Anna Karenina: Interesting, but Not the Greatest of All Time

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy is often ranked highly as one of the world's greatest novels and sometimes as the greatest-- that's right, the number one spot.  So I decided to give it a read.

And what I found was that this 800-pager was not particularly fun.  I realize of course that books have purposes beyond entertainment, but to attain maximum attention, readership, and respect I do feel that entertainment should be part of the equation.  But the reason this book is famous is more because it is fun to analyze rather than fun to read.  There is so much in there to unpack, and I respect this quality.  I did, after all, finish the book (something I only do about 75% of the time).  However, just because there is a lot to unpack and examine does not necessarily make it a great book.  It seems kind of messy to me and much longer than necessary.  All of the central messages could be told in far fewer words and might leave a stronger impression were the reader not forced to slog through 800 pages of loosely connected events and countless side characters.  One of the most obvious examples of this sloppiness is the choice to name the novel after Anna while choosing to spend perhaps twice as much time writing about the character of Levin.  Another example is the misleading back cover of the version I read which says, “Anna Karenina is one of the most loved and memorable heroines of literature.  Her overwhelming charm dominates a novel of unparalleled richness and density.”  Why is this misleading?  Well, Anna is not a heroine, I did not find her particularly loveable, and she does not dominate the novel; Levin does.  On top of that, these two main characters meet exactly one time in the entire 800 pages, and nothing significant comes of the meeting!  It is as if Tolstoy had at least two separate stories to tell but was too lazy to actually tell them separately.  But he is a highly respected writer, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that his choices were intentional.  If that is so, my interpretation of the connection is as follows.    WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

Levin and Anna do inhabit the same social world and interact with many of the same people.  And through the vastly different life outcomes they experience despite coming from similar social and economic standing, we can infer that we are meant to examine the differences in moral character that must be there as a cause of the differences.  

Why must it be moral character that is the difference?  I base this mainly on a revelation that Levin has in the final chapters. Because it is so near the end of a lengthy novel, I have to suppose that it relates quite directly to the central message and purpose.  That moment and message can be found in this quote:

             “Theodore says that Kirilov, the innkeeper, lives for his belly.  That is intelligible and reasonable.  We all, as reasoning creatures, cannot live otherwise.  And then that same Theodore says that it is wrong to live for one’s belly, and that we must live for Truth, for God, and at the first hint I understand him!  I and millions of men who lived centuries ago and those who are living now: peasants, the poor in spirit, and sages, who have thought and written about it, saying the same thing in their obscure words—we all agree on that one thing: what we should live for, and what is good.  I, and all other men, know only one thing firmly, clearly, and certainly, and this knowledge cannot be explained by reason: it is outside reason, has no cause, and can have no consequences. 

            ‘If goodness has a cause, it is no longer goodness [and] if it has a consequence—a reward, it is also not goodness.  Therefore goodness is beyond the chain of cause and effect.” 

            

           Levin here realizes that doing good for others is the most essential way to live in order to feel both close to God and purposeful as an individual.  And one should do good simply because that's the right thing to do-- not for any personal gain.

So let’s look at the main character of Levin, the novel’s namesake Anna, and the man who is their link, Oblonsky, in relation to this revelation.

 We start the novel in Oblonsky’s household where we learn that there is a dispute between he and his wife which arises from his having cheated on her—an action which he continues to do throughout the book.  Oblonsky is a social man who does do good for others: regularly treating people to dinners, connecting people professionally, and intervening on his sister’s behalf regarding the seeking of a divorce, for example.  But he also causes harm (mostly to his wife and himself) by “living for his belly.”  He seeks money and spends it excessively.  He seeks pleasurable company outside of his marriage.  He gets his wife to sell parts of her estate so that he can pay his debts and continue to live this way.  He exists in a very surface way, doing both good and harm, but never really thinking deeply about it, attaching much meaning to any individual occurrence, or even seemingly remembering key occurrences longer than the time it takes for a new interest to grab hold of him.  As a result, he never really learns from his mistakes, fully understands the perspectives of others, or changes himself. 

Anna, surprisingly, does not seem to be the heroine of the novel, but rather the foil to Levin and an example for the reader of what not to do.  Like Levin, she is concerned with deeper things.  However like Oblonsky, she “lives for her belly.”  As a result she makes a lot of selfish decisions while all the while remaining unsatisfied on a deeper spiritual level.  The key selfish decisions are cheating on her husband, leaving her husband, abandoning her son, and then behaving jealously and vindictively toward her lover while all the while making no effort to fully resolve the conflict between her still legal marriage and her current love, causing ongoing conflict for all involved parties.  She recognizes all the conflict, accepts some of the blame, but also pushes the blame on others, and wallows melodramatically in her problems instead of actively engaging in the struggle necessary to disentangle herself.  So she sees the deeper meanings.  She knows that she has done wrong, and she knows that others have also done wrong to her.  Her reaction to this is to stubbornly persist and survive rather than struggle to change and adapt.  Ultimately she allows her selfishness to take the most melodramatic step possible and kill herself in order to punish her lover Vronsky for all the dilemma she’s feeling—very little of which is actually his fault. 

