| Coming up 60 |
[May. 16th, 2012|05:10 pm] |
So I came up 60 last weekend, an accomplishment mainly achieved by getting up every morning and not dying. Some people don't manage it, so it is an accomplishment, but scarcely an achievement.
I have been thinking about things to say about this notional milestone birthday, and nothing special comes to mind. Like most people who arrive at this point I'm a little surprised. In some ways I don't *feel* all that different internally than I did 40 years ago...but I am, and not just by virtue of grey hair, extra weight, and somewhat less stamina and recuperative power.
According to actuarial models I can expect another 18 years or so, realizing that's a statistical assurance and not definite. Anything else I want to accomplish needs to be done in that time period, and probably in less time than that. This is different than thinking about the next 10 or 15 years when you're 20 or 30 or even 50--there's not any room for "Well, I'll get to that later on." This is pretty much it.
For someone of my temperament, there is some pressure to "get it right" is such circumstances.
Heh. I felt that pressure at 20; of course I feel it at 60! Who am I kidding? But this time it makes a bit more sense than it did then.
I don't know whether blogging will be part of what I come up with or not. But if it is, I will surely have to do better than I have since getting drawn into old friends reunion time on facebook!
I won't tell you to stay tuned. But if I find myself coming back here often, I may.
May your day and your week and life be blessed! |
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| Too much memory |
[Sep. 28th, 2011|08:36 pm] |
"I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane"
I saw three Cedar Waxwings dead by the windows as I came to work this
morning. I have no idea why they chose today to smash into the windows.
Ove the years a few birds have done this--one a beautiful painted
bunting--but never before have I seen 3 at once.
It was odd to remember the first lines from a novel I tried to read over
40 years ago and failed to finish: Nabokov's Pale Fire. I was 16. I
could say fictional academic exercise failed to move me much, but the
truth is it was too formal, arcane, and elaborate; it defeated me. And
bored me. I read it because my older friend George recommended it
and I wanted to be more like George.
But those first few lines stuck with me, and I can't really say why.
Well, that's not true--pure ego and pride had me start over and over
before I gave up for good; it would be unusual not to remember the
beginning. I can also remember--more or less--the first phrases of
Finnegan's Wake, another book that defeated me when I was a mid-teen.
If I couldn't read it, I could at least quote from it.
Made a stab at both books too early; some things you really do have to
be older to appreciate or even approach. I was trying to be a prodigy,
and trying in areas outside my real talents; I'd have done better to
stick what I was really good at. But I wanted to be a broad spectrum
prodigy, an increasingly futile desire in this age of massive
specialization and depth. Experiences like this did me no good; I have
always been somewhat soured on consciously "literary" work, and it
probably dates back to these and other excursions.
Which "brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back" to dead
birds on the sidewalk. The desire to be a prodigy led me to fly full
tilt into more than one window under the illusion I was flying toward a
free and open horizon.
I'll finish with another quote: "I was so much older then; I'm younger
than that now." I may still bang into windows thinking I'm aimed at the
horizon, but I'm walking, not flying, and risk no more than a bumped
nose and a little more bruising to my old and tattered glad rags of
pride. |
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| Red Hot Lava |
[Aug. 31st, 2011|12:42 pm] |
Put 3 or 4 kids between the ages of 6 and 8 in a living room with two sofas & a couple of chairs that have removable cushions, and they'll either build a fort from the cushions or scatter them around and jump from one to the other staying off the floor, which is now "red hot lava". Nobody teaches them this; they just do it. Iwas thinking about this for no particular reason today, and realized it's always "red hot lava". Never just lava, or molten lava, or hot
lava... always "red hot lava". Makes sense. Who would try to avoid beige lukewarm lava? If I ever retitle my blog, or start a new one I may use that. "Beige Lukewarm Lava, And Other Things That Exist Only In My Imagination" Pace Dave Berry, I don't think it would make a good name for a rock band. Quite the opposite. I think the heat is finally getting to me... |
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| Sometimes your prayers are answered quickly |
[Jun. 9th, 2011|09:13 am] |
Sometimes your prayers are answered quickly.
