Bookpuddle

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Monday, May 27, 2013

"Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone", he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby --

Have a great Monday!
*****

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Siddhartha

A couple of years ago my nephew encouraged me to read Siddhartha.
I kept putting it off until last week when I finally read the book, given to me as a gift. I now know why it's considered a classic in the genre of books about spiritual discovery.
I expected it to be daunting for some reason -- as though it would be too Buddhisty for me. But it ended up being very accessible, and written in a simple, straightforward way. It's the story of the young Nepalese boy Siddhartha, who decides to leave his family and home to become a "samana" or wandering ascetic. He sets out with his best friend Govinda into this life of renunciation and contemplation, and when they meet the actual Buddha guy, Govinda's zeal is strengthened, while Siddhartha begins to have second thoughts about it all. He questions some of the finer points of the Buddha's teachings -- primarily the seeming contradiction of how the alleged unity of all things is coupled with the need to renounce most of these things in order to reach inner wholeness or "nirvana".
So the boys part ways at this juncture, and Siddhartha sets out on his quest, freestyle. Soon he meets the perfect-10 courtesan Kamala, the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. Need I say more? This radically adjusts some of his former thoughts about sexual abstinence, among other things. Like wealth. Success. Fine clothes, booze, etc. Mostly to pay for his dealings with Kamala, he acquires wealth, discovering a special avarice for gambling. But again, disillusionment sets in. Satiated with his experience of worldliness, [or "samsara"] he decides to leave once again on a deeper quest, but by now he loves Kamala, and in the final sentence of one chapter the author drops this little nugget of info:
After a time she realized that she was pregnant from her last meeting with Siddhartha.
Oh, oh! He slipped one past the goalie there!
But he's gone now, and unaware of his impending progeny.
These latter portions of the book have Siddhartha meeting the ferryman Vesudeva -- a man who has never set off on any specific personal pilgrimage per se, yet seems much wiser regarding deeply spiritual matters, than Siddhartha is.
Sid learns a lot from Vesudeva. Meanwhile, Kamala has undergone a transformation of sorts, as well. Together with her son, she sets off to see the Buddha, but on the way, tragedy strikes. A venomous snake bites her just as she is re-united with the father of her child, and Siddhartha takes custody of the near-orphaned boy. What follows is true genius in story-telling, really, because Siddhartha finds that he cannot force the spiritual values he has learned throughout his life, onto this young boy. The very lesson it has taken him a lifetime to learn, namely that wisdom cannot be imparted through teachings of any kind, is worked out in a practical way with his son. The boy himself flees, and Siddhartha is heart-broken.
For me, the message of the book came through loud and clear -- and I would phrase it thus, in the following extremely long sentence:
Whatever depth of spirituality we ever achieve in this life, whatever spiritual connection we ever attain between ourselves and the world we live in, must be arrived at on a profoundly individual and experiential level, and will suffer deficiencies if merely the result of adherence to second-hand teachings or blind devotion to imparted doctrine.
Far be it from me to presume upon the intentions of a great author, but If this is what Hermann Hesse set out to say back in 1922 when he wrote Siddhartha, he succeeded in the case of this reader.
*****

Friday, May 24, 2013

Splash du Jour: Friday

Have a great Friday!
*****

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Have a great Thursday!

*****

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Splash du Jour: Wedesday

Books don’t offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.
-- David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas --

Have a great Wednesday!
*****

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Love and Power

In the book I just finished, there was a passage where young Bailey runs off to join the circus, but when he gets to the site he is too late. The circus is gone.
Erin Morgenstern writes -- He sits down on the ground, holding his head in his hands and feeling utterly lost though he has played in these very fields ever since he was little.
I found this line evocative of how I have felt many times.
Sometimes it is the very familiarity of physical geography that can accentuate feelings of lostness or disappointment. The quietness of a house that once had someone else in it, but no longer does. A favourite restaurant that will never be the same, without the other person being with you, at it. And what is the effect of heart-encircled carved initials in a tree, if the second half of the equation is not there to observe them with you?
You'd rather not see that tree!
In a word, sadness.
In the above example, Bailey is mourning the loss of a circus, and moreso the loss of a special girl he was in the process of loving. She left with the circus.
The passage made me think further into the losses that are part and parcel of some love relationships, that alter. I think of a certain axiom that I have always held to be a truism:
Whoever loves the least has the most power.
I have debated those words with many people over the years, but no one has yet been able to convince me of their inaccuracy.
In my opinion, love and power cancel each other out.
This is not to say that the two things cannot co-exist. They do, in fact, co-exist. But to the extent that one displaces the other, I believe that the axiom holds true.
The first of two people yearn to keep a relationship intact -- to maintain an element of love within it. The other has divergent interests, or is otherwise not as concerned. Does not care as much.
Which of these two is at a greater level of power, within the relationship?
Obviously [again, in my opinion] the latter person is. This is because the first person in the example is motivated by an exclusive love for the other.
Even if this love is ill-placed or unrequited from the get-go -- still, the axiom holds.
Whether the relationship is sick or healthy, the second person would find it easier to walk away from the situation in its entirety. Or to not comply with any reasons to make it better.
And that is what power looks like.
To accentuate the point, one might add “Whoever is betrayed feels the most betrayal.”
Or “Whoever is left most alone in the end feels the most lonely.”
Are either of those arrangements of words much different than saying “Whoever loves the least has the most power?”
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

