Nostalgia for primordial places to which we can’t return; for long lost times. For things that might have stood but never were; for lost loves and loves that might have been.
Echoes from long lost places in our souls for which we mourn.
Wind and rocks and waves. Trees and cliffs, flowers and blades of grass. Willows o’ the-wisp. Omnipresent nowheres lying in wait.
Ubiquitously melancholic whispers yearning wistfully for a home that never was. _______
I’m reading Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, possible even rereading it. I owned a copy in my twenties and thought I’d read it but it now seems obvious to me that I didn’t.
There are several translations available but the one I’m reading seems inadequate to me. I have a graduate degree in translation studies and linguistics (although it is not my primary profession) so perhaps I tend to be more critical than might be fair. Still, the disappointment at what seemed a poor translation of a seminal novel faded as I “plowed” through it until, suddenly, it seemed much less inadequate. The “plowing” ceased and sowing started, especially after I was introduced to “Hermine”.
Originally, the title of this article, a sort of literary review, was to be “Reflections on Hermine”, perhaps it still should be, but as readers will note towards the end, the more traditionally serious civic and literary aspects of this piece devolve into what some will consider sophomoric parody, hence the modification to the title. Hermine does not deserve to be tainted by parody, nor is it the intent of the latter part of this article to engage in parody, but one cannot control the reflections of readers or critics, especially those lacking in both a sense of humor and joy in the sensual; something now all too common as somehow, the liberal perspectives of the 1960s have morphed into censorious Puritanism.
“The” Steppenwolf’s transcendent fame is centered on its psychological reflections and on its refractive introspection with reference to human nature, but for me, at least so far, I’ve derived more from its perhaps unintended sociological and historical revelations as well as from the irreverent digression referenced above. On the more serious historical side, shortly after Hermine was introduced I was struck by the protagonist’s bitterness towards German jingoists who virulently attacked him and other pacifists, much as happens today in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and of course, Israel. What most struck me with reference to the foregoing is that the novel was published in 1927, long before Hitler’s ascent, and thus belied much of the fault assigned to him for subsequent events. The blame, of course, rightfully belongs to the Treaty of Versailles and the viciousness of the victorious Entente, as hypocritical a group as ever blemished the face of our planet. It was their greed and hypocrisy that generated bitterness and desire for revenge among the populace of the German nation, a supranational society that included not only the Weimer Republic but Austria as well, and parts of Poland and Czechoslovakia. A subsurface fury very similar to that generated among Muslims and especially Palestinians today by the disdain with which they are treated by those same countries.
Those brief passages generated cascading reflections on my part as they so accurately presaged the future and now, today’s present. And not only with respect to the rise of the Nazis and their defeat in the oxymoronic “second war to end all wars”. It also struck me that it was members of this same “alliance” now calcified in NATO, namely the United States, the United Kingdom and France, which orchestrated the now obviously hypocritical Nuremberg and Tokyo post war tribunals, proceedings disguised as efforts to impose ex post facto rules of war and legal norms applicable with respect to treatment of subjugated minorities. Rules totally ignored with respect to the victors, not only during those proceedings but ever since. Witness the United States’ facilitation of the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians by Israel for the past three quarters of a century, and especially since October 7, 2023. But then, as Hesse notes, hypocrisy has almost always, perhaps always been the only norm governing interstate, international and intercultural conflicts. It seems ingrained in our nature as the Steppenwolf aspect of Hesse’s protagonist so emotively observed. As I focused on those brief passages, I couldn’t help but recall how the victors in the second war to end all wars, as they were in the first war to end all wars, were as guilty as the vanquished in too many instances, and that the same lot of hypocritical victors, led for centuries by the United Kingdom, have kept the world in constant conflict as they successfully exploited and looted the Global South. Slavery has not really been eliminated, it’s just been camouflaged and swept under rugs.
Having taught history for a decade in my relative youth and, during the past several decades, having been actively involved in political analysis, both academically as chair of university political science, government and international relations programs, and as a participant in numerous media events, television and radio programs, etc., I was inexcusably caught off guard by the epochal reality brought to light for me by Hermann Hesse, i.e., the early appearance of underlying trends which would all too soon blossom into militarist fascism preceding the rise of the Nazi’s, although, on reflection, it is obvious that the Nazis did not sprout fully formed from ether. And although I should not have been surprised, I was again caught off guard by the reality that “all too frequently one learns a great deal more from analyzing an epoch’s or a culture’s fiction than one does from assiduously studying learned historical treatises”, respected albeit inaccurate sources which all too frequently only blend strains of propaganda seasoned with rationalization in order to obfuscate what really happened and why. It is fascinating to realize that either Herman Hesse was prescient or, more likely, that the history we are taught is so bogus that “the more we claim things change, the more they actually stay the same”.
