Ecstasy

1.

I remember, way back during the latter years of the Eisenhower administration, when I was first learning German, I came across the following sentence:  Ich war ausser mir vor Freude. Literally translated the sentence reads, "I was beside myself before joy." The very definition of ecstasy, to step beyond oneself, to transcend oneself, to be subsumed into joy. Sometimes literal meanings "unclichés" the cliché, that is, reveals a truth which the usual, figurative meaning of an expression takes for granted. Such is the case with the German expression and its English equivalent.

The sense of self as independent from the environment might not be a fundamental truth, it is, however, an essential lie. Without this 'trick of evolution' we would not be able to separate ourselves from the world, as it were; without it there would be no tools, no science, no culture, no gods. Without it we would be like squirrels, like leaves, like the sky. 

It is a very good thing, but it is also a very heavy burden. The sense of self, a sometimes wonderful thing, is subject to other forces of evolution as well, the search for meaning, competition, the desire to dominate, etc. These and other internal winds can sometimes be as fierce and destructive as the external winds of Neptune.

We therefore need periodic relief from the Myth in the Mirror. Nature, whose primary concern is the propagation of the species, has provided a powerful one: orgasm. The spirit provides two, love and wisdom. 

Nature might not have anything against love and wisdom, but she cannot afford to wait for love to occur on a spiritual and physical plane. Sexual attraction is quicker and much more efficient. I once was fond of telling the following joke: 'What's the difference between Mozart's Piano Concerto Number 24 and sex? Mozart lasts longer!' Nature, you see, doesn't want to divert us for too long. If orgasms lasted a good deal longer, how could we attend to the task of raising a family? And Nature, of course, has an amoral side: does she really care if rape or relationship continue the species? In addition, desire, culminating in orgasm, is subject to many perversions, as the prurient use of the internet attests.

Love and wisdom, though admittedly harder to attain, are ultimately more satisfying; sources of intense spiritual and physical love as well, they are never perverse, they are never wrong.

They provide the only satisfactory paths to get beside oneself with joy. They are the only cosmic, earthly, ultimate Mozarts that last.

2.

I would like now to say a few words about a famous poem by Wordsworth, the subject of which is ecstasy, or more precisely the lack of it:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;--
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon;
The Sea that bares its bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us  not. Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising form the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn,

This justly famous poem is one of Wordsworth's best. The meaning is clear. What human being, whether working at a fast-food restaurant or at Goldman Sachs, has never heard the sound of water lapping on the shore of an inner lake, where he or she can experience the ecstasy of being one with nature, rather than the drudgery of being a cog lost in a mechanical world? "I will arise and go now,/ for always, night and day/ I hear lake water lapping with low sounds on the shore;/whether I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,/I hear it in the deep heart's core."

Far too many have spent too much time, say, during infrequent breaks from work, day-dreaming about being someplace else, doing what the heart's core wants.

Is it the world's fault for being too much with us? Just what exactly is this world? Kant has taught us that we will never know "das Ding an sich," the thing in itself; we can only apprehend what our senses reveal. Hindus teach various forms of 'you are the world,' that is, the world as we experience it is a construct of the human brain. This is largely true, although I view the world as a construct of 'the thing in itself,' and the mind. For instance, there is no such thing as a beautiful sunset without the mind. The colors that cause (sometimes) the heart to leap up when it beholds a rainbow in the sky, do not exist without sensual perceptions; these colors are how the brain interprets light of certain wavelengths. Cosmically speaking, there is no such thing as red. Quantum theory teaches us that we can't even be sure that the wavelengths exist independently.

Now you know the answer to the old riddle: if a tree falls with no one around, what sound does it make? The answer is no sound at all, for sound is the way brains interpret certain vibrations of air. And yes, we can't even be sure that the disturbances are there without consciousness; on this question, physicists are divided.

It is therefore not the world that is too much with us, it is our attitude, our faulty choices. Ramana Maharshi, the great Hindu sage of the last century, taught that one's true nature is bliss. We have created a world of wants, desires, hang-ups that keep us from experiencing this bliss; it is a world of boredom, depression and despair.