"Do you mind telling me what’s suddenly so important?"
Sophie just shook her head. ‘It’s…it’s a secret.’
"Yuck! You’re probably in love."
-- Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Monday, May 20, 2013

The Night Circus

Erin Morgenstern's highly-acclaimed debut novel The Night Circus is the story of two innately gifted magicians, Celia and Marco, secretly bound together from a very early age to compete against each other within a circus that appears only at night. They are unaware of the identity of their opponent for most of their formative years, and during that time, fall in love with each other. The entire scheme is an outworking of two rival veteran magicians who have pitted them for battle, and love was not in the cards.
The novel is structured in a very unique, non-linear way. To say it is disjointed would sound too negative. Collaged, perhaps, would be more appropriate. Each chapter begins with a sub-heading describing the location and date. Without these I would have been lost -- I kept turning back and referring to them. Another thing a reader must get straight before going too far in the book is that the "magic" performed is real, for the most part. Especially as performed by Celia and Marco. It is camouflaged as illusion, but it is real.
And so, in this sense, the novel is definitely of a fantastic nature. One must be prepared for this before you're already at the ticket booth -- and just let yourself go into it, or you will have no fun at all.
Me being a die-hard realist when it comes to literature said to myself several times, "Where is Tolstoy when you need him?" This book might not be the thing for everyone out there -- you've really got to check your realism issues at the door. You've got to join this thing, this Night Circus.
But I found it rather rewarding, and definitely an escape, to do just that.

Splash du Jour: Monday

Celia Bowen sits at a desk surrounded by piles of books. She ran out of space for her library some time ago, but instead of making the room larger she has opted to let the books become the room. Piles of them function as tables, others hang suspended from the ceiling, along with large golden cages holding several live white doves.
-- Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus --

Have a great Monday!
*****

Sunday, May 19, 2013

I Miss Atlanta!

Please forgive me for being away from my blog for a while.
I've been in Atlanta, at a leadership training session….. thing. Late late nights, poolside. Early mornings, where my greatest fear was missing out on the breakfast buffet.
It. Was. Incredible.
It was fantastic. I loved it. I'm stoked.
I will be back around soon, with more regular postings.
The people in Atlanta were wonderful. What a beautiful city.
Here is an important thing I took away from the past week -- maybe it will speak to you in your own profession, or life in general:
"Do not let perfection get in the way of better."
ATLANTA ROCKS.
I already can't wait to return again next year!
*****

Monday, May 13, 2013

Splash du Jour: Monday

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.
-- Henry David Thoreau, Walden --

Have a great Monday!
*****

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Alone Together

I have rarely read a non-fiction book that was more engrossing than this one -- Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, by Sherry Turkle.
Admittedly, it took me a while to get through it, but that's because I've had some preoccupations. But every spare moment I could afford, I wanted to get back to it. Finished it Saturday night.
The book is broken into two parts, the first dealing with the history of robotics. Turkle, a licensed clinical psychologist and expert in all things cyber-techno, begins by recounting the rise of robot technology in the 1980's and '90's. She describes the effects of things like the Tamagotchis, the "MyRealBabies" and other robot toys that introduced a generation of children to the concept of ascribing a sort of "living" value to things that were essentially inanimate. Her premise is that the interactive abilities of these toys introduced new sensibilities foreign to children of previous generations, who possessed completely "lifeless" dolls to which a child had to [more creatively] attribute [verb-form] lifelike qualities. The most those old dolls could do was maybe wet their pants, or close their eyes as you horizontally tipped them. I am oversimplifying for the sake of brevity -- but Turkle explores so many other areas of how animated robots have affected society -- as in the case of the care of the elderly.
What I appreciate about her assessment is that she is not out to demonize the [alleged] progress made in all these areas, but rather, she raises very pertinent issues regarding how these developments have affected our "real" interactions with each other. Our relationships.
Having skimmed not one iota of this first section [so intriguing was it all], I must admit that it was really the second part of the book that I could not wait to get around to reading.
And I was not disappointed.
Part Two is entitled Networked: In Intimacy, New Solitudes -- and here, Turkle delineates what is going on with the whole phenomenon of texting -- and things like Facebook.
Forget regular e-mail, or phone calls.
My God -- these are the activities of dinosaurs. [Like me, by the way!]
We've come to a place in time where even e-mail is too… detailed of an affair. And a phone call too intrusive, and [horrors] -- too involved.
And why would you write a hand-written letter to someone you texted 40 times in that same day?
Who thinks in terms of paragraphs any more?
We are in the throes of a generation trying to abbreviate previous…. abbreviations.
The word of the day is get something across… to someone… as fast as possible, and move the hell on.
And like, "Holy ****, in the interim I myself have received 35 messages."
If you are like me at all, and have ever felt that perhaps the rudest thing in the entire world is sitting around with someone and finding that they are not really there with you at all, but are rather with pretty much everyone else in the world that is not in the same room -- this is the book for you.
Not because Turkle pokes fun at those people, or denigrates them. But because she explains WHY they are doing it. And what it is doing to them, as human beings… or is potentially doing to what we formerly thought of as the people right next to us. The ones that are breathing next to us.
What happens to a society, when the people that are most present, are not even there?
Quit texting someone long enough to read this book, and find out.
It is startling. It is so well-written, so well-researched and documented.
Let us just hope the book is not out-dated even as we read it, because the next step is to say, "No. Don't call me. No. Don't e-mail me. No. Don't text me. Just…. just… just…. don't be."