Donkey's Clubhouse

The Namesake

2008-06-22T20:54:00.004-04:00

Names are curious in that they often have to serve a twofold and contradictory purpose. Primarily, names are used for the purposes of disambiguation. Thus, for example, by addressing our comments to “John,” everyone not-named-John knows that we are not addressing them. Additionally, we know this book is not communal property, because “Stacy” wrote her name on it. But at the same time, names are also used for the secondary purpose of creating ambiguity, or unity, where otherwise, no apparent relation may be obvious. Thus, for example, if I were to present you with a given 3 year old girl from Ethiopia, you might not be able to tell me anything about her. If, on the other hand, I introduced her as “Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt,” you might be able to tell me quite a bit about her by her name alone. Thus, our names concurrently distinguish us from some people while yoking us to others.

However, can we rightly claim that names carry no significance beyond their utility as outlined above? Shakespeare presents an affirmative argument to that question in the mouth of the character Juliet during her famous balcony dialogue with her love Romeo:

O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I'll no longer be a Capulet.
…
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

Juliet argues that it would be possible, and, in some instances, prudent, to negate one’s name by sheer will alone. For Juliet, identity exists wholly apart from one’s title: ‘thou art thyself, though not a Montague.’ While it is not at all clear what Shakespeare himself thinks of this question (Juliet does, after all, end up dead), it is clear that many others disagree with Juliet’s reckoning.

In the movie The Namesake, the lead character, played by Kal Penn, struggles to discover the significance of his name. Under Bengali tradition, a child is given two names – a legal title (or, “good name”) to be used in official documents and a nickname (or, “pet name”) to be used by close family or friends. Penn’s vacillation from one name to another is an outward expression of an internal struggle for cultural balance so emblematic of most first generation Americans. Penn’s restlessness (and correspondent nameless-ness) is only cured when he discovers the true meaning of his name, how it relates to his father’s life experiences, and how this will shape his identity going forward as an Indian-American. This movie makes the unmistakable statement that identity is inextricably linked to one’s name.

This week in Sunday school, we watched a video by Rob Bell that also explored the relationship between name and identity. (I’ve attached a preview above.) In many ways, it represents the middle ground between Romeo and Juliet and The Namesake. For Bell, our true name, which carries significance as to our identity, is often buried under layer and layer of meaningless labels. Indeed, the great majority of names we apply to ourselves – be they related to our job, our education, or even our emotional or physical state – do not reflect our true essence as individuals. Thus labels such as ‘ivy league graduate’ are shed like layers of clothing in much the same vein as are labels such as ‘homeowner’ or ‘one who is HIV+.’

Bell begins, “In the ancient near east, your name was more than just words. Your name was identity. Your name was reflective of your character, your substance, the very fiber that made you you. Your name told who you are.” Jacob of Hebrew Scriptures pretends to be his elder twin brother Esau in order to secure his father’s inheritance. He is pretending to be someone he is not. Later in the story, after Jacob wrestles with ‘an angel’ or a mysterious ‘man’ (depending on the account) for an entire evening to a stalemate, an angel blesses Jacob by renaming him Israel, meaning ‘one who wrestles with God.’ That is his true identity.

The above description reminds me a lyric by Hafiz, the Persian poet:

At night if I feel a divine loneliness
I tear the doors off Love’s mansion

And wrestle God onto the floor.

He becomes so pleased with Hafiz
And says,

“Our hearts should do this more often.”

Lending some credence to the above, of course, is that Jacob’s namesakes from Hebrew Scriptures – the Israelites, “the people who wrestled with God” – were interchangeably referred to as “God’s chosen people.” A mere coincidence?

Above I suggested that names served a twofold purpose – to disambiguate and suggest unity. But here, we see a third purpose. Names can also be used to assert identity or establish one’s essence. That is to say, when we can truly identify ourselves without relation to other institutions or organizations or outside influences, then we can truly begin to live as individuals, we can truly begin to shape an outward countenance reflective of our inward essence alone. That, I pray, is no easy task.

But the formula is clear. Wrestle with your God (whatever his name). Struggle for righteousness and justice and virtue (however you’ve come to understand them). Bite and claw against all of the things that you deem important, against all the things that give you joy, for they also give you their name: you are their Namesake. And in wrestling like that, you cannot help but discover yourself, not as the world labels you, but as you really are.

Road Trips, New Homes, and Mystical Experiences

2008-06-06T22:59:00.011-04:00

Beautiful reader, it’s been too long. Let’s catch up.

My two week road trip to find a new home turned into a month long adventure, due to some car trouble and inclement weather. All in all, I ended up visiting 24 states and countless cities. The lifetime tally of states-visited now sits at 41. The 9 remaining states are Alabama, Louisiana, Wisconsin, The Dakotas, Montana, Alaska and Hawaii. Not sure when and how I’ll pick up Alabama and Louisiana, but the other continental states are on the radar for this summer. Stay tuned.

Of course, the purpose of my trip was the daunting task of finding a new home, which turned out to be quite easier than anticipated. Contestant number one was Denver, CO. I hated it. First, on my initial approach into the city from the south, I got snowed in. I have a lot of experience driving in the snow – having cut my teeth in New York and Boston – but snow in the Rockies is quite different than snow in New England. In New England, snow is heavy and wet, which means that, for the most part, it falls straight down, turns into slush upon hitting the warm pavement, accumulates rapidly, ices over, and is slow to melt. The slush and ice make the road very slick, which means that one needs to pump the break early and avoid sudden changes in direction. Easy enough. In Denver, the snow is dry, which means that it doesn’t stick to the ground, but it is also light, which means that it will whip sideways and upwards, depending on even slight wind currents. Such swirling snow makes visibility impossible. So, while my four wheel drive car and I were ready for slick roads, there was nothing we could do to combat zero visibility. When the snow subsided, I discovered that Denver is shrouded in perpetual smog and is perched atop a 50 mile strip mall stretching south to Colorado Springs. This is exactly the type of poor urban planning from which I was seeking refuge. If I wanted highways and sprawl, I’d move to Atlanta! I would like to tell you more about Denver, but I had to leave abruptly when I learned that another storm was blowing into the city that evening. I ended up passing through Denver again on the way back, and, you guessed it, I got snowed in again outside of Vail, CO. Indeed, Denver’s only redeeming quality, to me anyway, was its close proximity to Boulder, which had much to offer in the way of charm and was far more dog-friendly than its neighbor to the south.

While there were only 3 “official” contenders, I decided to have an open mind about the other cities that I happened to visit on my trip. I was particularly impressed by Salt Lake City and the entire state of Utah for that matter. I also found Nashville and Little Rock to be fun places. Boulder, which I mentioned above, was also impressive. However, none of these cites boosted themselves into serious consideration for a permanent move.

The second official contender was Portland, Oregon, which was amazing in every way. Indeed, I was so impressed that I decided that I would not even need to visit Seattle (the third contender). If I was moving, it would be to Portland. Since I’ve returned home, people ask me how I decided upon Portland and I tend to drone on about how it is an exceptionally well-planned city, how it’s walk-able, how it has great public transportation, how it’s so green, how it’s so dog friendly, how there are almost exclusively independently owned shops and coffee houses, how it houses the world’s largest bookstore (Powell’s), how it has a great music scene, etc. That is all true. But the praises of Portland are most concisely recorded in Donald Miller’s “Blue Like Jazz.” Miller, when asked to explain his decision to move from Houston to Portland, pointed to a topographical map and concluded (I’m paraphrasing), “I live in a place that’s flat and brown. I want to go somewhere that’s green and lumpy.” Greater Portland is geologically exciting, teeming with rivers and forests and even volcanoes! And as Miller surmised, that’s how home should be: green and lumpy

There you have it. I’m moving to Portland at the end of the summer.

***

It took me one week to trek all the way across the country from Chapel Hill, NC to Portland, OR. While it was supposed to take me just one week to get back, it ended up taking three. On the second day of my return trip, my engine seized up 25 miles east of Winnemucca, NV.

Being the Ant that I am, I packed all kinds of survival kits in my car. I had plenty of bottled water, a few days worth of food, several blankets, a first aid kit, and all kinds of tools, including a battery device to jump my own car and supplies to patch a flat tire in the unlikely event that I blew out two tires in the same catastrophic event. Of course, given my lack of know-how, I could not fix a car engine, so all of my survival kits were useless at the moment. Actually, the only time I used my tool kit during the whole trip was to duct tape a hole in the driver’s seat of my car. The only time I used my first aid kit was to bandage my finger, which I had cut while duct taping the hole in the driver’s seat of my car. I had to have my car towed back to Winnemucca.

It was around 7.00pm on the Saturday before Easter when the tow truck dropped me off in town. The only mechanic still on duty told me that my engine was shot and would need to be replaced. To install a new engine would cost almost three times the value of my car, so that option was out. A used engine would likely approach the total value of my car, but an exact figure would have to wait until the junkyards reopened on Monday. I did not want to wait until Monday, so I asked if there was some other way for me to get out of town tonight. The last bus out of town had already left. The last train out of town was due in an hour, but it wouldn’t allow me to take my dog on board. The rental car agency in town was closed for the weekend, but even when they opened on Monday, they would not permit me to take the rental car out of state. The nearest airport was 3 hours away and there was no way for me to get there. Even if there was, I could not fly with my dog on such short notice. Then the mechanic turns to me and says, and I kid you not, “I’ve got a delivery to make in Elko on Monday morning. I can have my boys give you a ride on the hay truck. You can rent a car there.” Hay truck? The only way out of Winnemucca is on the back of a hay truck?

While I was open to the idea of ditching my car and hitching a ride on a hay truck out of town, this did not turn out to be a viable option either, as the rental car agency at the Elko airport also did not permit out-of-state rentals. My prospects looked bleak. I then recalled a conversation I had with a church friend who encouraged me to try and find God on this trip. She said that I should try to talk to him while I was bored and driving through corn fields in Oklahoma or something. She was not the first to suggest that I try to ‘talk to God,’ but I’ve always responded to such suggestions by saying that I would ask God to do something impossible, so that I’d know it was really him talking back. I often mentioned asking God to have a friend of mine find sunken pirate treasure in the middle of a city street. This, I reasoned, was a legitimate request, because I was not gaining personal wealth by this request - a friend was – and it was something that could not be explained other than to say it was done by the hand of God in accord with my prayer request. But I also knew that God, unlike a Genie, was not likely to grant such a wish.

Still, Easter Sunday was said to be a day of miracles, so I made up my mind to do the following. I would get into my car and insert the key into the ignition. I would then say the following, “God, maybe you’ve been trying to talk to me all this time and I didn’t notice or I refused to hear, but I’m in kind of a bind right now, so if you want to say something to me, then I’ll listen.” Then, I would turn the key and the car would start. It would be a miracle! That’s how I pictured it and that’s what I resolved to do. It’s worth a shot, no?

Only, when I arrived at the mechanic and told him I was going to see if the car worked today, he laughed and said there was no way it would start. He even rebuffed my contention that Easter was the day on which miracles can happen. I was a bit flustered and hurriedly got in my car and turned the key without saying any of the things I had planned on saying. The car didn’t start. Easter or not, there would not be any miracles in Winnemucca this Sunday.

It appeared that the only way home was if I got my car fixed… which would take a week. There was no way I was staying in Winnemucca for a week, so on Monday, I left my dog in my motel room, hopped a 3 hour bus back west to Reno, where I found a regional car rental agency that allowed me to go to Salt Lake City, Utah. I then drove the 3 hours back east to pick up my dog, checked out of my motel, and continued on to Salt Lake City some 5 hours away. There, I was able to get a new rental contract that allowed me to travel to other states and return my car back in Reno. I spent the next week meandering through Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado. This was the Russian doll segment of my trip - the doll within the doll, the small road trip inside the big road trip. . .

***

I was in Boulder, CO on the last day of my small road trip when I stumbled upon this curious bookshop called Lighthouse Books. The bookstore caught my eye because it claimed to specialize in “ancient wisdom.” That’s my kind of bookstore! When I tried to go inside, I found that they were closed for the day. I made a mental note to return first thing in the morning, before hitting the road back to Winnemucca.

On the next day, I found the store open for business and I excitedly bounded down the stairs into the showroom. What immediately caught my eye was a large banner to the left of the stairwell which read, “Psychic on Duty!” I thought to myself, “Oh no! It’s one of those stores.” But perhaps the sign was pointing to something metaphysical that was about to transpire here in the aisles of a bookstore in Boulder, CO – a bookstore that, for right or for wrong, claimed to be so close to the Light.

Before I started my trip, I came across a poem from Rumi entitled "In Baghdad, Dreaming of Cairo: In Cairo Dreaming of Baghdad." The gist of the story is this. There was a man looking for God. Try as he might, he was not able to find God in his hometown of Baghdad. He spent his days on the city streets wailing for God to come show himself, but God did not. When angels questioned God on why he didn’t answer this man’s sincere and heartfelt prayers, God said, “Because that’s how a man should seek Me! Wailing in the streets! Crying with all his heart! Let him stand as an example to the others as to how one should look for God!” Still, God was somewhat troubled by the fact that the man himself did not know that his strife was so pleasing to God. God devised a plan. The next day, an angel appeared to the man and told him that an amazing treasure was buried in such-and-such location in the far off city of Cairo. The poor man, hardly within his means as it was, undertook the long sojourn. By the time the man reached Cairo, he was reduced to a brow-beaten beggar. As he was wandering the streets at night, he was picked up by a patrolman who was looking for a thief. Imagine the incredulity of the police officer who was told by the beggar that he was not the thief but was in town because an angel had appeared to him in a dream with instructions to travel to such-and-such a place. Only, rather than consider the man a suspect in the recent robberies, the police officer said, “You fool! I had the same dream that I should go to Baghdad to such and such a place,” and the officer offered the exact address, “and an angel told me that I would find a treasure there. Only, I never listened to the stupid dream, but you did. And now look at you – a lost beggar in a far off town!”

The resolution to the story is this. The address in the far off town that the police officer so flippantly dismissed in his dream was the exact home address of the man before him. God sent this man on a long journey so that he would realize that the real treasure – his presence before God – was under his own roof all along. I was open to this possibility for myself, as well.

As I walked down the second aisle of Lighthouse Books, I saw the psychic sitting on a chair with her back toward me apparently staring off into nothing. This lady purports to know the future and the past, the known and the unknown, and I asked her, “Do you know where the books by the Sufi’s are?” She pointed to my left shoulder, and I turned around to see a book of golden color, entitled simply, “The Gift.”

I opened the book and beheld the inscription by the author:

I am
A hole in a flute
That the Christ’s breath moves through –
Listen to this
Music.

The third poem read, in part:

If your heart really needs to touch a face
That is filled with abundance
Then why didn’t you come to this
Old Man sooner?

For my cheek is the universe’s cloister
And if you can make your prayers sweet enough
Tonight

Then Hafiz will lean over and offer you
All the warmth in my body
In case God is busy
Doing something else
Somewhere.

Why complain if you are looking
To quench your spirit’s longing
And have followed a rat into the desert.

If your soul really needs to touch a face
That is always filled with compassion
And tenderness
Then why,

Why my dear
Did you not come to your friend Hafiz
Sooner?

***

Largely, I reported all of the above – the stuff about going on a long road trip, about searching for God, about trying to find a home, about breaking down in Winnemucca, about trying to stumble upon significance, about praying for a miracle, about being stranded in the desert – to provide context for the poem on page 273 of The Gift, entitled Bring the Man to Me, which reads:

A Perfect One was traveling through the desert.
He was stretched out around the fire one night
And said to one of his close ones,

“There is a slave loose not far from us.
He escaped today from a cruel master.
His hands are still bound behind his back,
His feet are also shackled.

I can see him right now praying for God’s help.
Go to him.
Ride to that distant hill;
About a hundred feet up and to the right
You will find a small cave.
He is there.

Do not say a single world to him.
Bring the man to me.
God requests that I personally untie his body
And press my lips to his wounds.”

The disciple mounts his horse and within two hours
Arrives at the small mountain cave.

The slave sees him coming, the slave looks frightened.
The disciple, on orders not to speak,
Gestures toward the sky, pantomiming:

God saw you in prayer,
Please come with me,
A great Murshid {Teacher} has used his heart’s divine eye
To know your whereabouts.

The slave cannot believe this story,
And begins to shout at the man and tries to run

But trips from his bindings.
The disciple becomes forced to subdue him.

Think of this picture as they now travel:

The million candles in the sky are lit and singing.
Every particle of existence is a dancing alter
That some mysterious force worships.

The earth is a church floor whereupon
In the middle of a glorious night
Walks a slave, weeping, tied to a rope behind a horse,
With a speechless rider
Taking him toward the unknown.

Several times with all of his might the slaveTries to break free,
Feeling he is being returned to captivity.
The rider stops, dismounts—brings his eyes
Near the prisoner’s eyes.
A deep kindness there communicates an unbelievable hope.
The rider motions—soon, soon you will be free.
Tears roll down from the rider’s cheeks
In happiness for this man.

Anger, all this fighting and tormenting want,
Mashuq,{Sweetheart}
God has seen you and sent a close one.

Mashuq, {Sweetheart}
God has seen your heart in prayer
And sent Hafiz.

Admittedly, I’m skeptical that God “talks” to people in the direct manner popularized by mainstream Christianity. By way of contrast, when the ancient Greeks wanted to know the will of the Gods, they had to seek the mediation of an oracle. The latter conception would make it somewhat plausible that if God were to contact me, it would be through the direction of bookstore psychic and through the mouth of a 14th century Persian poet named Hafiz of Shiraz.

As I was leaving Lighthouse Books, the man behind the counter, who did not advertise any psychic ability himself, said to me, "I will speak to you as if you were my own son. Use the question 'why?' like a shovel and dig deeper and deeper into your true self. That's how you can attain self-knowledge." Then, after a pause, he continued, "But it appears that you already knew this." I returned to Chapel Hill with a metaphoric shovel in hand, perhaps one that I already owned. And while I did not unearth buried treasure or bear direct witness to a miracle, through the help of a Winnemuccan mechanic, a bookstore psychic, a bit of adversity, and 6,000 miles of road, I did find The Gift, an ancient poet/teacher, a fair amount of life experience, and, most importantly, a new place to call home. I'd say it was a good trip!

Kahlil Gibran

2008-02-28T00:54:00.009-05:00

The Ghost of Kahlil Gibran

Last Sunday, I had about 20 minutes to kill before my Ultimate Frisbee game, so I stopped by Borders to do a few minutes of aimless browsing. I noticed a new addition to the poetry shelf published by Everyman’s Library. Everyman’s Library is a subdivision of Randomhouse and boasts the motto, “With 100 volumes, a man may be intellectually, rich.” Of course, this motto made more sense back in 1906 at the publisher’s founding when 100 volumes would only cost 5 pounds, and would, thus, be available to every man. Now, however, it costs $2,219.45 for 100 volumes, meaning that you need first to be financially rich before you can be intellectually rich. Still, I do trust their selection of the best books by the best authors. The particular Everyman’s volume that caught my eye on this afternoon was “The Collected Works of Kahlil Gibran.”

I cracked open the book to a random page and was immediately taken by Gibran’s style and content. In the first chapter of The Prophet, the mysterious title character is asked by the townspeople to describe the nature of love to which he replies:

…Even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning…

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast….

But if you fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

Whoa.

In other chapters, the Prophet expounds upon marriage, work, joy, good and evil, law, freedom, friendship, and self-knowledge. This book is perfect for me! I wondered how I didn’t find it sooner. Indeed, I often peruse the poetry shelves at bookstores and I had never once noticed the name Kahlil Gibran. Given my fascination with religiously and ethically themed poetry, I suppose it was destiny that Mr. Gibran and I crossed paths eventually.

Only, upon learning that the book was priced at $30.00, I decided that destiny would have to wait for another day, and placed the book back on the shelf. I figured I could find a cheaper soft-cover online or at the local used book store another day.

With instant gratification temporarily postponed, I attempted to sate my curiosity by doing some research on the author, which is something I never do. Much to my surprise, I discovered that Kahlil Gibran is the third best selling poet of all-time, behind only Lao Tzu and Shakespeare! It’s practically a miracle that we didn’t run into one another until now.

Gibran was born in Bsharri in the mountains of Greater Syria (presently Northern Lebanon) to a Maronite family. The Maronites are a Christian sect that traces its roots back to ancient city of Antioch, which was the original seat of the Christian Church under the patriarch Peter the Apostle. Years later, when the Muslim’s came through, the Christians in Antioch had a choice to make: create a political alliance with the Pope and, thus, garner military protection from the Church in Rome or remain independent and face possible Muslim conquest alone. Those that re-aligned themselves with Roman Catholics came to be the Maronite Church, while those that remained independent become the Syrian Orthodox Church. Gibran owes his upbringing to the former, while I owe mine to the latter.

I also learned that when Gibran immigrated to America as a young boy in 1895, he lived in Boston’s South End, which was then home to Boston College, my undergraduate alma mater. Not only that. Gibran had a long love affair, if seemingly one-directional, with a woman named Mary Haskell, to whom he had written innumerable letters. She held onto the letters and her diaries from the time even after her relocation to Savannah, GA and well into old age. She would bequeath the entire collection to The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, just down the street from where I presently live. Strange.

But that’s not all. I also learned that Gibran had two schools named after him, both in New York. One school, which has come under some scrutiny, is located in a Lebanese enclave in Brooklyn where they teach all the students Arabic. The other school is in Yonkers, NY, which has an insignificant number of Lebanese immigrants, if any. Of course, the more immediate connection to Yonkers is that it is the town in which I was born and raised. Very Strange.

I google mapped the school and it turns out that not only is it in my hometown, not only is it in my particular neighborhood, but just as with the other parallels in this post, it, too, is just down the street from where I once lived. I called my dad to ask him if he remembered a school named Kahlil Gibran Elementary in our neighborhood and described its location in relation to our old home. He said, “Yeah, that’s where you went to second grade.” What?

I looked into this, and it is, indeed, where I went to second grade. Only, then it was called Public School 28, or PS 28, according to the primitive school naming system of New York in the 1980’s. Apparently, I went to Kahlil Gibran Elementary. Bizarre. This guy has been coming to get me all my life!

Wisdom: 98¢ of Best Offer

I ended up finding a few Kahlil Gibran books at a local used book store. I’m amazed at how affordable used books can be. Rather than fork over $30.00 for the new copy of Gibran’s collected works at Borders, I was able to buy 6 of Gibran’s books at the used book store for $13, including one that isn’t in his collected works.

The hardcover copy of The Prophet I ended up finding cost 98 cents. Ninety-Eight Cents!

Think about that. Some celebrated author writes down everything he knows about the nature of love and work and God and friendship and marriage and good and evil and that’s the resale value! Less than a dollar! Wisdom comes that cheaply!

Meanwhile, if I wanted to buy Zombie Nation, which IMDB ranks as the worst movie of all time, I would have to spend $12.99 at Amazon. What value do these things have for a man? An economist would say that Zombie Nation is 13 times more valuable to a man than The Prophet, as evidenced by all relevant market factors. Then again, I never cared much for economists.

All in the Timing

This past weekend, a grad school friend was in town for a visit. The last time she was in town, she took me to the above mentioned used book store for the first time. I have since become a big fan of the store.

While we were in grad school together, this same friend mentioned that I might like the writings of Rumi. I looked into it at the time, but didn’t care much for him then. Recently, however, I re-discovered Rumi and I now find him to be an incredibly insightful writer.

In contrasting the spirit and the body, Rumi writes:

Don’t feed both sides of yourself equally.
The spirit and the body carry different loads
And require different attentions.
Too often
We put saddlebags on Jesus and let the donkey
Run loose in the pasture.
Don’t make the body do
What the spirit does best, and don’t put a big load
On the spirit that the body could easily carry.

Elsewhere, he comments on love:

The way of love is not A subtle argument. The door there Is devastation. Birds make great sky-circles Of their freedom. How do they learn that? They fall, and falling,
They’re given wings.

There is definitely a thematic parallel between Rumi and Gibran. Indeed, Rumi wrote “wheat remains wheat through the threshing,” which is certainly pointedly evocative of Gibran’s description of love in The Prophet, or vice versa. I suspect that Gibran drew inspiration from Rumi.

Two things occur to me.

First, a person’s appreciation for literature is so intimately tied to where they are in life at the time. I can make a library of all the fine literature that was wasted on me in my high school days, before I had developed any sort of palate for anything worldly. Indeed, I may today have a greater appreciation for Joyce and Faulkner if I hadn’t had the misfortune of first attempting to approach them with 16 year old eyes. I am certainly thankful that I did not discover the likes of Rumi, Kabir, and Gibran until after I turned 25. I’m curious to learn what it will be like at 50 to happen upon an upturned rock and have my eyes alight upon an old literary treasure for the first time. Will it feel just like this? Or does this sensation improve with age?

Second, if I am truly haunted by the ghost of Kahlil Gibran, it stands to reason that the ghost might wait until I first learned to appreciate Rumi before he revealed himself to me. Granted, I would genuinely be surprised if ghosts really do exist in this manner. However, if ghosts do exist, it would come as no surprise to me that I am haunted by an early 20th century Lebanese-American mystical poet. All in all, that actually sounds eerily plausible.

Westward Bound

2008-02-14T21:05:00.002-05:00

Counting My Blessings

Last week, I decided that it’s time to move… far away.

I’ve been in the Triangle (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill) for over 5 years now, and this place has been very good to me.

First, with regard to my education, I was able to complete a marketable and versatile degree from a well-regarded university.

Second, with regard to my profession, I was fortunately enough to muster the support and encouragement necessary to stray from the beaten path and attempt to undertake my own business venture, which, to date, has not been an outright failure but, instead, has been quite rewarding.

Third, with regard to my personal life, I was lucky enough to fall into and gracefully out of love, while at the same time, making great friendships, which I hope to carry with me for the rest of my life.

Fourth, with regard to my spiritual life, I had something of a religious renaissance and have been able to reengage the eternal questions of my youth and early college years, which, for whatever reason, had been shelved for a number of years.

Fifth, with regard to my intellectual pursuits, I was fortunate in finding the resonant voices of authors such as Jack Gilbert, Stephen Dunn, Rumi, Kabir, Carl Dennis, and Tony Hoagland, in addition to challenging singer-songwriters such as Josh Ritter, Alexi Murdoch, Damien Rice, Joe Purdy, and Mason Jennings.

Most importantly, I’ve learned a great deal about myself as a person over the past 5 years: my strengths and weaknesses, my proclivities and disinclinations, and the effects, both positive and negative, that each of these may have in a community of others.

Indeed, I have much for which to be thankful. But at the same time, I can’t help but feel as though the best that this place has to offer me may be behind me. True enough, the revolving door of faces that comprises a transitory place like the Triangle may serve you well in trying to understand yourself in counter-distinction to others, but, having put away the mirror, I’m finding that it’s a difficult place to take root. It’s time to go.

***

Searching for Pearls

Of course, deciding to leave is only one-half of the equation. The other half asks: to where?

What occurred to me almost immediately is that I am in a privileged position at this point in my life. Until now, my decisions on where to live had to be reconciled with the desires of others to have me: my parents, my college admissions board, or my graduate school admissions board. But now that I work for myself, that I don’t have to consult with the desires or employment needs of a wife or serious girlfriend, that I don’t have to consider the educational opportunities of children, and that I don’t have to apply to a school or employer, I can pretty much point to any place on a map and move there. The world is my oyster!

Well, that’s not exactly true. Because most foreign countries would require that I kennel my dog for 3-6 months to ensure that he is not transporting a communicable disease overseas, I think I’ll limit my search to the US, to save him that fate. Still, the country, if not the world, is my oyster!

***

Packing the Caravan

Ever since high school, I’ve had this vision, perhaps inspired by then-required-reading such as On the Road or Grapes of Wrath, of packing up the Buick (or horse caravan) and heading West on Route 66 until I found what I was looking for. Somehow, that ideal has remained until now, even if I don’t own a Buick and most of Route 66 has been turned into Interstate 40. Thus, I resigned myself to leaving the East Coast and began considering the Midwest destinations of Madison, Minneapolis, Chicago, and Denver; the Western destinations of Austin, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City; and the Pacific Northwest destinations of Seattle and Portland.

Seeking to avoid bitter winters, I eliminated Madison, Chicago, and Minneapolis. Having little desire to live in a desert, I eliminated Texas and Phoenix. And desiring a certain degree of diversity, I eliminated Salt Lake City. The remaining options are Denver, Seattle, and Portland.

While I’ve read a good deal about each city, I’ve decided that the best course of action will be to visit each city for a couple of days before making a decision. Accordingly, I’ve planned a two week cross-country road trip for mid-March. Portable internet will definitely come in handy for the start of March Madness and for blogging. Here’s a look at my tentative itinerary with overnight stays flagged in green.