No need to be 'suckled in a creed outworn;' the ancient truths of love and wisdom are the great hidden secret of the good life.

So if you work for Goldman Sachs, you might need to quit, and, having amassed enough to get by, live, love, and be wise. You and those around you will be glad you did.

Buddhas teach that our feelings of inadequacy are caused by our desires. Get rid of  all desires and suffering is eliminated. While this is undoubtedly true, it is an extreme position. Not many of us desire the peace of a stone resting at the bottom of the sea. Is the choice, however, between that and running from this to that like a chicken without a head?

I know of a meditation practice of imagining yourself sitting in a field watching cars go by on a nearby road. Those cars are your thoughts. Such observation quiets the mind's discursive activity; we come to the crucial insight that we are not our thoughts. When we finally realize that there is no abiding self, the bliss of being is experienced.

Why is it that "Little we see in Nature that is ours?" Transcend the first person, singular or plural, and the ecstasy of Nature is seen with Nature's eyes. (Recall Meister Eckhardt's profound saying that the eye which I see God is the  same eye by which God sees me--We are talking about different I's, and only one of them has it!)

This is not as esoteric as it might sound. It is said that the basic difference between Ramana Maharshi and the rest of us is that he remained in the bliss of being while the rest of us come in and out of this state. Most of us have had so-called peak experiences.

The task is to increase these peak experiences, or at the very least, approach them. Wordsworth correctly points to the tragedy of being "out of tune" with the majesty of nature. We must do our best to be subsumed into the bliss within and without. How do we accomplish this?

First of all, through some time of meditation or a spiritual discipline that teaches us abstraction, that is, that we are not our thoughts.

Second, we must practice simultaneously the two roads to ecstasy, namely, that of wisdom and that of love. (I, for one believe that these attributes, the very foundations of morality, are not God-given, but are in a our very nature; others may disagree). What's important is to practice them!

Research has shown that the most important factor in life is good relationships. Not money, not fame. Relationships falter if one is not able to ecstatically be subsumed into the other, (love), or to ecstatically realize that you are not the center of the universe, (wisdom).

So if you work for Goldman Sachs, you might need to quit. Having earned enough to live simply, dedicate yourself to meditation, love, and wisdom. You and those around you will be glad you did.

Even Keats Nods

1.

One of the most famous poems in the English language is “On  First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer," composed by John Keats:

 

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,

  And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

  Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

  That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his desmesne;

  Yet did I never breathe its pure sere

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

  When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

  He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men

Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—

  Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

 

Keats wrote this poem in October 1816, shortly before his twenty-first birthday. It is arguably his greatest sonnet and launched his career as a major poet, a career cut short by his untimely death from tuberculosis at the age of twenty-five. Charles Cowden Clarke, a friend from Enfield school where they both had studied, presented Keats with Chapman’s version of Homer’s Iliad. Keats was so struck by this version that he periodically shouted from pure delight as it was read to him. The next morning, by ten o’clock, the sonnet was discovered by Clarke as he sat down to breakfast. How quickly the poem had been written only adds to our amazement at the its near-perfection.

The poem also contains one of the most famous errors in literature. It was Balboa who was the first European to “stare at the Pacific,” not Cortez.

Keats had recently read William Robertson’s History of America which included a detailed description of Balboa's encounter with the Pacific. He had ordered his men to wait for him just before the "peak in Darien", (modern-day Panama), was reached, so that he would be the first to see the Pacific. He knelt before the majestic view and gave thanks to God. This was obviously the event Keats was referring to, not to Cortez, who was busy plundering Mexico around that time.

The mistake is understandable. Keats wrote the poem quickly and referred to his memory. I am not sure he had Robertson's book with him at the time, anyway. And, of course, there was no Google in Keats's day.  It's a minor error that doesn't detract at all from the majesty of the poem.