Levin is the only major character who undergoes positive change.  He engages with all the struggles of life: seeking purpose and meaning, facing rejection, trying to improve the economy on macro and micro levels, wooing the woman he loves, navigating marital conflict, watching his brother die, and beginning to raise a son.  He frequently recognizes imperfection in both the world and himself, but always pursues better understanding, improvement, and that which is morally good, regardless of how much inner conflict he may feel or how much outer conflict he ends up engaged in with others.  As a result, he ends the novel rewarded with a happy family, a spiritual revelation, and a sense of purpose. 

So we have three major characters who are set up as a lifestyle comparison.  We have one man who has the capacity for both selfishness and selflessness but only so far as any given situation allows him—he has no sense of the long-term nor of deeper spiritual significance.  We have a character who perceives deep spiritual significance but mostly only in negative ways resulting from selfish actions including the ultimate selfish action of committing suicide.  And we have a character who is deeply concerned with spiritual matters within himself while all the while acting for goodness and selflessness and struggling through life’s conflicts.  These three characters end up unchanged, dead, and happy, respectively, as a result of their outlooks and choices.

This comparison is the main reason I can see for having a novel named after Anna but featuring Levin.  However, it does not explain the countless other characters who get an awful lot of "screen time" as well.  Let's compare a few of them, just for fun.  

Through the 3 major women characters, we get to see 3 different ways of handling flaws in relationships.  Through Anna, we see changing relationships.  We see the boredom and resentment of someone who has lost respect for the man she’s married to (having originally gotten married for status more-so than love).  We see the excitement of an affair and the turmoil and conflict that inevitably must come about when she is unwilling to end either the marriage or the affair.  Then we see crazed jealousy and vindictiveness when she suspects that her lover is in turn having another affair. 

Through Dolly, Anna’s sister-in-law, we see stoicism in a family woman dealing with a long-existing relationship who has chosen to stay with her cheating, money-wasting husband mostly for the sake of the kids.  She learns to ignore her husband most of the time and lives mostly for said kids. 

Then we see Kitty, the youngest woman and eventually Levin's wife, who must deal with the conflicts involved in new relationships.  First she must deal with balancing two men who are both wooing her, then with rejecting the one she wants less, than with being rejected by the one she wants more.  Later, upon entering into a new marriage, she must handle all the unexpected and often petty conflicts that arise when learning to live with someone new in addition to dealing with the bigger issues of giving birth and supporting her family during tragic times.

Anna’s two men, Karenin and Vronsky, also get a lot of time, and I found both quite similar in some ways as well as quite a bit more interesting than Anna herself.  The key quality they share is ambition.  The main difference between them is that Karenin’s work and position come before everything else, and Vronsky puts Anna before everything else.  However, Karenin does still care for Anna, and Vronsky does still have many other concerns.  It is Karenin’s inability to fully express personal, emotional things that mostly drives Anna away.  And despite Vronsky and Anna’s love for each other, Vronsky insists on still having ambitions and a life beyond their relationship as any normal man would.  It is this insistence combined with Anna’s poor societal position (resulting from her awkward status of a wife living with a man who is not her husband) that make her vindictively jealous toward him. 

Then there are countless side characters set up as foils or models that the main characters either come into conflict with or try to imitate.  There’s Koznyshev, Levin’s half-brother, who is too caught up in political issues to have the time or desire for personal relationships.  There’s Nicholas, also Levin’s brother, who is sickly and volatile.  There’s Lydia Ivanovna, a religious extremist, who comforts Karenin and plays a role in his preventing Anna from seeing her son.  There’s Vasenka Veslovsky, a youthful flirt that worries Levin in his first months of marriage.  There’s Sviyazhsky, a political man who has read up on and can accurately discuss any topic but gets a shifty defensive look anytime someone pushes him to say which view it is that he truly believes.  And there are many many others: peasants from whom Levin learns, society women that judge and gossip about Anna, soldier friends of Vronsky’s, house servants, children, etc. 

Ultimately it ends up being just a bit too much text with not quite enough payoff.  Are there worthwhile elements?  Tons!  But for me the whole was not any better than the sum of its parts.  

Taxation With Representation

I will forewarn readers that I am not a political nor an economic expert and there could very well be some legitimate legal reason why the proposal that follows cannot happen.  However, I am unaware of such a reason and think the following is a just and good idea.

America proclaims itself a democracy in which the government is created both for and by the people.  However, the people are only directly involved in the actions of their government in that they have some control over who the leaders of the government will be.  Once this decision is made, most other decisions are determined by those few leaders and their most powerful supporters.

One of the most major of these decisions involves taxing the people in order to pay for the various jobs and programs that are part of all other decisions.  But if the government is truly empowered by the people to do this, shouldn't the people get to choose which programs their money will fund?  Wouldn't this make the country more democratic socially, politically, and economically?

What I propose is a system of taxation that allows each individual taxpayer to designate what their tax dollars will be used for.  Designations could go toward one or more of several categories such as education, social programs, the military, and city maintenance.  So the areas in which people most want to see change will be the areas that receive the most money.

So a peace-loving educator might choose to use 70% of their money to support education, spreading the other 30% around but giving the military 0%.  A person who dislikes the idea of having to give the money they earned to the unemployed could choose to give 0% to social programs.  A person who benefits from social programs could choose to put their money back into that program that is benefiting them.

Much of the conflicts and points of dispute within our country would be reduced in intensity because people would be allowed to support or not support something based on their own beliefs.  People would be less likely to avoid paying taxes because it would feel like taxes are giving them power rather than taking away their resources.

