Something Funny Happened During the Apocalypse

While stumbling through the covid pandemic for nearly 2 years, I have relied upon friends, family, health care providers, politicians, strangers who have done their own research, angry people with their own agendas, and Uncle Brad (who is all of the above and thinks I’m an idiot).

This has produced mixed results, so I decided to give Gary Shteyngart’s Our Country Friends a try. After reading Lake Success (and loving it), I thought he might have the answers. He doesn’t but he is funny. And Our Country Friends is a clear lens through which we can see all the absurd, violent, selfish, selfless, and loving ways we have responded to the pandemic.

The book opens at the pandemic’s beginning, when no one knew how long it would last or the toll it would take. Sasha Senderovsky, a “writer and a landowner”, brings together 4 friends and an Actor (Senderovsky is trying to produce a TV show and he needs the Actor’s help) to ride out the pandemic at his country estate with his psychiatrist wife and his 8 year old daughter (who pre-covid attended a “very expensive city school for sensitive and complicated children”).

The estate (a house on a hill with several nearby bungalows) is in the gorgeous Hudson River Valley. “A pebbled path ran between the bungalows, in a way that Senderovsky [a Russian Jew] had hoped would create the feel of a tidy European village, the kind that would have never welcomed his ancestors.” The House on the Hill, which later becomes the Dacha of Doom, evokes the Shining City on a Hill – initially. However, dead trees litter the property with their “dead white rot”, evoking living White rot. There is also a metaphorical valley separating the ordinary and the privileged.

Before long, this “country menagerie” breaks apart, as friends and acquaintances become lovers – or partners in strange (but hygienic) sex acts. The Actor pairs off with a young writer (one of Senderovsky’s former students), and social media names them the “First Couple of the Quarantine”. But this brings more scrutiny to essays she wrote years before when her style was intentionally provocative. “She had been found out, exposed. But for what? All of this had been allowed just weeks before. Everything she had written came with just the right amount of nuance. It had been lab tested and publicist approved.” So what. Now the internet does not approve, and she is condemned.

The outside world intervenes in more violent ways too. George Floyd is killed. From their hilltop commune, which is disintegrating, they watch as society seemingly collapses. “They were watching a double disaster through glasses pressed to binoculars pressed in turn to a telescope.”

Mr. Shteyngart perfectly captures the Zeitgeist (whatever that means) of covid. The paranoia and panic are here. People are afraid that computer chips will be lodged in their naval cavities. They are struggling and lost. But they are also genuinely concerned about the health and welfare of the people they love and the people they grow to love. The story is funny at times but never mean-spirited.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Look at What’s Happening in France – Don’t Look Here

On rare occasions a powerful and secretive institution may become so corrupt, it should not be trusted to police itself. Fortunately that theory doesn’t apply to the Catholic Church.

Look at what’s happening in France. In October 2021, the Bishops Conference recognized that the Catholic Church was guilty of allowing the sexual abuse of children to become “systemic” after an independent investigation found an estimated 216,000 children were victims of abuse by the clergy since 1950. See! They acknowledge there might be a problem – though they haven’t really said what they plan to do about it. But, obviously, they can continue to police themselves.

And let’s not get distracted by (what some would call) a scandal. France is an isolated incident. As is Ireland, Australia, Germany, and all the others. In the United States, the Catholic Church has been far more honest. A few dioceses have filed bankruptcy so some assets can be sold for the benefit of victims (assuming there are any). Now when I say assets, I certainly don’t mean all assets. Just those the public knows about.

So have faith. More importantly, please continue to send us money. We actually want your money more than we want your faith.

And don’t worry about these peccadillos. I like that word because it sounds like peck of dildos – so it’s funny and we can all laugh and maybe change the topic. Perhaps to more words that sound like sex toys.

Father Orifice (pronounced Orifeechee), Chaplain of Pungent Sound Technical College of Technology

A Daughter Leaves for College

For eons or mere minutes on the clock
among marble mansions on a cliffside walk
or sewage-filled streets in a shantytown,
if you shimmer in silk or wear a paper crown -
110 degrees or snow sideways blowing -
should you be lost or know where you're going,
whether friends are plenty or few,
I will walk with you.

Luvgood Carp, Editor-in-Chief

Life is Short and Other Slogans

I’ve been around nearly as long as life, and I’ve seen it all. Which, at times, makes it difficult to say something original. But that’s o.k., because I’ve noticed humans crave the usual. You prefer slogans.

So here are my slogans:

   Be kind when you can.
   Don't be cruel - ever.
   Get involved, but not if you are going to violate the first two slogans.

