Author: Tetman Callis
And just how did that happen?And just how did that happen?
“Science is important for exactly the same reason that the study of history or of language is important—because we are beings that need in general to understand the world in which we live, and our culture has chosen a way of life to which that understanding is central. All human beings need some kind of mental map to show them the structure of the world. And we in the West have placed particular confidence in mapping it through methodical, detailed study.” – Mary Midgley, Science as Salvation
Even if the Times doesn’t review itEven if the Times doesn’t review it
“Even if you only write one book, that’s one of your great achievements in life.” – Pamela Paul, Editor, New York Times Book Review
A state of beingA state of being
“Illness reduces man to his basic state: a cloaca in which the chemical processes continue. The meaningless hegemony of the involuntary.” – Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
So thereSo there
“Even when God is most terrible, he is never cruel, the way men are.” – Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
The TellingsThe Tellings
alice blue review published one of my stories, “The Tellings,” last June. I’ve added it to the Previously Published Stories sidebar.
Basic mathBasic math
“The difference between something and nothing is nothing.” – Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
Lucky brutes along the bell curveLucky brutes along the bell curve
“We are all at best compromised agents, whether by biology, social circumstance, or brute luck. The differences among us are differences of degree that do not admit of categorical division into the normal and the abnormal.” – Barbara H. Fried, “Beyond Blame”
We’ve locked ourselves up and thrown away the keysWe’ve locked ourselves up and thrown away the keys
“What grows clearer every year is that the incarcerating state is not feared. It is seen as a palliative to a fear of violent crime, a fear mobilized by political parties and candidates desperate to find points of contact with a distant and disaffected electorate. While the state has not prevented job loss, workplace disempowerment, spiraling health care costs, and the disintegration of educational institutions from kindergarten to university, those seeking official positions can gain credibility by promising to get tough on crime. What such rhetoric implies may be even more significant, namely that the state is ‘for’ the law abiding and ‘against’ offenders, that even the most economically insecure among the law-abiding have a robust civic status in comparison to the lawbreakers. To say that Americans lack a sober fear of this swollen system of cruelty—and, indeed, use it as a mode of making social distinctions—is not to discount the pain and suffering of the victims of violent crime. It is only to draw attention to something hiding in plain sight. The public is both inured to and invested in this reality that is seen too much and too little. We see it constantly in the virtual world of criminal justice television, where hard treatment, shame, and degradation of prisoners are frequently portrayed as added consequences of breaking the rules and rarely as civic problems.” – Albert W. Dzur, “Twelve Absent Men”
Roses and thornsRoses and thorns
“You can’t just wish away an unattractive part of a writer’s biography and think the work would still exist.” — Jessa Crispin, Bookslut
The heart can get pretty tired, tooThe heart can get pretty tired, too
“The soul is the weariest part of the body.” – Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
There’s the door, go through itThere’s the door, go through it
“It’s just an accident that we happen to be on earth, enjoying our silly little moments, distracting ourselves as often as possible so we don’t have to really face up to the fact that, you know, we’re just temporary people with a very short time in a universe that will eventually be completely gone. And everything that you value, whether it’s Shakespeare, Beethoven, da Vinci, or whatever, will be gone. The earth will be gone. The sun will be gone. There’ll be nothing. The best you can do to get through life is distraction. Love works as a distraction. And work works as a distraction. You can distract yourself a billion different ways. But the key is to distract yourself.” – Woody Allen, “What I’ve Learned”
Know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’emKnow when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em
“It’s been said about marriage ‘You have to know how to fight.’ And I think there’s some wisdom to that. People who live together get into arguments. When you’re younger, those arguments tend to escalate, or there’s not any wisdom that overrides the argument to keep it in perspective. It tends to get out of hand. When you’re older, you realize, ‘Well, this argument will pass. We don’t agree, but this is not the end of the world.’ Experience comes into play.” – Woody Allen, “What I’ve Learned”
What the Dead Can DoWhat the Dead Can Do
Fourteen degrees Fahrenheit at daybreak.
The stairwell smells of dirty
diapers and stale cigarette smoke.
A man dressed several levels
below stylish picks through
the garbage bin behind a business.
Three blocks away at three
o’clock this morning, a man
was shot to death on the street.
The subjective impression
of his last moments are as
all of our such moments are,
forever lost. His blood froze
in spots on the concrete sidewalk.
The man at the garbage bin
pulls out a jacket discarded
there, says to no one walking by,
“Let the dead bury their dead.”
Rehabilitative fancies, anyone?Rehabilitative fancies, anyone?