View Larger Map

While I will keep an open mind for all the places I visit, the early favorite seems to be Portland, Oregon. Indeed, all week, I’ve been singing along to the song “Boston” by Augustana, while changing the lyrics to: “I think I'll go to Boston [Portland]/ I think I'll start a new life/ I think I'll start it over, where no one knows my name/ I'll get out of California [Carolina].”

Additionally, this trip will take me through 18 states, 12 of which I've yet to step foot in. I'll hopefully get to visit with some friends that have been scattered throughout the country. And, I'm sure, I'll encounter more than a few interesting characters on the road. I'm very excited about the move and everything associated with it. Wish me luck.

MLK Day

2008-01-21T15:27:00.000-05:00

Deep in the South, where Interstate 575 dead ends into State Route 515, about 70 miles northwest of Stone Mountain outside Atlanta, in Pickens County, in the land that used to belong to the Cherokee, there lies the unincorporated town of Tate, Georgia, which, though otherwise nondescript, is home to a rather fine marble quarry.

***

On February 12, 1809, two uneducated farmers living in a one room log cabin in southeast Kentucky gave birth to the boy who would become our nation’s 16th president, until his untimely death due to complications stemming from a gunshot wound he had sustained the evening prior while watching a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre in the Northwest Quadrant of the District of Columbia.

The last photograph taken of Lincoln, due to a crack in the photo-plate, quite prophetically, shows a line bisecting his head in the exact place a bullet fired from the gun of John Wilkes Booth would enter his skull. He was 56 years old.

***

On January 15, 1929 a young Baptist preacher, named Michael King, and his wife, living in a humble home in the bustling metropolis of Atlanta, in the land that used to belong to the Cherokee, gave birth to a boy, Michael King, Jr., who would grow up to be a noted civil rights activist until his untimely death due to complications stemming from a gunshot wound he had sustained hours prior while talking with a friend on a balcony outside room 306 of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

The man’s last words to his musician friend were, “Ben, make sure you play 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord' in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty." The song to which he was referring begins and ends:

Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, let me stand
I'm tired, I'm weak, I'm lone
Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on to the light
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home.

33 years prior to the shooting, when Michael. was six years old, his Baptist father changed his own name and the name of his first born son to honor a famous protestant reformer. And by the time he was wheeled into a Memphis hospital, a lifetime later, it was too late to save him, and Martin Luther King, Jr. was dead at age 39.

***

Starting in 1911, large blocks of stone were hauled from limestone quarries in Indiana and marble quarries in Colorado to a patch of swampland between Virginia and Maryland, near the nation’s Capitol Building, which had been drained and set aside for the purpose of housing a monument honoring the contributions and achievements of our 16th president. The formal construction of The Lincoln Memorial began in 1914, when the first stone was put into place on what would have been Abraham Lincoln’s 105th birthday.

The crowning jewel of the monument is a 19 foot 6 inch reproduction of the likeness of Lincoln himself, comprised of nearly 200 tons of single-source white marble drawn from a quarry just outside of Atlanta, Georgia, near Stone Mountain, in the town of Tate.

***

The pivotal year for the Civil War was 1963. In January of that year, Lincoln signed his Emancipation Proclamation, which effectively freed all slaves of the Confederate States of America. Then, in November of that same year, Lincoln delivered perhaps the most famous speech in American history, a short two minute address during the dedication of the Soldier’s National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It began, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” and concludes, “we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

***

By the time the Northern troops marched past Tate, about 40 miles to the West, during the War of Northern Aggression, as it was characterized in those parts, the war was largely decided. Atlanta, one of the last Confederate strongholds, would fall in July of 1864, the final major victory before General Sherman would march his troops, largely unimpeded, all the way to the sea by winter. Thousands of freed slaves are reputed to have followed Sherman all the way to Savannah. The Confederate Army would formally surrender just a few months later at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia on April 9, 1865. Civil unrest came to an end and the black man had his freedom secured by a series of Constitutional Amendments created by acts of the United States Congress.

***

In 1963, exactly 100 years after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and made his famous Gettysburgh Address, our nation was still struggling to give form to Lincoln’s vision, when a young black Baptist preacher then living in Birmingham, Alabama climbed the limestone steps of the Lincoln Memorial, looked down upon 200,000 supporters, engaged the eyes of history, and began his own speech that would ensure that those men, some hundred years before, had not died in vain. In the shadow of a larger than life marble rendering of Lincoln himself, fashioned from white marble taken just a stone’s throw from his birthplace, King, Jr. began his speech, in homage to Lincoln, “five score years ago.” Then, during his 16 minute speech, King Jr, an unlikely figure in an age long overdue, gave breath and ‘soul force’ to the calcified remains of Lincoln’s 100 year old dreams.

King concluded his powerful speech addressing the nation as a whole, asking that the echo of freedom be permitted to reverberate through “the mighty mountains of New York… the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania… the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado… the curvaceous slopes of California.” And when he turned his attention to the pressing needs of the South, he began with the land that used to belong to the Cherokee, the place of his birth, the home of the marble that shapes Lincoln’s countenance, and its highest peak: “Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

But King’s vision of freedom extended beyond black and white, beyond the color of people’s skin, as he concluded, “And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Finally, a century removed, this nation had ‘a new birth of freedom.’ Just two months later, acts of Congress would topple the oppressive Jim Crow laws of the South, and separate was no longer equal.

***

Here in the present, as I reflect back upon our nation just 45 years ago, it's hard for me to imagine how different life must have been then. It's also hard to imagine that such cruelties were commonplace, and even legally sanctioned, just 45 years ago.

But at the same time, as I view the partnership of my affluent and nearly-exclusively white church with an modest inner city nearly-exclusively black church, I have to wonder why some things are still the same. I can't help but wonder why there are any instances or circumstances under which, even today, after all we've been through together as a nation of brothers and sisters, it's all too easy to picture how life must have been 45 years ago. In his speech, King, Jr. warned against the 'tranquilizing drug of gradualism,' and stressed, instead, the urgency of Now. 45 years ago, "Now" was "the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children," and, yet somehow, it still is.

Paperwhite Narcissism

2008-01-20T02:35:00.001-05:00

The past few weeks have been chock-full of adoption stories. First, a book I’m presently reading, Free of Charge, comments favorably on adoption, with the author asserting his theological belief that his two adopted children were “meant to be,” seemingly chosen by the hand of God. Second, the girl with whom I’m reading said book has shared her own passion to adopt a child and shared some family stories about adoption. Third, some friends and I went to see the movie Juno, which is about the trials of a high school girl that gets pregnant and decides to give her baby up for adoption. (By the way, I recommend that you go see Juno, but I don’t particularly endorse the book.)

In all the conversations that followed each respective story, I have steadfastly maintained my position on adoption: it’s nice and all (for you), but I really, really want to have my own kids. I even recall going into some degree of detail, suggesting, first, that my worldview was shaped in part by the few evolutionary psychology classes that I took during my formative undergraduate years, which suggested that part (if not all) of “the meaning of life” is to replicate your genes. Second, if I may say so, I’m rather fond of my particular genes and I imagine I’d be equally fond of the genes that comprise the woman I will eventually marry; consequently, I’d be rather fond of the gene-milkshake we could make together. Thirdly, I have a desire to look at the face of my son or daughter and see a family resemblance.

All three of my points boil down to the same thing: narcissism. While I recognize that there are plenty of children that need to be saved from difficult situations, I would still rather make a new kid, who looks like me and is more likely to act like me. Such a position, if not the most empathetic, does seem to be the majority rule, with most parents viewing adoption only as a last resort. And while I will resist the temptation to make an appeal to normative ethics (i.e., “c’mon, everyone’s doin’ it!”), I will point out that a certain measure of self-admiration, even when at the expense of empathy for others, is necessary for self-preservation, and may even be a component to healthy self-esteem and a keen sense of self-worth.

The key here, however, is that the level of self-admiration must be healthy. Personally, I would place wanting-to-have-my-own-kid on the “good” side of healthy narcissism, though I understand how others may disagree. On the flip side, I’ve certainly encountered enough research to suggest that people learn to love what’s theirs, if only because it is theirs, no matter how they came to possess it. That would seem to suggest that adoptive parents are able to love their children every bit as much as non-adoptive parents. But if we love something only because it is OUR something, then isn’t that, too, just another form of narcissism, if only one step removed? Maybe. But, if it’s with respect to an adopted child, I would argue that that, too, is a healthy form of narcissism.

My point is this. Yes, it is narcissistic for me to want my own biological child. Guilty as charged. However, it is also narcissism that permits an adoptive parent to love their OWN child more than every other child in the world. But that just shows that narcissism isn't all bad. Indeed, sometimes it's quite healthy, and even necessary.

And then, there’s the unhealthy kind…

***

The story of Narcissus, as recounted by Ovid in his “Metamorphoses,” goes like this. The most beautiful nymph of all bore a son whose name was Narcissus. His mother asked a prophet if her son would live well into old age, to which the prophet quizzically replied, “If he does not know himself.” By the age of 21, Narcissus was so handsome that he was courted by numerous maidens and nymphs. However, due to his hard-hearted pride, he would not permit even a one to touch him.

Meanwhile, Zeus was not showing quite the same discretion when it came to nymphs, as he often partook of one or two in his spare time. So that his wife Juno would not catch him, ahem, in flagrante delicto, Zeus told Echo to distract Juno with long-winded stories until Zeus’ bedmate could escape undetected. Eventually, Juno wised up to what was going on, and punished Echo for her part in the deception. For all eternity, Echo would not be able to initiate conversation, but would be forced to double the voice of anyone she hears and return only their last words.

One day, Echo happens upon Narcissus in the woods and immediately falls in love with him. However, because she cannot initiate conversation, she has to follow him around, seemingly forever, until he happens to speak first. Their conversation, in abbreviated form, goes as follows:

“Is anybody here?” asks Narcissus to the woods.
“Here,” replies Echo.
Then, after some more beating around the bush, Narcissus cuts to the chase, “Why do you avoid me? Let us come together!”
“Let us come together.” returns Echo, at which point she reveals herself and passionately throws her arms around Narcissus, as she was so eager to do all along.
Narcissus, completely disgusted, pushes her away and rebukes, “Let me die, before thou should’st have the enjoyment of me!”
To which Echo must sheepishly reply, “May’st though have the enjoyment of me!”

Echo, for her part, was completely devastated and vowed never to show her countenance again. She remained hidden in the woods until her very bones fell to nothing and all that remained was her voice.

Others, too, would fall in love with handsome Narcissus to the same effect, until one spurned lover prayed to the gods, “So let him love, so let him not enjoy what he loves!” When that prayer was answered, Narcissus was made to fall in love with his own reflection in a spring. His love object would laugh when he laughed, would cry when he cried, would reach out for him when he reached out for it; only, he couldn’t actually hold it. Narcissus asked the woods if anyone in the history of mankind had ever loved so tragically, to which the woods remained silent. Still, Narcissus would not leave his reflection. He did not eat. He did not sleep. He simply lay by the water, gazing at his own reflection, while realizing that the only way out of this cursed affair was to leave his body, for his death would be the death of them both.

Narcissus took one last look at his beloved and with his final breath, he uttered, “Farewell,” to which, Echo returned, “Farewell.”

His sister would come to bury his body the next morning, but instead of his body, she found a yellow flower with white leaves encompassing it in the middle.

***

The other day, I was cleaning out a closet when I happened upon an old vase, in which I used to have some rocks and a few bamboo chutes. I dusted off the vase, filled it with water and rocks, and set out to the grocery store where I had purchased the bamboo some years ago. Unfortunately, the grocery store no longer carried bamboo, but, as I was walking out of the store, my eye happened to catch a discount cart with 3 plants, each priced modestly between $2 and $4. Though my “green thumb” has been able to summarily kill any plant I have brought into the house within 10 days - except for bamboo and cacti, two of the most virulent of plant species on earth - I decided that this plant might be worth a $4 gamble.

It's been 3 days now and the plant is not only alive, but thriving. Indeed, she probably now has twice as many blooms compared to when I bought her. I have to admit, however, that I had to move her from the kitchen counter, where I'll often sit and do work for hours, to the dining room, because she had become so fragrant that it was giving me a headache. She is rather charming to view from a distance, however, what with all her white and yellow blooms.

And, upon looking for care instructions, I noticed a label which, quite appropriate for the week, read: Paperwhite Narcissus. I've decided to name her Echo.

Intimacy and Androgyny

2007-12-01T17:05:00.000-05:00

Last week at young adults, we were discussing the topic of intimacy between men and women. To a large degree, the conversation devolved into women asking men to be more like women: to enjoy talking on the phone for hours at a time, sharing feelings, etc; and men asking women to be more like men: to enjoy watching sports for hours at a time, to love playing Halo, etc. That is to say, many were of the opinion, implicitly, that intimacy between men and women would be more fluid if they were both androgynous, which is to say, both male and female, or, effectively, neither male nor female. That’s a losing proposition to begin with, and besides, where would be the fun in that?

Pardon, my optimism, but I am of the general option that we should focus on each other’s strengths, rather than seek to rectify each other’s shortcomings. Thus, for instance, rather than say that men are emotionally shallow, perhaps we would be better served to consider them as being emotionally resolute. Conversely, rather that state that women are prone to bouts of fancy, perhaps we would be better served to consider them as having a great degree of emotional flexibility. This is not a mere rhetorical ploy, but it has its utility, as well. For instance, imagine that one was befallen by some measure of tragedy and needed to talk about it. If one wanted the listener to be relatively unaffected by the news, to be a pillar of strength against which to lean, for instance, one might seek a male ear. If one wanted the listener to empathize and cry with them, to serve as a measure of consolation, one might seek a female ear. Thus, rather than asking all of humanity to grow more androgynous, individuals would be better served by recognizing the strengths and weaknesses belonging to each gender and learning where and when such strengths would be best utilized.

Of course, any psychologist or sociologist will tell you that there is far greater within group variability than between group variability. Hence, the degree of difference between all men and all women tends to be less than the difference between any two randomly selected individuals of the same gender. That is, individual differences are too nuanced to be accurately reflected in the average differences between two large groups such as men and women (or any such crude grouping, really). Averages are blunt instruments. Accordingly, stereotyping in the manner above is not a substitute for getting to know people on an individual basis. There is no replacing that. However, understanding group tendencies is a quick and dirty place to start. Of course, before we can being to utilize the strengths of each gender, we must come to understand what strengths each gender brings to the table, or, more broadly, we must begin to understand the way in which our other halves come to view the world.

**********

I made a mix CD for a girl friend the other day. She liked the mix, but pointed out that, like most mixes made by guys, the playlist was dominated by male voices. Of the 18 songs on this particular mix, there were only 3 songs by female artists. True enough, my music catalog is almost entirely male. Of the 9.4 days of music that makes up my itunes collection, there are only 11 female artists represented.

She is working on rectifying the problem by making a mix for me made up exclusively of female artists. It will appropriately be named “Estrogen,” and will surely help me gain perspective on my better half.

*********

More to that end, I decided to buy a book of poetry written by a female to see if it was all that different than all of the books of poetry written by males which I have consumed over the years. I picked a collection entitled “Strike Sparks” by Sharon Olds, whom I encountered on The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keilor. I opened the front cover and found myself knee deep in issues that were decidedly feminine in nature.

The first poem was about spousal abuse. The second poem was about growing up with a sexually abusive father. A little further in, there was a poem about what it’s like to have a miscarriage. There was a poem about what it feels like for a mother to envy the youth of her daughter, and another that recorded the burgeoning of a female orgasm, while another documented what it feels like to fall in love with a man. I realized that many of the issues dealt with in the book were things that I could never experience first hand simply by virtue of the fact that I am male. Even if I was immediately present to the event – say a woman was falling in love with me – my experience of the event would be markedly different than hers. Indeed, my perspective is the mirrored image. My knowledge about her experience is limited to how able a given woman can articulate her side of the story to me.

The most remarkable poem for me to read was one entitled “New Mother” about what it’s like for a woman to make love for the first time after having a baby. To begin, it was a great poem, if a bit racy. But it was eye opening, because I never once stopped to consider what that would be like. The beginning of the poem documents the new mother’s fear and uncertainty, which are each allayed by the new father’s patience and tenderness.

All of you so tender, you hung over me,
over the nest of stitches, over the
splitting and tearing, with the patience of someone who
finds a wounded animal in the woods
and stays with it, not leaving its side
until it is whole, until it can run again.

I also liked the title poem, “I Go Back to May 1937,” from the perspective of an abused child that goes back in time to the day of her parents wedding. Initially, she wants to stop the wedding, having knowledge of all of the hurt that is owed to it. But then, defiantly, she assents to the marriage, choosing instead to live, to endure the suffering, and to write about it.

I Go Back to May 1937

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar make of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips back in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don't do it - she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to die. I want to go
up to them there in the at May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don't do it. I want to live. I
take them up like male and female
paper dolls and bang then together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

Chew on that one. Tomorrow morning, I get my hands on the "Estrogen" mix CD and I expect it will be equally eye opening. Stay tuned.

Matt Wertz

2007-11-09T13:16:00.000-05:00

(Fall Concert Series, Part III)

Matt Wertz is another act out of Nashville, whose style is characterized as “acoustic pop.” I think that means that it gets your toes tapping, even though the lead singer plays acoustically. I generally don’t like pop music, so I guess Matt Wertz defines the upper limit of my pop-palate. While playing it in the car, the preacher’s daughter commented that she thought he sounded a bit like John Mayer, which I told her was impossible, because I hate John Mayer.

I then recounted the story from grad school when some friends and I went to a Counting Crows/John Mayer show, and how we left early on principle because Counting Crows were opening for John Mayer, instead of the other way around. We had nearly fled the scene before John Mayer started playing, but due to some car trouble, we had to suffer through the first couple of songs of his set. The exact details are fuzzy and even recounting this abbreviated version of the story is traumatic enough. In any event, the preacher’s daughter is a big fan of John Mayer and she was not amused by my story.

That being said, Jason Mraz may be a more appropriate comparison, which is to say, this is good, happy music to listen to while falling in love, or with the windows down while driving down a windy country road. (After writing that sentence, I paused to consider the possibility that falling in love is much like driving down a windy country road with the windows down. I even entertained the possibility that falling out of love is much like being stranded in a parking lot at a John Mayer concert. The jury is still out on both questions.)

My favorite songs are “The Way I Feel,” which had the whole crowd singing, “Carolina,” which he was only too happy to play in Chapel Hill, and “Heartbreaker,” which is the first song of his that I had heard. I don't have any of his albums, so can't recommend any of them. But take a listen to those singles. If you’re looking for something deeply introspective, you won’t get it here. But if you’re in the mood for a little sugar, take a listen. Here’s his myspace.

The War

2007-11-08T22:19:00.000-05:00

(Fall concert series, part II)

The War was formerly a local Chapel Hill band of some repute named Starting Tuesday. They have not yet released a full length album under their new moniker, but they do have a 5 song EP, which is solid top to bottom. I was amazed by how much energy these guys put into a show. At more than one point, I felt like the audience was being bludgeoned by the riffs of a trio of guitarists, in a good way. For one of the songs, they invited the audience play percussion as the tech’s rolled out two 20 foot sticks of 4” PVC pipe and several dozen drum sticks. These guys are definitely my favorite local band, even though they’ve since moved on to Nashville. If you like The Fray, you should check these guys out. “Goodbye July” and “Satisfied” are my favorites. They, too, are available on itunes and myspace.

Meiko

2007-11-06T21:54:00.001-05:00

As I mentioned earlier, I caught two of Brett Dennen’s shows when he came through town in September. I feel like it’s necessary to give a plug to his opening act, a half-Japanese girl from Georgia named Meiko. Truth be told, I don’t actually know if she’s half-Japanese. She could be three-quarters or perhaps one-eighth, but I like to consider her one-half, because, if nothing else, it reminds me of the opening line from my favorite Weezer song/video, El Scorcho, which is worth watching if only for the chicken dance the drummer does during the breakdown.

Meiko, for her part, did not do a chicken dance, but she nonetheless had great stage presence, despite her unassuming personality. Indeed, the fact that she was slightly uncomfortable up there only made her more endearing and even downright funny at times. This, of course, is on top of the fact that she’s a talented singer and song writer, with a voice that was made to sing about heartbreak. My favorites are the tracks “Under My Bed,” which laments a recent breakup, “How Lucky We Are,” a ballad pregnant with hope, and the brutally honest Untitled Track about a hopelessly unhealthy relationship from the perspective of a hotdog. Yes, a hotdog. Adding to her charm are the facts that she has a stripped down under-produced style, has refrained from signing with a major label, and keeps a blog! What’s not to love? Keep your ears peeled for her. I understand she’s all over the soundtracks for TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy. She’s blowing up! In the meantime, hit her up on itunes or myspace.

Fall Concert Series

2007-11-06T21:52:00.000-05:00

As many of you know, I love love love live music. Unfortunately, since I live in a college town, good live music is only available seasonally. Musicians and their agents assume (and rightfully so) that few students are around during the summer months, so they pass over Chapel Hill when booking summer tour dates. The upshot, however, is that the fall brings an influx of great bands. I’ve been averaging a show a week for the past two months or so. It’s been fantastic. My next few posts will rundown some of the acts.

Timely Wisdom

2007-10-01T21:47:00.001-04:00

When I was in law school, I took a trip to Cincitucky (the "Cincinnati" airport is actually in Kentucky) to coach one of our Moot Court teams. Prior to the first round, my team was getting a bit nervous. They had also noted that I tended to read books of poetry and philosophy, which is strange for a law student, because we were assigned so much reading that the last thing anyone wanted to do was read for pleasure, except me, apparently. One of the girls on my team asked if I could read them something wise from the book I was reading, something that might give them inspiration or calm their nerves. At the time, I was about half-way through a collection of poems by Carl Dennis. I opened the book to a poem entitled "The Peaceable Kingdom," cleared my throat, and began:

You tear open the hood and stare in.
The fuel pump's clogged with flowers.

I gently closed the book, set it aside, and looked up at my team, who, quite predictably, went on to dominate the contest, claiming first place, while taking 2 out of 3 of the most outstanding individual performances.

Sometimes it matters what you say. Other times, it does not.

Life in Sepia

2007-09-24T01:19:00.000-04:00

I went into an antique store in Carrboro the other day, not looking for anything in particular, but just to browse. I don’t frequent antique stores, because, frankly, I don’t generally like old things. But, every once in awhile, I’ll pop into such an establishment, mostly in the hopes of finding a really good deal on something unique. To be honest, I hope to find an Antique Road Show caliber priceless work of art, which I could score for a nickel. No such luck this time around. This particular store was the size of a small closet, did not have any art, and was populated mostly by porcelain china - not something in which I have interest. I did a quick loop around, said hello to the merchant, and was walking out the door when a tin full of photographs caught my eye.

One of the first photographs I saw was of this fellow. I looked at the back of the photo for context clues – who he was, where he was, what town he was in, what year the photo was taken, etc. However, all I found was the curly cursive of a woman’s hand which read “Daddy at work.” It was not immediately clear to me what daddy did for work, however. On one hand, he appears to be wearing a white collar of a modern day Catholic priest, so that was certainly an option. However, it was a very old photo, and it was certainly possible that everyone wore big white collars to work back then. I tried to make out some of the book titles on his desk for clues, but to no avail.

Still, I was taken in by the photograph. I certainly like black and white photography and this particular photo had a unique sepia tonality that appealed to me aesthetically. Oddly though, what really drew me in was that I found myself identifying with the man in the photograph. Was he a lawyer? A writer perhaps? I have this silly dream of one day having a really sweet library with leather bound books. I suppose I always placed myself in a scene like this. Strange. I needed to find out more about this guy, so I kept leafing through the photos.

Here is our protagonist in a group photo, again sporting his big white collar. Apparently, he was quite the hit with the ladies! We also get our first glimpse of the family dog – an Irish Setter.

Here is his wife, presumably, teaching the dog to shake. I take it that she is the woman whose handwriting appears on the back of some of these photos.
On the back of this photo are the words “Mother and Dad.” You will note how men’s fashions have remained completely unchanged for quite some time. I’ve never, in my lifetime, encountered anyone wearing her outfit, however. He has a distinct jaw line and big ears. She has bags under her eyes. But notice the way she leans towards her husband. They have been married a long time, I suspect, but still, if you glance at it quickly, you may mistakenly think they were holding hands. I think that’s neat.

It occurs to me that this family is quite wealthy. From some of the other photos I gathered that this family goes on vacation quite a bit and it appears that they even had several horses. Also, a lot of these photos are candid snapshots, taken at a time when only those in the aristocracy would have had cameras. Plus, they had an automobile! A convertible no less! Check out the fashionable headwear. The guy in the back is wearing a leather Indiana Jones hat, while the driver is ready for safari. Notice any other clues in the photo? Take a closer look.

Find it? New York license plates. That’s a big clue. Also, it gives you the year: 1919, suggesting that license plates used to be issued yearly and proving that these photos are nearly a hundred years old. We’re getting somewhere now.

Here is some extended family, perhaps. You’ll again notice the varied headgear. It appears to me that the guy to the left is expressing some concern that the camera may steal his soul, while the little boy appears in desperate need of an outhouse. I would also like to point out the dirt road, the high socks, and the older boy’s kerchief. Sharp.

This house features prominently in many of the photos. I take it to be their residence. The two-tiered wrap-around deck is pretty neat. Also, the type of trees will remind us that we’re in New York, where deciduous trees dominate, as opposed to this part of North Carolina, where evergreens have run amuck.

Here’s another photo of a house. I’m not sure if it’s the same house as the previous photo, only from the rear and after Autumn. They do both have twin chimneys and two-tiered wrap-around porches though. Here’s the best clue so far though: on the back are the words “Taken November 10, '19 Peekskill, NY"

Here’s the strange part. I’m in an antique store in Carrboro, North Carolina looking at these photos taken in Peekskill, NY. According to google maps, that is a distance of 556 miles, which, by modern conveniences, it would take an approximate 9 hours and 23 minutes to traverse. I have no idea how long it would take by the standard of 1919, nor can I fathom a guess as to how these photos ended up so far from home. However, you may remember that I, too, grew up in New York, only a 30 minute drive from the scene of this photo! Not only that, but some of my high school friends lived in Peekskill, so I would often go up there to hang out and rouse rabble. I knew I felt a strange connection with our protagonist. We’re practically neighbors, though admittedly 100 years removed.

Here’s the final picture I’ll leave you with. It’s the latest one I could find. It has a stamp from the Westchester Photo Finishing Company dated May 8, 1942. On the back is written “Bernard, Bobby, and Richard.” The boys are all grown up, and the young contemplative Bernard from photos previous is now a proud papa, his face lightly weathered by time.

One more note of interest. I found a pair of photo jackets belonging to two separate now-defunct photo studios in Kingston, NY - Pennington Studio and Safford & Scudder. My guess is that "Safford" is John Milton Safford and "Scudder" is Robert Scudder Newton, each prominent medical doctors from Ohio that moved to New York in the late 1800's and co-wrote a rather famous work "A Practical Treatise on the Diseases of Women." Admittedly, I have no guess as to why their names were used for a photo studio.

Finally, one of the sleeves carried the slogan “Pictures taken NOW will be priceless 25 years from now.” I found that pretty ironic because nearly 100 years later, they sat in a tin box with a sign that read “Photos: 50 cents each!” And that was before the merchant took a liking to me and told me she’d sell them to me at half price! Considering that the photos cost 6 cents a piece to develop back in 1919, and factoring inflation, I’d say I made out like a bandit at 25 cents each.

Oh, I also got a last name off the sleeve – Chappell. Bernard Chappell is the man in the photo.

This whole episode reminds me of a Jack Gilbert poem entitled “Relative Pitch,” in which a man stumbles upon a ruined mansion in Virginia. He tries to imagine the way the house used to be and restores it, wondering if he “discovered maybe the kind of life the house was.” He concluded, “Strangers leave us poems to tell of those they loved, how the heart broke, to whisper of the religion upstairs in the dark, sometimes in the parlor amid blazing sunlight, under trees with rain coming down in August on the bare, unaccustomed bodies.”

And other times, it seems, the poems that strangers leave us are in sepia.

Games of Redeeming Features

2007-09-21T17:27:00.000-04:00

I try not to write about sports on this blog, but circumstances have dictated that I take up the pen in defense of my beloved New York Metropolitans in the form of an open letter to fellow New York Mets fans, and the New York and National media, respectively, and anyone else who will listen.

