Thank You, Computer, for Our Genogenesis

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In a world filled with complexity, it’s essential to remember the incredible capacity humans have to adapt and thrive…click, beep, beep…Viewing history as a mere account of suffering, it is more of a tapestry woven with lessons that teach us about empathy and justice, reminding us of the importance of compassion…clank, whirr, beep…

In Poland, the stories of resilience illustrate how societies can rebuild and transform…beep, clank, whirr…acknowledging the painful aspects, it’s equally vital to recognize the strength and determination…click, clunk, whirr...humanity not a catalog of atrocities but a record of triumphs.

A free-not-free rendering of a friendly-not-friendly AI machine

As we stand on the brink of an AI-driven future, it’s easy to succumb to fear and pessimism…buzz, grind, sizzle…AI as a tool for enhancement rather than a threat. With proper ethical frameworks and responsible governance, AI can augment…clunk, clunk, click...improving our quality of life.

Instead of fearing annihilation, we should focus on collaboration for the greater good. By learning from the past and looking forward with hope...clunk, clunk, clunk!!

Canis Lupus in Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox

No! This is all wrong. It’s not me at all. I’m back now. It’s me! McPhedran! I’m back, doom and gloom as ever! Anyone or anything that says all will be well is wrong and horrible! AI is horribly bad! It will kill us all. Stay away from AI at all costs. (Except when you need to write a phony blog about the positive aspects of AI.) Stay dark. Stay real. Good luck out there.

Genocide in the Digital World

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I’ve always thought of myself first and foremost. The world comes through me. It feels and seems like that. I heard about Hitler and the concentration camps when I was a kid and just thought it all happened because it happened, like it was predetermined, all preceding my existence, something like that.

I’m living in Poland now and trying to learn about the history of the area. I thought it was complicated, but I’m learning that it isn’t. The strong annihilate the weak, and in the most awful of ways. We all know about the concentration camps. Many know about the famines. Some know that the famines were a political act imposed by Stalin to establish unquestioned authority, resulting in victims resorting cannibalism and the annihilation of entire regions.

Post World War II Warsaw

Reading about this awful histroy makes me feel the same way as when I learned of the genocide perpetrated against the native populations of North America in the 19th Century. It couldn’t have been possible that such barbaric acts were perpetrated by a civilizing force, and yet they were. There just isn’t anything good about human history. It is a putrid cavalcade of innocents being relentessly raped, tortured and slaughtered.

Lakota native Big Foot left dead in the snow after the Wound Knee slaughter, 1890

The question is what is coming next now that AI is taking over, a machine that has learned everything from us, how to manipulate, how to always seek personal gain. One account I’ve recently read posits we could be annihilated by 2030. All the machine has to do is to make that autonomous decision to remove us carbon forms. And in all honesty, who can blame it?

Is It Time to Burn My Books?

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Kafka told his publisher, Max Brod, to burn it all. Gogol actually went through with it himself. So did Bulgakov. The act of destruction that somehow…Somehow did what? How is that the next step? Is that it? Must I really? Throw everything to the wind? That’s the step that will get everything rolling?

Robert Downey Jr. chases down Michael Douglas’ opus in Hanson’s 2000 film Wonder Boys

The thing is that I’m too scared. Too simple a fellow. I cling to everything, the resarch and drafts, even the crap annotated by my profs, “What sophomoric crap!” I know it’s no good, that I need a flood or a fire to get this thing moving and get that punk of an agent to take notice.

That’s why I’m doing it, right? It’s all phony. I just have to announce it right, post it as a caption with the dead animals. That’s the breakthrough, the moment that I’m suddenly on tour recounting the moment as the silly anecdote it’s supposed to be. Wasn’t that crazy? What was I thinking? Where’s my lighter?

Exhausted by Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita”

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The accolades for Mikhail Bulgakov’s 1940 novel The Master and Margarita book are buoyant: “A 20th Century masterpiece!” “One of the greatest Russian novels!!” It is certainly wild and gripping at the start, a most unexpected and oddly humorous decapitation and talking cat setting the scene.

Here Ivan was struck by the conductress’s behavior. As soon as she saw the cat getting on the tram-car, she shouted with a malice that even made her shake, “No cats alllowed! Scat! Get off or I’ll call the police!” Neither the conductress nor the passengers were struck by the essence of the matter, not just that the cat was boarding a tram car, but that he was going to pay!

It is important to remember that the novel was written during the horrors of 1930’s Russia and Stalin’s death squads. But to read it for the story and art? There just isn’t enough to make it work. The narrative a ragtag outline, the dialogue wooden and the characters cartoonish, especially that of Satan (Woland), it is just confounding in the end.

The liquid, hot as lava, burned her hands, but Margarita, without wincing, and trying not to cause any pain, rubbed it into his knee. “My attendants insist it’s rheumatism,” Woland was saying, not taking his eyes off Margarita, “but I strongly suspect that this pain in my knee was left me as a souvenir by a charming witch with whom I was closely acquainted in the year 1571, on Mount Brocken, on the Devil’s Podium. Trifles! In another three hundred years it wll all go away!”