I have another author to thank for my renewed interest in Hermann Hesse, one who reminds me of a now deceased friend, the brilliant translator and poet, Sam Hamill, who founded “Poets against War” as the disastrous second United States incursion into Iraq loomed. His name is Germán Eugenio Restrepo and I met him at the introduction of his latest “sort-of-novel in a fascinating blend of art gallery, cultural center, restaurant and bar in the City of Manizales, a special and somewhat esoteric place with the very appropriate name, given the context of this article, of “El Bestiario” (the Bestiary in Spanish). Germán mentioned Herman Hesse in passing in his novel, and then, responding to my detailed observations, reflections and analysis, admitted that, like so many others, he’d found Steppenwolf particularly meaningful in his youth, perhaps even foundational. That led me to almost immediately purchase a copy of Steppenwolf, along with copies of other Herman Hesse’s novels I’d either never read or had lost (I’ve always kept a copy of Siddhartha nearby but I now also own Narcissus and Goldmund, Beneath the Wheel and The Glass Bead Game, all of which I’ve yet to start).
Germán’s novel is entitled, in Spanish, Diatriba de un Ángel Caído (Diatribe of a Fallen Angel). He’s a complex, erudite and talented fellow who, as in the case of Chilean Nobel laureate, Pablo Neruda, can “confess that he has lived. His “novel” is full of insights and allusions to other works, of references to numerous philosophers and to enlightening esoterica. Indeed, such allusions seemed as though they, rather than any of the characters in his book, were the protagonists, but its most endearing quality was the personal introspection it stimulated and the lost memories and feelings it evoked. Germán’s novel also provided emotionally enlightening insights into the Republic of Colombia where I was born, and where, after half a century abroad, I again live, and of its disastrous history of bellicosity and inequity. Unfortunately, his novel will probably be difficult to obtain, although with todays’ virtual world, perhaps electronic copies will be available. It hope so. It is one thing to read history and quite another to feel as though one were actually a participant in the distressing historical realities narrated, something both Hesse and Germán were able to elicit.
I’m a bit over two thirds of the way through The Steppenwolf and “Hermine”, the female protagonist, is evolving from the initial impression Hesse generated, although “her evolution” is not quite contextually accurate, she is who she always was and it is only my impression of who she is that is evolving. I was initially struck by her ability to immediately attain total control over the chief protagonist, Harry Haller, something I’d once experienced (as the object) with a woman who kept me enthralled for about a decade in what now seems another life, but Hermine is quickly becoming more multidimensional and I find myself in that delightful point where, immersed in literature, I seem personally involved; recognizing the situation in which the protagonists find themselves but, as in the case of John Rawls’ “veil of ignorance”, unsure just how that resonance will play out. I can’t help but contrast Steppenwolf with Hesse’s Siddhartha, an allegorical novel which I have loved for decades, and the comparison is still very much in the latter’s favor, but I’m intrigued by how that perception may evolve given the fame of the former. The Steppenwolf seemed a bit convoluted at the start but has become a bit more human in the middle. I guess the transcendent elements are yet to come, at least for me.
“The” Steppenwolf, which I enjoy using as the title instead of merely Steppenwolf, is, in my opinion, the more appropriately translated title, although “the Steppenwolves” might have been more contextually accurate, as the novel deals with a bipolar hypothesis tested by multipolarity, one with which I’ve played in some of my own writings, especially in relationship to analyzing reincarnation, where I posit that if it exists, then our physical bodies are likely simultaneous experiential vehicles for myriads of entities requiring specific experiences, sort of like the “Legion” with whom Yeshua the Nazarene once interacted, but in a much more benign sense. I’m intrigued by the spiritual concept of panentheism and in that sense, reincarnation would be the panentheistic means through which the divine, learns, evolves and approaches perfection (which it can never attain). A context in which we are merely Divinity’s cells and organs. In that sense, I’ve irreverently toyed with the idea that the more we pray, the more the Divine suffers from migraines.