Dear Friends,

I have been a rabid Mets fans as long as I can remember. I have rejoiced in the 100 win seasons of the mid-1980’s and I have suffered through the 100 loss seasons of the 1990’s. I witnessed the absurdity of Bobby Valentine’s fake moustache, the rain delay hijinks of Robin Ventura, and the infamous career of he-who-shall-remain-unnamed but, if named, whose name would rhyme with Barmando Aenitez. I sat in my college dorm room in Boston and watched Kenny Rogers walk Andruw Jones with the bases loaded to end the NLCS. I was among the 55,000 that nearly brought Shea Stadium crumbling to the ground from the sheer elation we collectively expressed when Endy Chavez performed a miracle, and I rode the #7 back to Manhattan in stunned silence after Adam Wainwright’s curveball extinguished all of our hope. I can do the Teufel shuffle. When I pitched my eighth grade team to a championship, I threw my mitt skyward, just like Jesse Orosco. My favorite color is orange. I love baseball and I remained true to my team through good times and bad.

Right now, we’re going through a bad time. The Mets have lost 6 out of the last 7 games in crushing fashion. What was once a comfortable 7 game lead with just 17 games to play has dwindled down to a skinny game-and-one-half lead with 10 left to play. No team in the great history of the game has ever blown a lead as big as 7 games this late in the season, and the Mets are dangerously close to “accomplishing” that without precedent. The fallout has been that many people in the New York media, but especially the fans, have gotten caught up in pointing the finger of blame at anyone and everyone surrounding the organization – the general manager, the pitchers, the batters, the fielders, those too injured to do any of the above, and especially the manager. I suspect that a great many have even jumped off this sinking ship entirely. However, it is the blood lust in the voices and words of those that have remained that have troubled me the most. The majority of Mets fans, or perhaps only the loudest, has begun to speak of their team with utter contempt. Allow me to dissent.

Baseball is a long game, played over a long season, played over the course of a long career, and it’s a game at which you are only marginally more likely to succeed than fail, if even that. That is, relative to other sports, baseball is, by definition, wrought with an incredible amount of failure: a hall of fame batter fails to get a hit 70% of the time; a hall of fame pitcher gives up a run every three innings; a great team still loses around 40% of the time. Yet, it is in the very face of this failure that baseball presents an opportunity for success. As Hall of Fame broadcaster Bob Murphy always used to remind the listener, “Baseball is a game of redeeming features.” If you make an error in the field, you may get to bat in the bottom half of the inning to win the game. If you make a bad pitch, you may get a chance to get the next guy. If you lose today, there’s always tomorrow. If you don’t do well tomorrow, there’s always next year. But everyone, EVERYONE, will get a chance to both fail and succeed. It is the very nature of the game.

My fellow Mets fans that are ready to string up this player or executive in a public square are losing sight of this fact. And with it, they are also losing their ability to enjoy the game. When you cease to view baseball through the specter of redemption, you lose the ability both to deal with loss (e.g., Cubs fans) and appreciate victory (e.g., Braves fans). For those, I suggest you watch football instead, where the great majority of the plays result in positive yardage and a great team can win 90-100% of their games. But that is not baseball. Every baseball team goes through stretches where no one can do anything right, seemingly. And the team and its fans just need to weather that. Earl Weaver, long time manager for the Baltimore Orioles, when faced with the prospect of putting in a pinch hitter that was 10 for his last 20 versus another hitter who was 0 for his last 20, was reputed to have said that one would be better off using the less successful of the two, because “he was due.” That hope, even in the face of all evidence to the contrary, is what makes baseball unique and, to me, what keeps the game enjoyable. In what other sport could one make such a brazen claim?

Point is, the New York Mets, and each of the individual players that have been stinking it up as of late, will get a chance to redeem themselves. Whether or not they will remains to be seen, but it is guaranteed that they will at least have a chance. It begins tonight when Pedro Martinez, who himself is trying to comeback from a career threatening injury, takes the hill. Mets fans, please channel some positive energy in the direction of Miami tonight, for, if nothing else, being a sports fan gives you the opportunity to be hopeful. Being a baseball fan, in particular, lets you witness redemption.

With that said, Let’s Go Mets!

Neat German Ad

2007-09-18T16:27:00.001-04:00

It's worth watching twice.

Brett Dennen

2007-09-13T23:43:00.000-04:00

Last night, I went to see a Brett Dennen concert at the Cat’s Cradle. Here’s all you need to know about how cool Brett Dennen is. Earlier that afternoon, he did a free show in support of the local independent music store, at which he relied almost exclusively on requests from the audience. That’s pretty neat in itself. But in addition to that, immediately preceding the late show, he set up on the sidewalk and played for people waiting in line. Few things in life beat good, free, spontaneous music.

When he was taking requests at the early show, I asked him to play the song “Someday,” an upbeat-toe-tapper off his latest album, which includes the lyrics, “I may be weary but I am not weak/I can sing a song of suffering/Baby, a song unsung is dancing on the tip of your tongue/My salvation's ahead of me/I can feel it calling me/I know that I/I know that I will be ready.” You can see why I would request such a song. It’s right up my alley! Well, he looks me right in the eye and says, “Aw man, are you sure you want to hear that one?” Assuming that he’s looking for a little encouragement, I give him an emphatic head nod, as if to say, “Heck yeah, man! I love that song! I love you! Heck, I love love, man!” I mean, it was just a head nod, but that’s what I was trying to communicate; and he’s a hippy: he’d understand my vibe.

Having received my vote of affirmation, he then turns to the audience and says, “Shoot! OK, here’s the deal.” At this point, I start mentally back-peddling. Oh no, I think, I laid it on too thick. I should have left out the part of the head nod that was about loving love. A simple, Heck-yeah-head-nod would have been plenty, considering the circumstances. I seemed way too eager. Poor form. And, really, do I even love love? I mean, I like love, I want to spend time with and get to know love, but was I being honest when I blurted out that I love it? I got a little caught up in the moment. I start doing my more understated “Heck yeah! I like love.” head nod, but it’s too late, for he’s already re-directed his attention to the audience. “Ok. Well, I recorded that song, but wanted to leave it off the album, because I didn’t really think it fit with the rest of the songs. But, the producers [read: “suits”] wanted it on there, so, well, that’s why it’s on.” At this point, if I were able to un-request it, and put in a new request for any other song on the album, or perhaps if I was able to simply pass my turn on to the girl next to me, I would have done so. However, that wasn’t an option. I didn’t know how to communicate any of those ideas via head nod, and I wasn’t about to try to talk over him, for I had ruined his show enough as it was. No, I was married to my choice, and so was he. As he tried to remember how the song began, he said, “I’m not sure I’ve ever played this live before.”

What this all amounts to is that my one speaking line in the TV show was immediately followed by the sound effect, “Wah! Wah!” after which the audience gasps in disbelief. Momentary embarrassment aside, I don’t regret having asked for the song. After all, it provided some timely comic relief, as a whole record store was given the opportunity to laugh... at me. But that seems a fair price to pay in exchange for the song you want to hear, I suppose. In the end, he played it really well and the audience cheered louder after that song than any of the others. Much appreciated. The late show, with the full band, and without requests, was even better. It was a great day for music.

However, I am left with the uneasy sense that in the eternal struggle between fledgling artist and suit-and-tie-corporate-record-label, I’m (apparently) siding with the man. Yikes.

Here's one of his songs from the Album "So Much More," which I highly recommend. The lyrics to this song in particular are phenomenal, but the CD is great from top to bottom. (I couldn't find an 'official video,' so this will have to do.)

Go check out Brett Dennen’s music and go see him when he comes to a town near you! Just remember what not to ask for.

More on Religion/War

2007-09-07T16:53:00.000-04:00

Dancing Monkeys, Redux

2007-09-07T16:34:00.000-04:00

A few days ago, I put up a video about dancing monkeys. To me, it was a great example of satire. The purpose of satire is to use irony and sarcasm to expose human folly and vice. While the goal may be similar to that belonging to other modes of speech, we generally permit this genre of social commentary more leeway than, say, a political debate. Perhaps it can be argued that our desire to harshly criticize a particular work is inversely proportional to that work’s entertainment value. Because satire tends to amuse, we tend to be less critical towards it. This is why, I suspect, that comedians and satiricists, can get away with so much.

Take, for instance, Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” written back in 1729. Swift comes up with a rather clever solution to abate the poverty, homelessness, vagrancy, panhandling, and general hopelessness that plagues the city of Dublin’s lower class. He proposes that the poor be permitted to sell their babies to the rich. Such a solution would not only serve to unburden impoverished mothers and provide them with disposable income, but it would, at the same time, be to the public benefit of the rich, for, as Swift notes, citing an American with direct knowledge in such matters, “a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.” And while the audience is captivated by his analysis of the economic benefits of infanticide and cannibalism, Swift slyly exposes the injustices of the tenant-landlord system, addresses the import-export imbalance, discusses the prevalence of abortion in the slums, and shines light on the radical indifference the rich have for the poor. It’s a truly brilliant essay, delivered in a style of speech that permitted him to discuss issues that he would not have otherwise been able to.

I believe the monkey video is of a similar vein. While it makes some bold, eye-catching metaphysical claims – humans are insignificant in the grand scheme of things and God, at least as far as humans conceive him, does not exist – the video’s overall purpose is focused right here on earth, where human vice and folly have run amuck. For instance, he notes the fruits of human “potential” and “cleverness” – fiber optic technology, pyramids, sky-scrapers, phantom jets, the Great Wall of China, and an American flag on the moon – have done little or anything to cure humanities’ true maladies – unhappiness, hatred, racism, religious intolerance, loneliness, and war. Indeed, our continued focus on the trivial – taller buildings, faster modes of transport, longer walls, bigger pyramids, American Idol – only serves to distract us from the reality of our situation. Moreover, the greatest opiate of all, that which allows humans to sleep peacefully at night in the face of all our follies, is the Ptolemaic notion that the entire universe was made for the inhabitants of a tiny blue rock circling a tiny star in a tiny solar system in a tiny galaxy, as though it lay at the metaphysical center of The Grand Plan, the notion that, at the end of the day, despite our countless missteps, and continual denial thereof, a benign force will set things right eventually, and we are, therefore, justified in whatever we do.

What is not immediately obvious, however, is that such a suggestion is not anti-religious, nor is it anti-god, per se. It is, however, a stinging criticism of the way in which modern religions have come to understand their gods and humanity’s place in the universe. Of course, there is no reason to believe that the way that we do religion is the only way it can be done. It is at least possible that humans can conceive of a God, the worship of which would promote peace and understanding, tolerance and acceptance. The question is, do religions today advance these goals? Or, do they, more often than not, lead to dirision, hatred, and eventually war?

One of my best friends from high school, who is an atheist, once made a similar argument that religions cause wars, which, I, at the time, strongly opposed. I countered that to the extent that religion is a factor in war, it is likely more of a post-facto justification given by governments to curry support for a war that they already deemed tactically necessary; but also, if religion did not exist as such a justification, governments would drum up some other one. But the video made me question my original stance and I wondered if I could find any evidence for-or-against the proposition that religion still causes wars, even in civilized, educated modernity. I decided to do a little research, but immediately ran into some methodological problems. What exactly constitutes a war? What should be the threshold for ‘significant’? Should I consider the religion of the government in power or the religion of the majority of a country’s citizens? But most problematically, I had no way to ascertain the single proximate cause of any war.

Having noted some methodological problems, I will nevertheless push forward and consider US armed conflicts from 1950 onwards. According to this website, there have been 13 battles matching that description. One was against a predominantly Jewish country, two were against predominantly Buddhist countries, four were against predominantly Christian countries, and 6 were/are against predominantly Muslim countries. Using that method of counting, it seems that the US is quite democratic in choosing which religions to battle against. We may even be tempted to conclude that religion is not a factor at all.

However, I quickly realized that each of the “conflicts” against Christian countries seemed to be more of the peace-keeping variety, as opposed to the war-waging variety. This fact is borne out in the number of US casualties, which, in terms of the four conflicts in Christian countries, numbered 27, 6, 19, and 23. That is to say, in the past 57 years, the US has lost a total of 75 soldiers in battles in four separate Christian countries. (The Israelis claimed nearly half as many soldiers when they mistakenly bombed an allied US navy vessel in 1967, which accounted for 33 deaths, and the only US-Israeli “conflict,” and for which, mind you, there was no US retaliation.) In contrast, battles on Muslim soil have taken over 4,500 soldiers and counting. Battles on Buddhist soil have claimed over 14,000 soldiers. And, if we are counting dollars spent, rather than lives lost, which would then include the Cold War against the atheistic USSR, then this ceases to be a comparison at all, as Christian conflicts are dwarfed effectively into non-existence. Determining causality of a war is admittedly beyond my expertise, but it appears to me that if someone wanted to make the argument that religious difference strongly correlated with the number of lives lost or the number of dollars spent in US armed conflicts since 1950, then it appears that they would have plenty of fodder on which to base their argument.

Indeed, the notion that religiosity and bellicosity are strongly correlated is not a new one. Way back when, Plato suggested that society should actively encourage a vision of a blissful afterlife, for such a conception allows citizens to be fearless in the face of death, which, consequently, makes them good soldiers. Of course, this Platonic ideal can be taken too far and has often resulted in the senseless loss of lives of both soldiers and civilians for reasons and by tactics that no rightly-conceived god (seemingly) could ever justify.

Finally, I would like to address two points that Nathan raised in his comment on the video. First, as to the video’s internal consistency, my reading of the video is that it is, indeed, consistent. Where it mentions human potential, I do not think it is with reference to a transcendent moral standard. Rather, I think he is referring to human potential with sarcasm. The word potential is punctuated with the picture of an American flag on the moon, as if to say, so what? Even our greatest achievement (arguably) still amounts to nothing! In that sense, I think the video is consistently non-transcendent. Of course, if the author was not being sarcastic when he talks about human “potential” and “cleverness,” then Nathan would be correct in his criticism. I suppose it depends on how you read it. Secondly, as to the point of whether a Nihilist can rightly claim to be the only possessor of Truth, the answer is yes, precisely because a Nihilist doesn’t believe anyone is in any better position to judge Truth. Therefore, Nietzsche can say whatever he wants, but he is a monkey, too, as the video admits, and so is Ernest Cline. If nothing else, Nihilists are rather even-handed that way. Everyone’s a fool, even the one calling everyone a fool.

Lastly, when I put up the video, I did not realize that some people may be offended at the suggestion that all gods were made up. If you are a Nihilist, you probably agree with the statement. If you are an Absolutist who thinks that your God is the only true God, then you should at least see the partial truth in the claim, as it applies to everyone but you. And finally, if you are a Relativist, who thinks that everyone is seeing different aspects of the same God, then you likely have room in your heart even for those who see an absence of god, and, besides, you are likely not easily offended, you granola-eating hippie. Just kidding. You know I love you all and did not mean anyone individually any offense. Such things are meant to provoke thought rather than offense. My apologies to those who received it otherwise. Now, who wants a baby?

Dance Monkeys

2007-09-04T17:09:00.001-04:00

I thought this was pretty interesting...

Googlemercial

2007-08-12T12:53:00.000-04:00

If you don’t use Google Reader, you’re not living life to the fullest. I’m serious. If you subscribe to many blogs that update sporadically (like mine, for instance), you need this utility. Tired of traveling all the way across the internet to your favorite blog, only to find that there was nothing new to read? Not to worry. Google Reader will tell you when anything new is posted! Tired of typing all of those w-w-w’s and can’t remember if it was a forward slash or backslash in your favorite blog’s URL? Not to worry! With Google Reader, you only have to type it in once to subscribe initially! That’s right. Set it and forget it! After that, the reader will snag the latest posts from your favorite blogs and deliver them to your email-like inbox! This may be the best invention since the remote control.

But wait! There’s more! You can clip Google Reader to your personalized google homepage, so you’d be getting real-time updates every time you open up your browser!

But wait! There’s more! Google Reader is enabled with Google Gears. What is Google Gears? It is an application that allows you to use the internet, even when you don’t have an internet connection! It essentially works like podcasting, in that it downloads what you need when you have an internet connection, so that it can be accessed when you don’t. Now you can read your blogs while commuting to work. Brilliant. Plus, this way you won’t have to get your hands dirty setting up the alternative – Google’s G-flush technology.

No purchase necessary. Just click here or click on the "subscribe" icon in the upper right hand corner of this page.

What will the good folks at Google think up next?

Taoist Proverb

2007-08-07T16:14:00.000-04:00

The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?
- Zhuangzi, Chapter 26.

What I Do and Do Not Remember

2007-07-30T11:56:00.000-04:00

I remember sleepovers at Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. I remember being given warm milk just prior to bed, because New York City was an ugly place back in the 80’s, and the chemicals in warm milk help a child sleep through the crack-heads blasting boom boxes and the gunshots splitting the night air. Indeed, I have no recollection of such things. I distinctly remember the big, white bathtub in my Aunt’s bathroom. I remember the low frequency buzz I encountered when I filled it to the top and plunged my head under water. What was that noise? And why could I only hear it when under water? I imagined that as the lights of this vast metropolis were ignited, their tiny filaments would vibrate and give off, in addition to the light, a practically inaudible sound. The massive network of copper pipes in the city’s sewer system, then, would harness all of the little tiny sounds and would, for some unknown reason, conduct them up to this eighth floor apartment, where, with the aid of my water-and-cast-iron-bathtub-receiver, I could go under and listen to my city burn. And glow.

I also remember being happy for the smell of hotdogs in the morning, back before I knew what hotdogs were made of, or cared, back when I would cover everything on my plate in ketchup.

I remember those pink strawberry frosted donuts from Dunkin’ Donuts as belonging to my childhood.

I remember walking upside down on my hands at recess and that one time I fell off the monkey bars and bumped my head. I had heard sports announcers talking about concussions, and I wondered if I had one. Because they never described what one feels like, I couldn’t be sure.

I remember when it was my turn to go up to the second floor kitchen with my nursery school teacher to help make the Kool-Aid. I remember how seriously I took the whole endeavor, how I believed all my fellow students were counting on me to mix it just right, and I remember my teacher lauding my industriousness. I’ve never again felt so self-important. I remember a little Asian girl asking me to marry her, but I can’t remember if I did.

I remember my kindergarten teacher telling us that she had just recovered from several months of blindness after a child hit her in the eye with a block. I remember her shoulder length blonde hair and the way she walked.

I remember my mother’s earnest attempt to teach me how to read 48 hours before my first day of school, so that everyone wouldn’t think I was dumb. I remember that I was then left back in first grade, if only for a day, after receiving straight F’s, at least until the school fixed its clerical error. My mother’s disgrace was only temporary compared to some other mother, who was told that her son’s A’s were actually F’s. And think of the boy, too, his unbridled joy, seeing all of those A’s on his report card, like some miracle brought to life. A Christmas in June.

I remember a Japanese friend named Mitoki in first grade. I remember that his mom made me take off my shoes when I went over to his house. I also remember that he had the neatest house you’ll ever see, which we promptly demolished during an indoor Easter Egg hunt. And I remember the perverse pleasure it gave me, at least to the extent that an eight year old can feel such a thing.

I remember that up to a certain point in elementary school, girls were just these relatively tall people that couldn’t throw a ball very well. I remember the girl in 4th grade that changed that. And I remember when, in sixth grade, I developed my first real crush on a girl, who, interestingly enough, could throw quite well, and who would teach me what it felt like to be reduced to a babbling mess, to be wholly uninteresting in another person’s eyes, and for that not to make one difference.

I remember the blue ring around my god-father’s dark brown irises. When he touched my head, they gave me his name, and told me that I would come to bare his character. I remember how they spoke of him like some hero out of a children’s book, and I wondered how I could live up to that. I still do.

I remember my mom’s eldest brother, how he was tall and sinewy, how he taught me the art of catching butterflies, fireflies, and dragonflies, all kinds of flies really, and how he taught me to swim, if only well enough not to die. We knew, I suspect, that he, for his part, would die soon, but I remember how it crushed my mother. It may have crushed her more than when her own parents, in turn, passed away. Perhaps because his death was first. Or perhaps because it was too early. Or perhaps because she knew that they would have to bury him and that there are few greater injustices in this world than for a parent to bury a child. For my part, I was relatively unaffected by the death of my grandparents, because I did not know them very well. My greatest sadness in the matter was when my mother told me that my dad, ever the stoic, upon receiving news of his mother’s passing, himself wept. Lessons of loss, to this point, I suppose, have been learned vicariously.

I remember the green grass at Shea Stadium in Flushing Meadows. I remember how I’d wear my mitt for all nine innings, hoping to catch a fly ball. This, despite the fact that we were so far up in the upper deck that even Casey himself could not reach us, not even with the benefit of two swings of his Mighty bat. I remember my mom, bless her heart, becoming a Met fan to connect with her son. And I remember penciling in the box score to show her when she returned from work. When I went off to college, she predictably stopped following baseball altogether, but every once in awhile, an old neuron will shake off the dust and fire, and she’ll ask me; “So, how are the Mets doing?” And just like that, it’s 1988 again. And one of these days, I suppose, they’ll win it all. And I’ll call my mom and tell her that we finally did it. The New York Metropolitans. My mother and I. World Champions.

I remember the hot July sun and how sometimes, as if for no reason at all, and without a single cloud in the sky, the rains would mysteriously begin to fall and just as suddenly stop. It was as if someone had nodded off at the control center, if only for a minute.

I remember the smell of snow in the New York air on the afternoon the trade towers were first bombed. My junior high school principle allowed us to go home early.

I remember that beautiful spring afternoon in college, when my favorite philosophy professor announced to the class that a kid in our class, the night previous, had taken his own life. I always wondered if things would have gone differently if, a week prior, when I had seen him at the gas station he worked at, I had told him that of all the kids in that class, he was the only one that I thought ‘got it’ better than I did, that I valued the contributions he made to class, and that one day I hope to be as well-read as him. I remember really feeling that way about him. And I remember, after receiving the news of his passing, wondering the implications of those facts. I cannot remember the kid's name, but I distinctly remember the way he pronounced the name Jean-Paul Sartre.

I remember my small victories on the athletic field much more so than my larger victories in academic arenas. I remember my one and only time on the all-star team in little league. I didn’t have a hit, but I did make a sparkling diving catch to my left from shortstop. It almost made me feel like I belonged there. I remember being on the mound and striking out the last batter in our junior high school championship game. And I remember throwing my mitt skyward, like I had seen on TV, which is the way that I perhaps even rehearsed it in my head, as though I had been waiting for such a moment all my young life, the way a caterpillar might daydream of what it must feel like to fly.

I remember getting a pencil tip stuck in my knee. It shouldn’t have been that big of a deal, because most American pencil manufacturers, by that time, had made the switch from dangerous lead cores to innocuous graphite cores, which would have been all these was to tell, except that we purchased these pencils from an airport in Munich. As a result, there was some concern over whether or not I would make it. My mom, who was then a nurse, and my brother, who would grow up to be a doctor of some renown, performed their first surgery together and extracted the lead tip without having to amputate my leg. They would perform their second surgery together a few weeks later when a black ant somehow managed to bury his head in that same knee. I survived; the ant did not.

I remember family trips to Niagra Falls, Hershey Park, Boston, and Disney World. I remember wanting to go over the Falls in a barrel. I remember eating so much chocolate I became sick. I remember getting caught in a blizzard so bad that we could not see but a foot in front of the windshield. Suddenly, on an otherwise unassuming winter afternoon in New England, our automobile seemed thrust into the perpetual battle between the iridescent and the monochromatic, itself an allegory for Good and Evil, and surely we were doomed, until Spring arrived, as it always does, just in time, to save us. But Spring, herself appearing to have a flair for the dramatic, waits patiently, or doesn't it seem, just long enough for the audience to begin to doubt whether or not She'll make it this time, to question whether or not this Winter will be the one that lasts forever. But I remember that snowy afternoon, before things got better, and how brilliant the inside of the 1988 Toyota Camry looked in a world that had become an overexposed negative. I remember eating dinner in a Princess’ Castle. I remember the weight and immensity of that over-sized wooden goblet, which my seven year old arms steadily tried to touch to my lips.

I do not remember having gotten old. Still, somehow, I can remember an entire lifetime. But this is enough. For now.

Guru Wanted

2007-07-29T23:50:00.000-04:00

I’ve recently discovered Guru.com: "the world's largest marketplace for freelance talent." It’s basically an amped-up version of the Craig’s List help-wanted section. You put up a post about what you need and people from all over the world bid for the job. I put up an ad for someone to take over here at Donkey’s Clubhouse. A writer from Thailand named Sirikit agreed to be my ghost writer for 6 Bahts per post, which is roughly equivalent to 20 cents American. Personally, I think I’m overpaying, especially in light of the sub-standard quality of work we’ve grown accustomed to here. But I think she’s the perfect person to replace me. Sirikit is a housewife from the province of Samut Sakhon, enjoys attending Muay Thai (Thai boxing) matches, loves the color purple, is fluent in Thai and has a “working knowledge” of English - all characteristics I would possess, if I was Thai. See, she’s perfect!

Also, Sirikit says that if you’re a reader of this blog, she’ll cut you a deal on any dissertations you need her to write on your behalf. She tells me that she’s an expert on all subjects, and who am I to doubt her?

Anyway, Sirikit, welcome. I’m looking forward to reading what “I” will be writing from now on.

Looking Under the Bed

2007-07-28T23:08:00.000-04:00

Have you ever noticed that if you have a particular subject on your mind, you seem to encounter things in life that speak to that subject directly?

Take for instance yesterday’s post about how religion has gone wrong by focusing too much on ideas rather than deeds. This afternoon, I went to Amazon to buy a book of poetry by Tony Hoagland. They suggested that I might like a book by a guy named Bob Hicok, of whom I had never heard. I looked up some of his poetry on Plagairist and found one entitled, “By Their Works,” about the waitress that served the Last Supper. She observes of subsequent patrons: “What a mess they’ve made of their faith” with all their talk of “Rome and silk and crucifications.” She contrasts their manner of speaking with the way Jesus acted toward her. Interesting.

Consider also that today’s episode on my new favorite podcast, The Writer’s Almanac hosted by Garrison Keillor, focused extensively on the work of Karl Popper, who was born on this day in 1902. Though I’m not familiar with Popper’s writing, I learned that in his book The Open Society and Its Enemies, “(Popper) argued that political leaders like Stalin and Hitler shared a mindset with philosophers like Plato and Marx in that they all believed that ideas were more important than individual people.” You’ll note that this is precisely the same criticism I levied against the Church in yesterday’s post: the church’s decision to focus on ideas made their subsequent human rights abuses almost inevitable.

And while the degree of parallel between my post yesterday and this morning’s episode of the Writer’s Almanac is interesting, it is dwarfed by the measure of coincidence shared by this blog and a previous episode of that same show. I went back and listened to the episode from June 18th, which, if you scroll down, you will note was my birthday. On that day, the poet being featured was no other than one Tony Hoagland, whose book I was to purchase this morning, when this whole ball of happenstance starting tumbling. Not only that! But the last time I mentioned Amazon, or Tony Hoagland for that matter, was back on August 21st, shortly after I purchased the book containing the very poem Garrison Keillor would later read on my birthday. The title of the book, if you recall, is, dun dun dun. Donkey Gospel. That’s right, Garrison Keillor, who, by at least one internet account, is the son of Batman, knew to read from Donkey Gospel to commemorate my birthday!

Because all happy accidents desire to be ruined by explanation, and because I have Rives’ presentation - also from yesterday’s post – on my mind, I’m working on a theory that Garrison Keillor is hiding under my bed and stealing my thoughts. He then sells them to Amazon or the American Poetry Foundation after somehow employing Google advertising. I’m still working out the kinks, but I think I’m on to something.

Dan Gilbert, in anticipation of this very post, I suspect, wrote a book that attempts to explain our tendency to attend to aspects of our environment that relate to matters already on the brain: “The brain and the eye may have a contractual relationship in which the brain has agreed to believe what the eye sees, but in return the eye has agreed to look for what the brain wants.” Gilbert draws his conclusion based on years of empirical research, which, to him, suggests that people have a very difficult time being truly objective, because their pre-cognitive biases determine which facts to attend to and which to ignore. This may, in part, explain why humans have a tendency to stumble upon so many coincidences. A fair point. However, in my defense, I’d like to point out that most of Gilbert’s research is conducted via questionnaires distributed to Harvard undergraduate students, and as far as I know, he is yet to look under my bed to determine what is or is not there.

Conspiracies Abound!

2007-07-27T18:00:00.001-04:00

Who is a Christian?

2007-07-27T12:36:00.000-04:00

I don’t know how closely some of you read my writing, but you may have noticed that I’ve again started going to church. You may have also noted my continued insistence that I am not Christian. The implication, then, is that I believe that simply going to church does not a Christian make. So, what does?

