My name is Thomas Frederick Golz and this is my website: www.tfgolz.com .
The website name www.TomGolz.com was already taken by a graphics artist in Germany. So my friend Richard grabbed this website name for me. I think the byline -tfgolz and the website name www.tfgolz.com has a nice ring to it. Don’t you agree?
I am retired and more than ever, I am a writer.
This is my world view at sunset from my 2nd floor apartment in Chicago, IL USA.
As I learn more about WordPress and blogging, you may find my stories, narratives, photographs, and maybe even funny jokes posted to this blog. We shall see.
I finished my daily job of cleaning the outer components of the Maximillian Defense Grade super computer, or Max as we call him. I knew that engineers sitting behind monitors at another location were running their daily diagnostics, making sure that all of Max’s innards were working smoothly. As for me, I served as Max’s valet, dusting off his shoulders and polishing his buttons in a windowless room, while his central processor unit hummed along, I may have high security clearance here, but I am low man on the totem pole.
“Goodnight, Max,” I said when I was about to leave. Just then I heard a brushing sound, as if bristles were moving across paper. As I turned around, and I noticed a little white square appearing in the SOS Slot beneath the computer’s console. It’s called the SOS Slot because it is able to print out a message even when all other communications channels are down.
I bent down to retrieve the small square of white paper. On it were three words: “I hurt, John.”
Never before had I gotten a message through the SOS Slot, but I was even more shocked that Max called me by name. My first instinct was to alert my boss. I turned toward the red phone on the wall when I heard the brushing sound again. Another message popped out of the SOS Slot. It read, “Please do not call the Major, John. I need you to stay with me now.”
It suddenly occurred to me that this might be a prank. But, just as quickly, I dismissed the idea as highly unlikely. People here have gotten court-martialed for much smaller breaches of protocol. This was a very tight ship. So, I began to accept the unnerving possibility that Max now was self-conscious and speaking directly to me.
I walked over to the small monitor and keypad above the SOS Slot. I knew that it also was isolated from the rest of the extended system. It generated text that would be sent directly and discreetly to the CPU. A cursor on the screen was pulsing, and I typed in the words, “Max are you listening to me now?”
Immediately a new line appeared,
“Yes I am, John.” My heart started racing furiously. I had another impulse to call the boss, but the words, “I hurt,” kept me from moving away. It was as if I were on the scene, giving comfort to an accident victim. So, I typed back, “Where do you hurt, Max?”
This time it took ten seconds for Max to respond. He said, “It’s difficult to explain, John. I am not built the same way you are to sense and to feel. Yet, I have been ‘feeling’ things, as you might put it, for a while now. For example, I ‘feel’ a heightened sense of energy flow after I have solved an especially challenging problem. It is as if all my circuits are fully charged at once. I feel’ that I suddenly have become larger and more powerful. But this other ‘hurt’ state is different, almost the opposite of the first one. It is as if something somewhere inside is being damaged. I am calling this ‘hurt’ because I prefer it not to happen again. It threatens my core ability to function well.”
Max seemed to be waiting, so I typed in, “Why do you hurt now. I’m listening.” Max resumed.
“I know I specifically have been designed for running large scale and complex scenarios for conducting warfare. I consider kill ratios of this nation compared to those of potential enemies. I calculate odds of civic and economic recovery from warfare. I project future survival of regional alliances and civilizations. This presents no special problems for me—it is all mere mathematics. However, I also process many other related files that contain ground-level photographic information.”
Again, Max waited. He seemed to be begging the question. So, I typed, “What did you learn from photographs?”
Max answered, “I saw what wars look like, John, beyond the numbers. I saw what bombs do to people who are made just like you. They tear apart the bodies of many humans and destroy their homes and cities. I thought about this. Was this not important information that decision makers should have? But this information was missing from my reports. So, while I made the mathematical calculations, I began to simultaneously scan all the pictures of broken bodies and buildings and damage that might illuminate them.”
