Thursday, June 16, 2005
For Sailor Jack & Bingo.
Devastation
The hardening is deliberate and cruel,
as is all that will come thereafter.
The only consolation being that so many,
so very many others, share the same fate.
The heat, the sweat, the pain.
Left and right, succumbing to the pressure,
those known to you perish.
Blown apart, ripped open, left white
in shock. Naked guts torn inside out.
A mushroom cloud of exposed flesh,
shards of skeleton clinging to the core.
Throw these now (still exhaling steam)
to the gaping maw, to be mashed to pulp
and lowered into hot acid.
Ground in the mingled bile and bones
of comrades, and finally
rammed the length of a cold hard pipe
into a rotting cesspool…
where there is nothing,
nothing more devastated
than popcorn.
___________
I have always been interested in the life cycle of popcorn.
As such, I wrote the above poem oh.... I guess about a year or so ago.
I think of it as sort of a tribute. A eulogy in honor of the sacrificial life of the kernel we all love to eat.
This evening, I am especially thinking of the glories of popcorn as I sit here at the mega-bookstore drinking my own body weight in coffee. Because today, June 16th, is an important day in the history of one of the best things that ever happened to popcorn!
Cracker Jack!
It was 112 years ago today, on June 16th, 1893, that a man by the name of R.W. Rueckheim introduced this innovative amalgamation of popcorn, peanut, and molasses at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Admittedly, there were a few kinks to be ironed out in the product (premature meltage).... but in 1896, R.W.’s brother Louis perfected a process whereby the molasses-covered popcorn morsels would remain separate.... and there you have it! The world of popcorn was revolutionized!
Louis gave a sample of the treat to a salesman who exclaimed, "That's crackerjack!"
"So it is," said F.W. Rueckheim, who then had the words trademarked.
This stuff was a significant part of my overall diet, growing up. I would just love it when Dad would come home and surprise my sister and me with matching boxes of Cracker Jack. Till today, it is one of the very few "candy" type items that can tempt me at the checkout line in the supermarket. It is invariably there (in bags now, not those old wax-lined boxes). I do NOT have a sweet tooth, meaning I am not a dessert or candy-bar type person. The racks of candy bars tempteth me not! Nor do the cakes and goodies in the display cases at Starbucks.
But Cracker Jack?
Oh yeah! It’s got my number! It’s in the cart!
There is just something about it that is so DANG good! The peanuts inside there. Why do they just taste better than peanuts everywhere else in the world? Is it just me? Am I nuts?
Am I the only one addicted to Rueckheim’s devilishly ingenious confection?
Apparently not!
Because (I love trivia, if you have not noticed this by now)... it is a fact that enough Cracker Jack has been sold that if laid end-to-end it would circle the Earth more than 69 times.
[I know it sounds like it, but I am NOT making this up as I go along].
In 1912 they began their "A Prize in Every Box" feature.
[In my morbider moments, I have wondered how much Cracker Jack went down with the Titanic on April 14th of that same year].
Since then, they have given out more than 23 billion of these little surprise toys. Believe me, I know! Many times I’ve been so greedy after the popcorn, I have inadvertently eaten a few of these toys!
[They taste not bad, but the popcorn’s better. I repeat... do NOT eat the toys.... they do not ummm... digest well.]
Some old Cracker Jack prizes are valued at more than $7,000. A complete series of the 1915 baseball cards, original and in near mint condition, has been valued as high as $60,000.
Which proves at least one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt. People who are serious collectors of Cracker Jack memorabilia.... are also LOONY!
You know the little boy and his dog? They appear on the package?
This is Sailor Jack and Bingo, repectively.
So I just want to say.... Happy Birthday to Sailor Jack and Bingo.
Happy 112th.
Seriously, neither of you look a day over...... ten!
Popcorn.
Such a devestating, selfless, violent life it lives and dies. For us. All for us.
On our behalf!
It literally blows itself up for us.
We benefit, from its trials.
Buy a box (or bag) of Cracker Jack today, my friends....
... lest we forget!
Splash du Jour: Thursday
This week’s Splash du Jours will consist of the one-sentence blurbs written for past recipients of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Winner of the Nobel Prize For Literature in 2001:
“V.S. Naipaul, for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories."
Have a great Thursday!
Winner of the Nobel Prize For Literature in 2001:
“V.S. Naipaul, for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories."
Have a great Thursday!
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Finding Tolkien.
Remember when Hobbit-Mania struck the land?
The weeks and even months leading up to the release of the first installment of Peter Jackson’s Lord of The Rings trilogy in the theatres?
It was the winter of 2001.
Back then, it was hard to find a place that was uninhobbited. The marketing machine was in full swing, and rightfully so. Moviedom had never taken on a project as grandiose and off-the-scale as this bringing of Tolkien’s classic to the big screen. I think the production cost for Lord of The Rings was something like 168 million dollars?
At any rate, as you might expect, I was already a fan of the books, having read the Trilogy long before it was ever a movie. In fact, I probably read the thing before Elijah Wood was born.
But with the impending release of The Fellowship of The Ring, I set out to re-read the books. To refresh my memory, prior to movie-time. And this time I tracked the journey through Middle Earth with an excellent guide, Barabara Strachey’s book, Journeys of Frodo: An Atlas of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of The Rings. [Published by HarperCollins].
I found this guide to be immeasurably helpful in keeping track of exactly where everyone is throughout the story. It contains 51 maps, with accompanying text on the opposite page of each map. Invaluable information and commentary.... and in one or two instances, Strachey points out where even Tolkien himself got a bit miscomhobbitated in his calculations. She corrects a few minor textual discrepancies. Really, the atlas is amazing.
OK, so one evening after work I am sitting in this mega-bookstore over there by the fireplace, and I am reading through Volume 1 as if pursued by a slavering band of Orcs! I’m getting right into it. [By the way, I use the term “over there” because as I write this, I am still at the same mega-bookstore. I am dead serious. Things may change in Middle Earth... but in MY Earth? No... things on Planet Bookpuddle are pretty much the same as they were four years ago! I’m not sure, but I think I am even wearing the same shirt today as I was then! But back to my story...]
So I’m sitting there and it just happens to be just to the right of the Science Fiction section of the store. Soon I began to take note of the steady stream of people, usually in twos or threes, coming up to a certain section of the shelves and searching, shaking their heads.... and leaving. A few times, I saw people leaving that particular area of shelving and walking straight out into the bitter cold!
I swear to you, what I am about to relate here is 100% true. At first, I just kept reading away....
But then more people. And then some more. So finally, curiosity getting the better of me, plus... I needed to stretch.... I had been sitting there for about six hours.... I got up and walked over to the exact location of the intense consternation. I could tell exactly where the hordes of people had been standing because the rug was all worn out right there. Plus it was all wet where the snow had been melting off of their horridly disappointed shoes.
Aha!
It was Tolkien they were after!
Obviously, other prospective moviegoers wanted to do exactly what I was doing.... brush up on their Tolkien, or maybe experience the Ring for the first time!
But right there, right where the masterpiece should have been..... was nothing.
Either the books were WEARING the Ring... or......
“But wait a minute” I said to myself. “This is impossible. How can this BOOKstore not have....?”
Then it dawned on me. And you know it as well as I do right now.
You know where all of the Tolkien books were?
ON A BIG DISPLAY TABLE toward the BACK OF THE STORE!
And I mean, on that shivering table were Lord of The Rings books up the wazoo!
Piled ten hobbits high! At least! But no one was seeing it! Plus, the shelves were being picked clean so quickly, that real book-buying patrons (unlike me) were leaving the store without a purchase because they just thought the Tolkien stuff was SOLD OUT! As I mentioned above, I watched many of them leave!
Well, I could not stand for this.
After all, I want this mega-bookstore to prosper. I have a vested interest.
It is much more to me than a “second home”.
Plus... ALL MY MAIL IS DELIVERED HERE!
So I went and found the manager.
I led her back to the soggy rugworn area in question and I told her, I said “Are you aware that in the past six hours I have observed several [and I emphasized that word “several”] really serious prospective buyers leaving your store because [and I pointed] there is nothing right here where, according to my calculations, books should be replenished every three minutes or so?” [She’s looking at me like I am a lunatic.... but I continue] OR a little sign placed in the space, indicating that over there at the Leaning Tower of Bookpile there is at least four thousand copies of what they are looking for?”
I am not exaggerating when I tell you that she said to me “Sir, we have a fairly visible display set up and I assure you, we do keep the shelves stocked on a regular basis and...”
“But people are leaving!” I pleaded. “They are leaving without buying anything. I see them!”
To say that my own tears then fell onto the floor... and mingled with the residue of the thawed parking lot slush.... would be not only melodramatic and sappy, but false. Just false.
And what I strive for on this blogpage is truth, not falsity. Verisimilitude, not fabrication.
No. I did NOT cry into the gritty slush!
I cried into the sleeve of my sweater.
And.... I gave up.
And I went and sat back down by the fireplace.
And as Ms. Manager walked past me with her huffy little authoritative strut and dismissive glance, oh hell yes I wanted to trip her.
But I didn’t.
And as she walked away, yes, I wanted to yell out, “Of course, it’s easy for you. You just work here! BUT I LIVE HERE, DAMMIT!”
But I didn’t.
There’s one thing no one needs in the dead of winter.
An eviction!
The weeks and even months leading up to the release of the first installment of Peter Jackson’s Lord of The Rings trilogy in the theatres?
It was the winter of 2001.
Back then, it was hard to find a place that was uninhobbited. The marketing machine was in full swing, and rightfully so. Moviedom had never taken on a project as grandiose and off-the-scale as this bringing of Tolkien’s classic to the big screen. I think the production cost for Lord of The Rings was something like 168 million dollars?
At any rate, as you might expect, I was already a fan of the books, having read the Trilogy long before it was ever a movie. In fact, I probably read the thing before Elijah Wood was born.
But with the impending release of The Fellowship of The Ring, I set out to re-read the books. To refresh my memory, prior to movie-time. And this time I tracked the journey through Middle Earth with an excellent guide, Barabara Strachey’s book, Journeys of Frodo: An Atlas of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of The Rings. [Published by HarperCollins].
I found this guide to be immeasurably helpful in keeping track of exactly where everyone is throughout the story. It contains 51 maps, with accompanying text on the opposite page of each map. Invaluable information and commentary.... and in one or two instances, Strachey points out where even Tolkien himself got a bit miscomhobbitated in his calculations. She corrects a few minor textual discrepancies. Really, the atlas is amazing.
OK, so one evening after work I am sitting in this mega-bookstore over there by the fireplace, and I am reading through Volume 1 as if pursued by a slavering band of Orcs! I’m getting right into it. [By the way, I use the term “over there” because as I write this, I am still at the same mega-bookstore. I am dead serious. Things may change in Middle Earth... but in MY Earth? No... things on Planet Bookpuddle are pretty much the same as they were four years ago! I’m not sure, but I think I am even wearing the same shirt today as I was then! But back to my story...]
So I’m sitting there and it just happens to be just to the right of the Science Fiction section of the store. Soon I began to take note of the steady stream of people, usually in twos or threes, coming up to a certain section of the shelves and searching, shaking their heads.... and leaving. A few times, I saw people leaving that particular area of shelving and walking straight out into the bitter cold!
I swear to you, what I am about to relate here is 100% true. At first, I just kept reading away....
But then more people. And then some more. So finally, curiosity getting the better of me, plus... I needed to stretch.... I had been sitting there for about six hours.... I got up and walked over to the exact location of the intense consternation. I could tell exactly where the hordes of people had been standing because the rug was all worn out right there. Plus it was all wet where the snow had been melting off of their horridly disappointed shoes.
Aha!
It was Tolkien they were after!
Obviously, other prospective moviegoers wanted to do exactly what I was doing.... brush up on their Tolkien, or maybe experience the Ring for the first time!
But right there, right where the masterpiece should have been..... was nothing.
Either the books were WEARING the Ring... or......
“But wait a minute” I said to myself. “This is impossible. How can this BOOKstore not have....?”
Then it dawned on me. And you know it as well as I do right now.
You know where all of the Tolkien books were?
ON A BIG DISPLAY TABLE toward the BACK OF THE STORE!
And I mean, on that shivering table were Lord of The Rings books up the wazoo!
Piled ten hobbits high! At least! But no one was seeing it! Plus, the shelves were being picked clean so quickly, that real book-buying patrons (unlike me) were leaving the store without a purchase because they just thought the Tolkien stuff was SOLD OUT! As I mentioned above, I watched many of them leave!
Well, I could not stand for this.
After all, I want this mega-bookstore to prosper. I have a vested interest.
It is much more to me than a “second home”.
Plus... ALL MY MAIL IS DELIVERED HERE!
So I went and found the manager.
I led her back to the soggy rugworn area in question and I told her, I said “Are you aware that in the past six hours I have observed several [and I emphasized that word “several”] really serious prospective buyers leaving your store because [and I pointed] there is nothing right here where, according to my calculations, books should be replenished every three minutes or so?” [She’s looking at me like I am a lunatic.... but I continue] OR a little sign placed in the space, indicating that over there at the Leaning Tower of Bookpile there is at least four thousand copies of what they are looking for?”
I am not exaggerating when I tell you that she said to me “Sir, we have a fairly visible display set up and I assure you, we do keep the shelves stocked on a regular basis and...”
“But people are leaving!” I pleaded. “They are leaving without buying anything. I see them!”
To say that my own tears then fell onto the floor... and mingled with the residue of the thawed parking lot slush.... would be not only melodramatic and sappy, but false. Just false.
And what I strive for on this blogpage is truth, not falsity. Verisimilitude, not fabrication.
No. I did NOT cry into the gritty slush!
I cried into the sleeve of my sweater.
And.... I gave up.
And I went and sat back down by the fireplace.
And as Ms. Manager walked past me with her huffy little authoritative strut and dismissive glance, oh hell yes I wanted to trip her.
But I didn’t.
And as she walked away, yes, I wanted to yell out, “Of course, it’s easy for you. You just work here! BUT I LIVE HERE, DAMMIT!”
But I didn’t.
There’s one thing no one needs in the dead of winter.
An eviction!
Splash du Jour: Wednesday
This week’s Splash du Jours will consist of the one-sentence blurbs written for past recipients of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982:
“Gabriel Garcia Marquez, for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts."
Have a great Wednesday!
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982:
“Gabriel Garcia Marquez, for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts."
Have a great Wednesday!
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Burglar King!
Hey kids!
What is the deal with the amount of burgling that goes on in the United States of America?
The United Nations Survey of Crime Trends (year 2000) compiled a listing of the Top Ten Burglarized Nations.
The results are sort of.... ominous.
Apparently, the United States is not only the birthplace of the fast-food industry, it is also, undisputedly, The Burglar King!
Here is the List, the corresponding number being the number of reported burglaries for the year 2000.
1. United States 2,099,700
2. United Kingdom 836,027
3. Australia 436,865
4. South Africa 394,557
5. France 370,993
6. Poland 364,786
7. Japan 296,486
8. Canada 293,416
9. Mexico 139,679
10. India 111,296
Is it just that the American people have better stuff to steal? (This is entirely possible).
Is it just that the U.S. is the third most populous nation in the world? Ah, but before we argue along these lines (of population) we need to note that India, with its one BILLION people has nearly twenty times fewer break-ins than the U.S.
And what’s goin’ on down under mates? Crikey! Australia? A nation of 20 million is THIRD?
And while we’re at it.... where’s China? A nation of 1.25 billion inhabitants is not even on the list at all.
So, I did a bit of research on the overall North American situation, as based on this chart.
I found that the U.S. population on April 1st of the year 2000 was 281,421,906. At the same time, the population of Canada was very close to 31,000,000.
So, some quick work on the ol’ calculator reveals the following per capita ratios:
Canada. One burglary for every 106 people.
United States. One burglary for every 134 people.
In other words, there is not really that much difference in burglary rate between these two North American neighbors. Both statistics are less than reassuring though. My question is this:
What’s next?
DRIVE-THRU Burglaries? To sort of... speed things up?
