Year's End 2023: Looking Back, Taking Stock, Bumbling Onward, Ha!
As another year careens to a close it is time once again to reflect on what I have been up to, where it has taken me, and plans, prospects, hopes for bumbling onward into the coming year. Pursuit of intellectual adventure and this writing life remain at the heart of an improbable existence. Running somehow figures into the mix almost as much as books, film, and art. Conscience and values cultivated as a boy growing up in a rural community in the South Carolina countryside more than half a century ago underlie it all.
The year was brightened beyond measure with a June excursion to Tulsa for the Tulsa Runner twentieth-anniversary celebration. The celebration was a festive affair and a welcome opportunity to visit Tulsa friends I had not seen since before the pandemic. Two visits to the Bob Dylan Center, one to the Greenwood Rising Black Wall St. History Center, and an evening taking in the Tulsa Tough bicycle racing were other highlights.
Livin' on Tulsa Time: Celebration...and Down in South Florida: Indictment
Livin' on Tulsa Time: Greenwood Rising, Bob Dylan Center, Tulsa Tough
I like to think that Portable Bohemia stands in an honorable tradition of pamphleteers, gadflies and rabble rousers unleashed on Europe with the introduction of printing with movable type and the perfection of cheap paper in the 15th century. Launched in 2016, it is a successor to my previous blogs Memo from the Fringes (2005–2008) and House Red (2010–2015). In April of this year I moved publication from my Portable Bohemia website to Portable Bohemia at Substack hoping to expand my audience. The move has been a modest success that perhaps I can build on in the weeks and months ahead.
The writing here consists of social and political commentary as conscience and honest indignation dictate. Less frequent but more satisfying are literary and film criticism, bio sketches, and essays with more personal themes. Last summer I began posting recordings of previously published poems accompanied by text from time to time.
I use the expression going to my desk as a trope for getting on with the work of writing. That does not quite cover it though. When in the midst of an essay or a poem, I find myself writing and revising in my mind while on the bus, at a cafe for an espresso and journal session, or out for a walk. In the latter I stand in good company. Coleridge told William Hazlitt that “he himself liked to compose in walking over uneven ground, or breaking through the straggling branches of a copse-wood; whereas Wordsworth always wrote (if he could) walking up and down a straight gravel-walk” (Hazlitt quoted by Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions). Even reading can be difficult as thoughts about the composition in progress take my focus away from the book. It can be glorious when that happens.
I began tracking annual word counts with Portable Bohemia’s launch in 2016 as a way to gauge how diligent and disciplined I am about keeping at it. Quality is another matter. Production picked up markedly after my retirement from wage work in August 2017, with a high near 114,000 words in 2018 and ranging from 92,000 to 98,000 in succeeding years. The consistency is pleasantly surprising, each year enough to make up a book of decent heft. This year the count crept above 120,000.
The poems do not come as readily as they once did, and I have never been more than sporadically diligent about submitting them for publication. Even so, I keep at it. View from the Deck September 2023 appeared in the October 2023 issue of Quill & Parchment.
Books and film. A year for rereading:
Samuel Beckett, Murphy
Harold Bloom, Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds. Bloom sparked the reading dead white women project, which is presently foundering on the shoals of Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country, Bloom’s favorite among her works. I hope to provide an update on this project in the foreseeable future.
Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution: 1789–1848
Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions
Other books of note
Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum
Pat Barker, Regeneration
Gregory Corso, The Golden Dot
Elena Ferrante, The Lying Life of Adults
Pekka Hämäläinen, Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power
Mick Herron, several in the Slow Horses series
Karen Millwood Hargrave, The Mercies
Susan Neiman, Left Is Not Woke
In Progress
Fyodor Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary, Vol. 2 1877–1881 (a reread from twenty or more years ago)
Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time (another reread, from perhaps twenty years ago)
Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought: an alternative history of philosophy
S. Frederick Starr, Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane
Films of note
Yamina Benguigui, Soeurs (2020), with Isabelle Adjani, Rachida Brakni, Maïwenn
Frédérique Berthe, Les invincibles (2013), with Virginie Efira, Gérard Depardieu
Amartya Bhattacharyya, Adieu Godard (India 2021)
Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Turkey 2011)
Catherine Corsini, Un amour impossible (2018), with Virginie Efira
Todd Field, Tár (2022), with Cate Blanchett, Nina Hoss
Hong Sang-soo, The Day He Arrives (2011), In Front of Your Face (2021), Introduction (2021), The Novelist’s Film (2022)
Celine Song, Past Lives (2023), with Greta Lee
Orit Fouks Rotem, Cinema Sabaya (2021), with Dana Ivgy
I began these year’s end reflections in 2020 with no thought that it would become something of a tradition. As I look back on those earlier recollections, I am stuck by certain continuities. 2020 was a year of pandemic, widespread unrest, protest and riot, attempts to overturn the election. The January 6 insurrection set the tone for 2021. Even congressional Republicans were initially shaken. To what should have been no one’s surprise, they soon returned to their bootlicking ways. Another year of faction, discord, and unraveling of the social fabric followed: Republican assault on rule of law and constitutional government, bizarre resistance to vaccines and other public health measures by the numbnuts brigade, Afghanistan debacle, Build Back Better debacle, crisis at the border, climate-related disasters. And so on. (Year’s End 2021).
The entry for Year's End 2022 opened on a personal note with reports on running and the state of this writing life before wading into the muck of politics and current affairs, where the exemplary work of the January 6 committee, the steady drumbeat of convictions related to the insurection, and midterm elections brought a measure of hope, while the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine left me shaken. To that I added,
Too much else has happened to get into it all here. By way of example: mass shootings; a seemingly intractable homelessness crisis; ditto the mess with immigration and the border; a troglodyte faction on the Supreme Court out to roll back much of the twentieth century; catastrophic weather events; the return to power of Benjamin Netanyahu with a hardline, far right governing coalition whose extreme religious and ultranationalist agenda includes the declaration that the Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right to all areas of the land of Israel, rejection of a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and expansion of West Bank settlements. And much else.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
The war in Ukraine drags on. There are conflicting reports about how dire the situation on the ground is for Ukraine. Things are not going well for Russia and the tyrant Putin either. On the home front, a betrayal of Ukraine orchestrated by a coterie of congressional Republicans would come as no surprise.
Linkage of funding for Ukraine with immigration and funding for Israel is the mechanism for betrayal. The endgame is not bipartisan immigration reform, which is much needed, but rather use of the strategic and moral imperative to provide funding for Ukraine to impose Republican demands on the administration and the Democratic majority in the Senate. If the ploy fails, they will be quite happy to leave Ukraine to Putin’s devices and rant about the immigration crisis on the campaign trail.
Nota bene: When Republicans fume about immigration they have in mind immigrants from Africa, Asia, and Central and South America. One need not be a particularly astute observer to note a pattern.
The situation in Gaza and the West Bank is a human catastrophe and moral abyss. My default setting is for wild mood swings between outrage and despair. There is no reason to think that will improve any time soon.
The antics and shenigans of our elected representatives might be good for laughs if the stakes were not so high as the usual suspects conduct a relentless campaign to undermine our system of constitutional governance and rule of law. What follows is a partial list from the Dishonor Roll for 2023. Bear in mind that these charcters represent their constituencies. A sobering thought.
Kevin “Elbows” McCarthy, whose stumbling ascent, predictable fall, and spectacular capacity for humiliation were in their way awesome.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, booted out of the House blockhead caucus for embracing, so to speak, Kevin McCarthy and calling vaping, groping Boebert a little bitch.
Hitherto obscure constitutional scholar Mike Johnson emerged from House chaos to be installed as speaker, two heartbeats down from the Oval Office. Johnson holds that the Constitution grants all Americans freedom to think, speak, and worship in accordance with his understanding of Christianity and interpretation of the Bible. For those who believe otherwise, not so much (see Kim Wehle, Mike Johnson's First Amendment legacy, Simple Politics with Kim Wehle, December 14, 2023).
