Meals
Meals are hard for me.
I remember a time; I was about sixteen, when all I would eat were hostess Suzy-Q’s.
I remember the last time I sat down to a dinner at which I was expected to eat meat. It was at a friend’s house. His mother served a full ham. I can’t even begin to describe how awkward that meal was.
There is something about eating that is very personal to me. Meals will linger with me for weeks, months, even years. I can remember a cheese dip I ate at a church social I had twenty years ago. Most of the food was fruit suspended in a Jell-O compound. The dip was exceptional. I have thought about it so often I can tell you exactly what it was made of.
My greatest memory of food is my grandmother’s apple pie. She died, taking the recipe with her. But through trial and error, I am very close to recreating it. Some meals demand perfection.
The other day my wife gave birth to our fourth daughter. Almost immediately offers of food began to pour in.
Questions were asked. What do you eat?
How do I begin to answer?
I will eat a sunny side egg, but only if it is cooked for 3 minutes and 45 seconds. Any longer and it is burnt. This is a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea. I am a sane man living in a crazy persons body.
I eat fish. But I abhor river fish.
Beets are evil. Sushi is good.
Salad is safe.
One friend offers her famous chicken Parmesan. My reply “that sounds awesome.”
How can I explain that while I will never eat this dish, I love the idea of it, I know my wife will love it, and I especially want my children to have it.
Once, at a restaurant, I ordered an appetizer. I took a bite and discovered it was full of lamb. Rather than spitting it out, I finished it. My wife looked at me. “What are you doing?” she asked. I didn’t know. I spit out the bite and struggled to finish my dinner.
Tonight I cooked Chinese for the family. Sweet and sour chicken and beef with broccoli. I will never taste the meal I have prepared. Self-consciously I ask. “Was it any good?” Everyone raves. I cannot be so sure.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
And we are off...
Well, the first week of class is over. Syllabi have been handed out, preliminary assignments made. The students have already begun, knowingly or unknowingly, to test the boundaries of the rules. A few have dropped the class after the first day, others have been added late. Some miss the first day, only to show up on the second and then vanish on the third. One or two have come into the wrong class, only to realize their mistake too late and leave abruptly. Most sit silently staring ahead, like passengers on a long bus ride, unsure of the trip or their destination.
You can always tell the sprinters from the distance runners. The sprinters come out early, asking questions, firing away at rules and material alike. Soon they are sated, as they lean back and sit restfully, content that they have established themselves in the hierarchy of classroom politics. The distance runners are more cautious. Not to be confused with the rest of the rank and file, they too ask questions, probe the steadfastness of yours truly, then retreat, like a bashful hermit crab, to the safety of shell and silence, only to venture out again, later, after the tide has turned.
I think it is going to be an interesting year. After a few false starts with my honors class, which was eventually dissolved into an “ordinary” Art Appreciation class, my schedule has settled into alternating Art Appreciation and Art History classes. The students seem eager, but each class differs widely in personality. As if the body of students makes up a solitary individual, who, like the proverbial Goliath, has to be stared down across the field of battle, sized up and strategy made before a humble David can proceed.
While there are perhaps many ways to teach art, I like to approach it as an opportunity to challenge preconceived notions of seeing the world. To teach students about their own cultural biases, and to offer them tools to, if not shed, then at least peer around these roadblocks to seeing. Like the old adage “Teach a man to fish and you can feed him for life.” I suppose I could beat the dry facts into them for a day or two, only to have the information lost within a half an hour of test taking, or I can show them how to look at art, in which case they may never see the world the same way again... I know. I know. But I can dream, can’t I?
You can always tell the sprinters from the distance runners. The sprinters come out early, asking questions, firing away at rules and material alike. Soon they are sated, as they lean back and sit restfully, content that they have established themselves in the hierarchy of classroom politics. The distance runners are more cautious. Not to be confused with the rest of the rank and file, they too ask questions, probe the steadfastness of yours truly, then retreat, like a bashful hermit crab, to the safety of shell and silence, only to venture out again, later, after the tide has turned.
I think it is going to be an interesting year. After a few false starts with my honors class, which was eventually dissolved into an “ordinary” Art Appreciation class, my schedule has settled into alternating Art Appreciation and Art History classes. The students seem eager, but each class differs widely in personality. As if the body of students makes up a solitary individual, who, like the proverbial Goliath, has to be stared down across the field of battle, sized up and strategy made before a humble David can proceed.
While there are perhaps many ways to teach art, I like to approach it as an opportunity to challenge preconceived notions of seeing the world. To teach students about their own cultural biases, and to offer them tools to, if not shed, then at least peer around these roadblocks to seeing. Like the old adage “Teach a man to fish and you can feed him for life.” I suppose I could beat the dry facts into them for a day or two, only to have the information lost within a half an hour of test taking, or I can show them how to look at art, in which case they may never see the world the same way again... I know. I know. But I can dream, can’t I?
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Baby "Elle"
Elliott Jane was born on Monday Night, 7 lb. 14 oz. and 21 in.
More pictures of the birth and family can be seen at my sisters blog, (she's the one who has been taking all of the pictures.)
Saturday, August 23, 2008
something old, something new
Lying in bed last night I picked up Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis (1946) and flipped it open to the chapter on Rabelais. Erich Auerbach wrote in Mimesis that the revolutionary thing about Rabelais' way of thinking "is not his opposition to Christianity, but the freedom of vision, feeling and thought which his perpetual playing with things produces, and which invites the reader to deal directly with the world and its wealth of phenomena. On one point, to be sure, Rabelais takes a stand, and it is a stand which is basically anti-Christian; for him, the man who follows his nature is good, and natural life, be it of men or things, is good."
“Wow.” I thought, “Rabelais is the first post modern thinker.” On that thought, J. came in and turned off the light and we settled into slumber, but not before I decided that I had once again discovered an instance where past and future have overlapped, knowledge that was once common, had been lost, and I had rediscovered it (Or at least Auerbach had). Postmodernism did not start in the 1950’s. It started in the 1500’s.