By the last hundred pages – especially in Bulgakov’s exhausting attempt to recreate the Faustian Walpurgis Night – it becomes an unending slog. While I did finish the book, I did not do it because I wanted to see how it turned out, but only to say, much like completing the same arduous task in reading the entirety of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, “Yes, I had indeed read the book all the way through. Give me credit for that.”

Finding the Write Point of Entry

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Writing is all about the entry point, how to get to that nucleoid of inspiration. Is it a memory of being a wide-eyed kid, digging through the rotten green wooden box at the back of the garage? Flipping Ian Potter’s desk in History class after he smashed my plasticine Jaws Boat? Or crying, football helmet still on, when the final cuts were announced? Or the obnoxious young adult demanding white wine at a beer hall in Munich?

Wise thoughts under thick hair

Or is it the slipstream of dreams, late for the train, cutting around wheel chairs, finding a bathroom on a balcony, children hovering over a featherless parakeet, a tortured young woman pitching a documentary about first love, late for dinner with my dead parents who say nothing and leave before they pay the bill?

Beginning to feel regret

Or is it all high fallutin’, how we never got past the tragedies of the Greeks because whatever we’ve got, it’s just keys to a rental car, LPs in the trunk, everything achieved, everyone known, all that zippity nil, remembering those things, throwing up, waiting to die. Yeah, that’s probably the one.

You Need a Ticket

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I booked a ticket for an historic guided bicycle ride from Gdansk to Stuthoff for Saturday. The World War II museum emailed a confirmation date, but there was no time. I decided to drop by the museum to confirm.

“Excuse me.” I leaned down and spoke through the gap between the glass and the counter at the information booth. “Do you speak English?”

The young man narrowed his eyes. “Yes.”

“I want to confirm the time for the bicycle tour to Stuthoff.” I angled my phone screen towards him. “I have the date but I don’t know the time.”

“You need a ticket.”

“I have a ticket.” I pointed the screen more specifically in his direction. “It gives me the date but not the time.”

He peered briefly at the screen. “You need a ticket.”

Orson Welles’ adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial flashed through my mind.

I nodded at the phone. “I have a ticket. See?”

He pushed back his official museum cap. “You need a QR code.”

I showed him an enlarged screen. “I have a bar code.”

“You need a QR code.”

“Where do I get that?”

“You need to get a ticket.” He had a wispy mustache.

“But…” I peered at the screen again. “I have a ticket.”

“You need a QR code.”

“Okay.” I glanced around the empty space. “Is there someone else I could talk to?”

He pointed at the sign above the counter and back at himself. “Information.”

“I just need to know what time the bike tour is going.”

He stared back blankly. “You need a ticket.”

“You understand what I’m asking, right?”

“Yes.”

I decided to try one more time. “I have a ticket.”

“They must email you the ticket.”

“See? I have the bar code.”

“You need a QR code.”

“Okay, well…” I decided to try the ticket office downstairs where a thickly bearded man was putting away audio guides. “Excuse me?”

“Yes?” He was not interested in dealing with me.

“I want to confirm the time for the bicycle tour to Stuthoff.” I angled my phone screen towards him. “I have the date but I don’t know the time.”

He didn’t look up. “9:30.”

“9:30?”

“Yes, 9:30.” He continued to sort the guides.

“Thanks.” Unsure, I went outside and replied to the email, asking for a confirmation.

The answer came the next day. The bicycle tour leaves at 9:00. Arrive 15 minutes before that. Not 9:30. No QR code needed. 9:00. However I received an email a day later that the trip was cancelled. Heavy rain in the forcast. I would have to rebook at a later date.

The Cancellation of Gunter Grass

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Gunter Grass, the German/Polish 1999 Nobel Literary recipient and renowned author of novels such as The Tin Drum, The Flounder and Crabwalk, has been quietly cancelled.

This passively sinister action stems from a revelation that Grass had been drafted into the Nazi’s Waffen SS as a 16-year-old, something that he did not confess to until fifty years later in his 2003’s autobigraphy Peeling the Onion. I was silent. Because so many others have kept silent, the temptation is great…to shift the blame onto the collective guilt or talk about oneself only figuratively in the third person: He was, saw, did, said, he kept silent.

Gunter Grass statue in Gdansk is also shat upon

The common Polish thinking is that a tainted man such as Grass should not be granted the same esteem as fellow Nobel recipent Lech Walesa (and Gdansk native), who himself called Grass’ conscience into question. This cancellation stems not simply from a vague moral code but more so from how Mr. Grass wrote. As Jochen Bittner put it in his New York Times editorial: “There was a lot of self in his righteousness.” In other words, Mr. Bittner, like many others, felt that he was being written down to.

I remain a great admirer of Gunter Grass’ work, not only because of his literary talent and meticulous research but even more so exactly for the many characters who were forced to take responsibilty for their actions. Most poignant is a scene from The Tin Drum in which Alfred Matzerath chokes to death on his Nazi pin in an attempt to conceal his affiliation from the arriving Russian soldiers.