George Santos. A man who could, as Kinky Friedman might put it, use a checkup from the neck up.
Josh “Crazy Legs” Hawley and and Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz welcomed Coach Tommy Turbeville and Markwayne Mullin to the Senate blockhead caucus. Tuberville spent the better part of the year pursuing a scorched-earth campaign to undermine the readiness of the American military by holding up promotions to high-level positions. It got to be too much even for some Senate Republicans, treating us to the rare sight of Lindsey Graham occupying the high ground on an issue.
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) led the group on that November night, which included Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Todd Young (R-Ind.). They held the floor for hours, where they ripped Tuberville’s blockade and brought up one nominee after another, only to have the Alabama Republican block each one. (JC Whittington, Daniella Diaz, The George Santos Saga, Kevin McCarthy Implosion and Marjorie Taylor Greene Circus, Politico, December 24, 2023)
Former Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighter and member of the Oklahoma Wrestling Hall of Fame Markwayne Mullin (MAGA, Okla) rose from his seat during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions to invite a physical confrontation with a burly Teamsters official who was testifying, prompting 82-year-old committee chair Bernie Sanders to admonish him: “You’re a United States senator, sit down.”
Congressman Jamal “Fire Alarm” Bowman (NY) and Senator Bob Menendez (NJ) did their part to ensure that the Democrats are duly represented on any dishonor roll. Bowman may have been guilty of little more than being a dunderhead. Menendez is in another league, charged with “secretly aiding the authoritarian regime of Egypt and trying to thwart the criminal prosecution of a friend in exchange for gold bars and cash.” Along with a 2019 Mercedes convertible.
Authorities who searched Menendez’s home last year found more than $100,000 worth of gold bars, as well as over $480,000 in cash—much of it hidden in closets, clothing and a safe, prosecutors say. Photos in the indictment show cash that was stuffed in envelopes in jackets bearing Menendez’s name. Investigators also say they discovered a Google search by Menendez for the value of a “kilo of gold,” and DNA of one man prosecutors say bribed him on an envelope filled with thousands of dollars. (Jake Offenhartz, et al., Gold bars, cash-stuffed envelopes: New indictment of Sen. Menendez alleges vast corruption, AP, September 22, 2023)
It appears that Menendez represents the gold standard, so to speak, for corruption. The senator for his part accused prosecutors of misreprenting “the normal work of a congressional office.”
Bumbling onward, ha! If fortune and fate are kind, I will keep at it. I try to resist temptation to indulge in armchair self-psychoanalysis. Yet it struck me a few days ago that it has taken years of retirement to find some sense of my best self. Though I worked with many good people and some truly exceptional ones in the course of what amount to multiple brief careers, and think I was generally well regarded by them in turn, the work was never my work. That exacted a toll. This best self is mess enough in countless ways, but it is a better place.
The Greek poet Alexandros Panagoulis said, “Politics is a duty. Poetry is a need.” To poetry I would add books, film, art, the world of ideas and intellectual adventure. I close with two remarks about poetry by Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) with which I feel kinship.
For the author poems are also divided into those the poet remembers writing and those that seemed to be generated spontaneously of their own accord. In some the author is doomed to hear the sound of a violin that once helped him to compose, and in others the rumble of a traincar which prevented him from writing them.” (My Half Century: Selected Prose)
There are no capable poets! Either someone's a poet or not! It's not the kind of work where you get up early in the morning, wash, and sit down at the table: Well, let's see, I'll immerse myself. Poetry is a catastrophe. Only in this way can it be written. If not this way—the reader will immediately understand this and feel it! (quoted in Roberta Reed, Anna Akhmatova: Poet and Prophet)
As always, thank you for your support and encouragement.
Keep the faith. Stand with Ukraine. yr obdt svt