I have a secret penchant for discovering knowledge that was forgotten and then rediscovered. The Archimedes Palimpsest showed how Archimedes was able to solve problems that would now be treated by integral calculus, which was formally invented in the seventeenth century by Newton and Leibniz, working independently, and solved a problem in his “Method” that is the calculation of the volume of a cylindrical wedge, that reappears in the 1600’s as theorem XVII (schema XIX) of Kepler's Stereometria. One of my favorites is this website dedicated to unraveling the secret of Egyptian pyramid construction and demonstrates how Archimedes' lever is employed to move 20 ton blocks with ease.
Alas, when I woke this morning it occurred to me that while Rabelais may be the great grand father of Postmodernism in the same way that Hieronymus Bosch is the Great Grand daddy of surrealism, by the time Auerbach was writing in the 1950’s there was already a dominance of formalist trends in western culture. Signs of what we call Postmodernism were already floating about in the ether that fills the halls of academia. Auerbach sees in Rabelais, (and Abraham and three thousand years of literature) a kind of realism, in part, because that is what he was trained to see. Which isn’t to say that his Masterpiece Mimesis isn’t an amazing contribution to critical thought, rather it is one that reshapes our vision of the past, and brings it up to date and launches it into the future…
There is definitely a part two to this post, I just can think what it is right now. Perhaps a cup of coffee and a shower are all I need and I can look at this renewed and refreshed. Perhaps then I can look at how, Duchamp revisits Alchemy and Picasso revisits African masks and how so much of what we think of as new knowledge is really just old knowledge recast in a new light. Or maybe i just said it? Who knows. Now, off to that coffee maker.
“Wow.” I thought, “Rabelais is the first post modern thinker.” On that thought, J. came in and turned off the light and we settled into slumber, but not before I decided that I had once again discovered an instance where past and future have overlapped, knowledge that was once common, had been lost, and I had rediscovered it (Or at least Auerbach had). Postmodernism did not start in the 1950’s. It started in the 1500’s.
I have a secret penchant for discovering knowledge that was forgotten and then rediscovered. The Archimedes Palimpsest showed how Archimedes was able to solve problems that would now be treated by integral calculus, which was formally invented in the seventeenth century by Newton and Leibniz, working independently, and solved a problem in his “Method” that is the calculation of the volume of a cylindrical wedge, that reappears in the 1600’s as theorem XVII (schema XIX) of Kepler's Stereometria. One of my favorites is this website dedicated to unraveling the secret of Egyptian pyramid construction and demonstrates how Archimedes' lever is employed to move 20 ton blocks with ease.
Alas, when I woke this morning it occurred to me that while Rabelais may be the great grand father of Postmodernism in the same way that Hieronymus Bosch is the Great Grand daddy of surrealism, by the time Auerbach was writing in the 1950’s there was already a dominance of formalist trends in western culture. Signs of what we call Postmodernism were already floating about in the ether that fills the halls of academia. Auerbach sees in Rabelais, (and Abraham and three thousand years of literature) a kind of realism, in part, because that is what he was trained to see. Which isn’t to say that his Masterpiece Mimesis isn’t an amazing contribution to critical thought, rather it is one that reshapes our vision of the past, and brings it up to date and launches it into the future…
There is definitely a part two to this post, I just can think what it is right now. Perhaps a cup of coffee and a shower are all I need and I can look at this renewed and refreshed. Perhaps then I can look at how, Duchamp revisits Alchemy and Picasso revisits African masks and how so much of what we think of as new knowledge is really just old knowledge recast in a new light. Or maybe i just said it? Who knows. Now, off to that coffee maker.
Friday, August 22, 2008
The Ferryman
So, if you know you are making yourself crazy, how do you stop? I know that I have blogged more than once about the insanity that is my graduate school program. I fear in reality that it is little different from any other, and that the insanity is mine. The truth is that so many things make me crazy, traffic, children’s toys that play repetitive songs, trying to remember whose turn it is to do the dishes. Serenity is stolen from me at every turn.
I imagine even the Buddha had his moments of disquiet thinking. I love the scene in Hesse’s Siddhartha when he is confronted by the irascibility of his own son. Siddhartha tries as hard as he can to make his son happy and to show him how to live a good life, nonetheless he finds his son filled with rage. Still, this does not prevent Siddhartha from trying to make his son see the error of his ways. Siddhartha is blinded by love, and he ignores something he already knows: Everyone must follow his own voice to enlightenment. He has learned for himself that no one can teach enlightenment, and that enlightenment must be found within.
“He remembered how once, as a youth, he had compelled his father to let him go and join the ascetic, how he had taken leave of him, how he had gone and never returned. Had not his father also suffered the same pain that he was now suffering for his son?”
Although Siddhartha is blinded by love for his son, he is eventually able to realize that he, like his son, had to rebel against his father and make his own way. Siddhartha is able to adjust to this realization through the counsel of his friend, Vasudeva, and is eventually able to let go of his expectations he has for his son. Vasuveda is there to counsel his friend and offer guidance. Siddhartha has maintained that a journey toward peace and enlightenment must come from within, but is unable to recognize his own shortcomings. Vasudeva points out Siddhartha's contradiction of his own beliefs and is thus able to offer some peace.
So, I am driving long, listening to the crazy voice inside my head telling me how I am doing everything in school wrong, and how the faculty is against me, when suddenly it occurs to me that I need to check this experience out with someone who (this is important) has had the same experience.
I picked up the phone and called a fellow grad student and said, “What are you doing.” And she said, “Why are you calling?” and once I laid it out for her, she fully understood, and for once, I fully understood myself. I cannot do all of this myself. I need help
“The layman thinks, ``by myself was this done; in every work, great or small, let them refer to me''. Such is the ambition of the fool; his desires and pride increase. – The Dhammapada
Although Vasudeva is often described in divine terms, he does not maintain the power relationship that would typically exist between student and teacher, or between the divine and the mortal. Unlike a teacher who would have to stay behind to continue teaching others, When Vasudeva departs, Siddhartha is his equal. He has guided Siddhartha to his final destination and can now depart.
