Seven Years In The Dream Antilles

The seventh anniversary of this blog, The Dream Antilles, is on August 3, 2008. This is, believe it or not, the 1,372nd post.

Most of what I wrote on this blog's third anniversary, in 2008, remains true today, even if the tone seems, well, a bit too sanguine:

What began as a way to promote my vastly underselling 2005 novel, The Dream Antilles, morphed first into a lit blog, and then took on aspects of a political blog, and finally blossomed into an eccentric collection of commentaries on whatever strikes me as something I would enjoy writing about.

When I initially began, I hoped there would be tons of comments on my essays. There aren't. In fact, there are hardly any comments at all. But I know that I'm not the unheard vox clamatis in deserto because there are... web counters [showing a few hundred views per week]. Let me put this in perspective. Some blogs receive more than 10,000 page views in an hour. Those who read this blog around the world are far, far fewer. But they are nevertheless readers to whom I owe my thanks for reading and my appreciation when they bookmark the site and when they return, even if they generally don't leave comments...

Why do I keep on writing? You could ask as well why I keep on breathing. It's something I do. Unlike many of my favorite writers, Garcia Marquez, Roberto Bolano, Ricardo Piglia, I don't live in a place where there is an established, literary cafe culture. I can't go out this evening to my favorite cafe and find the other writers with whom I've been hanging out to discuss my latest ideas. Or theirs. So in a way, The Dream Antilles is a kind of substitute for that interaction. It's something that I do even though I'm working on another novel. Blogging is like a conversation that can always be resumed.

Will I continue? Of course.

But, alas, sometimes I'm not quite as sure of things as I was back in 2008. Not nearly. Just look at 2011's Anniversary post, written in the third person:

Your Bloguero believes you are reading this. He doesn’t know for sure that you are here. Actually, he has no idea whether you’re reading or how many readers have visited. Or who has read what. Or when. Why? In a moment of self righteous indignation several years ago, your Bloguero deleted all the web counters. Good riddance, he said. “I’m doing this whether or not anybody reads it,” he announced pompously. Later, much later your Bloguero caved in to his own curiosity about you. Were you really there? Were you really reading? Of course, he wouldn’t admit that it mattered to him. So he quietly put up the map with the dots (you can still find it near the bottom of the right column) so he could see you. If you read The Dream Antilles a tiny dot appears where you are and it stays there for a while. Your Bloguero still likes the dots, particularly when people of every continent visit. Other than that small reassurance that you are there, your Bloguero writes The Dream Antilles on the faith that you read it. This faith is not rock solid. Far from it. Sometimes your Bloguero has towering doubts. He imagines that he might be standing on the pitcher’s mound in a completely empty Yankee Stadium making believe the seats were filled with people paying rapt attention to him and laughing at his jokes and understanding what he is telling them. Sometimes your Bloguero doesn’t care that all the seats might be empty and that newspapers are blowing around in the infield and that the PA system is turned off and pigeons are swooping in from the eves. Banishing the emptiness from his consideration, your Bloguero declaims that the blog is a writing practice. And your Bloguero is another Eveready Bunny. He does it for himself, he says. Really? You ask. Yes, sure, and your Bloguero’s obvious vanity? Hah! Your Bloguero never claimed he was so perfect. So free from doubt.

Thank you for visiting. And thank you for reading.

And so begins my eighth year in the Dream Antilles. I'm aware that there are zillions of blogs, many of which have been abandoned, and that in the age of Facebook and Twitter (@thedavidseth), a blog may be more like outmoded music cassettes, VHS cassettes, LP records and Betamax machines than I care to admit. An antique. A relic. A fossil. No matter. I continue. For now. And I hope you will continue to return.

Thanks for seven great years.

A Grim Anniversary

Today is the 44th anniversary of the My Lai Massacre.