“We are not blackboards that can be erased. Our actions do mark us, and for life. There has been reflected in psychiatry, and especially in the criminal justice system, a kind of stupid optimism about the ability of people to change.” – Terence Sellers, Psychopathia Sexualis
No compass, no mapNo compass, no map
“How might we return to where we never were?” – Terence Sellers, Psychopathia Sexualis
Two-Four TimeTwo-Four Time
The clouds relax,
the snow shakes loose.
Icy dandruff coats
the shoulders of the roads.
The sky is gray,
the lake is green and still.
Gulls threaten each other for scraps.
A man stands on the breakwater,
shouts at the lake, “Jah! Allah!
Motherfucker Santa!”
A commercial truck
backs up on the street,
its beeper beeping warning beeps.
The man on the breakwater
throws his head back,
dances to the rhythm,
two-four time.
I’m melting…I’m melting…
“The reality is that not everyone can be a doctor, not everyone can be a professional athlete, and not everyone can be a writer. You may be a precious snowflake, but if you can’t express your individuality in sterling prose, I don’t want to read about it.” – Ted Genoways, “The Death of Fiction?”
They could stand to be remindedThey could stand to be reminded
“The duty of a public prosecutor is to seek justice, not merely to convict.” – Illinois Supreme Court Rules, Article VIII, Illinois Rules of Professional Conduct of 2010, Rule 3.8
Dropping Back to PuntDropping Back to Punt
Whenever a litmag/journal/site/publication/entity publishes one of my stories, I wait at least three months then post the published story to this site. In July, Knee-Jerk Magazine published “Dropping Back to Punt.” Now it is included in the Previously Published Stories sidebar.
What gods are good forWhat gods are good for
“A progressive renunciation of constitutional instincts, whose activation might afford the ego primary pleasure, appears to be one of the foundations of the development of human civilization. Some part of this instinctual repression is effected by its religions, in that they require the individual to sacrifice his instinctual pleasure to the Deity. ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ In the development of the ancient religions one seems to discern that many things which mankind had renounced as ‘iniquities’ had been surrendered to the Deity and were still permitted in his name, so that the handing over to him of bad and socially harmful instincts was the means by which man freed himself from their domination.” – Sigmund Freud, “Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices” (ed. Gay)
A paraphraseA paraphrase
The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, even unto the third and fourth generations. (Exodus 34:7)
How words and times changeHow words and times change
“Sexual love is undoubtedly one of the chief things in life, and the union of mental and bodily satisfaction in the enjoyment of love is one of its culminating peaks. Apart from a few queer fanatics, all the world knows this and conducts its life accordingly; science alone is too delicate to admit it.” – Sigmund Freud, “Observations on Transference-Love” (ed. Gay)
We are what we eatWe are what we eat
“Nothing in life is so expensive as illness—and stupidity.” – Sigmund Freud, “On Beginning the Treatment” (ed. Gay)
GettysburgGettysburg
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
— Abraham Lincoln, President, United States of America, November 19, 1863
Learn your lessons, precious snowflakeLearn your lessons, precious snowflake
“Education can be described without more ado as an incitement to the conquest of the pleasure principle, and to its replacement by the reality principle; it seeks, that is, to lend its help to the developmental process which affects the ego. To this end it makes use of an offer of love as a reward from the educators; and it therefore fails if a spoilt child thinks that it possesses that love in any case and cannot lose it whatever happens.” — Sigmund Freud, “Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning” (ed. Gay)
One thing it’s good forOne thing it’s good for
“The march of Providence is so slow and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our means of abiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.” – Robert E. Lee
The BellThe Bell
The joggers and joggettes of Evanston
gather in packs on grizzly November days
and run south into Oniontown.
At their head is the crier who clangs
his bell and calls, “Stand aside! Stand aside!”
The joggers and joggettes are young
and slender and beautiful, their faces
unlined, brows unfurrowed, their clothing
new and unfrayed, well-styled and of
perfect fit. Their conversation is of matters
pertinent. You may overhear snatches
of it as they trot past. The bell clangs.
The joggers and joggettes trot along
the sidewalks. They will nudge you
in the most polite manner possible
if you have not paid attention to the cries
of the crier and the clangings of the bell.
What words meanWhat words mean
“What defines literary fiction is an attention to language on a word by word and sentence by sentence level that is equal to or greater than attention to plot.” – Eric Simonoff (interview with Michael Szczerban)
What’s your pleasure, sailor?What’s your pleasure, sailor?
“The extraordinarily wide dissemination of the perversions forces us to suppose that the disposition to perversion is itself of no great rarity but must form a part of what passes as the normal constitution.” — Sigmund Freud, “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality” (ed. Gay)