I’ve looked at how the term “Christian” is defined by those that say they are Christians, which has been an informative undertaking. The first thing we can say is that there is no universally accepted definition for the term. Rather, the term Christianity is defined along the same lines as criteria for membership into an exclusive club. A Baptist preacher may ask you, “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?” Your answer to this question will determine whether or not he will allow you to join his club, or, in the alternative, as was my case, he will wish you well on your path to eternal damnation. A Catholic priest may ask you, “Have you been baptized under the Trinity in the Roman Catholic Church?” Other definitions may be premised on whether or not you have received the grace of the Lord, whether or not you have turned away from sin, whether or not you have entered into a friendship with Jesus, whether or not your heart is imbued with the Holy Spirit, whether or not you accept the New and Old testaments as God’s revelation, or any combination of these and others.

It appears that most definitions focus on what you believe, rather than what you do. If addressed at all, what you do is, at most, given subordinate importance; most often, if is left out entirely. This is most apparent with creed-centered definitions of Christianity. These definitions seem to take a verbatim line or two directly out of a Church’s creed, usually the Nicene or Apostle’s. They will ask you, for instance, whether or not you believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God (Nicene, line 6), whether or not we are saved through him (line 13), whether or not he was of a virgin birth (line 16), whether or not he was resurrected in fulfillment of prophecy (line 20), etc. (A survey of these definitions and others can be found here at the Religious Tolerance website. )

I believe that creed-centered definitions of Christianity are largely a vestige of the early years of the Church, when such matters of faith were wholly unsettled, and, as such, they are largely an historical accident. The council at Nicea met, in large part, to address the divinity of Christ, which, presumably, was still up for debate, by then, some 300 years after his death. After Nicea decreed that Jesus was, indeed, divine, another council convened at Constantinople to reconcile this divinity with his humanity. Still another council met at Ephesus to address the nature of Mary, and still another to address the nature of the Holy Spirit, and so on. By this time, we were some five or six hundred years into the “Era of the Lord.” The findings of these various councils were codified in Creeds or the like and belief or non-belief in them separated Christians who belonged to the fledgling Catholic Church, which history shows would win out in the end, from the Christian “heretics” that did not. That which lives on in these creeds, and that which is reflected in creed-centered definitions of Christianity, then, is not a reflection of the views of all early-Christians, nor even of Jesus Christ himself, but instead, they document the points of disconnect, rather than the points of overlap, between the Catholic Church and the various competing positions as they existed some 1,500 to 2,000 years ago or at least several hundred years ago during the less distant schisms of the once Holy Roman Empire.

That is to say, rather than focus on the heart of what it means to be Christian – that which united all Christians and still does – the definitions focus on the very outer layer of what it means to be Christian, the point at which subtle difference arise between one mode of reckoning and another. While it was perhaps understandable, or at least forgivable, for the early church to be consumed with such subtle differences, it is largely anachronistic for us to continue to do so today. To premise the main thrust of Christianity in general on the few sectarian differences we have, then or now, I would argue, is to miss the point almost entirely.

But understanding Christianity as a set of beliefs, as opposed to, for instance, a lived experience, leaves one open to far greater pitfalls than the largely academic point raised above. One need only recall that some of the greatest injustices the world over have been committed under The Cross in the name of Jesus Christ. The living history of the Church was, and continues to be, a bloody tale. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu points out, “It was Christians, you know, not Pagans, who were responsible for the Holocaust. It was Christians, not Pagans, who lynched people here in the South, who burned people at the stake, frequently in the name of this Jesus Christ.” Tutu’s description does not even make mention of the Crusades, Inquisitions, the various other attempts at violent proselytization, nor the myriad Christian justifications once given for slavery or the oppression of women. As philosopher Blaise Pascal once cautioned, “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” History has been Pascal’s witness. And it is an observation similar to Pascal’s which led Ghandi to say of Christianity, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” What these three criticism have in common is that unlike most definitions of Christianity, they focus on the acts of man, rather than his beliefs.

What good are any of our religious beliefs, in Christ or otherwise, if we simply use them to bludgeon one another? What good is the practice of any religion, if it too easily becomes a practice of hatred, intolerance, and violence?

Curiously, the historical Christ himself spent little, if any, time discussing most of the questions that many Christians now hold to be the central tenets of their belief. Indeed, we know very little, if anything, about what Jesus Christ himself believed. For instance, he was reluctant to address the question of his divinity, made no mention of the virginity of his mother, left it unclear whether his resurrection would be bodily or spiritual, made no mention of the Holy Trinity, made no promise that his disciples would inerrantly record and re-tell his story, and indeed, he left it wholly unclear what role, if any, your beliefs in any of these matters had in your salvation. Moreover, there is even the suggestion that Jesus was intentionally evasive and unclear about such things, so that we would not know what to believe! Still, somehow, most Christians seem to think that following Jesus is “about” a few particular beliefs in God, of which Jesus himself was largely silent, vague, or contradictory.

I, having seen its effect throughout history and in the present day, have a hard time subscribing to such a view of Christianity. Christianity should not be viewed as a club to which you gain membership if you meet certain standards of belief. One should not “become” Christian the moment one decides to write one’s name on a roster and pay membership dues to a local church or attend service in a particular building once a week. Such an “in the club” or “out of the club” mentality is precisely that which allows those “in” the club to hate, oppress, and exact violence against those “outside” of it.

I’ve already hinted that I believe Christianity should be defined, ideally speaking, as an action-centered-way-of-life, something which is to be practiced, not arrived at. Indeed, such a view comports nicely with Jesus’ actual teachings and practice. Jesus teaches that the two most important laws are these: (1) love your God and (2) love your neighbor as yourself. In exploring what it means to ‘love your God,’ John writes, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.” Elsewhere, Jesus tells us, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” That is to say, the manner by which Christendom will be announced to the world, or in another word, defined, is the love Christians have for their brothers. To the extent that Christianity is reducible to definition, it should be thus: the attempt by man to emulate God’s love for us by loving our fellow man.

Not only would such a definition better comport with Jesus’ actual teachings, its practice would avoid many of the pitfalls that has beset creed-centered conceptions of Christianity for the past two millennia. Of course, I don’t believe that such a view will have any traction. After all, healing the world with love is not nearly as profitable a venture as selling faith and church doctrine to those clamoring simply to get into heaven. Preaching the Golden Rule will not make men rich, nor with it build empires. Founding religions on blind faith in the incomprehensible, however, seems to have the opposite effect. Simply loving one another has never been enough, and the lure of far off heavens with streets paved in gold, and hope of divine intercession in the way of trumpet bearing angels, and trying to put one’s faith in logically contradictory church doctrine of which no man can make any sense at all have each proven to be too seductive for man to resist. But one has to wonder if God will not say of it, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.”

So, how is a Christian to be defined? Put it this way. I like to think that, if there is such a place as heaven, someone like Ghandi would be there, even though he did not believe in the God of Abraham, nor did he confess to the teachings of any Christian Church. Ironically, by his own admission, he wasn’t a Christian, but, in my mind at least, he was, nevertheless, such a good example of what a Christian should be. Ghandi had a pure heart and loved his fellow man much like the historical Jesus. Should it really be of any consequence that he subscribed to a different set of beliefs? Should it really be of any consequence that he did not say the right thing? No. Let the heart of a man be the seat for his God, let it also be his measure. Words, and doctrines, and professions of belief and all things originating from the lips - of these things the hearts of man place little value, and in these things the gods of man put little Faith.

Back to the Start

2007-07-12T18:51:00.000-04:00

I met this girl and I would like to tell you how it happened, if not for you, then for me, just so I have it on record, just so the historical revisionists cannot take their grand liberties with it. It was three weeks ago this past Sunday. I was walking out of the front door of church as she came bounding down the stairs in front of the side door. I made some comment about how I didn’t know you could use that door. Admittedly, it was not the best ice-breaker in the world, because such a comment doesn’t really lead to a larger conversation. It did not. And we said goodbye four seconds later.

And in some parallel dimension, that was that. I never saw her again, she never provided me with this very blog-fodder, she would not be cause for any sleepless nights, nor would she occupy anything more than a footnote in my life’s story, if even that. But in this version of the story, the actual one not the imagined one belonging to some far off dimension, for reasons that are not yet immediately apparent to either of us, our end was not meant to follow so closely to our beginning. And so it was that as she meandered through the parking lot in search for her car, we crossed paths again, this time more substantively, which led to my getting her email address, which in turn flowered into our first date, which in turn, blossomed into our first non-date, but I’m getting ahead of myself, and I cannot help but feel like I’ve left something important out already. So let me, as must so often be the case, take a step back before we can again move forward.

You can understand my initial temptation to start the story at the point in time when we first said hello to one another. It’s a nice, neat, easily-demarcated starting point. But that’s not really where the story starts. The story really starts about 200 seconds before I first said hello to her, when my gaze, quite accidentally, fell upon her gaze, if only for an instant, as I walked out of a classroom and into a hallway inside the church, the outside of which was the scene of our first hello. We looked at each other for perhaps a tenth of a second, so small a sliver or time that it’s a wonder I even noticed, a fraction so insignificant that, though I’m yet to ask her, I doubt she even remembers. And the question that pre-occupies me at the present moment is: how much of what is to come of us was determined in that tenth of a second?

As I may have mentioned in a previous post, Socrates once said that all knowledge is merely remembering that which we once forgot. He said there was a moment in time, at birth perhaps, maybe just before, when we knew everything that we would ever know. The whole of our lives, peppered as it is with ah-ha moments and episodes of déjà vu, then, is spent recollecting and reconstituting that scrapbook of knowledge, which in some sense, was already complete before we started the journey. Suppose the same is true of relationships and that moment of omniscient clarity is just before you say hello, in that tenth of a second 200 seconds before everything else. Maybe, then, the rest of it, all that comes after that initial meeting of eyes - the questions and answers, the tentative admissions, the small graces we bestow on one another, the tiny gifts, the profound warmth and occasional sadness, the words we choose, the deeds we conspire to, maybe the whole course of our lives together – amounts only to this: simply returning to that initial feeling, trying to remember what it was that you once knew about that person, so that we may finally arrive at the place, wherever that may be, where we can say to ourselves, “Ah yes, this thing we’ve become, this is how I envisioned it, even way back when.”

It's like a doctor asking you to rate the intensity of sensation deriving from a phantom limb on a scale of one to ten, one being the lowest and ten being the highest, and you then telling him, “Doc, it’s not like a number at all, but it’s a lot like that feeling you get when you find yourself singing along to a song in a foreign language whose meaning you have not yet had the chance to look up.” And if the whole of it all amounts merely finding meaning for the words you’ve already somehow memorized, feeling again that which you’ve felt before, in a word, re-living that tenth of a second, then can we really say that there are any surprises, in life or in love?

Of course, I’m not arguing that we’re living out some pre-destined fate, that we’re merely puppets in the theatre of the gods arriving at tragedy or comedy for the exclusive purpose of Cosmic entertainment. I believe that we do have a great degree of control over our own lives, perhaps even more so that we typically realize. This is why I cannot describe the facts that are about to befall us or the other ones that will escape us. These things have not happened yet, and, thus, I cannot have knowledge of them. What I am suggesting, however, is that our emotional response to the facts, or to the world, or to its people, or to a pretty girl in a parking lot may be decided in the blink of an eye, in the tenth of a second, so quickly that it does not even rise to the level of consciousness. Moreover, the mechanism for determining our emotional response, our metaphorical heart, has been shaped through natural selection for millions of years, and it includes the love songs of the amoeba-people, the poetry of the frog-people, and the story of how Lucy first fell in love, all things belonging to some distant past, all things that once were and already have been, which now belong to some forgotten dream, or exist as only shadow of a thought once held.

And how quickly we dismiss this wisdom or even forget that it even existed. Our eyes and ears are turned outward, our mouths parade out word upon word, and that is where we look for life’s lessons, in externalities. But every once in awhile, in the ancient struggle for self-understanding, there comes along a rogue voice, a Socrates, who reminds us to look inward, rather than outward, to our heart of hearts, to find what we already know. Some hundreds of years before I found myself unable to articulate an answer to her question of why I am even bothering with her, Blaise Pascal wrote, “The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing.” The Bard, as if himself humming the chorus to the love song of the amoeba-people from eons ago, instructs me, “Go to your bosom: Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.”

As I tumble backward through time, trying to gain my bearings, I realize that things would appear far less complicated if only I knew how this would end, and I even realize where I should look for answers. Still, of that prescient wise old heart and of its secret wisdom whispered during that tenth of a second, I have no recollection.

Hobo Love

2007-06-19T00:14:00.000-04:00

In June of 2002, I packed up my small studio apartment in Boston, MA and headed south down the Interstate-95 corridor. What was supposed to be a 10 hour drive ended up being closer to 15 for reasons that I cannot quite remember, and by the time I arrived amidst the sunny pastures of North Carolina, it was too late to check into a hotel and too early to pick up the key to my new apartment. Thus, my first night in the Carolinas was the 3 hour nap I took in the parking lot of the Kroger Grocery store. My first night as a hobo was rather uneventful compared to my second night as a hobo, which would take place about a year later when I was flat broke and sleeping on the floor of an airport some 50 miles outside of London, but that’s a story for another day. What my two hobo moments shared in common was that they both took place in a completely unfamiliar environment, where the nearest familiar face was hundreds of miles away. I literally knew no one.

Of course, the prospect of knowing no one was not altogether unfamiliar to me. As a child, I bounced around from school to school and was forced to make new friends everywhere I went. I went to one school for nursery and switched to another for kindergarten. First and second grade was spent at a third school, while third, fourth, and fifth were spent at a fourth school. My fifth school took care of sixth, seventh, and eight grades. The longest time I’ve ever spent at the same institution of learning was my sixth and seventh schools – high school and college – each of which spanned 4 years. Indeed, even my tenure at an eighth school – graduate school – was completed in only 3 years, after which I’ve technically been enrolled in a ninth school for the past year, though I am yet to take any continuing education classes there. Point is, after nine new beginnings, solving strangerdom becomes old hat. More out of historical necessity than for the sake of anything else, I’ve grown pretty good at making friends when needed.

Historically, I’ve always been the one leaving my friends. However, this has not been the case since I’ve moved down to North Carolina. Every summer for the past five summers, people whose company I’ve come to enjoy and value have moved away from me. Indeed, each and every person that I may have called a significant friend, with only one exception, has moved elsewhere, or will this summer. Part of it, I suspect, has to do with my age. Many people my age are starting new careers or transitioning between careers, which often entails changing location. Part of it, I suspect, has to do with geography. I now live within The Triangle created by the 3 large research universities nearby. Many people just come down here to get their degree and are happy to start their “real lives” elsewhere. Most people I come into contact with these days, then, including those whom I befriend, are transients. Ironic, then, that it is in this place bereft of any interpersonal stability that I would decide to finally take root.

Reflecting upon the friends that have come into and out of my life, I wonder if I’ve let some of them go too easily. I’ve always accepted the fact that I’m much better at making friends than I am at keeping them. I am apparently completely devoid of all of the skills necessary for maintaining long distance friendships – remembering birthdays and anniversaries, sending out news of marginally important life events, and the ever popular calling-just-to-say-hello. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever in my life called someone just to say hello. The effect of this has been that when I move away, or when people move away from me, goodbyes really tend to be goodbyes. I used to think that this was the case due to some personality defect of mine, but I now wonder if it’s rather a matter of philosophy.

This week at Sunday school (yes, I realize it’s strange that I attend Sunday school while not actually attending church or even being Christian for that matter, but I’ve found that such an arrangement suits me quite well), the minister lectured about the virtue of chastity. I didn’t care for much of what he said, but one point really did resonate. He suggested, contrary to what I was expecting, that the problem with America today was not that there was too much sex, but too little of it. That is to say, our sexuality was intended to be a broad-ranging drive which permeated all aspects of our lives. The real perversion of sexuality, then, is to confine it to the mere act of congress and it is this narrow portrayal found everywhere you look which is, so to speak, poisoning the water we drink. The Greeks, who, mind you, were naked all the time, believed that love existed in many forms including familial, sexual, charitable, and that between friends. True love, we say, is to be found in a committed sexual relationship between a man and woman and behind closed doors. Think of how many times we use the phrase ‘I love you’ and how many of those times are limited to romantic/sexual relationships. Maybe we’d all be healthier if we freed love from the bedroom, or romance in general, and let it breathe out in the open, where it could contribute positively to all aspects of our lives, more like the Greeks (though they may have taken it too far, honestly). While the minister did not mention this (and I’ve probably already butchered his lecture to pieces), I would like to add that in the story of the Fall, the first thing Adam and Eve did was clothe their nakedness, or hide their sexualities. Maybe that is something we still need to overcome.

Part of the problem with the way we think about love, I suspect, is that we have bought into the notion that love as a commodity is, to borrow a term from economics, rivalrous, which is to say that the more we give one person, the less we’ll have left over for others. But even if we assume that love exists in fixed quantity in the manner described above, would it be an altogether bad fate to have expended all the love one was given? I mean, consider the alternative - how much worse off would you be to be standing at the gates of your death, like the William H. Macy character in Magnolia, repeatedly saying, “But I have so much love (left) to give!” Maybe I’ve been guilty of putting my love on the shelf and waiting for just the right moment to use it.

But now, I’m a new man. It's no longer just about making new friends to replace the ones that I already have. It's about taking love off the shelf and allowing it to permeate my entire existence and broadening my conception of the creative drive of attraction to include even platonic relationships. Take heed new and old friends alike, this hobo is coming to a town near you, and I’m bringing my bucket of love and I plan on sharing liberally, and maybe this way we'll each find our way to salvation.

Happy Donkey Day

2007-06-18T23:39:00.000-04:00

Today is the 27th anniversary of the day of my birth. Though I'm not one to make a big celebration of such things, I do love cake and I'd like to share some of my favorite flourless chocolate variety with my readers. Look, there's even enough for everyone.

Also, I wanted to post this video, but couldn't think of a good reason to do so, but since it's my birthday, I guess I can do it for no reason at all. The video does have a donkey and there is a bit about souls, so if nothing else, it will fit in thematically to what we've got going on so far. Enjoy!

Can't Knock the Hustle

2007-06-05T21:20:00.000-04:00

Over the past nearly-27 years, I’ve sustained my fair share of injuries while playing sports. Some of these injuries were unavoidable and would have befallen anyone in my position. Others, however, were the direct result of a self-created desire to be the “hustle guy.” The hustle guy is the player that does the little stuff necessary to help his team win – in baseball, his uniform is always dirty from diving all over the place; in basketball, his body is bruised from playing hard-nosed defense; in hockey, he’s the guy without any teeth. Some examples of hustle guys I grew up emulating were Mets second baseman Wally Backman and Knicks forward Charles Oakley. And though he’s before my time, the prototypical example, of course, is Pete Rose, whose gritty play earned him the well-deserved moniker “Charlie Hustle.”

A little note on the psychology of the hustle guy: they do not hustle because they want to, they hustle because they have to. That is to say, hustle guys tend to be people that were not given the gift of natural athleticism. Instead, they must manufacture faux-athleticism with some concoction of sweat, gritty determination, and quite often an utter disregard for the safety of their own bodies. If hustle guys had a natural grace about them – think of the way Ken Griffey, Jr used to lope after balls in center field, the effortlessness of Will Clark’s swing, or the way Clyde “the Glide” Drexler would soar through the air – someone somewhere along the pipeline would have told these kids to stop putting their bodies in harm’s way. But the hustle guys were never handled with kid gloves like that. Instead, their psyches were hardened by being kept so dangerously close to the fire of failure. As a hustle guy will tell you, leave grace for those other guys, because there’s nothing graceful about picking grass out of your teeth, or, better yet, just leaving it there.

To take an example from my own life, when I was in 6th grade, my middle school threw together a boys basketball team. My friends convinced me to play, even though I had hardly ever played basketball. Due in part to my inexperience, I could not dribble the ball and my jumpshot reflected only the vaguest apprehension of the purpose of the game, namely to direct the ball into, or at least in the generally direction of, the hoop. Still, because I was willing to work my butt off on defense, I, quite remarkably really, earned a starting spot as a four-guard. You likely have never heard of the position. That’s because my coach created the position, tailored it to my unique skill set (or lack thereof), and instructed me to “on defense, find the opposing team’s best ball handler and stop him, and on offense, stay the heck out of the way.” This arrangement was just fine with me. Defense was a largely thankless endeavor which comported quite nicely with my notion of the hustle guy. I stuck to the other teams point guard like white on rice. I was playing defense on him wherever he was on the court – half-court, three-quarters court, full-court, wherever. Heck, I was playing defense on him even when MY TEAM had the ball! I’m sure opposing point guards had never seen anything like it.

Indeed, there’s a certain rituality that comes along with being a hustle guy. Over the ensuing 15 years since middle school, I’ve developed some respectable offensive skills which allow me to participate, even contribute, on the offensive end, but I still play defense like I did in 6th grade. If you’ve ever seen me play, this will explain to you why I seem to run a one-man-full-court- press all the time, regardless of the circumstances, even if no one is back there helping me trap the ball handler. I’m sure people must have wondered what I was doing. I doubt that any how-to manual will suggest that you expend 95% of your energy on defense, but it’s how I was taught to play. It’s become a ritual, one that persists irrespective of my skill level. And that is part and parcel of being a hustle guy. The circumstances are irrelevant. If you’re going to play, you’re going to go all out. This means running out every ground ball, diving after every loose ball, playing hard defensively even if you’re getting blown out, and going all out, even at practice. Joe DiMaggio, who was too talented to be called a hustle guy, once remarked about his hard play, “There is always some kid who may be seeing me for the first or last time, I owe him my best.” I suppose that the same should hold true, even when no one is watching.

Still, hustle guys inevitably realize that hustling all those years takes its toll on one’s body, and that all the bumps and bruises, nicks and cuts, even the small ones, have a cumulative effect. After playing through countless ankle sprains, I finally went to see a physical therapist a couple of years ago. After examining my swollen left ankle, he said, “This thing is a mess. Let’s see the good one.” But after he saw my right ankle he said, “Holy crap! This one’s worse!” Apparently, “playing through” makes soup of the tendons in one’s ankle. Who knew. Still, that episode pales in comparison to the time I broke my wrist playing pickup basketball. Sure, it hurt, but that was no reason to stop playing. And you might say, and rightfully so, why would you keep playing if it was just a pickup game – nothing was really on the line? Fair enough. But I would reply, where I come from, if you can walk, you can play, and if it hurts, rub some dirt on it. And besides, I’d remind you that it was the wrist of my non-shooting hand. And we’d both have a point. Eventually, I’d go to the hospital and have my arm set in a cast for 6 weeks, but not before I finished the game I started. Pete Rose would be proud.

Still, I can’t help but feel as though this Charlie Hustle may have met his demise this weekend. I recently joined a church league softball team, which has been holding practice the past 3 Saturdays. Of course, I went to practice, and, of course, I busted my tail like it was Game 7 of the World Series. I was diving after balls in the gap, running out groundballs, and trying to take an extra base at every opportunity. In my last at bat, I got on top of a ball and bounced sharply to the shortstop. Most people would go through the motions and jog to first. Not me. I had it in my mind that I was going to beat out the throw to first. So at the end of a long day of practice under the Carolina sun, and after playing basketball for two and a half hours the night before and neither stretching after basketball nor before softball, I bust it out of the box. I’m digging down the line, really have my wings on, trying to make it a close play at first. Then, just as I’m making my lunge for the bag, I feel, in the back of my left leg, a sudden pop. As I’m lying next to the bag, the girl that was playing first base, comes over and asks, “Are you OK?” And briefly forgetting that I am not prone to profanity and momentarily losing sight of the fact that this is indeed a church league, and to no one in particular and not necessarily in response to her question, I drop the F-Bomb, which pretty well summarized how I felt at that moment.

As I’m lying there for the next minute, I have myself convinced first that I’ve torn my hamstring to smithereens, then that I’m not hurt at all, and finally, that I can keep playing. This is actually the natural thought progression in these situations. Unfortunately, my theory that it was just a cramp doesn’t last much past my realization that I can’t walk off the field. And in the unlikely event that someone ever stabbed me in the back of the leg with a knife as I ran to first base, I imagine that it would feel exactly like this, which in turn signals to me that I cannot, in fact, keep playing. But the sad part is not that I got hurt - it’s what occurred after I got hurt. First, an old guy comes up to me and says, apparently speaking from experience, “Oh boy, once your hamstring starts going, you know you’re getting old.” Second, I have the realization that I’ve managed to injure myself playing the non-contact sport of softball, the rules of which were specifically designed so that even old people would not hurt themselves. Third, when my coach comes over to check on me, I confess, “Well, maybe it serves me right, trying to beat out an infield hit at softball practice.” And that’s when I realized, here amongst all these old guys with pads on this and that, braces on every joint, and slow and purposeful gaits, that softball fields are where Charlie Hustles go to grow old and die.

I’ve been limping around town for the past 4 days and I’m not quite sure how long it will be until I can run again. Two weeks? A month? Whatever the case, I know it will be sooner if I resign myself to playing the game like an old person, which I guess I’ll have to do sooner rather than later, if I haven’t already made the transition in my mind. I suppose it’s too late in life to cultivate a Clyde Drexler-esque grace. Does old age befall a person that quickly? Somehow I always imagined it would take longer than the three or four seconds it takes to run the 60 feet between home and first. But that’s how quickly it happened. Still, even after admitting to myself that maybe I’m too old for this, even as Charlie Hustle is hanging up his spikes for the last time, I can’t shake that faint, raspy, defiant voice inside me…

Just rub some dirt on it.

Bright Smile, Dark Eyes

2007-05-09T17:25:00.000-04:00

I recently came across this song by Josh Ritter entitled “Bright Smile.” It’s been getting a fair amount of airplay on the ipod these days, so I thought I’d share it with you along with some thoughts. Here’s the video that accompanies the song, so you can follow along wherever you are.

You’ll note that there are a couple of literary or historical references throughout the song. For instance, in the third stanza, he mentions Calamity Jane, Casanova, and a certain Darling Clementine.

Martha Jane Canary rose to some notoriety as Calamity Jane in the Wild West of the 1870’s. She befriended and claimed to have married (though this is disputed) one James Butler Hickok. Hickok, who himself rose to notoriety as Wild Bill, was prone to both gambling and paranoia. When playing poker, he always sat in the corner, fearing that otherwise, someone would sneak up behind him. On August 1, 1876, when Wild Bill sat down to play cards, the corner seat was not available. As a result, Wild Bill was sitting with his back toward the door when Jack McCall walked in, lifted his .45 to the back of Wild Bill’s head, and pulled the trigger. At the time of his death, Wild Bill had in his hands a pair aces and a pair of eights, or, as it has come to be known in poker lore, a “Dead Man’s Hand.” When Jane received word of what had happened, she unsuccessfully went after Jack McCall with a meat cleaver. He was later hanged. Jane was married numerous times, but people say she was always fondest of Wild Bill and even asked to be buried next to him. As for how she earned her nickname? One story says that Jane liked to tell men that to pursue her was to “court calamity.” Calamity, I suppose, was something of which a man named Wild Bill was never afraid.

And then there’s the story of Giacomo Casanova, a handsome and charming Venetian whose adventures spanned the better part of the 1700’s. His restless heart did not permit him to any more than dabble in a great many occupations: law clerk, novelist, playwright, alchemist, philosopher, diplomat, spy, and magician. The last of these would land him a five year prison sentence for witchcraft, but quite appropriately for a magician, or perhaps a witch, he escaped. Like Wild Bill Hickok, Casanova had an inclination to gamble, and he made millions after setting up a state lottery. Of course, Casanova is best known for his womanizing. In his autobiography, he mentions his most memorable 122 conquests. He summed up his philosophy on love: "Real love is the love that sometimes arises after sensual pleasure: if it does, it is immortal; the other kind inevitably goes stale, for it lies in mere fantasy." For all his studies in love, Casanova, it would appear, never found happiness. During his final years, he lived the solitary life of an uncelebrated librarian and wrote his memoirs “to keep from going mad or dying of grief.”

Clementine was the main character in an Old West folk song, which I remember singing in my first grade music class. Of course, as with many children’s stories or verses, this song is much darker than I remember. The song is about a miner that falls in love with a fellow miner’s daughter, named Clementine. Clementine was chasing ducks into a lake, when she stubbed her toe and fell in. Because her lover did not know how to swim, he could only watch from the shore as Clementine died. Thus, he bellows, “Oh my darling, oh my darling, Oh my darling, Clementine! You were lost and gone forever. Dreadful sorry, Clementine. ” However, his sorrows, as you will see, are short-lived, “How I missed her! How I missed her,/ How I missed my Clementine,/ But I kissed her little sister,/ I forgot my Clementine.” What? This is a children’s song? But wait, there’s more. At this point, Clementine, as you can imagine, is not a happy camper. She has no other recourse but to come back as a ghost to haunt her former lover’s dreams; “In my dreams she still doth haunt me,/ robed in garments soaked in brine.” But Clementine is out of luck. The song ends with the miner telling us how he’s moved on, “How in life I used to hug her, Now she's dead, I draw the line.” Yikes. Dreadful sorry, Clementine.