“Hello, and welcome to Burglar King. Can I take your order?”
“No! But I’ll certainly take yours if you just turn your back for a minute, or leave your patio door unlatched tonight!”
What is the deal with the amount of burgling that goes on in the United States of America?
The United Nations Survey of Crime Trends (year 2000) compiled a listing of the Top Ten Burglarized Nations.
The results are sort of.... ominous.
Apparently, the United States is not only the birthplace of the fast-food industry, it is also, undisputedly, The Burglar King!
Here is the List, the corresponding number being the number of reported burglaries for the year 2000.
1. United States 2,099,700
2. United Kingdom 836,027
3. Australia 436,865
4. South Africa 394,557
5. France 370,993
6. Poland 364,786
7. Japan 296,486
8. Canada 293,416
9. Mexico 139,679
10. India 111,296
Is it just that the American people have better stuff to steal? (This is entirely possible).
Is it just that the U.S. is the third most populous nation in the world? Ah, but before we argue along these lines (of population) we need to note that India, with its one BILLION people has nearly twenty times fewer break-ins than the U.S.
And what’s goin’ on down under mates? Crikey! Australia? A nation of 20 million is THIRD?
And while we’re at it.... where’s China? A nation of 1.25 billion inhabitants is not even on the list at all.
So, I did a bit of research on the overall North American situation, as based on this chart.
I found that the U.S. population on April 1st of the year 2000 was 281,421,906. At the same time, the population of Canada was very close to 31,000,000.
So, some quick work on the ol’ calculator reveals the following per capita ratios:
Canada. One burglary for every 106 people.
United States. One burglary for every 134 people.
In other words, there is not really that much difference in burglary rate between these two North American neighbors. Both statistics are less than reassuring though. My question is this:
What’s next?
DRIVE-THRU Burglaries? To sort of... speed things up?
“Hello, and welcome to Burglar King. Can I take your order?”
“No! But I’ll certainly take yours if you just turn your back for a minute, or leave your patio door unlatched tonight!”
Splash du Jour: Tuesday
This week’s Splash du Jours will consist of the one-sentence blurbs written for past recipients of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Winner of the Nobel Prize For Literature in 2003:
“J.M. Coetzee, who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider."
Have a great Tuesday!
Winner of the Nobel Prize For Literature in 2003:
“J.M. Coetzee, who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider."
Have a great Tuesday!
Monday, June 13, 2005
Ambient Music.
To be honest, I think I am still a little shook up over last night’s Saramagian fiasco!
So, I’ve got to let off a bit of steam here.
Tell me. Am I allowed to go on a bit of a rant now and then, on this blogpage?
Thank you.
Today’s the day.
I would like to just calmly mention a few things about what I consider to be one of the most colossal cultural mysteries of our modern era. Indeed, it is a riddle as unsolved as the legendary one concerning the exact pyramid-building procedures of Ancient Egypt. Or whether the Bermuda Triangle really eats airplanes.
Truly, this mystery is greater!
Simply put, I would like to know what Hydra-Headed Beast has been put in charge of the global selection and distribution of ambient music that we as human beings are constantly subjected to, and invariably within earshot of.
What office does it work out of? What is the address, that we may bomb it, forthwith?
What do I mean by ambient music?
Well, I mean the music that is just piped-in and unasked-for, no matter what store or public place you walk into nowadays.
In fact, I am listening to a fine example of it right now, here in the mega-bookstore. Actually, (this is no exaggeration) I am hearing not just one, but TWO examples of ambient music.... one from the bustling Starbucks system and the other from the bookstore itself. They are converging upon my defenseless head, beating themselves against the anvil of my ears, competing for dominance. Is this supposed to soothe the beast in me? Make me buy books? Or coffee?
If so, this marketing tool is missing its mark. I am fitting absolutely nowhere in the Hydra-Headed Beast’s demographic chart.
The only real effect this bombardment of sound has on me is to cause my eyelids to flutter. Also, I very much fantasize about shooting the overhead speaker grille right out of its false-ceilinged moorings. I would love to see that insidious tin seive dangling by its umbilical cord. Smoke curling upwards and every eye in this place turning toward me, the Deliverer!
The Bringer of Peace!
I would like to know the history of this thing called ambient music.
At what point in history did it dawn upon someone that we as humans cannot possibly live without music for even a few moments in a store or elevator?
What is so wrong with silence?
Maybe I’m weird though.... an anomaly. Some sort of dinosauric throwback to a time when our own thoughts were noise enough. I must be.
Because as I look around this room here, it is apparent that the two types of ambient music in this particular place are not providing enough racket for some patrons. No.
They have HEADPHONES on.
And they are reading at the same time.
Now, hold on here. Stop the train. Something just does not seem right for me, and I’m going to take a few deep breaths and try to understand it..... you are READING.... and then also, you are LISTENING TO MUSIC. Literally, the music could not be any closer to the same brain that is trying to comprehend the full meaning of a printed page, than in the scenario I am painting here. Essentially.... you are welcoming intense cerebral distraction while at the same time trying to concentrate on....
Here is a comparative image that springs to my mind:
A person eating a tub of lard during liposuction surgery.
I mean.... is it not time to decide upon one or the other my dear?
Now, I would like to conclude with just one final observation.
If we are doomed to have to contend with ubiquitous ambient music for the rest of our lives, could we at least make better choices as to what is played where?
Here is what I mean. Basically, it is the issue of LYRICS I am talking about.
Invariably, (please correct me if I am wrong here), in the very places where musing and introspection and philosophical digression could be greatly enhanced with nice soothing instrumental music quietly playing in the background... in these very places is where the snappy lyrical tunes are chirping out of the overheads!
What I mean is this. You will be sitting in a nice mellow coffee place, or say a bookstore... a place where one might be tempted to relax, stretch out and think, read, or quietly talk with a friend. But then.... what is hovering over your head like a seagull ready to unload?
The Barenaked Ladies, singing like a herd of monkeys about what they would do if they had a million dollars! And then all of a sudden your thoughts are scattered because you’re wondering along with this band of goofballs “Hey, yeah! Why don’t they sell pre-wrapped bacon?”
Or.... “Hmmm... how much would it cost to buy John Merrick’s remains?”
Or you’re trying to focus on some beautiful passage in Anna Karenina when all of a sudden WHOMP, the pin-up punk is screaming into your brain cavity “Hit me baby one more time!” and you want to hit someone all right! You want to shoot the speakers out of the ceiling.
The very place where you want to chill out is being blasted out with lyrical music!
Who is choosing this? Is it really that most obvious possibility?
Satan?
Seriously, why can’t they have something more relaxing that has never been put to words?
Or stuff that is put to words but is unintelligable... like Enya? How about one of those ethereal instrumental creations, or some of that New Agey stuff.
John Tesh.
Shirley MacLaine playing a cello.... I don’t care, as long as it does not have words!
But.... (and here is the killer for me).... you go somewhere where you would actually like to be distracted, and this is where they are playing the soothing instrumental stuff.
You know what I mean?
You’re trying to get an airline ticket via the telephone and you are put on hold. Now you are going to be listening to Zamfir until you swear you are growing hooves!
This is when I wouldn’t mind singing a song..... and you give me the pan flute?
Or you are in the supermarket. Well I’ll be danged! I’ve never heard a Hawaiian luau actually echoing off a wall of detergent boxes before.... but I’m sure hearing it now! This is one of the very rare moments when I wouldn’t mind Britney Spears to liven things up a bit. But no, she’s at the bookstore!
And, worst of all. What about the doctor’s waiting room?
I want distraction here. I want to sing something. I don’t want to think of the prostate exam!
But you know it as well as I do. What’s playing in here?
Kenny G.
And you don’t even want to glance at the little old lady sitting adjacent to you because you can see that she is knee-deep into a Cosmopolitan! And there is already wayyyyy too much romance in the room!
I want the address of the Hydra-Headed Beast!
I want his number!
So, I’ve got to let off a bit of steam here.
Tell me. Am I allowed to go on a bit of a rant now and then, on this blogpage?
Thank you.
Today’s the day.
I would like to just calmly mention a few things about what I consider to be one of the most colossal cultural mysteries of our modern era. Indeed, it is a riddle as unsolved as the legendary one concerning the exact pyramid-building procedures of Ancient Egypt. Or whether the Bermuda Triangle really eats airplanes.
Truly, this mystery is greater!
Simply put, I would like to know what Hydra-Headed Beast has been put in charge of the global selection and distribution of ambient music that we as human beings are constantly subjected to, and invariably within earshot of.
What office does it work out of? What is the address, that we may bomb it, forthwith?
What do I mean by ambient music?
Well, I mean the music that is just piped-in and unasked-for, no matter what store or public place you walk into nowadays.
In fact, I am listening to a fine example of it right now, here in the mega-bookstore. Actually, (this is no exaggeration) I am hearing not just one, but TWO examples of ambient music.... one from the bustling Starbucks system and the other from the bookstore itself. They are converging upon my defenseless head, beating themselves against the anvil of my ears, competing for dominance. Is this supposed to soothe the beast in me? Make me buy books? Or coffee?
If so, this marketing tool is missing its mark. I am fitting absolutely nowhere in the Hydra-Headed Beast’s demographic chart.
The only real effect this bombardment of sound has on me is to cause my eyelids to flutter. Also, I very much fantasize about shooting the overhead speaker grille right out of its false-ceilinged moorings. I would love to see that insidious tin seive dangling by its umbilical cord. Smoke curling upwards and every eye in this place turning toward me, the Deliverer!
The Bringer of Peace!
I would like to know the history of this thing called ambient music.
At what point in history did it dawn upon someone that we as humans cannot possibly live without music for even a few moments in a store or elevator?
What is so wrong with silence?
Maybe I’m weird though.... an anomaly. Some sort of dinosauric throwback to a time when our own thoughts were noise enough. I must be.
Because as I look around this room here, it is apparent that the two types of ambient music in this particular place are not providing enough racket for some patrons. No.
They have HEADPHONES on.
And they are reading at the same time.
Now, hold on here. Stop the train. Something just does not seem right for me, and I’m going to take a few deep breaths and try to understand it..... you are READING.... and then also, you are LISTENING TO MUSIC. Literally, the music could not be any closer to the same brain that is trying to comprehend the full meaning of a printed page, than in the scenario I am painting here. Essentially.... you are welcoming intense cerebral distraction while at the same time trying to concentrate on....
Here is a comparative image that springs to my mind:
A person eating a tub of lard during liposuction surgery.
I mean.... is it not time to decide upon one or the other my dear?
Now, I would like to conclude with just one final observation.
If we are doomed to have to contend with ubiquitous ambient music for the rest of our lives, could we at least make better choices as to what is played where?
Here is what I mean. Basically, it is the issue of LYRICS I am talking about.
Invariably, (please correct me if I am wrong here), in the very places where musing and introspection and philosophical digression could be greatly enhanced with nice soothing instrumental music quietly playing in the background... in these very places is where the snappy lyrical tunes are chirping out of the overheads!
What I mean is this. You will be sitting in a nice mellow coffee place, or say a bookstore... a place where one might be tempted to relax, stretch out and think, read, or quietly talk with a friend. But then.... what is hovering over your head like a seagull ready to unload?
The Barenaked Ladies, singing like a herd of monkeys about what they would do if they had a million dollars! And then all of a sudden your thoughts are scattered because you’re wondering along with this band of goofballs “Hey, yeah! Why don’t they sell pre-wrapped bacon?”
Or.... “Hmmm... how much would it cost to buy John Merrick’s remains?”
Or you’re trying to focus on some beautiful passage in Anna Karenina when all of a sudden WHOMP, the pin-up punk is screaming into your brain cavity “Hit me baby one more time!” and you want to hit someone all right! You want to shoot the speakers out of the ceiling.
The very place where you want to chill out is being blasted out with lyrical music!
Who is choosing this? Is it really that most obvious possibility?
Satan?
Seriously, why can’t they have something more relaxing that has never been put to words?
Or stuff that is put to words but is unintelligable... like Enya? How about one of those ethereal instrumental creations, or some of that New Agey stuff.
John Tesh.
Shirley MacLaine playing a cello.... I don’t care, as long as it does not have words!
But.... (and here is the killer for me).... you go somewhere where you would actually like to be distracted, and this is where they are playing the soothing instrumental stuff.
You know what I mean?
You’re trying to get an airline ticket via the telephone and you are put on hold. Now you are going to be listening to Zamfir until you swear you are growing hooves!
This is when I wouldn’t mind singing a song..... and you give me the pan flute?
Or you are in the supermarket. Well I’ll be danged! I’ve never heard a Hawaiian luau actually echoing off a wall of detergent boxes before.... but I’m sure hearing it now! This is one of the very rare moments when I wouldn’t mind Britney Spears to liven things up a bit. But no, she’s at the bookstore!
And, worst of all. What about the doctor’s waiting room?
I want distraction here. I want to sing something. I don’t want to think of the prostate exam!
But you know it as well as I do. What’s playing in here?
Kenny G.
And you don’t even want to glance at the little old lady sitting adjacent to you because you can see that she is knee-deep into a Cosmopolitan! And there is already wayyyyy too much romance in the room!
I want the address of the Hydra-Headed Beast!
I want his number!
Splash du Jour: Monday
Is it Monday already?
This week’s Splash du Jours will consist of the one-sentence blurbs written for past recipients of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962:
“John Steinbeck, for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception."
Have a great Monday!
This week’s Splash du Jours will consist of the one-sentence blurbs written for past recipients of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962:
“John Steinbeck, for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception."
Have a great Monday!
Sunday, June 12, 2005
The Language Barrier.
Margaret Atwood has the following unattributed epigram pinned to her office bulletin board:
“Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pate.”
What the epigram is getting at is the fact that so often the meeting of the real thing is a disappointment.... the author is shorter, older, and more ordinary than what you were expecting.
Well, tonight I went to see my idol.
The best author in the entire world.... the whole planet.
For those of you faithfuls who are keeping track of this blogpage, I am referring to the one and only Jose Saramago. (See my Worship-Blog of June 9th).
Tonight was the night.
I just walked back from there. Within this past hour I was in his very presence, and shook his venerable hand.
I very nearly fainted.
But, sadly, this evening in its entirety was one of the most disappointing letdowns of my life.
Definitely one of the top eleven or so!
Here’s why..... are you ready for this?
I DID NOT UNDERSTAND ONE WORD OF THE ENTIRE EVENING!
IT WAS NOT IN ENGLISH!
I WANTED TO TEAR MY HAIR OUT IN FRUSTRATION!
Correction.
Correction, excuse me. I did understand one word, a hyphenated one.
Shopping-centre.
Because Mr. Saramago said this combination of words at least fifty-four times, no exaggeration. He was explaining something about his wonderful book The Cave and talking about The Center, which figures very prominently in that book, as you probably know.
Thing is, apparently there is no French equivalent for the word “shopping centre” AND THE ENTIRE EVENING WAS CONDUCTED IN FRENCH. This is the only thing I understood all night.
SHOPPING-CENTRE!
I did not take even ONE note of any kind, because I couldn’t understand anything.
He was introduced (in English) and then he got up to the podium.... people were standing on their feet in a spontaneous ovation before he even said one word. Then he read from the beginning of Blindness, in Portuguese. Some other guy got up afterwards and read the same passage in English.
Then Mr. Saramago was interviewed in French and we all put these headsets on so that we could hear the interpretation from back there in the interpretation booth. [Soon I, and hundreds of other English-dependent headset-wearers, were turning and looking back there, and we were NOT looking to see if it was Nicole Kidman doing the interpreting!]
THE DEVICES WERE NOT WORKING!
You could hear people getting restless, banging these cheapo headsets with their cheapo transmitters against the chairs..... praying.... doing everything humanly possible to get these things working..... Jose just kept talking.... obviously oblivious to the horror descending in the room.
Seriously, people were just getting up and leaving, and I did too. I went out to the foyer to talk with the guy who gave me the headset as I went in to the auditorium.... we were all asking the same question..... “What the hell is the matter with these things?”