The subject of the poem is the transcendent, overwhelming, aesthetic awe that swept over Keats after reading Chapman's Homer. This "new planet" which swam "into his ken" shook Keats to his core. It was a transcendent experience because Keats, subsumed into the new encounter, for the time being forgot he was Keats. His ego was transcended, the very definition of ecstasy. The poem has become an emblem of aesthetic delight.

Keats depicts this ecstatic experience masterfully. I love his use of "wild surmise;" "wild" because the experience of the tidal wave of ecstasy that was about to break over them was so thoroughly unexpected, "surmise" indicating that their inner beings had a premonition of what was coming. The majesty of a sunset, for instance, is a product of how the inner (the brain) interprets the outer (the sunset)--The sunset by itself is not majestic at all.; the brain by itself is just a blob of protoplasm. Cortez's men, in other words, anticipated the wave that was about to break over them and had a good idea of what it portended.

The last line is for me the best of all.  The iambic pentameter is broken with the trochee "Silent"--which is followed by a caesura, supplied by the comma.  This is a rhythmic description of the awe Keats felt. What's left to see after this? The rest of the line must be read faster and quieter--what is left is breathless majesty. Keats indicates this by a rhythmic change. Although the line is technically written in iambic pentameter, "upon a" is actually an anapest that is stopped by the stress of the word "peak".  The wonderful word "Darien" consists of a stress followed by two unstressed syllables. 

The last line is thus a striking example of Hopkins's "sprung rhythm." The stresses are on the first syllable of silent, on the word, 'peak' and the first syllable of Darien. This change from the iambic pentameter of the other lines is striking, and expresses the breathlessness that can be the result of extreme ecstasy, especially when first encountered. The three actual stresses, compared to the implied five, forces us to read the line faster, which fosters the experience of awe.

2. Chapman

Keats referred to "on first looking into Chapman's Homer"--as a well-read young man, he was undoubtedly familiar with  versions of Homer and Vergil, popular in his day. Pope's translation of The Iliad into heroic couplets was well-known in Keats's time, while Dryden' s translation of The Aeneid was the standard version of that epic. George Chapman (1559-1634) wrote his version of The Iliad a century earlier than Pope's. Pope was a great poet; writing at court during the Augustan age, (Pope lived from 1688 to 1744); his verse was highly polished, while Chapman's were, more or less, diamonds in the rough. Pope was often cynical, e.g. "Maggots half-formed in rhyme exactly meet,/And learn to crawl upon poetic feet," a quote from his satirical poem, The Dunciad.  Chapman's rougher lines tended toward immensities; they evinced a much broader emotional range.  Here is an example, the ending of "Hymnus in Noctem," from "The Shadows of Night":

So in the chaos of our first descent,

(All dayes of honor, and of vertue spent)

We barely make retrait, and are no lesse

Than huge impolisht heapes of filthiness.

Mens faces flitter, and their hearts are blacke

But thou (great Mistresse of heavens gloomie racke)

Are blacke in face, and glitterest in thy heart,

There is thy glorie, riches, force, and Art.

Pope, writing in The Age of Enlightenment, viewed night more or less as a symbol for ignorance; he was the poet of day. These powerful lines of Chapman strike us as more modern; The Age of Enlightenment, after all, failed to deliver. Chapman's night, symbolizing perhaps the transcendence of and freedom from the ego, though very black, is, however, not without a star, some form of transcendent insight. (That star, however, though always present, is unseen during the light of day.)

Elizabethan profundity was much more akin to the burgeoning Romantic movement to which Keats belonged. When lines from Chapman's Homer were read aloud to him, he broke out with shouts of joy at certain passages. Too bad we don't know which lines they were!

3. Dickinson Nods As Well?

We return to the false reference to Cortez. Erica McAlpine recently published a book entitled "The Poet's Mistake."  She correctly asserts that poets sometimes make mistakes, albeit perhaps less frequently than the rest of us. She cites Keats's error, along with ridiculous attempts by some critics to justify it. She mentions other 'howlers' as well. Among poems containing mistakes, she includes the following lines by Emily Dickinson, which were written as part of a letter of consolation to Mary Higginson in 1867:

The Flake the Wind exasperate

More eloquently lie

Than if escorted to it's Down

By Act of Chivalry.