This morning, walking from the parking garage to the office, I voiced in prayer an all-to-familiar complaint: "Why am I hanging around here when I seem to have done everything I was put on Earth to do? What use is a grumpy old fat man anyhow?"
Of course I knew the answer-- there is always time and room to become a witness, to help, to give love, to show compassion, to comfort. But the air was hot and humid already, the day stretched ahead with little to recommend it, my antihistamine had not yet started to work, and an old injury was acting up... I was pretty much wallowing in full blown middle-aged petulant self-pity.
10 minutes after arriving at my desk I found myself talking to a young man who needed encouragement, a witness to the reality and value of trust in God, and some perspective on how God answers prayers over time, not in an instant. Which, paradoxically, was a strong, rapid, and complete answer to my own plaintive prayer not 20 minutes earlier.
So here I sit, firmly put in my place once again. Thank you Lord, for your never-ending mercy, your patience, your gifts of Grace, and your gentle remonstrations. |
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| Amazing is too weak a word |
[May. 5th, 2011|12:51 pm] |
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Here are a couple of sites where you can buy DVDs of "public domain" movies and other hard to find old movies. Mostly. http://rareclassicdvds.com/index.html http://www.lovingtheclassics.com/index.php I remember thinking in High School that I'd like to be rich enough to own prints of some of my favorite movies-- and I was thinking 16 MM. Now? Even old style DVDs can be upcast to 1080i--better resolution than the old theater screens ever had. you no longer have to be rich to have such things; you have to be pretty poor not to have them. Amazing variety and quantity! I was looking at the DVD sales racks at Fry's the other day and realized that I probably didn't have long enough to live left to see every video on display there. A massive flood of information and entertainment, more than can be absorbed. More variety, more choices than I could have imagined being available 40 years ago. I doubt I have anything new to say about all this, but every once in a while I break through the acclimatisation and wonder at it all. The once remarkable becomes mundane in such a short period of time that it becomes difficult to appreciate anything as remarkable. And yet so much is... So. Take a minute. Recapture the wonder of it all. And then let it be normal again, because it's impossible to get anything done when you're gasping in awe. |
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| The First Spin? |
[Apr. 18th, 2011|11:35 am] |
In 1066, William the Conqueror invaded England. As he arrayed his forces on the landing beach, he fell off his horse. This was a time in which even the smallest event could be--and was--interpreted as an omen; William falling off his horse sent a ripple of concern through the men who saw it. Was this a bad omen, even the worst possible? Would their commander fall in battle? William stood up smiling and offered his own interpretation-- telling the assembled troops to see how eager England was to embrace her new King...
They relaxed and won the Battle of Hastings. In a later battle, William fell off his horse again, injured himself, and died.
Leaving omens aside--please!--this is the earliest example of political spin I can think of. Too bad it worked; we've been cursed with it ever since.
Can anyone think of an older example? |
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| taxes |
[Apr. 2nd, 2011|05:32 pm] |
One again I have finished my taxes, the first weekend in April having arrived and my excuses having fled in the face of the impending deadline. Anything else I might say is simply not suitable for a social medium where young people and those with moral scruples might accidentally encounter language and images so vile as to turn H. P. Lovecraft into a gibbering wreck, desperately seeking Valium and an escape into the bright, happy worlds of his own imagination. |
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| This is, I fear, a fairly immodest proposal... and that makes me sad. |
[Mar. 9th, 2011|03:37 pm] |
For what it is worth, here is a small contribution to the continuing "political civility" thread of discussion that crops up over and over again in this thoroughly partisan era we live in.
It seems to me that you know you *really* understand your opponent's position when you can describe it in terms that they are content to accept as fair and undistorted.
My rule of thumb is that if my characterization of what the other side is saying is dismissed by that side as a parody or as a straw man or as a distortion in whatever way of my opposite number's position, then I have failed in the first requirement of civil discourse and dialog: I have not demonstrated that I really understand what my opposite number *means* by what he is saying.
It is crucial to this suggestion that my characterization of what someone on the other side is arguing is accepted as valid by someone from that side, not just by someone from my own side. In practical terms, this means I will not argue against your point of view before I can restate it in a way that you find acceptable...and will require the same from you when it comes to arguing against my position(s).