I suppose I should say something keen about sponsorship or friendship, or even misery loves company. Alas all I have is, sometimes it doesn’t matter so much that I share my grievances with others, as much as I share it with the right other, one who has had the same experience, maybe even someone who has been where I want to go and knows how to get there. Anyway, I got a lot a relief from this conversation.
I imagine even the Buddha had his moments of disquiet thinking. I love the scene in Hesse’s Siddhartha when he is confronted by the irascibility of his own son. Siddhartha tries as hard as he can to make his son happy and to show him how to live a good life, nonetheless he finds his son filled with rage. Still, this does not prevent Siddhartha from trying to make his son see the error of his ways. Siddhartha is blinded by love, and he ignores something he already knows: Everyone must follow his own voice to enlightenment. He has learned for himself that no one can teach enlightenment, and that enlightenment must be found within.
“He remembered how once, as a youth, he had compelled his father to let him go and join the ascetic, how he had taken leave of him, how he had gone and never returned. Had not his father also suffered the same pain that he was now suffering for his son?”
Although Siddhartha is blinded by love for his son, he is eventually able to realize that he, like his son, had to rebel against his father and make his own way. Siddhartha is able to adjust to this realization through the counsel of his friend, Vasudeva, and is eventually able to let go of his expectations he has for his son. Vasuveda is there to counsel his friend and offer guidance. Siddhartha has maintained that a journey toward peace and enlightenment must come from within, but is unable to recognize his own shortcomings. Vasudeva points out Siddhartha's contradiction of his own beliefs and is thus able to offer some peace.
So, I am driving long, listening to the crazy voice inside my head telling me how I am doing everything in school wrong, and how the faculty is against me, when suddenly it occurs to me that I need to check this experience out with someone who (this is important) has had the same experience.
I picked up the phone and called a fellow grad student and said, “What are you doing.” And she said, “Why are you calling?” and once I laid it out for her, she fully understood, and for once, I fully understood myself. I cannot do all of this myself. I need help
“The layman thinks, ``by myself was this done; in every work, great or small, let them refer to me''. Such is the ambition of the fool; his desires and pride increase. – The Dhammapada
Although Vasudeva is often described in divine terms, he does not maintain the power relationship that would typically exist between student and teacher, or between the divine and the mortal. Unlike a teacher who would have to stay behind to continue teaching others, When Vasudeva departs, Siddhartha is his equal. He has guided Siddhartha to his final destination and can now depart.
I suppose I should say something keen about sponsorship or friendship, or even misery loves company. Alas all I have is, sometimes it doesn’t matter so much that I share my grievances with others, as much as I share it with the right other, one who has had the same experience, maybe even someone who has been where I want to go and knows how to get there. Anyway, I got a lot a relief from this conversation.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Anonymity
I woke up this morning thinking about the nature of Anonymity. One of the twelve traditions talks about anonymity in this way: “Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.” Those of you with inquiring minds might ask right away, how anonymity can be the spiritual foundation of a thing? Isn’t anonymity in AA just to prevent alcoholics from being “outed?” I don’t think that is what this saying is talking about. Rather than disavowing any one persons presence, anonymity allows an individual to subordinate their will to the spiritual strength of the group. It’s funny, I think of anonymity as, being anonymous with ourselves. Getting our personality out of the way so we can heal the quirks that make us unhealthy.
Anonymity in AA is something of a contradiction, because spiritual well being calls for a bit of soul searching and self reflection, while asking us to be mindful of how we relate to others. In some ways this tradition refers back to the first, “Our common Welfare should come first; personal progress for the greatest number depends on unity. Unity aids the healing process, allowing us to step outside of ourselves and view our lives though the group consciousness with selflessness and mindfulness. It reminds me of the idea of selfless action. I love the idea of selfless action in the Bhagavad Gita. I believe that selfless action is the core of anonymity, work done without expectations, motives, or thinking about outcomes that purify one's mind. These concepts are vividly described in the following verses from the Gita: "A person has the right towards action alone and not towards the fruit of action. Let not the fruit of action be the motive for acting. Also, Let there not be any attachment to inaction.”
Anyway, random searches of the Internet yielded a list of The 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Century. I was a little disheartened that I hadn’t read a lot of these, and of the ones I had read, I didn’t like half of them. I was interested in reading Simone Weil’s Waiting for God, but when I went to get my copy of what I thought were Weil’s essays off of my bookshelf, it turned out to be a copy of her biography instead. So now I have to run down a copy of that for my own edification. Apparently this essay is maintaining its anonymity for now.
My last struggle of the day has been to address what I feel to be a prejudice at my school. I was at an orientation meeting for new faculty the other day when I began discussing my continuing education towards my MFA with some of my peers. I told them of the difficulties I have been experiencing with my professors. A perfect example is the meeting I had last week to show my summer works to one of my professors. I told him that I had had some success in exhibiting this work over the summer. His response was to discourage me from showing my work calling it "a distraction," questioning my desire to exhibit my work. This is not the first time I have heard this language from the faculty, in fact many faculty members have frequently discouraged me from showing my work in outside venues. I was telling my story to my peers at my new job, their response was, “why are you taking this?”
It had never occurred to me to protest the seeming disparity I felt at the hands of my professors, encouraging some to show while berating others.. At a recent graduate meeting I heard the new chair of the department say that the primary focus of the graduate student should be to build a portfolio and an exhibition record. So I asked him, in light of these seeming contradictory messages, what is his position as the chair of the department on graduate exhibition outside of the auspices of the graduate program?
“Any time you can get exposure to the professional art community I would encourage you to go for it. I would discourage exhibiting for the sake of exhibiting.” Was his response.