The My Lai Massacre (Vietnamese: thảm sát Mỹ Lai [tʰɐ̃ːm ʂɐ̌ːt mǐˀ lɐːj], [mǐˀlɐːj] ( listen); English pronunciation: /ˌmiːˈlaɪ/, also /ˌmiːˈleɪ, ˌmaɪˈlaɪ/)[1] was the Vietnam War mass murder of between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam on March 16, 1968, by United States Army soldiers of "Charlie" Company of 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade of the Americal Division. Most of the victims were women, children (including babies), and elderly people. Some of the bodies were later found to be mutilated.[2] While 26 US soldiers were initially charged with criminal offenses for their actions at Mỹ Lai, only Second Lieutenant William Calley, a platoon leader in Charlie Company, was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence, but only served three and a half years under house arrest.

The massacre took place in the hamlets of Mỹ Lai and My Khe of Sơn Mỹ village.[3][4] The event is also known as the Sơn Mỹ Massacre (Vietnamese: thảm sát Sơn Mỹ) or sometimes as the Song Mỹ Massacre.[5] The US military codeword for the "Viet Gong [sic] stronghold" was "Pinkville".[6]

When the incident became public knowledge in 1969, it prompted widespread outrage around the world. The massacre also increased domestic opposition to the US involvement in the Vietnam War.

Three US servicemen who had tried to halt the massacre and protect the wounded were later denounced by several US Congressmen. They received hate mail and death threats and found mutilated animals on their doorsteps.[7] It was 30 years before they were honored for their efforts.[8]

More here from the New York Times today. And all of the original reportage by Seymour Hersh here (warning: graphic photos).

How hard it is, even now, to think about this event. Or to look at the photos. Or to imagine it from the perpetrators' or the victims' sides. And that's probably why today could easily come and go with little mention of it. Unfortunately, complete, collective forgetting just doesn't seem possible. Or wise. So there's the inevitable, personal struggle to remember, to recognize this event for what it was, to hold it, to feel it, and eventually to seek amends, forgiveness. A truly daunting, completely staggering task.

Happy Birthday, Dream Antilles! On 8/7/10 You Are Five.

I almost missed it. I almost missed the actual 5 year anniversary of this blog. It's 8/7/10.

This is post number 814. I am astonished.

Thank you for visiting.

Boo Radley, I Almost Forgot All About You.

You been holed up in that house, that fallin' down house for so long I forgot you was there. But thank you, Mr. Radley. Thank you for rustling those blinds this morning to remind me.

So almost my bad today. I almost missed the Fiftieth Anniversary of To Kill A Mockingbird. What kind of Lit Blog is this anyway when an event like that is almost overlooked?

So here's what Garrson Keillor has to say in The Writer's Almanac:

Fifty years ago today, Harper Lee's only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, was published, the story narrated by six-year-old Scout Finch in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama. It was an immediate best-seller, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and an instant American classic. It continues to sell incredibly well, with 30 million copies still in print.

The book's title appears in a scene in chapter 10, where Scout remembers something her dad, Atticus, has said and asks her neighbor Miss Maudie about it.

"I'd rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it.

"Your father's right," she said. "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

Harper Lee, it's reported, hasn't given an interview since 1964. She's living in Monroeville, Alabama. That's entirely ok.

If she were passing us on the street, we'd stand up to honor her. We remember this, "Jean Louise. Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passing."

The Five Year Blogaversary: 8/7/10

Boy is this ever weird.

August 7, 2010, is the fifth anniversary of this blog. This is the 794th post. I have no clue how many people have visited here. I have no idea who has read what. I imagine that only I have read it all.

I have enhanced my own ignorance about the readership. Who is reading and what. You may recall that in a moment of clarity I proclaimed that I wasn't going to keep track of statistics any more, and I then took down all the counters. The counters, truth be told, didn't work very well anyway. It wasn't a big deal. I made believe it was.

Come to think of it, there have been a lot of quirky things in the five years. One of them is that the readership has been surprisingly quiet. The other is that nobody tells me that I've jumped the shark. I am far more ignored than scolded.

