch pad." I appear to be dancing with myself. In reality I'm dancing with ghosts. Perhaps, I, too, have become a ghost... unconsciously haunting my own past...)

In this (brief) dream  I am in the house of my childhood... but, it is not not exactly the place I lived, for it has changed. Or, I should say, it has changed again. The first time it changed - in a long ago dream - a hidden room was revealed... positioned between my old bedroom and what was (in reality) a fairly unusual hallway featuring an array of closets, recesses, drawers and other enclosures. It was a phantom room but, in my sleeping mind, seemed both valid and logical.

I dreamt about this phantom room several times over the years. Its dimensions became an actual memory, as if it had always existed... somehow tucked away... enfolded in the recesses of a closet or at the bottom of a cluttered drawer.

In the latest dream, however, a screened-in porch had been added to the second floor of the family house...  in the front and, once again, where my bedroom was once located. It was accessed indoors from a newly created hallway... call it an Escher hallway, because it's position in the corporeal house was not (logically) possible. It was a phantom hallway... with another phantom construction nearby: the previously-mentioned "hidden room." I vaguely remember passing what may have been its potential doorway as I walked down the phantom hallway towards the phantom porch.

Now, the actual house was surrounded by tall trees: silver beech along the back, two enormous red maples in the front and a wall of massive pines. In the dream, they still existed. But, through the floor-to-ceiling screened apertures which composed the new porch, the trees were now fully visible, as if viewed from a treehouse.

The dream ended just as I entered the bright doorway and stepped into the screened enclosure. This, too, had a door, with stairs leading down to the ground below... a feature I may have consciously added in the process of waking up.

- From a note file created in May of this year. The addition of the porch was a fine dream-construction; an economical plan to let the outdoors in while also providing a third door - the house had two already - from which to escape. When I awoke from the dream, I felt refreshed. Perhaps, it was a metaphor for a new unconscious development and it felt like a positive one.

Which, is to say, it represented no part of my present-day physical reality but, rather, a vacation from it.

***

“Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but 'steal' some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.”

- Albert Camus (1913-1960), Notebooks 1951-1959. Camus was a French-Algerian writer, journalist, playwright, and philosopher and is most often considered an Absurdist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957.

My first introduction to Camus was in my art school days. I read The Stranger and it depressed me. Maybe I glimpsed my own future. Recently I read an online article regarding absurdist philosophy and in it I rediscovered Camus. I spent that night reading pages and pages of his quotes which exhilarated me; astoundingly, I could relate to just about everything he said. Via the Wiki entry for Absurdism:

"Absurdists, following Camus' formulation, hesitantly allow the possibility for some meaning or value in life, but are neither as certain as existentialists are about the value of one's own constructed meaning nor as nihilists are about the total inability to create meaning. Absurdists following Camus also devalue or outright reject free will, encouraging merely that the individual live defiantly and authentically in spite of the psychological tension of the Absurd."

The odd thing is, while I feel sympathetic towards Absurdism, my personal experience would require something a bit beyond it... Uber-Absurdism? I'm not sure.

"The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point

where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold.

It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism." - Albert Camus

***

“A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom,

the press will never be anything but bad.” - Albert Camus

"Illinois Worker Finds 3 Severed Heads at His Desk After Job Complaints.

"At first I was confused," Dale Wheatley tells PEOPLE. "My boss walked by, and I asked him why the heads were at my desk. He said, 'I don't know, Dale, there's a lot of strange things going on.'"

- Via this page. The headline - a classic example of Absurdism - prompted me to finish this post. That is, I had about 4 posts lying around in draft mode for months, but - as mentioned previously - a huge writer's block to overcome. Apparently, several severed heads can do wonders.

*

"Two-year-old boy accidentally shoots and kills his pregnant mother with gun left on nightstand"

- In between numerous articles featuring the exploits of former president Donald Trump (who continues to torment us) and, on slow news days, nude photos of has-been actresses past their prime, we find tragic, invasive (but sensational) stories like the headline above. Before the internet, this story would never appear as a headline in a national or international news venue. And, prior to the 21st century, news like this was unlikely to occur... which brings us to...