My every cell screams at this kind of double talk. We want you to exhibit, but not to just exhibit. (Queue Scooby-Doo “Hurungh?”) Alas I have to let it go. Thank the dear chair for his kind response and suggest an opportunity to dialogue on this subject as some point in the future. Jenny sometimes says, “Let’s just mend the fence.” Meaning, we probably aren’t going to make a lot of headway on this subject tonight. Let’s just mend the fence and try to get some sleep. I think this is a good policy for inaction. Realizing that I can’t do everything I want to do in an instant. I can’t right a couple of years of wrongs over night, or even dispel a few dozen character defects in an instant. The best I can hope for is a bit of anonymity from myself, my fears, and the nagging thoughts of a persistent mind.
Anonymity in AA is something of a contradiction, because spiritual well being calls for a bit of soul searching and self reflection, while asking us to be mindful of how we relate to others. In some ways this tradition refers back to the first, “Our common Welfare should come first; personal progress for the greatest number depends on unity. Unity aids the healing process, allowing us to step outside of ourselves and view our lives though the group consciousness with selflessness and mindfulness. It reminds me of the idea of selfless action. I love the idea of selfless action in the Bhagavad Gita. I believe that selfless action is the core of anonymity, work done without expectations, motives, or thinking about outcomes that purify one's mind. These concepts are vividly described in the following verses from the Gita: "A person has the right towards action alone and not towards the fruit of action. Let not the fruit of action be the motive for acting. Also, Let there not be any attachment to inaction.”
Anyway, random searches of the Internet yielded a list of The 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Century. I was a little disheartened that I hadn’t read a lot of these, and of the ones I had read, I didn’t like half of them. I was interested in reading Simone Weil’s Waiting for God, but when I went to get my copy of what I thought were Weil’s essays off of my bookshelf, it turned out to be a copy of her biography instead. So now I have to run down a copy of that for my own edification. Apparently this essay is maintaining its anonymity for now.
My last struggle of the day has been to address what I feel to be a prejudice at my school. I was at an orientation meeting for new faculty the other day when I began discussing my continuing education towards my MFA with some of my peers. I told them of the difficulties I have been experiencing with my professors. A perfect example is the meeting I had last week to show my summer works to one of my professors. I told him that I had had some success in exhibiting this work over the summer. His response was to discourage me from showing my work calling it "a distraction," questioning my desire to exhibit my work. This is not the first time I have heard this language from the faculty, in fact many faculty members have frequently discouraged me from showing my work in outside venues. I was telling my story to my peers at my new job, their response was, “why are you taking this?”
It had never occurred to me to protest the seeming disparity I felt at the hands of my professors, encouraging some to show while berating others.. At a recent graduate meeting I heard the new chair of the department say that the primary focus of the graduate student should be to build a portfolio and an exhibition record. So I asked him, in light of these seeming contradictory messages, what is his position as the chair of the department on graduate exhibition outside of the auspices of the graduate program?
“Any time you can get exposure to the professional art community I would encourage you to go for it. I would discourage exhibiting for the sake of exhibiting.” Was his response.
My every cell screams at this kind of double talk. We want you to exhibit, but not to just exhibit. (Queue Scooby-Doo “Hurungh?”) Alas I have to let it go. Thank the dear chair for his kind response and suggest an opportunity to dialogue on this subject as some point in the future. Jenny sometimes says, “Let’s just mend the fence.” Meaning, we probably aren’t going to make a lot of headway on this subject tonight. Let’s just mend the fence and try to get some sleep. I think this is a good policy for inaction. Realizing that I can’t do everything I want to do in an instant. I can’t right a couple of years of wrongs over night, or even dispel a few dozen character defects in an instant. The best I can hope for is a bit of anonymity from myself, my fears, and the nagging thoughts of a persistent mind.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Daryl's Poem
D. wrote me a poem tonight. She saw me writing and said, "what are you doing?"
I replied, "a friend's blog made me think of a poem."
She said "I want to write one too."
Five minutes later she came up with:
I hear sounds of chirping
I turn around to find
A red bird standing there
Looking in his eyes
I stood there. Turned
around and saw my
bushes shaking
I peer inside and to
My surprise I see
A blue bird flying by
I replied, "a friend's blog made me think of a poem."
She said "I want to write one too."
Five minutes later she came up with:
I hear sounds of chirping
I turn around to find
A red bird standing there
Looking in his eyes
I stood there. Turned
around and saw my
bushes shaking
I peer inside and to
My surprise I see
A blue bird flying by
Monday, August 11, 2008
This Aggression Will Not Stand
From a column in the Washington Post by Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace...
"Historians will come to view Aug. 8, 2008, as a turning point no less significant than Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. Russia's attack on sovereign Georgian territory marked the official return of history, indeed to an almost 19th-century style of great-power competition, complete with virulent nationalisms, battles for resources, struggles over spheres of influence and territory, and even -- though it shocks our 21st-century sensibilities -- the use of military power to obtain geopolitical objectives. Yes, we will continue to have globalization, economic interdependence, the European Union and other efforts to build a more perfect international order. But these will compete with and at times be overwhelmed by the harsh realities of international life that have endured since time immemorial. The next president had better be ready."
Oh what the heck, I'll throw in a poem in the same vein...
THANKSGIVING (1956)
a monstering horror swallows
this unworld me by you
as the god of our fathers' father bows
to a which that walks like a who
but the voice-with-a-smile of democracy
announces night & day
"all poor little peoples that want to be free
just trust in the u s a"
suddenly uprose hungary
and she gave a terrible cry
"no slave's unlife shall murder me
for i will freely die"
she cried so high thermopylae
heard her and marathon
and all prehuman history
and finally The UN
"be quiet little hungary
and do as you are bid
a good kind bear is angary
we fear for the quo pro quid"
uncle sam shrugs his pretty
pink shoulders you know how
and he twitches a liberal titty
and lisps "i'm busy right now"
so rah-rah-rah democracy
let's all be as thankful as hell
and bury the statue of liberty
(because it begins to smell)
e.e. cummings
"Historians will come to view Aug. 8, 2008, as a turning point no less significant than Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. Russia's attack on sovereign Georgian territory marked the official return of history, indeed to an almost 19th-century style of great-power competition, complete with virulent nationalisms, battles for resources, struggles over spheres of influence and territory, and even -- though it shocks our 21st-century sensibilities -- the use of military power to obtain geopolitical objectives. Yes, we will continue to have globalization, economic interdependence, the European Union and other efforts to build a more perfect international order. But these will compete with and at times be overwhelmed by the harsh realities of international life that have endured since time immemorial. The next president had better be ready."