Such a practice would benefit the people and the country by allowing the people to speak with their wallets, which can often be more influential than their voices or votes.  It would make it harder for small groups of powerful men to make decisions that go against the desires of most citizens.  For it is fairly easy to manipulate or even fake moral backing, but it is much harder to fake or manipulate financial backing, as the latter is much easier to keep track of.  

Irony Curbs Genius

             In the 1840s, Dr. John Croghan set up a tuberculosis clinic inside Mammoth Cave, Kentucky.  Noting that the cave environment was highly effective at preserving artifacts as well as dead bodies, he hoped it would be equally effective at preserving the lives of those suffering from a then-cureless disease.  Specifically, he believed the air to be purer than most—something that would be highly beneficial to those whose lungs were not in good health.  However, the dampness of the air combined with the buildup of smoke from torches and cooking fires actually worsened his patients’ condition, and none of them were cured.  Croghan was forced to end the experiment, and he himself died of tuberculosis six years later.

                But he sure tried, didn’t he?  The end result was failure, but he sure as hell tried.

The Dreamer

There once was a man who dreamed.  And the things he dreamed came true-- not by magic but by choice.  He adjusted his life actively to align with the things in his mind.  If he dreamed it, he did it, and he found freedom and purpose in this lifestyle-- in relinquishing control on the one hand by letting his dreams (and whatever caused them) do all the decision making.  On the other hand, he had never felt more in control; every day he awoke with new purpose, new conviction, and the fearless drive to do that which was right.  He did not know in the empirical sense that it was right, but that did not matter.  It felt right.

He dreamed he had a dog-- one with black spots on a white coat.  So he scoured the pet shops and dog pounds (16 of them) until he found one of this variety.  He named the dog Chester, and the first thing he did next was teach Chester to play fetch-- for that was what they did in the dream.

Once he sold his house and used the money to travel around the world by bicycle because in a dream Jesus told him that this is what he was to do.  And while travelling he fell asleep many times-- once while he was riding.  He of course did not dream at this time for the sleep only lasted the 3.5 seconds it took to go crashing to the ground.  But much like Saul, at this time of disturbance our dreamer had a waking vision, a vision of a world in which the one goal of all was selfless love.  This was the man's interpretation, anyway.  The vision itself was of a world map which quickly zoomed in and out of different countries and in each country were a variety of people dressed only in national flags sewn together.  These people were hugging.  Some laughed.  Some cried.  Some looked healthy.  Some did not.

The vision compelled our man to act; however for the first time he did not know exactly what to do or where to start.  So he decided to continue his journey but to start hugging people more.  He also started asking people to join him.  Most said no, but here and there he found some people in a transitional period in their lives.  Most were students or recent graduates.  Some were attracted by the hugging aspect.  Some by the exercise and challenge of long distance cycling.  Some by the opportunity to travel.  But many of them simply wanted to do something-- something different, big-- something that seemed to matter.

This went on for some time, and all the while the dreamer continued to dream.  Mostly small things: where to take meals, what to say to people, which direction to ride...

But sometimes the dreams were less clear.  One time the sky was orange, his bike was flying, and some strange creature was perched on the handlebars.  The man did not know what to make of this, but he was still on the bike in his dreams, so he stayed on the bike in real life.

Another time he wasn't even in the dream; there was just blue sky, clouds, and birds-- birds everywhere.

And then came a very disturbing dream.  The man was on his bike with his followers behind him when suddenly a semi-truck came around a corner at top speed and straight at him. He veered right.  The truck veered the other way.  They missed each other, but the truck proceeded to run over 5 other cyclists.  The man ditched his bike and started running toward the accident when the truck exploded.  Then he woke up.

What was he to do?  If he continued living his life this same way, it was clear that people would die.  Or was he given this dream so he would know to make a different choice the second time around?  Perhaps by veering left instead of right?  Or was he supposed to stop cycling so the dream could never come true?

The next day the man told his followers to take a rest.  They would not ride.  They were to use the time to build up their energy while he planned their next course of action.  This was, of course, a stall.  He needed another dream-- something that would make things clearer for him.  So he waited for night.  He ate breakfast, talked to some of the people that had been with him longest.  He ate lunch, called a few friends back home, read some poetry.  He ate dinner, looked at some maps, drank some tea that was supposed to be good for sleep.  And then he went to bed.

He laid there for quite some time.  But sleep would not come for the dreamer.  When it comes to desperate need, it is often the desperation that proves the biggest obstacle to having the need satisfied, and that was true in this case.  The man was so hungry for guidance that his mind was unable to be calmed.  He tossed and turned and tried all the tricks he knew, but sleep would not come.  The closest he got was a half-awake chain of thoughts that were clearly thoughts rather than dreams-- for there were no images.  Yet somehow these thoughts did not seem entirely within his control.  But when the sun rose, the dreamer had made his decision.  He had lived his life a certain way, and it had suited him brilliantly.  He would continue on as he had always done.  For what reason, other than sheer uncertainty, should a man do anything but stay the course when that course has proven itself useful?

So he assembled his followers, and together they rode toward their next destination.  That day, they passed thirteen semi-trucks, and every time one of them came around a corner the man tensed, readying himself to veer to the right.  But the trucks always stayed in their own lanes, and the cyclists always stayed in theirs.