*

"Missouri Republicans Vote to Affirm Toddlers’ Rights to Carry Firearms in the Streets"

- Found here. (Also, see here.) Can't make these absurdities up. My proposed editorial cartoon might feature Missouri lawmakers locked in a room with a group of teething, tantrum-throwing toddlers with guns. I think we can visualize the outcome. (Note: needs a caption.) (Maybe: one lawmaker asks another: "Uh, those are toy guns, right?")

*

Boy's lemonade stand reported to Department of Labor

- Found here. This sad (absurd) story is more elaborate than it appears in the headline above (found on the main news page). But, it's still in keeping with the headlines here. Welcome to the cuckoo's nest... or, perhaps, more to the point...

***

Welcome to WTF World!

"I don't care who's at the door, just tell them we don't want any!"

- Via my mom, Anne... a wonderful woman always fondly remembered.

"All the cruelty of our civilization can be measured by this one axiom:

happy nations have no history.”- Albert Camus

Constraint. It isn't a pleasant word; it means constriction, limitation, being forced to modify ones natural inclinations.  Via the Cambridge Dictionary: "Something that controls what you do by keeping you within particular limits."

However, sometimes constraint is a good thing. For instance, ideally, the laws of a country are designed to protect its citizens from various forms of criminal intent, i.e., prevent us from robbing and/or killing each other. So, as I live in a country in which a new mass-murder occurs every day, it seems obvious that certain constraints have not been effectively enforced.  Less obvious, perhaps, is that - in a world gone mad - the constraints are not enforceable.

In fairness, it seems as if we, the People, - or, more accurately, I, the person - have been catapulted into an alternate reality - let's call it WTF World -  wherein the same, basic question is asked (at least) 20 times a day (or more): WTF?! (Variations: Why, Who, Where, When and - my personal favorite - Whatever the F*k.)

Now, there are a number of contributing factors to our present surrealistic malaise (& we seem to have a new one every few years): 1) the governing body has developed gangrene in several limbs, 2) its citizens continue to battle with mass-psychosis, 3)  the international playing field is devoted to parades of "official" madmen waving flags, followed by a flamboyant team of  AI-generated cartoon zombies tossing hand grenades into the audience, 4) the warped physics of time and space generally associated with alternate realities... and, finally, 5) Somebody forgot to let the dogs out.

(We are also in post-pandemic mode... but, there's little point in opening that bottomless can of worms.)

- Via another text file from May, 2023.

Once again, we must consult Albert Camus (inset left). Below are four more quotes. (Note: all Camus quotes contained within this post can be found on pages starting here or here.)

“Thus the disease, which apparently had forced on us the solidarity of a beleaguered town, disrupted at the same time long-established communities and sent men out to live, as individuals, in relative isolation.” - Via Albert Camus' The Plague.

“Sometimes, carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.”

"For in the presence of God there is less a problem of freedom than a problem of evil. You know the alternative: either we are not free and God the all-powerful is responsible for evil. Or we are free and responsible but God is not all powerful. All the scholastic subtleties have neither added anything to nor subtracted anything from the acuteness of this paradox.”

-  Via Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays.

“The need to be right - the sign of a vulgar mind.”

***

"Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the people’s anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way they are governed; that they gamble – yes, gamble – with a whole part of their life and their so called 'vital interests.” - Albert Camus

“If absolute truth belongs to anyone in this world, it certainly does not belong to the man or party that claims to possess it.” - Albert Camus

“And I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. I don't want any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood. I want to keep it alive by keeping justice alive.”