This is certainly not Dickinson at her best. The meaning of the poem, as I see it, is that "Nature knows best" and is more eloquent (better) than what we humans can do, even with the best intentions.

McAlpine takes Dickinson to task for the apparent solecism: shouldn't "Wind" take the third person singular, that is, "exasperates"--Similarly, shouldn't "lie" in the next line be "lies?" 

I'm not sure. I think the grammatically correct addition of the letter "s" in both cases might have sounded too prosy to Dickinson's ear. Dickinson, like Hopkins, often used grammatical liberties to help create her inimical style. She might have made an error with "it's", but I doubt  that she missed the obvious failure to match a singular subject with a singular form of the verb.  The plural form of the verbs provide, for me at least, a subjunctive, conditional mood. If I were to translate the first two lines into prose, I would suggest, "(Let) the Wind exasperate the Flake, (And it will) more eloquently lie". The grammar is contorted, granted; we must not forget, however, the root meaning of the German word for the writing of poetry, dichten, is 'to condense', or to 'make thick'. Poetry is not prose!

Perhaps McAlpine would include me among those critics who justify errors of poets to the point of absurdity. Perhaps she is right; in this case, however, I think not.

Keats's error deserves a footnote; it is a curiosity that does not diminish the majesty of the poem. It remains one of the greatest short poems written in English.

How did we get into this mess? How are we going to get out of it?

1.

 It's almost a month since that misguided, frightening mob stormed the Capitol. As I write this, it's also been several weeks since Trump left office. My house is still standing. Our divided house, pace Lincoln, is still standing as well, although desperately in need of repair. 

I am writing this essay to convey a much-needed sense of relief, even optimism, for I believe the glass of our present situation is over half-full, be it ever so slightly. This coming from a person like me is saying something, for I was very worried for a while that the glass was about to fall and shatter. 

Democracy has survived! The attempted coup failed. It failed for  good reasons: the checks and balances that the Founding Fathers wisely put into the Constitution did check and balance the excesses of a sick man, who was (and is) as authoritative and as anti-democratic as the thugs he admires: Putin, Duterte, and Kim Jung Un, to name a few.

Even a padded Supreme Court didn't allow itself to be used as a footstool from which that 'very stable genius' expected, with the help of others, to proclaim victory, and to void the uncomfortable truth of having lost the election. If this were a country (like Belarus, for instance,) in which democracy is as popular as a can of beans would be in a butcher shop patronized by cannibals, Trump would still be president--I have little doubt about that.

Having won the War of Independence, the Founding Fathers, who wanted to safeguard America's future from despots, wrote and ratified a splendid Constitution; the separation of powers and the First Amendment are still very much in effect. Two Hundred years have given Uncle Sam enough time for these bulwarks of democracy to become second nature.  Lucky for us, and unlucky for those countries that lacked them, such as Weimar Germany.

2.

I proudly assert that I smelled a rat even when there were no droppings on the pantry floor.  I count myself among those who 'knew Trump's number,' a zero that would never add up even to a positive fraction; Trump and his party would reach that unifying integer, one, as quickly as a mule in Boston would arrive at the North Pole by heading south from Faneuil  Hall.

Trump is a racist, a narcissist; a mean, incompetent, lazy man who had no business being president. How could one think otherwise of a person who was the head of the 'birther movement', which claimed that Barack Hussein Obama was as American as Idi Amin? etc. Unfortunately, many did, and apparently still do.

From the day after Trump's  election in 2016 until now, I have written some thirty pieces about this nasty saboteur who has inflicted great damage on my country and on the world. These documents are all on my blog and have reached thousands of readers all over the world. Unfortunately, the prediction of the first essay, Small Hands Blues, namely, that Trump was too incompetent, too crooked and too scandal-prone to complete a four-year term, has, alas! been proven wrong.