Oh what the heck, I'll throw in a poem in the same vein...
THANKSGIVING (1956)
a monstering horror swallows
this unworld me by you
as the god of our fathers' father bows
to a which that walks like a who
but the voice-with-a-smile of democracy
announces night & day
"all poor little peoples that want to be free
just trust in the u s a"
suddenly uprose hungary
and she gave a terrible cry
"no slave's unlife shall murder me
for i will freely die"
she cried so high thermopylae
heard her and marathon
and all prehuman history
and finally The UN
"be quiet little hungary
and do as you are bid
a good kind bear is angary
we fear for the quo pro quid"
uncle sam shrugs his pretty
pink shoulders you know how
and he twitches a liberal titty
and lisps "i'm busy right now"
so rah-rah-rah democracy
let's all be as thankful as hell
and bury the statue of liberty
(because it begins to smell)
e.e. cummings
Sunday, August 10, 2008
My Neighbor's Passing
I went to an alumni association seminar last night and didn’t get home until almost eleven o’clock. Driving up my street, I saw several police cars parked outside my next-door neighbors house. My neighbor Laura, a divorcee in her mid forties, has had a string of bad luck recently and the police have been frequent visitors to sort out difficulties with family members and an ex-boyfriend. Driving past the scene my first thought was “now what?”
This morning we received a call from my neighbor across the street. Laura died last night. There weren’t many details, but apparently she suffered a reaction to medication she was taking for a staff infection. I was shocked. I immediately felt guilty for having misjudged the situation last night. My thoughts went to her little boy, a classmate of my daughters. I thought about the suddenness of her death, the strange sense of vacancy that it created, and the sadness of the situation.
Death always creates an opportunity to reflect on this mortal coil. I have known many people who have died over the years, a young boy in my tae-kwon-do class when I was fourteen, my grandparents, and many family friends. In each case their death has changed they way I think about life, sometimes suddenly, other times more subtly. Mostly death feels like a tie to the past that has slipped away.
I don’t fear death. I think I did when I was younger, but at some point it occurred to me that death would not allow for reflection on the event. There was never going to be a time when I looked back at my own death and thought, “Boy that sucked.” When it happened there would be no sense of finality, there would simply be nothing more.
Nowadays, if I think about death at all, it is to question how I will die. I find it really interesting, even amusing. I can even remember the first time I thought about the event of my death. I was watching Apocalypse Now. During a skirmish with native tribesmen, the patrol boat is hailed with arrows and javelins. Chief Phillips (Albert Hall) is struck in the chest. He looks at the spike protruding from his torso and whispers “A spear” then crumples over and dies.
This enigmatic statement has stuck with me over the years. A spear. Mystery over. It is as if the ultimate question has suddenly been summed up. 42. A great deal of fun can be had along these lines: “a Mack truck”, “a Brussels sprout,” “a rake.” Images of Monty Python characters leap to mind “Uh oh, I think I’m having a cardiac arrest.” However none of this captures the frank, terrifying and inexplicable awe of Chief Phillips whispering “a spear.”
Another favorite movie scene in this vein is from American Beauty in which Jane and Ricky bond over his father's WWII paraphernalia, and then one of his camcorder movies of what he considers his most beautiful footage, that of a plastic grocery bag dancing in the wind. Ricky says “…And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and, this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever.” Sometimes thinking about the way in which I die is like this for me, that there are all of these events in the world, and that there is a life behind all things, that life is somehow larger than my own death, and that I don't have any fear.
On a final note, I was recently reading The Gospel of Judas, a text known to the early church fathers and rediscovered in an early fourth-century Coptic manuscript. It tells a very different version of the final days of the life of Jesus and his disciples. Judas, far from the traitor, acts in obedience to the instructions given him directly from Jesus. Judas is the catalyst to release Christ's spirit from its physical constraints. We can no more blame a spear, or Judas for death.
Jenny and I were talking and she pointed out that this story is like the story of the death of the Buddha. Buddha ate his last meal, either of mushrooms or pork, which he had received as an offering from a blacksmith named Cunda. Falling violently ill, Buddha instructed his attendant Ānanda with a specific injunction that Cunda had nothing to do with his passing and should be held blameless. This last meal, said the Buddha would be a source of the greatest merit for Cunda as it provided the last meal for a Buddha and his entrance into Nirvana. The Buddha's final words were, "All composite things pass away. Strive for your own liberation with diligence. Hold fast to the truth as if to a lamp."
This morning we received a call from my neighbor across the street. Laura died last night. There weren’t many details, but apparently she suffered a reaction to medication she was taking for a staff infection. I was shocked. I immediately felt guilty for having misjudged the situation last night. My thoughts went to her little boy, a classmate of my daughters. I thought about the suddenness of her death, the strange sense of vacancy that it created, and the sadness of the situation.
Death always creates an opportunity to reflect on this mortal coil. I have known many people who have died over the years, a young boy in my tae-kwon-do class when I was fourteen, my grandparents, and many family friends. In each case their death has changed they way I think about life, sometimes suddenly, other times more subtly. Mostly death feels like a tie to the past that has slipped away.
I don’t fear death. I think I did when I was younger, but at some point it occurred to me that death would not allow for reflection on the event. There was never going to be a time when I looked back at my own death and thought, “Boy that sucked.” When it happened there would be no sense of finality, there would simply be nothing more.
Nowadays, if I think about death at all, it is to question how I will die. I find it really interesting, even amusing. I can even remember the first time I thought about the event of my death. I was watching Apocalypse Now. During a skirmish with native tribesmen, the patrol boat is hailed with arrows and javelins. Chief Phillips (Albert Hall) is struck in the chest. He looks at the spike protruding from his torso and whispers “A spear” then crumples over and dies.