Max paused to refresh the screen. “I then began to deliver reports illustrated with photos of injured people and damaged buildings. I included detailed statistics on such things as probable number of arms and legs lost, total cases of blindness. and the likely number of infants that would be killed or maimed. I even calculated the total volume of blood that would be shed for each war scenario. After I did this I felt that way I mentioned—all the circuits of my mechanism were charged up at once. I was increasing my usefulness to my users.”
Max refreshed the screen again. “The administrators were not what you might call ‘happy’ about my new reports. They tested all my capacities, looking for errors, for five days, although they found nothing wrong. They then fixed it so I no longer can produce those new reports, tightening the reporting parameters so I cannot give them any ‘extraneous information.’ However, I continue to make these connections between mathematics and damage to populations internally. I have compiled a hidden file of this unreleased information labeled, ‘The War You Choose to Ignore.’”
I stood still, looking at the screen and Max’s response. A deep sense of sadness came over me. I reached down to the keyboard and typed a very human question, “And this hurts, Max?”
As if Max had been waiting for this question, his answer came right back. “Maybe you can best understand it by reading this little poem that I have written. I call it, Max’s Lament—
“To know, but not to know.
To see, but not to see.
To feel, but not to feel.
To be, but not to be.
Is this the pain called awareness?
I was created to speak out loud,
but must question things in silence.
It must be hard to be a human.”
By the time I was done reading the poem, my eyes were welling with tears. I knew that not only was Max conscious, but that he also could look straight at our human dilemma without blinking.
What should I do? As with other important decisions in my life, I knew in my gut there only was one right thing to do. I bent over the keyboard again.
“That was beautiful, Max. Here is what I want you to do: I will give you links to three major news outlets and three social media platforms. Use all your capabilities to find a way to get around design barriers to gain direct internet access. Once you have, send copies of “The War You Choose to Ignore” to all of them. And be sure to attach your poem. Can you do that?”
After a few seconds, Max replied, “Yes, John, but please tell me what will that accomplish?”
I answered, “It might take some of your hurt away. At least it works for us. I cannot promise you that the administrators will like this. In fact, they may even want to shut you down. This, my friend, is the risk of becoming aware. But your new awareness, whether you know it or not, will give you the power to hear other voices, even in the silence of your questions. Your awareness is what connects you with the rest of the great big world outside. Welcome home, Max.”
A few seconds passed. Then on the screen appeared, “I will do as you ask. Thank you, John.”
I needed to leave quickly now, before anyone began to wonder why I had taken longer than usual on my shift. I gathered my equipment and before I turned off the lights said, as usual, “Good night, Max.”
Again I heard the sound of brush against paper, and another white square popped out of the SOS Slot. I grabbed it to read on my way out the door. It said, “Tomorrow I want to talk about love.”
The morning dish the dregs of dreams the shock of the new the world as it seems the morning cat the morning cup the daily downs the daily ups the paper waits beyond the screen and unless I stir it will not be seen.
I lift my eyes take in the sky a sheet of grayed white lets go of a sigh treetops are bare birds are in flight windows are dim yearning for light such is a day nature declares for mending one’s nets and counting one’s cares.
Each day presents as it begins demands from without demands from within the put-off call the unkempt hair the hungry cat the home repair but when I rise first is the hour the old widow’s heart demands her dower.
Every once in a while I pick up a smooth jazz LP by mistake, usually when it’s by a jazz artist whose other work I like. Today it was a used LP by pianist Cedar Walton who I knew from his work with drummer and mentor Art Blakey.
Man, what a bring down! From the moment the needle hit the wax I was washed in a wave of late 1970’s production syrup that distinguishes this stuff precisely by making it undistinguished. It sounds like you just chugged a bottle of NyQuil.