In my own writings I frequently explore alternative perspectives from a contrarian viewpoint, exploring how, for example, Lucifer, Caine, Benedict Arnold and others almost universally adjudged arch villains perceive of themselves in relation to their antagonists. And that proclivity is not limited to fiction. I tend to champion causes disdained by many of my peers, even so far as to defend people whose values I find distasteful, Donald Trump being an example.
Sort of in that vein but taking another turn towards the irreverent (but perhaps not irrelevant), I will here dare to read between the lines writ by Hesse, delving into an essential aspect of the human psyche, one dealt with but perhaps not adequately articulated in The Steppenwolf (although, as I am only about two thirds of the way through the novel, I may be quite wrong). It deals with the allegorical reality that not all literary wolves are wild animals. Indeed, metaphorically, men who are enthralled by the predatory physical expression of lust (albeit usually denominated as love), are also referred to as “wolves” and thus, perhaps a person who perceives of himself as in a state of bipolarity between such a wolf and a more decent, more respectable or at least more superficially acceptable personality might, after having read Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, consider himself a “schtuppenwolf”. Personally, I find that term somewhat horrifyingly corny and way too much of a pun, but it just won’t go away as I share these impressions. So, how might I share with the reader just what that impression entails? Perhaps the concept can best be illustrated through an example in recent “media culture” (I can’t help but reflect that the phrase “media culture” seems somewhat oxymoronic). The example that comes to mind involves the qualities, traits and practices fictionally memorialized in a comedic television series no longer generally available (having been judged as politically incorrect); i.e., the character of Charley Harper, played by Charlie Sheen (Carlos Estevez) in “Two-and-a-Half-Men”. I wonder if Mr. Estevez ever read Steppenwolf, or any of the novels written by Hermann Hesse. Others more critical of Mr. Estevez may unfairly wonder if he ever read anything at all. Much earlier during the dawn of the television era, my example would have been the protagonist in a series about a photographer, The Bob Cummings Show.
Admittedly this turn in these observations seems a bit frivolous. But it’s also relevant in the context of the complexity evoked by Hermann Hesse’s literary creation. At least as far as I can glean (so far), Harry, the male protagonist in Steppenwolf, unexpectedly has room in his confusion for levity as well gloom, something Hermine clearly understands. So, it seems fair to wonder, at least I do, what Hermann Hesse would have thought of the concept of a schtuppenwolf.
At first blush, one might suspect that he would have found it disagreeable, but then, given his defense of multipolarity instead of bipolarity, there would certainly be room in the complex human psyche he portrayed for one or more schtuppenwolves, as well as for all sorts of alternative psychosocial personalities. Indeed, to an extent, finding and extracting the schtuppenwolf seems to be what Hermann Hesse’s heroine, “Hermine”, sought to accomplish with Harry Haller when she intimately acquainted him with her friend, Maria.
Initially the antithesis of Charley Harper, Harry eventually incorporates some of Charley Harper’s attributes into his complex of personalities. Or perhaps, he merely becomes reacquainted with them, having experienced them during a happier youth, and then misplaced them. It occurs to me that Carlos Estevez/Charlie Sheen/Charley Harper might also have opinions with reference to the foregoing (after all, he already has multiple names). One wonders whether he might not find Derr Schtuppenwolf an excellent title for his own composite biography, or even better, autobiography. Oh what a tale that could make, with dozens of Hermines and Marias, etc.
I wonder what my new friend Germán will think of these observations. He is profoundly serious and eclectic but not bereft of a sense of humor. And sexual passion and eroticism play crucial roles in his own novel so that the concept of a schtuppenwolf might actually have a role to play therein, albeit unwritten; as it does in many poets and artists, or at least had before the Dawn of the Woke. Schtuppenwolves, if not extinct, must now be carefully obfuscated.
What an admittedly strange digression in an article concerning serious novels, but perhaps, not one uncalled for. Rather, what a sad reflection on our values and with reference to the world in which we find ourselves that, rather than joyous, the concept of a schtuppenwolf seems so incongruously out of place when analyzing one of Hermann Hesse’s seminal novels. Actually, out of place anywhere if one hopes to avoid career shattering litigation. Ask Johnny Depp for example.
If only the schtuppenwolf’s onomatopoeic component and “punnic” (as a neologistic derivative adjective for pun) aspects were not so prominent.
