Ambiguous omens

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, memoirs, desert environment, climate anxiety, mojave desert, owls

To be human is to be self-conflicted to some extent. For Ben Ehrenreich, self-conflict defines his character. In his memoir Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time, he presents himself and the social circles he inhabits as generally, not quite unhappy, but chronically anxious, seeking bits of contentment and even joy wherever they may be found. He does not project victimhood, which is the stock-in-trade of Lefties generally; rather, he finds himself in the current of the "lives of quiet desperation" described by Thoreau.

The book opens with a hike with a pair of friends near Joshua Tree National Park, where a pair of owls seemed to be leading the hikers along a canyon. Owls figure frequently in his remembrances, and the book closes with a glimpse of an owl. He wonders whether owls are typically omens of evil, whether they can ever portend good. To the owls themselves, we are almost always evil omens. 

As it happens, to most cultures an owl brings bad news, but in Japan and Guatemala owls are good. The Japanese word for owl, 梟, pronounced fukurō, has the same sound as "without hardship". Owls are ambiguous as omens. I, for one, love seeing an owl. The "hooh---hoo-hoo-hoooh" call heard around here on occasion is from a Great Horned Owl, but I've seen one only once in the wild.

I love deserts, and so does Mr. Ehrenreich. For the first part of the book he and his wife lived near 29 Palms just north of Joshua Tree National Park, for the second section he was living in Las Vegas—at the other end of the Mojave Desert—for one school year on a teaching fellowship, and the last chapter takes place in Landers, back near Joshua Tree but further to the northwest. 

I have camped out in Joshua Tree several times, both with my parents and with fellow desert rats. I return most frequently to an area further north, along I-40 and old Hwy 66. This picture shows the colorful mountains north of Pisgah Crater. A similar patch of mountains 35 miles to the west are named Calico, quite aptly.

Desert living has an effect on a person. The sights, smells and even tastes differ quite a bit from those in more temperate climes. The heat gets hotter, the cold gets colder, the wind blows harder, the rare rainstorms are fiercer, and this very rawness accentuates every shift of weather and hones the senses. Desert people tend to be more "colorful".

Another theme that runs through the book is the author's almost-obsession with "the Rhino", as he calls President Trump. It becomes clear that in this case he is indeed a victim, a victim of the "mainstream media" that produced an ugly caricature of Donald Trump and vehemently, even violently, opposed everything about that caricature without engaging the real person. When a misguided "journalist" published an article about President Trumps "10,000 lies", a genuine journalist analyzed the material and showed that all but a few of the "lies" were truths the first guy didn't like or "business exaggerations" of the kind that were uniformly praised in "the Press" prior to the 2015 Presidential campaign. Actually, the media has libeled Mr. Trump thousands of times per day, and continues to do so, thus it is no surprise that Mr. Ehrenreich had a bad impression of him. He spreads his ire around a bit also, calling National Security Adviser John Bolton a "mustachioed cretin". Hmm. I don't know any genuine cretin (medically defined as a severely mentally deficient person with an IQ less than 40) who could graduate from Yale and then the Yale Law School, earning a JD. Dr. Bolton is abrasive as a cinderblock, but stupid he definitely is not.

The author's anxiety about climate change is part of a larger existential anxiety that forms an undercurrent of his life. His writing pops back and forth in time, typically about every page, between current events seen through a Leftist lens and mini-bios of a number of historical writers and philosophers. His pick of historical figures tends towards the little-known, such as Jacob Boehme (Jakob Böhme, 1575-1625), whom most theologians consider a heretic, but a milder one than really wacky ones such as Arius of the 4th Century. He dwells much on a contention of Hegel and others that writing itself is more of a problem than a solution. That is a hard stance for a writer to live with! He makes a good point: The earliest writing is mainly lists of goods and administrative instruction, while actual literature came much, much later. Having gathered numerous threads together, though, he weaves no tapestry, draws no conclusion.

The book begins and ends with existential angst. It would be rather hard to take, were it not for the author's lyrical gifts as a writer. Whatever the topic, his writing is enjoyable. "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down", as Mary Poppins sang. I'm glad I read it. I'm glad I'm not him.