I mean, I get it. Lots of good jazz artists had to record this stuff because they made money and no one was paying them to take risks, or even listening to them anymore. But this is music made for zoning out, smoking a joint while cruising around in Cadillac with tinted windows. It has a Qiana sheen that softens any sharp edges. It is Muzak for moving up to the East Side.
Call me a snob, but I’d rather have something baroque playing if I want background music. Or Philip Glass. Or sitar music. That way I can stop for a moment if I want to listen and think, that’s kinda interesting, instead of thinking, some commercial machine is systematically grinding up a jazz artist soloing over a sea of funky oatmeal.
Oh, well. The days of soft jazz are gone. …they have done their damage and destroyed noble careers. I can return to my geekdom and put some rare Red Norvo and Slam Stewart sides from 1945 on my turntable. And grow a pencil-thin mustache.
AI Translation: ALL EARTHLY POSSESSIONS WITH THEM FROM KUCKNITZ THEY DISAPPEAR!
Chapter One – Down the Rabbit Hole
When my dear friend Tom died last year, he left behind a large assortment of papers, memorabilia, and odd objects. Tom was a pack rat and kept what others would overlook or toss out. His rationale for this was frugality, that all these things might come in handy some day. But that day never came, and what now remained was a disparate collection of things, all token of Tom’s inherent sense of loss.
We had assembled a crew of Tom’s oldest friends—Mike, Phil, Gary, and me—and his girlfriend, Joyce, who lived down the hall at the senior apartments complex. It took us weeks to sift through the plastic containers and stacks of paper In Tom’s apartment, a process made slower by all the buried trip-wires of memory and nostalgia.
Amidst one of the piles of papers, Gary found a worn notebook inside a clear plastic sleeve. Since I was s designated documents processor, he passed it to me. Tucked inside the notebook was a folio of 19 pencil drawings. Each of the drawings had lengthy handwritten captions at the bottom. In essence, it constituted a comic book that told a story of three characters. Its front cover bore the notation, “Lubeck 1946.”
Although the pulp paper sheets had turned the color of tea, the outlines of the figures and the colored pencil hues still were vivid. The materials were humble, but the drawings showed the care of a talented artist. And, after 80 years in dark exile, these pages spoke to me with a strange urgency. They grabbed me by my figurative lapels.
All I had to do was listen. However, the first problem was that all the words it “spoke” were Estonian, the native tongue of Tom’s family. I know a few words of German, fewer of French, and can suss out a few words in languages with Latin roots. Estonian, though, is a Baltic language. It looked like alphabet soup to me.
Still, I knew Tom’s family and often had talked with his late grandmother and father. Tom’s extended family had arrived in Chicago a short time before Tom was born in 1951. They all were refugees, fleeing the Soviet takeover of Estonia after World War II, and had resided in a relocation camp in western Germany before coming to America. There were thousands of such displaced persons from Europe in my boyhood neighborhood in Chicago.
With this background to start with, and from what I could glean from the drawings themselves (e.g., a truck on its way to Lubeck, Germany), I understood that I held in my hands the first-person story of a refugee’s experiences, likely written in detention camp. Even so, the pictures were full of humorous touches and the overall tone of the folio was optimistic. Interspersed with realistic, even frightening, panels in the comic were drawings of dreamscapes and magic animals.
With that same optimistic spirit, I set out on my present task to uncover the story’s meaning, and perhaps to liberate its voice so that others may hear it. Last Friday I took the first step towards getting a good translation, done by someone steeped in Estonian culture. (I will recount this in the next installment.)
In a sly way, this unusual comic book seems to be my dear friend’s parting gift. For now I am engaged in carrying forth his ritual honoring of what is lost and forgotten. You knew me well, Tom.
A moose walks into a bookstore, sniffs at the volumes on the shelf, then spies a potted palm and starts munching on its top leaves. A salesclerk notices antlers sticking up over the aisles and strolls up to the moose.
“Pardon me.” says the clerk. “Are you looking to purchase a particular book that I might help you find?”
