IndStead Landings
In the Middles of Nowhere, Halfway to Somewhere
[I posted this on my Substack page this afternoon, but I haven’t posted at Medium for a long time so I thought I’d try it.]
I could’ve started this and lead up to the fairly fun poem in a completely lighthearted way. Instead I did this:
Environment Matters — We Know
In the evolution of the story behind this story, if that’s what it is, the idea of a landing had to do with bringing our overly philosophical projections, and maybe ourselves, back down to Earth. Just what overly philosophical means is tricky, but it has to do with a detachment from on-the-ground experiences and enjoyment, and with questioning the blank slate idea of human nature (a trend that’s pretty much over, but the laggards aren’t paying attention, and it works well for marketing More).
Ultimately, ideally, Philosophy will find and focus on a truth that coheres with reality and fosters human flourishing better, not just adolescent emancipatory musings. I’m not saying it’s all bad, nor all disingenuous, but we know what kind of things get the crowds’ attention, as do the publishers.
Sure, anything might be true, and maybe we could all live a hundred different ways, and maybe every curated anthropological novelty that we think suits our fancy is philosophically fine. But what if we’re wrong, in the pragmatic sense, and things aren’t quite that arbitrary on the ground. Would our eyes and minds be open wide enough to notice?
As an uncynical but suspicious Joneser (the best term for those of us born between 1956 and 1966), suspicious of Boomers mostly, sympathetic towards X-ers, frustrated by Millennials, still hopeful for Zoomers, I’m encouraged by trends from the Aughts showing up again, even with a few mindful improvements.
That is, we almost climbed out of the Boomers’ swamp about twenty years ago, and from the Boomers’ yuppiedom. The Millennials got spooked by the 2008 Crash and other things and jumped back in, which is why I’m frustrated with them — and why I generalize as if that’s really valid or fair, just like I did there with the Boomers. I have lots of friends who are Boomers, okay?
And this whole project is dedicated to the Millennials, from my teaching years between 1996 and 2008. They’re not all simplistic pleasure-seeking philosophical sycophants, I know. Who could blame them anyway? I don’t really, not entirely.
I bumped into a former sorta-student last week (one of my wife’s favorite students, sister of two I did teach, daughter of the parents responsible for my calling this This Project and for my moving a hundred-year-old house twenty miles away), and she had just turned 42. Of course, someone had mentioned to her Boomer Douglas Adams’ ridiculous and cynical Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and his sarcastic derivation of the meaning of life, which turns out to be the number 42. What wit.
Still, I try to recycle or upcycle the refuse, so I say 42 is not the meaning of life, nor a wry legitimate dismissal of the meaning of life, better conceived as the meaning in life, and that we generally realize this at age 43. (Funny enough, as I like to say to our VP of Engineering here — she works remotely, and also for Apple when she can).
Yes, environment matters, we all know. And everything matters, actually, and sarcastic dismissals of that fact are why we need a landing, in the sense I opened with here. But there are lots of different kinds of landings, all the way from getting away from the high-rise, to alien landings, to the little cottage in The Wizard of Oz landing somewhere over the rainbow.
So much of our so-called true selves is caused by or derived from the environment we’re immersed in. I’m pretty sure Toto would understand this and maybe even its implications. Why is it so hard for us? I think I know, or at least Bug Stu does.
Landing on This Side of the Rainbow
When Dorothy came out of her dream, the cottage sort of landed again, in Kansas, and now she understood a lot more about men (and women) behind curtains pretending to know and to represent more than they do, advising us in ways that serve them somehow, but not us or our heirs. Appropriately, it was the little dog Toto, a very Earthly creature, that exposed the ruse by pulling back the curtain. I see a pattern. You should probably digress on your own time, if you want, because I’m limited here.
As some of you will remember, the story that Rhettie and Wally are telling comes to Rhettie, mostly, in dreams from Bug Stu. She explains them to Wally, and he illustrates them and acts as a normie sounding board. Rhettie is a 2009 graduate of North Newton High School, which is well-situated to see Indiana’s state insect, the Say’s Firefly, named for Thomas Say, a member of the scientific team who joined Robert Owen’s community at New Harmony, Indiana in 1826.
As with the last episode here, Bug Stu and his firefly friends are curious about how the Stralfs in the reeds are trying to influence thought, mostly with song. The poem includes mention of author and playwright George Ade, who grew up in Newton County and returned here to a country estate now being restored. Mark Twain predicted he would be the “next Mark Twain.” That might have been true briefly, but his work did not have the staying power of Mark Twain’s. Stu attributes that to Stralfian interventions.
The poem starts with Stu and his grown-up firefly friends listening to the Stralfs practicing their techniques in the reeds. Something was familiar but sounded a little off, maybe ominous even. Near-miss replicas often strike us that way. Some are repelled, and some are curious. Everyone has to be careful, almost always. Careful.
Buzzin With All That Flies
There they were on the marshy shore
with glowworms all around
(the young fireflies with light to use).
They heard an eerie sound.
A whisper in the reeds they knew,
a song that drew them in,
serene and knowing, heartfelt, showing
care amidst the din.
Crickets, frogs, a busy bog there
buzzin with all that flies.
The whispered song went on and on,
felt wrong and full of lies.
But sweet, and they all listened in,
and learned the sirens’ ways.
No fools, they saw the tools,
abused, against the glowworms, Say’s.
The singing Stralfs, like tubers,
simply built, like Idahos.
Potato-sized with clinching skin,
with eyes, no mouth, no nose.
Their skin makes waves like speaker cones.
They sing without a throat,
or talk or whisper, as they need,
confuse our thoughts and gloat.
Though small, they’ve so outsmarted us,
to send us on our way,
to make us want to leave this place
for Stralf, while here they’d stay.
Their planet’s kind of barren,
though the pictures look so nice.
They convince us of its charm,
say there’s no Good and there’s no Vice.
And slowly over decades
all the strife would take its toll,
and ribbings from George Ade,
the prophecies played out in full.
“Give them what they think they want,”
he kidded more or less.
And that’s half of Philosophy,
I’ve found and I confess.
Take me to the marshy shore,
the source of what we “need, adore.”
I only want to learn, explore.
But tell me what you’re searching for.
The poem’s kinda silly title, “Buzzin With All That Flies,” has multiple meanings.
Strangely though, when I wrote “buzzin” and “flies”, my mind pulled up “Angel From Montgomery,” which is one of the best songs ever, especially if you like feeling sorrowful and depressed for a minute, maybe like swimming underwater for a while but knowing you shouldn’t stay there. But being there, underwater, especially near the bottom, lets you see things, and maybe understand things, that you wouldn’t have otherwise, or something.
Anyway, that got me started on another poem, for Saturday, and that’s when I’ll get more into what the first caption today said this is all mostly about, cottages, Landings, Star Eyes, and Bright Spots. Today’s post was about that too, but I’ll finish it on Saturday, because we’re out of time again.
Thanks for reading : ).
Tim