Things continued on this way for months.  The dreamer couldn't dream new dreams.  He slept restlessly, consumed by thoughts of trucks, blood, and fire-- if ever his sleep lasted long enough to reach the dream state, it was these things he continued to dream of.  In waking life, he found that people became less receptive to his random well-intentioned hugs.  Sometimes they would hurry away quickly, glancing back over their shoulders.

As time went on, the other cyclists drifted away.  They got jobs, they fell in love, their grandparents died, they got bored.  Things changed for them.

And the dreamer was confused.  How could he make his dream come true if he had no followers?  Clearly he must have done something wrong?

Then a semi-truck came speeding around the corner in his lane.  He veered right.  The truck veered the other way.  No one died, and both continued onward.

The man at first breathed a sigh of relief.  He had followed his dreams and prevented death.  All was right.

But was it, really?  Life had not happened the way it had in his dream.  Was that event still to come?  Or had he changed things somehow?  Was he still doing what he was meant to do?  Or should he find something new?  And for that matter, how did he know he was supposed to even be going around to all these countries in the first place?  Had he interpreted his vision correctly?   What should he do now?  What now?

It took him a long time to sleep that night, and when he did he didn't dream.  The next day he didn't feel very well, so he stayed in bed, dreaming again of the truck.  Nothing had changed about it.  But cycling around from stranger to stranger was seeming much less of a draw.  Yet the dreamer had no other ideas.  So he stayed the course.  And his dreams rarely changed.

End of 2014 Reading List

Another year passes with the reading of 20 more books.  It was a good year, literarily speaking, for me, as I benefitted significantly from many of these reads.  For those looking to find some new things to read, below are reviews of what I have read:

Top picks:

1) Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell: Six stories unfold in different time periods that turn out to be linked in certain ways.  Each story stands pretty well on its own, and they are radically different in perspective/point of view, subject matter, and style while also maintaining the common threads necessary for them to work as one novel.  The structure is unique in that each story stops halfway through when the next story starts.  The 6^th story is told all the way through and then you proceed to finish each previous story in reverse order so that the order is 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th, 6^th, 5^th, 4^th, 3^rd, 2^nd, 1^st.  My favorites were stories 2 and 5 about a down-and-out orchestral composer and a clone-slave of the future McDonalds, respectively

2) What is the What by Dave Eggers: The true story of a Sudanese refugee told from his perspective and recorded by the author.  The story goes back and forth between the main character’s present day life in America and his history beginning with childhood in a peaceful village then continuing through many experiences of violence and slow, confused, terrified on-foot travel through Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya.  Lots of dark stuff, but made bearable by moments of humor and the understanding that this is a unique and often marginalized experience worth learning about. 

Those were my favorite two reads, but there were many other good ones and worthwhile ones as well.  Below are descriptions of the other 18 books I read this year:

3) White Noise by Don DeLillo: Semi-apocalyptic story taking a semi-satirical look at things like pop culture and modern communications while the main character and his family attempt to survive the sudden appearance of a giant toxic cloud in their home town. 

4) Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston: This was the first time I had to teach a book I had not before read on my own, so it was interesting to read it as a teacher thinking about how to teach it.  This made me really appreciate the poetic language often used to describe the lives of southern black migrant workers in the early 1900s.  There are lots of cool archetypes and symbolic meanings present.  There’s a lot of dialect used which can sometimes be difficult to understand but can also be fun to read, especially out loud. 

5) Pulp Head by John Jeremiah Sullivan: a collection of essays on various topics.  My favorites were “Upon This Rock” about modern day Christianity, told as the writer attends a Christian rock festival, and “Violence of the Lambs” about a theory that animals of all species are becoming more aggressive over time in response to humanity’s increasing expansiveness. 

6) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: a re-read for me, this is of course the tale of Jay Gatsby, a mysterious man striving to obtain and maintain the ideal of the American Dream while also chasing his own personal dream of love for Daisy, who is married to another man.  A fairly simple read that takes a good look at things like class, status, dreams, power, and gender roles in a way that is still relevant almost 100 years later. 

7) Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges: originally written in Spanish, this is a highly literary and cerebral collection of stories and essays (and sometimes a weird mixture of the two) that felt very existential and meta-fictional  to me.  Examples of subject matter include a guy who believes he is interacting with his own ghost, a guy who becomes more interested in a dream world than the real world, and a universe organized into a library. 

8) Oblivion by David Foster Wallace: another collection of stories that are very cerebral.  Wallace likes to experiment a lot with language and perspective, so if you enjoy experiments in language you will enjoy him.  My favorites were “The Soul is Not a Smithy” about a child who daydreams during class and fails to notice as his teacher becomes possessed, and “Good Old Neon” which is a man’s account of his life as a fraud and his inability to change this aspect of himself because he believes everything he does including the telling of this story to be fraudulent in that it is only designed to get people to respect and admire him. 

9) The Time Machine by H.G. Wells: classic science fiction tale about a man who goes to the future in a time machine and finds that humanity has evolved into two distinct and new species.

10) The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells: one of the best examples of a case in which a good book was made into a horrendous movie, this is the tale of a man stranded on a strange island inhabited by two men doing experiments in surgically creating sentient man-animal combinations.

11) The Rules of Influence by William D Crano: A fairly simple and useful look at the means by which people influence one another with a specific focus on how minorities (here defined as anyone whose either status or opinion is not shared by most) can have an effect upon the larger society of which they are apart.  Worth reading, but some parts feel overly repetitive in a way that made me feel the book could have been just as good maybe even better if it were shorter. 