-  Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion and Death: Essays

Need anything more be said? Actually, yes. And that's the bad news. I would be lax in my feminist duties if I let this contagion blow by. It carries with it the stench of both sexism and racism... and once again, we are led to this dance by the same source: the man wearing the carmen red face (inset left)... A man who has been a thorn in the public eye (a deliberately mixed metaphor) since 2015, tormenting the intelligent world with his gluttonous need for grandeur. His is an expensive ego - everyone must pay... and pay.... and pay... especially women.

In this section I will be calling on a few people who are not Camus, but, this is not to say that Albert Camus is irrelevant here. He lived through WWI and WWII and fought for the French Resistance - this was a hell that that few of us can recall but (I think) we can say for sure that tyrants were unlikely to appear on Camus' dance card. Moreover, he was a working-class French Algerian - eventually what was described as Pied-Noir (or black-foot) - that is, both a citizen and refugee in either France or Algeria.

Camus loved women. Not so much as a womanizer... but as a Lover. And, yet, his variety of infidelity would be a difficult proposition for many women to deal with; it almost drove his second wife, pianist and mathematician, Francine Faure, who birthed their twin daughters, to suicide. But, no human's history deserves a rapid analysis; certainly not by myself on this blog. Suffice to say, Camus had his own existentialist dilemmas; I will not burden his memory with mine.

So, I'll make it short. I live in a country which enables one politician  (possibly a criminal, and potentially deranged) to appoint multiple members to it's ruling body - the Supreme Court and other federal courts -  specifically those individuals who reflect his (said politician's) racist and sexist biases. In a democracy this seems impossible. Ah, but, if only it ended there... or, preferably, here (see editorial image inset right). (Once again, thanks, Flea!)

"The total number of Trump Article III judgeship nominees to be confirmed by the United States Senate was 234, including three associate justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, 54 judges for the United States courts of appeals, 174 judges for the United States district courts, and three judges for the United States Court of International Trade..."

- Via the Wiki entry: List of federal judges appointed by Donald Trump. Emphasis, mine.

But we can't say we weren't warned. From September, 2020, we have the statement former Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, made shortly before her death: "My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed."  (See: Vale, Notorious RBG.)

"May 6, 2023. The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which states that equal rights under the law cannot be denied on account of sex, has been in a perpetual state of limbo for 100 years. Originally written by suffragists Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman and first introduced into Congress in 1923, last week in the US Senate, there were not even enough votes to pass a resolution to lift the 1982 deadline for full ratification by the states for its adoption into the US Constitution.

...All of these realities only sharpen the need to ask: Why are we fighting for inclusion into systems and institutions that were built upon our oppression? Why have we limited the scope of our political vision and ethics to equality, as men have defined it?'

Why are women waiting for men — who are the majority of our politicians, justices and judges — to benevolently bestow equality unto us?

- Via a CNN article by Marcie Bianco: Freedom means accepting that achieving equality is impossible. Inset left is a plastic baby bump with the handwritten words: "Not Yet a Human'. It was carried in protest of the recent rescinding of Roe v. Wade, but it doubles as a reference to the over-90 year failure of the ERA to pass.

"The Conservative Case for Trump is a 2016 book written by Phyllis Schlafly, with Ed Martin and Brett M. Decker, arguing that American conservatives should vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. It was published the day after Schlafly's death, four months after Trump secured the Republican Party nomination in May and two months before he won the general election."

- An interesting tidbit via Wiki regarding feminist/womanist enemy, Phyllis Schlafly, who, almost single-handedly, prevented the initial passing of the Equal Rights Amendment, and, is indirectly responsible for much of the absurdism discussed in this section. Also see this article.

“Today’s decision, which is the biggest WIN for LIFE in a generation, along with other decisions that have been announced recently, were only made possible because I delivered everything as promised, including nominating and getting three highly respected and strong Constitutionalists confirmed to the United States Supreme Court,” Mr. Trump said.

- Via this NY Times article. "Win for Life"? Whose life? Oh, that's right, embryonic life. In the article Trump is energetically boasting (to his Evangelical followers) about his packing of the Supreme Court (during his presidency) thereby overturning Roe v. Wade, a Republican goal for many years.

