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.

What to Do When the World is Ending

If I knew the world would end this week, I’d propose to someone special.  If they said no, I’d keep proposing until somebody said yes.  I’d quit my job, then travel cross country seeing all of the people that I miss and all of the places I haven’t made it to yet.  If there’s still time after the U.S.A. I’d plunge down into Central America.  I’d try to speak Spanish again.  I’d sky dive.  I’d go streaking.  I’d drive really fast.  I’d do all the things that are often dismissed for being too risky or too time consuming or too expensive.  They are this way when you have time, but when that luxury is taken, other luxuries become available—the luxury of not needing to plan ahead.

If I knew it was all ending, I’d still write.  I’d still sing.  I’d still hike through the woods on sunny days and go for jogs on rainy ones.  I’d drink more coffee and less beer because I want to be alert for oblivion.  I’d still try to be friendly and helpful to all people.  I’d still read, though I might choose shorter works.  I’d keep doing all the things I already love because true love doesn’t change even when everything else does. 

And if a week passed and we were all still here—if two weeks, three weeks, a year go by and the world turns out to not be finished after all—I don’t think I’d be disappointed.  I wouldn’t be regretful.  The world would be intact, as would I, and those two facts alone are worth celebrating.  Plus there’d be pictures and memories: me in freefall, me in a sombrero, me hugging my best friend, us pushing my car to a service station, someone saying yes, someone saying thank you. Yep, I think things would be just fine.  I’d smile and pay my speeding tickets, then see about getting my job back.  I mean, hey, I only quit because the world was ending.  Surely they’d understand. 

But even if they didn’t, I’d be okay.  Because I’d still have skills and drive and integrity and the support of my loved ones.  And time.  Lots and lots of time. Yeah, if handled the right way, the end of the world is a win-win situation.

“But wait a minute!” you might say.  “You left out all the bad stuff that’ll happen.  If the world’s ending, people will go crazy.  They’ll throw off their inhibitions and start doing all this bad stuff because they know they won’t have to suffer the consequences, at least not for very long.   They’ll riot, rape, steal, and destroy.  They’ll destroy everything because it’s all going down anyway.  How will you do all that stuff you want to do when things are so dangerous?”  But that is not the world we live in.  I reject the idea of a world where everyone is just one step away from being a sociopath. 

Sure, some people might make that choice. But what if we don’t?  What if we choose not to reach for weapons?   What if those who were holding weapons put them down?  What if the time before the world ends is the most peaceful in human history?  Is it such a crazy thing to ask?  To just let go of conflict and enjoy the last week of existence?  And if this is a crazy thing to ask, what does that say about us? Are we so full of hate that we can’t wait a week for our enemies to die along with us?  They have to go now?  If this is our mindset, then we are deserving of destruction. 

This piece seems to have taken a turn towards the negative.  Things usually do when the world is ending.  Watch any disaster movie.  But the question I’m putting forth is: Why does it have to be that way?  The world is what we make of it.  That’s true now, and it’ll be true at the end.  So let’s make something good. 

She Really Did Mean To

Penelope Hunt really did mean to paint when she got home from school that day.  On the way home she had purchased three new canvases and eight fresh bottles of paint and her head was so chock full of ideas that it was almost too much for her to keep focused on the road because man, what her teacher had said was so inspiring and made her want to inspire others so that they too could feel the way that she felt!  But when she got home, Tommy called her to go out and he was the first boy she ever let touch her and he was very popular and handsome and he had a scholarship to a good school so she didn’t want to let him down because he was what her mother called “a keeper” and given that her father had run away on them, a keeper sounded like a pretty good thing so she went out with Tommy and ended up staying at his place really late so that when she got home she just collapsed into bed and slept for like twelve hours.      

            When Penelope woke up the next day she had a 103 degree fever, nausea and a headache, so she spent pretty much the whole weekend laying in bed watching the TV her brother moved into her room for her and vomiting into a bucket telling her mother to please not cook her any food because it only made it worse.  By Monday she felt good enough to go to school and a good thing too because it was finals week and she was so close to graduating with a perfect GPA and now was no time to mess it up on account of some silly illness.  So she hit the books hard, both in school and out of school, eating and studying simultaneously, only stopping occasionally to sleep or go to the bathroom or talk on the phone with Tommy, and not painting because she had turned in her final for art already so that she could focus on the harder classes, and it paid off too because she aced all her finals and graduated at the top of her class.  So then it was time to focus on writing her valedictorian speech and on preparing for the summer marketing internship her uncle got her which started a week after graduation, and soon enough graduation happened and her speech went great and she was invited to all the popular kids’ graduation parties, then she started her internship which was challenging yet rewarding and in July she lost her virginity to Tommy and was very convinced she was in love with him but then he dumped her in August and she spent much of that month on the couch watching TV and thinking of excuses to keep from having to go to work.