So here I am. I'm five years older than when I started. This is my Polonius moment. I probably write faster. Do I write any better? Doubtful. I have aphorisms, though: Writing fast is a virtue, editing fast is an important skill. Persistence has some value. Neither a borrower nor a curmudgeon be.

There are five years of writing piled up behind me. And the open road ahead. I guess I'll continue so long as this is still fun.

As ever, thanks for reading. And while we're at it, do you think you could order my book?

9/11, The Eighth Anniversary

Let me just repeat what I said a year ago:

This morning in Columbia County, New York the sky was blue. I took the faithful retriever dog for a walk in the fields. The golden rod is in bloom, and there are wild asters. American milkweed is in its cotton phase. It was September 11.

When I walk I am aware of my breathing. I am aware of my feelings. I am aware of my thoughts. Today I felt sad. I didn't know why. I was aware of my breathing and my feelings and my thoughts. I remembered where I was and what I did seven years ago. It was September 11.

I remembered watching the film of the airplane crashing into the World Trade Center over and over and over and over again. The people who escaped or survived the fire and the collapse of the building probably are still shocked. And all of us who watched the airplane crashing into the World Trade Center over and over and over and over again. We were shocked. Maybe all of us who watched have post traumatic stress disorder. Maybe we're a nation of people suffering from post traumatic stress disorder or shock or whatever you call it when you're filled with inescapable horror and can't do anything about it. After all, it was September 11.

I remembered sitting in the hot tub with all the lights off. Abundant stars. No airplanes. Silence. A tiny person on a tiny planet sitting in a hot tub listening to the crickets. It was September 11.

I'm walking in high golden rod. Thankfully, there are a few bees. There are some monarch butterflies. There are the usual birds who live in bushes. But as I walk I feel like one of the many children whose parents are getting divorced who assume that the reason the divorce happened has something to do with them, something, they don't know what it is, but it had to have something to do with them, didn't it? But, I think, the attack did have something to do with me didn't it? Some people say it did. Some people say it's the chickens of the empire coming home to roost. And I had something to do with the chickens, didn't I? We're all interconnected, the poultry and me. This connection is so remote, so far away, so ungraspable, so unfathomable. I couldn't figure it out. It didn't make sense to me. Sometimes things just don't make sense. After all, it was September 11.

The dog decided to go for a swim. I am aware of my breathing. I am aware of my feelings. I am aware of my thoughts. The dog and I decided to walk home. I gave her a treat. The sky was perfectly blue. It was just like that day seven years ago. Except there were airplanes in the sky today. But my country continues to suffer from its post traumatic stress disorder or shock or whatever you call it when you're filled with inescapable horror and can't do anything about it.

Today it rained. Otherwise, it's still the same for me. Is it true that when you remember something, your brain doesn't know whether it's a memory or something that is actually then happening?

Seven Years

This morning in Columbia County, New York the sky was blue. I took the faithful retriever dog for a walk in the fields. The golden rod is in bloom, and there are wild asters. American milkweed is in its cotton phase. It was September 11.

When I walk I am aware of my breathing. I am aware of my feelings. I am aware of my thoughts. Today I felt sad. I didn't know why. I was aware of my breathing and my feelings and my thoughts. I remembered where I was and what I did seven years ago. It was September 11.

I remembered watching the film of the airplane crashing into the World Trade Center over and over and over and over again. The people who escaped or survived the fire and the collapse of the building probably are still shocked. And all of us who watched the airplane crashing into the World Trade Center over and over and over and over again. We were shocked. Maybe all of us who watched have post traumatic stress disorder. Maybe we're a nation of people suffering from post traumatic stress disorder or shock or whatever you call it when you're filled with inescapable horror and can't do anything about it. After all, it was September 11.

I remembered sitting in the hot tub with all the lights off. Abundant stars. No airplanes. Silence. A tiny person on a tiny planet sitting in a hot tub listening to the crickets. It was September 11.