Postscript of sorts:
I’ve now passed the three quarters mark, I’m towards the end of the masked ball, Hermine has already revealed herself to Harry and, no, Harry lacks the qualities essential for a schtuppenwolf. The desire is there, and the physical joy, as is the eroticism, but not the predatory elements necessary for a real schtuppenwolf. In fact, it is Hermine and Maria who possess the requisite combination of energy and apparent disdain that make a schtuppenwolf. But there’s still almost a quarter of the novel to go, a quarter of the novel in which, perhaps, I`ll find its existential nature, and perhaps a schtuppenwolf or two.
“Yearning”, a fox trot. Wondering what made it so special to Harry and the rest of the guests at the masque ball, I played it on YouTube. Alas, I guess I lacked the appropriate context, or perhaps I was too full of context Harry and the others had yet to experience, nor could I identify the sounds of a saxophone Pablo would have been playing. Oh well. Still, Hesse made me curious enough to step out of the novel for an instant. Nicely done! On the other hand, YouTube automatically played “Suave” by Johannes Linstead next and, though separated by almost a century, Pablo on the saxophone seemed eerily present, eerily but happily. And it occurred to me that if Harry was not a schtuppenwolf, Pablo most probably was, happily and innocently so. Can a schtuppenwolf be innocent though?
Now it’s done, resolution irresolutely unresolved and the existential experience denied me. A strange journey though, in that Magic Theater, the one starring Pablo as the schtuppenwolf and quite a bit more. _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
I woke up this morning dreaming of the “The Bells of St. Mary’s”, a film starring Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman that I probably first watched as an eighth grade student at St. Gerard de Magella, a Catholic school in Hollis, Queens, a neighborhood in New York City. It’s been a favorite of mine ever since, though hard to view now; times have changed and the values reflected in that film no longer predominate. It reflects a sort of idyllic yet plebian epoch where we believed we stood for decency, ignoring the cultural cancers that afflicted us, the genocide of indigenous Americans and racism based on our history of unrepentant abuse of Africans, as well as our penchant for intervening militarily in the affairs of others in order to appropriate their natural resources.
St. Gerard’s though seemed reflective of a streak of decency, as was Father O’Malley’s and Sister Mary’s St. Mary’s. My best friend at the time, albeit briefly, was an African American of Jamaican ancestry whose name was Cuthbert Williamson. Other close friends were Italian and Irish, and I had a serious crush on a girl whose ancestry I never knew, but whose name was Patricia Maher; all of us happily melding, unaware of how much our world would change or just how hypocritical the country we loved was and had always been.
I think we’ve strayed from the path that might have led from there to the best version of who we should have become. Instead of curing our societal ills, we glossed over them self-righteously and became a more and more polarized society and a larger and larger danger to ourselves and even more so to the rest of the world. Indeed, we became that which we claimed so many of the best among us had died to prevent in the second of our wars to purportedly end all wars and today, our government, if not all of our people, avidly supports ethnic cleansing and the mass murder of civilians that most of the world, at least in the global south, considers genocide. And, of course, our government seeks to embroil us in wars all over the globe in order to attain the worldwide hegemony that we purportedly disdained when I attended St. Gerard.
Shortly after I graduated from St. Gerard, a sort of poetic prophet playing a harmonica and a guitar, and singing what seemed like the hymns of our generation (albeit sort of off key), arose and stirred us towards a better world, asking “when will we ever learn” and declaring that the “times they were a ‘changing”. But we haven’t and they didn’t; … not really. And the innocence of St. Mary’s is gone.
My mood as I awoke this morning was nostalgic and melancholy, as tends to happen as we mature, and I reflected on my personal failures and on my regrets instead of on the successes I’ve attained and the blessings I enjoy; on the many friends and relationships that have vanished and which I did not appreciate as much as they deserved. Bittersweet memories, reflections and introspections. But I also focused on the hope Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman generated when I watched their interplay, a sense of hope they still inspire whenever I manage to revisit Father O’Malley and Sister Mary.
A sense of hope we desperately need today when their like seems all too hard to find. _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
He was as far from suicidal as a human being could be. Indeed, he suspected that immortality was a distinct possibility for him, and not in a reincarnative sense but in his own body, a body to be kept permanently in decent repair. Ironically, when he was thirteen or fourteen, he’d experimented with suicide, but not in order to terminate his life but rather, to assure himself that it had a transcendent meaning, that he was, as he was so often told by his grandmother’s esoteric colleagues in the Theosophical Society, destined to accomplish very transcendent things.