Among the metaphors I used to describe the Trump presidency was that of 'the negative pyramid.' I asserted that if someone as ill and incompetent as Trump suddenly found himself at the apex of a pyramid, which his vanity had constructed solely out of imaginary, diaphanous bricks, gravity would know what to do with him; he would have met the same fate as a madman who jumped off a skyscraper imagining that he was  able to soar like an eagle, but who fell like Icarus, having become as important as a dead pigeon on a busy sidewalk. He did not fall on his face because he was supported by the upper third of the pyramid made up of muddy bricks, the Republican members of the House who even now support him,  Trump's pathology had brought him to the top; greedy Republicans, who love their perks and fear primaries more than they fear God, are largely responsible for keeping him at the summit of power. More problematic still is the lower two thirds,  the base of the pyramid, his base.

It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss why so many, including good people, willingly got in line behind a very needy, obese, aging piper who has lead us all into a cave of despond from which it will take a long time to extricate ourselves. Broadly speaking, however, I would like to mention three reasons why his base is so, well, base. First of all is the financial support he received from the very wealthy. The rich, who have become even filthier rich during the Trump administration, want to maintain their position as the hidden puppeteers running the whole show. Their primary concern is lowering taxes, despite the great needs of everyone else. Whether America burns or not is a matter of indifference to them. Second, Trump's support comes in large degree from undereducated whites from areas devastated by globalization. The good-paying jobs of their fathers have gone. When people lose meaning in their lives, they tend to become angry. Angry voters tend to become irrational. Angry and irrational people tend to find scapegoats--in this case, Blacks, immigrants and liberals, to name a few--groups of people who have absolutely nothing to do with their plight. The third aspect is relatively new--the rise of social media. Someone said that about 30% of voters in America are ignorant and tend to vote against their own interests. This 30% has swelled astonishingly, by at least 50% in the last election. The rise of social media is at least partially responsible for a decline in critical thinking. Many like to hear their own ideas, however irrational, enforced. The internet is the ideal platform for fanatics to share the flames of their passion until they reach a level of conflagration. Could anyone imagine the absurdities of QAnon having arisen in the age of Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Morrow? (I'm old, I admit it.) How can the harm wrought by these three factors be mitigated?

3.

At the outset of this essay I asserted that there is reason for some optimism. The coup, after all, failed. We can be only slightly optimistic, however; the country remains deeply divided. Although Biden received about eight million more votes, a full 48% of the American electorate cast their ballot for an incompetent, selfish man. Yes, the  Democrats received more votes than in any other election, but the Republicans garnered the second most votes in any election. If it weren't for Trump's horrible bungling of the Covid epidemic, Narcissus would probably still be in the White House.

How will we get out of this mess? It won't be easy. I must admit that I'm no expert here, but I have come up with three factors to counter the three factors mentioned in the last section, that were pivotal in causing the current political decline. First, we must increase taxes on the rich. A simple solution would be to remove the salary limit for Social Security taxes. Second, there needs to be a considerable increase in funds for education. The amount of education one has and one's ability  to think critically are, without a doubt, directly proportional to each other. Third, we need a vigorous New Deal-like program to put people back to work. American infrastructure is in bad need of repair. Not only are bridges between people, but steel and asphalt bridges are in danger of collapse as well. The transition to green jobs, and the many positions this will create need to be vigorously supported.

There will always be a section of the country that is irrational and fond of conspiracy theories. However, if the undereducated become more educated; if most people are employed doing work they can be proud of, irrational behavior would be greatly reduced. Which also means that Republicans wouldn't have to take extreme positions, since they no longer would fear bein primaried if they did the right thing.

Yes, the glass is half full; but it is positioned at the edge of the resolute desk. A few more false moves and the glass will fall and shatter. These are still dangerous times! It is up to all of us to fight for democracy; it is true that we get the country we deserve. I hope that I will be more optimistic in the (near?) future. Let us take care of each other better, beginning now. Stay active, stay informed, and stay tuned.

How to Modernize Shakespeare

Elect Iago president. Put any Bloody

Fool on center stage. Have Gagas and Dodos

Play ladies and lords. Let Prince Hamlet

Starve. (Exit Bear! Devour them all!