Earlier in the song, Josh Ritter refers to a fourth historical character – French philosopher and logician Pierre Abelard. Abelard was the premier philosopher of the early 1100’s. Thousands of people from all over Europe came to hear him lecture. His brilliance, charisma, and success soon landed him the position of canon and Chair at Notre-Dame. He was on top of the world. And then he fell in love. A young girl named Heloise, brilliant in her own right, moved to Notre-Dame with her uncle, a canon named Fulbert, and she soon fell under the tutelage of Abelard. Abelard and Heloise began a love affair until Fulbert caught heed and separated the two. Abelard and Heloise then had to see each other in secret, until she got pregnant, at which point, the two ran off to Brittany. Uncle Fulbert was not a happy camper. To appease Fulbert, Abelard proposed a secret wedding that would legitimize the union. (A public marriage was impossible, given Abelard’s vow of celibacy.) Heloise would have preferred to remain a mistress, but she finally relented. Fulbert, meanwhile, let slip word of the marriage and soon Heloise was bombarded with questions. Heloise denied the allegations of marriage and even joined a convent to escape suspicion. When Fulbert received word of this, he erroneously assumed that Abelard had abandoned his niece and sought revenge. He broke into Abelard’s room in the middle of the night and castrated him, which disqualified Abelard as a priest, ecclesiast, and husband. Abelard was ruined professionally and he joined a monastery. Heloise had to bear a worse fate, it appears. She was still in love with a man that was no longer capable of loving. The letters that Heloise wrote to Abelard from her convent, which document her torment, can be found here.

Indeed, 18th century English Poet Alexander Pope retold the story of Abelard in his poem “Eloise to Abelard.” In it, he includes the famous line:

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.

Of course, the third line provided the inspiration for the Charlie Kaufman film “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” which starred Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, and Mark Ruffalo. a scene of which you will find below. The movie is a modern re-telling of the story of Abelard and Heloise.

So, how does this post end? How am I going to tie all these seemingly disparate stories together? Easy. You see, first we started with a song by a 21st century musician, named Josh, and then we met a 19th century Jane, a Bill with two aces up his sleeve, and a guy named Jack with a .45. We met an 18th century Italian librarian who had known better days and a 49er, his two daughters, one of whom was a Clementine, and, lest we forget, her apologetic lover. And then of course, there was a 12th century Parisian philosopher, his dear Heloise, and her vindictive uncle Fulbert. This, in turn, led us to an 18th Century Pope and back to a modern day Charlie, and his troop of actors: Jim, Kirsten, Mark, and Kate, who herself played a Clementine in the above movie. And now there’s only one person left to meet - John Graham. And now that you’ve met him, I can say that all 19 people you’ve met so far are within 6 degrees of separation of the actor that played John Graham in the movie “In the Cut,” which also starred Mark Ruffalo, namely, Kevin Bacon.

And Then There Were Two?

2007-05-08T00:53:00.000-04:00

Here's a follow-up to a story I mentioned a few posts back. It appears that Lonesome George may not be so lonesome for much longer. NY Times story.

For the Dogs

2007-05-01T15:23:00.000-04:00

Well folks, this whole pet food recall fiasco is getting more ridiculous by the day. Awhile back, the FDA recalled several canned dog and cat foods, due to a contaminated batch of wheat gluten. Originally, people speculated that some rat poison accidentally got mixed in with the wheat gluten, which seemed plausible enough. What was interesting at the time was the sheer volume of dog foods that were affected by the recall. The list included Wal-Mart's budget-friendly Ol' Roy, which I understand costs about $0.25/lb, but also its pricey competitors which often cost 4 or 5 times that. You had to wonder, was it all the same stuff?

For my part, I was not particularly concerned about the recall. When my dog was a pup, he often had stomach issues, which led me to conclude that he was allergic to wheat. Unfortunately, most dog foods contain sizable amounts of wheat, in some shape or form. After some research, I settled upon Blue Buffalo brand dog food, a super-fancy-pants natural dog food which was free of wheat, corn, and soy. Unlike most dog foods, which have all kinds of fillers and by-products, Blue Buffalo contained only the best ingredients. It was free of all steroids, antibiotics, artificial preservatives, and by-products. Indeed, their ingredient list was better than that of most things I consume! Of course, with that came the steep price of $1.33/lb. Yikes. Still, if I could avoid the hassle of having to wake up at 3am and again at 4:30 am to let my dog out, it was well worth it. Plus, I had the peace of mind in knowing that my dog was eating well, which is especially important for a dog that will live forever.

Meanwhile, the FDA would periodically expand the recall. Now included were certain dry foods and dog treats. A few days ago, the FDA found contamination in certain Rice glutens and proteins. Again, I was not worried, because my brand of dog food, for which I pay an arm and a leg, did not contain such things. Only the best ingredients, remember? You can imagine my surprise when I logged onto the FDA website this morning to find that my pup's doggie biscuits were being recalled for rice gluten contamination. This had to be a mistake, I thought. First of all, to be technical, they weren't even biscuits. They were 'health bars' of 'unsurpassed nutrition.' They were even BAKED for crying out loud! But more importantly, they didn't contain any rice gluten... or wheat gluten... or the gluten of anything. I read the label. I re-read the label. No glutens! Phew, for a minute there, I felt like i was an irresponsible parent. But wait...

I went to their website to find this notice: The attached press release reads, in relevant part:

It should be noted the "BLUE" canned dog and cat food products were not formulated or labeled to contain rice protein concentrate, and that the manufacturer, American Nutrition, Inc. added the rice protein concentrate to these products without Blue Buffalo Company's knowledge or consent. For this reason, Blue Buffalo Company is concerned that it can not have any faith in the integrity, or the accuracy of the ingredient labels of any of its products manufactured by American Nutrition. Therefore Blue Buffalo is withdrawing all products manufactured by American Nutrition, including products that American Nutrition claims do not contain rice protein. The FDA investigation into the inclusion of the rice protein by American Nutrition in Blue Buffalo's products is ongoing.

I'm sure there's a healthy round of blame gaming being played throughout the dog food industry these days. Frankly, I'll never know whose fault it is that my dog treats are potentially fatal. I'm thankful that my dog isn't exhibiting any symptoms of illness to date. I've decided to take back both the biscuits and the unopen bag of dry food I recently purchased. With the recall continually being expanded, you never can be too sure. I've further decided to make my dog a home-diet for the next 4 to 6 weeks or until the dust settles from this melamine contamination scare.

But just when I thought I had matters under control, I came across a NY Times article suggesting that the melamine-contaminated rice protein has found its way into chickens at 38 Indiana farms. These chickens were marked for human consumption. At the same time, 8 pork producers in 7 states have been potentially contaminated with melamine after their pigs were fed contaminated dog food. In another report, it appears that melamine is openly and intentionally added as a filler in animal feed in China; "What? Poison? I eat this stuff by the fistful!"

At this rate, dog food may soon be the safest thing for us all to eat.

Top 20 Songs Played on my Ipod:

2007-04-26T21:49:00.000-04:00

1. Fidelity – Regina Spektor
2. Come Back Down – Joe Purdy
3. El Otro Lado – Josh Rouse
4. The City – Joe Purdy
5. Killer’s Creek – Mason Jennings
6. Mr. Brightside – The Killers
7. Here It Goes Again – OK Go
8. Darlin’ Do Not Fear – Brett Dennen
9. Falling Down – Joe Purdy
10. Andrea – Joe Purdy
11. Adrian – Mason Jennings
12. Ain’t No Reason – Brett Dennen
13. Trust Me – The Fray
14. Won’t Back Down – Mat Kearney
15. How to Be Dead – Snow Patrol
16. Chocolate – Snow Patrol
17. Where Do We Go from Here? – Mat Kearney
18. Accidental Babies – Damien Rice
19. The Denial Twist – The White Stripes
20. Sweet Lord in Heaven – Mike Doughty

Chapter Fourteen

2007-04-23T01:41:00.000-04:00

This afternoon, a friend stopped by my place. She stopped in under the pretense that she was in the neighborhood running some errands. After about 20 minutes of small talk, she turned to me in a serious tone and said, “I have something to tell you.” It’s been my experience that whenever someone needs to halt a happy conversation, take a deep breath, and transition to a serious tone whatever is about to follow will almost certainly be bad. Second, whenever someone needs to preface that something with a ‘I have something to tell you’ that something is probably big. Hence, in the blink of an eye, I concluded that this happy visit was just a pretense to drop on me something both big and bad. Maybe she was going to tell me that I had unwittingly fallen into massive, inescapable debt, having won a reverse-lottery of some sort. Perhaps, she was going to tell me that I negligently had been feeding my dog some of that contaminated dog food and that he would soon be dead. Who knows, maybe I was the one dying. Heck, who knows, maybe she had just returned from ninja training and was being paid by my arch enemy to assassinate me! Although this last possibility was the least likely, namely because I’m pretty sure I don’t have an arch enemy, I thought it wise to reach for my spoon. Just in case.

I was a bit relieved to learn only that my ex-girlfriend, not the most recent one but the one before, was engaged.

Of course, I realized that this presented an altogether different problem. I knew how to fight ninjas. That I had done before. I was mentally and physically prepared for that. However, having an ex get engaged was new to me. What exactly am I supposed to feel in this situation? Anger? Disappointment? Envy? Jealousy? Happiness? Relief? Enormity? (That’s right, enormity is an emotion I am considering.) And is it safe to put down the spoon yet?

After telling her that I didn’t feel anything in particular in response to the news, she confided that she has gotten physically ill when she received similar news awhile back regarding an ex of hers. Am I supposed to be feeling ill right now?

Hoping to find the answer somewhere between me and the road, I filled the car with a full tank of gas and headed west. I decided to drive until I was the last person left on the road, however long that took. I would know I had gone far enough when everyone on the road that was going somewhere got to that somewhere and all that was left was me and the places that no one would go. And that’s where it would all make sense. I got about 30 minutes into the trip when, unable to shake the cars either in front of or behind me and realizing the impracticality of this plan, I decided to stop for dinner.

The new plan was to find some old-time diner. I would sit at the counter and some waitress in a powder blue dress would fill my cup of coffee and offer me a generous helping of pie, like in the movies. I don’t even drink coffee, but I had seen how it was done, and who am I to mess with tradition? Between the caffeine and sugar, Old Rosie would have sage advice for me, indeed. Old Rosie would know what a man in my position is to do. And besides, who doesn’t love pie?

I even found the perfect diner in an old time town, but, this being the Bible-belt and it being Sunday evening, it was closed. I asked the skateboarders outside the courthouse where a weary traveler might find a diner ‘round these parts. (Admittedly, I probably had not gone far west enough to talk like that, but it just felt so right at the moment.) Their directions led me to a Mexican restaurant in a relatively new strip mall. Fearing that I would not find powder-blue-clad waitresses, bottomless cups of coffee, neither pie nor sage advice at this establishment, I got back in my car and headed back east. So much for living out scenes from movies.

As I made my way back home, my back pocket started vibrating and I saw that “home” was calling. It was my mom calling to tell me, as always, that nothing was new and that I should go to church. She also added, for the first time in my life, that it was about time I started looking for a wife. These things take time, she said, so I better get going. Of course, I had tried to get going, but by this time, I was about back where I started. I thanked my mom for her advice, hung up the phone, and headed into a diner near my house. They don’t have powder blue dresses here, but they do have my favorite chocolate-chip and banana pancakes and I ordered a triple-stack. As I waited for my food to arrive, I re-read some Jack Gilbert I had on me, cued up some Damien Rice on the ipod, and thought about what I was supposed to feel.

It occurred to me that my ex and I used to come here all the time. If we had a place, this would be it. How was it that I traveled half way across North Carolina (or at least 50 miles) to just end up here again? And here of all places? And while I did not do it consciously, such things don’t just happen without design, do they? Freud didn’t believe in accidents, but he probably didn’t believe in eating breakfast for dinner either. So much for Freud.

I thought about how hubristic it was for me to make this story about myself. For the past 13 months, I was under the impression that I was the reason these two people were together. Had I not left her the way I left her, he would not have found her the way he found her. But what was this to say, really, other than that all people exist in some interconnected web of cause and effect?

I can certainly understand each person’s desire to be the central figure in their own life stories. But to be the central figure in this girl’s story is something that is no longer due me. And while I may have once been Chapter 12 of 12, and more recently Chapter 12 of 13, it now occurs to me that even when 60 chapters have been written, I’ll still only be one lowly Chapter 12 in her life story. The point at which her book stopped being about me, and vice versa, is behind both of us.

This realization reminds me of that day I went back to visit my high school several years after graduation. The place looked largely the same. The buildings were still where the buildings had always been. But most of my favorite teachers had been reassigned or moved on. My friends, obviously, no longer roamed the halls. In their place were kids that looked younger than I remembered, who dressed pretty much the same as I did, and who joked about pretty much the same stuff we used to joke about. However, despite the apparent similarities, these kids were neither me nor my friends. Indeed, most everything that would remind anyone of me was no longer there. Still, life went on without incident. And just as I was ready to conclude that my 4 years here didn’t make a lick of difference in the grand scheme of things, I opened the back closet of room 217 and found, right where I left it, that book of poems by Thomas Dylan, which I had bought some 5 years prior. No one who’s still around would be able to tell you where that book came from. But I knew and it was a secret kept between me and the walls.

Today, I feel a lot like I felt that day when I walked into that building that used to be mine. I feel as though I’ve been put, with some degree of finality, in my proper historical context. And soon, the record books will be re-written, and I will no longer own any significant superlative. But so it goes.

And it is with equal parts nostalgia and mischief that I recall one Thomas Dylan. And how she used to bite her bottom lip. And all the secrets kept between the walls of forgotten buildings as to how these things came to be.

Nope. I think so. You?

2007-04-20T23:16:00.000-04:00

The Namesake

2007-04-20T00:15:00.000-04:00

I saw The Namesake a little while ago. It was fantastic. It was the most realistic portrayal of the mythic first-generation-American culture clash I've ever seen. The kid who played Kumar in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle pulled off the serious role quite well. If you get a chance, go see it.

Lonesome Languages

2007-03-29T23:31:00.000-04:00

In the title sequence to the movie Babel, Brad Pitt, in voice over, recounts a version of the eleventh chapter of Genesis: "In the beginning, all the Lord's people, from all over the world, spoke one language. Nothing they proposed was impossible for them. But fearing what the spirit of man could accomplish, the Lord said, 'Let Us go down and confuse their language so that they may not understand each other's speech.'"

**

This afternoon, I was at the bookstore, browsing the fiction/literature section and I came across a novel entitled, The God of Small Things. The book takes place in Kerala, India. I decided to sit down and leaf through a couple of pages to see if anything about the novel caught my interest. It didn’t. However, I was reminded of a peculiar feature belonging to the language spoken in Kerala - Malayalam. The names given to people in Malayalam are often times not names in the Western sense. You will not find them on birth certificates, nor can they be labeled nicknames in the proper sense. Rather, labels are given to people based on their relation to other people.

For instance, one female character in the novel was named Kochamma, which roughly translates, ‘little mother.’ Of course, she wasn’t known as ‘little mother’ all her life. One could only imagine the plight of a young girl going through middle school with such a name! Instead, she came to assume the name later in life when her younger sister had a child. The child, then, had a mother, a ‘little mother’ in the form of her mother’s sister, and a ‘big mother’ in the form of her mother’s mother.

While it might make some sense for the child itself to apply the title of ‘little mother’ to her mother’s sister, as much as one would apply the name ‘aunt’ in the West, this is not how it happens. It appears that everyone except the child refers to the aunt as little mother. The title of little mother, then, seems to supplant the aunt’s actual proper name. The rules that determine the name the child will use in reference to its aunt is far more complex and takes into account whether the sister-relation is by blood or by marriage, whether the sister is older or younger, and whether the aunt is maternal or paternal. Such naming rituals presumably served as verbal scorecards in houses that might contain extended families, two or three generations deep. (Also, on a side note, if you are the wife of a priest, everyone calls you ‘little mother,’ whether or not you have a niece or nephew, or even a sister, for that matter.)

In the West, first names are individualistic and surnames are growing to be, the latter often retained through marriage. It’s hard for us to fathom such a relational naming scheme. Indeed, one has to wonder if having things defined by their relation to other things has an effect on one’s world view. Conversely, in the West, does the appearance of individuality by way of naming schemes also color one’s approach to the outside world and to the self? That is to say, does the East have a multitude of words for relationships, because their world-view is relational to begin with? Or is their world-view relational, because their language defines relationships in an ever-present and exact manner? A related question is: how much of one’s world-view is lost, when one loses one’s language?

I recently came across this statistic: of the 6,000 languages spoken in the world today, one-half are not spoken by this generation’s children. I’m reminded of a certain Giant Galapagos Tortoise. I think I mentioned an NPR story awhile back about a tortoise that was believed to be the last member of his species. People who are in charge of such designations deem a species to be extinct when there is only one member of that species still living. Thus, this 80 year old tortoise will live his last 120 years, belonging to a species that is already extinct. He was accordingly dubbed Lonesome George. By that same standard, some 3,000 languages are already extinct, uttered among the living like voices of the dead. 3,000 Lonesome Tongues. 3,000 Lonesome Worldviews.

Of course, every language I’ve ever heard of, either dead of alive, would likely number in the dozens, rather than thousands. So why should I give pause over the fate of these obscure, and soon to be forgotten, dialects? For me, the significant lies in the fact that language is not merely a means of communication, but a rich tapestry of human life experiences. Just as sedimentary rock preserves fossil records, so too does language faithfully record a people’s history, their culture, and their philosophy.

Take English, for example. The very fact that Americans speak English tells the story of the British colonization of the New World. The presence of many French cognates, in turn, harkens back to the Norman conquest of England in 1066. A grocery list of items arrived along ancient trade routes, including the word tea from China, the Arabic words saffron, caraway, coffee, and cotton, as well as the Malayalam words mango and teak, which arrived by boat. Our court system’s preservation of verbatim Latin points to the foundational tenets borrowed from Roman Law. That the word philosophy itself comes from Greek tells a story unto itself. Point being, even without understanding the meaning of a single English word, one could tell a great deal about a people from the structure and characteristic of a language itself. A death of a language, then, is also the loss of all of the life experiences and insights that helped shape a language, that which breathes life into this spiritless typeface.

Suppose an ancient civilization held wisdom that would relieve some of our modern problems, or, suppose further, that they held some beauty that would appeal to our modern sensibilities. “I dream of lost vocabularies that might express that which we no longer can,” writes Jack Gilbert in "The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart." Perhaps, then, the homogenization of language, is also the homogenization of wisdom. But who, if any, among us would boast that theirs should be the chosen tongue, that theirs is the only one to get it all right, that theirs is the Almighty Language? Maybe it is better to equate the loss of language to a loss of wisdom, rather than a return to it. Maybe we are experiencing a flattening of the Earth and a return to a blander, more two-dimensional understanding of the world.

I'm also concerned about this topic, because I fear that our language, this very language in which I'm writing, will be forgotten in time. I wonder whether men of the future can live richly without words such as ‘renaissance’? ‘Passion’ or ‘butterfly’? And what would they call that great beast we so aptly named ‘hippopotamus’? And, if on the eve of the renouncement of such words, I am able, I will hurriedly scribble down my favorites on scraps of paper and bury them in a locked chest in my backyard, even if never to be found, then at least to have been left with some dignity. Still, I cannot help but imagine an archaeologist in some great distant future unearthing this treasure chest and lifting its top. Can you see the expression on his face when he first encounters 'serendipity' and ‘gossamer,’ along with my detailed instructions on how they may be put to use?

Lasagna for an Old Man's Soul

2007-03-03T18:58:00.000-05:00

Awhile back, I read Robert Wright’s The Moral Animal and I’ve since been trying to write about it. I’ve tried repeatedly to present it in a relevant manner, but to no avail. However, yesterday, I came across an old video blog by Ze Frank, entitled How To Make Lasagna, which is more about the work of psychologist Robert Trivers than it is about layered pasta. Ze’s vlog (is that the word?) made it all click. I hope.

The main thrust of The Moral Animal, based in large part on the research of Robert Trivers, is to suggest that there is constant wrestling between men and women to gain an economic advantage in the reproductive act. Parallel wrangling exists between all people in all social situations, but reproductive interaction is the most important, at least as far as evolutionary psychologists are concerned. As all but the staunchest feminist extremist will admit, men and women do not start with the same equipment. It is very costly for a woman to reproduce – she has a limited supply of eggs, once impregnated she cannot again get pregnant for almost a year, and in almost all animal species, the female has more responsibilities in child rearing, which for humans, lasts some 18 years. It is very inexpensive for a man to reproduce – sperm is in endless supply, and absentee fathering is quite prevalent in the animal kingdom, including humans – just watch Ricki Lake or Maury. Also, a man could conceivably impregnate numerous women at the same time (just watch Springer), his conquests to be limited only by the extent of his charm and the number of hours in a day. Of equal import is the fact that a male’s window for fertility is far larger than that of a woman. Evolutionary psychologists argue that these facts have shaped the way that men and women interact on a daily basis.

To the extent that the value of thing is to be determined by its rarity, it can be said that a woman’s egg is far more valuable than a man’s sperm, a fact reflected in the disparate rates at which sperm and egg banks compensate men and women, respectively. This is to say that a woman has far more to lose to the same reproductive misstep compared to a man, even though both of them stand to gain the exact same thing – one half-copy of their genes. Society (and not just human society) has tried to correct for this imbalance by ingraining traditions that require the man to pay a price for mating, which is presumably commensurate to the difference in value between male and female gametes. So, for instance, the male will generally expend the energy necessary to pursue and woo the woman, he will hunt for her and fend off saber-tooth tigers on their way back to the cave. In modern times, he will buy her a nice steak dinner, flowers, and in time, a wedding ring with three months of his salary to make her an honest woman. Some monkeys, too, by the way, can be seen bringing a female a large piece of meat just prior to copulation. Some argue that the tradition of literally 'bringing home the bacon' is social compensation for the biological relationship between menstrual blood loss and the resultant iron-deficiency in women. Interesting. With humans, but not monkeys, there is the matter of alimony, should anyone change their mind, a tradition thought to have originated as compensation for the loss of reproductive years during a failed courtship. In short, argue the evolutionary psychologists, our very definition of romance is itself wedded to biological-economics. Of course, with men as with monkeys, if one can get a mate for cheaper, one would jump at the chance, just as a woman would appreciate a man who gave more than was necessary. Both parties are, understandably, trying to get more than what they paid for, or so the theory goes.

Contrary to public perception, the women’s sexual liberation movement of the 1970’s which roughly coincided with the introduction of female-based methods of contraception did nothing to change this paradigm. The “cost” of a woman’s egg or one of her reproductive years is still far higher than a man’s sperm or one of his reproductive years. Liberated women mistakenly associated the price that men were willing to pay for a mate with the imbalance in how much money each party made at the workplace. As women started to earn more money and this disparity narrowed, these traditional “romantic” gestures grew less important. At the same time, as readily-available sex flooded the market, the price men were willing to pay for access to eggs has seen a marked decline. Couples will now often “go dutch” on dates, marriage itself has been redefined to where expensive weddings rings are no longer necessary, and alimony awards are dwindling. What the women’s liberations movement had wrong was that men weren’t correcting for the economic imbalance at the workplace, strictly speaking, but correcting for the inherent biological differences that still exists today. Namely, an egg is more valuable than sperm, a relationship which is unaffected by a woman's increased control over her own fertility and only marginally affected by the option of early termination of pregnancy. It is for this reason that many evolutionary biologists/psychologists conclude that the women’s liberations movement was far more liberating for men and even to the detriment of women as far as biological-economics goes.

On one level, discussed above, you have the inherent value differences among male and female gametes, but on another level, you have differences in value among the gametes of particular men and women. Assume that there was some way to take all of the genetic characteristics of a man or women and reduce it to a simple number value. Fred is a good looking guy, smart, athletic, but he has a bad back and halitosis, so we’ll give him a 205. Daphne is attractive and brilliant but she’s a poor athlete and has an inherited predisposition to heart disease and bipolar disorder, so let’s give her a 185. In a ‘perfect system,’ from an evolutionary perspective, Fred would find another 205 to mate with and Daphne would find another 185. Fred would do his genes a disservice by reproducing with Daphne, because his progeny would average 195 with her, versus 205, if he were able to land a fellow 205-er with whom to mate. Conversely, Daphne would love to get with Fred, because her progeny would enjoy a +10 boost over the value expected with a baby-daddy of 185. While Daphne cannot change her actual number value, she does have some control over how Fred might assess her value. To the extent that a 185 can appear to be a 205, he or she stands to gain a +10 windfall. Therein lies the evolutionary benefit of deceit.

Robert Trivers argues that the very reason that humans rose to consciousness was in order to become better at lying. The process went something like this. One day, a man lent another man some money or a comparable good. The debtor never paid him back. The next time, the creditor wised up and, before the loan was given, the creditor required an earnest promise that the money would be repaid promptly. Some debtors returned the money, while the dishonest ones did not. The creditor again wised up and developed a method of distinguishing between the truth-tellers and the liars. Then something strange happened. Some men gained the ability to convince themselves that they would return the debt, even though, in reality, they would not. These men, unlike the simple liars, were indistinguishable from the truth-tellers, because they genuinely believed their lie. These men were level-two liars: they not only lied to others but they lied to themselves about the very fact that they were lying. Phew. It doesn’t matter what goods are being exchanged – beads, spearheads, gametes, paper money, love, seemingly altruistic gifts. The same principles apply generally to all social interaction - people who lie to themselves about a particular fact will find it easier to lie to others about it. The illustration above is only a metaphor for the change that occured over tens of thousands of years to the actual hardware in our brains. As Ze puts it, we are the result of and are even currently undergoing "an evolutionary arms race." The vehicle for this social deception, Trivers argues, was the conscious ego, which evolved to serve as the nice-guy-third-party, set up as a front for the general public, while the seedy inner-workings of the genes seek to gain small economic advantages from social interaction. The Teflon ego would only appear genuine to the degree he could disassociate the shady dealings below from his sense of self – hence, the division of the mind and the rise of consciousness as we know it. Indeed, we find that all conceptions of evil - the little devil on your shoulder, Original Sin, Satan himself, the Id, or 'the other' - have one thing in common: they each, to varying degrees, are disassociated from any notion of self.

Assuming that people themselves cannot tell when they’re lying and when they are being honest, how should a creditor proceed? If the root of modern dishonesty is self-deception, then it would follow that those who are most likely to be dishonest are those that have the greatest penchant for self-deception. Avoid people that are overly self-deceptive – they are capable of forgiving (or disassociating from) themselves of anything, it seems. The ancient Greeks believed that the greatest truth was self-knowledge, hence the proclamation on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: Know Yourself. The message is clear. Outward honesty begins with inward honesty. Indeed, Polonius says as much in Shakespeare’s adaptation of the Greek paradigm found in Hamlet: "To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man."

But remember, deceit appears to have an economic advantage and we may be careful in wanting to rid ourselves of it entirely. Perhaps, Shakespeare, elsewhere, offers some middle-ground in Sonnet 138, where he discusses the difficulties of complete self-knowledge and, perhaps more importantly, the advantages of mutual self-deception. One character lies about his age while allowing his lover to lie about her beauty.

O! love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love, loves not to have years told:
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

Perhaps this is the best we can hope for: to find someone who lies as we do – with the same frequently and about things of equal gravity. Maybe with enough self-knowledge we can find the right lover or business partner to whisper only the lies that we need to hear and no more, and for whom we can return the favor. At least this way, the number of lies we tell will roughly equal the number of lies we are told, and thus, we are both the better for it, with neither one being more so than the other. But before any such arrangements can be made, it is true, one must know thyself.

Belated Valentine's Gift

2007-02-16T12:48:00.000-05:00

Happy Belated Valentine's Day, Clubhousers. For the record, I think it's a ridiculous holiday. But, here's a little gift nonetheless. It's a free, downloadable Valentine's compilation which includes some pretty good artists - The Weepies, Matt Wertz, and Bare Naked Ladies. Enjoy!

Finding Dunmow Bacon

2007-02-10T01:21:00.000-05:00

"He who knows content's content is always content." - Tao Te Ching.

***

The haunting sounds of Damien Rice can be heard in the opening scene of the movie Closer. Indeed, for the first 2 or 3 minutes of the movie, there isn’t a single line of dialogue, just the first half of the song “Blower’s Daughter,” which is linked above. But the reason I’m posting the song, or its importance to the movie, for that matter, is not to be found in the first half of the song. For that, you’ll have to listen all the way to the very end. Take note of the plot twist, if you will, in the very last line. If you’re not looking for it, you might miss it. I’m beginning to fear that it’s a plot twist that we may all experience at some point in our lives, or, at the very least, a plot twist that we must all expend a great deal of mental and physical energy trying to avoid. Still, there are others who choose to embrace it. Either way, like the last line in the song itself, if you’re not on guard for it, you might miss it.