Meanwhile, I can see Jose talking away on the TV screen thingy in the overflow room..... in French.
The headset guy was seriously panicking. “I don’t know, they just aren’t working” he stammers and shrugs.
So we all just sort of kept walking back into the auditorium, sort of trickling back in there.... I mean, what is the use of even being there?
The person I was with, she can understand French. So she was telling me the odd sentence or two, but Mr. Saramago’s French is so different from the French that she is familiar with that it was really difficult for her to make out any larger pieces of information.
It was very disappointing.
At any one time, half the auditorium was craned backwards, looking at the sound booth, where frantic machinations of some kind were indeed going on, and an interpreter was interpreting.... we could all see that she was, but NOTHING was coming out into the headsets.
In the foyer, I and some other angrier ticket-holders spoke with the main organizer of the event and I told him I was not impressed at all, and to appease us he put a number of our names down on a list of people that will receive free tickets to an upcoming Jane Urquhart evening in September. She is a terrific author in her own right. Hopefully she will not be speaking in.... Martian that night!
A very disappointing evening in Bookpuddle-land!
I was looking so forward to inundating this page with all manner of Saramagian anecdotal wisdom!
But nope!
Not going to happen.
I did get to have my beautiful new volume of Blindness signed by the Master himself. But other than this, the night was a bit of a washout.
IT IS NOT MR. SARAMAGO’S FAULT.
I repeat (in English...) IT IS NOT MR. SARAMAGO’S FAULT.
He is still the best there is. He is still the greatest living writer!
And I am sure that every word he said was tres importante as they say en francais! Life-changing, even!
However, like one of those dogs in the Gary Larson cartoon, all I was hearing was....Blah-blah-blah shopping-centre blah-blah-blah shopping-centre blah-blah-blah-blah shopping-centre blah-blah shopping-centre!
“Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pate.”
What the epigram is getting at is the fact that so often the meeting of the real thing is a disappointment.... the author is shorter, older, and more ordinary than what you were expecting.
Well, tonight I went to see my idol.
The best author in the entire world.... the whole planet.
For those of you faithfuls who are keeping track of this blogpage, I am referring to the one and only Jose Saramago. (See my Worship-Blog of June 9th).
Tonight was the night.
I just walked back from there. Within this past hour I was in his very presence, and shook his venerable hand.
I very nearly fainted.
But, sadly, this evening in its entirety was one of the most disappointing letdowns of my life.
Definitely one of the top eleven or so!
Here’s why..... are you ready for this?
I DID NOT UNDERSTAND ONE WORD OF THE ENTIRE EVENING!
IT WAS NOT IN ENGLISH!
I WANTED TO TEAR MY HAIR OUT IN FRUSTRATION!
Correction.
Correction, excuse me. I did understand one word, a hyphenated one.
Shopping-centre.
Because Mr. Saramago said this combination of words at least fifty-four times, no exaggeration. He was explaining something about his wonderful book The Cave and talking about The Center, which figures very prominently in that book, as you probably know.
Thing is, apparently there is no French equivalent for the word “shopping centre” AND THE ENTIRE EVENING WAS CONDUCTED IN FRENCH. This is the only thing I understood all night.
SHOPPING-CENTRE!
I did not take even ONE note of any kind, because I couldn’t understand anything.
He was introduced (in English) and then he got up to the podium.... people were standing on their feet in a spontaneous ovation before he even said one word. Then he read from the beginning of Blindness, in Portuguese. Some other guy got up afterwards and read the same passage in English.
Then Mr. Saramago was interviewed in French and we all put these headsets on so that we could hear the interpretation from back there in the interpretation booth. [Soon I, and hundreds of other English-dependent headset-wearers, were turning and looking back there, and we were NOT looking to see if it was Nicole Kidman doing the interpreting!]
THE DEVICES WERE NOT WORKING!
You could hear people getting restless, banging these cheapo headsets with their cheapo transmitters against the chairs..... praying.... doing everything humanly possible to get these things working..... Jose just kept talking.... obviously oblivious to the horror descending in the room.
Seriously, people were just getting up and leaving, and I did too. I went out to the foyer to talk with the guy who gave me the headset as I went in to the auditorium.... we were all asking the same question..... “What the hell is the matter with these things?”
Meanwhile, I can see Jose talking away on the TV screen thingy in the overflow room..... in French.
The headset guy was seriously panicking. “I don’t know, they just aren’t working” he stammers and shrugs.
So we all just sort of kept walking back into the auditorium, sort of trickling back in there.... I mean, what is the use of even being there?
The person I was with, she can understand French. So she was telling me the odd sentence or two, but Mr. Saramago’s French is so different from the French that she is familiar with that it was really difficult for her to make out any larger pieces of information.
It was very disappointing.
At any one time, half the auditorium was craned backwards, looking at the sound booth, where frantic machinations of some kind were indeed going on, and an interpreter was interpreting.... we could all see that she was, but NOTHING was coming out into the headsets.
In the foyer, I and some other angrier ticket-holders spoke with the main organizer of the event and I told him I was not impressed at all, and to appease us he put a number of our names down on a list of people that will receive free tickets to an upcoming Jane Urquhart evening in September. She is a terrific author in her own right. Hopefully she will not be speaking in.... Martian that night!
A very disappointing evening in Bookpuddle-land!
I was looking so forward to inundating this page with all manner of Saramagian anecdotal wisdom!
But nope!
Not going to happen.
I did get to have my beautiful new volume of Blindness signed by the Master himself. But other than this, the night was a bit of a washout.
IT IS NOT MR. SARAMAGO’S FAULT.
I repeat (in English...) IT IS NOT MR. SARAMAGO’S FAULT.
He is still the best there is. He is still the greatest living writer!
And I am sure that every word he said was tres importante as they say en francais! Life-changing, even!
However, like one of those dogs in the Gary Larson cartoon, all I was hearing was....Blah-blah-blah shopping-centre blah-blah-blah shopping-centre blah-blah-blah-blah shopping-centre blah-blah shopping-centre!
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Backspace and Delete.
“... the vast empty spaces of the blank page appall, and everyone walks into the maze blindfolded.”
-- Margaret Atwood –
I rarely dream.
Rather, I rarely remember my dreams. They fade, and fade so quickly, upon awaking, that they might as well have not existed in my sleeping mind.
This past week, however, I awoke in the middle of the night on two separate evenings, with a lingering dream so vivid and alluring in its remembered detail that I have longed ever since, to write of it. To fashion it into a written story.
I have spent the better part of today trying to do just that, but to no avail. Sadly, the most popular keys on the laptop today have been backspace and delete. It’s just not... working. I’m not satisfied with my product. I delete, because thus far, what has been written is not worthy of the dream.
In a sort of defiant spirit, and with a fresh coffee before me, I have decided instead to write about the process of not writing.
This blog could be subtitled: Where Is The Muse When You Need Her?
Why is it that when I am all primed and ready to go, I can barely write two or three sentences before I want to throw them against the wall? Yet, when most unbidden, when most unsought, sentences and paragraphs knock against my brain... not in an attempt to get in, but to get out! Exactly at that moment when there is no pen or paper, when I am engaged in something utterly unliterary, and even when I am trying to sleep, there she is. Calliope, in all of her untimely rudeness.
Calliope, according to my trusty Thrall & Hibbard (see my blog of May 26th, entitled The Divine Afflatus) was one of the more significant of the Muses in Greek history. Her specialty was helping sweating Greek writers in the area of epic poetry.
Sitting here in the mega-bookstore, escaping the Hades-like humidity of the outdoors, I ponder upon what I consider to be the three prerequisites of good writing.
The first one is idea.
Whether the Muse is there to help you along or not, it is necessary that a writer be able to interact with idea. To write, a person must be able to engage in dialogue with themself. What I mean by this is simply the following: I could sit here and TELL YOU all about my dream, the dream that is begging to be a written story. In rather astonishing detail, even. And it would be entirely comprehendable to you, the listener. This is due to the fact that in verbal communication, 100% accuracy is not required. Hit-and-miss will do just fine. When it comes down to it, in verbal communication we are continually backspacing and deleting, whiting-out and re-explaining. This is why the word “uh” is the most commonly used word in conversation, even among the very intelligent and eloquent. We’re hitting some pause or backspace button in the mind. And for the most part, we find it acceptable, or good enough.
But no one wants to read a lot of “uhs” in a written story. You don’t want to see that on a page. The story has to be much more of a refined product than verbal communication. What ends up being written must be the product of someone talking with themself. (Which, by the way, I see as something quite different from talking to oneself).
I liken it to the concept of a bridge. In verbal communication we can get by with holes in the bridge, as we cross it. As we talk, we can look down and avoid the missing planks, or the broken portion of handrail, and we can make adjustments which avoid our unwanted dive into the water below. But when we read, we want to be able to look straight ahead. We want to trust that the author has foreseen that obstacle ahead and will warn us of it as we approach. Our business is to get to the other side, not ask for directions or make repairs along the way. This, we assume, should have been done for us. When we are reading, we want to be walking the perfect bridge.
We know this, and more importantly, the author knows this. This is their burden. The building of such a bridge.
Hence, when I tell you about my dream (my story) you may respond with something like “Hmmm... that sounds quite interesting. You should really write of it, write it out!”
“I agree. I shall go do that, directly.”
And the other person leaves the room. And now I'm staring at a blank page. The “vast empty spaces” as Atwood calls it. I am no longer dreaming. Or talking. I am all of a sudden blindfolded.
And there’s no way out except plunging headlong into it. Even if the Muse is there to help. When it comes down to it, with all of her generous help down through the ages, she herself has never written a single piece of work! Only you have. Only I have.
And to do so has required that you or I step far beyond the realm of what can (adequately) be verbally communicated. Most people secretly feel that there is a book in them, and there probably is. But to write it.... ahh, those that write it are few and far between, and are always those who have wrestled with the idea until it has become its own entity.
The second factor in the writing process is health.
By this I mean that it is incredibly difficult to write if one is even remotely ill, or otherwise unsettled, whether emotionally or physically. This is quite straightforward and obvious, yet I think that overall health is not factored in to the success of the writing process as much as it ought to be. If you are not feeling well, can you write well?
The history of the arts is replete with stories of painters and sculptures who were bona fide lunatics, suffering from acute mental illness. But I would be interested to hear of writers who were battling similar maladies. I know there must be examples (Edgar Allen Poe? Virginia Woolf? Help me here). I am just saying that I doubt if many great pieces of literature were written in between sessions of vomiting into a toilet! Nothing stifles creativity, like sickness!
Thirdly, I think of time.
Writing takes time. Often disciplined time, or time that is not there unless it is deliberately allocated. I find it interesting to read of the different ways that authors have disciplined themselves in this area. Authors with huge families, with many other responsibilities and time-pressures, have still found the time to write. Even if it is for one or two hours every morning, or night.
Often I lament the fact that my day-to-day work is very time constraining as well as physically demanding, and that by the end of the day there is not much left over for the pursuit of things artistic in nature. And yet, I am aware that in many ways I have more time than most other people do. This is because I have very little after-work time constraints upon me. And I never take work home with me. With the snap of the time clock, I am done with it.
Time, or the lack of it, can never be a valid excuse for my own dearth of literary output.
Nor can health issues. Or lack of idea, and the ability to interact with it.
Then..... what am I waiting for?
Calliope.
When you are at your wit’s end, maybe... maybe she will show up.
After all, this is her, of whom it was said in the High School Yearbook:
Voted most likely to decline an invitation.
Today, thinking of her, I am reminded of the poem by Anna Akhmatova.
The Muse
All that I am hangs by a thread tonight
As I wait for her whom no one can command.
Whatever I cherish most – youth, freedom, glory –
Fades before her who bears the flute in her hand.
And look! She comes... she tosses back her veil,
Staring me down, serene and pitiless.
“Are you the one,” I ask, “whom Dante heard dictate
The lines of his Inferno?” She answers: “Yes.”
-- Margaret Atwood –
I rarely dream.
Rather, I rarely remember my dreams. They fade, and fade so quickly, upon awaking, that they might as well have not existed in my sleeping mind.
This past week, however, I awoke in the middle of the night on two separate evenings, with a lingering dream so vivid and alluring in its remembered detail that I have longed ever since, to write of it. To fashion it into a written story.
I have spent the better part of today trying to do just that, but to no avail. Sadly, the most popular keys on the laptop today have been backspace and delete. It’s just not... working. I’m not satisfied with my product. I delete, because thus far, what has been written is not worthy of the dream.
In a sort of defiant spirit, and with a fresh coffee before me, I have decided instead to write about the process of not writing.
This blog could be subtitled: Where Is The Muse When You Need Her?
Why is it that when I am all primed and ready to go, I can barely write two or three sentences before I want to throw them against the wall? Yet, when most unbidden, when most unsought, sentences and paragraphs knock against my brain... not in an attempt to get in, but to get out! Exactly at that moment when there is no pen or paper, when I am engaged in something utterly unliterary, and even when I am trying to sleep, there she is. Calliope, in all of her untimely rudeness.
Calliope, according to my trusty Thrall & Hibbard (see my blog of May 26th, entitled The Divine Afflatus) was one of the more significant of the Muses in Greek history. Her specialty was helping sweating Greek writers in the area of epic poetry.
Sitting here in the mega-bookstore, escaping the Hades-like humidity of the outdoors, I ponder upon what I consider to be the three prerequisites of good writing.
The first one is idea.
Whether the Muse is there to help you along or not, it is necessary that a writer be able to interact with idea. To write, a person must be able to engage in dialogue with themself. What I mean by this is simply the following: I could sit here and TELL YOU all about my dream, the dream that is begging to be a written story. In rather astonishing detail, even. And it would be entirely comprehendable to you, the listener. This is due to the fact that in verbal communication, 100% accuracy is not required. Hit-and-miss will do just fine. When it comes down to it, in verbal communication we are continually backspacing and deleting, whiting-out and re-explaining. This is why the word “uh” is the most commonly used word in conversation, even among the very intelligent and eloquent. We’re hitting some pause or backspace button in the mind. And for the most part, we find it acceptable, or good enough.
But no one wants to read a lot of “uhs” in a written story. You don’t want to see that on a page. The story has to be much more of a refined product than verbal communication. What ends up being written must be the product of someone talking with themself. (Which, by the way, I see as something quite different from talking to oneself).
I liken it to the concept of a bridge. In verbal communication we can get by with holes in the bridge, as we cross it. As we talk, we can look down and avoid the missing planks, or the broken portion of handrail, and we can make adjustments which avoid our unwanted dive into the water below. But when we read, we want to be able to look straight ahead. We want to trust that the author has foreseen that obstacle ahead and will warn us of it as we approach. Our business is to get to the other side, not ask for directions or make repairs along the way. This, we assume, should have been done for us. When we are reading, we want to be walking the perfect bridge.
We know this, and more importantly, the author knows this. This is their burden. The building of such a bridge.
Hence, when I tell you about my dream (my story) you may respond with something like “Hmmm... that sounds quite interesting. You should really write of it, write it out!”
“I agree. I shall go do that, directly.”
And the other person leaves the room. And now I'm staring at a blank page. The “vast empty spaces” as Atwood calls it. I am no longer dreaming. Or talking. I am all of a sudden blindfolded.
And there’s no way out except plunging headlong into it. Even if the Muse is there to help. When it comes down to it, with all of her generous help down through the ages, she herself has never written a single piece of work! Only you have. Only I have.
And to do so has required that you or I step far beyond the realm of what can (adequately) be verbally communicated. Most people secretly feel that there is a book in them, and there probably is. But to write it.... ahh, those that write it are few and far between, and are always those who have wrestled with the idea until it has become its own entity.
The second factor in the writing process is health.
By this I mean that it is incredibly difficult to write if one is even remotely ill, or otherwise unsettled, whether emotionally or physically. This is quite straightforward and obvious, yet I think that overall health is not factored in to the success of the writing process as much as it ought to be. If you are not feeling well, can you write well?