12) The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky: a re-read for me.   One of those rare delights when both the book and the movie are well done.  The book is the story of a high school freshman with some emotional problems experiencing the joys and difficulties of adolescence, specifically the struggle to belong and the joys of friendship. 

13) How They See Us by various authors: a 2004 collection of essays written by non-American writers about how people of their countries view the USA.  Some are positive, some are negative, but most are fair, well-balanced arguments.

14) The Stranger by Albert Camus: the story of a man who seems to go through life experiences without much emotional feeling.  Such experiences include his mother’s death and a murder he commits.  I am convinced that the main character has something like Asperger’s syndrome, but it is unclear whether this could have been the author’s intention, as it was written before Asperger’s was a diagnosis. 

15) Wild Swans by Jung Chang: the true story of 3 generations of Chinese women that reads like part story, part memoir, part history.  It takes place from about 1920-1970 and focuses mostly on the reign of Mao Zedong through the perspective of the lives of the people affected by his rule.  Very informative, but largely filled with unjustified struggle, which makes for a fairly slow read. 

16) The Giver by Lois Lowry: the story of a society in which everyone’s role is assigned to them by their society.  The main character is assigned the role of Receiver, whose job it is to remember all of the things that the rest of the absurdly communist society has chosen to forget.  This includes experiences of both intense beauty and intense pain. 

17) Travelling Mercies by Anne Lamott: memoirs of a Christian woman’s imperfect journey toward and through faith that focuses more on her social relationships with friends and with her son than on anything else.  In other words it is a look at how imperfect yet beautiful people can be, and how one views the people important to them alongside and in the context of a faith that’s important to them.

18) The Book Thief by Markus Zusak: a WW2 era story focused on an adopted German girl living in a household that is hiding a Jewish fighter in the basement.  The most interesting part of the story for me was that it was narrated by Death, which was unique in that it is a rare 1^st person omniscient narrator, something I once tried and failed to accomplish fully in my own writing.  

19) Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom: memoirs of the time the author spends with his former professor during the last months of said professor’s life.  It’s a very quick read and covers the valuable subject matter of what is and is not important in life.

20) House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III: the story of three people all at the end of their rope trying to turn their lives around but getting in each other’s way.  The cool thing about this story is that it accomplishes the creation of character conflict without creating any villains.  These are all realistic people having realistic problems, and you can understand each of their perspectives, but their failure to understand each other is what drives the conflict rather than any sort of bad intention or evil. 

That’s it for this year.  Happy 2015 everybody, and happy reading.

Looking Toward Nature and Longing

Oh how I admire the bird
Who is rarely alone
And can comfort himself
On those rare occasions
By coasting among clouds.

And the ant I too admire,
For it is strong and gentle
And rarely alone--
And the elephant has those traits
Along with caring and trumpeting.

While the human can be any or all
Yet somehow manages
To be alone quite a lot
And to feel alone
Even when he's not.  

Risk

A touch of the hand, a sideways glance,
A good conversation, and--
"Would you like to dance?"
And, "Yes, of course," three glorious words--
Yet also remains my own hesitance.
Should I stay the course?
Or should I advance?
And if I advance how far do I go?
Want and fear wrapped around each other,
A flavorful mixture we call risk,
Which is a hard thing to do and
Perhaps harder not to,
For it is difficult to risk, to live,
Difficult to know, difficult to trust,
But it is easy to love if you can just
Learn to master even one of the above.

Love Is a Tricky Thing

Love is possibly the most overarchingly important, often thought of, and frequently misinterpreted concept in society.  To refer to it even using the word concept feels inadequate, incomplete-- but in an attempt to speak honestly about it one must treat it as a universal concept rather than a special subjective experience, for all too often this latter manner of presentation is what we see.  The subjective experience of love is what movies present us with.  It is what people talk about at weddings. As outside spectators in these situations, we naturally generalize, making the subjective into the universal.  In other words we see the couple getting married or the couple on screen as representative of love itself.  We then start to wonder-- worry, even-- why we have not experienced this universally good thing.  We get self-conscious and jealous.  We start actively seeking it-- but the problem arises when the love we seek is the subjective version we have observed as a third party in the church pew or the movie theater seat.  We are seeking something we don't-- and will never-- fully understand because it is the experience of someone else, of which we have obtained what is only (however beautiful) the merest glimpse.

If we base something as chiefly important as our experience of love on glimpses of a love from which we are separate, then we doom ourselves to incompletion by seeking only small parts of a much bigger whole.  We do this when we ask someone out simply because that's what we think we are supposed to do and hey, she's good-looking and relatively successful and it's been a while since we slept with anyone or even kissed anyone, and so-and-so met his wife in this same situation so hey, let's give it a shot.  We do this when we reject someone in the early stages for not being impressive enough or romantic enough or spontaneous enough or gender-normed enough (or when we try too hard to be all these things ourselves).  We do this whenever we want the sex we know others are having or when we want the weddings that others keep inviting us to without first experiencing the feelings, the struggles, the sheer amount of time that made up the parts of their experience that we did not see.  We want the climax of the film while forgetting all those unsexy moments that were left on the cutting room floor or even perhaps removed from the script altogether or not even considered in the first place by the writer who (at least in part, however earnest and heartfelt a person he may be) is trying to sell us on an image both beautiful enough to pay ten bucks to see and simple enough to be conveyed in an hour and a half.