This enigmatic statement has stuck with me over the years. A spear. Mystery over. It is as if the ultimate question has suddenly been summed up. 42. A great deal of fun can be had along these lines: “a Mack truck”, “a Brussels sprout,” “a rake.” Images of Monty Python characters leap to mind “Uh oh, I think I’m having a cardiac arrest.” However none of this captures the frank, terrifying and inexplicable awe of Chief Phillips whispering “a spear.”
Another favorite movie scene in this vein is from American Beauty in which Jane and Ricky bond over his father's WWII paraphernalia, and then one of his camcorder movies of what he considers his most beautiful footage, that of a plastic grocery bag dancing in the wind. Ricky says “…And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and, this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever.” Sometimes thinking about the way in which I die is like this for me, that there are all of these events in the world, and that there is a life behind all things, that life is somehow larger than my own death, and that I don't have any fear.
On a final note, I was recently reading The Gospel of Judas, a text known to the early church fathers and rediscovered in an early fourth-century Coptic manuscript. It tells a very different version of the final days of the life of Jesus and his disciples. Judas, far from the traitor, acts in obedience to the instructions given him directly from Jesus. Judas is the catalyst to release Christ's spirit from its physical constraints. We can no more blame a spear, or Judas for death.
Jenny and I were talking and she pointed out that this story is like the story of the death of the Buddha. Buddha ate his last meal, either of mushrooms or pork, which he had received as an offering from a blacksmith named Cunda. Falling violently ill, Buddha instructed his attendant Ānanda with a specific injunction that Cunda had nothing to do with his passing and should be held blameless. This last meal, said the Buddha would be a source of the greatest merit for Cunda as it provided the last meal for a Buddha and his entrance into Nirvana. The Buddha's final words were, "All composite things pass away. Strive for your own liberation with diligence. Hold fast to the truth as if to a lamp."
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
losing versatile solutions for modern living
Recently, through a series of communication snafu’s, a friend on mine nearly lost her domain name. Her struggles to navigate the quagmire that is the telecommunications industry reminded me in many ways of my own difficulties with the strife of modern living. Not long ago I recounted the disaster that was the failure of our refrigerator. Though we eventually got it repaired, it was out of commission for several days, and forced us to rely on a variety of strategies for keeping frozen foods. Perhaps the most difficult decision was what to do with the frozen placenta in our freezer that we were planning on planting beneath a tree in our backyard. Ultimately we stored many items in various coolers, friend’s refrigerators, and even made use of the freezer at our daughter’s co-op for a time to get us through till life was restored to our own unit.
Last week we experienced another unsettling dilemma when the power went out over half of our house. I checked the breakers, swept the plugs, called the city and eventually an electrician was called. It turns out the problem was in the breaker box. I didn’t catch it because our 30 year old box is in such a sad state that when a breaker trips, it doesn’t move, so I am left guessing where the problem might lie. To make matters worse, nothing is labeled. The best we can hope for is to plug a few lights in at various points throughout the house, start throwing switches and see what flickers. Ultimately we ended up pulling an orange extension cord from one side of the house to the other to restore phone and modem, and were lucky enough to be spared another refrigerator ordeal.
Needless to say, the electrician was less than impressed with our methods. After some debate and a horrendous quote that would cost me more than the birth of my second child, the electrician left, shaking his head and saying, “you have to get that thing fixed somehow!”
I found myself thinking about these myriad situations in philosophical terms, and posted as much on the unreliable narrators site. What follows are the general comments I made there, but which I felt deserved further fleshing out here: I think it was Lucretius that suggested that the isolated or “natural” man would be savage and brutal but would have greater freedom and happiness and fewer vices than the civilized man. Today, however there is a tendency to think of the savage life as unstable, dangerous and insecure where, far from being happy, we would live in constant fear of death and that we are really social creatures, which loosely translates into being utterly dependant on one another for the most basic tools of survival: a woobie, a modem, a few gallons of petrol, and a large supply of Haagan Dazs. Without them are we Robinson Crusoe, a social man in isolation making solitude an object of reflection?
I was recently reading E.M. Forster’s short story, The Machine Stops, and reflecting on just these questions. At what point do we say I am still independent? If the power went off in my home, we might be able to survive for a few days, devouring the contents of the fridge first then moving on to canned goods. Without water, that time would be cut in half. I like to think of myself as self sufficient, but it only seems to exist within the system of carefully balanced rules that have been erected around me. Without them I spend a lot of time on the phone pleading to get them back. Maybe it is this recognition of our dependence of the system and the importance of considering life without it that Lucretius saw as having greater freedom and happiness? What do I know? I enjoy the irony of typing this question into my word processor.
I have a cousin living just outside of Austin whose declared intention is to “live off of the grid.” I can’t even imagine what that would be like. Though I suppose, many of the green living solutions are really just this. Install solar panels to be less reliant on power companies, a rainwater cistern to be less reliant on the water company, build a compost pile and grow your own seasonal vegetables, bike, or better yet walk wherever you can. The entire green movement is about being less dependent on systems, or, I suppose, about substituting one system for another. I am very guilty of this.
When Crusoe finds himself shipwrecked on an island, he is completely isolated from society. In this isolation, Crusoe creates his own civilization, population one, though he bemoans his isolation. As he begins to re-encounter people he discovers that his idyllic world is merely another social construct, one in which he is neither king nor governor, but the same middle-class man he left behind in England. Arguably the island is not Crusoe’s final destination, however Crusoe’s needs have never really changed, even while his surroundings did, and so ultimately Crusoe abandons the island and returns home.
Last week we experienced another unsettling dilemma when the power went out over half of our house. I checked the breakers, swept the plugs, called the city and eventually an electrician was called. It turns out the problem was in the breaker box. I didn’t catch it because our 30 year old box is in such a sad state that when a breaker trips, it doesn’t move, so I am left guessing where the problem might lie. To make matters worse, nothing is labeled. The best we can hope for is to plug a few lights in at various points throughout the house, start throwing switches and see what flickers. Ultimately we ended up pulling an orange extension cord from one side of the house to the other to restore phone and modem, and were lucky enough to be spared another refrigerator ordeal.