The history of the arts is replete with stories of painters and sculptures who were bona fide lunatics, suffering from acute mental illness. But I would be interested to hear of writers who were battling similar maladies. I know there must be examples (Edgar Allen Poe? Virginia Woolf? Help me here). I am just saying that I doubt if many great pieces of literature were written in between sessions of vomiting into a toilet! Nothing stifles creativity, like sickness!
Thirdly, I think of time.
Writing takes time. Often disciplined time, or time that is not there unless it is deliberately allocated. I find it interesting to read of the different ways that authors have disciplined themselves in this area. Authors with huge families, with many other responsibilities and time-pressures, have still found the time to write. Even if it is for one or two hours every morning, or night.
Often I lament the fact that my day-to-day work is very time constraining as well as physically demanding, and that by the end of the day there is not much left over for the pursuit of things artistic in nature. And yet, I am aware that in many ways I have more time than most other people do. This is because I have very little after-work time constraints upon me. And I never take work home with me. With the snap of the time clock, I am done with it.
Time, or the lack of it, can never be a valid excuse for my own dearth of literary output.
Nor can health issues. Or lack of idea, and the ability to interact with it.
Then..... what am I waiting for?
Calliope.
When you are at your wit’s end, maybe... maybe she will show up.
After all, this is her, of whom it was said in the High School Yearbook:
Voted most likely to decline an invitation.
Today, thinking of her, I am reminded of the poem by Anna Akhmatova.
The Muse
All that I am hangs by a thread tonight
As I wait for her whom no one can command.
Whatever I cherish most – youth, freedom, glory –
Fades before her who bears the flute in her hand.
And look! She comes... she tosses back her veil,
Staring me down, serene and pitiless.
“Are you the one,” I ask, “whom Dante heard dictate
The lines of his Inferno?” She answers: “Yes.”
Friday, June 10, 2005
Marginalia.
We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.
-- stanza six of Marginalia, a poem by former U.S. Poet Laureate, Billy Collins –
I once used to engage in profuse marginalia.
I was a profligate marginalizer. Uninhibited about the defacing of books. Especially during my college years. My margins were filled with ephemera.
Aside from writing in the margins of my books, I would highlight pertinent items, in every color of the known spectrum. And I was real big on underlining too. Arrows and brackets. And asterisks. And squiggly things.
Cracking open one of my old college books is like peering into a Jackson Pollock painting. What was I thinking? How could I do this to so many books?
I am over it though. In fact, now I am on the opposite end of the marginalia continuum.
I have severe marginphobia!
I keep my books free of all defacement and defilement, and I make separate notes, either in a notebook, or, more frequently, on a few sheets of 8 ½ x 11” paper folded once, which I use as a bookmark while I read, and which I leave in the book afterwards as a permanent reference point.
No highlighting.
No squiggly things.
I now leave my books in as close to their storebought condition as possible.
For the last few days I’ve been wondering about the cause of this evolution in my note-taking style. Should I chalk it down to just another facet of my middle-aged anal-retentativeism?
I will get to my conclusions on these matters in a bit, but first, WHY IS IT that we employ the art of marginalia?
If we do it, WHY do we do it?
Is it as Collins suggests in his poem, to show that we are being attentive to our reading? To show that we are not just sitting in a chair, turning pages?
If so.... then my question becomes.... to show WHO?
Ourselves? Is it to convince ourselves that we are paying attention to what we are reading?
If this is the case, then I can see why I do not do it, because I am always very conscious of what I am doing when I am reading.
Some people read to fall asleep. I read to stay awake! I am really that intense about it.
As I spend half of my life in the mega-bookstore (guess where I am right now?) I even have a ready supply of those disposable earplug things (I call them Frankentein bolts, because that’s what you look like when they are properly installed). I keep a fresh set in my backpack at all times, and when the ambient noise of normal people around me is too distracting.... in go the bolts!
So I recently asked my friend (a skilled and chronic marginator) why she marginalates as much as she does. Even with library books, she will marginatize them in pencil, and then erase all of the margination before the due date. The returned books will have no trace of marginification.
I am impressed with the conscientiousness that is a part of of her overall marginacity.
She mentioned that marginalia can be seen as evidence that one has identified mythically or metaphysically with the author. I think this is an interesting point. I can buy that. It is as though the reader (the marginator) is signifying that they agree or disagree with a certain point being made, or that a scene or passage is resonating with the reader’s own experience to such a degree that some sort of visual addendum is necessary.
In my marginatory research, one thing became clear, early on. It was the fact that marginalizing only really makes sense if one intends to look again at the material at a later date. To re-examine the contents of a book, either for study purposes (to skip the uneccesary data that you hope will NOT be on the exam, and head straight for the asterisks and rainbows etc.), or for personal clarification. The latter thing is done to add your own slant to what the author said. It is as though you are saying “and” and then filling in the blanks.
I do both of these things. I want to refer to the book later (yes) and I am constantly adding my own cross-referential “ands” to what an author is saying. However, I do this addenda stuff in a completely separate area, as I said, a notebook or sheets of bookmark paper.
Thinking of this practise that has seemed to evolve on its own has caused me to finally understand the WHY of it, as it applies to myself.
Reason #1?
Purely aesthetical. I just like the look of newness. I feel that a beautiful book is something just this side of worshipful. I like smelling them, and even sometimes licking them. I am some sort of book..... whacko!
Reason #2?
My views and opinions are in constant flux. This reason is every bit as important as is the aesthetic one. When I look back at a lot of the marginal notes I made in books during my college days, or even as recently as five years ago, I am horrified at how dorky I was at that time. And (here is the thing).... five years from now, I will probably be horrified at how dorky I am right now! So convinced am I of this fact that I end up religiously abstaining from transcribing and immortalizing my current dorkiness in the form of marginalia!
Yes, I will want to look at the book again (if it was a good book) but I will not want to look at how dorky I was at the time of the first go-around.
I am the type of person who is always writing personal journals and then throwing them away. Destroying them. Why do I do this? Because when I read the old stuff, it is always way too dorky.
So I shred it.
Good books however? See, I don’t want to fall out of love with a good book just because it is tainted with marginal ideas I have fallen out of love with. So I keep it clean.
What I am saying begs the question.... “Don’t you hate looking at your old notebooks then?”
Strangely, the answer is no.
These books are where I press my thoughts into the wayside.
I keep them in huge three-ring binders, and I actually like looking through them. They are crazy. A wildland. A zoo without cages. This is where, like an unleashed rhinoceros, I let the pent-up highlighting and asterisking energy run rampant!
And the squiggly things? They are everywhere. Running amok in wild abandon until falling down, like Pollock-thrown paint.
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.
-- stanza six of Marginalia, a poem by former U.S. Poet Laureate, Billy Collins –
I once used to engage in profuse marginalia.
I was a profligate marginalizer. Uninhibited about the defacing of books. Especially during my college years. My margins were filled with ephemera.
Aside from writing in the margins of my books, I would highlight pertinent items, in every color of the known spectrum. And I was real big on underlining too. Arrows and brackets. And asterisks. And squiggly things.
Cracking open one of my old college books is like peering into a Jackson Pollock painting. What was I thinking? How could I do this to so many books?
I am over it though. In fact, now I am on the opposite end of the marginalia continuum.
I have severe marginphobia!
I keep my books free of all defacement and defilement, and I make separate notes, either in a notebook, or, more frequently, on a few sheets of 8 ½ x 11” paper folded once, which I use as a bookmark while I read, and which I leave in the book afterwards as a permanent reference point.
No highlighting.
No squiggly things.
I now leave my books in as close to their storebought condition as possible.
For the last few days I’ve been wondering about the cause of this evolution in my note-taking style. Should I chalk it down to just another facet of my middle-aged anal-retentativeism?
I will get to my conclusions on these matters in a bit, but first, WHY IS IT that we employ the art of marginalia?
If we do it, WHY do we do it?
Is it as Collins suggests in his poem, to show that we are being attentive to our reading? To show that we are not just sitting in a chair, turning pages?
If so.... then my question becomes.... to show WHO?
Ourselves? Is it to convince ourselves that we are paying attention to what we are reading?
If this is the case, then I can see why I do not do it, because I am always very conscious of what I am doing when I am reading.
Some people read to fall asleep. I read to stay awake! I am really that intense about it.
As I spend half of my life in the mega-bookstore (guess where I am right now?) I even have a ready supply of those disposable earplug things (I call them Frankentein bolts, because that’s what you look like when they are properly installed). I keep a fresh set in my backpack at all times, and when the ambient noise of normal people around me is too distracting.... in go the bolts!
So I recently asked my friend (a skilled and chronic marginator) why she marginalates as much as she does. Even with library books, she will marginatize them in pencil, and then erase all of the margination before the due date. The returned books will have no trace of marginification.
I am impressed with the conscientiousness that is a part of of her overall marginacity.
She mentioned that marginalia can be seen as evidence that one has identified mythically or metaphysically with the author. I think this is an interesting point. I can buy that. It is as though the reader (the marginator) is signifying that they agree or disagree with a certain point being made, or that a scene or passage is resonating with the reader’s own experience to such a degree that some sort of visual addendum is necessary.
In my marginatory research, one thing became clear, early on. It was the fact that marginalizing only really makes sense if one intends to look again at the material at a later date. To re-examine the contents of a book, either for study purposes (to skip the uneccesary data that you hope will NOT be on the exam, and head straight for the asterisks and rainbows etc.), or for personal clarification. The latter thing is done to add your own slant to what the author said. It is as though you are saying “and” and then filling in the blanks.
I do both of these things. I want to refer to the book later (yes) and I am constantly adding my own cross-referential “ands” to what an author is saying. However, I do this addenda stuff in a completely separate area, as I said, a notebook or sheets of bookmark paper.
Thinking of this practise that has seemed to evolve on its own has caused me to finally understand the WHY of it, as it applies to myself.
Reason #1?
Purely aesthetical. I just like the look of newness. I feel that a beautiful book is something just this side of worshipful. I like smelling them, and even sometimes licking them. I am some sort of book..... whacko!
Reason #2?
My views and opinions are in constant flux. This reason is every bit as important as is the aesthetic one. When I look back at a lot of the marginal notes I made in books during my college days, or even as recently as five years ago, I am horrified at how dorky I was at that time. And (here is the thing).... five years from now, I will probably be horrified at how dorky I am right now! So convinced am I of this fact that I end up religiously abstaining from transcribing and immortalizing my current dorkiness in the form of marginalia!
Yes, I will want to look at the book again (if it was a good book) but I will not want to look at how dorky I was at the time of the first go-around.
I am the type of person who is always writing personal journals and then throwing them away. Destroying them. Why do I do this? Because when I read the old stuff, it is always way too dorky.
So I shred it.
Good books however? See, I don’t want to fall out of love with a good book just because it is tainted with marginal ideas I have fallen out of love with. So I keep it clean.
What I am saying begs the question.... “Don’t you hate looking at your old notebooks then?”
Strangely, the answer is no.
These books are where I press my thoughts into the wayside.
I keep them in huge three-ring binders, and I actually like looking through them. They are crazy. A wildland. A zoo without cages. This is where, like an unleashed rhinoceros, I let the pent-up highlighting and asterisking energy run rampant!
And the squiggly things? They are everywhere. Running amok in wild abandon until falling down, like Pollock-thrown paint.
Splash du Jour: Friday
I want to mess with your life. I want you to miss appointments, burn dinner, skip your homework. I want you to tell your wife to take that moonlight stroll on the beach at Waikiki with the resort tennis pro while you read a few more chapters.
-- Stephen King --
Have a great Friday!
-- Stephen King --
Have a great Friday!
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Anticipating Saramago.
Jose Saramago... "who with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality."<-- Saramago, receiving the Nobel.
When the Nobel Prize committee selects their annual recipient of the Literature award they compose a one-sentence blurb that summarizes what they consider to be that author’s unique contribution to the field. The opening quote is what they said of Portugal’s Jose Saramago when he was awarded the Nobel in 1998. His most recently published novel at that time was entitled All The Names, and prior to this, Blindness. How fitting the committee’s words are, when one contemplates the “elusory reality” in which both those amazing novels are set.
Saramago is my favorite living author.
If I was on some sort of committee whose challenge it was to shrink the above Nobel blurb down to one word, I know which word I would choose.
The word would be:
Venerable.
As in “accorded great respect because of age, wisdom, or character.” (Concise Oxford Dictionary).
Only I would want to change the word “or” to “and”.
Because Jose Saramago has all three of these attributes. He is a mere 83 years young, exudes more wisdom than any other contemporary novelist I am aware of, and he is definitely a character!
I believe that the soul of Jose Saramago lives and breathes through certain characters of his novels. In his All The Names, the protagonist is called Senhor Jose. But beyond such non-coincidences, one needs only to read the speech that he presented at the Nobel ceremony to see that the author himself identifies closely with his creations.
You can find it in full, at: http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1998/
He ended his speech with these (to me) profoundly moving, and memorable, words:
“I conclude. The voice that read these pages wished to be the echo of the conjoined voices of my characters. I don't have, as it were, more voice than the voices they had. Forgive me if what has seemed little to you, to me is all.”
His style is inimitable.
By that, I mean that there is literally no one like him. Just take one of his novels, open it up anywhere, and you immediately see that it does not look like the last thing you read. No prose writer I am aware of breaks so many grammatical rules. His paragraphs can run on for pages, for chapters, even. And punctuation? It is... not conventional. Quotation marks? He doesn’t use them. The amazing thing is that he is so good at what he does that you soon forget that the world is supposed to need proper punctuation!
I have not read all of his works, but I will. Thus far, I have only read The Gospel According To Jesus Christ, Blindness, All The Names, The Tale of the Unknown Island, The Cave, and his latest, The Double.
Of these, I think that The Cave remains my favorite, however, if someone had never read Saramago at all, I would suggest they read Blindness first of all. Then dig yourself in and read everything else.
I have been thinking about Saramago all day today because I am so excited about the fact that this weekend I will hear him speak, and possibly, possibly.... (“I’m all verklempt”.... [sips some water].... “OK, tawpik! Alphabetically speaking, Saramago is superior to Tolstoy... discuss!”)..... possibly.... I may possibly meet him. Shake his hand. Get him to sign my book. Faint. Pee my pants. Perhaps a combination of these things.
He will be doing a reading and discussion session within walking distance from Pigeon Central and I got tickets to this event the very day I heard of it.
I will be sure to give you an update on every unpunctuated, venerable word he says!
I am anticipating Saramago.
Sunday, June 12th... 7 p.m. He speaketh.......!
Splash du Jour: Thursday
My favorite writer in the whole world said:
The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write. At four o'clock in the morning, when the promise of a new day still lingered over French lands, he got up from his pallet and left for the fields, taking to pasture the half-dozen pigs whose fertility nourished him and his wife.
-- Jose Saramago, speaking of his grandfather Jeronimo. Nobel Prize speech, 1998 --
Have a great Thursday!
The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write. At four o'clock in the morning, when the promise of a new day still lingered over French lands, he got up from his pallet and left for the fields, taking to pasture the half-dozen pigs whose fertility nourished him and his wife.
-- Jose Saramago, speaking of his grandfather Jeronimo. Nobel Prize speech, 1998 --
Have a great Thursday!
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Spongism.
I am in the midst of reading a fascinating new book by John Shelby Spong.
Spong is well-known as a writer in the realm of what I am going to call “avant-garde Christianity.” He is (I believe) on the very cutting edge of a new and innovative, and incredibly revitalized way of observing and conversing with Biblical theology. He has written extensively on so many topics that it would be difficult to enumerate even a portion of them here, but I find him to be most illuminating on issues of ecclesiology. On how church is conducted, or ought to be.
Rather than just criticize and point toward everything that the established “church” is doing wrong, Spong’s brilliance is that he proposes what ought to be done about it. And “ought” is really too weak of a word... he says it must be done, if the Church is to survive in the 21st Century and beyond. Specifically, I would be referring to what he has written in his books entitled Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks To Believers In Exile, and A New Christianity For A New World: Why Traditional Faith Is Dying and How a New Faith Is Being Born, both published by HarperSanFransisco.