That seemed a very heavy burden to him rather than a compliment, one he was not all that interested in bearing, but if bear it he must, he wanted to know it involved something real. It seemed logical to him that if his experiment with suicide failed, then perhaps there was merit in the assertions of those arcane adults who to him, seemed as likely to be dangerously deluded as sagacious. The experiment was either a success or a failure, as experiments are wont to be, depending on one’s perspectives. He did not “disincarnate”, as his would be mentors might have phrased it, but he did become seriously ill, ill enough to be taken to a hospital where his stomach was pumped and he was placed on a short term diet of ice cubes (“food poisoning” having been suspected). He did not disclose what had actually happened to anyone at the time, or anyone at all for many decades.
So, … he didn’t “pass away” but it turns out that didn’t really prove anything, although the converse would certainly have been definitive, and very final. In consequence he lived his life with a sense that a permanent quest might always be on the horizon, but a very ill-defined quest and a very ill-defined horizon, both in distance and scope. That permanent state of uncertainty and ambiguity led him to investigate diverse spiritual and religious traditions in depth, and to constantly reflect on the nature of divinity, and on whether or not divinity was merely an illusion. And also to delve into psychology and parapsychology, into physics and metaphysics, into mathematics and astronomy, and then into history and cosmogony, poetry and literature and even political theory and science. The latter led him to comparative philosophy albeit superficially, and then to empirical philosophy with himself as both the philosopher and the student.
Because he also had to eat and needed a place to live and a vehicle in which to travel, he studied law, at which he unfortunately excelled although he despised it for its ethical ambivalence. But he practiced it anyway, at least for a while, and not unsuccessfully, at least for a time. However, it was so contrary to his quest for practical verity, equity and justice that eventually, he ran afoul of the unwritten but binding rules pursuant to which that profession was practiced and took on foes much too powerful to defeat, and was consequently cast out of that profession, with a suggestion that he lead revolts elsewhere, which he henceforth did, although with the pen rather than the sword, and eventually, with the keyboard and the cell phone.
He gained some respect in the world at large, and perhaps helped more than a few people, and his students (he became an academic), at least most of them, both liked and admired him, and he them.
Unfortunately, the former was not true with respect to his personal progeny, his greatest failure. There were other areas he should have avoided as well, or at least dealt with in much better ways. He had way too many intimate relationships in a quest for his perfect mate, many of whom didn’t thereafter care for him at all, although some remained friends and a few, very good friends, which was sometimes complex and frequently complicated. Still, his writing and appearances on radio and television and in forums and seminars did succeed in making a bit of a difference in the way the world was perceived, if not in how it was run, although at least he tried, and more and more people came to respect his views, although not really enough to make a difference.
As he matured, sort of, the boy in him was a permanent guest, essential to potential immortality of sorts, he came to realize that it only took helping mold a few very special people, perhaps even just one, who could attain the goals that, when he was very young, had been allocated to him, for him to fulfill the prophecies that had started him on his quixotic quests and that perhaps those well-meaning esoterics had merely misinterpreted his role, which was apparently to serve as a link in a long, long chain towards the eventual Kwisatz Haderach. Whatever that was.
So, …. As we noted at the start of this reflection, he was not really suicidal at all but it was yet too early to tell if he was immortal, after all, he was still alive and was aging in a manner somewhat slower than was usual for most. His hair was still dark and abundant while that of his contemporaries, at least those who still had hair was snow white, and he was very active in diverse areas, including athletics which he loved, but he had lost a step or three and new aches tended to appear every now and then. And immortality he’d realized, would not be all it was cracked up to be, which explained some of the contradictions and fallacies associated with divinity. After all, if one were the last immortal, the last of the last, the final guardian, one would be destined to learn just how lonesome utter loneliness might be and thus, eventually, come to understand why divinity and sanity could not coexist in the same being.
A strange life so far, but not one bereft of magic, at least as far as the most esoteric and farfetched hypotheses imaginable based quantum theories were concerned.
And who knows what might turn up on the other sides of the horizon. _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, as single lives come and go, there was a little girl whose name was Marianne, Marianne Bass, although it might have been Mary Anne, or Maryanne. Who knows, girls play a bit with the spelling of their names. In a sense, she may have been a precursor to another Marianne about a decade later, one with whom I’m amazingly still in touch.
