On Cults and Mayonnaise

Silverberg, Robert. The Masks of Time. New York: Ballantine Books, 1973. Print.

While I highly doubt the average person would admit it, there is no doubt in my mind that we live in an age fueled by cult madness. You, your best friend, and your mother might disagree, but we’re knee deep in it even though no one’s pulled out the pitcher of kool-aid yet. I don’t think anyone realizes how truly Bizarre with a capital ‘B’ the world is. Everyone is so hell-bent on pushing the terror of meaning out of their mind that they’ve set up alters to the most ridiculous, shocking, and grotesque things.  It’s all about the meaning and priority you assign to the things in your life. Would you believe that some of the most straight-laced, square people are members of some of the sickest unofficial, unorganized organizations in the world? Facebook can be a cult, and so can fashion and yoga and rigid, organic lifestyles. It all depends on how a person treats a thing, institution, pastime, or whatever. We dedicate abnormal amounts of time to things that don’t matter at the end of the day, all the while suppressing the mortifying and frightening thought that this is where we’re looking for and assigning meaning. 

Robert Silverberg’s The Masks of Time is a novel about cults. Two cults, really. One that does a merry dance of death around the thought of an impending doomsday, the other putting all their faith and love in a man that might be from the distant future (could also be an alien, a hoaxer, or a crazy). The story is told from the perspective of Leo Garfield, a professor of physics assigned to a team that is supposed to chauffer Vornan-19, the man of the future, through the United States, protecting him and assessing him as they go. I won’t say whether Vornan turns out to be what he says he was, because it doesn’t matter. An object is only what others perceive it to be, and for people looking for meaning, for a god to creep out of the rubble of anarchy and provide a Way Back Out, Vornan-19 was a god. Whether he actually was from the future or not. Whether he was all-powerful or not. Whether he was even likeable or not.  I really enjoyed this book. For me, Vornan-19 was the perfect personification of the kind of weird attitudes I notice in the world today. Hell, you can polish up a jar of mayonnaise real shiny and call that your god, if you feel so inclined. And our handy human brains will allow you to do it subconsciously, without wasting the time of even acknowledging the beatific mayo’s divinity.

Brian Barker Makes Me Pitch a Fit

Let me stamp my foot and act out the written, adult version of a child's tantrum: IT'S NOT FAIR.

Here's what I'm talking about: Brian Barker. And I'm not referring to his talent--yes, one might call it unfair to be that damn good, but I'm not about to cast stones of jealousy towards someone who can make my head spin so in the weirdly enchanting alleyways of sinister country.

I've spent a fair amount of my pre-shutting-down-for-bed-time reading poetry, and Barker is my latest find. I came across his poem, "A Brief Oral Account of Torture Pulled Down Out of the Wind", in the winter 2011 volume of Pleiades, then went on to his website and read all of the freely available stuff I could find.

Barker is a professor at the University of Colorado Denver, the co-editor of Copper Nickel, the recipient of numerous awards, and the author of two books of poetry, The Animal Gospels (2006) and The Black Ocean (2011).

Here's what I'm complaining about: the irreconcilable conflict that arises when a passionate person is broke.

Right now, on Amazon, The Animal Gospels is selling for $16.95. That's $16.95 for 76 pages. Same price from his publisher, Tupelo Press. The Black Ocean will not be available until June, but I imagine the price will fall somewhere in the same region.

Now, I'm not saying Brian Barker's work is not worth seventeen bucks. Based on what I've read, I'd say it's worth more, and I'd gladly pay it in order to show my respect and chip in whatever I could to support the guy, however dull that quarter might be, coming from my pocket. But seventeen dollars? For seventy-six pages? I realize the economy is no friend to writers right now. But when books put out by worthy authors such as this are that expensive (and the economy is really no more a friend to anyone else than it is to writers), things are not going to get any better any time soon, because no large base of buyers is going to develop, even if there are tons of people like me interested in purchasing copies.

I don't even know how to round off this post. I'll at least say this: Brian Barker is a wonderweaver and my life stinks because I'm having to put off buying his first book until my checkbook register gets bored with this hostility bender its been on lately.