Take selfies with cubs on ice floes; snap

Phantom grizzlies stalking failing schools.)

Have plays directed by pseudo-originals:

Make Lear queer! Make Caliban Afghan,

A much-abused, rude, sun-bronzed god.

Let Paroles oppress Prospero for laughs.

Have the Duke of Vienna ban great books.

Fill libraries with Ecstasy and Me by

Peter Quince. Make poor toms a-cold.

Have Goneril or Regan incarnate Ronald

Reagan--Finis! What about Jacques' Seven

Ages of Man? Let's mewl and puke on

At stage one. Stream cartoons; do not

Read poetry. Drink cola, think cable.

Thomas Dorsett

first appeared in POEM, Number 124, February 2020

From the Depths of Enceladus

Suddenly age has been blasted from sad

to the ninth ring of Saturn. How many

astronomical units from childhood is that?

Yesterday, prose became an inscrutable poem

beneath miles of critical ice. Today rings

hope's ultimate bell. Enough is enough:

despite infarctions, acceptance at the speed 

of light has brought me back to Jersey City:

I'm on my last stent. The door opens wide.

First published in POEM, Number 124, November 2020

Interpretation

As a child, I was fascinated by the solar system. Percival Lowell's theory, with which I was familiar, asserted that striations on the Martian surface, as seen through a telescope, were canals maintained by an advanced civilization. This theory, as I knew even then, had been disproven many decades before I was born. In the 1950s, the belief that life in the solar system other than on Earth was virtually untenable; planets and moons that revolved around the Sun, other than Earth, were widely believed to be either too hot, or, mostly, too cold to support "life as we know it." Today, we're not so sure; primitive forms of life might well exist in our planetary neighborhood. Water, for instance, the solvent of life, is abundant. One of the principal candidates for extraterrestrial life is Enceladus, a small moon of Saturn. Under ten miles of solid ice, there is a liquid ocean, larger than any on Earth. It is thought that life in that ocean, especially around thermal vents, is a real possibility. Geysers from the moon's depths which plume into space compose the ninth ring of Saturn; they contain organic compounds, which is an indication, but not proof, that oceanic life exists. We will find out (relatively) soon. What an amazing time we live in!

An astronomical unit (line 3) is the distance from our sun to Earth, approximately 93 million miles or eight light-minutes. Saturn is about 80 light-minutes from Earth, or ten astronomical units. 

The protagonist of the poem is old and beset with health problems. The protagonist, tired of living a superficial life, is on the cusp of a major transformation; it is 'now or never.' 

I would like to make clear at this point that the use of the first person in my poems does not necessarily refer to the author. I am decidedly not a confessional poet. There are elements, however, that apply to me: I am old, and I was born in Jersey City, NJ. Other aspects are fictive: for instance, I've never had a heart attack or had a stent placed in a coronary artery, nor in any way do I hear 'hope's ultimate bell,' etc.

The metaphorical 'door' of the last line is always open for all of us; it is our choice--at least we can approach it-- whether we walk through and step into a world of genuine relationship with all and with the all. The poem is, therefore, as much about you as it is about me.

Meditation

O you used thimble lying in a dresser drawer.

O you used match.

Concentrate on rough and tumble;

loss, become mythology:

Charybdis as a grain of salt, Scylla

as popcorn. Which worse is which?

Let no soul bob up and down like a cork.

Suffer unborn children. It lasts,

do not forget as you run, it lasts. 

The mind is the brain's internet;

Self is a loose ball of string.

You are the world; disconnect from everything.

Thomas Dorsett

first published in

California Quarterly, Fall 2020 (Volume 46, Number 3)

The Face of Depression

1.

By now, most of you have heard of the Christmas  morning bombing in Nashville.

This is the face of Anthony Warner, a 63-year-old I.T. specialist, who (seemingly) out of the blue blew himself up in his RV in downtown Nashville on Christmas morning, causing extensive damage but no loss of life other than his own.