If you want to make your community/world (is there a difference?) a better place, you don’t have to go it alone. There are billions of you humans. I am sure some of them may be willing to help. So make allies.

As my good friend, Luna, says:

   If you are going to turn the tide
   perhaps it would be best 
   to have the moon on your side.

See you soon.

Raven Breathless (fka Death), Senior Human Rights Correspondent

Love is a Many Splendored Thing – Sometimes

So what’s Louise Erdrich’s The Plague of Doves about? Love. Ahh, that sounds really warm and cozy. It is – until it isn’t. This novel is no Hallmark card or cheesy pop song. Its major theme is love in its many forms (splendored or not): young love, mature love, obsessive love, self-love (our favorite), destructive love (which may not be love at all), forbidden love (sweet!), and familial love (whatever).

The novel is primarily set in North Dakota’s Badlands (major metaphor alert) on and near an Ojibwe reservation. However, it opens with the murder of a White family on a farm. The sole survivor is a baby in a crib (the murderer finds her when she starts crying). So now he has a decision to make.

The story then jumps ahead decades to the 1960s. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that shortly after the murders 4 Native Americans came across the scene. When several White men learn about the Native Americans’ presence at the farmhouse, they deputize themselves and (not being too concerned about guilt or innocence) lynch the 4 Native Americans. The murders and the subsequent lynchings permeate the community as if an icy phantom walks through it, even as the descendants from all sides interact and mix. There is no way to “unravel” the rope. “Nothing that happens, nothing, is not connected here by blood.”

The novel is narrated by 4 characters and follows several inter-related families for about 40 years. The proximity of the White and Native communities may breed trouble, but it also creates desire. “We can’t seem to keep our hands off one another, it is true, and every attempt to foil our lusts though laws and religious dictums seems bound instead to excite transgression.” This is not new. But Ms. Erdrich is a skilled writer, and her wonderfully-drawn characters keep the story interesting and the reader engaged. Ultimately, we learn what happened to the baby and who murdered the family. There is a resolution of sorts. But, still, questions linger.

While the murders and lynchings are ever present, this story is about finding, maintaining, and losing love – even the most fulfilled are not exempt. “I have loved intensely. I have lived an ordinary and a satisfying life, and I have been privileged to be of service to people. Most people. There is no one I mourn to the point of madness and nothing I would really do over again.” That sounds like a full life, but Ms. Erdrich is too honest to leave it at that. Fulfilled or not, questions still linger.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor.

Do You Pretend to be a Poet? Don’t Quit Your Day Job

Hello readers of this pointless blog. I am supposedly Luvgood’s father. That’s what I’ve been told, at least – even though every blood test has come back “inconclusive”. More importantly – I own every hotel on Block Island. But please don’t pigeonhole me. I am so much more than that. I am human, and I also own hotels in Connecticut.

When Luvgood informed me that he was going to devote his life to poetry, I told him don’t quit your day job. So then he quit his day job. And he has been asking me for money ever since. Being a good father, I have refused. He obviously needs to grow up and quit pursuing his dreams.

As an older, distinguished white man, I am burdened with the responsibility of constantly giving unsolicited advice. If you are pursuing your dreams, don’t quit your day job. I need workers. I need to support my lavish lifestyle. Don’t be selfish.

Knowgood Carp, Owner of All the Hotels on Block Island (and Some in Connecticut)

The Court of Last Resort

It’s easy to know when I’m about to make a bad student loan. I ask 3 questions. Is the borrower studying for a degree in social work? Is the borrower attending a for-profit college like Pungent Sound Technical College of Technology? Does the borrower want a career where she selfishly works to help other people?

If the answer is yes to any of these questions, the borrower will never be able to pay back the $200,000.00 loan I am about to give her. Still, I make the loan. Then I hound her all the way to bankruptcy court. If she can’t discharge the loan (and usually you can’t), I continue to hound her after bankruptcy.

If I were lovable, the bankruptcy court would be my lover. The relationship will be wildly dysfunctional. But the sex would be charged and dangerous. I wrote a poem about it.

The Court of Last Resort

Some of us get a dime
even though a dollar is due
and some of us pay a dime
even when we have so few.

So everyone here has
lots of reasons to lie
because in the court of last resort
you keep what you can hide.

Titmouse Beak, President of Pungent Sound Community Bank

Cloud Cuckoo Land – Going Cuckoo for the Classics

Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land is a book about a book. Yawn, you say? But, wait, it is also about the love of books. Still yawning, I see. But a big section takes place in a library in Idaho. Whose point are you proving, you ask, while stifling another yawn.

