Tag Archives: Frauds

Don’t Dissemble

Posted on by

Certain words ring true at particular times in our lives. We might be living through something, or feeling under siege, and you come across a word that elicits that Charlie Brown response from one his infamous sessions with Lucy: “That’s It!!!” he shouts, bowling Lucy over, after she offers her diagnosis to poor ole’ Chuck.

The word this week (and perhaps this month) for me is “dissemble,” as in feigning, concealing, or tamping down one’s true feelings. This is often done for some gain: personal, financial, social. The dissembler might even experience dissonance in the midst of their dissembling. Continue reading →

Failures of Kindness

Posted on by

I’m reading a book of short stories by George Saunders. The librarian that checked it out for me waxed effusive about Saunders. His stories are good, although they fall short of another book of short stories I just finished by Ottessa Moshfegh.

I picked up Moshfegh’s book because I got a Google alert and discovered something she shared about Mark in an interview for Vulture, including one of his 50-books-in-a-year as one of 10 works she’d take with her to a desert island. I’d never read anything by her. She was in his MFA cohort at Brown:

We lost this brave genius last year, and the books he gifted us while he lived are so wonderfully strange and honest and beautiful, I can’t believe he even existed. He was more than a poet or performance artist — Baumer’s life itself was a work of art. He was truly radical, and the most openhearted, unjaded human I’ve ever met.

That was kind of her. Continue reading →

A Lack of Vision

Posted on by
Tumbling, tumbleweeds.

Tumbling, tumbleweeds.

Where there is no vision, the people perish…

People and places without a plan for the future—a vision—are doomed to failure. Equally worse in my opinion is a plan that takes you in the wrong direction.

I grew up in a community that at one time was a vibrant little place. Main Street had a number of places where you could shop, buy ice cream, pick up auto supplies; there was a barber shop (there were actually two, at one time), a hair salon, and several department stores. All of that’s just a memory that people rehash ad nauseum on Facebook these days. There’s a lot of hand-wringing going on, too. Rarely do they look behind the memories and wonder what happened to what was once Lisbon Falls. Continue reading →