Real love, universally and conceptually speaking, is not something that can be forced, controlled, or achieved.  It is a mindset-- an ongoing, ever-developing, always imperfect mindset that requires (somewhat paradoxically) a combination of self-awareness and selflessness.  You must know and value yourself, but you must love the world and the other people in it at least as much and, if possible, more.  And you have to be comfortable allowing the self and the world to intermingle-- you must willingly share yourself (and not just the straight facts but also the feelings, the insecurities, the details, the overwhelming questions of intense moral debate): you must laugh and cry in front of others.  You must take the risk of looking foolish for the greater purpose of being human.

Of course you cannot do these things to the point of being dominating or intimidating-- the sharing cannot be one-sided or it ends up producing its purpose's opposite: alienation. You must also actively seek to do things for and learn things from-- even draw things out of-- others.  You must truly value them not because of what they might do for you or how they might make you feel or to what degree they are "marriage material" but rather because of who they actually are, what they do, what they stand for.  To love someone is not to demonstrate your own value in order to impress, conquer, or even genuinely help the person for altruistic reasons.  Rather, it is to actively value someone else and to help them see their own value better-- to help them develop it further.  The desire to do this should drive any action or demonstration of your own value.

Mutual love then occurs when each party does this regularly-- when there is not pursuer and pursued, desire and object of desire, knight in shining armor and princess in high tower.  Mutual love is two people standing on the same unsteady ground, recognizing the unsteadiness yet finding beauty in it all the same and longing to find even more-- willing to risk losing themselves completely for the chance at something greater.

In one-sided love, the lover loses their sense of self completely and might not get it back.  The other party enjoys the benefits of their lover's love but eventually tires of it.  They may feel superior to the doting fool or intimidated by the intense romantic, but for whatever reason they choose not to reciprocate.  Some of the truly bitter breakups result from this; an uneven exchange of selves has occurred, and the split leaves both parties feeling off-balanced.

In pre-love dating, folks are hesitant to truly put themselves out there for fear of this damage, this loss, this altering of self, but ultimately this fear defeats the purpose of dating, which is after all an attempt to put an end to feelings of isolation and loneliness.  This hesitance results in the awkward silences of initial dates.  It results in that confused feeling of: hey, we're both attractive, successful people.  Why is there no chemistry here?  Or perhaps worse: the self-conscious assumption that it's your fault there is no chemistry, that you are uniquely flawed, ugly, and undesirable.  Or maybe even worse than that: blaming the other person for the awkwardness, judging them as boring or not trying hard enough or trying too hard or not immediately meeting every standard, qualification, and fancy that composes the character of your ideal lover.  In any case, many dates fail to get off the ground because of a person's unwillingness to really release control of the situation.

In mutual love it does not matter if one person loses their self in the other because the other is doing the same thing.  They have each taken on the care of and responsibility for the self of the other, which means that identity is then maintained without isolation.

But of course that sort of trusting, selfless love takes time and ongoing practice-- and it's okay to want to be liked, to try to be impressive, to want to be wanted.  But you also have to take risks, put yourself out there in a way that some people may find offensive or strange or unimpressively imperfect.   And if someone puts their self out there in front of you, try being open-minded.  Try to embrace and join them in their risk.  It will not always work, but neither will love if you don't at least try.

Support

If the keystone were to fall
So too would the others,
But it does not
So they do not
And because they do not
It cannot,
And as a result
The rest of us gain
A lovely space to pass through.

A Certain Kind of Ache

There is a certain kind of ache
Which lingers
Felt by the brain--
Though the hand may search in vain
The weary feel it,
As do the restless
(No, these are not the same thing)--
As do those who remain
Too focused for too long.

It is impossible to grasp
Yet impossible to ignore,
For it nags like a child
Or the question of whether or not
You did in fact lock the door
Or the feeling of missing out
Or seeing too much--
It hurts the way the sun can,
The way you can't stop
Poking a bruise,
The way it feels thinking about
That person who almost loved you.

There is no real end for this poem--
Not an intended one,
For there is no real way
Of ending the pain
Without first finding the source,
And in this poem's case
The ache and the source
Are the same.

2013 Reading List

Happy belated New Year!  Here you will find descriptions of all the books I read in their entirety last year.  It wasn't as good a reading year for me as was 2012, so whereas I simply listed the largely enjoyable 2012 list in the order I read them, I will group the 2013 list by the degree of enjoyment.  Not that the less enjoyed group of books was bad... (I did finish them).  It's just that for varying reasons I don't think they are universally good recommendations.  Either I enjoyed them but most people won't, or I hated them but others might like them, or in a few cases they really are just bad.  Within each group, the order is mostly still chronological rather than a ranking.

Books I Recommend

1)  The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare: One of the lighter, more entertaining Shakespearean plays in which I don't think anyone dies!  A lot of classic archetypes like the woman using a test to determine which of her suitors is worthy of her.  The play is especially interesting when looked at from the perspective of antisemitism and how the Jewish characters are portrayed.  I believe I read somewhere that this play was quoted and referenced in later years by people who sought to vilify Jews.

2) The Tempest by William Shakespeare: Another of Shakespeare's better comedies.  I read and saw this one performed, and both experiences were pleasant.  This was the last play he ever wrote, and if you read the last monologue with this in mind it seems to be a farewell speech not just by the main character but also by Shakespeare himself.  