Well, quit yawning, because Cloud Cuckoo Land is a delight. The story involves 3 timelines and characters separated by continents and centuries. They are connected only by a book supposedly written by Diogenes in the first century. That book (also called “Cloud Cuckoo Land”) is about Aethon, a shepherd who lived 80 years a man, 1 year a donkey, 1 year a sea bass, and 1 year a crow. It is an unbelievable comedy but that doesn’t make it a lie, because some stories “can be false and true at the same time.”

Diogenes’ book (really a codex) surfaces in Constantinople in 1453, during the Sultan’s long siege of the city. A 13 year old girl named Anna discovers the book and endeavors to protect it.

In the early 2000s the book is found in the Vatican’s archives. Major theme alert. “Sometimes the things we think are lost are only hidden, waiting to be rediscovered.” Age, water, and mildew have been cruel, making parts barely legible. It is published on the internet, and scholars are invited to decipher what they can. In Lakeport, Idaho, Zeno (who is not a scholar) is in his 80s and lonely, so he attempts to translate the story – perhaps realizing that he has a lot in common with Aethon. Seemingly ordinary people making great (though unrecognized) contributions to humanity is a second major theme.

Zeno’s translation eventually is discovered by Konstance circa 2130. She appears to be the sole survivor on a spaceship traveling to a distant planet.

Cloud Cuckoo Land is part epic poem, part fantastical quest, and part science fiction. And while the characters and events are convincingly depicted and the narrative is absorbing, the novel is really about the miraculous survival of Diogenes’ story.

Doerr writes a love letter to all the ancient myths, legends, and folktales that somehow survived when so many others did not. “In a time . . . when disease, war, and famine haunted practically every hour, when so many died before their time, their bodies swallowed by the sea or earth, or simply lost over the horizon, never to return, their fates unknown . . . Imagine how it felt to hear the old songs about heroes returning home. To believe that it was possible.” Times haven’t changed that much.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

A Tribute to Anonymous Unknown

So many people have created stunning works of art, and we don’t know their names. Even more people crap themselves and call that art. But because they do it in public and are immune to shame, everyone knows their names.

When it comes to literature, some of the most beautiful and inspiring works were written by history’s most prolific writer: Anonymous (aka Unknown) or, better yet, Anonymous Unknown.

Anonymous Unknown wrote the Old Testament, as it is called by Christians. Jews call it the Torah, which literally means Jesus Christ! Quit coopting our stuff – you do this all the time. He, She or They (we simply don’t know) also wrote Pearl, Sundiata, El Cid, The Man from Nantucket, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Fifty Shades of Grey (The Early Years), Beowulf, and many more works that richly explore what makes us human. Yet, their names are lost in the dank cellar of Antiquity’s library – probably behind the leaky water heater and under Sappho’s poems.

We don’t need social media to inform us that Fame is fickle. We don’t need more grieving parents to remind us that Equity and Justice have never lived here. Still, it is a blessing to have these works, even if we don’t know who to praise and thank.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Blood Diamonds

   When it comes to comprehending numbers,
   don't listen to the poets -
   if they understood basic math,
   they wouldn't be poets.
   Listen to the accountants, instead.

   A poet will sing how 
   13 is an unlucky number
   (no feat of the imagination there).
   She may even pull out her license
   and irrationally rhyme 
   how some numbers are unethical.

   As if ethics applies to math and money.

   An accountant will cogently observe
   that no matter what 13 may be
   it is not a big number.
   17 is bigger - though still not big.
   27, 32, 50, and 59 are big
   but no bigger than a modest PR problem.

   13 does not make a synagogue a concentration camp.

   Especially when 13 is actually 12
   because the killer was 1.

   The accountant will clarify 
   that 12 is much smaller than
   billions.

   The poet will protest:
   billions is the sound of 
   outdoor concerts becoming killing fields
   and classrooms becoming slaughterhouses.
   Poets call those children and concertgoers
   blood diamonds.

   An accountant now concerned about the bottom line
   will counter that "blood diamonds" is
   a misleading and malicious metaphor
   manufactured by malcontent poets
   to cynically incite the sympathies of simpletons.

   There hasn't been a market for blood diamonds in years.

   So children and concertgoers are not blood diamonds.
   They aren't even innocent bystanders - 
   because they were terrified,
   when the shooting started,
   and tried to run away.

   If you must name them,
   the accountant will conclude that 
   the children and concertgoers were
   coal ash or feathers
   or other unavoidable byproducts
   of businesses worth billions.

   What, the accountant would like to know,
   is a poem worth?

   Luvgood Carp, Editor-in-Chief

   First published in The Broadkill Review