I was “Billy” then, recently arrived from my beloved Manizales into a strange new world, but my English had improved drastically from its non-existence a year earlier. I wonder if I had an accent. Friends my age who’d known me for about six months claimed it had disappeared. And I’d made the great leap forward scholastically from the rear to the head of my class, a sudden linguistic epiphany had made that possible. But there was still some confusion. I was very good at drawing for my age, and I’d been asked to draw a turkey for Thanksgiving, but there were still some words that confused me: chicken and kitchen for example, and, … turkey and turtle. So we wound up with my famous drawing of the first ever Thanksgiving turtle. Turkeys may well have found the concept an improvement.
Marianne Bass in Mrs. Mary Dunn’s class. I recall her new front teeth had already fully come in, mine probably had not.
It must have been, in Miami Beach, or Maybe Miami, probably in 1953-54. My first serious crush. I was seven and she might have been eight. She never knew how I felt but I wonder whether she suspected. We were not close, I was pretty timid (in the midst of confused childish immigrant syndrome) but after seven decades I still recall her from time to time. Especially when I’m in the midst of melancholic nostalgia, in the midst of misty reflections and introspection. Times sort of like today. I do recall one special lunch we shared, albeit in the school cafeteria, where she told me quite a bit about herself, she’d been left back so was older than I was, and as young as we were, I grasped that she was more than just beautiful, that there was a depth to her, and intelligence as well, and that fascinated me. Perhaps that’s why after so, so long, I still recall her so clearly.
I wonder what her life has been like. Hopefully full and meaningful. Hopefully she married someone who appreciated her and had great kids and delightful grandkids. Hopefully her life was secure and free of violence, physical and emotional and that the sorrow she inevitably suffered was shallow and superficial.
I wonder if she remembered me at all, … ever.
I of course moved on. Moved on way too often but I recall her very fondly. I wish she knew although I’m not sure why. I wish she knew what I’d made of my life, at least with respect to its positive aspects.
Marianne Bass in Mrs. Mary Dunn’s class, a pretty time, a very different time, one now, of course, in every sense, long, long gone.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
How do my nostalgia and melancholy relate to bitterness? Or are they more associated with boredom? Or a combination of both?
Actually, I’d guess, they’re related to the full panoply of emotions I’ve felt and to the spectrum of my personal experiences. To all of my regrets and joys; a distillation of sorts, one perhaps diluted in the process, but perhaps, synergistically enhanced instead.
A strange sort of brandy, part biological, part cognitive, part emotional and part spiritual.
And what of that brandy’s residue? The things seemingly forgotten but perhaps just hiding. Hiding from me and from anyone and everyone, but perhaps, like a neurosis, rather than hiding are only in stasis, preparing to pounce unexpectedly, and to create an alternative version of the person I perceive as me.
Brandy, distilled wine, sometimes disguised as cognacs and armagnacs, but only when blended in France, albeit from grapes whose ancestors were once migrants in Chile. Strange. Sort of like my nostalgia and melancholy, all of them filtered through traces of bitterness, but spiced with joys and regrets. _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
Nirvana doesn’t appeal to me. Nor frankly do Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, etc., although heaven is such an amorphous concept it can encompass anything.
Abrahamic heaven is certainly not my thing. At best, horribly boring with perpetual psalms, harping and sycophancy.
But an afterlife with everyone I’ve cared for would be interesting even if complex given competing and inconsistent relationships; at least in my case.
Hell is apparently were all the fun people go so a hell without the torment would be pretty awesome. I wonder if Jimmy Buffet is there, and the Beatles who’ve passed on, and Elvis, and Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio. Awesome artists of course, Vincent van Gogh and Picasso, Rembrandt and da Vinci, Raphael and el Greco, Michelangelo too. And actors and actresses and writers, and of course, poets. Of course, a lot of unpleasant characters would be there as well, loads of politicians and lawyers and pseudo journalists, pederasts and rapists and reams upon reams of religious leaders, popes, cardinals, bishops, priests, rabbis, pastors. And a lot of military officers, especially generals and field marshals and such. And monarchs and judges and jurists who made mistaken decisions.
So Hell, … interesting but not really for me. Too much like the current world.
Purgatory. Hmmm, probably pretty cool, maybe the best of Hell without its downside. But Limbo? Well, sort of vacuous with a lot of babies wailing wondering just what the heck they were doing there, and who they were, and why they’d been abandoned.
What kind of deity creates the foregoing and where ought he, she, it or they be reigning, if anywhere at all.