Needless to say, the electrician was less than impressed with our methods. After some debate and a horrendous quote that would cost me more than the birth of my second child, the electrician left, shaking his head and saying, “you have to get that thing fixed somehow!”
I found myself thinking about these myriad situations in philosophical terms, and posted as much on the unreliable narrators site. What follows are the general comments I made there, but which I felt deserved further fleshing out here: I think it was Lucretius that suggested that the isolated or “natural” man would be savage and brutal but would have greater freedom and happiness and fewer vices than the civilized man. Today, however there is a tendency to think of the savage life as unstable, dangerous and insecure where, far from being happy, we would live in constant fear of death and that we are really social creatures, which loosely translates into being utterly dependant on one another for the most basic tools of survival: a woobie, a modem, a few gallons of petrol, and a large supply of Haagan Dazs. Without them are we Robinson Crusoe, a social man in isolation making solitude an object of reflection?
I was recently reading E.M. Forster’s short story, The Machine Stops, and reflecting on just these questions. At what point do we say I am still independent? If the power went off in my home, we might be able to survive for a few days, devouring the contents of the fridge first then moving on to canned goods. Without water, that time would be cut in half. I like to think of myself as self sufficient, but it only seems to exist within the system of carefully balanced rules that have been erected around me. Without them I spend a lot of time on the phone pleading to get them back. Maybe it is this recognition of our dependence of the system and the importance of considering life without it that Lucretius saw as having greater freedom and happiness? What do I know? I enjoy the irony of typing this question into my word processor.
I have a cousin living just outside of Austin whose declared intention is to “live off of the grid.” I can’t even imagine what that would be like. Though I suppose, many of the green living solutions are really just this. Install solar panels to be less reliant on power companies, a rainwater cistern to be less reliant on the water company, build a compost pile and grow your own seasonal vegetables, bike, or better yet walk wherever you can. The entire green movement is about being less dependent on systems, or, I suppose, about substituting one system for another. I am very guilty of this.
When Crusoe finds himself shipwrecked on an island, he is completely isolated from society. In this isolation, Crusoe creates his own civilization, population one, though he bemoans his isolation. As he begins to re-encounter people he discovers that his idyllic world is merely another social construct, one in which he is neither king nor governor, but the same middle-class man he left behind in England. Arguably the island is not Crusoe’s final destination, however Crusoe’s needs have never really changed, even while his surroundings did, and so ultimately Crusoe abandons the island and returns home.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Dog Days of the Soul
When I was ten or twelve years old I read a story about a doctor who hypothesized that the soul had measurable mass. He placed a dying volunteer on a scale and recorded a three-quarters of an ounce weight loss at the time of death. (21 grams- hence the movie title) Additionally, in a separate experiment, the doctor weighed a dog at the time of death. It turns out the Doctor’s name was MacDougall, and he actually euthanized some 15 or more dogs in his quest to prove the existence of the soul. In every case, the doctor recorded no weight loss of the dogs at the time of death. The results of the tests on the dogs galvanized the doctor’s zeal that he had in fact discovered the weight of the human soul, as animals have no souls. A quick Internet search reveals that this story is well documented. The theosophical doctor practiced his experiments in the early 1900’s, and, over the next few years, the aspiring doctor was able to procure only 5 more human volunteers, but was never able to repeat the results of his original experiment. (American Medicine 1907)
There are several reasons why this story has stuck with me over the years. In many ways it marks the beginnings of my spiritual journey. After reading this story I couldn’t look at a dog and wonder whether or not it had a soul. By simple association, many animals, birds, cats, mice, crickets, and so forth, came under careful scrutiny. As if, by simply looking in their eyes, or the shape of their exterior, I might be able to discern whether or not a soul lay within. Later, when it one day dawned on me that the good doctor MacDougall has probably poisoned 15 perfectly healthy dogs, I stopped worrying so much about the canine soul and became conscious of the terrible harm, even great evil, can be done in the name of an investigation of the human condition. I think I had this particular epiphany around 14 or 15, when I was learning of all the barbarism and suffering committed in the Lord’s name. The death of these 15 dogs was simply added to the already extensive list.
When I was an undergraduate I picked up a copy of the Nag Hammâdi Library, a collection of early Christian Gnostic texts discovered near the town of Nag Hammâdi in 1945. I began learning about Gnosticism and the evolution of early Christian “heresies.” (From the Greek haireomai, literally "choose") I discovered that far from the image of pagan devil worshipers, the word heretic is used to describe and discredit virtually any opponents in the early Christian Church, where any nonconformist view within the church may be perceived as "heretical" by others within the church who are convinced that their view is "orthodox" (from ortho- "right" + doxa "belief").
Suddenly heresy didn’t seem so bad. Heresy, dare I say, is merely a difference of opinion. I suppose modern heresies include debates over gay rights and the ordination of women. One of the most interesting heresies I learned about during this period of my life was Catharism, a name given to a Christian religious sect that appeared in the Languedoc region of France in the 12th century. The theology of the Cathars is interesting, and really too complex to describe in a few simple sentences. However, while reading about them, I discovered an interesting factoid. Believing the world to be divided between matter and spirit, the Cathars would not eat anything that had a soul. To this end, the Cathars were vegetarians. However, they were allowed to eat fish because they believed that fish were the product of spontaneous generation. The irony that they believed that the fish, one of the earliest symbols of Christianity, (The use of the Ichthys symbol by early Christians appears to date from the end of the 1st century AD) is soulless was not lost on me. I found this hysterical.
“And God created great whales, and every living creature that moves, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good” (Gen. 1:21).