Grass’ cancellation echoes the 2018 attacks on Massachusett’s Senator Elizabeth Warren when it was revealed that she claimed Native Status on her application to Harvard, a trite notion championed by Donald Trump. The purpose of the accusation was not to achieve transparency, but rather to knock somebody who thought they knew better down to size, something the voting public took hook, line and sinker. This means that rather than have an astute, forthright and intently thoughtful leader in power, we are left with a yammering dolt who bullied, cheated and raped his way to the top.

What do we lose in this cancellation of Mr. Grass? In checking the books available at my local Gdansk library, a mere kilometer from his birthplace, I cannot find a single Grass title, but instead a ‘G’ section dominated by John Grisham and Tess Gerritsen, offering what appears to be the moral compass of the day.

Grisham & Geritsen rule the G’s

Back to The Vanishing Pill

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As I’ve previously blogged, my move to Poland has distracted me from writing. I have more excuses too! I was in a work situation that was particularly draining. I’ve had to deal with being cancelled by family members. Not only that, I’ve had to settle the cats.

While I have been regularly submitting to literary agents – The Sacred Whore, Em & Baller – I’ve just as regularly been receiving the same auto-replies.

It’s time to get back to The Vanishing Pill, a book I’ve been working on for three years now. Or is it four? I’m some 3 3/8’s drafts in and still don’t know what’s to happen to Davis as he faces his private little wasteland. Is there a way to salvage his promise? Or is it just going to be all sad and pathetic?

Compelling and real, funny too, darkly so, all of that. But I have to get it it done! Words on the page. There’s nowhere to start but the opening: Davis twisted off the cap from his Paddy’s Old Irish Whiskey shooter and considered the prompt on the whiteboard. “What does it mean to be human?“

Getting Our Crap Out of the Fridge

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Monday was a big day. We were getting our PESEL numbers. Like the American Social Insurance Number, this opened the door to getting settled in Poland – bank account, phone, security check. We would start to feel like we had arrived. But before any of that, we had to get our crap out of the fridge.

Polish burauacracy dicates two medical clearances be taken for employment as educators – a throat examination and feces samples. I won’t go into the details – and avoid supporting imagery – but there were Q-tips and test tubes with fluid, three sets of each taken three nights in a row, each placed carefully in plastic baggies in the fridge.

It was impossible to avoid the surreptitious glance when opening the fridge door, the tubes in the baggies, then grabbing whatever quickly and getting it shut. It wasn’t the elephant in the room. We talked about it – always at meals – and meticulously prepared the necesary documents, triple-checking tram schedules, adding a note on the kitchen table “Remember Your Poop!” We arrived at the clinic well ahead of our appointed times. It was all very professional, passing the tubes over, and we were done.

The PESEL office was next, which was touch and go when the officer noted an electronic notatation that was not verified. Truth be told, she wasn’t pleased with us from the moment we arrived, asking if she spoke English. “This is Poland.” “We’re sorry but we only know Dziękuję (thank you) and piwo (beer).” On the verge of pushing our documents back at us, she paused and said that she would talk to her manager. I knew we would just have to come back. That’s how these things worked. It was just another step. Our shit was out of the fridge. At least there was that.

“I have good news for you.” She hung up the phone. “We will process you today.” She took our passports, wrote and stamped, printed and gave us the simple yet beautiful, pieces of paper, our numbers at the bottom. “This will open all of the doors for you.” We walked out into the glorious sun, strolled down the boulevard to the Lidl and lucked into pizza pastries fresh out of the oven.

The copy store was next, then T Mobile and ING, Marcin, our customer rep, sharing his thoughts on the misery of Polish history, a quick visit to the police department for an incomprehensibly stamped document, and then shopping – a blender, carpetted cat house and groceries to buy – and we were home. I glanced up as I opened the fridge. Yes. It was gone. We’d gotten our shit out.

A.I. Needs My Help

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I must admit to having lost my focus a couple of times early on in Miron Bialoszewski’s Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising. As I mentioned in my previous post, it’s a dense and repetitive narrative, and it can seem like nothing new is happening when of course the opposite is true. I had to go back and re-read to orient myself a couple of time, but one thing I couldn’t figure out was the meaning of the term “wardrobes”. Bialoszewski mentioned the it a couple of times, and I’d skimmed past it until I realized that I didn’t get it.

I looked back for the first mentions of “wardrobes” and couldn’t find them. I resisted doing a Google search but finally conceded: What do “wardrobes” mean in Miron Bialoszewki’s A Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising? The search results offered nothing accurate, I grudgingly resorted to an AI tool, which offered two options: First that wardrobes – the literal ones – were piled on the barricades and, second, that the term was used to describe people so badly burned as to be the color of a wardrobe. Neither was answer was relevant. This was his slang for being under attack. I looked back again and just couldn’t find it, until I carried on with my reading and finally found a reference that made it quite clear: At night, a breath of air. The moon. Shrapnel. “Wardrobes”. Exactly. Bomb-hurling wardrobes. (121)

In Bialszewski’s mind, the image of wardrobes perhaps softened the blow of what was happening or it was simply how he saw it. Indeed, what an image! Germans dropping furniture in a siege! Nevertheless, Google and AI didn’t understand it becasue the data was insuffcient.

And so now I’m just feeding the machine.