I'm walking in high golden rod. Thankfully, there are a few bees. There are some monarch butterflies. There are the usual birds who live in bushes. But as I walk I feel like one of the many children whose parents are getting divorced who assume that the reason the divorce happened has something to do with them, something, they don't know what it is, but it had to have something to do with them, didn't it? But, I think, the attack did have something to do with me didn't it? Some people say it did. Some people say it's the chickens of the empire coming home to roost. And I had something to do with the chickens, didn't I? We're all interconnected, the poultry and me. This connection is so remote, so far away, so ungraspable, so unfathomable. I couldn't figure it out. It didn't make sense to me. Sometimes things just don't make sense. After all, it was September 11.

The dog decided to go for a swim. I am aware of my breathing. I am aware of my feelings. I am aware of my thoughts. The dog and I decided to walk home. I gave her a treat. The sky was perfectly blue. It was just like that day seven years ago. Except there were airplanes in the sky today. But my country continues to suffer from its post traumatic stress disorder or shock or whatever you call it when you're filled with inescapable horror and can't do anything about it.

Three Years In The Dream Antilles

The third anniversary of this blog, The Dream Antilles, is in three weeks, on August 3, 2008. This is the 317th post. And this is a very brief introspection on the past three years.

What began as a way to promote my vastly underselling 2005 novel, The Dream Antilles, morphed first into a lit blog, and then took on aspects of a political blog, and finally blossomed into an eccentric collection of commentaries on whatever strikes me as something I would enjoy writing about.

When I initially began, I hoped there would be tons of comments on my essays. There aren't. In fact, there are hardly any comments at all. But I know that I'm not the unheard vox clamatis in deserto because there are two web counters in the right column of the blog, and they tell me there have been about 10,000 page views in the past year. Let me put this in perspective. Some blogs receive more than 10,000 page views in an hour. Those who read this blog around the world are far, far fewer. But they are nevertheless readers to whom I owe my thanks for reading and my appreciation when they bookmark the site and when they return, even if they generally don't stop to write comments.

Because I nevertheless wanted to read comments, I wrote diaries first at daily Kos, and then I began to write at my favorite group blog, docuDharma, cross-posting from The Dream Antilles. I found docuDharmaniacs a delightful, diverse, interesting, fun group. Kossacks not so much, though I sometimes still go against my instincts and cross-post there. Many of the resulting comments are disappointing to me. Regardless, docuDharma satisfies my desire to receive (and write) comments even if this blog doesn't.

Why do I keep on writing? You could ask as well why I keep on breathing. It's something I do. Unlike many of my favorite writers, Garcia Marquez, Roberto Bolano, Ricardo Piglia, I don't live in a place where there is an established, literary cafe culture. I can't go out this evening to my favorite cafe and find the other writers with whom I've been hanging out to discuss my latest ideas. Or theirs. So in a way, The Dream Antilles is a kind of substitute for that interaction. It's something that I do even though I'm working on another novel. Blogging is like a conversation that can always be resumed.

Will I continue? Of course. Going on and on isn't something new to me. Before I blogged, I began to write a long serious of essays on the death penalty and my opposition to it. I started in March, 2002, more than 6 years ago, and there have been 186 essays. Those essays are distributed by yahoogroups to more than 120 readers, but I have written fewer and fewer of them as I began to blog. Lately, I've been taking my blog posts on that topic and sending them to the listserve.

What's my favorite part? I just loved writing the recent essay about Salicornia. Stories like that just light me up. I learn something. I get to think about something new. I get excited. I hear the inside of my head say, "Wow!" I just love it.

Thanks again for reading. And special thanks for making the 3 Year Anniversary of The Dream Antilles possible.

Arrgh!! I Missed This Blog's Two Year Anniversary!!

I don't believe it. I started writing The Dream Antilles blog in August, 2005. There are 168 posts before this one.

I have now officially missed the 2nd Anniversary of the beginning of this Blog, which was at the start of August. To no one's surprise or eternal consternation, there will not be a celebration, cyber or analog, either of this unimportant milestone or of my forgetting it.

And to you, dear readers, my sincere thanks for visiting and continuing to read The Dream Antilles. The best is yet to come.