The movie Closer is basically about failed marriages and infidelity. If you haven’t seen the movie, take a look at the trailer. If nothing else, it’ll give you a sense of how depressing the movie is.

Still, the movie has been heralded as being true to life, at least from the perspective of some. However, Closer is not alone in this regard. The cold hard truth has supplanted the formulaic, traditional storybook ending in Zach Braff’s latest movie, The Last Kiss, and in the movie Sideways. Other mediums have followed suit. I just bought Regina Spektor’s album, “Soviet Kitsch,” whose lead track is entitled “Ode to Divorce.” Just the other night at dinner a friend told me about a guy that tried to pick her up, in spite of his brazen admission that he was, in fact, married. He was even still wearing his wedding ring when he asked her out on a date. Is life starting to reflect art? Or have things always been this way?

The late radio personality and language expert John Ciardi once did a segment on the origins of the British idiom – to eat Dunmow bacon, meaning to live in marital bliss. Ciardi recounts, “Robert Fitzwalter, one of the barons of Magna Carta, established in perpetuity, in care of the Priory of lesser Dunmow, a provision to award a flitch of bacon (i.e., a side of pork) to any man, woman, or couple that would appear before the Prior and his monks and kneeling on two designated stones solemnly avow that he/she/they had been married for at least a year and a day without a moment of discord or without ever wishing not to be married but had truly shared one another in uninterrupted bliss.”

While most men would be willing to do nearly anything for some bacon, apparently being happily married is not one of them. Ciardi continues, “In the years between 1445 and 1772, when the custom was abandoned, a record was kept, and it shows, perhaps in tribute to British honesty, that in those more than 300 years exactly 8 Dunmow flitches were handed out.” Eight? Yikes. The chances of a blissful marriage look bleak, especially considering the Prior only required ONE YEAR of happiness. And what, do you suppose, would be the chances for a lifetime of said bliss? Isn’t that what everyone is signing up for when they get married?

But perhaps it is that very notion of wedded bliss that is at fault here. It may give people unrealistic expectations on what to expect from marriage. Perhaps movies like Closer, The Last Kiss, and Sideways, as difficult as they are to watch at times, will prove to be instructive to prospective husbands and wives as to what challenges they might realistically expect to encounter during matrimony.

There may be something else at play here. Maybe people are just really bad at estimating how happy they are, how happy they will be, and how unhappy they used to be. John Stuart Mill once remarked, “most persons have but a very moderate capacity of happiness.” Meanwhile, they expect “in marriage a far greater degree of happiness than they commonly find: and knowing not that the fault is in their own scanty capabilities of happiness – they fancy they should have been happier with some one else.” Of course, this doesn’t just apply to marriages, but all relationships, and even career paths and any number of other matters.

Was Mill correct in his characterization that the human capacity for happiness is generally ‘scanty’? And if so, why? This distinctly human characteristic appears to be related to the pre-frontal cortex. This part of the brain is responsible for a human’s ability to simulate future events. Studies have shown that, across the board, humans have a tendency to overestimate the hedonic impact of future events. Getting that girl, landing that dream job, and winning the lottery counter intuitively will not make you any happier, at least after three months. Indeed, author Dan Gilbert cites studies which show that individuals that won the lottery and individuals who were rendered paraplegic rated comparably in terms of their happiness after one year. Incredible! It’s exactly the opposite of what your pre-frontal cortex would have you believe.

Gilbert uses these studies and other anecdotes to conclude that human happiness is not to be found in the outside world, but is, instead, synthesized inside one’s mind. You’ll be interested to learn that the enemy of such synthesis is freedom, apparently. Gilbert took an introductory photography class at Harvard and taught them how to take and develop photos. Students developed their two favorite photos. The students were told that they could only keep one photo, because the other one needed to be mailed back to “headquarters” as evidence of the final project. The students were then divided into two groups. The first group was told that their decision on which photo they’d keep was irrevocable. The un-chosen photo would be mailed out immediately, never to be seen again. The second group was given more freedom. They were told that the photos would not be mailed out until 4 days later and if at any point before then, they wanted to swap the chosen photo for the un-chosen photo, they would be permitted to do so. Students were then rated on their satisfaction with the photo they had chosen after 3 days. Students in the irrevocable group were FAR happier with their choice. On the 4th day, the option to swap photos expired for the revocable group and they either kept or swapped out their original photo. Both groups were again asked to rate their satisfaction a day later. The irrevocable group again rated FAR higher in terms of their satisfaction with their choice! People that were stuck with their photo loved it. People who deliberated on whether or not they liked their photo ended up not liking either photo. And, here’s the kicker. In another study, students were given the choice to join a class that had revocable choice or join a class that had irrevocable choice. We know that students in the irrevocable class are happier. But, as you would expect, students sided with freedom and chose the revocable class 66% to 33%, even though doing so would ultimately lead to their unhappiness.

Is Damien Rice talking about the problem with revocability in relationships? Implicit in the statement “Can’t take my eyes off of you… until I find someone new” is the suggestion that the new person will share the same fate as the old person. That is to say, even for the new person there will be another still newer person, presumably ad infinitum. So what’s the alternative?

Ciardi, at the end of his segment, offers some insight when he stakes a claim for the ninth flitch of pork: “I am prepared to avow to the Prior of lesser Dunmow in the ghostly company of his assembled monks that I have been married for what seems to be at least 745 years and in that time my wife has never allowed me to feel anything but bliss, nor have I been permitted to wish myself unmarried, nor have I dared consider an alternative – there being none.” With what I can only imagine was a wry smile on his face, Ciardi concludes the segment, “Please send flitch.”

Perhaps Ciardi was only trying to be funny, but I think he highlights an important point. Maybe happiness, in life but especially in relationships, takes a certain degree of coercion – from one’s spouse, the state, societal norms, and religion. Maybe a public marriage ceremony, to be bound by state law and religious custom, and to be subject to public ridicule for divorce all collectively serve to make one’s relationship look more like Gilbert’s irrevocable class. That is to say, maybe it’s our best chance at happiness. Of course, society is moving away from traditional relationships as serial monogamy has become the rule. Not to sound like an old fuddy-duddy, but I think such change is to our detriment.

If research to date has taught us anything, it is that too much emphasis is placed on external events, when we would be better served trying to come to grips with the bounds of our own internal capacity for happiness. Any boy or girl will do, it appears – one who’s as pretty as winning the lotto or one who’s only as charming as suffering paraplegia. Research has established that if, but only if, we’re forced to, we can synthesize the difference. Meanwhile, the above movies show us the alternative: people will invariably want more and more still, no matter how good they have it. Instead of waiting for some hedonic windfall to come one’s way, one should learn to love one’s own modest capacity for happiness. That is as happy as one will ever be. And for those who grow at peace with this notion, the bacon is on its way.

The Year of the Marshmallow

2007-01-31T14:21:00.000-05:00

In the opening scene of the movie Magnolia, which is, by the way, my favorite movie, the narrator describes 3 unlikely events.

“In the New York Herald, November 26, year 1911, there is an account of the hanging of three men. They died for the murder of Sir Edmund William Godfrey; Husband, Father, Pharmacist and all around gentle-man resident of: Greenberry Hill, London. He was murdered by three vagrants whose motive was simple robbery. They were identified as: Joseph Green, Stanley Berry, and Daniel Hill. Green, Berry, Hill. And I Would Like To Think This was Only A Matter Of Chance. As reported in the Reno Gazzette, June of 1983 there is the story of a fire, the water that it took to contain the fire, and a scuba diver named Delmer Darion. Employee of the Peppermill Hotel and Casino, Reno, Nevada. Engaged as a blackjack dealer. Well liked and well regarded as a physical, recreational and sporting sort, Delmer's true passion was for the lake. As reported by the coroner, Delmer died of a heart attack somewhere between the lake and the tree. A most curious side note is the suicide the next day of Craig Hansen. Volunteer firefighter, estranged father of four and a poor tendency to drink. Mr. Hansen was the pilot of the plane that quite accidentally lifted Delmer Darion out of the water. Added to this, Mr. Hansen's tortured life met before with Delmer Darion just two nights previous. The weight of the guilt and the measure of coincidence so large, Craig Hansen took his life. And I Am Trying To Think This Was All Only A Matter Of Chance. The tale told at a 1961 awards dinner for the American Association Of Forensic Science by Dr. Donald Harper, president of the association, began with a simple suicide attempt. Seventeen year old Sydney Barringer. In the city of Los Angeles on March 23, 1958. The coroner ruled that the unsuccessful suicide had suddenly become a successful homicide. To explain: The suicide was confirmed by a note, left in the breast pocket of Sydney Barringer. At the same time young Sydney stood on the ledge of this nine story building, an argument swelled three stories below. The neighbors heard, as they usually did, the arguing of the tenants and it was not uncommon for them to threaten each other with a shotgun, or one of the many handguns kept in the house. And when the shotgun accidentaly went off, Sydney just happend to pass. Added to this, the two tenants turned out to be: Fay and Arthur Barringer. Sydney's mother and Sydney's father. When confronted with the charge, which took some figuring out for the officers on the scene of the crime, Fay Barringer swore that she did not know that the gun was loaded. A young boy who lived in the building, sometimes a visitor and friend to Sydney Barringer said that he had seen, six days prior the loading of the shotgun. It seems that the arguing and the fighting and all of the violence was far too much for Sydney Barringer and knowing his mother and father's tendency to fight, he decided to do something. Sydney Barringer jumps from the ninth floor rooftop. His parents argue three stories below. Her accidental shotgun blast hits Sydney in the stomach as he passes the arguing sixth floor window. He is killed instantly but continues to fall, only to find, three stories below, a safety net installed three days prior for a set of window washers that would have broken his fall and saved his life if not for the hole in his stomach. So Fay Barringer was charged with the murder of her son and Sydney Barringer noted as an accomplice in his own death. And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that this is not just "Something That Happened." This cannot be "One of those things..." This, please, cannot be that. And for what I would like to say, I can't. This Was Not Just A Matter Of Chance. Ohhhh. These strange things happen all the time.”

***

2007 has ushered in some strange happenings in my life. On the upshot, I’ve been able to cross off a few things on my never-been-done-before list. Unfortunately, I would have preferred that all of those things remain on said list, unchecked. Ah well. Here is a run-down of the unlikely events of 2007 listed in ascending order of their unlikelihood and, as it happens, in reverse chronology.

First, or lastly, I guess, I got dumped. This probably isn’t a very unlikely event at all. Indeed, I should expect to get dumped at least every other time I start dating someone. However, that’s not how it’s worked out thus far in life. I’ve always been the dumper, rather than the dumpee. The unlikely part, then, is that this improbable streak lasted as long as it did. Nevertheless, streak over. Welcome to Dumpsville. I imagine there will be more to say about this relationship in the near future. For the moment, take it as the cherry on top of the worst start to a year in recent memory. I would like to think that this event was entirely unrelated to the preceding events, which I am about to recount. I would like to think that their juxtaposition in time was just a matter of chance.

A few days prior to getting dumped, I was the victim of acute road rage. This is actually quite unlikely, because I pride myself on being the most courteous driver on the road. Despite cutting my teeth on the mean streets of New York and Boston for the first 6 years I had my license, I had never once been flipped off. Not by a NYC cabbie or a drunken “Masshole.” Not even once. Then, the other day, some lady in a Corolla decided to object to my usage of the road, sped up to catch up to me for the purposes of rolling down her window and flipping me the bird.

There is some suggestion in English lore that the tradition of flipping someone off dates back to the Hundred Years War. When the French military would capture British archers, they would cut off their index and middle fingers – those used to draw back the bow – rendering the archers militarily useless. If the British archers eluded capture, however, they would flip up these fingers as they retreated in a display of defiance, as if to say, “Haha, we still have ‘em! See?” While the US has adopted a one-finger variation to this gesture, the UK and many of its present or former territories still retain the two-finger salute.

Perhaps the lady in the corolla, then, mistakenly thought I was of French descent and thought she would take the opportunity to pay homage to her British arrow-wielding ancestors. Of course, I cannot fully account for why she used the American version of the bird, nor why she also found it necessary to move over to my lane and drive behind me with her brights on. And I’m trying to think this was all just a matter of chance.

Third, I got sick. I’ve been remarkably healthy throughout my life. This is perhaps due to the fact that I am borderline obsessive compulsive about washing my hands and, more generally, I’m an insane germaphobe. But, hey, it’s worked for me thus far. That is, until some sickly hooligan, or perhaps Satan himself, coughed as he passed me on the street or sneezed on my breakfast sandwich, and hence communicated a rather virulent strain of the influenza virus into my body. Granted, the phrase ‘I had the flu’ is about as hackneyed as ‘I love you’ in our culture and neither phrase retains much in the way of actual meaningfulness any longer. But baby, I REALLY do love you. I mean, baby, I REALLY did have the flu. In practical terms, this meant that from the day the symptoms first presented, I felt body aches that would typically be associated with repeatedly getting run over by a city bus or maybe a Zamboni. And while the headaches and fever were also bad, they had at least been things I had experienced before. The fatigue, on the other hand, was something I had never seen before. For the 4 or 5 days that it was at its worst, I was probably awake for 3 or 4 hours a day, sleeping the other 20 or 21. But the absolute worst part was that this lasted for 14 days! In the end, I had lost 12 pounds (or 112 pounds if you count the girlfriend, too).

While I was laid up in bed, I did some research on the flu and came up with two interesting factoids. First, the first influenza pandemic killed more people in its first 25 WEEKS than the AIDS "crisis" has claimed in its first 25 YEARS! That’s hard to imagine. Second, and more relevant to our present discussion, the term ‘influenza’ derives from 15th century Italy and was used to denote a disease believed to be caused by influence (or maybe mal-influence) of the stars. Of course, modern medicine will tell you that influenza is caused by a virus entering your body. However, they will also tell you that their anti-viral medications will do little to aid in your recovery. First, anti-virals must be taken within the first 48 hours of onset of symptoms to have any effect at all. Second, even if taken in this small window, the drugs will likely only reduce the length of the disease by one day. Maybe the Italians were right some 600 years ago – medicine will do you little good, if the stars are conspiring against you. Celestial conspiracies or not, I would still like to think it was all just a matter of chance.

Now let me share with you the unlikely event that first got me rolling in the direction of rage, infirmity, and heart-ache. But let me warn you that you may, if you haven’t done so already, want to take a seat before you continue to read. Depending on your religious bent, what I am about to describe to you borders on the miraculous.

Many of you are familiar with the children’s cereal Lucky Charms. It’s a sweet oat and marshmallow mixture enjoyed by 7 year olds around the country. And by me. The cereal’s mascot, Lucky the Leprechaun, owes his good fortune to the various marshmallow shapes in the box – hearts, stars, horseshoes, clovers, moons, pots of gold, rainbows, and red balloons (although the specific shapes change from time to time). The leprechaun exclaims, “They’re magically delicious!” as he runs away from greedy, charm-lusting children.

At the start of the year, I purchased a box of Lucky Charms, as I had done many times before. I tilted the box and poured out a rather large bowl full of cereal. Much to my dismay, there wasn’t a single marshmallow in the bowl. Not one! I quickly looked inside the box to see if perhaps I had received a defective-marshmallow-less box of Lucky Charms, but I could clearly see the normal compliment of marshmallows sitting in the box. I decided that I would pour my bowl of oats back into the box, give it a good shake, turn it upside down a few times and re-pour a bowl, hoping to land a few marshmallows this time. Before I re-poured, I peered inside to ensure that some marshmallows were sitting at or near the top this time. When I saw that there were marshmallows near the top, I poured a second bowl, only to find that I was again without marshmallows! Unbelievable! It occurred to me that this must violate some law of physics or probability or something.

Most of the above events that have befallen me since the cereal episode are interesting only in so far as they hadn’t happened to me yet. Indeed, I should expect to experience road rage, infirmity, and getting dumped again, if not several times in life. But to have zero marshmallows on successive bowl-pours? That was a once in a lifetime event! There are far too many marshmallows in that box to not receive a single one. It’s darn near impossible. But in order to find out just how impossible, or at least improbable, I would need some numbers. In order to get some numbers, I would have to sit down and count out how many marshmallows there were in a 20 oz box of Lucky Charms. Thankfully, Mrs. Wagner’s class conducted an intercontinental study on this very issue, concluding that there are about 523 marshmallows in a 20oz box of Lucky Charms.

Unfortunately, they failed to include one very important piece of information – the exact proportion of oats to marshmallows. For this information, I would have to call the General Mills helpline.

“Hello, and thank you for calling general mills. How can I assist you?” “I need to know the ratio of oat to marshmallows in a standard 20 oz box of Lucky Charms.” “What?” “I need to know how many marshmallows there are in a box of lucky charms, relative to the number of oat clusters.” “Hmmm. Why do you need this information, sir?” Clearly, the lady on the other end of the phone was trained to deal with spies from competing cereal companies. The ‘golden ratio’ of oat to marshmallow, it would appear, was a closely guarded trade secret. However, with some cajoling I got the information I needed, which I then turned around and sold to the makers of Kashi for a handsome sum. (Warning: Math Content. Further Warning: I cannot guarantee the accuracy of methods nor conclusions expressed below.) There are 2 and ½ cups of marshmallows per 20 oz box, meaning that the ratio of oat to marshmallow is 5.3 to 1. Combining this information with the study conducted by Mrs. Wagner’s class, I can conclude that in each box of Lucky Charms there are 3,294 pieces, and of them, 523 are marshmallows and 2,771 are oats. I can further estimate that my bowl can contain about 274 pieces of Lucky Charms, with two bowls containing twice that, or 548. If you were to reach into a box of Lucky Charms and pick out a single piece, we know from the above that your chances of NOT drawing a marshmallow are pretty good, about 84%. But what are the chances that you wouldn’t draw a single marshmallow on 548 consecutive draws, as happened to me? That would be .84 to the 548th power.

Or. One in 3 Tredecillion. For those of you unfamiliar with the number tredecillion, it has 42 zeros. (For comparison, a trillion has 12 zeros.) If impossibility were to be a number, I would imagine that it would have no more than 40 zeros, meaning that the cereal incident was some kind of impossible miracle. This cannot be "One of those things." This, please, cannot be that.

Lucky the Leprechaun supposedly derives his good fortune from possession of his charms, which is why he so doggedly fends off the little children. Without my charms, I was threatened by a total stranger for no apparent reason, I lost my woman, and I fell under the mal-influence of the stars. A coincidence? Well, you know how I feel about coincidence. At least I can now say that the most unlikely event I will likely ever face in life, mathematically, is behind me. I’ve got my health back and the rest of the box has way more marshmallows than it should. And like in the movie Magnolia, it appears to be clear skies from here on out, in this, the Year of the Marshmallow. But good fortune, if such a thing even exists, is often as unpredictable as the weather, and you don't need a cartoon Leprechaun to tell you that.

Crisis Averted

2006-11-04T13:45:00.000-05:00

My friend over at Pave the Whales recently mailed me the book “Love, Love, Love” by Charles Taliaferro, who is a university professor that writes about love, poetry, his dog, and ethics. As you can see, it’s something right up my alley! The book is a collection of short essays and I’ve been flipping through the book over the last few days. I’m sure it will provide a good bit of blog-fodder over the next few months.

One essay that I found particularly interesting was entitled, “Are we in Crisis Yet?” Judging from the title, I was expecting something resembling a checklist designed to determine whether or not your relationship was headed down the drain, or, at least, when it was time to pony up for some couple’s therapy. That would be a handy tool, indeed. Of course, that’s not at all what the essay was about. The essay is actually about his fear that we have grown accustomed to using the wrong amount of emotion at inappropriate times, and that sometimes, we’ll even use the wrong emotion entirely. Thus, people will suggest, for instance, that they are in ‘crisis’ over the most rudimentary things, when, in fact, they are only slightly troubled or perturbed.

He refers to the writings of St. Augustine, who discussed Ordo Amoris, or the order of love. This is the notion that some emotions are meant to ‘fit’ certain circumstances. So, for instance, witnessing cruelty should engender a call for justice, displays of vulnerability should rouse a desire to protect, etc. Something is dis-ordered in your psyche if affection is met with contempt or if disease is met with envy. Obviously. This speaks to feeling the right emotion at the right time. As to the notion of proportionality, GK Chesterton defined sanity as the ability to treat big things big, and small things small. To the extent that we, as the saying goes, make mountains out of mole hills, drum up drama into our lives unnecessarily, or as Taliaferro puts it, set the threshold for crisis too low, we are again fall short of the ideal and are emotionally disordered.

Taliferro’s short essay is largely descriptive – noting that the misuse of emotion is quite prevalent and that it is to our detriment, because habitual misuse sabotages our ability to genuinely feel a given emotion where appropriate. I tend to agree. He doesn’t, however, discuss any reasons why we have come to misuse emotion in such a manner nor does he discuss what we might do to avoid said misuse. I’d like to take a few stabs at causality and prevention, or at least discuss some related issues.

I believe that the breadth of human emotional experience is quite broad. Meanwhile, our language is wholly inadequate in expressing our feelings. It was once said that Eskimos have 57 words for snow. Apparently, there are fine distinctions to be made among snowflakes; no two are alike, after all. (It turns out that this is not true of Eskimos, but it’s a useful analogy nonetheless.) I am of the opinion that similarly fine distinctions exist in the realm of human emotion. We often overlook this fact, because our language only presents us with relatively few words to express emotions. You “love” your mother and you “love” your girlfriend and you “love” chocolate pudding. There are, I imagine, (I hope!) distinctions between the three. Indeed, I often find the need to borrow from other languages when it comes to describing emotions. For instance, the Greeks speak of Agape, meaning a divine, self-less love. Or, the Germans talk about Schaddenfreud, which is to take pleasure in the pain and misfortune of others. There’s really no good way to concisely express those notions in English, even though English speakers feel such emotions, presumably. However, I imagine that even one with a firm grasp of every language in history would still not be able to precisely express the expanse of emotional experience.

If the first problem is that our language doesn’t have enough words, the second problem is that we do not have enough of our language’s words. That is to say, we have an increasingly small vocabulary. Two studies conducted in the early 1990’s found that an average high school senior has a vocabulary of somewhere between 5,000 and 17,000 words. Another statistic (but I can’t locate the study) reported that over the last 50 years the average working vocabulary for 14-year olds has dropped from 25,000 to 10,000. This is an important statistic even for adults, because most of what we read – newspapers and magazines – are written at the middle school or high school level, apparently bouncing around the same 10,000 words every issue. Frequency of word usage studies on adults has shown that the 10 most commonly written words account for 25% of all written words and the 1,000 most commonly written words account nearly 70% of all written words. Even if the average adult vocabulary pushes 20,000, I don’t imagine words past 5,000 would be used very often. For the sake of comparison, the complete works of William Shakespeare alone contain well over 30,000 different words. Point is, we no longer talk with the precision that we used to. No one seems to be particularly worried about it either.

The trouble, as Taliaferro points out, is that we’re saying we’re in crisis or in love or in-whatever when we’re not. Maybe it’s because we’re lazy. Maybe it’s because we don’t know the right word. Whatever the cause, when we abuse such terms, we’re propagating misinformation as to what these things really are. Concurrently, we’re growing increasingly reliant on our misused language to teach us key ethical points. This is one of the negative effects of the democratization of information in cyberspace. People are beginning to understand the world through bad writing (case in point!) in a medium that relies on words almost exclusively.

This point grew apparent after I watched “Three Times,” a Chinese indie flick in which the same two people fall in love in three different periods in Chinese history – 1911, 1966, and 2005. I picked up the movie, because Ebert and Roeper said that it was “the reason cinema was created!” While I didn’t find the movie to be that great, I was impressed by how little dialogue the movie had. The viewer is really left to feel his or her way through the scenes. It really made me cognizant of how reliant our movies are on dialogue to advance the plot. It was refreshing to be permitted to complete the sentences myself, without relying on the writer and director. It was as though the raw emotions associated with courtship were laid bare before my eyes without any of the fancy window dressing of pop songs and saccharin dialogue. It also drove home the point that much of the dialogue you’ll find in a movie is largely superfluous, if not outright misleading.

OK, so I’ve argued that newspapers, blogs like this one, the internet, and poorly written wordy movies are to blame for the marginalization of our emotional experience to one extreme or the other. But the greatest culprit of all is your television. TV shows are designed to introduce the characters, cause conflict, reach a climax, have a resolution, and tease you for the next episode all in 20 to 40 minutes. Now ask yourself, given those parameters, how deep can the emotional experiences being portrayed afford to be? To the extent that we rely on TV to teach us the ethics of human emotion (and don’t think people don’t!), we would expect to see, as we have, a flattening of human affect. Three minute pop songs have the same short comings. The result is that everyone is either in deep despair or extreme elation, when, in fact, all but the exceptional is lived in the middle.

What’s to set us back on kilter, then? The first key would be to increase one’s emotional vocabulary. When one has to talk about emotions, try to do it precisely. To that end, try to read material with greater than 20,000 words in rotation. Also, as a general rule, live plays should be preferred over film with TV being only a last resort. Finally, now that you have gained the capacity to speak intelligently about emotion using no less than 60,000 words, don’t. Words will only make a mess of those thoughts you're thinking. Instead, just stop and listen to the human body, the familiar home of subtlety, where whole encyclopedias are contained in every look and touch, where I know what you mean well before you ever find the words to say it.

Bible Belt

2006-11-01T15:03:00.000-05:00

The Harris Poll recently conducted a survey on religious belief in America. The numbers suggest that faith in god is declining (although there is a caveat that the decline may be due to methodological reasons). A more reliable finding was that age, sex, race, level of education, and political affiliation all correlate to strength of religious beliefs. There also appears to be differences between relgiions, with Born Again Christians on one side of the spectrum for certainty in God's existence and Jews on the low end of said spectrum. You can look at the stats here.

Contrast those numbers for the nation as a whole (58% absolutely certain) with a similar study conducted by my local news organization in North Carolina.

Do you believe there is a God?
Choice Votes Percentage of 5550 Votes

Yes, I'm absolutely certain. 4070 73%
I think so, but I'm not absolutely certain. 450 8%
I am doubtful, but not certain there isn't. 448 8%
No, I don't believe there is a God. 582 10%

Rumors of My Demise are Greatly Exaggerated

2006-10-31T08:01:00.000-05:00

Donkey Boy: At age 73 you will refuse to give a quarter to a beggar. Immediately afterwards you will be hit by a bus. Link.

TV on Your Computer

2006-10-15T00:32:00.000-04:00

The above website has complete epdisodes of the Simpsons and scrubs. How have they avoided getting shut down?

Regina Spektor

2006-10-15T00:25:00.000-04:00

Check her out...

Don't Know Jack

2006-10-15T00:14:00.000-04:00

Unbeknownst to me at the time, on my 17th birthday, the man who would come to be my favorite poet some 9 years later gave an interview to NPR. This afternoon, I happened upon it. The neat thing about Jack Gilbert is that he doesn’t consider himself a professional poet. Indeed, over the last 80 years, he’s only published 4 small books. The first two of these are long since out of print and can be found only at great difficulty. Below are two poems from his first collection, which, as far as I know, is not available for purchase anywhere. I found my copy at the university library.

In Dispraise of Poetry

When the King of Siam disliked a courtier,
He gave him a beautiful white elephant.
The miracle beast deserved such ritual care
That to care for him properly meant ruin.
Yet to care for him improperly was worse.
It appears the gift could not be refused.

In that interview with NPR, Gilbert says that a person can only fall in love 4 times in their lives. I’m not sure where he comes up with that numbers, but poets should be knowledgeable in such matters, so I’ll defer to his expertise. He says that he’s got one left; by that same measure, I’ve got two. It’s interesting to consider the future with the perspective of fixed supply. Such knowledge would, I imagine, affect one’s behavior. It is difficult, however, to imagine exactly how. I’m reminded of a friend of a friend whose wife told him that he was allowed to cheat once and only once. Taking the proposition seriously, how painstaking would it be to decide upon “the one”? It would be far easier never to cheat at all… and maybe that was the point.

Of Jack Gilbert’s four published books, I’ve gotten my hands on and completed three. I’ve only got one left. With his age, I’m not sure he has any left. Suppose that he’ll be my favorite poet of all time. What then? I have, perhaps, 50 or 60 years to live. Can I live that long without discovering something better?

But the same can be said for movies or songs. My favorite movie is “Magnolia” and my favorite song is David Gray’s “Gathering Dust.” Suppose I feel the same way when I’m 80 years old? Maybe the best we can hope for is to find our best loves early in life and have them change along with us as we age.

Maybe Jack Gilbert will be the best poet I ever find. Maybe not. The good thing is that favorite poets, perhaps unlike the loves of our lives or marital freebies, are not in fixed supply.