This retired Bishop of Newark (Episcopal Church) once claimed that he was finished with the writing of books. I am so glad that here in what he calls his “third half of life” he has given us yet another insightful look into the relevant theological issues of our day and age.
The new book is called The Sins Of Scripture: Exposing The Bible’s Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love.
Scorcher of a title huh?
Spong, on the face of it, can appear to some to be almost “anti-Christian” but when you really examine his work and read of his personal convictions, you find that a much better summation of his ideas would be “anti-ignorance”.
He is all about asking the needful questions, and doing what he can to dispel the ignorance of invalid answers.
As a “believer in exile” myself, I find in my own life that I am increasingly identifying with Spongism.
Anyhoo... the specific issue that I wanted to point out from this new book is neither all that controversial nor potentially divisive nor heretical enough to burn anyone at the stake over.
It is just.... interesting.
It comes from Section 2 of the book, in which Spong is discussing The Bible And The Environment, and for his “terrible text” he is looking at Genesis 1:28, which says “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.”
Spong’s argument is that at one time (namely, the time at which this Scripture was written, and several millennia thereafter), the injunction had a certain validity and purpose which our current environmental situation can no longer support in an ad infinitum sort of way. In ancient times, it is understandable that population growth was a necessary part of human survival. There just weren’t that many people around. Not only this, but they died a lot earlier (younger) than people tend to die today in most parts of the world. Nowadays worldwide population is growing so exponentially, that if the earth were a bus, someone ought to put the brakes on!
In a nutshell, the age-old enemies of human survival have been largely defeated, one after another. He says:
The proof of this is recognized when one looks at the statistics of human population. Human life emerged on this planet, according to the best estimates of anthropologists, between one and two million years ago. [This is me here, not Spong... cutting in to say that I am fully aware that biblical literalists reading that statement would already be giving birth to a sacred cow over it, but I would remind them that it is ignorance we are trying to expel here, not cattle! Back to Spong now...] Yet it took from that point of origin until 1750 CE [Common Era, same as saying, AD, except more religiously correct to say CE] for the number of human beings to top one billion. It then took only about one hundred and eighty years for the human population to reach the two billion number plateau, which demographers believe was achieved around the year 1930 CE. It then took only forty years until 1970 to add the third billion. Since then, in the thirty-plus years between 1970 and the present, the world’s population has doubled to approximately six billion people. Even now, when the rate of growth has finally begun to slow, the actual expansion of human beings has not.
Current estimates are that before the twenty-first century fades into history, the human population will reach a figure somewhere between nine and ten billion people. There are still some who do not see this as an impending disaster.
-- from page 36-37. The Sins of Scripture, John Shelby Spong, 2005 –
Spong is not telling people here that there is something wrong with their desire to have children, nor is he implying that people ought to quit having children, or feel guilty that they are contributing to the end of the world because they are impregnated or impregnating. He is merely pointing out that at one time, the biblical injunction presented in Genesis was necessary to enable the human race to survive.
Those days are over. How long are we going to continue being fruitful?
Till there is standing room only?
Millions of people around the world are still interpreting this particular scripture as though it were a present-day command to avoid methods of contraception, and I believe that this is very much a distortion of its original context and intention.
I agree with Spong when he says:
Now it [Gen.1:28] must be seen as as nothing less than a prescription for human genocide. Once it was accepted as the “Word of God.” Now it must be viewed as a terrible and life-threatening text.
If followed literally and applied worldwide this biblical verse would guarantee our annihilation. Therefore we need to be careful of what we mean when we declare that it is the “Word of the Lord.”
Spong is well-known as a writer in the realm of what I am going to call “avant-garde Christianity.” He is (I believe) on the very cutting edge of a new and innovative, and incredibly revitalized way of observing and conversing with Biblical theology. He has written extensively on so many topics that it would be difficult to enumerate even a portion of them here, but I find him to be most illuminating on issues of ecclesiology. On how church is conducted, or ought to be.
Rather than just criticize and point toward everything that the established “church” is doing wrong, Spong’s brilliance is that he proposes what ought to be done about it. And “ought” is really too weak of a word... he says it must be done, if the Church is to survive in the 21st Century and beyond. Specifically, I would be referring to what he has written in his books entitled Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks To Believers In Exile, and A New Christianity For A New World: Why Traditional Faith Is Dying and How a New Faith Is Being Born, both published by HarperSanFransisco.
This retired Bishop of Newark (Episcopal Church) once claimed that he was finished with the writing of books. I am so glad that here in what he calls his “third half of life” he has given us yet another insightful look into the relevant theological issues of our day and age.
The new book is called The Sins Of Scripture: Exposing The Bible’s Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love.
Scorcher of a title huh?
Spong, on the face of it, can appear to some to be almost “anti-Christian” but when you really examine his work and read of his personal convictions, you find that a much better summation of his ideas would be “anti-ignorance”.
He is all about asking the needful questions, and doing what he can to dispel the ignorance of invalid answers.
As a “believer in exile” myself, I find in my own life that I am increasingly identifying with Spongism.
Anyhoo... the specific issue that I wanted to point out from this new book is neither all that controversial nor potentially divisive nor heretical enough to burn anyone at the stake over.
It is just.... interesting.
It comes from Section 2 of the book, in which Spong is discussing The Bible And The Environment, and for his “terrible text” he is looking at Genesis 1:28, which says “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.”
Spong’s argument is that at one time (namely, the time at which this Scripture was written, and several millennia thereafter), the injunction had a certain validity and purpose which our current environmental situation can no longer support in an ad infinitum sort of way. In ancient times, it is understandable that population growth was a necessary part of human survival. There just weren’t that many people around. Not only this, but they died a lot earlier (younger) than people tend to die today in most parts of the world. Nowadays worldwide population is growing so exponentially, that if the earth were a bus, someone ought to put the brakes on!
In a nutshell, the age-old enemies of human survival have been largely defeated, one after another. He says:
The proof of this is recognized when one looks at the statistics of human population. Human life emerged on this planet, according to the best estimates of anthropologists, between one and two million years ago. [This is me here, not Spong... cutting in to say that I am fully aware that biblical literalists reading that statement would already be giving birth to a sacred cow over it, but I would remind them that it is ignorance we are trying to expel here, not cattle! Back to Spong now...] Yet it took from that point of origin until 1750 CE [Common Era, same as saying, AD, except more religiously correct to say CE] for the number of human beings to top one billion. It then took only about one hundred and eighty years for the human population to reach the two billion number plateau, which demographers believe was achieved around the year 1930 CE. It then took only forty years until 1970 to add the third billion. Since then, in the thirty-plus years between 1970 and the present, the world’s population has doubled to approximately six billion people. Even now, when the rate of growth has finally begun to slow, the actual expansion of human beings has not.
Current estimates are that before the twenty-first century fades into history, the human population will reach a figure somewhere between nine and ten billion people. There are still some who do not see this as an impending disaster.
-- from page 36-37. The Sins of Scripture, John Shelby Spong, 2005 –
Spong is not telling people here that there is something wrong with their desire to have children, nor is he implying that people ought to quit having children, or feel guilty that they are contributing to the end of the world because they are impregnated or impregnating. He is merely pointing out that at one time, the biblical injunction presented in Genesis was necessary to enable the human race to survive.
Those days are over. How long are we going to continue being fruitful?
Till there is standing room only?
Millions of people around the world are still interpreting this particular scripture as though it were a present-day command to avoid methods of contraception, and I believe that this is very much a distortion of its original context and intention.
I agree with Spong when he says:
Now it [Gen.1:28] must be seen as as nothing less than a prescription for human genocide. Once it was accepted as the “Word of God.” Now it must be viewed as a terrible and life-threatening text.
If followed literally and applied worldwide this biblical verse would guarantee our annihilation. Therefore we need to be careful of what we mean when we declare that it is the “Word of the Lord.”
Splash du Jour: Wednesday
I like the way a bookstore breaks down into fiction and nonfiction. In other words, these people are lying, and these people are telling the truth. That’s the way the world should be.
-- Jerry Seinfeld –
Have a great Wednesday!
-- Jerry Seinfeld –
Have a great Wednesday!
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
McEwan's Saturday.
The funniest thing just happened twelve seconds ago. I sat down here at the mega-bookstore, and this really old guy sat down across from me. He's probably a hundred. There is a partition wall between us. We are sitting at this desk-like bank of inoperative computer terminals, and I can only see the top 1/3rd of his head from here. But, when I went around to plug in the power cord for my laptop I saw that he is leafing through Ian McEwan’s Saturday, fresh-plucked from the shelves and so, I say.... “That is a great book. I just read it a while ago” and then he mutters something, he is totally flustered, and fidgets around, and he is closing the book and all.... half-getting up to leave, and he just mumbles “Yes, Yes” but even with those two repeated syllables I can hear that he has a really thick accent from somewhere... and then I realized that he probably thinks I work here (I am still in my uniform from work) and that I am suggesting that he put the unpurchased book back on the shelf, especially since I was sort of bent down plugging this computer in and all, as if I own the place.... so I said it again, in my most re-assuring voice... “It’s a great book. You’ll like it.”“Yes, yes” he says in Jarble-ese.... and then just as I sat down again I noticed that he glanced over at me and convinced himself that I am not going to arrest him. With that, he cut back to about the middle of the book and has been reading in there ever since. So, I find that hilarious. He is doing the same thing I did in here just a while ago.... he is reading the entire book without buying it. Isn’t that wild?
We're birds of a feather all of a sudden, me and this foreign centenarian.
McEwan is definitely a writer of successful and successive masterpieces. He keeps getting better and Saturday is the best of the five McEwan books I have read thus far. It is simply amazing the sheer AMOUNT of things, incidents, that happen to Henry Perowne and his family in this one day, Saturday, February 15, 2003. Amazing, and yet so believably presented. McEwan is the consummate chronicler of incident. He kindles conflagrations from sparks, like no-one else I have ever read. His novel Enduring Love is probably the best example of the power of antecedents, but really all of his books have this trail you can follow.... this led to this, which led to that.... and WOW, what a subsequent blaze from such a small little tea-light candle of an incident. Saturday is a character-driven book. Here we find a leading man who is consistently decent without ever being a namby-pamby moralist. Here is an engaging story that abounds in optimism and resolves itself in decency without ever avoiding the ugliness and potential violence that exists in the real world. These have the capacity to change our lives in an instant. Henry, (by no means a Pollyanna-figure but rather a scientifically calculated realist when the chips are down) has to face time-and-again in this one Saturday, what it means to "do the right thing." The Perownes are perhaps the most lovable (lovely) family I have met in literature. With Saturday, I predict a second Booker Prize will come to McEwan [The Longlist will be revealed August 10th, '05]. He proves with this novel that he is a writer worthy of the Nobel.
Saturday is a fabulous book. You should buy it.
Everything I have read of this author has been exceptionally good.
I know that it is almost impossible to utter a more subjective statement than, “Such-and-such book is a good book”.... but seriously, sooner or later you are just going to have to trust me that I am a certified authority on what is good! And on what is bad. Otherwise, this blog is going to get real boring for you, day in and day out, if it hasn’t become so already!
I have read McEwan’s Black Dogs, Enduring Love, Amsterdam, Atonement, and now his latest gem, Saturday... and truly, I must conclude, you cannot go wrong, reading this authorial genius. This, this... sculptor of story.
Just quit reading this, get in your car right now, go to the store, and buy Saturday. It’s really easy.
“Yes, yes,” mumbled my reader, “And why did you yourself not buy the book Cipriano?”
You know what? I am going to go with the “temporary insanity” thing on this one.
Temporary book-driven insanity of a permanent and incurable nature.
Splash du Jour: Tuesday
Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don't use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye,your ear, your tongue your hand. And, above all, poetry is compacted metaphor or simile. Such metaphors, like Japanese paper flowers, may expand outward into gigantic shapes.
-- Ray Bradbury --
Have a great Tuesday!
-- Ray Bradbury --
Have a great Tuesday!
Monday, June 06, 2005
Double Standards.
double standard: a rule or principle applied more strictly to some people than others (including oneself). -- The Concise Oxford Dictionary –
I hate double standards.
To me, the phrase is synonymous with hypocrisy, something I despise with a passion.
In my experience of literature I have never encountered a more poignant and mournful example of hypocritical double-standardism than in Thomas Hardy’s Tess Of The D’Urbervilles. I have read so many of his books I cannot recount them, but this one remains my favorite. Hardy himself thought it his finest novel, and Tess the most deeply felt character he ever created. I consider Hardy to be one of the best writers that ever lived, not only for his prose, but his poetry as well.
Hardy, a thoroughgoing fatalist, really ratchets things up here with Tess.
In the early portion of the book, young Tess Durbeyfield is seduced by the wily and worldly-wise Alec D’Urberville. He is portrayed as a spoiled, high class snob, void of conscience and morals. Into his web the hapless Tess falls.
Tess is de-flowered and impregnated in the encounter, and she chooses to leave the D’Urberville mansion,but of course, must do so as a “fallen” woman. After all, she lives in Hardy’s Victorian Wessex.
[I pause at this point to note that Hardy subtitled this novel “A Pure Woman” and while detailing the taboo and social stigma of Tess’s predicament, he seeks at every remove to exonerate her of her “sins” and present her as a veritable moral lighthouse casting its light upon a sea of floundering depravity.]
Tess’s baby dies, and she is cast out to fend for herself. Even her own kith and kin have rejected her. She is hired as a milkmaid on a large dairy farm and it is here that Hardy places his protagonist as well as her future husband in their most troublesome and disturbing moral and social dilemna.
For it is here that she meets the man Angel Clare and the two fall in love.
The proper courtship ensues, but Tess knows in her heart that she must tell Angel about her past. Feeling that the moral sin she has experienced will surely drive him from her, she hesitates in her revelation. The question she and the reader must ponder is this: Would Angel accept her even though she is not accepted by society?
There is much more to this story than I am re-telling here, especially the issue of an unread confessional letter that Tess mistakenly assumes Angel has read... but I want to focus on the double-standardisms.
I will zip ahead now to their wedding night, whereupon Angel Clare feels profoundly moved upon to share with Tess his own past moral lapses. He tells Tess of how he has been around the block a few times, utterly unaware that she too sort of knows the neighborhood. (so to say).
So Tess readily forgives him and he accepts her forgiveness easily, saying “Then we will dismiss it at once and forever!”
Tess is “almost glad” at his lapse because she thinks it is the same as hers and that he will forgive her outright. Plus, she thinks he has already read her confessional letter to him anyway.
Big mistake.
Tess now tells her own dark secret....
Her confession destroys Angel’s idea of the pure, virginal maiden, and as a result, he cannot see, let alone appreciate, the vital, loving Tess before him. His rejection is immediate. Apparently, what has been so good for the gander is NOT good for the goose!
She looked absolutely pure. Nature, in her fantastic trickery, had set such a seal of maidenhood upon Tess’s countenance that he gazed at her with a stupefied air: “Tess – say it is not true! No, it is not true!”
Her words “Then you will not forgive me?” are among the saddest (for me) in literature.
He does not. The idiot does not.
As Angel watches Tess’s coach slowly move up the hill, he hopes that she will look back at him. Too devestated to move, she does not look out. Guilt-ridden, she submits to his anger.
For those of you that are keeping score here... now Tess’s situation is even worse. She is married but not really married. She is abandoned. She returns home to Marlott in this sort of annulled limbo, where she is promptly shunned by friends and neighbors and her own family. Her social and economic status decline with the temporary jobs she takes.
Hardy is exposing the hypocrisy of his time by pointing out that a man could divorce his wife for committing adultery; however, a woman could not divorce her husband for it.
Double standard!
And Tess has not even committed adultery, technically speaking.
The truth is, she was essentially raped by Alec D’Urberville in her youth!
It’s enough to make you want to throw the book at the wall!
And it gets worse.
Alec D’Urberville returns to rescue her, this time not as a spoiled young man, but as a preacher. He claims to have received a calling from God to preach to sinners. He pretends to realize the errors of his ways (with Tess) and asks her to forgive him. She confesses to him about their child and her (unofficially annulled) marriage to Angel. [Meanwhile, Angel has left the continent, literally.]