            Then it was August 20 and it was time to go away to college which was new and exciting enough to pull Penelope at least partially out of her slump and get back to her usual overachieving ways so she packed up, got in the van with her mother and brother, and drove the three hours it took to get to what would become her new hometown.  She brought along her clothes, her computer, three towels, two sets of bed linens, a hygiene kit, a set of dishes and utensils, the textbooks she was able to locate on EBay, a backpack, a case of Ramen noodles, her iPod, and two framed photos (one of her best friends at prom and one of her family from their last vacation), but because dorm rooms are small and Penelope had an unknown roommate on whom she wanted to make a good impression by not infringing upon her side of the room—because of this the three still-blank canvases and the unopened bottles of paint were left behind.  

            She started as an undecided major but her internship experience and her roommate Clara’s own interest in the field influenced her to major in marketing which she did and committed to and was great at, completing the four year program in three and a half years, landing a solid job afterward, and moving in with her then-boyfriend Donald whom she eventually married and stayed with.  And in all this time there were many occasions where Penelope experienced a desire to create art, but it wasn’t until she was pregnant with her first child that she felt that same rush of inspiration she had felt way back in her last weeks of high school.           

            It happened when they were deciding how to decorate the nursery and she had the idea of painting each wall herself with a scene from a famous children’s story.  She spent weeks drawing up sketches, buying the necessary supplies, and talking to experienced painters about the specific considerations for such an endeavor.  But right when she was ready to begin painting, somewhere in the middle of the third trimester, she went into early labor and gave birth to a tiny but healthy baby boy whom she loved dearly and named Adam, and the exhaustion that only new mothers know combined with a particular knowledge of the psychological effects of exposure to certain colors and the worry that paint fumes would be dangerous to her premature baby, Penelope decided to just put up some blue wallpaper instead because wallpaper doesn’t generate fumes and because blue is supposed to be soothing.

            It’s been said that once you have kids, your life is no longer yours; it must be devoted to them.  This was true for Penelope.  She did have her own life, but she also ended up having four kids, for whom and with whom there was always something else to be done all through their early years into their teenage years and college careers, all the way through to when they started having their own kids, her grandchildren, one of which is me and it wasn’t until she got the shakes real bad and was diagnosed with the disease (four months the doctor gave her) that she again felt that intense inspiration to make art that would change people.  

            I was still a kid and she was living in our guest bedroom at this point when one day, a week or so after the diagnosis, two men arrived carrying an enormous wall-sized canvas.  “Upstairs, please!  First door on the right!” she told them.  When they had left, she sat us all down and told us that she was going into her room to paint and that no one under any circumstances should disturb her.  She then had me carry several jugs of water and a giant box of granola up to her room.  These I sat next to her table where already gathered were several sketching pencils, two stacks of paper, and a plethora of paints and brushes.  She then kissed me on my cheek and gently pushed me out of the room, shutting and locking the door behind her.  Over the next week I caught sight of grandma only three times as she crept from her room to the bathroom and back, but on the 7^th day I literally bumped into her as she turned the corner of the hallway.  She was startled, and dropped several of the sketches she had been carrying, which I then picked up and handed back, admiring her work as I did so.  When I handed her the pile, she promptly walked downstairs and threw every last sketch into a lit fireplace.  “I am finished,” she said.

            Penelope never re-entered that room and it remained locked for the rest of her life, two months as it turned out, which was spent mostly on our living room couch.  When she passed, she left a note telling us all that she loved us and that the key was in her left pocket.  At this point we were all pretty broken up and hoping for some inspiration, so we hastened to her room to behold what she had done with her week of laboring on that canvas.  What we found was not a detailed illustration of her life or a portrait of her closest friends and family.  Nor was there some trite maxim scrawled out in big bold letters.  None of the scenes from the childhood stories she had so long ago sketched out made it on.  There were no epic battles, loving embraces, abstract allegories, or beautiful landscapes.      

            No, what we discovered was eighty square feet of white canvas.  It was blank… or almost blank.  After closer inspection I discovered, way down in the bottom right corner where the author’s signature would be, an inscription. It read: Try Harder.

           

            My family argued for a while about exactly what this meant and about what we should do with this giant canvas, our grandma’s artistic legacy, which was taking up an entire wall of our guest room.  I don’t really remember what all they talked about as I was still fairly young and a lot of it went right over my head.  But back when I was picking grandma’s sketches off the floor for her, I actually hid one when she wasn’t looking, and I still have it to this day.  It’s quite good.