And She Waiting

Always I have been afraid
Of this moment:
Of the return to love
With perspective.
I see these breasts
With the others.
I touch this mouth
And the others.
I command this heart
As the others.
I know exactly what to say.
Innocence has gone
Out of me.
The song.
The song, suddenly,
Has gone out
Of me.

The Tide Has Turned!

2006-10-14T01:15:00.000-04:00

A real life proof that luck takes the shape of a parabola, as per the graph below.

Day 1:

Cookie:

Standard issue cookie. Nothing special.

Enclosed Fortune:

What a terrible fortune! First of all, it's not even a fortune. It talks about the present not the future. Second, it doesn't say anything about me. I'll try again...

Day 2:

Cookie:

Standard issue cookie.

Enclosed Fortune:

What? That's the worst fortune ever. I should have stuck with the weather one. Lemme give the wheel of fortune another whirl...

Day 3:

Cookie:

Half cookie. Where's the rest of my cookie? Some guy in a fortune cookie factory ate half my cookie! This doesn't bode well...

Enclosed Fortune:

Wait a minute. I'm missing the fortune, too. There is no fortune with my half cookie! What the heck?? I've reached point 0,0 on the graph!

Day 4:

Cookie:

Ok, back to a standard fortune cookie. Things are looking up!

Enclosed Fortune:

Booyah! Can it get any better than that? Let's see...

Day 5:

Cookie:

Oh yeah, that's a Double! Bet you've never seen that before! I'm flying high with my siamese cookies!

Enclosed Fortune:

You know what, I'm so stoked about my double cookie that I'm not even going to open them. Can you really improve on a double cookie? I'm already at the top of the curve and I'm content with that! Afterall, the cookie is the best part of the whole fortune cookie experience. Granted, there's a one percent chance that I'll crack open these cookies to find even more baby cookies inside, but I'm going to quite while I'm ahead.

...and just like that, things are looking up all of a sudden...

Mulholland Drive Was a Bad Movie

2006-10-13T00:43:00.000-04:00

(This entry will be written without using the backspace ubtton. Also, it will make no attempt to make sense. Sense is for losers.)

Jonesy, don’t worry. They’ll never find us. For although there is dew on the pumpkins in the patch, there won’t be any traces left for the feds to use their infrared devices to identify us by our fingerprints. That is a run on sentence that doesn’t make any sense, I will admit, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. This entry is like fate careening towards you on train tracks and all you have to fend off this million mile an hour streak of metal and momentum is two sticks of gum, a thumbtack, 4 rubber bands, a wire hanger, and a roll of duct tape, plus the bare notion that a single copper coin and a rubber stopper would come in handy right now. And maybe you could rig something like macguyver if only you were allowed to think clearly. But you cannot think of anything but that girl on a train in Madrid, the one whose reflection you could see in the window as she lip synched the words to the soundtrack of your lives together, and your million dollar idea of coconut flavored jello, which you swear would be a hit in third world countries the very instant they rose to second world status. You cannot forgive yourself of your inability at the time to realize that she was from out of town too. Such a fact would only prove relevant in retrospect. And who doesn’t love coconuts, right? If onl y uou could clear your mind, you could be someone…

But this entry isn’t about being someone. Quite the contrary. It’s about subjecting oneself to seemingly random neural firings, as though one were at the end of a barrel on a gun belonging to a man who worked for a company that did contract work for governments that used firing lines. It is highly unlikely that said government cares about your guilt or innocence or if it is the wrong proverbial train is headed right at you. Indeed, what do governments know about justice and individuality?

These rule s are carved in stone. Limestone, yes, but stone nonetheless. Perhaps you could edit them. But alas, all the aliens left you with was an egg beater. And from this area code, you cannot even call a pizza delivery service for help. But getting back to the story…

I lied and told the girl that it was my fault – that I just wasn’t very good at my culture. But that is absurd. I’m very good at my culture. Everyone is. Even those whose culture it is to be bad at one’s culture. The problem is that I’m not very good at the culture that was my birthright. Instead, I’ve fashioned this one out of a bunch of stuff I stole from a consignment shop in Burbank. Your culture may have the weight of ten thousand generations, tyrannical governments, well-meaning monarchs, and the blood spilt from a half-dozen revolutions, but mine was forged purely from the creativity of a 12 year old boy without a decent pair of shoes nor a place to live. And damn it all if I won’t take mine toe to toe agastin yours, and heck, I’ll even spot you twenty. Planning does little good in the province of people becoming people. I know, I read Psychology Weekly.

Instead, I think a ’57 chevy is a mean machine. I will bke you a macaroni casserole from scratch. I will secretly plot against you, because I had concluded, even before I met you, that you had it coming. So, when you least expect it, I will jump out of the laundry hamper on that balcony of your 52^nd floor apartment in middle america while your kids play video games behind us in the living room and while your husband is in the bedroom getting ready for bed, and I will ask you, “Hey, good lookin. Do you remember that time I first said I loved you? And do you remember that card I gave you on that night with the poem inscribed on the left margin? It was tall and skinny, remember? Each line was only two words long and it didn’t rhyme, because you know how I hate rhythm. And I know it’s been a really long time, two or three lifetimes even, but I’ve come so far and no one is looking. Can you makybe close your eyes and sing that poem back to me? Your words, so high up right now, scraping the sky of this cold, windy city.” Granted, you can attempt to thwart my plan now by making a mental note to never place your laundry hamper on your balcony, but you know better than to tempt fate like that. And, you know as surely as I know right now that you’ve already forgotten the words that I would then be seeking.

These words I will borrow from the old lady selling flowers on franklin street. May the lord bless you and keep you from the devil’s grasp. These words I will borrow from the thunder. Be self-controlled. Give. Be Compassionate. These words will not actually be words but only the letters w and S and they will contain all that is true and universal in the world. If that isn’t patently obvious to you, it’s only because you didn’t look closely enough. One man once said, “Bruce Lee packing punches like brown bag lunches.” I disagree. It was mostly like lunches carried in lunch pales at construction sites in the 1950’s.

I hear the echo that tomorrow has made on the atmosphere before it got reflected back down to us in the form of the memory that we had been here before. Some call it Déjà vu, but the people in the know realize that it’s just elementary physics. We thought that maybe we had known each other in some past life, but it was just smoke and mirrors, nature screwing around with us with her illusions and discount pyrotechnics she picked up over the state line in Virginia because they really clamp down on that stuff in north carolina. It’s half the reason that you didn’t suspect anything. That sort of thing is illegal here. It was the other half of the reason that you had difficulty accounting for. One pundit suggested it had something to do with the smell of jasmine. He said that his opiion on the matter was fair and balanced. Another pundit said the first one was a fascist but did not proffer an opinion as to the other half of the reason himself. Some lady with a degree in classics said she was going to write children’s stories about it, but both pundits agreed that such books wouldn’t catch on. They forgot that people love half-truths.

This letter fell off the previous sentence “r” and I decided to give it its own sentence. Was it alanis morrissette that said that self-referetiality is ironic?

I’m tempted to stop writing, but I’m kinda curious how far you’ll read. Did you ever see the movie Mulholland Drive? That movie had no plot, no beginning, middle, or end, as far as I could tell, but I kept watching. Maybe that movie was written without using the backspace button. Has anyone made it down this far? If so, you’re ready for the big finish…

Eggs. Half-gallon of 2% milk. Wheat bread. Laundry detergent. Moon pies. Love. Band aids. Laxatives. Mars bar. Soap. Goats. The wind beneath my wings. Flood insurance. E Coli. Good deeds. Envelopes. Paper cups. Awe. Chocolate shavings. Burlap sack. Ouiji board. Ginger peach tea. Fireflies. Serendipity. A slow song by someone no longer living who had a lot of bass in his voice and all the things that people like you and me used to mean to one another. Preheat oven for 1450 degrees. Try to revel in the slow burn. Cool before consuming the end.

Fat Tax

2006-10-11T15:54:00.000-04:00

The other day, I purchased a pack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. I was surprised to find a warning label which read something to the effect of “Candy is a special treat and should be enjoyed in moderation.” Even though I hardly ever eat candy, I felt guilty consuming it. Still, I wondered if the reason that such a warning existed had more to do with feared legal liability than a genuine concern Hershey’s had for the general health and well being of its customers. Is this the lasting effect of the McDonalds law suit, books like Fast Food Nation, and movies like Supersize Me?

I was glad to hear that my fair New York City has initiated legislative measures that would ban the use of trans fat in any of her nearly 25,000 eateries. This is the same forward-thinking city that banned smoking in restaurants three years ago. Kudos to Gotham City on both accounts!

Taking it a step further, I recently learned of a proposal to tax all foods rich in saturated fats, or, in a word, a fat-tax. Basically, it would extend the “sin” tax that presently applies to cigarettes and alcohol to include junk food. It’s the governments way of saying, “Yeah, you can kill yourself, but not without paying us first!”

The pro’s and con’s of taxation is an economic matter, something that I’m not particularly well versed in. Luckily, I stumbled upon the story on Judge Posner’s blog. (Yes, Judge Posner keeps a blog!) For those of you who are not familiar with his body of work, Posner is a judge and professor at the University of Chicago Law School. He is a giant, no, the giant, in the field of economics and the law. You can read his thoughts, along with the thoughts of another economist, Gary Becker, here.

Posner suggests that increasing the price of junk food might result, contrary to the laws of demand, in an increase in junk food consumption. He cites the “Giffen Effect” which suggests that higher prices might cause poor people to be even poorer, forcing them to consume only junk food, which though more expensive than before, is still less expensive than healthy food, which they can no longer afford. Got that? Basically, the income effect dominates the substitution effect. (If that makes it any clearer.)

Becker takes a different approach, suggesting that pharmaceuticals will advance to the point where heart disease, blood pressure, and high-cholesterol are no longer problems. Basically, he’s arguing that we don’t have to worry about this now, because in a few years our life expectancy will reach new highs, even if we’re all rolling around in our giant, gas guzzling fat-mobiles, because we’ll all be drugged out of our greasy, partially hydrogenated minds.

I’m not particularly moved by either line of reasoning. Then again, I don’t care much for the economic perspective. Economics presupposes that regular people have a capacity for a very particular form of higher level reasoning – complex, high-order cost-benefit analysis. It’s been my experience that most people would rather just be told what to do, especially in matters where mathematics is concerned.

To that end, people should be forced to exercise.

Simply telling people that fat is bad for them is merely stating the obvious. Heck, the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup episode makes me wonder if we’re headed towards a world in which everything carries a warning label. I half-expect to see a warning label for warning labels themselves: “WARNING: READING FINE PRINT HAS BEEN CLINICALLY PROVEN TO HAVE ADVERSE EFFECTS ON THE VISION OF LAB RATS! ONLY BE WARNED IN MODERATION.” If everything carries a warning label, no one will pay attention to any of them. Plus, as noted before, people are bad at decision making, even when they are given lots of good information.

Instead of simply providing more information, our schools should have gym offered twice a day for 45 minutes each session. (When I was in high school, we had it once every 8 school days, or less than once every week and a half!) I imagine this would cut down on the prescriptions doled out for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and the like. It would also be a nice break for teachers. If kids do not participate in an after school sport, they should be “fined” with having to do laborious community service. Similar rules would apply to adults in the workplace. In addition, we should have a group of people, dressed like American Gladiators, with giant foam bats that will randomly chase people around town if they are found to be too sedentary. If paying the government didn’t stop you from eating that second bag of Doritos, maybe a whoopin’ from Nitro will do the trick.

Oh yeah, and if we catch you smoking, we’re locking you in a window-less room with Weird Al Yankovik, Pauly Shore, and Carrot Top. Withdrawal symptoms will be the least of your worries.

Final Exam Answer Key

2006-10-11T00:02:00.000-04:00

The truth. Answers to some of life’s biggest questions. Sponsored by the internet.

(1) What happens if I mix diet coke with mentos?

Answer: Bad things.

(2) Should the bible be taken literally?

Absolutely!

(3) Are you stuck in the friend zone?

Consult the graph!

(4) What’s wrong with the New York Knicks?

Scientists weigh in.

(5) How did we get here?

It's a long story.

(6) What has Kirk Cameron been up to since his days on the hit 80’s show Growing Pains?

Disproving evolution to save your soul.

(7) Can’t decide between dinner and dessert?

Don't!

(8) What are the consequences of your choices?

More than sticks and stones and broken bones.

Programming Note

2006-10-09T23:10:00.000-04:00

In a move that privileges quantity over quality, I'm announcing that there will be posts every day this week! It's like Chanukah in October!

About Bob

2006-10-09T22:23:00.000-04:00

I went to see a Bob Schneider concert the other night and it was great. I walked in as the opening act was finishing his set. Bob immediately came out with a bunch of stools from backstage, so people could sit down. While I’m generally not star-struck, I think that seeing someone on a CD cover or up there on stage under the lights has the general tendency to make them seem larger than life. (Also, Bob looks like Jesus.) However, seeing Bob set up chairs for his audience really brought him back to earth. Suddenly, he was like a buddy of mine, picking up a guitar in my living room to help pass the time.

The theme of being just a regular old Bob was reinforced when he used the opening act’s guitar to play his set. Perhaps he doesn’t have one. It was a solo acoustic set with only that guitar and one of those $5 fisher-price children’s xylophones. That fact, coupled with some clever stage banter, a few completely ridiculous non-album songs, and more than one dig at Justin Timberlake made for some good laughs. A good time was had by all.

It seems to me that a lot of Bob’s songs are about reflecting back upon your life, realizing that things haven’t worked out the way you had planned, and growing to be at peace with that fact. His second solo album, for instance, was entitled “I’m good now.” Another song goes, “There’s a man I’ve never met before and he looks a lot like me/and there’s a little place called heaven that I’ll probably never see/and there’s a thing called peace of mind that I have never know/I’ve got a long way to get before I get back home.” Another song goes, “I know the time it's time to get up/And get out and get over this/But I don't know how and I don't know why/And the world goes round/And the world goes around/
And the world goes round & round.” There’s also this sentiment that is expressed in several songs that people often try to be better than they actually are. It’s a losing proposition. But there are glimmers of hope, if you look close enough, like in this ballad about Chuck Norris’ love child, “Oh, you never know what the world is gonna do/it may break you right in two/it might make all your dreams come true.”

I had been feeling a little down the last few days, so such songs rolled into town at the right time. About half way through, he entertained requests. I asked for “2002,” which he obliged and rendered a super-sad, slow version. It’s a song he wrote in 1998 after a girl broke his heart. He envisioned that it would take him a couple of years and numerous unfortunate events before he could get over her. Only, he can’t forget her. While it’s actually a fictional account of what his life might look like, it really feels authentically autobiographical.

I also appreciated the fact that they taped the show and made the CD’s available for purchase immediately after the concert. All musicians should present this option. Oh, and he ended with a song about pirates.

On Tuesday, I’m going to see Everclear. I’m stoked.

10 Confessions

2006-10-08T15:59:00.000-04:00

1. I have several t-shirts that do not, technically, belong to me.
2. I wash my hands both before and after using a public restroom.
3. I really enjoy playing fetch with a dog.
4. I don’t mind the occasional romantic comedy.
5. I refuse to read the newspaper or watch the news.
6. I find left-handedness very attractive.
7. I think I may be racist.
8. I always root against the Yankees, but I feel guilty when I’m happy that they lost.
9. I have to sit in corners while in public.
10. I failed first grade due to a clerical error.

Dancing

2006-09-28T19:39:00.000-04:00

Now that I've got "The Worm" under my belt, the next step is to learn to dance like these guys:

Smelling Healthy

2006-09-26T17:34:00.000-04:00

My dog isn’t much of a retriever. He isn’t particularly interested in fetching a ball or Frisbee. There is one exception to the rule, however. If we’re in the woods, he’ll gladly bring back a stick that I throw deep into the woods. What’s interesting is the way he finds it. He doesn’t appear to watch where the stick lands, as I do. Instead, he tries to find the trail of scent the stick left as it flew through the air. On the down side, it often takes him awhile to find the stick. On the upshot, he’d be no worse off if we played the game at night, when my eyesight would largely fail me. In that respect, his nose is less efficient but more reliable than my eyes.

The human eye is very sensitive. We have about 125 million receptors on the retina. The great majority of these receptors (120 million) are called rods, which allow you to distinguish between shades of grey in low light. The remaining receptors (5 million) are called cones, which allow perception of color in bright light. A dog’s eye is generally less sensitive. While a normal human’s vision is said to be 20/20, a normal dog’s vision is 20/75, which is to say that a dog would have to be 20 feet away to see the same object that a human could see from 75 feet away. Also, a dog has relatively poor color vision. Their biggest problem, it would appear, is the fact that they’re only two feet tall. If you were two feet tall and relied exclusively on sensory data from your eyes, you can imagine how much you’d miss.

As sensitive as the human eye is, a dog’s nose is even more sensitive. Compared to the 125 million receptors in the human eye, a dog’s nose carries over 200 million receptors. The human nose, in contrast, only has about 5 million receptors, some of which are re-dedicated for taste and temperature – think of the “smell” of menthol or wine. Basically, what I’m trying to get at is that humans smell badly, and men smell worse than women.

This is why I found it particularly troubling to hear that olfaction may play a large factor in mate selection. The other day a friend mentioned a study she had read a few days prior. The gist of the study was that a group of men were asked to wear a t-shirt to bed for a couple of nights. These shirts were taken, placed in marked bags, and given to single women to rate in terms of their pleasantness. Their responses were recorded. Some days later, the men and women were brought together for a party and the women were asked to rate the men in terms of attractiveness. Women tended to give high ratings of attractiveness to the same men whose t-shirts they found pleasant-smelling days earlier. (Unfortunately, I was not able to find this study anywhere, so I cannot provide a link.)

In another study, it was suggested that women are particularly sensitive to the smell associated with the molecule that enables the immune system to recognize foreign bodies (MHC – major histocompatibility complex). Women tend to prefer the smell of men that are immunologically similar to their biological fathers. This makes evolutionary sense. You’d want your kids to be able to combat the same antigens as you, because they are likely to be in the same environment. However, given the choice between immunologically similar and immunologically identical, women prefer similar. This may be a check against the ills of inbreeding. Interestingly, women do not prefer the smell of men that have antibodies similar to their mother nor to their non-biological father, in the case of adoption or re-marriage. The preference, it appears, is not about familiarity, but biology. Indeed, most women are unable to identify preferred smells as being familiar, nor are they more likely to correctly identify these smells as being of human origin, as distinguished from other household smells.

After encountering these studies, I can’t help but ask: if so much is riding on the way we smell, then how come we’re so bad at smelling? Would there be less divorce if we had 200 million olfactory receptors, instead of our paltry 5 million? Do people with more acute senses of smell stay together longer? Is using axe body spray going to screw up your kid’s chances of leading a long, healthy life? Was love potion number 9 just glorified antibiotics? Should personal ads read: SWM seeking SWF with good sense of humor and desire to combat like antigens?

Much like my dog trying to find a stick with his nose, trying to find a husband using your nose may not be the most efficient method, but it may prove to be the most reliable, evolutionarily speaking. We all know that it's quite easy to fool the eye. Language also can be manipulated with ease. Meanwhile, the failure of various pheromone colognes that have hit the market over the years attests to the discernability of the human nose. Maybe cereal box superhero Tucan Sam was dispensing sage relationship advice when he remarked, “Just follow your nose!”

Reincarnation

2006-09-21T15:35:00.000-04:00

You are what your deep, driving desire is.
As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is,
so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.
-Brihadaranyaka, IV. 5

**

Over the past few weeks, some friends and I have started practicing yoga with some regularity. I decided to do some background research on the practice and found my way to the local bookstore and a collection of ancient Hindu texts called The Upanishads. One of the basic tenets of Hinduism is the notion of reincarnation, which has found its way, in one form or another, into many other worldviews. The basic idea is that if you live a good life, you come back as a higher life form, until you eventually attain harmony with god. If, on the other hand, you lead a bad life, you’d come back as a lower life form, setting yourself back on the path to harmony. Simple enough.

When I first heard the notion of reincarnation way back when, it sounded pretty hokey. However, as I learn more and more about how the universe operates, reincarnation sounds a little less absurd. Either through digestion or decay, dead things regain life among the living, don’t they? That’s elementary science.

Biologist Richard Dawkins gave a lecture on the queerness of the universe in which he retold anecdotes originally given by Louis Walcott and Steve Grand, both of which speak to the point above, I think.

Louis Walcott once remarked, “Every time you drink a glass of water, the odds are that you will imbibe at least one molecule that had passed through the bladder of Oliver Cromwell.” It’s true. It’s simple probability, I’m told. There are just far more molecules in a glass of water than there are glasses of water or bladders in history. Of course, this point isn’t particular to Oliver Cromwell of glasses of water. It is also quite probable that the last breath you took shared an atom with John the Baptist’s fig tree or Ghengis Khan’s first bowel movement, for instance. From this perspective, the inter-connectivity of all life forms, living or dead, seems all the more probable. Of course, the fact that this information was explained to me by very credible scientists does not do anything to make it any less mind-blowingly-absurd.

In another thought experiment, Steve Grand asks you to remember an event from our childhood that you distinctly remember. Maybe you can see, smell, touch, and taste whatever it is that you are thinking about. You may even feel like you are really there. Of course, you aren’t really there. Here’s the kicker – you were NEVER really there, atomically speaking. Not a single atom that is presently in your body today was also in your body at the time of the memory. Not ONE SINGLE ATOM! The “you” at the present, just like the “you” from the past, is more like a point on a wave, in which matter comes together only for a brief instant before moving on to something else. Amazing, no? Perhaps, like me, you were moved to ask, well who has my atoms now? Or, to whom did my atoms once belong?

As these and other ideas are swimming around my head, I purchase the book and head outside. As I’m crossing the street to the parking lot, I notice that a couple about 20 feet over to my left is looking down at the ground and pointing. They are having a conversation about something that is on the ground. As they walk away, I grow interested to find out what they were looking at. Right at that moment, a voice comes from behind me to ask, “Is that a turtle crossing the road?” In an effort to save the turtle from getting run over, I walk over to pick it up and help it across the road. Of course, it’s beyond me where the turtle may have come from: there’s no water anywhere near here and it’s a miracle that it’s made it all the way across this enormous parking lot without getting run over already. Only, when I make it over to my new turtle friend, I discover, to my shock and amazement, that it’s not a turtle at all, but, get this, a lobster! So, here I am, standing in the middle of the road, a book on reincarnation under my arm, fending off traffic, trying to help a crustacean make it up the curb, unable to fathom the sequence of events that may have led to our lives intersecting in this manner. By this point, a crowd has gathered and people are calling people on their cell phones and taking pictures, which only adds to the absurdity of it all. Meanwhile, I can only wonder what the heck this guy must have done in his past life to end up a tiny lobster in a Barnes and Nobles parking lot. Talk about drawing the short straw in the game of reincarnation!

The story ends with some fellow good Samaritans getting a cup of water and another volunteering to take him to a nearby creek. With a little help from strangers, unity and order was restored among all of god’s little creatures. However you want to look at it, scientifically or religiously, we’re all made of the same stuff:

As the same fire assume different shapes
When it consumes objects differing in shape,
So does the one Self take the shape
Of every creature in whom he is present.

Point is, be nice. Even to lobsters. Because, if there’s one thing we can learn from science, it's this: chances are, you're already a lobster (to some degree), and even if you're not, you'll be one soon enough.

Remember, Remember the Eleventh of September

2006-09-11T16:05:00.000-04:00

I wouldn’t be able to tell you what I did on the 10th of September or the 12th of September, 2001. The eleventh day, however, the one five years ago to the day, is seared in memory. At the time, I lived in a small studio apartment on the first floor of a building on Lothian Road, which was an old, winding one way street in the section of Boston referred to as Brighton. There was lead in the paint and asbestos in the walls. Human engineering was seemingly reaching from all directions and trying to kill me.

It was an absolutely gorgeous late-summer-almost-autumn morning in Boston, Massachusetts. I was 21 years old and enjoying my senior year of college. At 8:50 a.m., I turned on the television, while getting dressed for class, and Matt Lauer told me that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center Towers some 8 minutes prior. There was a small fire, but no one seemed particularly alarmed. It was apparently an accident. By this time, they had gotten up a live feed of the first tower burning. All of a sudden, another plane streaks across the screen and into the second tower, at which point we extinguish any thought that accident played any role in these happenings. Two fires.

I immediately picked up the phone to call my dad, who was working on the upper west side of Manhattan. When I told him what was happening on TV, it was news to him. He told me that it was business as usual on his end of the island and that it was nothing to worry about. Relieved, I hung up the phone.

Speculation began about terrorists and news soon came over the wire about the Pentagon. Three fires. Matt Lauer told me that our country was under attack. If a terrorist organization was involved, not a single one was stepping up to claim responsibility. This fact would fuel speculation in the forthcoming days and in years to come.

September 11, 2001 is our generation’s flash-bulb memory. Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing. For the generation before, it was the day John F. Kennedy was shot. As was the case after the JFK shooting, there is growing conspiracy theorizing surrounding the tragic events. The feature film “V for Vendetta” and the internet production “Loose Change 911” suggest and allege, respectively, government knowledge and/or involvement in the attacks. The validity of their claims is beyond the scope of this post, but retrospect has certainly taught us the pitfalls of fervent, unreflective patriotism which always seems to commingle with terror.

No one played baseball for a week. People were still trying to pull bodies out of the steel and recreation of any kind would have seemed trite. But after awhile, someone realized that we – and the city in particular – needed distraction. On the 21st of September, the New York Mets returned to their city and donned their home whites for the first time in three weeks. They welcomed home the hated Atlanta Braves, who sat a nearly insurmountable 5 ½ games ahead in first place. My favorite players traded in their standard “NY” hats for caps that read “NYPD” or “FDNY” in homage to the city’s fallen heroes.

The game was tied 1-1 heading into the eighth inning. Mets’ pitcher Armando Benitez gave up an RBI double to Brian Jordan and the Braves jumped ahead 2-1. In the Mets’ half of the eighth inning, Edgardo Alfonso worked a walk, meaning that one of the greatest Mets of all time – Mike Piazza – would approach the plate as the potential go-ahead run. Right on cue, Piazza launched a ball deep into the night sky for a home run, bringing home the tying and winning runs.

Why am I talking about baseball? The 9/11 Commission Report says that of the 600 people trapped at or above the impact on the South Tower, only 18 managed to escape. In the North Tower, 1,366 people were trapped at or above impact. All of them were killed. Of the 2,700 bodies found at the site, only 1,600 could be identified. 400 rescue workers died trying to save people from the burning towers. For weeks afterwards, volunteers were sifting through the rubble unable to find any signs of life. This was the atmosphere in New York in the weeks following 9/11. When Piazza hit that ball in front of 41,235 people in Queens, it was the first time that post-9/11 New Yorkers were able to jump up and down and cheer for anything. For a brief moment, we were all just kids watching a baseball game and everything else faded into the background. The people of New York took momentary respite from all they had been dealing with and thus began the healing. Strange as it may sound, I believe that it was with that swing and the ensuing cheers that New Yorker reclaimed their city. It was the stubborn, tough, funny-sounding New Yorkers letting the world know that life would go on.

On the eleventh, I sat in my apartment a long way from home and watched on TV as the buildings which had cast a long shadow on my suburban childhood folded themselves into a heap of molten rubble. Tomorrow would be a lot like the day before in many respects: politicians of every persuasion would scheme to gain power; media people would resume selling their speculation; the hawks would clamor for retribution, while the doves would envision a world with more hugs; business men would seek financial advantage; commercials would return to the airways and we would transition back to consuming all kinds of things we didn’t need; people would once again honk their car horns and gossip about one another; people would ask their gods to take their side in the fight. But, on this, the eleventh day of September, 2001, everything was different. Everything. For one perfect New England morning, everything was still. There was a haunting quiet. As I watched that small window into the world, some 36” inches tall and luminous, I couldn’t help but marvel at the very depths to which a human can stoop; these depths which were, before my very eyes, doused in jet fuel and engulfed in flame. And here’s the poetry. On that same television screen, in juxtaposition to the fires, I beheld the very heights to which the human spirit can ascend, his arms carrying his brother, both covered in cinder.

And in that very moment, more so than any other in my life to date, I felt intimately connected to humanity’s collective consciousness. I was acutely aware of the part of our nature responsible for the commission of such acts of violence, but also the part of our psyche which openly defies them. We were human beings. And, despite all illusion to the contrary, we were in this together: each of us profoundly and irrevocably human, shrouded, even five years later, in fire and ash.

Postalgia

2006-09-07T16:01:00.000-04:00

I was listening to my friends over at A Way with Words again and this guy called up with a word he’d like to add to our lexicon – postalgia. He proposed that it would mean nostalgia for the future that never came to pass. Think about scenes from The Jetsons and Back to the Future II and consider how far off that reality still is. Disappointed? That’s postalgia!