Her seduction by Alec is slow and methodical and he haunts her until she agrees to marry him. He does this by convincing her that Angel is gone forever.
What do you think?
Will Angel come to his senses and return to Tess?
When, and if, he does, what will happen?
In case you have never read this masterpiece of fiction, I am not going to say any more.... for those of you who think I have spoiled the book for you, let me just say, there is much more that takes place. Stuff that you would never imagine, from what I have revealed here.
Not since Desdemona’s strangled head was set down lifeless on its pillow has anything so tragic in its unnecessariness happened to a heroine.
But my point in recounting the aforementioned is just to take an example from literature of the kind of double standardism that the world can do without.
The whole wretched mess of it makes me think of the following, more modernish fable on a similar theme. Only this time, the man gets it in the end! (so to say).
A man escapes from prison where he has been for 15 years. He breaks into a house to look for money and guns and finds a young couple in bed. He orders the guy out of bed and ties him to a chair. While tying the girl to the bed, he gets on top of her, kisses her neck, then goes up into the bathroom.
While he's in there, the husband tells the wife:
"Listen, this guy's an escaped convict, look at his clothes! He probably spent lots of time in jail and hasn't seen a woman in years...I saw how he kissed your neck. If he wants sex, don't resist, don't complain. Do whatever he tells you. Satisfy him no matter how much he nauseates you. This guy is probably dangerous. If he gets angry, he'll kill us. Be strong, honey. I love you."
To which the wife responds:
"He wasn't kissing my neck. He was whispering in my ear. He told me he was gay, thought you were cute, and asked if we had any Vaseline.
I told him it was in the bathroom. Be strong honey, I love you, too!"
After all, what’s good for the goose...... well, you know the rest of it, right?
I hate double standards.
To me, the phrase is synonymous with hypocrisy, something I despise with a passion.
In my experience of literature I have never encountered a more poignant and mournful example of hypocritical double-standardism than in Thomas Hardy’s Tess Of The D’Urbervilles. I have read so many of his books I cannot recount them, but this one remains my favorite. Hardy himself thought it his finest novel, and Tess the most deeply felt character he ever created. I consider Hardy to be one of the best writers that ever lived, not only for his prose, but his poetry as well.
Hardy, a thoroughgoing fatalist, really ratchets things up here with Tess.
In the early portion of the book, young Tess Durbeyfield is seduced by the wily and worldly-wise Alec D’Urberville. He is portrayed as a spoiled, high class snob, void of conscience and morals. Into his web the hapless Tess falls.
Tess is de-flowered and impregnated in the encounter, and she chooses to leave the D’Urberville mansion,but of course, must do so as a “fallen” woman. After all, she lives in Hardy’s Victorian Wessex.
[I pause at this point to note that Hardy subtitled this novel “A Pure Woman” and while detailing the taboo and social stigma of Tess’s predicament, he seeks at every remove to exonerate her of her “sins” and present her as a veritable moral lighthouse casting its light upon a sea of floundering depravity.]
Tess’s baby dies, and she is cast out to fend for herself. Even her own kith and kin have rejected her. She is hired as a milkmaid on a large dairy farm and it is here that Hardy places his protagonist as well as her future husband in their most troublesome and disturbing moral and social dilemna.
For it is here that she meets the man Angel Clare and the two fall in love.
The proper courtship ensues, but Tess knows in her heart that she must tell Angel about her past. Feeling that the moral sin she has experienced will surely drive him from her, she hesitates in her revelation. The question she and the reader must ponder is this: Would Angel accept her even though she is not accepted by society?
There is much more to this story than I am re-telling here, especially the issue of an unread confessional letter that Tess mistakenly assumes Angel has read... but I want to focus on the double-standardisms.
I will zip ahead now to their wedding night, whereupon Angel Clare feels profoundly moved upon to share with Tess his own past moral lapses. He tells Tess of how he has been around the block a few times, utterly unaware that she too sort of knows the neighborhood. (so to say).
So Tess readily forgives him and he accepts her forgiveness easily, saying “Then we will dismiss it at once and forever!”
Tess is “almost glad” at his lapse because she thinks it is the same as hers and that he will forgive her outright. Plus, she thinks he has already read her confessional letter to him anyway.
Big mistake.
Tess now tells her own dark secret....
Her confession destroys Angel’s idea of the pure, virginal maiden, and as a result, he cannot see, let alone appreciate, the vital, loving Tess before him. His rejection is immediate. Apparently, what has been so good for the gander is NOT good for the goose!
She looked absolutely pure. Nature, in her fantastic trickery, had set such a seal of maidenhood upon Tess’s countenance that he gazed at her with a stupefied air: “Tess – say it is not true! No, it is not true!”
Her words “Then you will not forgive me?” are among the saddest (for me) in literature.
He does not. The idiot does not.
As Angel watches Tess’s coach slowly move up the hill, he hopes that she will look back at him. Too devestated to move, she does not look out. Guilt-ridden, she submits to his anger.
For those of you that are keeping score here... now Tess’s situation is even worse. She is married but not really married. She is abandoned. She returns home to Marlott in this sort of annulled limbo, where she is promptly shunned by friends and neighbors and her own family. Her social and economic status decline with the temporary jobs she takes.
Hardy is exposing the hypocrisy of his time by pointing out that a man could divorce his wife for committing adultery; however, a woman could not divorce her husband for it.
Double standard!
And Tess has not even committed adultery, technically speaking.
The truth is, she was essentially raped by Alec D’Urberville in her youth!
It’s enough to make you want to throw the book at the wall!
And it gets worse.
Alec D’Urberville returns to rescue her, this time not as a spoiled young man, but as a preacher. He claims to have received a calling from God to preach to sinners. He pretends to realize the errors of his ways (with Tess) and asks her to forgive him. She confesses to him about their child and her (unofficially annulled) marriage to Angel. [Meanwhile, Angel has left the continent, literally.]
Her seduction by Alec is slow and methodical and he haunts her until she agrees to marry him. He does this by convincing her that Angel is gone forever.
What do you think?
Will Angel come to his senses and return to Tess?
When, and if, he does, what will happen?
In case you have never read this masterpiece of fiction, I am not going to say any more.... for those of you who think I have spoiled the book for you, let me just say, there is much more that takes place. Stuff that you would never imagine, from what I have revealed here.
Not since Desdemona’s strangled head was set down lifeless on its pillow has anything so tragic in its unnecessariness happened to a heroine.
But my point in recounting the aforementioned is just to take an example from literature of the kind of double standardism that the world can do without.
The whole wretched mess of it makes me think of the following, more modernish fable on a similar theme. Only this time, the man gets it in the end! (so to say).
A man escapes from prison where he has been for 15 years. He breaks into a house to look for money and guns and finds a young couple in bed. He orders the guy out of bed and ties him to a chair. While tying the girl to the bed, he gets on top of her, kisses her neck, then goes up into the bathroom.
While he's in there, the husband tells the wife:
"Listen, this guy's an escaped convict, look at his clothes! He probably spent lots of time in jail and hasn't seen a woman in years...I saw how he kissed your neck. If he wants sex, don't resist, don't complain. Do whatever he tells you. Satisfy him no matter how much he nauseates you. This guy is probably dangerous. If he gets angry, he'll kill us. Be strong, honey. I love you."
To which the wife responds:
"He wasn't kissing my neck. He was whispering in my ear. He told me he was gay, thought you were cute, and asked if we had any Vaseline.
I told him it was in the bathroom. Be strong honey, I love you, too!"
After all, what’s good for the goose...... well, you know the rest of it, right?
Splash du Jour: Monday
Some guy, whom I cannot possibly agree with, says, of the venerable Thomas Hardy:
There is one fault in Mr. Hardy’s work that still jars... but which he can hardly be expected to eradicate, as it is temperamental – a certain slight coarseness of touch in his lovemaking... his women and men alike are always somewhat too obviously animal.
-- Richard Le Galliene, in Retrospective Reviews. A Literary Log II 1893-1895. --
Have a great Monday!
There is one fault in Mr. Hardy’s work that still jars... but which he can hardly be expected to eradicate, as it is temperamental – a certain slight coarseness of touch in his lovemaking... his women and men alike are always somewhat too obviously animal.
-- Richard Le Galliene, in Retrospective Reviews. A Literary Log II 1893-1895. --
Have a great Monday!
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Pigeon Update!
I am afraid it is a sad Sunday here at Pigeon Central.
For those of you perhaps just tuning in, I described in a blog (May 30th, entitled “Pigeon Central”) how that this year I have two pigeon families nesting on my balcony. I have been looking forward to this season’s hatchlings, and as I described in the blog, due to certain ads that the pigeons had placed in a periodical called Nesters Monthly, I was even thinking that perhaps a few more families would have moved in by now.
But I went out there to check on them this morning.
The news is not good.
The eggs are gone.
All three eggs that were there, are gone.
At first, I couldn’t believe my eyes. So I bent down to have a closer look and then a pigeon fluttered out from behind this old wooden chair in the corner. And instead of flying away (as they usually do when encountering me), it just walked over to the one planter which had been its nest, and looked up at me, blinking. (I am not making any of this up). I could tell it was furious.
And scared. But more furious than scared, because if it was more scared than furious, it would have simply flown away.
But no.
It had business with me. It was now obvious to me that it had been waiting behind that wooden chair for a moment like this! It fixed me with that eye, and said:
“WHERE...
IS...
THE...
EGG?”
“I swear to you, I have no idea, I haven’t even been out he...”
“NO.
SERIOUSLY.
WHERE
IS
IT?”
I felt so bad. Honestly.
I have nothing to say to this bird.
I did not take its egg.
Nor did I touch the other two. The other eggs, in the big clay pot.
But all three are gone. And as I turned away from this mad-as-a-hen pigeon-mother, I discovered one of the eggs there on the concrete, quite a ways from either nesting area. Smashed, no yoke or embyonic bird in it even... the sun must have dried either thing away. Or something (eegads!) ate the contents.
This is a mystery to me. It really is.
The Case of The Disappearing Balcony Eggs.
No one else (human) that I know of has had access to my balcony. My cat has not been out there. Not even once.
So, my next step is to ask the superintendent about it. I know that recently, just a few days ago, workers were in my apartment while I was at work. They were installing a condensate pipe in the air conditioner. But they would have had no reason to be out on my balcony.
Is there such a thing as other birds that would fly up there and steal and/or eat these eggs?
Seriously, I do not know this.
What do they do? Carry the eggs away in some sort of bird-backpack? I mean, but for the one omellette there.... not even a shell fragment from the other two is left behind.
No evidence.
No fingerprints.
No footprints.
Just the ominous twirling sound of my neighbor’s Wal Mart Bird-B-Gone pinwheels on the next balcony rail. Twirling like it's the end of the world.
And a mad mad, mournful pigeon looking up at me with everything in its beady eyes but tears.
For those of you perhaps just tuning in, I described in a blog (May 30th, entitled “Pigeon Central”) how that this year I have two pigeon families nesting on my balcony. I have been looking forward to this season’s hatchlings, and as I described in the blog, due to certain ads that the pigeons had placed in a periodical called Nesters Monthly, I was even thinking that perhaps a few more families would have moved in by now.
But I went out there to check on them this morning.
The news is not good.
The eggs are gone.
All three eggs that were there, are gone.
At first, I couldn’t believe my eyes. So I bent down to have a closer look and then a pigeon fluttered out from behind this old wooden chair in the corner. And instead of flying away (as they usually do when encountering me), it just walked over to the one planter which had been its nest, and looked up at me, blinking. (I am not making any of this up). I could tell it was furious.
And scared. But more furious than scared, because if it was more scared than furious, it would have simply flown away.
But no.
It had business with me. It was now obvious to me that it had been waiting behind that wooden chair for a moment like this! It fixed me with that eye, and said:
“WHERE...
IS...
THE...
EGG?”
“I swear to you, I have no idea, I haven’t even been out he...”
“NO.
SERIOUSLY.
WHERE
IS
IT?”
I felt so bad. Honestly.
I have nothing to say to this bird.
I did not take its egg.
Nor did I touch the other two. The other eggs, in the big clay pot.
But all three are gone. And as I turned away from this mad-as-a-hen pigeon-mother, I discovered one of the eggs there on the concrete, quite a ways from either nesting area. Smashed, no yoke or embyonic bird in it even... the sun must have dried either thing away. Or something (eegads!) ate the contents.
This is a mystery to me. It really is.
The Case of The Disappearing Balcony Eggs.
No one else (human) that I know of has had access to my balcony. My cat has not been out there. Not even once.
So, my next step is to ask the superintendent about it. I know that recently, just a few days ago, workers were in my apartment while I was at work. They were installing a condensate pipe in the air conditioner. But they would have had no reason to be out on my balcony.
Is there such a thing as other birds that would fly up there and steal and/or eat these eggs?
Seriously, I do not know this.
What do they do? Carry the eggs away in some sort of bird-backpack? I mean, but for the one omellette there.... not even a shell fragment from the other two is left behind.
No evidence.
No fingerprints.
No footprints.
Just the ominous twirling sound of my neighbor’s Wal Mart Bird-B-Gone pinwheels on the next balcony rail. Twirling like it's the end of the world.
And a mad mad, mournful pigeon looking up at me with everything in its beady eyes but tears.
Saturday, June 04, 2005
Atwood's Alias Grace.
I have just finished reading what I feel is among the very best pieces of fiction I have ever encountered.Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this is Canadian Gothic, at its finest.
Of the Atwood canon, I have read Surfacing, Bodily Harm, The Handmaid’s Tale, Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, The Blind Assassin, and Oryx & Crake.
Alias Grace now displaces Cat’s Eye, as my current favorite.
And there’s so much more to read of her...... I am not done.
AG is the fictionalized story of the real-life Grace Marks, possible murderess, possible innocent. Each possibility is never rendered a final verdict, and this is part of the book’s overall appeal (to me). In an online interview, the author stated:
It is not a murder mystery, it is a mystery about murder.... In a murder mystery you have to come up with the conclusion, or the readers will rise up against you. You can’t just end it by saying, “Well, I don’t know.”
In other words, this novel, as the real story itself, does end with an “I don’t know.”
It is definitely a mystery about murder.
The truth about Grace’s culpability has never, and will never, be known.
In Ontario in 1843, Grace Marks, a 16-year old servant girl, was found guilty of the grisly murders of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and his housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery. [Actually, the Montgomery murder was not even tried, because the already delivered verdict of a death sentence in the Kinnear trial rendered the second trial unneccessary.]
The murders were committed by Kinnear’s hired stable hand, James McDermott. Grace’s involvement (if any) was that of an accomplice. McDermott was hanged, and Grace, through the last-minute machinations of her lawyer, had her own death sentence commuted to life imprisonment.
She spent close to thirty years in Kingston penitentiary. In 1872, after relentless petitions in her favor supporting her innocence or at least her rehabilitation, she was finally granted a pardon and freed.
To say that the historical record of these events is “splotchy” is to be too generous. There is so much false testimony, outright perjury, histrionics, exaggeration and contradictions involved, that for any real unequivocal truth to emerge would be a miracle.
Nonetheless, Atwood utilizes narrative, letters, newspaper accounts, excerpts from the writings of journalists of the day, notes by doctors and wardens, and even poems by Browning, Dickinson, and Tennyson to illuminate as much as possible the events leading up to the murders.
The bulk of AG consists of Grace’s (fictional, now) own recollections as told to the young Dr. Simon Jordan, who visits her every day in the Penitentiary and seeks to unearth Grace’s latent memories. He represents the burgeoning methodology of psychoanalysis in the mid 19th Century.
Grace willingly tells her story to Dr. Jordan, but in doing so, she also tells it to us through her first person narration which seems to be less a series of thoughts and straightforward factual memory than a form like an inner diary, an (actually) unspoken journal. Neither the well-intentioned doctor nor the well-informed reader ever know if Grace’s words can be trusted. Grace seems to be continually reconfiguring portions of her story, especially as she approaches the fateful Saturday in question, July 23rd, 1843. Here we are confronted with what the French call “dedoublement” or dissociation of personality, something resembling schizophrenia, where Grace claims to have not been in control of her actions at the time.