3) I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb: I am a big fan of longer, character driven stories, which this is.  In simple terms it is about a man who must continue to live his life despite the struggles he faces, the biggest of which are a schizophrenic twin brother coupled with a personal need to always be the strong one in the family.  

4) Doubletakes by various authors and compiled by T. Coraghessan Boyle: A collection of pairs of short stories by thirty different writers.  I would personally recommend Barthelme, Bender, Coover, Davis, Gaitskill, Moore, O'brien, Saunders, and Wolff the most, though nearly all works within are of significant value.  

5) Pricksongs and Descants by Robert Coover: a very post-modern collection of short stories with extremely unique structure, style, and subject matter.  Examples include "The Brother," a re-telling of the story of Noah's ark from the perspective of someone who doesn't get on the ark or "The Babysitter," which changes perspective every paragraph to the point where you lose track of which events are actually happening and which events are fantasies.  

6) Animal Farm by George Orwell:  This was one of three re-reads for me this year.  It is the tale of the first ever farm run by animals for animals, and it is meant to parallel the rise and failure of Communism in Russia.  

7) Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck: This is the tale of George and Lenny, two buddies seeking work during hard economic times.  It's got some great commentary on loyalty and loneliness.

8) All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque: My favorite book of the year, this is the tale of the common German soldier during World War I.  Great depictions of how value systems change as a result of extreme circumstances.  Unique in its focus on the side that eventually lost.  Amazing scene of terror and survival when the main character gets lost in no man's land and can't tell which side is his and which is the enemy's.  

9) Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis: A series of letters from a senior demon to a junior demon concerning the best ways to go about corrupting souls.  Some great commentary on faith, good vs. evil, and relative goodness/evilness.  

10) Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller: portrayal of a man (and his family) set on greatness, on the American Dream, on being liked by everyone, on starting with nothing and becoming something.  He is set on this, and teaches them to be, but is starting to realize failure.  Is the fault in himself or in a society that misled him?

11) Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman: A re-read of one of my favorite 2012 books, this is a collection of very short stories in each of which time functions in a unique way.  For full review go here: http://uglinessandinspiration.blogspot.com/2012/02/einsteins-dreams.html.

12) Othello by William Shakespeare: The tale of a man tricked into jealousy and violence as a result of his own insecurities.  I recommend this mainly because of Iago, one of the best literary villains ever.  He is such an ingenious asshole who is enemy to all but perceived as the truest of friends.

13) Seeking Common Ground by David Tyack:  This book provides a history of education in America and a strong examination of what a truly democratic education should look like vs. what our education system actually looks like.  Of particular interest to me were chapters 3 and 4 concerning the challenges of educating diverse populations.

The Rest of the Books:

14) King Lear by William Shakespeare: My least favorite Shakespeare play because who are you supposed to empathize with?  Every main character is a terrible, overly flawed and unlikable person.  The best character doesn't even get a name.  He is simply called the Fool, and he disappears halfway through.  

15) Henry V by William Shakespeare: It's got some famous lines, but mostly it's just boring.  Henry goes to war, the French underestimate him, and he wins despite terrible odds.  That's all that happens.  

16) The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare: My second least favorite Shakespeare play.  Few likable characters, though unlike King Lear you don't have to endure any of them for very long.  Also it's just really cheesy.

17) Safe House by Chris Ewan: Sort of a mystery thriller.  Enjoyable at the time, but I've already forgotten most of what it was about.  

18) These Things Happen by Richard Kramer: This is about the son of a gay man whose best friend has also just come out of the closet.  It's about love in spite of unusual family structure.  It starts out strong but drags toward the end.  

19) The Lightning Thief by Rich Riordan: kind of poorly written young adult fiction about the half-mortal children of gods.  It reads quickly, but too quickly.  I was never invested enough to stop as a result of some meaningful thought or emotion to be contemplated. It's all plot.  The first of a series that did not compel me to read the second.

20) The Magicians by Lev Grossman: sort of a more angst-y version of Harry Potter.  A teenager find out he has an aptitude for magic and gets into a super secret school for magicians.  But magic doesn't prove to be all fun and fantasy.  It's a lot of hard work.  The story is really more about growing up than about magic-- but not in the "Oh man, I went through that" kind of way. It's more like, "Man this kid sure whines a lot." 

21) Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov: Most of my colleagues hated this book because it seems to suggest that teaching is a procedural thing easily broken down into steps that can be applied to any student body.  However, it does provide some helpful and detailed strategies for accomplishing very specific goals within the classroom.  It's kind of like a teacher's playbook.

22) Whistling Vivaldi by Claude M. Steele:  This book details the very interesting topic of stereotype threat by using the very boring style of in-depth step-by-step description of research methods.  Stereotype threat is a situation in which a person perceives that they are being stereotyped and as a result of their anxiety about this they end up feeding into the stereotype.  Super interesting concept, but you can read just the beginning and end of the book and you'll get the gist.  The middle is mostly pedantic fine-tuning of research strategies.

23) The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: The psychological tale of how one sin weighs on the lives of three different people.  This book has value and probably belongs on the other list, but it just seems too predictable to me.  I am probably just over-saturated after having spent a month and a half teaching it to students who mostly hated it.  If you like character-based, in-depth examinations of souls and value systems, this book is a good choice for you.  

24) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz:  A lot of people really like this book, but it just didn't do it for me.  I found myself a lot more interested in the narrator, Yunior, and in the historical details about the Dominican Republic than in the actual main character Oscar or anyone in Oscar's family whom the story surrounds.  I didn't get what was wondrous about his life.  He didn't seem to do much of anything with it, and then when he finally does try to do something he gets beaten to death.  There's probably something metaphorical or allegorical going on there that I'm missing.

That's it for this year.  As always there were several books I read part of that were not included in the list.  If you want further details on any of the books or want to recommend me something, please do so.  Peace.

From He Who Sees and Feels

To She Who Lives

Eyes lit up

Like a Jack-o-Lantern

With all the glory

Of a much-loved holiday

And the story—

The story of who did this

And why…

And what happened

Leading up to it?

And the fire, the passion,

The glow, the aura—

The thing that makes children’s guts

Flutter with anticipation

And laugh with glee.

But these eyes are better than those

For they contain twenty-five years.

They contain turmoil and victory

And joy and sadness

And life.

They move with wonder

And widen with surprise

And belong to the land of the living

Rather than some plucked and mangled fruit.

They see and they seek and they see some more

And are all the better for it

As are we—

For in the looking,

In the process of it all,

There happen a great many things

Regardless of whether

What’s sought is found

For the seeking is the finding—

For all is good and all is worthy

In the eyes of one who knows

Why they’re looking.

To She Who Builds

A deck takes shape

Behind my childhood home

Where the crumbling patio used to be

And a woman looks on with satisfaction

And pronounces it good, this transaction—

For on it she will sit

With the fruits of life’s labor:

Two twenty-somethings

Home for the holidays,

Or a trio of long-known souls

Drinking glasses in hand

And smiles at the ready,

Or a dog who runs slower now

But wags her tail just as fast,

Or a small group of worshipers

Supporting and praying,

Some leaving, some staying—

All loving and saying,

“This is it, my friend,

And it is enough so don’t worry.

Though the memories may wander

Or shrivel and fizz,

It has not been in vain.

No life that loves is.”

To She Who Touches

A framed photograph hangs

On the white hallway wall

Next to several others.

To an outsider they may tell a story

Just as easily as they may not,

But were we to enter the image itself

Then turn one hundred eighty degrees

We would see a young woman,

Face concealed, hand on a trigger,

Looking and waiting—

Waiting for what?  I don’t know,

Perhaps a secret of the trade:

The lifting of a chin or

The picking up of a breeze or

The accentuation or elimination

Of some shade of contrast or

Some gut feeling that things are right

Or beautifully wrong or

Simply, mysteriously, incomprehensibly

Beautiful.

Such a person remains concealed—

For self-revelation is not written

Into the job description;

And yet

Such a person’s touch is felt

When the lonely are comforted

Or when the happy feel gratitude

Or when the forgotten are remembered.

When feuding friends realize

They’ve made it through worse,

When friends who’ve lost touch

Pick up the phone,

And when weary lovers rediscover

All those little things they love,

The young woman is at work—

And neither they nor she

May realize the extent to which

Their lives have linked,

But we might just if only

We could enter the image

And look around.

To He Who Ventures

A man sits in the passenger seat

Perhaps wearing a baseball cap

Or perhaps cap-less,

Wind tousling his hair,

Or maybe the window is up?

I am not sure, for I am not there.

No, this man has left me

Or rather we’ve parted ways healthily,

Each on a journey of our own now

Connected as family are,

But apart as are those

Who must yearn.

It is never too late

To get a fresh start

And all things are good

With ‘yes’ in your heart—

The future be damned!

It’s not even real.

Instead let’s travel, let’s love,

Let’s explore, let’s listen to the crickets,

Let’s watch the snow fall, let’s tell stories,

Let’s do all the things

We always said we would.

The Compass is Either Spinning or Non-existant

The intensity of experience
Is often too much--
Or near enough to it
To make one lose touch,
Lose faith, lose track,
Get lost at sea...
Where most things are subject
To chance and relativity,
And thoughts are exchanged
For mindless activity--
And also as easily...
A sea-storm of thought
Induces paralysis.

So in such stormy times
When currents are strong--
Of this situation
I provide this analysis:
Whether riding the waves
Or getting beaten down,
You face three choices:
Learn to swim,
Hold your breath,
Or drown.

Identity and Its Effect on Worldview

Most people form their identities in significant part through their membership and association with various groups (such as white people, Christians, students, doctors, parents, Democrats, soldiers, sports fans, etc.)  They build self-esteem through associations with these groups and often through the exclusion of non-members/ disassociation from members of groups to which they do not belong.  This occurs because people who share our views tend to support us in these views and people who hold differing views tend to challenge what we have believed up until this point.  So in general we befriend those who make us feel comfortable and right, avoiding those who make us feel uncomfortable and uninformed.

I reject this.  I find value in befriending people who are different from me because I can learn more from them.  It is an endeavor that requires much more effort, of course, because of the difficulty of finding a middle ground, a common interest that will help ignite passionate discussion and eliminate awkwardness.  It is more valuable, though, because it promotes open-mindedness to the possibility that there is more out there and that these yet undiscovered things can be good rather than feared, hated, or viewed with contempt.

If you surround yourself only with like-minded individuals, you will have a lot of fun and live quite comfortably.  But you will never be challenged and you will never grow.  You will never change the world because you never dared to take a real look at it.