I don't do a lot of political discussion any more because, sadly, it seems increasingly difficult to find people willing to do the work necessary to arrive at what seems to me to be a necessary starting point. |
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| Reading Mark Twain's Autobiography, Volume 1 |
[Jan. 16th, 2011|09:52 pm] |
I finished volume 1 of Mark Twain's autobiography last week, and have been mulling what to say about it.
One thing involves a bit of irony. Twain writes that once a review has been published, no critic ever has an original thought for subsequent reviews--- they all agree with each other. I don't have the exposure to turn-of-the-last-century reviews to know how accurate this perception is, but I was amused to read that Twain's response to this was to make sure that his friend Howell at The Atlantic got a manuscript of any new books to review long before other reviewers, counting on him to set the tone.
Robert Heinlein did this toward the end of his career--he'd have Spider Robinson review his new books in advance; everyone else had to wait for the publication date.
Anyhow, I did read a review of the autobiography in the Wall Street Journal before I read teh book, and find myself agreeing with one observation the reviewer made... and I wonder if I'd have had the same thought had I not read the review before reading Volume 1.
A short experiment, then--Twain made a number of false starts on an autobiography, and eventually settled on a method he felt was uniquely his, something nobody had ever though of before. He dictated instead of writing so that the prose would be immediate, informal, and discursive. He emphasized that he would dictate what was on his mind in a given day, following his current thoughts and interests, and not attempting to create a chronological account of his life. Instead he talked about what interested him, and jumped into memories as he talked.
He also would insert newspaper articles, excerpts of other things he had written, and passages of other people's work he wanted to reference (especially his daughter's biography of him, which was half diary and half biography).
Sound familiar? Think of the inserts as hyperlinks, and it snaps into focus for me: Twain was blogging his autobiography.
So... is this characterization something I would have come up with on my own had I not read the WSJ review? Or was that observation in the review enough to shape my perception of what I was reading?
If reviewers are good at what they do, and if we accept that there is such a thing as objective truth (lower case "t" in this instance), I would expect people to come up with similar conclusions about a book, at least with respect to something that really is pretty evidently true. This is not a flaw in reviewers; they see the same thing because it is there to be seen.
I found reading the Autobiography to be a lot like reading a blog, whether someone else planted a seed for the opinion in me or not. Deal with it, Sam.
All of which which leads me to my next observation. Twain is remarkably contemporary in his voice and attitudes--recognizably "modern", so to speak. BUT. He writes and opines with essentially no trace of psychologizing, and this is sometimes rather jarring.
Not that it's jarring per se to read work by someone who doesn't psychologize in the modern sense; most of the pre-modern reading I've done lacks that same perspective; it's a modern perspective. But Twain doesn't have it and doesn't use it-- for him character and thoughts define a person and explain his actions.
Combine this with Twain's apparent belief that hypocrisy is one of the worst--perhaps the worst--of human failures, and you do get something jarring, because the elevation of hypocrisy to the status of paramount vice is also a modern perspective. This is not a perspective I share, having lived at the end of a century which showed what the non hypocritical humans can do do, from Stalin and Hitler to Mao and Pol Pot.
It is interesting, though--When Twin doesn't like someone, his take on their character is withering. And he often extends that jaundiced view to humanity in general. Yet in the next day's entry, he is all praise and loving kindness about a given friend or old acquaintance--described as a person without flaw, or with almost no flaws.
For a long time I have thought that we, in our over-psychologized age, have come to substitute understanding for forgiveness. If you can attribute the negative parts of a person's character to trauma or issues; if you can explain an unpleasant action by analyzing it as "acting out", you can avoid the need to simply forgive them for their trespasses.
Beaus Twain believes in character and not in psychological constructs, his take on the people of his time is limited to forgiving acceptance or outraged condemnation (Yes, I oversimplify).
Well, it was always thus, really. We have just added condescending or compassionate understanding to our range of reactions.
There is considerable humor in the book, but it is mostly the humor of Twain's lecture circuit persona--cynical, sarcastic, hyperbolic, and inverted. It is entertaining, but more so in small doses than in a marathon exposure.
But Twain's is a great mind shining forth from a great talent at expression--I found the book engaging and entertaining and well worth reading, and I look forward the succeeding volumes. |
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