Do fish have souls? Do Dogs? Therein lies the question. How does one define soul? If a dog has a soul, can it be enlightened, or saved? What does and enlightened dog look like? (Other than looking like a dog I mean.) Does it sit under a bodhi tree? I suppose an enlightened dog can sit wherever it wants. In my late twenties I began to embrace Buddhist philosophies that changed my way of viewing the creation stories, from one in which Man is given sole dominion to the idea that God created all things as living creatures endowed with spirit. In this way, the language of creation takes on a modern view of the world, where creation is a vast and evolving process, an ever-moving stream of becomings and extinctions. This, in turn, changed the way in which I thought about my own soul, and ultimately the existence of things.
It seems to me almost over simplified to view the individual soul as emerging from this process. I think we tend to confuse the soul with the ego, as a force that witnesses the unfolding of life around us. But, to put it in Christian terms, if the kingdom of heaven is all around us, if God is omni-present in all things, isn’t it possible that the Universe is beholding us? I like this visualization because it helps me understand how our soul is made up of all of these forces, a composite of aggregates, and rather than our ego defining the world, the soul is without a fixed center, and ego, or an unchangeable identity.
“If the flesh came into being for the sake of the spirit, that is a mystery. But if the spirit came into being for the sake of the body, that is a wondrous miracle. Yet I wonder, how did such great wealth make its home in such poverty?” (Gospel of Thomas, 29)
The word for soul in Greek is psuche, or breath. As God breathed life into Adam, this breath is not ours, but Gods, and it unites all living things together. Rather than thinking about the existence of souls as individual entities: Does a Dog have a soul? Or a Fish? Shouldn’t we instead seek god? After all, what is a soul, but the breath of God.
"Vainly I sought the builder of my house through countless lives. I could not find him... How hard it is to tread life after life! But now I see you, O builder! And never again shall you build my house. I have snapped the rafters, split the ridgepole and beaten out desire. And now my mind is free." (The Dhammapada)
There are several reasons why this story has stuck with me over the years. In many ways it marks the beginnings of my spiritual journey. After reading this story I couldn’t look at a dog and wonder whether or not it had a soul. By simple association, many animals, birds, cats, mice, crickets, and so forth, came under careful scrutiny. As if, by simply looking in their eyes, or the shape of their exterior, I might be able to discern whether or not a soul lay within. Later, when it one day dawned on me that the good doctor MacDougall has probably poisoned 15 perfectly healthy dogs, I stopped worrying so much about the canine soul and became conscious of the terrible harm, even great evil, can be done in the name of an investigation of the human condition. I think I had this particular epiphany around 14 or 15, when I was learning of all the barbarism and suffering committed in the Lord’s name. The death of these 15 dogs was simply added to the already extensive list.
When I was an undergraduate I picked up a copy of the Nag Hammâdi Library, a collection of early Christian Gnostic texts discovered near the town of Nag Hammâdi in 1945. I began learning about Gnosticism and the evolution of early Christian “heresies.” (From the Greek haireomai, literally "choose") I discovered that far from the image of pagan devil worshipers, the word heretic is used to describe and discredit virtually any opponents in the early Christian Church, where any nonconformist view within the church may be perceived as "heretical" by others within the church who are convinced that their view is "orthodox" (from ortho- "right" + doxa "belief").
Suddenly heresy didn’t seem so bad. Heresy, dare I say, is merely a difference of opinion. I suppose modern heresies include debates over gay rights and the ordination of women. One of the most interesting heresies I learned about during this period of my life was Catharism, a name given to a Christian religious sect that appeared in the Languedoc region of France in the 12th century. The theology of the Cathars is interesting, and really too complex to describe in a few simple sentences. However, while reading about them, I discovered an interesting factoid. Believing the world to be divided between matter and spirit, the Cathars would not eat anything that had a soul. To this end, the Cathars were vegetarians. However, they were allowed to eat fish because they believed that fish were the product of spontaneous generation. The irony that they believed that the fish, one of the earliest symbols of Christianity, (The use of the Ichthys symbol by early Christians appears to date from the end of the 1st century AD) is soulless was not lost on me. I found this hysterical.
“And God created great whales, and every living creature that moves, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good” (Gen. 1:21).
Do fish have souls? Do Dogs? Therein lies the question. How does one define soul? If a dog has a soul, can it be enlightened, or saved? What does and enlightened dog look like? (Other than looking like a dog I mean.) Does it sit under a bodhi tree? I suppose an enlightened dog can sit wherever it wants. In my late twenties I began to embrace Buddhist philosophies that changed my way of viewing the creation stories, from one in which Man is given sole dominion to the idea that God created all things as living creatures endowed with spirit. In this way, the language of creation takes on a modern view of the world, where creation is a vast and evolving process, an ever-moving stream of becomings and extinctions. This, in turn, changed the way in which I thought about my own soul, and ultimately the existence of things.
It seems to me almost over simplified to view the individual soul as emerging from this process. I think we tend to confuse the soul with the ego, as a force that witnesses the unfolding of life around us. But, to put it in Christian terms, if the kingdom of heaven is all around us, if God is omni-present in all things, isn’t it possible that the Universe is beholding us? I like this visualization because it helps me understand how our soul is made up of all of these forces, a composite of aggregates, and rather than our ego defining the world, the soul is without a fixed center, and ego, or an unchangeable identity.
“If the flesh came into being for the sake of the spirit, that is a mystery. But if the spirit came into being for the sake of the body, that is a wondrous miracle. Yet I wonder, how did such great wealth make its home in such poverty?” (Gospel of Thomas, 29)
The word for soul in Greek is psuche, or breath. As God breathed life into Adam, this breath is not ours, but Gods, and it unites all living things together. Rather than thinking about the existence of souls as individual entities: Does a Dog have a soul? Or a Fish? Shouldn’t we instead seek god? After all, what is a soul, but the breath of God.
"Vainly I sought the builder of my house through countless lives. I could not find him... How hard it is to tread life after life! But now I see you, O builder! And never again shall you build my house. I have snapped the rafters, split the ridgepole and beaten out desire. And now my mind is free." (The Dhammapada)
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