Is Grace’s selective amnesia real, or merely convenient?
Increasingly, we are not sure if Grace is telling of events as they actually happened, or if she is telling them as she thinks they want to be told. Grace (her identity) is deeper than anyone knows, and iceberg-like, she hides more than she reveals. Is she giving us the real story, or the manageable story, as her lawyer Kenneth MacKenzie once taught her to do?
One thing that this novel shows is how incredibly difficult it is to reconstruct the past when using present-day testimony as the sole source for truth. Especially when that testimony has to be fit into an existing grid of presupposition, prejudice, and partiality, and can be slanted in favor of the person offering it. [In this case, Grace’s future depends not only on how she conducts herself, but on how she is perceived by those on whom her freedom depends.]
In real-life, when she was released, Grace had to fill out a final questionnaire, in which she was asked, “What has been the general cause of your misfortunes and what has been the immediate cause of the crime for which you have been sent to the Penitentiary?”
She answered:
“Having been employed in the same house with a villain.”
I close by saying that I choose to believe these words of hers. I believe that her crime was that she (it sounds so cliché) was in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
However, even in saying that, reading this book has made me aware that to do so, to make that decision regarding belief in someone, this is always a choice.
Not a verdict.
Friday, June 03, 2005
E-Books? Eee-Gads!
"It's fine work. Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That's our official slogan."
-- Montag, in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 –
What would it be like if there were no books?
If books were outlawed? Expressly forbidden?
Fahrenheit 451, aside from being the ingenious title of Bradbury's ingenious book, also happens to be the temperature at which book paper catches fire and burns. Bradbury rented a typewriter and holed himself up in a Library basement, and wrote the thing in nine days! It was first published in 1953, and remains an in-print masterpiece. I read it a few years ago.
The main character, Montag, is a “fireman” (rather than put out fires, he starts them!) and in the dystopian “brave new world “ of this novel his particular job is to burn books.
Horrors!
He’s been at it ten years, when, according to Bradbury, he “suddenly discovers that books are flesh-and-blood ideas and cry out silently when put to the torch.”
It is a powerful little book that should be read by all literate human beings!
The thought though, of all the books of the world being forbidden. It makes me shudder.
I am surrounded by wonderful books right now, in the mega-store.
I love the smell of them, the look and feel of them. You could say that I am some sort of book-addict, yes. Proportionally speaking, I spend far too much of my income upon them.
And I continue to believe that we have come too far (in our civilized-ness) to ban books, or (God forbid) burn them.
But there is a different sort of book revolution apace, and it involves computers.
E-books.
Librarians and hard-core (hard-copy?) booklovers the world over are hearing the stirrings of cyber-influence, and raising a collective “Shhhhhh” to Google!
Google (the search engine) wants to create a virtual global library and has already committed to spend as much as $150 million (U.S.) on the “Google Print” project. It is expected to take a decade or more to complete.
The vision involves working with Michigan State, Harvard and Stanford universities, as well as the Bodleian Library at Oxford in in the U.K. and the New York Public Library, to digitalize literally millions of books and create the world’s greatest conglomeration of E-books!
Will “availability online” become the slogan of this generation’s reading public?
Will tomorrow’s (or today’s) kids grow up thinking “If it ‘taint on a screen, ah ‘taint readun it”?
The wheels of this sort of a thing are in motion.
And Europe is a bit miffed with America’s zealousness. Nineteen European libraries (primarily in France, Germany, and Austria) are scrambling to compile their own digital library to rival the “American” Google project. Their stated concern is to ensure that any online library alleging to represent a comprehensive catalogue of relevant literature include representation from every European country.
Several million EC euros are expected to be doled out to fund the project.... and soon.
Think of the wasted duplicate effort that will be going on here. Aren’t we really talking about “market” here? Money? And who is going to make more of it?
Ah well...... I for one, will not be the person staring at a computer screen to get my literature fix! For me... a die-hard book purist, I want the actual book.
I feel the same about books-on-tape. I have never understood how anyone (unless maybe a long-haul trucker) can drive around and listen to a book. If it were me, I would certainly get so distracted in my concentration that I would drive directly into the next power pole or light standard or herd of pedestrians!
Nope. I want the book. The real book. The print. The pages.
Having said all this, let me clarify. As strictly a reference source, yes, I think the Google thing is a great idea.
As some sort of pseudo-replacement for books, no. A thousand million times, no.
It will never sell, for me.
How about you?
Would you read an entire novel from a computer screen?
Besides all this.... e-books ruin my bestest recurring fantasy!
See, I have always imagined finding this wondrously beautiful damsel, quietly laying on the grass, or sitting oh so demurely, leaning against a tree. Her diaphanous dress flows out on either side of her as she turns the page of a wee book, and (not noticing me yet) she gazes off into the distance and sighs deeply and smiles at these three butterflies that flit past in front of her right about then.
Ah yes, I can see it.
But this vision is completely SHATTERED when I picture the same wondrous maiden peering into a computer screen, an extension cord trailing off to the whining Honda generator, every feathered and/or furry beast having long since run for cover.... IT’S JUST NOT RIGHT.
Not that I am a techno-dinosaur or whatever, but some things in life are just fine the way they are!
Let’s stay in love with books that have pages!
-- Montag, in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 –
What would it be like if there were no books?
If books were outlawed? Expressly forbidden?
Fahrenheit 451, aside from being the ingenious title of Bradbury's ingenious book, also happens to be the temperature at which book paper catches fire and burns. Bradbury rented a typewriter and holed himself up in a Library basement, and wrote the thing in nine days! It was first published in 1953, and remains an in-print masterpiece. I read it a few years ago.
The main character, Montag, is a “fireman” (rather than put out fires, he starts them!) and in the dystopian “brave new world “ of this novel his particular job is to burn books.
Horrors!
He’s been at it ten years, when, according to Bradbury, he “suddenly discovers that books are flesh-and-blood ideas and cry out silently when put to the torch.”
It is a powerful little book that should be read by all literate human beings!
The thought though, of all the books of the world being forbidden. It makes me shudder.
I am surrounded by wonderful books right now, in the mega-store.
I love the smell of them, the look and feel of them. You could say that I am some sort of book-addict, yes. Proportionally speaking, I spend far too much of my income upon them.
And I continue to believe that we have come too far (in our civilized-ness) to ban books, or (God forbid) burn them.
But there is a different sort of book revolution apace, and it involves computers.
E-books.
Librarians and hard-core (hard-copy?) booklovers the world over are hearing the stirrings of cyber-influence, and raising a collective “Shhhhhh” to Google!
Google (the search engine) wants to create a virtual global library and has already committed to spend as much as $150 million (U.S.) on the “Google Print” project. It is expected to take a decade or more to complete.
The vision involves working with Michigan State, Harvard and Stanford universities, as well as the Bodleian Library at Oxford in in the U.K. and the New York Public Library, to digitalize literally millions of books and create the world’s greatest conglomeration of E-books!
Will “availability online” become the slogan of this generation’s reading public?
Will tomorrow’s (or today’s) kids grow up thinking “If it ‘taint on a screen, ah ‘taint readun it”?
The wheels of this sort of a thing are in motion.
And Europe is a bit miffed with America’s zealousness. Nineteen European libraries (primarily in France, Germany, and Austria) are scrambling to compile their own digital library to rival the “American” Google project. Their stated concern is to ensure that any online library alleging to represent a comprehensive catalogue of relevant literature include representation from every European country.
Several million EC euros are expected to be doled out to fund the project.... and soon.
Think of the wasted duplicate effort that will be going on here. Aren’t we really talking about “market” here? Money? And who is going to make more of it?
Ah well...... I for one, will not be the person staring at a computer screen to get my literature fix! For me... a die-hard book purist, I want the actual book.
I feel the same about books-on-tape. I have never understood how anyone (unless maybe a long-haul trucker) can drive around and listen to a book. If it were me, I would certainly get so distracted in my concentration that I would drive directly into the next power pole or light standard or herd of pedestrians!
Nope. I want the book. The real book. The print. The pages.
Having said all this, let me clarify. As strictly a reference source, yes, I think the Google thing is a great idea.
As some sort of pseudo-replacement for books, no. A thousand million times, no.
It will never sell, for me.
How about you?
Would you read an entire novel from a computer screen?
Besides all this.... e-books ruin my bestest recurring fantasy!
See, I have always imagined finding this wondrously beautiful damsel, quietly laying on the grass, or sitting oh so demurely, leaning against a tree. Her diaphanous dress flows out on either side of her as she turns the page of a wee book, and (not noticing me yet) she gazes off into the distance and sighs deeply and smiles at these three butterflies that flit past in front of her right about then.
Ah yes, I can see it.
But this vision is completely SHATTERED when I picture the same wondrous maiden peering into a computer screen, an extension cord trailing off to the whining Honda generator, every feathered and/or furry beast having long since run for cover.... IT’S JUST NOT RIGHT.
Not that I am a techno-dinosaur or whatever, but some things in life are just fine the way they are!
Let’s stay in love with books that have pages!
Splash du Jour: Friday
There would be no art, and there would be no science, if human beings had no desire to create. And if we had everything we ever needed or wanted, we would have no reason for creating anything. So, at the root of all art and science there exists a gap – a gap between what the world is like and what we wish and hope for it to be like. Our unique way of bridging that gap in each of our lives seems to me to be the essence of the reason for human creativity.
-- Fred Rogers, a.k.a. Mister Rogers –
Have a great Friday... in your neighbourhood!
-- Fred Rogers, a.k.a. Mister Rogers –
Have a great Friday... in your neighbourhood!
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Companionship.
I am once again at the mega-bookstore coffeeplace and still thinking about these issues of friendship and companionship, especially since I kept browsing through Lewis’s The Four Loves during my lunch-hour today. If you have time for only one Lewis book in your lifetime, make it this one! It is a gem, and only 128 pages.
In a section of Chapter 4, Lewis describes the precursor to friendship. He calls it companionship. I touched on this yesterday, on the blog. He said that friendship arises out of companionship.
In a very interesting argument, Lewis posits that friendship is the least “biological” of the loves (of the four types of love delineated in the book) and by this he means that the individual and the community can survive without it. But there is something else which the community does need in order to survive, and this is companionship.
I began to wonder if prehistoric man... cavemen, if you will, experienced “companionship”. Lewis says they did. Page 60 is so intrigueing, I want to transcribe it for you here:
In early communities the co-operation of the males as hunters or fighters was no less necessary than the begetting and rearing of children. A tribe where there was no taste for the one would die no less surely than a tribe where there was no taste for the other. Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had to. And to like doing what must be done is a characteristic that has survival value. We not only had to do the things, we had to talk about them. We had to plan the hunt and the battle. When they were over we had to hold a post mortem and draw conclusions for future use. We liked this even better. We ridiculed and punished the cowards and bunglers, we praised the star-performers. We revelled in technicalities. (“He might have known he’d never get near the brute, not with the wind that way”... “You see, I had a lighter arrowhead; that’s what did it”... “What I always say is ---“... “stuck him just like that, see? Just the way I’m holding this stick”...) In fact, we talked shop. We enjoyed one another’s society greatly : we Braves, we hunters, all bound together by shared skill, shared dangers and hardships, esoteric jokes – away from the women and children. As some wag has said, paleolithic man may or may not have had a club on his shoulder but he certainly had a club of the other sort. It was probably part of his religion; like that sacred smoking club where the savages in Melville’s Typee were “famously snug” every evening of their lives.
-- C.S. Lewis. The Four Loves, ch.4 --
I just think that the passage is so thought-provoking. Cavemen grunting at each other about how to do this or that. Did they ever laugh, I wonder?
The very last part, about Melville’s Typee got me so intrigued I went over to the store’s bookshelf and snagged it.
I cannot find the exact reference that Lewis is alluding to, but the gist of the story itself is that after a long arduous trek through the mountains of Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas, (Polynesia) two sailors, one named Tommo (a character based on Melville) and his companion Toby, encounter the Typees who live in a secluded valley. The two sailors are practically adopted by the villagers at once and treated as visiting dignitaries. The story contrasts the oppressive conditions in capitalistic society (called “civilization”) with the relative Stone Age affluence of the Typee. It is a sort of diatribe (the way I am seeing it here) against the abuses of racism and colonialism (I am going to equate it to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness). The protagonists, in their encounter with the Typee, end up wondering (aloud, at times) whether “civilization” is really that much of an advance over savagery.
The Typee are a peaceful people. They lack a concept of personal property or crime and they leave valuable items like spears and carvings out in the open, unlocked and unhidden. Ultimately Melville casts doubt on the possibility that cannibalism was practiced by the Typee, despite the allegations of missionaries and sailors who had preceded him to the island and who were far more prejudiced against the "savages." This is a pattern that has been repeated throughout the history of colonialism. During the early years of colonial expansion, subjugation of indigenous people was considered appropriate if they were beyond redemption, especially if they were reported to be cannibals. Hence, reports on such tendencies were accepted often at face value.
I should note that in real life, Melville and a companion jumped ship on June 23rd, 1842 (they were in the U.S. Navy at the time) and ended up on Niku Hiva, where they sought refuge with the Happaa people there. However, one day, after taking a wrong turn in the forest, they ran smack dab into the reputedly ferocious Typee (a rival tribe) and spent four weeks among them. Ends up that these “savages” were NOT the terrors that they had been reported to be, and this time in their midst inspired Melville to write Typee. Hence the “story” is really a cross between a personal essay, a piece of fiction, and a social commentary. It supports the idea that mankind is naturally good.
That was a longer digression than I had intended. I would like to go on, but I won’t.
It’s just that this idea of the “primitive man” is something that I find fascinating. I would love to observe how they interacted with each other... how they paired off. Observe the manner of friendships they formed.... the teams, the strategies they no doubt developed, etc. The fact that Lewis raised the issue in his discussion of friendship reminds me of how brilliant he is/was.
Somewhere around a year or two ago, I was contemplating what I would most want to observe, if I could observe cave-people. So I wrote a little whimsical poem about it. As I recall it now, I think that what I had decided upon.... [my one videotaped moment of cavemanity].... has everything to do with companionship.
Cavemirth
If I could observe prehistoric cavepeople
The hunt would not interest me (stalking
A saber-tooth until it gets stuck between their teeth).
Nor would the scene where they copulate
In some drippy, echoing vault
And slurp primordial soup afterwards.
Spare me the Olympic-style trot
Toward the world’s first barbecue,
Lightning sticks held aloft.
Steer me instead, to the first joke.
Let me try to decipher a Neanderthal punchline.
Was it a pre-planned gag?
Or just a mastodon tripping over a log
As it stomped past the lounging knuckledraggers?
I want to see them fall off their rocks
Banging their shaggy heads in the dust,
Roaring in perfect English, and
Crying, it hurts so good.
I want to see the first kneeslapper.
© Ciprianowords Inc. 2005
In a section of Chapter 4, Lewis describes the precursor to friendship. He calls it companionship. I touched on this yesterday, on the blog. He said that friendship arises out of companionship.
In a very interesting argument, Lewis posits that friendship is the least “biological” of the loves (of the four types of love delineated in the book) and by this he means that the individual and the community can survive without it. But there is something else which the community does need in order to survive, and this is companionship.
I began to wonder if prehistoric man... cavemen, if you will, experienced “companionship”. Lewis says they did. Page 60 is so intrigueing, I want to transcribe it for you here:
In early communities the co-operation of the males as hunters or fighters was no less necessary than the begetting and rearing of children. A tribe where there was no taste for the one would die no less surely than a tribe where there was no taste for the other. Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had to. And to like doing what must be done is a characteristic that has survival value. We not only had to do the things, we had to talk about them. We had to plan the hunt and the battle. When they were over we had to hold a post mortem and draw conclusions for future use. We liked this even better. We ridiculed and punished the cowards and bunglers, we praised the star-performers. We revelled in technicalities. (“He might have known he’d never get near the brute, not with the wind that way”... “You see, I had a lighter arrowhead; that’s what did it”... “What I always say is ---“... “stuck him just like that, see? Just the way I’m holding this stick”...) In fact, we talked shop. We enjoyed one another’s society greatly : we Braves, we hunters, all bound together by shared skill, shared dangers and hardships, esoteric jokes – away from the women and children. As some wag has said, paleolithic man may or may not have had a club on his shoulder but he certainly had a club of the other sort. It was probably part of his religion; like that sacred smoking club where the savages in Melville’s Typee were “famously snug” every evening of their lives.