But Nirvana.
I guess I’m not yet evolved enough to yearn for the absence of everything and anything, everyone and anyone. As though I’d never been, which I find philosophically confusing. Why all the effort, all the incarnations and suffering and, well, pleasure too, if the goal is to return to what I was before I was. Unless, of course, it’s just an exercise for the education, training and evolution of the omnidivine.
But what happens when the omnidivine attains Nirvana?
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
Reflection and introspection at times clarified things for him. His life had not been bad but it had been confusing, and despite its complexities and diversity, he was unfulfilled. Fulfillment, he realized, at least in his case, had to come from within, and his attempts to obtain it through his diverse relationships had always been a mistake, a detour at best, a deliberate misdirection at worst. But misdirection by whom, and for what purpose? That seemed incomprehensible. He was not usually prone to delusions of grandeur, or to despair. He was just not important enough to merit that kind of attention, unless each and every one of us was.
We humans are gregarious he thought to himself, seeking to contradict instincts that hinted that introversion was not synonymous with temerity, and that at least in his case, accurate answers were more likely to be derived from inner reflection than from outward associations. His truths lay within, something he’d always sensed, and perhaps it was boredom more than anything else that misled him. Alleviation of boredom through intimacy with others was not love, although it often seemed that way, and when the boredom dissipated somewhat, what passed for love was gone as well. Residues remained, affection, respect, gratitude, but nothing of the synergistic mutual resonance that he felt love should have involved, and those residues were always tinged with regret and self-recrimination because the residues included consequences to others, as if, vampire-like, he’d left the objects of his affection drained.
It was not love that he sought, although that’s what he frequently thought, but fulfillment of a very different kind, fulfillment that had no fear of loneliness nor need of external resources. A sort of fulfillment crafted from inner echoes and infinite reflections in perfectly juxtaposed interior mirrors where, perhaps, his soul communed with his heart and with his mind seeking to grasp the eternal within and without. And in that context, others would always be a distraction when the mists of passion lifted. As they always did.
He was, he felt, a sort of tempest, a cyclone, a hurricane whose vortex needed to keep ascending fighting against emotional gravity wells lest he crash to earth and lose himself in drifts and eddies of rootless emotions, then be crushed in the grasp of history’s relentlessly chaotic tides. But he’d always been drawn to chaos in whose inchoate depths everything remained possible and from whence he suspected he’d been cast adrift eons ago, before there existed time or space. Cast adrift to find something, perhaps an antidote to relentless order, or perhaps something altogether intangible, perhaps an antidote to a divine inchoatesy, perhaps a counter balance to divinity itself, if divinity in fact existed.
What would that make him he wondered, as images of Hêlēl and Samael and Shaitan churned in his version of Jung’s universal unconscious, or was that subconscious, and any way, was there a difference there, or any relevance? Did relevance in fact exist? Was he utterly lost or on the verge of enlightenment, perhaps sitting in a lotus-like position, meditating under an immense primordial tree, perhaps somewhere near the intersection of Ragnarok and Eden, futilely seeking enlightenment?
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
The lava was dazzlingly bright and malodorous, viscous and horribly searing. He could feel the ring formerly called by some Isildur’s Bane, the One Ring, the one still on Frodo’s finger but both now both ensconced in his belly, both stirring and rumbling, as if fighting or perhaps mating. Somehow the One Ring and Frodo’s finger formed a strange amalgam protecting him from the elements in which he found himself immersed, albeit changing him. He was actually breathing the molten blend of minerals in the core of Mt. Doom, becoming one with them and gaining insights. Everything that had once been vague, confusing and occluded was becoming crystal clear. Well, actually, had become crystal clear. His metamorphosis, if not complete, was well on the road to completion. For some reason he thought of two thespians, one a crooner and the other a comic, and strangely, at the same time, visa versa. They’d someday be famous for something called “road movies”, at least for a while, but their time would be followed by one where the past was something to be quickly discarded and replaced with nary a trace. Strange sort of prescient instant but not one involving the Middle Earth he’d always thought of as home.