Interestingly enough, the idea of postalgia was fresh in my mind, because I had recently heard a piece by Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes wherein he unearthed a CBS Evening News five part story back from 1986 predicting what life would look like in 2001. Here’s what CBS predicted.

By 2001, the Russians will have landed on Mars. Never happened. Domestically, Los Angeles will be the largest US city, with phoenix the fastest growing. Again, they’re wrong. New York, New York is still our largest city, with LA and Vegas the largest growing. Worldwide, Mexico City was to be the largest city with 35 million populates. Mexico City only has 8.5 million people (9th place). If you include the surrounding urban areas, it jumps to 2nd place with 18.7 million people, but well behind 1st place Tokyo with, you guessed it, 35 million. Right number, wrong city, I suppose.

Technology was supposed to produce “cows the size of elephants” and “pigs 5 feet tall!” I, for one, am glad this never came to fruition. Cars were to be voice activated and bathrooms were to serve as a home’s entertainment center. Huh? The pharmaceutical industry would provide miracle cures for cancer, heart disease, baldness, alcoholism, and phobias. Higher efficiency machines and computers would result in a 6 hour work day, 30 hours a week. Nope. Lives would be longer, with 108,000 people over the age of 100 years old. Actually, there are only about half that many Centurions – 55,000.

I decided to research the issue a little further. I read in the news that Google has come up with this new feature which allows you to search newspaper articles back to the 18th century. You can then use the timeline feature to see how ideas have evolved on a given topic over time. While it’s a great idea, I quickly found that you had to pay to access most of the articles. Bummer. Time magazine, however, allows you to access their archives for free. I found an article back from 1966 in which “The Futurists” predicted what the world would look like in 2000. Ready to feel postalgic? Here goes.

According to the experts interviewed by Time Magazine in 1966, by the year 2000, the US would have 330 million people with 90% living in or around cities. Population was “only” 280 million in 2000, and it’s not expected to break 330 million until 2020. Only about 60% of people lived in metropolitan areas at the turn of the millennium. Interestingly, the article stated that only the “gloomiest forecasts” have population reaching 6 billion by 2000. The 6 billion persons mark was surpassed a year earlier in 1999. The pessimists were spot on.

Back in ’66, they expected huge advanced in transportation by now. Planes would carry 1,000 people and travel just short of the speed of sound. Ballistic rockets would transport people anywhere on Earth in under 40 minutes. These days, it takes twice that time just to get through airport security! Also, men never made it to Mars, as expected. We’re all still waiting for Kia to introduce an affordable hovercraft.

Did they predict the internet? Maybe. They thought that cities would be able to decentralize because of the advent of instant communication. Indeed, this “countrywide telecommunication network” will allow people to work from home. That’s pretty close, only instead of a country wide network, we use the more descriptive and alliterate moniker World Wide Web. In addition, they discussed “electronic "information retrieval," meaning that “the contents of libraries and other forms of information or education will be stored in a computer and will be instantly obtainable at home by dialing a code.” That’s pretty much how it works, isn’t it? Wild.

They also missed the mark a time or two. For instance, they predicted that “frogmen farmers” will grow protein-rich kelp and seaweed, while living underwater for months at a time. The sea-produce will be ground into flavorless cereal which will be chemically flavored to taste like steak or bourbon. They may have missed the mark on frogmen farmers, but technology is presently being used to make soybeans taste like just about anything.

They predicted that advances in medicine will make artificial hearts, lungs, and stomachs “commonly available.” Hand held devices will effectively allow the blind to “see” and the deaf to “hear.” Computerized limbs will be linked to the brain to aid amputees. Human tissue was supposed to be grown on demand. Additionally, fetuses were to be grown outside the uterus for the woman’s convenience. Bacterial and viral diseases were to be wiped out, along with heart disease, cancer, memory loss associated with old age, and birth defects. Drugs for personality shaping will be common, such as “anti-grouch” pills a wife may slip into her husband’s coffee.

We were to gain control of DNA to the extent that “man will become the only animal that can direct his own evolution”

At home, our meals would be prepared by robots. Still, the role of the house wife, they predicted, was safe, because, while grocery shopping from home will be possible via video phone, it will flop “because women like to get out of the house, like to handle the merchandise, and like to be able to change their minds.” Wow. Well, if nothing else, at least they were right that no measure of technological advance will stop a woman from changing her mind.

On the job, they foresaw that most workers will be replaced by computers, with only 10% of the population working, while the rest is paid to be idle. In ’66, 40% of the population was working with the remaining 60% students or housewives. By 1984, they predicted, one would spend 25 years in school, 25 years working, and 25 years retired. I don’t know about you, but I graduated school at the age of 25 and I’m planning on going back for another 3-5 years. Of this much they were right - a high school diploma isn’t good enough for most jobs. Indeed, most people find they need post graduate or professional degrees.

Some closing predictions: “amid general plenty, politics will simply fade away”; we were share an “increasingly homogenized world culture”; “My hunch, is that man may have finally expiated his original sin, and might now aspire to bliss.” Religiosity has undergone a renaissance, especially in our post-9/11 culture. And, as the saying goes, it’s politics as usual...

What’s to be concluded from the distinctly human proclivity to overestimate the future? How long have the Jews been waiting for their savior? How much longer will the Christians wait for the second coming? Is the same thing at play when we dream of flying cars and robots serving us the perfect crème brulee? Look how we long for that perfect husband! Look at how we wait for the perfect moment to leave that crummy job! Look at how we procrastinate even with that which is so important to us. Maybe postalgia could serve as a check against these tendencies. Maybe if we remember our past failure in putting all of our stock in tomorrows, then we will be allowed to live more fully in our todays. The first step will be to have our language make this concept part of our everyday parlance. Postalgia is the reminder that tomorrow will look a lot like today. The question then becomes, as it should, what’s one to do with today?

Happy 108th!

2006-08-30T19:39:00.000-04:00

Folks, I’d like to take a minute to congratulate the clubhouse on this - its one-hundred-and-eight posting. That’s right, this marks our Cento-octenial! Granted, it would have made some sense to celebrate the 100th posting, but I figured, why buck the trend and start making sense now? Plus, I figured that one of my faithful clubhousers might write Willard Scott to congratulate us on the Today show. Clearly, we take a back seat to 106 year old Birdie “Ma” Miller and 102 year old Fanny Chaffee. Whatever.

I was hanging out with a friend of mine the other night when I mentioned that I had a blog. She called me that next afternoon from work to tell me that she hadn’t gotten anything done all morning, because she was too busy reading my blog… back to May! And I thought, wow, someone can read some 3 hours of my writing? Now, that’s a compliment. Then she wrote me today to let me know that she had gotten all the way back to my first post in Dec! I’m flattered. I even tried to go back to the beginning and read it for myself, but I, admittedly, got bored and quit after 2 posts. Now I understand why actors refuse to watch their own movies – they already know what’s going to happen.

I figured I’d take this opportunity to give back to you, my dear reader. So, here it is, a very special gift from me to you: a quiz. Get out your number 2 pencil and follow along at home. Let’s see how closely you’ve been paying attention.

(1) In a post about the trouble with language, i wrote that if someone said "I love you!" I might reply "I want a ___ ________, too."

(2) I wrote a list of random things which was supposedly placed into a briefcase that was cuffed to a man in the back of a taxi. To which mid-western town did he take it?

(3) True or False. I once wrote a post claiming that I was the sexiest man alive.

(4) I once had lunch "with" (a) John Edwards, (b) Bill Maher, (c) Coach k, (d) Dean Smith, or (e) Hillary Clinton.

(5) If I ruled the world, which of the following would be banned: (a) speaking Japanese, (b) lemons, (c) napkin origami, or (d) having more than 2 children.

(6) How many times have I fallen in love: (a) never, (b) once, (c) twice, (d) five times, or (e) every time you walk into the room, baby.

(7) When I broke into Snakeman's house, I did which of the following: (a) reset his tivo to record the Golden Girls, (b) accidentally killed his snake, (c) ate all of his home made chocolate chip cookies, or (d) built a pillow fortress?

(8) I had to have elective cosmetic surgery due to an accident involving: (a) skateboarding, (b) archery lessons, (c) a dog fight, or (d) a battle to the death between a pirate and a ninja?

(9) According to the first principle, I am: (a) a Christian, (b) left handed, (c) a keeper, or (d) better at basketball than bowling.

Answers (highlight to reveal):
(1) ham sandwich; (2) St John, Kansas; (3) True; (4) John Edwards; (5) Lemons; (6) Twice (7) reset his TIVO to record the Golden Girls; (8) a dog fight; (9) a keeper.

**

I wanted to comment upon what I’d written, but, as I’ve already mentioned, I was unable to re-read my blog. Instead, I just cut and pasted it into a word document and yielded the following information.

Total Number of Pages I’ve written (including photos, excluding comments): 170. (Holy Crap!)
Total Number of Paragraphs written: 1119
Total Number of Lines: 5,043
Total Number of Words: 54,466
Time required to transcribe my blog, typing 50 words a minute: 15 hours and 8 minutes

According to this nifty applet, I've compiled a list of the most popular words in the English language and noted how many times I've used them. If you use the applet, just know that they're watching you!

Top Ten Words in the English Language:
(1) the - 2,495
(2) of - 1,157
(3) and – 1,163
(4) to – 1,732
(5) a – 1,240
(6) in - 815
(7) that – 1,105
(8) it - 770
(9) is - 969
(10) was – 384
(11) I – 1,847
(12) for - 474
(13) on - 290
(14) you - 589
(15) he – 316

Clearly, I use the pronoun "I" way, way, way more than most people. Although, I've read that it's healthy to use "I/we" statements as opposed to "you" statements, particularly when yelling at someone. Apparently, I dont use the words "in" and "of" nearly enough.

Other notable Words (with rank in parenthesis):

(15) he - 316
(30) she - 75
(36) her - 102
(54) more - 131
(60) him - 105
(154) life - 146
(235) less - 25
(308) full - 29
(318) probably- 31
(357) book: 56
(376) God - 60
(384) Love - 187
(406) read: 87
(480) human - 57
(484) Happy - 20
(543) hope: 34
(572) friend: 93
(616) girl: 51
(675) knowledge: 18
(731) success: 0
(974) maybe: 100
(1075) understanding - 13
(1,789) empty: 3
(1,941) faith: 7
(2,381) Beauty - 36
(2,389) Angry - 2
(3043) definitely: 2
(3,107) Hate - 28
(5,145) wisdom: 13
(6,471) Sacrifice - 5
(10,666) Donkey - 125
(13,815) Sartre - 10
(15,446) Plato - 4
(35,307) dude - 8
(54,660) Serendipity - 1
(n/a) don’t believe: 5

I find it very interesting that the subject pronoun "he" (#15) is more common than "she," (#30) BUT! the possessive/object "her" (#36) is more common than "him." (#60) What's that all about? Freud once wrote that men act and women are acted upon. Does our very use of language reflect this Freudian bias? You'll note that I use him (105) more often than her (103), further cemeting my allegiance to the Feminist movement.

I use these words more than you would expect: more, God, book, read, human, friend, beauty, girl, and hate. These words popped up way more than expected: love, friend, maybe, wisdom, dude and donkey.

Most rare word used:
(86,562) gigabytes - 1

Most Common word unused:
(233) British - 0
(312) report - 0

Phrases:
“I don’t know”- 6
“I know”- 18
“I'm a hot, sweaty St. Bernard”- 1

**

Speaking of words, I came across this great NPR podcast called A Way with Words. Two language experts talk about etymology, grammar, and word usage. Sounds thrilling, I know. But really, it’s fascinating. You should check it out.

Martha Barnette ended the last show I listened to talking about the New York Times article that discussed one of the hottest new baby names – Nevaeh. Apparently, only 6 years ago, there were only 8 babies with that name. Since then, the name has had an unprecedented meteoric rise to the 70th most popular name for a girl. Indeed, if you were born in 2005, you are more likely to be named Nevaeh than to be named Sara, Vanessa, or Amanda! What caused the trend? Apparently, it all began when Christian Rock star Sonny Sandoval announced that he had named his girl Nevaeh, which is “heaven” spelled backwards. Since then, according to the article, blacks and Evangelical Christians have been running with it. Is this really happening?

This baby naming business is getting out of control. Every girl I know already has 5 or 6 names picked out for their hypothetical children. It seems to me that a great deal of thought and effort is put into this. For my part, I’m simply going to name them Donk and Donkette and be done with it. If I have more than one, then I simply add a subscript number. Thus, my 3rd girl would be Donkette3. Who’s with me? For the rest of you, you may enjoy this interactive baby names wizard.

**

For those of you that don't want to go back and read all my past postings, here are some highlights:
(1) My first post
(2) The things I want
(3) Legend of Snakeman
(4) Fame
(5) Laundry List

**

It's been fun.

Playa Hatin'

2006-08-22T13:26:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine levied some criticism against his brother, who is a philosopher of some renown. He said, “Even after publishing all those books, if you ask him a simple question, like ‘Does God exist?’ he can’t give you a straight answer.”

Maybe questions worth asking don’t have straight answers. Or, maybe life is more about finding the right questions. After all, what good is the right answer to the wrong question? Wouldn’t no answer to the right question be better? Hmmm.

**

In explaining why Miles Davis’ understated style was popular with women, Stanley Crouch remarked:

“If you put an audience of women together and there are 3 walnuts on a table. One guy comes in and he has a sledge hammer; that’s how he gets inside the walnut. The next guy has a nutcracker and he gets into the walnut like that. Then there’s a third guy and just by simply rubbing the walnut some kind of way, the walnut opens – he’s the one they’re going to be interested in.” That’s Miles Davis.

I’m not familiar with the work of Miles Davis, so I can’t say whether or not it has anything to do with walnuts. It’s an interesting theory, nonetheless.

**

In that same interview, cultural critic and essayist Stanley Crouch argues that “We have sunk down into a situation in America in which we assume that all authenticity comes from the bottom, comes from the street. It’s relatively absurd to see in popular media this constant definition of authenticity through something like the rap world in which it is always a celebration of lowlifes, thugs, pimps, and types of that sort.” He rejects the proposition that this is a counter-cultural response by those on the fringes of society, and, instead, posits that such culture is “quintessentially American.”

This raises the question: who makes our counter-culture? We’d like to think, perhaps, that counter-culture is the result of the minority finding a voice. But the rap industry, for example, is run primarily by rich, old, white males, many of whom, I can only imagine, don’t even like the genre, and all of whom sit squarely amidst the mainstream. For example, while the current leaders of Def Jam records look like this and this, the leaders of the company that owns the media conglomerate to which Def Jam belongs (ie, their bosses) look like this. So, can we honestly say that hip hop is the voice of black America? Crouch doesn’t think so. In fact, he charges that Hip Hop is primarily a mode for suburban white kids to take an “audio safari into “the jungle of urban America.”

When I first heard him say that, I was taken aback. Can gansta’ rap really be for suburban white kids? Then it occurred to me that Crouch wasn’t the first to make such a claim. Indeed, if you listen closely, you’ll even hear the occasional rap song about it. Awhile back, a friend of mine, who was working for a hip hop record label, sent me a song called “I Used to Love Her” by Common. Common refers to the early days of rap – think Run DMC and the Fat Boys – as “Original, pure, untampered.” He contends that this “old school” rap spoke to his heart, that it was soulful, and that it wasn’t motivated by greed. But “the game” changed. He continues, “I might've failed to mention that the chick was creative/But once the man got to her, he altered the native/Told her if she got an image and a gimmick/That she could make money, and she did it like a dummy.” Not only that, but he includes a lyrics that seems to justify Crouch’s “audio safari” comment: “She used to only swing it with the inner-city circle/Now she be in the burbs lookin' rock and dressin' hip/And on some dumb [expletive deleted], when she comes to the city/Talkin about poppin glocks, servin rocks, and hittin switches.” Who is hip hop’s target audience?

Common and Crouch are not alone in their criticism. Rapper/poet, Black Ice (video), points out that the shift from early hip hop to gansta rap was contrived: “They’re takin our heart felt demos, putting us in limos, trying to [screw] up our direction..” Not only that, but the very creation of the gansta culture by record labels has systemically altered our sense of authenticity; “meanwhile, they corrupt your perception of what the real is./ See, they’ve taken all our business men and made them drug dealers/ took all our messengers and made them rappers/just flappin their jaws, afraid to admit their treason/ took all our soldiers for the cause/made ‘em killers for no reason/… [and] if you’re negative, you’re positive/and if you’re positive, you’re a hater.”

In response to criticism levied against the industry by Bill Cosby, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson, former Def Jam records president Russell Simmons, in an interview with the Washington Post, “rejected the notion that hip-hop music has had a coarsening effect, saying it ‘is the soundtrack that reflects the struggle’ of young people today.” But, that’s the question, isn’t it? Does it reflect anything real at all? Or has it been entirely contrived for financial gain?

For my purposes, it doesn’t matter whether Russell Simmons is right or whether Stanley Crouch is right. The historical question of the origins or gansta’ rap – be they poor and black or rich and white- may never be settled, although it is an interesting subject to consider. What concerns me is that the question of authenticity alone is being used as an empowering or silencing tool. For many people, the conversation begins and ends in asking whether or not something is factually correct. For example, one might ask, was Jay-Z really a drug dealer before he entered the rap game? Was 50 Cent really shot 9 times and then lived to tell about it? If yes, then in the minds of many, it is justifiable for them to rap about selling drugs and shooting people. The flip side of the coin, unfortunately, is that people with a positive message – like Bill Cosby, Common, and Black Ice – are being silenced under the term “hater” because they don’t self-identify with this conception of “inner-city plight.” This is what I take exception to. We must not forget that culture is made by and ought to serve people, not the other way around. We should be suspicious of any culture which attempts to silence those who argue that a given culture no longer serves (or never did) its purpose in advancing valuable, normative social mores, or that it’s advancing the wrong ones. Rather than ask the retrospective question – did this really happen to people? – we should probably be asking the prospective question– do we seek for this to continue to happen? And, do we?

Reading Rainbow

2006-08-21T10:31:00.000-04:00

I’ve been doing some traveling lately, which has given me the opportunity to read lots and lots. I finished my second Jack Gilbert book, Refusing Heaven. In the title poem, Gilbert talks about going to church on a winter morning. He sees the old women dressed in black and recognizes that they are closer to God than him. They make him feel as though he has “an unusable soul.” But, he understands that to choose their path would be to reject all that he’s been through. Instead, he reflects on his life- what he is and where he’s been- and concludes, “The silver is worn down to the brass underneath/and is the better for it.” It begs the profound question: under what circumstances, if any, would you refuse heaven?

The collection reads like an old man, seeing his life flash before his eyes, asking himself if it was worth it. It’s truly remarkable to see which events a person in such a position would chose to consider. The book is phenomenal. Here are some highlights:

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
But just coming to the end of his triumph.

**

(as he stands before a panel of gods)
What do you want?
A blonde one asks. To keep what I already have, I say. You ask
Too much, he says sternly. Then you are at peace, she says. I am not at peace, I tell her. I want to fail. I am hungry for what I am becoming.

**

Ginsberg came to my house one afternoon
And said he was giving up poetry
Because it told lies, that language distorts.
I agreed, but asked what we have
That gets it right even that much.
We look up at the stars and they are
not there. We see the memory
of when they were, once upon a time.
And that too is more than enough.

**

Also, Amazon has looked over the books I’ve purchased and, quite incredibly, recommended that I buy Donkey Gospel by Tony Hoagland. Mind you, I've never bought a book from them about donkeys or gospels. It appears that a book that I would otherwise be interested in carries that title. Unbelievable. Here’s a sample.

Finally, I picked up Stephen Dobyns’ Velocities in part because his cover art was from my favorite artist, Mark Rothko. So far so good. I’ll post an excerpt shortly.

Speaking of Mark Rothko, when I was back in NY, I hit up the Modern Museum of Art. It was my first visit since the recent re-design. I was disappointed that they only had one of his works on display. They had this special exhibit on ‘obscured perspectives,’ which I found pretty interesting. Part of it was a large black room with about 50 flat screen tv’s hanging from the ceiling. Around the perimeter of the room were a few cutouts that functioned like port holes, with a view into the adjoining room. Through the little peep hole, you could see all these amazing works of arts – including one of my favorite Rothko’s. But to see it, you had to crane your neck and twist and turn to see through the little hole. Even then, you could only see part of each of the works. I found, however, that I appreciated the work more because I had to work so hard to barely catch a glimpse. Interesting.

Here’s what’s neat about participatory art: for a brief moment, my struggle against obscurity was on display at one of the world’s greatest museums for all my fellow patrons to behold and appreciate. Little ole me was a work of art!

I also started “Everything and Nothing” by Jorge Luis Borges. My ipod recommended I read it. I was listening to this Mike Doughty song, “Grey Ghost.” As the title was scrolling across the screen I noticed the following, “(Here's the hidden message: Eat your greens. Read Everything and Nothing by Borges. Thanks for listening. Mike.).” Honestly, if one of my favorite musicians is going through the trouble of encoding a secret message into his itune, I owe it to him to check it out. As fate would have it, the book isn’t stocked at any of the local bookstores. I happened to find a copy at a random Borders in Mt. Kisco, NY.

Form and Function

2006-08-20T14:45:00.000-04:00

I’ve been watching lectures from the TED conference. Most recently, I watched a lecture by Sir Ken Robinson on the state of public education. He points out that our educational system prizes logic and reasoning (left hemisphere) over art and creativity of the right hemishere. He suggests that this is because the public system was founded in the 19th century, during the industrial revolution. People had to study that which would get them a job, so art, dance, and poetry, among other things, were universally de-emphasized.

Indeed, university professors – the most “successful” people to rise through our educational system – are literally disembodied. He points out that professors “live in their heads.. and slightly to one side… they look at their bodies as a mode of transport; it’s a way to get their heads to meetings.” It’s true, isn’t it? If it had its druthers, wouldn’t our educational system make everyone look like that? But do we really want a world full of egg heads? Would that be a better place to live and grow?

Robinson concludes his lecture by arguing that we ought to look at education as “human ecology” and need to “reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity.” He analogizes our current hierarchy to strip mining, where we tear up the earth looking for one particular commodity, at the expense of the rest.

Another lecture/performance by David Pogue, a New York Times tech columnist, picks up on this theme, I think. He points out the difference between the design approaches of Microsoft versus Palm and Apple. Palm had a “three-taps rule.” The Palm was designed such that you could utilize all the features by tapping the screen no more than 3 times. With Microsoft word, you cannot even do the simplest tasks (such as opening a new blank document) without clicking at least 3 times. Microsoft cares more about power than design and usability. Contrast the remote for my stereo receiver at home, which has around 150 buttons, with my ipod, which has 5.

I believe that this is an example of innovation that takes into account both the right and left hemispheres of the brain. The fact that my ipod is the simplest and sexiest machine I own does little to improve its functionality. Still, the designers of it recognize that I am not a disembodied consumer of music. Form is important even where function resides.

A gestalt understanding of a human being would take into account matters of aesthetics in technology, education, religion, recreation, and any number of other matters. Why should we be content with things that only address a part of our being?

Am I A Feminist?

2006-08-10T22:52:00.000-04:00

I’ve had a little back and forth with a fellow blogger Katie Rose about a story she wrote about here. If you’re interested, you can go to her blog to read the original story, her post about it, my comment, and her response. Most of Katie’s other posts are thought provoking and worth a look, as well.

The short of the story is as follows. There’s a girl, Holley Mangold, playing high school football (quite well) in an otherwise all-boys league. Holley doesn’t consider herself a feminist and distances herself from ‘I am woman hear me roar’ movement (Holley’s words). Katie, meanwhile, argues that the girl is “breaking down barriers,” being a “trailblazer,” and serving as a “hero” to other young girls. Indeed, Katie even levies some criticism against the 16 year old saying that it is “sad” that a woman “changing the stinking world, can't stand up and say, ‘YES, I AM CHANGING THE WORLD.’”

I’m trying to understand why a feminist would use the term ‘heroic’ to describe Holley’s decision to play football. By her own account, Holley admits that it is not her intention to change the sport or the world, nor does she intend to advance feminist ideals; she just likes football. If she is heroic despite her intentions not to be, then her heroinism must be owed solely to the effect her actions have. So what effect might a girl playing high school football have with regard to the feminist movement?

Feminism is defined, though perhaps poorly, as the “belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.” Is Holley, unwittingly, pushing society towards sexual equality? If one’s answer is yes to this question, then you might believe that ‘equality’ means ‘sameness.’ Thus, if a boy plays football, a girl can play football, too. Indeed, you might argue, girls ought to play football to preserve this sexual sameness. But, if that is one’s belief, then one must also acknowledge the other side of the coin, which is this. Sexual sameness can be accomplished in either of two ways - neither one being better than the other – (1) girls can do things that have been historically done by boys (such as football) or (2) boys can do things that have been historically done by girls. In other words, yes, the sexual sameness perspective would laud little Holley Footballer, BUT, it would laud her only as much as it lauded little Johnny Barbie-doll-player. But do feminists canonize little boys that play with dolls? Do they praise boys that want to grow up to be a stay at home dads? Or nurses? Or school teachers? Wouldn’t the fruition of their dream push our society towards sexual sameness with equal force and rapidity as the Holley Mangold story? Would these boys also be criticized if they didn’t acknowledge their place in the feminist movement and shout from the rooftops that, “YES, I (TOO) AM CHANGING THE WORLD.”?

I would argue, then, that if one is going to consider Holley Footballer a hero, then, for the purposes of internal consistency, one shouldn’t forget about Johnny Barbie-doll-player. Alternatively, one can conclude, as I do, that neither of them deserve the scrutiny of our heroes. Sometimes kids, boy or girls, just want to be kids, and since when is that not ok? Who am I to spoil their fun by forcing upon them my own big ideas about how the world ought to function? Unless of course, they want to be little ethicists…

**
Katie also asked me if I was a Feminist, and, if not, why not? Truth be told, I don’t consider myself an anything-ist. The problem with identifying with any ideological group is that it’s probably too broad to accurately reflect an individual’s personal beliefs. To complicate matters even more, feminism, in particular, seems especially factional. For example, wikipedia divides the feminist movement into 14 sub-types:

Anarcha-feminism
Cultural feminism
Cyborg feminism
Ecofeminism
Individualist feminism
Liberal feminism
Marxist feminism
Postmodern feminism
Psychoanalytic feminism
Radical feminism
Religious feminism
Separatist feminism
Socialist feminism
Womanism

Indeed, the feminist movement has been chopped up, divided, contorted, misquoted, perverted, misunderstood, overanalyzed, defined, redefined, undefined, expanded, contracted, etc, etc, etc so many times that the term itself has been rendered completely devoid of meaning. If someone says they are a feminist, what does that tell you about them? That they hate men? Maybe, some do. That they think that there is no distinction between genders? Maybe, some do. That they think that men and women should live separately? That they think that there should be fewer men in the world? That they think all sex is rape? Maybe, some do. That they think the very use of language is a means of subjugating women? That they spell the word ‘wommyn’ as opposed to ‘women’? Maybe, some do. That they think that women are discriminated against more than other social groups? That they think that God is a woman? That they think that we should get rid of capitalism? Maybe, some do. That they think that women are like cyborgs? Maybe, some do. Indeed, others would reject all of the above and still consider themselves feminists. My point is, the label feminism encompasses so much to the exclusion of very little that its use is rarely, if ever, informative or descriptive.

The only common strand among all feminists that I am able to identify is that they all think that there is gender inequality and they think that fact should be righted. However, that definition of feminism is so watered down that it is indistinguishable from what would appear to be its antonym, Masculinism. (To be honest, I didn’t even know such a thing existed until just now! Although, in law school, as a response to the “Womens Law Students Association” a group of guys banded together “The Man Club,” which hosted a beer pong tournament and a lecture by renowned ambulance chaser James Scott Farin, though not at the same time. Do you suppose that’s what Masculinists do on weekends? ) But who, in their right mind, would argue against the fact of gender inequality or argue that it not should be righted? Not me. So, I guess I’m a feminist (of no particular denomination) and also a masculinist (sans the beer and ambulance chasing) and, at the same time, I'm neither, also. To the extent that I am a feminist, I must note that I concern myself less with the descriptive question of sameness (see above) than the evaluative question of equality. That is to say, I recognize two distinct genders that are equal, rather than one super-gender which is identical to itself. And while I find the notion of a genderless society implausible, that fact alone would not disqualify me from membership into the feminist or masculinst movements.

If someone can present a better definition of the term, I’d be interested to hear it. At the very least, reading up a little about the movement has been a valuable experience. Roar.

Pacman Es Victorioso!

2006-08-08T17:19:00.000-04:00