-- C.S. Lewis. The Four Loves, ch.4 --
I just think that the passage is so thought-provoking. Cavemen grunting at each other about how to do this or that. Did they ever laugh, I wonder?
The very last part, about Melville’s Typee got me so intrigued I went over to the store’s bookshelf and snagged it.
I cannot find the exact reference that Lewis is alluding to, but the gist of the story itself is that after a long arduous trek through the mountains of Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas, (Polynesia) two sailors, one named Tommo (a character based on Melville) and his companion Toby, encounter the Typees who live in a secluded valley. The two sailors are practically adopted by the villagers at once and treated as visiting dignitaries. The story contrasts the oppressive conditions in capitalistic society (called “civilization”) with the relative Stone Age affluence of the Typee. It is a sort of diatribe (the way I am seeing it here) against the abuses of racism and colonialism (I am going to equate it to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness). The protagonists, in their encounter with the Typee, end up wondering (aloud, at times) whether “civilization” is really that much of an advance over savagery.
The Typee are a peaceful people. They lack a concept of personal property or crime and they leave valuable items like spears and carvings out in the open, unlocked and unhidden. Ultimately Melville casts doubt on the possibility that cannibalism was practiced by the Typee, despite the allegations of missionaries and sailors who had preceded him to the island and who were far more prejudiced against the "savages." This is a pattern that has been repeated throughout the history of colonialism. During the early years of colonial expansion, subjugation of indigenous people was considered appropriate if they were beyond redemption, especially if they were reported to be cannibals. Hence, reports on such tendencies were accepted often at face value.
I should note that in real life, Melville and a companion jumped ship on June 23rd, 1842 (they were in the U.S. Navy at the time) and ended up on Niku Hiva, where they sought refuge with the Happaa people there. However, one day, after taking a wrong turn in the forest, they ran smack dab into the reputedly ferocious Typee (a rival tribe) and spent four weeks among them. Ends up that these “savages” were NOT the terrors that they had been reported to be, and this time in their midst inspired Melville to write Typee. Hence the “story” is really a cross between a personal essay, a piece of fiction, and a social commentary. It supports the idea that mankind is naturally good.
That was a longer digression than I had intended. I would like to go on, but I won’t.
It’s just that this idea of the “primitive man” is something that I find fascinating. I would love to observe how they interacted with each other... how they paired off. Observe the manner of friendships they formed.... the teams, the strategies they no doubt developed, etc. The fact that Lewis raised the issue in his discussion of friendship reminds me of how brilliant he is/was.
Somewhere around a year or two ago, I was contemplating what I would most want to observe, if I could observe cave-people. So I wrote a little whimsical poem about it. As I recall it now, I think that what I had decided upon.... [my one videotaped moment of cavemanity].... has everything to do with companionship.
Cavemirth
If I could observe prehistoric cavepeople
The hunt would not interest me (stalking
A saber-tooth until it gets stuck between their teeth).
Nor would the scene where they copulate
In some drippy, echoing vault
And slurp primordial soup afterwards.
Spare me the Olympic-style trot
Toward the world’s first barbecue,
Lightning sticks held aloft.
Steer me instead, to the first joke.
Let me try to decipher a Neanderthal punchline.
Was it a pre-planned gag?
Or just a mastodon tripping over a log
As it stomped past the lounging knuckledraggers?
I want to see them fall off their rocks
Banging their shaggy heads in the dust,
Roaring in perfect English, and
Crying, it hurts so good.
I want to see the first kneeslapper.
© Ciprianowords Inc. 2005
Splash du Jour: Thursday
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.
-- Robert C. Benchley –
Have a great Thursday!
-- Robert C. Benchley –
Have a great Thursday!
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Soulmates.
For two days now I have been pondering a certain question. At first (yesterday) I kept thinking that the desire to formulate an answer would sort of evaporate, like water on a warm rock. But it’s now tomorrow and the moisture is still upon me. So, I resolved to meet myself for coffee right after work and at least begin to resolve this thing. Here I am now at Starbucks in the mega-bookstore, and here is the question:
If you had the choice of one intimate soulmate and no other close friends, or of no such soulmate and many friends and acquaintances, which would you choose?
The way that this question is worded (phrased) is deliberate, and I will mention what I see as its inherent limitations, later on. But first off, I think that a quick answer to it is more difficult than may first appear. This is why I have been pondering it now, for about 40 hours. If you yourself answer it instantly, read it again.
By way of beginning to speak of how I arrive at a current answer for myself [Note: I tend to use the word “current” whenever I speak of personal conclusions, as this leaves the door slightly ajar, and allows the possibility of revision when further ponderance suggests that amendments are in order]..... I first contemplate the following:
- I dislike smalltalk, fake talk, and/or phony talk. I dislike pretension, and the posing that often goes on in human relations. I value politeness wilfully given much moreso than politeness that is required. To be honest, I am not all that good at trying to acquire friends, as I do not sense the internal need to do so. “No man is an island” said Donne, but seriously I am about as close to being one as you can get.
- I dislike being agreeable for the sake of being agreeable. Neither do I like being argumentative for the sake of argument. And one thing that is very important to me is critical thinking. By critical I mean thinking that places as high a priority on good questions as it does good answers. Thinking that is as willing to be wrong, as right. As I get older, I am finding that I tend to like doubt, and those who are capable of doubting, morseo than I like surety, and those who tend to be certain of everything.
- I love camaraderie, but only if it is selective, meaningful, deep... as opposed to indiscreet, random, shallow.
- In a nutshell, I dislike people that ask insincere questions. [They ask you something, and then before you can answer, they’ve asked you a second thing...] And BIGGEE: I cannot be friends with someone that feels they have an agenda for me to adhere to or follow.
I could go on and on, but I won’t. These are just a few of the things that I thought about today as I arrived at the conclusion that I currently am not at all the type of person that places a high value on superficiality in friendships. These deeply felt things reveal that I am not one that “takes easily” to other people. I began to definitely realize that I would much rather have five or six really close friends than a hundred fairweather friends.
But the question is more severe than this. It asks about the ONE intimate soulmate.
One person.
It is tough.
I know that my current answer would probably not be the statistically popular one (in fact, I just asked an acquaintance of mine here in the coffee shop, and he instantly said he would choose the “many friends and acquaintances”).... but I am going with the one soulmate.
I would rather have the one soulmate.
Someone may say... “Dude, that may not help you out too much when you have to load your stuff into the moving van!”
I know all this.... you are probably saying this because you are shuddering at that phrase “no other close friends”.... but, do you know what I shudder at? That phrase “no such soulmate.”
I am choosing to emphasize that part of the equation.
Anne of Green Gables called it a “kindred spirit” meaning somone who really knows you, the depth of you. Someone you could laugh with, and cry with, talk as well as be silent with. You could be with them and do nothing, and that would be good.
Not to belabor it, but I think that we can tend to de-value what it means to have friends.
I wonder how the value (the worth) of friends can be expressed numerically, I really do.
In thinking of all this stuff I recall a song performed by Garth Brooks. Now, I don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression. I am not against country music, nor am I against the drinking of alcohol. I personally endorse the existence of both of these things, in moderation. But there is this honky-tonky bar-type song Garth does, and it’s called Friends In Low Places.... if you have a radio or horse with a saddle on it, (and especially BOTH) you have probably heard it. At the final chorus, everyone who has just drunk their own body weight in alcohol joins in and chants:
'Cause I've got friends in low places
Where the whiskey drowns
And the beer chases my blues away
And I'll be okay
I'm not big on social graces
Think I'll slip on down to the oasis
Oh, I've got friends in low places.
No you don’t.
I disagree with the song. I don’t want to be a party-pooper, I know it is just meant to be a fun sing-along, not a discussion of what friendship is, and it is fun to clink glasses with strangers sometimes, and regale each other with mutual stories of adversity and whatnot, but the point I would make is this.... they are strangers! The song talks about meeting people in the bar and becoming these terrific friends all of a sudden.
You’re not friends.
You’re PICKLED!
Half of those friends are hoping that your dang wallet flies out of that shirt of yours with the next line-dance! They’ll scoop that thing off the floor before you can say “the next round’s on me!”
“Oh,Cipriano, you’re so cynical!”
“Thank you. I will take that as a compliment as I meditate upon whatever the opposite of cynical is....”
In contrast to the friendology of Garth Brooks (and in all fairness, that particular song is not written by him), I think of the great thinker, C.S. Lewis, and how he differentiated between what he called Companionship and Friendship. I think he was really onto something here, when he wrote:
Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.”.... In this kind of love, as Emerson said, Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth? – Or at least, “do you care about the same truth?” The man who agrees with us that some question, little regarded by others, is of great importance can be our Friend. He need not agree with us about the answer.
-- taken from The Four Loves, ch.4, paragraphs 16 and 18 –
He or she need not agree with us about the answer. So true, I think. Lewis really knew how to say it. For me, the above would be the requisite beginning stages of someone who may be discovering a soulmate.
In tentative conclusion, there is only one thing I would like to say about the initial question. It deliberately limits the “soulmate” issue to the existence of only one soulmate.
But life itself does not place such a limitation upon us.
I believe that we can have several “soulmates”. We can be wonderfully aware of having several “kindred spirits” for friends.
But you cannot have one, without being one.
People, like even the clearest of lakes, have depths to them that you cannot possibly know unless you are willing to hold your breath for a bit, dive in, and fight a sort of reverse gravity to get towards the bottom. And even then, closed eyes will not do. You must open them.
You’ll know if someone is a potential soulmate, if they let you do the diving.
You’ll know if you are one, if you let them into the lakeness of you.
You’ll know then that the greatest thing about finding a soulmate, is being one.
If you had the choice of one intimate soulmate and no other close friends, or of no such soulmate and many friends and acquaintances, which would you choose?
The way that this question is worded (phrased) is deliberate, and I will mention what I see as its inherent limitations, later on. But first off, I think that a quick answer to it is more difficult than may first appear. This is why I have been pondering it now, for about 40 hours. If you yourself answer it instantly, read it again.
By way of beginning to speak of how I arrive at a current answer for myself [Note: I tend to use the word “current” whenever I speak of personal conclusions, as this leaves the door slightly ajar, and allows the possibility of revision when further ponderance suggests that amendments are in order]..... I first contemplate the following:
- I dislike smalltalk, fake talk, and/or phony talk. I dislike pretension, and the posing that often goes on in human relations. I value politeness wilfully given much moreso than politeness that is required. To be honest, I am not all that good at trying to acquire friends, as I do not sense the internal need to do so. “No man is an island” said Donne, but seriously I am about as close to being one as you can get.
- I dislike being agreeable for the sake of being agreeable. Neither do I like being argumentative for the sake of argument. And one thing that is very important to me is critical thinking. By critical I mean thinking that places as high a priority on good questions as it does good answers. Thinking that is as willing to be wrong, as right. As I get older, I am finding that I tend to like doubt, and those who are capable of doubting, morseo than I like surety, and those who tend to be certain of everything.
- I love camaraderie, but only if it is selective, meaningful, deep... as opposed to indiscreet, random, shallow.
- In a nutshell, I dislike people that ask insincere questions. [They ask you something, and then before you can answer, they’ve asked you a second thing...] And BIGGEE: I cannot be friends with someone that feels they have an agenda for me to adhere to or follow.
I could go on and on, but I won’t. These are just a few of the things that I thought about today as I arrived at the conclusion that I currently am not at all the type of person that places a high value on superficiality in friendships. These deeply felt things reveal that I am not one that “takes easily” to other people. I began to definitely realize that I would much rather have five or six really close friends than a hundred fairweather friends.
But the question is more severe than this. It asks about the ONE intimate soulmate.
One person.
It is tough.
I know that my current answer would probably not be the statistically popular one (in fact, I just asked an acquaintance of mine here in the coffee shop, and he instantly said he would choose the “many friends and acquaintances”).... but I am going with the one soulmate.
I would rather have the one soulmate.
Someone may say... “Dude, that may not help you out too much when you have to load your stuff into the moving van!”
I know all this.... you are probably saying this because you are shuddering at that phrase “no other close friends”.... but, do you know what I shudder at? That phrase “no such soulmate.”
I am choosing to emphasize that part of the equation.
Anne of Green Gables called it a “kindred spirit” meaning somone who really knows you, the depth of you. Someone you could laugh with, and cry with, talk as well as be silent with. You could be with them and do nothing, and that would be good.
Not to belabor it, but I think that we can tend to de-value what it means to have friends.
I wonder how the value (the worth) of friends can be expressed numerically, I really do.
In thinking of all this stuff I recall a song performed by Garth Brooks. Now, I don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression. I am not against country music, nor am I against the drinking of alcohol. I personally endorse the existence of both of these things, in moderation. But there is this honky-tonky bar-type song Garth does, and it’s called Friends In Low Places.... if you have a radio or horse with a saddle on it, (and especially BOTH) you have probably heard it. At the final chorus, everyone who has just drunk their own body weight in alcohol joins in and chants:
'Cause I've got friends in low places
Where the whiskey drowns
And the beer chases my blues away
And I'll be okay
I'm not big on social graces
Think I'll slip on down to the oasis
Oh, I've got friends in low places.
No you don’t.
I disagree with the song. I don’t want to be a party-pooper, I know it is just meant to be a fun sing-along, not a discussion of what friendship is, and it is fun to clink glasses with strangers sometimes, and regale each other with mutual stories of adversity and whatnot, but the point I would make is this.... they are strangers! The song talks about meeting people in the bar and becoming these terrific friends all of a sudden.
You’re not friends.
You’re PICKLED!
Half of those friends are hoping that your dang wallet flies out of that shirt of yours with the next line-dance! They’ll scoop that thing off the floor before you can say “the next round’s on me!”
“Oh,Cipriano, you’re so cynical!”
“Thank you. I will take that as a compliment as I meditate upon whatever the opposite of cynical is....”
In contrast to the friendology of Garth Brooks (and in all fairness, that particular song is not written by him), I think of the great thinker, C.S. Lewis, and how he differentiated between what he called Companionship and Friendship. I think he was really onto something here, when he wrote:
Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.”.... In this kind of love, as Emerson said, Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth? – Or at least, “do you care about the same truth?” The man who agrees with us that some question, little regarded by others, is of great importance can be our Friend. He need not agree with us about the answer.
-- taken from The Four Loves, ch.4, paragraphs 16 and 18 –
He or she need not agree with us about the answer. So true, I think. Lewis really knew how to say it. For me, the above would be the requisite beginning stages of someone who may be discovering a soulmate.
In tentative conclusion, there is only one thing I would like to say about the initial question. It deliberately limits the “soulmate” issue to the existence of only one soulmate.
But life itself does not place such a limitation upon us.
I believe that we can have several “soulmates”. We can be wonderfully aware of having several “kindred spirits” for friends.
But you cannot have one, without being one.
People, like even the clearest of lakes, have depths to them that you cannot possibly know unless you are willing to hold your breath for a bit, dive in, and fight a sort of reverse gravity to get towards the bottom. And even then, closed eyes will not do. You must open them.
You’ll know if someone is a potential soulmate, if they let you do the diving.
You’ll know if you are one, if you let them into the lakeness of you.
You’ll know then that the greatest thing about finding a soulmate, is being one.
Splash du Jour: Wednesday
And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days.
-- James Russell Lowell, The Vision of Sir Launfal --
Have a great Wednesday!
Then, if ever, come perfect days.
-- James Russell Lowell, The Vision of Sir Launfal --
Have a great Wednesday!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)