I would like you to look carefully at his face. It is the face of depression. The mouth shows no expression; not even a hint of a smile. The eyes look directly at the camera with  a combination of defiance and despair. This man obviously didn't want to be photographed; he wanted to be left alone. His general appearance indicates a lack of concern regarding how he presents himself to others. He has obviously not seen a barber in a long time; lack of personal styling of his hair reveals a man who has "let himself go." His clothes are casual-sloppy and seem to be chosen at random. This is the face of a loner; this is the face of a man who has given up.

Look at that face again. He looks so defiant; he looks so angry! The anger appears to be chronic and internalized. How dare you take my picture, it seems to be saying.

This is the face of a man whose needs haven't been met for a long, long time. It is the mien of someone who has given up all hope, Leave me alone, it seems to be. saying--or else. "Else" came on Christmas morning.

How do I know all this? Am I using his face as a Rorschach test? I think not. It is too, too common.

It was once the face of my father, who died miserably in 1967. It is the face of several patients I had encountered as a practicing physician. It has also been, now and then, my face as well.

The contrast between Mr. Warner's face and this face is striking. The face above is that of the renowned physicist, Michio Kaku, the author of several books and researcher in the field of string theory. Warner's and Kaku's are indeed both human faces; both men have long hair, but there the similarities end. Dr. Kaku's hair is long like Mr. Warner's, but unlike the latter's the former's is well groomed. Dr. Kaku's face exudes confidence and the desire to communicate as well. It seems to be saying, "I have something interesting to say, please listen; you have something to say as well, I am listening." The contrast between the two mouths is equally revealing. Mr. Warner's seems to be saying, "I hate myself and I hate you; leave me alone!" Dr. Kaku's seems to say, "Life is good, and I'm delighted to be alive. One face elicits compassion and pity; the other, admiration.

2.

I was convinced it was suicide from the beginning. Emerging facts corroborated my opinion. He parked his booby-trapped RV in downtown Nashville.  The sound system played over and over a famous song from the sixties, "Downtown."  The opening lyric is as follows: "When you're alone and life is making you lonely/ you can always go downtown."  It's basically an upbeat song, but I think the major key turns minor in Mr. Warner's interpretation. Mr. Warner, an obviously intelligent man, was an I.T. specialist; he traveled from business to business, fixing computer problems. He did not have regular colleagues.

Mr. Warner said something to a casual acquaintance that is very significant. He informed him that something was about to happen, after which everybody would know Warner's name. The acquaintance believed that he was talking about good news! 

This is significant. It reveals that Mr. Warner suffered because he was unknown and failed to make his mark in the world. Mr. Warner, in short, felt worthless, a terrible burden to bear. Mr. Warner's state of mind is the dark side of our highly competitive culture. He probably thought a lot of himself as well. The path of great expectations and self-hate sometimes leads to the abyss, as it did in his case.

The recording that blasted  from the RV before the bomb exploded informed those within range of hearing to clear the area. He gave the public ample warning. The immediate vicinity was indeed evacuated, the result of which was that no one died except Mr. Warner himself.

I would imagine that many distorted by self-hate would want to bring the world down with them. That Mr. Warner desired no harm to others speaks in his favor. Deep down there, I think, he was good person.

Poor thing! I think the statement he was trying to make was, "Notice me! I'm somebody, too!" How sad. It is well known that depression distorts thinking and sometimes paralyzes sense.

I heard many pundits on TV state that Mr. Warner should be classified as a white, domestic terrorist. This doesn't help; this doesn't help at all.

Mr. Warner, as an aging white man, belongs to a very high risk group for suicide, second only to that of Indigenous Americans. The fact that he gave away his possessions before he blew himself up indicates a man with a suicide plan. 

He caused a lot of damage, still, I think, one should have compassion. Putting that compassion into action would help the thousands of Warners who exist in the USA get some much-needed help.

I think Mr. Warner was wearing the face of despair for a long time. How many people said, "What's the matter?" or "I think you need some help?" A little nudge; the butterfly effect could have significantly changed his affect, and prevented tragedy.

Yes, Mr. Warner failed himself, but we also failed him. Many of us strive to do our best to help; do you?