Apparently, however, Mr. Trump is also somewhat concerned that his victory over a woman's right to make decisions involving her own anatomy might cause a few problems for his re-election. Concerned? Women are currently in the majority in this country... and embryos can't vote.

 “Today, the Supreme Court not only reversed nearly 50 years of precedent, it relegated the most intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues—attacking the essential freedoms of millions of Americans.”

- Former-president Barak Obama's response (above) was made the day after the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. I think, of everything I've read, his is the only comment that really nailed it.

Read my abortion rap in the footnotes.*

“'The court system has become so independent of American public opinion and desires – and certainly our understanding of the constitution – that it risks damaging democracy in a significant way,' said Caroline Fredrickson, a law professor at Georgetown University."

- Via the Guardian article: A conservative overhaul of public life: what the supreme court’s term means for the US. During the course of writing this post, Trump's new and "improved" Court has recently just passed bills ending Affirmative Action, enforcing student debt, and allowing for more discrimination against the LGBTQ community. Now, if the Court could just come up with some legislation aimed at harming the rich and powerful - the only minority with any clout - we might finally be rid of this contagion. .

Only in WTF World, ladies and gentlemen.

***

“Get scared. It will do you good. Smoke a bit, stare blankly at some ceilings, beat your head against some walls, refuse to see some people, paint and write. Get scared some more. Allow your little mind to do nothing but function. Stay inside, go out - I don’t care what you’ll do; but stay scared as hell. You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself.”

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

- 2 more quotes by Albert Camus (inset right); the latter from the essay The Rebel.

***

“If the world were clear, art would not exist.” - Albert Camus

“One plays at being immortal and after a few weeks one doesn't even know whether or not one can hang on till the next day.”

- Albert Camus, from The Fall.

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.” - Albert Camus

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?” - Albert Camus

Kismet is a "magic" we cannot devise nor improvise. It is "fate." Some say there is no fate. They imagine that humans operate by free will alone. What they can't seem to grasp is that "will" is not at all free... not for the weak, nor for kings and queens... and never for the impoverished.

Kismet, however, should not be confused with the Absurd. Observe...

It was 7am and I had yet to get my morning coffee. My singular goal was a Speedway just around the bend and down he hill. I was in my car - that is, the vehicle which doubled as my home - when, suddenly I was faced by a blazingly (& blinding) bright, white light. I could see nothing else but a few cars in a line behind me in the rear-view mirror... (but, this may have been only in my mind).

I drove into the sun. There is no other way of putting it. Later, I learned I had also driven through a streetlight pole.

None of this was the fault of my will as much as it was the fault of my timing. The deadly bright morning sun may have been avoided had I factored in my position in relationship to it and the time of day.

Ultimately, the car was lost to me. (Herein lies my tribute to a stellar vehicle sorely missed). The history of 10 or more years of my life - and work - was also lost (stolen) shortly thereafter... when my desktop was taken from the trunk of my car (and not by myself).

All that remained was my corporeal self  and, of my work, the clay rose-pentacle - apparently as resilient as myself - and a few digital images on a thumb-drive.

Kismet, free will, karma... or just plain stupidity? Or, worse still, could this negative life-changing event have occurred merely due to the lack of caffeine? I will never know.

If there need be an argument for Absurdism, then my life events can be counted amongst its parables. Perhaps, Camus felt the same way, too.**

“She was waiting, but she didn't know for what. She was aware only of her solitude, and of the penetrating cold, and of a greater weight in the region of her heart." - Albert Camus

"You lie with me on the park bench, with stars and strange lights circling overhead.

This is the side of the coin upon which, when flipped,

I might grasp your newly revealed hand... and we might dance (invisibly)."

- Via an untitled poem, 2023, DS.