His Gollum aspects had been purified and distilled somehow, and become integrated with the Sméagol from whom they’d once escaped, the Sméagol who had once been and would be again, albeit in a drastically changed form, all occurring concurrently. Everything, he realized, was both concurrent and complimentary, especially those things that most seemed at odds. Oxymoronism was the rule rather than an exception as the power of the One Ring and the one finger were integrated into his being. As had been the case with that damned Gandalf the Grey, when he’d been had been transformed into Gandalf the White, his essence seared and melded in the comparatively minor fires in the depths of Khazad-Dûm, so Sméagol was being transformed, was transformed in the infinitely more powerful and hellishly hot timeless fires of Mount Doom. Yes, Sméagol too had emerged transformed, transformed into the all-powerful being he’d aspired to, but not quite. The metamorphosis apparently involved a complex blend of good and evil, and the Gollum he’d been ironically found himself transformed into Sméagol the White, Sméagol of the many colors, Sméagol the-all-colored-and-none. But what had he been before? Gollum the Black perhaps, or Sméagol the sort of dingy grey.
Anyway, “it”, whatever “it was”, was not what he’d imagined. His final triumph over the burglar had not turned out as he’d hoped. He was encumbered rather than liberated, chained to responsibilities in every direction. He was chained in chains more biting and bitter than those in Barad-dûr, although as ethereal as they were ephemeral. He was as imprisoned as he’d ever been, although now in a prison of his own devise where “duty”, rather than feckless free will and whimsical follies and grandeur, seemed to be what divinity entailed.
He was not quite omniscient, although he now knew almost everything that had ever happened and had a fair inkling of what was to come, and if he was omnipotent, his use of power was severely constrained through limits that may or may not have been self-imposed. And omnipresence was very overblown as it stretched him so thinly over time and space as to make him virtually non-existent. As to omnibenevolence, well that was only possible if he froze everything and failed to permit any action at all, and apparently, his possibly self-imposed limits rendered that as improbable as it was impractical. The closest that could be attained in that regard was a sort of perpetual balance between the light and the dark, between absolute silence and the eternally unwinding song of the orbs. Damned stifling he thought.
Sméagol was disappointed. And he had a bit of indigestion as his body tried to assimilate both Frodo’s finger and the One Ring, and despite the hellish heat in the nethermost pits of Mount Doom, he felt bitterly cold. And the massive constant input of information made him dizzy. And he was lonely and alone, now the only being of his kind. Worse, the former occupant of his current post had evaporated as Sméagol’s metamorphosis took hold, changing into a joyful mist from whence was shouted: “free at last, free at last, thank Me all-mighty I’m free at last”, … or some such thing.
Sméagol remembered Bilbo and Frodo and Hobbits and fishies and his cavern and his lake and his little boat, and he remembered the stages through which he’d passed to become what he now was, some phases when he’d been relatively happy, albeit mainly as a baby, then increasingly less so as he’d grown into a young lad of a species now extinct (having been assimilated into various other species, Hobbits among them). He remembered how tasty orcs and goblins could be, especially when seasoned with a bit of garlic, which was hellishly hard to come by given the absence of Italians in the Middle Earth of his time. But now all times were his to play with, albeit passively, but what fun was there in passivity he thought to himself, there being no one around with whom to chat, or with whom to share riddles.
He speculated on how Italians might fit into “his” Middle Earth. Perhaps medieval Italians. But had they already invented the cuisine for which future Italians would become famous and with which he, free of temporal constraints, was already somehow familiar? And what about the famous “Mafia”, which was apparently not an acronym for the Mothers and Fathers Italian Association? He wondered why Italy had come to mind, rather than say, South Africa, or England, now that he had the omniverse in which to play, although, he recalled, only in a passive sense. Then he wondered why South Africa and England felt more relevant. And Iceland, something about its sagas seemed important.
Perhaps, thought Sméagol the White (or whatever, the colors issue had become confusing), this was all a dream, perhaps everything was a dream and only dreams existed, and perhaps he was the only dreamer. Perhaps he’d always been the only dreamer in a dream from which there could be no escape, notwithstanding omniscience and omnipotence and all the other omnis, all of them being somehow passive in the end, each one cancelling out the others.
Then gratefully, if not blissfully, everything became dark, if not quite silent. That damned infernal music of the orbs was incessant as was the somewhat painful rumbling in his stomach, but Sméagol the White, Sméagol of the many colors, Sméagol the-all-colored-and-none slept; hopefully dreamlessly and forever if not quite peacefully.
Sigh!!!!!
In a corner somewhere else in time and space, a place but not a place, someone chuckled, and a string of multicolored rings made from some sort of smoke played at tag. _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
Guillermo Calvo Mahé 