Tortilla Flatscreen | Poetry of Mankh |Axisoflogic.com

“The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.”

– John Steinbeck,
from his Speech at the Nobel Banquet, 1962 [1]

The title came from joking around and literarily riffing with a friend. But then I got to thinking about what it signifies in the context of today’s world, or as another John, Trudell, called it: “tech no logical society/civilization.”

Thirty-something years ago a few friends and I were stuck in a little cabin near the coast of Maine. It was a kind of way-station between living situations and there wasn’t much money and there wasn’t much to do. So that’s when I got further acquainted with the marvelous world and writing of John Steinbeck, as we read aloud to each other “Tortilla Flat” and “Cannery Row,” maybe others. The standard school fare is the novella “The Red Pony” which has graphic description of the birth of a pony, an eye-opener for a city kid. And of course “The Grapes of Wrath” which is as applicable today as ever, what with worker conditions, treatment of minorities, and reports of glyphosate contaminated wines. [2]

I don’t remember the details of the Steinbeck novels during those foggy coastal days and nights so much as the feel of it all, how a bunch of friends, a bunch of locals made for the charm of the place they lived and worked in, plus the flavors of the neighborhood, the locale – Monterey, California – inspired by true life stories -- yet portrayed with fiction -- of people doing what they know how to do to get by, living their lives, struggling, interacting, relating, partying and with all the quirkiness of hanging out with a bunch of pals in college. The people weren’t brainwashed by propaganda and 24-7 news channels were yet to be unveiled.

Nowadays we are inundated with screens large and small. I used to be able to go to a small restaurant or bagel place for a change of scenery, some people-watching, and perhaps a little quiet during an afternoon lull. But most of those places now have TV screens, typically with local news. Don’t people get enough of that at home?! It’s like an audio-visual stimulus milk-bottle; go without it for a few minutes and baby might cry, or forget where he/she is at, or what the weather forecast is. And bars can have five, ten, or more screens in one room!

Sitting in a restaurant or café and looking out onto a city or small town street, how often do you see someone stop and look at a tree or say hi to a bird in said tree? Instead it seems virtually everyone is looking at their hand-held gadget, an electronic security blanket that is perhaps the greatest anti-social social device ever created.

As far as the big-screen, there’s something to be said for having a cinematic theatrical experience in one’s very living-room, a veritable audio-visual surround-sound virtual-reality synapse orgasm, but it concerns me that perhaps many have traded their imaginations to get it, have made a kind of electronic-Faustian deal to be ever, yet mindlessly, entertained. Don’t get me wrong, after a good day’s work at the computer or with my head in a book and another book and another book, I sometimes like to clear my noggin’ by watching fluff like Family Feud or a bunch of grown men using sticks to whack a little white ball, trying to get it into a hole 18 times in about 4 hours (the winners getting obscenely paid for it) – everyone deserves some play-time and/or escape from the daily grind. Yet again I wonder about the distance the collective “we” have come from the ability to shut it down and sit around the proverbial campfire telling stories aka Tell-a-Vision, reading aloud with others, or if by one’s self ‘talking with and listening to someone’ via a book.

We can have the clearest, sharpest, most life-like picture screen image yet if the content is predominantly controlled by a big corporate media then – breaking news! – we have entered an electronic dystopia. Yet, as with any machine the key is how it gets utilized and how much flexibility it has, which is the strong suit of this era, enabling the common person to film police brutality, make a news program or movie, organize a spontaneous protest, and so on.

If the collective “we” can get its head out of the fixation on achieving the perfected pixel sand and instead look to the content of ocean & sky, then we will have a chance to watch and interact in a manner that would please the compassion and humanity of Steinbeck as well as the scope of a techie-savant.

“John Steinbeck won the Pulitzer in 1940 for his novel The Grapes of Wrath. While hailed today as one of the great American novels, at the time it was criticized and widely banned. The press and many politicians accused Steinbeck of being a socialist or communist and in some cases the book was even burned. Both popular and critical opinion was split about the novel. Many considered it brilliant, while others disparaged it. The reviewer from Newsweek called it a “mess of silly propaganda, superficial observation, careless infidelity to the proper use of idiom, tasteless pornographical and scatagorical talk.” [3]

It’s a good ol’ movie with Henry Fonda... Hey, pass the chips, and let’s check it out on the Tortilla Flatscreen...

Tom Joad: Well, maybe it's like Casy says. A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then...

Ma Joad: Then what, Tom?

Tom Joad: I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too. ...

Ma Joad: Easy. You got to have patience. Why, Tom—us people will go on livin’ when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we’re the people that live. They ain’t gonna wipe us out. Why, we’re the people—we go on. …we keep a-comin’. Don’t you fret none, Tom.

And: As the Original Peoples know, those people or beings who keep a-comin’ are also trees, birds, flowers, bees, wolves, coral, thunder, and so on. Now that's the kind of consciousness needed to help with healing our environs and ourselves, and for remembering the difference between the screen and the true picture.

NOTES:
1. “John Steinbeck - Banquet Speech”

2. “Widespread Glyphosate Contamination in Wine”

3. “Five Controversial Pulitzer Prize Winners (and Losers)”

Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is an essayist and resident poet on Axis of Logic. In addition to his work as a writer, he is a small press publisher and Turtle Islander. His new book of genre-bending poetic-nonfiction is “Musings With The Golden Sparrow.” You can contact him via his literary website.  