“If I had to write a book on morality, it would have a hundred pages and ninety-nine would be blank. On the last page I should write: "I recognize only one duty, and that is to love.”

-  Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942.

_________________________________________

*"Health professionals say that maternal mortality has skyrocketed in the year since Roe v. Wade was overturned, a new survey from KFF found, a sign of how harmful abortion bans are.

United States already has the worst maternal mortality rate among developed nations, and health experts have long warned that abortion restrictions would only cause it to rise. A study released in November by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder found that if abortion is banned nationwide, maternal mortality will rise 24 percent. Maternal mortality among Black people will shoot up 39 percent."

- Found here. While my original rant is below, I decided today (July 9) that this quote is necessary here. It is, in fact, the bottom line of the whole argument. 

Hard to believe that in 2023 women are still dying in childbirth in this country! While one may question the actual number - the statistics are vague here - the implication is the same. Things can go very wrong at any stage of a woman's pregnancy... and economically challenged women who cannot afford continuous monitoring are most at risk.

So, what is the anti-choice response to this?  One can only conclude that the far-right believes that poor women's lives are more dispensable than the unborn.

From a text file written last month:  Who owns the uterus?

The right of women to determine their own pregnancies - as opposed to the State usurping that right - hinges upon one irrefutable fact: the viability of the fetus depends wholly upon a human uterus in most stages of its development. Fact 2: The human uterus is an anatomical element found only in the female members of the human species and is a significant aspect of her personal, physiological existence and experience. Throughout history, it has been the individual woman's responsibility to maintain the health and well-being of her uterus and, as such, it was her right and responsibility to remove any foreign bodies, debris, diseased cells, pseudo-parasitic growths and tumors which might threaten her life and, inevitably, the welfare of her family members.

Abortion is not about "killing babies." "Babies" apply only to infants who have been born (and/or qualify as tax deductions). The figure to your left illustrates the earliest stages of the human fetus. I note that there is nothing specifically human about this life-form. I also note that it rarely appears in anti-choice disinformation campaigns. Generally, the lurid photos of bloody, late-term fetuses are referred to instead... a tabloid tactic for tabloid minds to conjure with.

If we're discussing reality, however, and some of us try to, women have been aborting fetuses from the moment they figured out how.  For poorer women, older women and the infirm (both then and now) it was often a necessity. Regardless of the male's role in conception, the burden of carrying, birthing and sustaining an "extra mouth" was generally considered a "woman's problem" and, quite often, a fatal proposition. Only in fairly recent times has the autonomy over ones personal biology and well-being become a political issue. (See: History of Abortion)

Presently, some states in the USA have effectively decided a woman does not own her own uterus. We, then, might assume that the said states do... and will provide for them throughout their child-bearing years, and provide for the spawn till its adulthood. We might also assume that women (and men, who are inadvertently - and often unwittingly- responsible for the whole mess) are currently viewed as little more than tax-paying livestock.

But, there are two more silent assumptions being made: 1) the unborn fetus consciously "desires"... and, 2) it desires to be born under all circumstances, regardless of its fate...

...as if we could possibly know.

“You have so much inside you, and the noblest happiness of all. Don’t just wait for a man to come along. That’s the mistake so many women make. Find your happiness in yourself.”

- Albert Camus, A Happy Death.

** Sadly, Camus' life ended in a car accident a few days after the New Year's holiday in January, 1960. He was 46. Along with his body they found an unpublished handwritten manuscript for The First Man, an autobiographical novel eventually transcribed and published in 1994 by his daughter, Catherine.

“I come at last to death and to the attitude we have toward it. On this point everything has been said and it is only proper to avoid pathos. Yet one will never be sufficiently surprised that everyone lives as if no one "knew." This is because in reality there is no experience of death. Properly speaking, nothing has been experienced but what has been lived and made conscious. Here, it is barely possible to speak of the experience of others' deaths. It is a substitute, an illusion, and it never quite convinces us. That melancholy convention cannot be persuasive.”

- Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus