Soaked, Flying, Thinking Cows

When I drive to work on wet winter mornings in BC, I sometimes see Very Miserable Sights. They have four legs and go moo, and it is good that they don't appear to be able to engage in self-pity. Else the sensitive ones'd be flagging down passing traffic and asking to be eaten early. "Grass fed all my life, sir, excepting a bit of grain on Sundays, and that was organic - please don't roll up your window - I'd make a mouthwatering meal, sir, just try me. Well-marbled steak runs in the family, sir, right back to the bronze age, word of honour, sir."

Therefore, when I curse the everlasting damp and drip and miasma of moist that sucks the smile right out of a person, I am still thankful that I am not a cow. When the rainwater that collects on the roof of my rover trickles in past loose rivets and unerringly drops down my boot and soaks my left foot, I grit my teeth and grin. At least I'm not a cow. Standing in that soggy muck all day rechewing freshly upchucked ralph would be awful.

But not all cows have to be as wimpy as me. If you want a good definition of stolid, you can find it in two places. One of them is the excellent and enormous Random House Dictionary. The other is in a British Columbian pasture (or 'pond', as they are sometimes called). Some cows in the rain are The Very Essence of Stolidity. They simply stand and chew. It is questionable whether or not they actually know what misery they are in, even though it falls on them from sky every time a sullen cumulonimbus comes rumbling by.

Speaking of bad weather and cows, I am reminded of a chart that a friend showed me. It was called 'The Moojita Scale.' It measured, you guessed it, tornado severity based on the wind's effects on nearby cattle. For example, M1 was something like, "Cows spin parallel to the ground in mild annoyance." In my opinion, the phrase "mild annoyance" is so perfectly appropriate to the hypothetical feelings of the average fictional cow in such a situation that the inventor of this scale should be given some kind of award.

... I imagine that different breeds would express themselves differently in an M1 situation. A Holstein, for example, might say,

"Ground, vhy for du bist spinningen? Nicht ausgezeichnet, ground, nicht ausgezeichnet."

I am sure you will have noticed the accurate syntactical representation of the common Holstein's moo. You may have also observed that the Holstein is rather more composed when airborne than most Herefords, who invariably work themselves into a bother:

"It's the bad silage what done it, I know 'tis. Blooming bad silage. I tole Aggie - *Hurp* Shouldn't wunner if there was chemy-culls innit, aye, like wotsit, pneumonium, um, noitrate-yeah-thassit, an' rocks, too! *Hurp* Wuddever happena good ol' roughage eh? Where's the alfalfy is what I'd like to know!"

But for sheer toughness and a funny accent, give us an Angus any day.

"Well, there goes the loch again... but I've seen wairse.

... hmph. What the ach, I've got nothin' else to do. Frrreeeedommm!"

Why A True Zombie Apocalypse Might Not Be That Bad

I want to make clear that 1)  for certain people, this is going to be a bit of a buzz-kill, and 2) this is about true zombies - the living dead. This is not about I Am Legend zombies, which aren't really zombies because they haven't died. They have a virus, which is a whole different issue. In fact, if we are going to worry about this sort of thing, viral diseases should scare us a lot more than the possibility of a true zombie apocalypse. Here's why.

In the event that a true zombie apocalypse actually happened, (what could cause millions of people to come back to life as decaying versions of their former selves?) zombies would be kind of pathetic. I don't buy the super strength, super speed, or super anything that have become attributable to zombies in popular culture. Any real zombie (again, assuming that a dead body could come back to life as a zombie) would be, at best, equal to a regular human in intelligence, strength, speed, endurance, and all those other things we need to know about to optimize our chances of survival.

Presumably, zombies are simply reanimated humans. So the materials they have to work with are limited. And depending on the stage of decay they are at when they regain consciousness, the weaker they are. I mean, an ancient corpse would be pretty gross, but really incomparable to say, a healthy grizzly bear. If it falls apart before it gets to you, it's just not that bad. Fresher corpses would be more problematic, but at least they wouldn't look quite as gross.

How could a fresh zombie function, actually? My friend explained to me that in some zombie shows, the brain is somehow reactivated, but certain parts of it no longer work (areas corresponding to personality and speech, for example). Motor control is a bit sketchy, to all appearances, but not completely absent. For my part, I've noticed that the one area where zombie flicks are universally consistent is the depiction of decay in the average zombie's inner ear. (Why is lurching so scary, anyway?) At any rate, if the inner ear can decay, why not the brain in general? Why should motor control be preserved at all? Why don't reanimated zombies get tired? Don't they run out of energy? What about respiration and circulation? If they run out of blood, how do they keep lurching along? If they do eat, their digestive systems must all be miraculously intact, right? If they have a sense of touch, how come they usually shrug off massive injuries?

Let me explain - No, there is too much - let me sum up. True zombies are subject to way too many limitations to pose a huge threat. And as far as I can see, a real zombie apocalypse is pretty much out of the question anyway.
Uh.
I mean, in case you were in doubt.
'Cause I wasn't.

The Moth's Return: Leaving the Lake

They all stood on the shore and skipped rocks and the lake sipped the sun like hot chocolate - when it was gone, there was a lingering sweetness at the edge of things that the Moth would never forget. Warmth went west over the water and they sent pebbles that way, too, for the soft splashes between each skimming arc, and for the thought of sinking stones settling in the blue and fluid dark.

Even a cool and misty morning found them reluctant to head to bed. Sir Ontzlake stood with his hands in his armor-pockets, squinting at the tendrils of fog creeping from the lake to the circling trees. He had a bad case of helmet hair. The Owl's feathers were rumpled and out of place. Icarus' antennae were frazzled. Except for the Cat, they were exhausted, but while full daylight was blocked out by darkness or clouds or fog, it was the kind of place that one could look at and look at forever.

"Mangelwurzel!" swore the Cat, and everyone jumped.

"Cat, must you insist on-" snapped the Owl, but he was interrupted by Ontzlake.

"No, look! Hordlings!" He was pointing to the north end of the beach, where figures were emerging from the mist. They stood frozen for a few seconds, and then the noise of voices and clinking metal reached them. Several more hordlings appeared, and then all at once a pack of them, and then, to their horror, a monstrous champion who towered over the rest of them. And they were all sprinting straight at the Moth and his friends.

Language in the Library

This happened in the library today:

I sat down at one of many wooden cubicles equipped with outlets. There was a bearded guy with a mac set up in the one beside me. I remember he had really blue eyes. I looked around for the usual outlet to plug my laptop into. Couldn't find it. The guy pointed out that the outlet was on the floor. I said "oh yeah, it's inth'floor..." because I'd started speaking a split second before I decided that the time it would take to say thank you I did know there were outlets in some of the cubicles and I expected the ones in these cubicles to be in the same place so when I didn't see any in this one I simply assumed that this particular one had no outlets and was about to move along but not because I thought you were odorous or unsightly or unsatisfactory as a seating buddy in some way was much greater than the usual time that someone would expect to spend listening to a normal response, like "Thank you," or "Oh, there it is."

About thirty seconds after I'd pulled out some vexing assignment guidelines, he said, "So what're you studying?"

"Shakespeare," said I.

"Pretty heavy stuff? Upper level?"

"Yep. I'm doing three other English courses so it's a lot of writing."

He smiled. "Yeah...yeah - hey, if you were asked to describe the essence of 'house' - okay, I'm doing a presentation for educational psych - could you give me a three or four word definition of the essence of 'house'?"

"Uh...maybe...the place where a family is?" I replied. Couldn't come up with anything more profound than that. But he seized on the idea.

"Yeah! That's great, I can work with that. Thanks, that's good." He started typing, and I asked him what his presentation was about. "Language," he said. "It's like how we construct reality with language. I mean, look at the way we capitalize 'I' when we talk about ourselves. Says somethin' about our egos, doesn't it? What if we capitalized 'you,' I mean Y-o-u, and decapitalized 'i'? It would totally change the whole dynamic!"

By now, he really had my attention. Some of my profs had already tried to sell me a somewhat similar idea. I said, "Sounds like an interesting presentation," and meant it. He nodded. "Yeah, I really think the class'll be stoked." He went on to talk about how learning Halq'em'aylem had taught him about different ways of using language to shape reality. He talked about the English desire to name things and take the mystery out of them by naming them. Apparently in Halq'em'aylem they don't have that same compulsion. I asked him how they talked about stuff without having words for it, and his answer was, "Maybe we don't have to talk about everything. Maybe that's the beauty of it. It's not English. We don't have to name stuff like that. We should go back to the language of the land. It keeps the mystery."

It was an utterly odd conversation. I'm still not sure if he was pulling my leg, or totally serious...

The Penseroso Place

I'd better begin with a short introduction to Milton's poem "Il Penseroso." It's kind of unpromising on the face of it, 'specially in my anthology, which has the opening lines, "Hence vain deluding joyes/ The brood of folly without father bred," the invocation to the goddess Melancholy, and a description of her parents on the first page of the poem. There's interesting stuff in there, but at first read, thirty lines of it are a lot to stomach.

Perseverance, however, is rewarded. The speaker starts revealing more and more of his personality. First, he wants Melancholy to bring her buddy Contemplation along. And Silence can come along too, unless Philomel (a nightingale) will sing. But if Philomel won't show up, he wants to go for a walk:

And missing thee, I walk unseen

On the dry smooth-shaven Green,

To behold the wandring Moon (65-67)

I don't know about you, but I like this guy. Where's he want to go? Walking outside at night to look at the Moon. Good on! And he's equally okay with some dimly lit cottage, or a "lonely Towr."

The best thing about this poem is the spatial imagery. If the Penseroso represents a focused stance - one that eyes mirth, happiness and Joy suspiciously (like an old man might squint at a iPhone toting teen), then it isn't surprising that all of the places he mentions are framed and enclosed in some way. He mentions later that sometimes he stays up overnight til morning, but when the Sun starts chucking sunbeams around, he retreats to "arched walks of twilight groves." I think part of the reason for this is that thick groves of trees are protective. They sort of shrink the physical world (as in, you can't see as far as you could in a field) into a more manageable place. And then there's the dark, which works in the same way. When your light source is quite small, what you can see is suddenly intense and obvious, because all of the competing sensory input that was crowding in at your peripherals is replaced with black.

I know this smacks of literary analysis - in fact, I'm writing a paper on it right now - but I still find it an extremely interesting way of looking at things. We can examine spatial preferences in the imagery of other poems (Milton's "L'Allegro" and Tennyson's "Lady of Shalott" and "The Poet's Mind" are great ones) and even in ourselves. What kind of places and spaces do you want to be in? What does that say about you? 

Midterms? Close Not the Curtains of Your Countenance

Exams bring people together.

Is't not so? When it is that time of year, when some sit, some slump, some slouch, in rows of chairs, when some cling to coffee cups like drowning men, and some arrange and rearrange assorted pens, and the thundering clock
is ticking ticking, and white bright lights are harsh and buzzing,

then, and then most of all,

will we listen with sympathetic ear to the weird chap in the front row, who turns now with knitted brow. Says he, with a shake of his head, "Aw man...I'm so screwed."

At which admission our weary hearts remember warmth. "My brother!" cry we, and we perceive that in sooth, this fellow's habit of asking hard questions just before the end of each class is but a trivial fault - of no consequence next to his obvious strength of character. What a guy! What depth of feeling and noble sentiment express themselves in that heretofore unpleasant countenance! Surely we are kin - surely he is a distant cousin, thrice-removed offspring of some fair uncle. Let the jocund rebecks sound! The ice is broken - nay! melted, and ere the examinations begin, find we not new strength in pleasant conversation?

Math, I Salute You

I thought I was going to have stand around with some kind of idea-conductive version of the lightning rod, but at last, inspiration has struck. And from the most unlikely of places: Math. Specifically, the math in A Beautiful Mind, and the math in Randall Munroe's xkcd blag (even more specifically, from the post about his study on colour.)

I've been a staunch math-hater for years, but I may come to change my stance on certain aspects of the issue. For example, I no longer despise math when it means 'the written expression of some extremely complex concept.' I can't express it here with the right symbols, but trapezoidal derivatives for discovering the y-coordinates of any given stoichiometric Eidenbacher's function regarding the polyasymptotic parabola of the famous Gondlemann Log-Cosine Proof where x is unknowable are awesome.

Seriously though - some equations look intriguing. Greek letters, super/subscripts and loads of brackets. Tremendous. I merely speculate, but it seems that having a working knowledge of high level math would be analogous to the ostensible awesomeness of knowing Hebrew, Ancient Greek and Old English. And the fact that you can actually do things with those equations is even cooler.

I know, we do things with math all the time. To clarify, when I say 'things,' I mean interesting things. Like building trebuchets, complicated graphs, maps and underwater robots. Math, in the immortal words of one of my old teachers, "I salute you."

A Few Quotes

My head is awhirl with reading. Here are a few of the things clamoring for brainspace right now:

        Did he fling himself down? who knows? for a vast speculation had failed,
        And ever he muttered and maddened, and ever wanned with despair,
        And out he walked when the wind like a broken worldling wailed,
        And the flying gold of the ruined woodlands drove through the air.
                --- Maud, 1.1.3 (Tennyson)

Depressing, but splendidly shivery all the same. Here's a long block of text that you are free to skip if you wish to miss out on a fine insight:

I was introduced to zoology and palaeontology ("for children") quite as early as to Faerie. I saw pictures of living beasts and of true (so I was told) prehistoric animals. I liked the "prehistoric" animals best: they had at least lived long ago, and hypothesis (based on somewhat slender evidence) cannot avoid a gleam of fantasy. But I did not like being told that these creatures were "dragons." I can still re-feel the irritation that I felt in childhood at assertions of instructive relatives (or their gift-books) such as these: "snowflakes are fairy jewels," or "are more beautiful than fairy jewels"... I was keenly alive to the beauty of "Real things," but it seemed to me quibbling to confuse this with the wonder of "Other things." I was eager to study Nature, actually more eager than I was to read most fairy-stories; but I did not want to be quibbled into Science and cheated out of Faerie by people who seemed to assume that by some kind of original sin I should prefer fairy-tales, but according to some new kind of religion I ought to be induced to like science. Nature is no doubt a life-study, or a study for eternity (for those so gifted); but there is a part of man which is not "Nature," and which therefore is not obliged to study it, and is, in fact, wholly unsatisified by it.

                   --- An endnote from "On Fairy-Stories." (J.R.R Tolkien, emphasis mine.)

And an unrelated but interesting argument by Matthew Arnold:

We have poems which seem to exist merely for the sake of single lines and passages; not for the sake of producing any total impression. We have critics who seem to direct their attention merely to detached expressions, to the language about the action, not to the action itself. I verily think that the majority of them do not in their hearts believe that there is such a thing as a total-impression to be derived from a poem at all, or to be demanded from a poet; they think the term a common-place of metaphysical criticism. They will permit the Poet to select any action he pleases, and to suffer that action to go as it will, provided he gratifies them with occasional bursts of fine writing. 

                   --- "Preface to the First Edition of Poems" (Emphasis mine.)

(He goes on to say that Victorians ought to take some lessons from the Greeks in choosing their subjects or plots. I'm not too sure about that. But substitute 'novel' for the word 'poem' in this passage - are there some plots that are inherently superior, or can any story be successful if told in a certain way? Is it reasonable to read a novel like a poem, that is, expecting brilliance and layers of meaning in every line?)

Good Music

Just wanted to share this song by Judith Beckedorf:

Pretty good, no? (If anyone can find tabs for it, serious brownie points. I'm having trouble getting the bass notes by ear, and her link leads to a German or Dutch site that looks suspiciously like a 404 error.)

A Most Ridiculous Scene in Building G

John Stuart Mill: Poetry is, of course, the higher expression of the uncommonly articulate and cultivated mind, which despite retaining a bond with the average citizen - that is, a shared humanity, speaks with near prophetic strain to those complex emotions so strange to the rude intellect of the Tartar and the yet immature mind of the child, and thus it must only be discussed in wretchedly sesquipedalian t-

Student One: But soft! What is this abrupt and interrupting mellifluous odor that wafts 'round corners from coffee cups and curls quietly 'mongst these unfurled books? Why - I feel a thirst! Hence, loathed hunger! Gadzooks! the pangs begin.

Student Two: It wrenches me too. Aching of mid-class fatigue and breakfast abandoned strikes most untimely. Yet, were any time timely? This wallet aches worse! Curse you, Tim's, but oh! Bless you, bless you too. Coffee calls; my veins quicken. Caution be hanged!

Student Three: How those bagels bask in that warm angelic backlit glow! Oh, but I know your ways, deceitful food and beverage sales-place. It is not for nothing that you have sprung up 'longside this thoroughfare. At the Turnpike you waylay innocent travelers and strip them of their silver. But I'll starve before I submit. This poor student frame will have sustenance from text alone, or perish. To the Library hasten I! E'en the wise must be wary ere long, for no man may withstand forever the siren's song.

Exit Student Three. Student One observes.

Student One: She runs on Scylla, wishing to avoid Charybdis. Is't Mammon or Prudence she serves, I wonder? Some say the god is doubly named. By my pan! This tension is ode-worthy. To live in squalor with shining eyes and tastebuds euphoric is the true spirit of the romantic, aye, but Coffee is a harsher master than hunger. If Prudence be deaf, what shall I do?

A Familiar Place

I inhale french vanilla. Clouds look in at the windows. We observe the man far away at the front of the room. The clock hangs over his head. He describes, explains, exhorts:

"It's hard enough (you know) to   keep    the    lion      at     the DOOR." 


"If men within themselves (That's very Miltonic, isn't it? Am I making any inroads here? Very Miltonic.) would be governed by reason, and not generally give up their UNDERSTANDING..."

Gesticulation in crescendo. Staccato emphases. Lulls. His helpless grin supplants frustration.

"Come on, guys! Let's end with a bang. I'm going to stop here. (Yeah, right here.) Just - just fill in the blank. Milton     can     only    ______

Minds wait for words to percolate. Mere synonyms won't do. You must find precisely the right words - have we been reeled in after all? The thought detaches me and and I bob gently in the stream of words. Books do not even have to be opened to be pleasant; hot drinks can be held before they are drained.

Two hours of this is not bad at all.

A Good Kind of Sad

Here is how a strong cup of coffee is perspective:

Tipped up, the rim is chipped horizon
and the black and grainy world ebbs in gulps.

The bad taste, the burnt tongue bitterness - each is welcome against hurt and cold and maybe rain. Sugar wouldn't be right.

The morning is still frostbound and I find myself in it, walking from glow to glow under watchful streetlights, thinking blue and orange thoughts. The empty mug feels good in my hand. When the new sun storms through the clouds, I will be ready.

Prissifying Attila

Alas! Age of Empires, I've come to a sort of crisis in my life. And by crisis, I mean one of those miniscule inconveniences that are fun to hyperbolize about. You see, I made an unofficial resolution at the library to read more European history. Most of what I already knew about it comes from you, you untouchable, august emperor of RTS games, and I, ever greedy, wanted more. So I checked out a book on Attila the Hun...

...and my world turned upside down. Because, darn it, Age of Empires, if the guy who wrote the book is right, the Romans were worse than Attila, and the great general Aetius was nothing better than a backstabbing opportunist. You got him wrong, man. In fact, the whole point of the book is to show how one Roman historian began to challenge the "civilized Rome vs. barbarian Other" concept. Which brings me to a more serious consideration.

I was about to write simply that I like my ancient barbarians to stay barbarian, because I do. The book was saturated with an irritating kind of multiculturalism, and I was kind of annoyed that the author was trying so hard to put current North American values into the fifth century Roman empire(s). Let's not prissify Attila. On the other hand, it is suddenly apparent that I'm being just like those rotten old Romans of the book, who were more comfortable with the Huns as savages than as equals. Why, exactly, do I want to view the Huns as ferociously filthy fighters on horseback and not as diplomats with all the finesse of Roman VIPs?

Partly because it makes a good story. But why does it make a good story? That opens a frightening can of worms, Age of Empires. And all because you present a suspiciously simple version of events. I don't know whether to be happy that you've made me think about things, or upset that you may have betrayed my trust. Do try to redeem yourself while I ruminate upon these matters. (Upstart book, don't think I trust you, either.)

Recommendations

"'What ho!' I said.
'What ho!' said Motty.
'What ho! What ho!'
'What ho! What ho! What ho!'
After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation."
           -- PG Wodehouse


Is it not splendid? Read this too:

"'Glug!' said Lord Emsworth - which, as any philologist will tell you, is the sound which peers of the realm make when stricken to the soul while drinking coffee." --from "Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend"


Ahhh. If you haven't read it, I recommend in particular "The Crime Wave at Blandings." And one can't go wrong with the stories about Wooster and Jeeves.

While I'm enthusing and recommending and such, there's also an excellent webcomic called Girl Genius that you should check out, and, on a more serious note, a thoughtful movie called Bella that you should watch. (It has nothing to do with Twilight.)

Things that Don't Mix

1. Socks, wooden floors, and sprinting. Only a quick grab for the ironing board saved me from certain death  minor bruises.

2. Delicious looking burritos and the dusty, spider-webby crack between the freezer in the garage and the wall.




...yes, I did get on top of the freezer, mash my too-short arm between fridge and wall and fish around for the languishing food article with a pair of long pliers. It was one of those situations where one wants to look at the item just out of reach in order to pick it up, but cannot because one's face is crushed against the area adjacent to the opening of the crack in order to stretch a few inches further. But I did manage to get it!

A Psalm 8, of Sorts

Well, I'm back. Camping turned out pretty well, and much fun was had. Lots of stuff went down, which is to say, events occured, which is to say, I won't go over it in detail. Except about the late night campfires, because somehow, they sum up all that is the Best of Camping.

This is not really about toasty marshmallows or guitar or scalding hot chocolate, though all of those things are fine additions to the Experience. It's about the effect the fire has on the night.

I love the night, especially when it's dry, cool and windy out. When the clouds scud across a sky that looks impossibly deep, and the wind whispers in the trees and the brush, I consider myself fortunate to be alive.

But a fire enhances that by shutting it out. The world contracts around Fire, and the smaller the fire gets, the more magnetic it is. Glowing embers and flickering Orange drag my eyes away from the outside - the blackened blues and greens of the wild dark. Crackling sparks over-ride conversation. Fire commands attention.

And the Night knows this - it strains to regain a distracted audience. It looms large behind turned backs, chilling and threatening and coaxing all at once, and it washes everything in breezes. The pines groan - they have seen the Night in all its forms. They are indifferent to stars they cannot reach. But the inhabitants of the shrinking hemisphere of light and heat and sound lean in ever closer 'til their faces are nearly singed, and they think their thoughts, and the Fire dances on.

The Dark sets its jaw and waits, after that. When the last flames are finally dispelled, I am the only one left. The world expands with a whoosh, and there is the Night: cold, grim, grand - immense.

I retreat to my tent. I slip into a sleeping bag. Warmth returns. I lean over to zip my haven closed, but I let a little of the Night in, too. It curls up and goes right to sleep. The rest of it goes back to being splendid. And I am intensely glad that God has lavished so much beauty on a single day.

Off we go

Yessss! My family'n'I are off to Lillooet. We're road-tripping for two days, and then returning for a twinkling, and then hurrying off again to Nitinaht on Vancouver Island - for a week. Huzzahs all around, despite ominous weather forecasts. When I'm not working in it, I find I can actually appreciate the rain.

Another ominous development = a sore throat, but it isn't going to thwart me. Some kind of Tazo tea has come to the rescue! (Orange Blossom, I believe, and absurdly enough, they claim that the ancient Chinese drank Tazo (TM). Presumably while they strolled along the great wall and visited Starbucks and Ye Olde Chapters.) My friend assures me that gargling cayenne pepper is a surefire method for banishing sore throats, but I think I'll stick with tea.

Urgh. Gargling pepper.

Bye for now.

...When It Went BANG

Land Rover people amaze me. I mean the old-school owners who are so steeped in (mechanical) lore and (vehicular) intuition that they put Himalayan medicine men to shame. They can practically smell a downed Rover. And they're so helpful. Witness:

I was at Starbucks with my sister after an unfruitful Chapters run, and we were discussing impulse buying over the rumble of the Rover when it went BANG. I stopped, got out and looked under the vehicle, because the sound was one those suspiciously dangerous sounding sounds. You know. Those ones. Of course, I saw nothing. I thought maybe my E-brake was stuck on. So I pushed it up and down a few times to make darn sure it was off.

Thirty seconds later, BANG. We hadn't even made it out of the parking lot yet. I pulled into an empty spot and looked again. No sooner was I on my hands and knees than Presto! two guys in a blue pickup pulled up. Elapsed time since first bang = < 60 seconds. 

"Having problems? I've got one of those at home. Maybe I can help?" said the passenger in a British accent. The driver grunted something unintelligible, but it sounded friendly. I nodded my head yes. The passenger hopped out and pulled on some gloves. It was better than BCAA. We didn't actually figure out the problem until I got home (broken U-bolt again, which means the axle could possibly have separated from the vehicle, resulting in many owies) but still - amazing! You just don't see that kind of helpfulness amongst, say, Lexus owners. 

Rewind back to before the mechanical difficulties. Impulse buying is actually an interesting subject. Sis and I were talking about how hard it is to buy books from new authors. It's so risky! I hardly ever do it. You could easily end up with a dud. But when it comes to fast food, I'm ridiculously impulsive. It's kind of pressure-related. The person on duty at the till looks over and says "HihowcanIhelpyou?" all in a breath and my mind immediately stops processing words. 

Generally, the people at the till are pretty quick on the draw, because they can see the sixty-odd florid fuming faces of the regulars who have just lined up impatiently behind me after battling through traffic and construction and hot, sticky weather besides. And they know what they want. So I have time to read about two or three words, and they ALWAYS jam up my brain. And the item just gets bigger and bigger until I can't think about anything else. After a few seconds, I just order it. Today, it was a white chocolate mocha, which I don't even like. Silly. Can anyone relate? Maybe I'm just eccentric...

...though that would be kind of cool. Good writers are often eccentric, right?

Hedges and Workthink

I spent much of Today thrashing the hedges. It took some time, because I wanted to give them a proper thrasing, and at eight to ten feet tall, they were much bigger than me. And they were bristling with that badly contained rebellion so common to feral shrubs.  My allies, the hedge trimmer (mortal enemy of all things hedgy) and a number of other sharp edged tools, helped me out a great deal, but the whole process was pretty laborious and consequently took forever. The redeeming feature of these circumstances was that I had plenty of time to think.

Here is an example:

How am I going to get these stupid things to look level? The ground is like a bloody sine function. Hey, ducklings. The pond is very green. I need to write a blog post sometime. I could write about ducklings. No, writing about work is no good. Too boring. But Dad said that one can make a good story out of ANYTHING... even though I argued at the time, it kind of makes a little bit of sense, possibly...


Okay, I could tie a string to that post and then to the telephone pole, and measure about 7 feet on each one. Whoa, sparrow. And then - 'nother sparrow - try not to hack through the line. 


... RRRGH! #$*%@ string! Why is it so thin? Okay, what am I doing? I have all this time to think. I should write a poem right now. In my head. Then I can have something to post. What comes to mind? Uh...


...plants?




As of now, I call this workthink: the kind of thinking that one does when one is engaged in labor which fails to capture the majority of one's attention. I think most people that work alone for long periods of time experience it. And it's pretty valuable, if you use it right. The above bit is impure workthink; cutting the hedges required a bit too much of my working memory to allow a poem to form, or a useful idea for my story, but pure workthink is golden. It's a tiny bit like getting paid to write. (Woot!) Even if it's all written in my head.

Therefore, it is my privilege to inform everyone that Sooner or Later, I'll be painting fences, and the number of writerly thoughts in my brainbox should increase dramatically. Stay tuned!

Tree Frogs and Waterflame

I want to start light and positive, but things will get serious pretty quickly. Here we go.

Little things are great. Maybe you've read Neil Pasricha's books of Awesome, and you have a heightened appreciation of the good little things in life. Maybe you've thought up of a lot of them on your own. Maybe you are Neil Pasricha. (If somehow it is you, Neil, I love page 85 of the Book of Even More Awesome.)

I've been thinking about little things a lot lately. I'm talking about things like the way frogs croak like crazy on spring nights, and the color green, and getting a coffee from a kind co-worker in the morning (or giving a coffee to a co-worker). I think there's a whole internet subculture - ok, no, a bunch of tribes grouped under one bigger subculture - related to the noticing and writing about Awesome Little Things. The internet is the branch I'm thinking about, mainly. There are groups of Facebookers. (Think the 'like' pages.) Forums are full of this stuff, too. So are blogs. And it's great. Awesome even. Because big awesome things don't happen as often as little awesome things, and we like that extra zip in our days - the tiny connections that we form with others when we share those experiences.

But I was wondering - how do we deal with this as Christians? Christianity is primarily about the big awesome thing: Jesus' death and resurrection. Being happy about stepping on really crunchy leaves (for example) is just so different from being joyful about the results of God's plan. See where I'm going with this? The two extremes are not incompatible, but...it's hard to focus on big things when most of your time is spent enjoying little things.

I'm guilty here. I love the little things - the finishing touches to life that make you realize that God is fully engaged with his creation - so much. Finding treefrogs in the garden. This song by Waterflame. Painting the last board on a fence. Making a nice girl laugh. You know? I spend a lot of life zoomed in, thinking about those things. But I can't grasp the enormity of salvation. I have a feeling this is more common. Christians know that God loves his people and sent his son to die for us. I've heard ministers talk about this as 'head knowledge.' Too bad head knowledge isn't terribly motivating. We need heart knowledge too - some thankfulness should be inspired by God's love for us. It has to mean something to us. Christianity is a kind of response.

I think we do feel thankful most of the time. I do. But for me, it's always related to other blessings, like that beautiful day yesterday, or the nice drive home, or a good talk with a friend. Basically, I get meaning and emotion from the less important things in life. They are important in a way, of course, but they pale in comparison to Christ's sacrifice on the cross. What if us seekers of little awesome things lost many of them? Do we depend on them too much? Maybe more of us get meaning from the less important places. Maybe this whole "little awesome things" move is kind of overrated. I don't want to abandon it. I don't know if writing is even possible without it. But I want to really feel the huge-ness of God's grace! I can't settle for head knowledge, and I won't settle for only the little awesome things.

Though treefrogs and Waterflame are indeed awesome, the One who made them must be a lot more so. And his Son's death (and resurrection) has got to be more important. For Christians, things are out of wack when it is easy to tell a complete stranger about our love for the cold side of the pillow but difficult to articulate our feelings about God. Actually, how do we feel about God, in comparison, say, to a free cup of coffee on a Monday morning? That should be an easy question to answer, but when we commit to total honesty and substitute other little awesome things for that cup of coffee, maybe it's not.

Thoughts?

Sleep

Sleep is a giant waste of time. No two ways about it. If you're like me, you need at least four hours a night, with twice that once a week. Four hours is four pages of heavily-edited essay. Four hours is time for an oil change, a long email, learning a song on guitar, starting a novel, and writing a poem. Four hours is a precious handful of seconds - tiny little grains of time that slip through fingers like sand.

Do you cut back on sleep to squeeze something extra into most days? Me too. After a while, it's pretty hard to relax and turn off your brain. I spend my pre-sleep hour thinking about life, how I'm going to find time to write in the near future, life, work, books, life, cutting back on sleep, whether or not thinking about sleeping makes it hard to fall asleep, whether or not thinking about not thinking about sleep counts as thinking about sleep, and life. It's not exactly insomnia, but I envy people who can fall asleep at the drop of a hat.

My friend, on the other hand, once told me that he just "stops thinking about stuff" and goes to sleep. Is this a common thing? How is it even possible to voluntarily stop thinking?

If it is, I would like to learn how to turn off my brain at will. That would be grand. I know I said earlier that four hours of sleep is a waste of time, and I stand by that, but if I'm going to waste time, I'm darn well going to waste it sleeping, and not staring at the ceiling listening to random creaking and snoring sounds.

On a somewhat relevant note, dryers and washing machines are the best.

The Man in the Mickey Mouse Shirt

A lot of times, people let us down. Case in point: I think I've been disappointing anyone who reads my blog lately. And we know that the let-downs that everyone experiences from time to time are often much worse than that. So isn't it awesome when people (especially perfect strangers) exceed expectations?

Consider the man in the Mickey Mouse shirt. (I'll call him M.) He appeared one morning when I was weeding in the rain at my boss's office. It was a garbage job, and I was tired and sore and grumpy and the light was as darkness in my eyes. It was one of those days. I was savagely ripping horsetails and dandelions from the ground when I heard, "Hey! Have you seen my rabbit?" It was M., of course.

He was a short guy with a high tenor kind of voice, and dirty blue coveralls. His face was crinkled into a smile. Wispy brown hair topped him off. I figured he was anywhere from 50-60 years old. While I was looking at him with that look that irrationally angry people have when they're interrupted, he said, "Yeah, there's a rabbit that always hangs around in the weeds here. I like to watch him eat the dandelions." He said something pleasant about the hedges too.

I was crouching in a pile of mangled dandelions just then. It occured to me that the rabbit probably wouldn't show up again any time soon. I sought for an appropriate facial expression in lieu of something to say. M. smoked a cigarette for a bit. Eventually, he left.

Hours later, it'd stopped raining and I was cheered up. I was finished the most outrageously overgrown bits of the garden and was working on a resistant clump of grass when M. suprised me again. "Whoa! You're still here!" he grinned. "I thought you were gone and forgot your coat!" He pointed to my coat, which was draped over a rock. I smiled, but words failed me again. What does one say to that, except 'nope' ? Besides, now that his work coveralls were gone, his Mickey Mouse shirt was kind of distracting me. Not very many fifty-something mechanics wear Mickey Mouse shirts, do they?

He continued, "This all looks good. Really really good. 100% better," and my worries that he was grieving for his rabbit's habitat were put to rest. I said, "Thanks." He drove away in an old blue clunker. Mentally, I shook his hand for being a friendly old mechanic in a mickey mouse shirt. Props to him.

Good Books, Anyone?

Well, it's summer now, which hopefully means more time for reading. But I went to Chapters the other day and couldn't decide what to buy. I ended up with two books: War and Peace and What Ho! The Best of P.G. Wodehouse. (Haven't started W&P but the Wodehouse anthology is hilarious and worth the read, if you like bumbling British aristocrats and competent butlers.) Anyone have any other good books that they'd recommend?

Hang an intro. Here's my thesis: The Best Part of Work is being around birds.

Part of my summer job includes taking care of roughly forty chickens. In other words, there are thirty-seven Harry Houdinis at work (thirty-nine if you count the cows that keep busting out of their fences, but that's another story). Chains are as straw to them. High walls are as spacious arches. They could find their way out of Daedalus' labyrinth blindfolded and hobbled with leg irons. It's incredible. I attempt to keep them in an aging chicken coop with three layers of chicken wire, rotten netting and numerous baler twine patches. Somehow, one or two chickens always manage to get out. And of course, they instantly lose their heads and can't find their way back in. If they don't make it back before night time, they become hors d'oeuvres for the coyotes. It is a constant struggle for survival. They try to get themselves killed, and I try to save them.

I'm not terribly fond of chickens, but they are funny to watch. I resolved to write this post when I was collecting eggs today. Here is the situation: I am moving from left to right. I collect eggs from vacant nesting box 1. I move on to nesting box 2 just as Chicken A hops on to the ledge of the same nesting box. We have an awkward moment, and Chicken A, no doubt embarassed to be caught shirking her egg-sitting responsibilities, shuffles sideways to move in front of nesting box 3. I collect the eggs from nesting box 2. Chicken A has now figured out that something is wrong. She is not in front of the right nesting box, and she can't go back to brooding on her eggs. But when she sees me finishing up, she hastily dives into nesting box 3. Chicken A then discovers that nesting box 3 is already occupied by Chicken B. Chicken B makes a strangled noise - in pain, I think. Chicken A is now perched on top of her, anxiously checking to see if maybe it is Chicken B who has made the mistake and got in her nesting box accidentally and sat on her eggs. Chicken B's head is squashed down into her feathers. There are more strangled noises. Chicken A emerges when she realizes that no, it is definitely the wrong box, and I collect the eggs from under Chicken B. Chicken B is highly disgusted by the whole thing.

As I see it now, the above paragraph is a big chunk of text with too many As, Bs, Chickens and 1, 2, 3s in it, but it can't be helped. I was leading up to the sparrows, you see. They hang around the chicken coop because of the feed, but they spend most of their time chasing sweethearts or else in hot debate. Blows are frequently exchanged. But I don't want to spend much time on them, because there are swallows around too, you know. They fly like F-16s and poop like horses. When you think about how many insects they would have to eat to produce the messes they make on barn floors everywhere, it's kind of sickening...

Ah, and there are ungainly herons and nesting eagles and even pileated woodpeckers - and I could probably write volumes about the mallards that waddle around with their babies stumbling along behind them. Red-winged blackbirds and Canada geese come visiting too. And some birds I've never seen before (spotted towhees, I think, but it's hard to say.)

Conclusion: Birds are awesome.

If you wrote a book in which a bird was a character, what kind of bird would it be, and why?

Experience and Knowing: Why do we Believe?

I probably should have gone through this stage already... we all know the commonplace "The more you know, the less you know." Anyway, even if it's all old hat, it is probably useful to review, because it relates to how we talk about God and Christianity and the big things we believe. The short answer to the title question is that we just do. The long answer is below.

Our idea of knowing - it's kind of problematic. Some people had this idea (I think it was Locke that really picked up on this) that what we know for certain is only what we experience with our senses. Some other people worried that we can't actually know anything for certain because our sense mediate reality - so somewhere in the process of perceiving, we're transforming reality into something else. Still other people retorted that if we can't truly get at reality, then reality is our perceptions.

I'm going to go with Locke for now, because in the western world, we seem to have gone with him, and we value hard facts. We want evidence, right? Rational thought and reason are important too. We discover/develop a system (with heavy influence from Aristotle) that we call logic/reason, and we use it to sort and analyze our experience - the information that we get directly from our senses. So, assuming we use logic/reason correctly, and assuming that the system we've worked out is a good one, we can do a pretty good job of figuring out the world, right?

Maybe. The amount of sensory information you can take in during your lifetime is a drop in the bucket compared to the sensory information that is out there waiting to be perceived. We can't apply our reasoning to everything, because we don't have all the available information. So we have to rely on others for a sorted version of that information. Did they sort it correctly? We hope so. Sometimes, we don't think so. We develop a system that allows us to transfer more information and to get a rough estimate of how qualified people are to sort and analyze certain types of experience. A doctorate degree in botany means people are likely to trust the doctor's sorting/analyzing skills in all things plant-related.

But remember that our ultimate standard still seems to be one that highlights personal experience. Reading words on a page, even if they represent well sorted and accurately analyzed information, is not the same thing as directly experiencing the raw sensory info that went into the ideas, which were transformed into words and put on paper by someone else. We're at least at two or three removes from the actual experience. When we begin to rely on evidence that has been filtered through generations of experiencers, we are removed even further from the experience. This is not surprising: as I mentioned before, there are serious limits to what we can phsyically experience. And the proper sorting of some experiences requires prior knowledge that we just don't have time to gain independently. However, it is probably a good thing to examine the degree to which this second or third or fifth or tenth hand information is true.

What about experts who disagree? They invariably do (especially in composition theory). How do we know which expert is right? Is it true that the most well informed experts are always right, or can we only say that they are usually right? Think about online interactions for a second: Most internet forums involve some sort of debate. One thing that is noticeable is that appeals to experts are rarely, if ever, effective in silencing the opposing side.

I think this is because we are always removed from the actual relevant experience that would validate our claims, and sometimes at an incredible distance. When it comes to hearing some biker tell us about biking based on experiences he/she has had, there is usually a high probability that we can accept their sorting of experience as valid. In most cases, we can trust that they're being accurate. It isn't too specialized, and we can compare to our own experiences or the experiences of others we trust. We don't have to worry too much about testing this type of information. But when it comes to academia, we have to rely on all sorts of specialized people, who have in turn relied on other specialized people, who have...and so forth, to produce a very specific type of sorted experience.

All this requires a lot of trust, and when we read about things like the theory behind writing pedagogy, we hope that everyone has got it right, even though we argue all the time about experience, about truth, and about how things are, which means that somebody has got something wrong. Usually, somebody does mess up. Someone or a few someones sort experience incorrectly. In fact, most people do at some point. Think of the distortion a bad worldview (a medium through which experience is filtered) can cause.

Admittedly, I don't see an alternative to this system. We can hardly rely on personal experience for even a tenth of what (we think) we know. And yet when we try to apply our knowledge to certain things, like the truth of the Bible, or the truth of Creation, we ultimately fall back to relying on the experience of others, and we run into problems. To fully support the Bible with facts, you'd have to be an expert in a ridiculous number of fields. No one can know all the relevant information through personal experience at once.

And people don't trust that many removes from actual experience, because they know that somewhere along the line, somebody screwed up and sorted their information badly. There is also the possibility that we will never have all of the necessary information we need to get everyone to agree. So our own system defeats us. The scientific method is useful, but it can't account for the loss or distortion of knowledge through hundreds or resorting and reanalyzing attempts.

I think this explains why I'm not satisfied by writers like Lee Strobel who try to convince others about the truth of Christianity through scientific facts. By emphasizing facts, he's appealing to a system that generates uncertainty. To his credit, he tries for personal experience. He works to test his facts and minimize uncertainty. And we're partially at fault for his approach, because we demand facts. But I keep thinking It isn't enough. The Bible is too big - it involves too many fields. There will always be people who question Expert X's opinion, and they will always have some grounds to do it. Strobel just can't dig that deep. He'll only live to 125 or less. He doesn't have time, and neither do we. It's not even guaranteed that we've found all the necessary information to verify the facts.

At bottom, we believe things on faith. If some of us believe in the goodness and rightness of our system of logic and reason (if it has flaws, they probably originate in us as imperfect users), we believe it on faith. And if some of us believe the Bible, we believe it on faith. Scientific facts, to me, seem a lot more like probabilities than we're letting on. When we appeal to facts, we do it because of our faith in the system that we have for organizing and packaging reality. Believing in the Bible and being a Christian is not crazy if believing in the goodness and rightness of our system of reason isn't crazy. I don't think we should rely on facts to show it.

Joy

The best trumpet solos rise from the gathering dark
            with the welling crescendo of certainty that brims,
  overflows
              and grows into bursting awe
                                              in the reverence of after sunset.

From the quiet, they sing the Maker
  And all the distant suns burn fierce
                                    and unextinguished.

Romanticism in Real Life

I was chugging slowly uphill through a school zone on the way to class today and I took a moment to look to the right.  The unfortunate building responsible for the whole slow chugging situation sat primly behind a chain link fence and looked disapprovingly back at me. Fine, I thought, and looked to the left instead.

The view on the left was tremendous. In a tiny, tiny field of exuberant grass on top of the hill were four llamas: three adults and one baby. Framed by the blue mountains that scrape the sky, they cast long shadows to the west; they struck gloriously pastoral poses in the morning sun. The light was warm and friendly on their wild fur. Five minutes later, I said to myself, "Behold! Llamas," and was immensely pleased.

Inarticulate

I like words. They have a bumbling earnesty - a serious and well intentioned commitment to sharing meaning, to dividing it into chunks and sorting and delivering it, but they fail us when it comes to feeling. And they frown and mutter and group and regroup when we rail at them to do work that was never meant for them to do alone.

Still, they try, though we demand nothing less than alchemy, and they come up with good hearted inadequacies like "I'm sorry" or "I love you."

"Incompetents!" we grumble with flaming cheeks, and we marshall more of them: bigger, stronger, longer, older and wiser words, and we assign them ranks and roles and arrange them in squadrons. But when they march out (and so often stumble), don't we always look at the listener - at the Eyes, who have been laughing all along? In one glance: telepathy.

A Toast to Litotes

There is a neat little rhetorical device known as litotes. (It is pronounced "lie-TOTE-eez.") In a pinch, you could call it hypobole. Remember my favorite moment in Mort D'arthur? If, for example, Sir Lancelot had succeeded in splattering himself on the ground below the lofty castle window, and if, in the awkward silence immediately following, Sir Gawain had ventured to look down and say something like: "Goodness. That wasn't the wisest decision," or "Oh dear. He wasn't the cleverest person, was he?" or even "My stars.  A flesh-wound." that would be litotes. File this information for later, if you will.

So. We come to toast. You might remember an earlier post on toast. It was a bit negative, due to the evanescent properties of perfect toast, and the traitorous traits of toasters. Today, I found myself reflecting on this theme again. I put two breads* in the toaster. I moved the dial to 5. I pushed the knobthing down. Then  I remembered that my sister owed me money. This was The First Mistake.

Murphy's law was in effect, of course, and I didn't have the right change for a twenty. I was scrounging around for toonies when I remembered my toast. I bellowed (with some degree of fear) and charged up the stairs to the toaster. Sure enough, the toasts were burnt. My sister demanded what the big deal was. I tried to explain that toasters are betrayers - they get you where it hurts most: right in the toast - and thus I made The Second Mistake.

Articulating raw emotions and making lunch are activities that require intense concentration, and never the twain shall meet. Flustered, I put chocolate spread instead of butter on my burnt raisin toast. Think boiled raisins, scorched spelt and sticky brown mess. I bit into it and thought, "This tastes bad." And I invented 'litoastes' on the spot. This was Deus Ex Machina, and it pretty much redeemed a terrible situation.

Hence, I present: Litoastes  n. A rhetorically magnificent subcategory of litotes that deals exclusively with toast, toasting and bad toast-related puns.




*Slices. Since we're talking rhetorical devices, we might as well use synecdoche.

The Finity Problem

Yesterday, I was thinking about infinity - specifically, how God always has been and always will be. The 'always has been' part boggles my mind. After death, we'll have eternal life, which is infinite in the sense that it never ends. But it has a beginning. I just couldn't imagine not having a beginning. It's more than infinity, if that makes sense. If beginning at year 1 and counting upwards forever is infinity, then to have always been counting upwards must encompass more time... I think... 

Then I started thinking spatially - what about the universe? If it is infinite, we are frighteningly small. In fact, if you think about a version of Google Maps that just keeps on zooming out and zooming out, we would vanish completely, except not really - we would just keep dwindling in size forever. Imagine looking for Earth on this cosmic map with the Hubble telescope and not being able to find even the Milky Way. And that's understatement when it comes to infinity. Again, it's mind boggling. 

But then I thought: how can it not be infinite? In a hypothetical situation where people could instantly travel as far as they wanted to, can you imagine coming up against some kind of blank "edge of the map"? (like in RTS games.) Mind = blown. I can't imagine it. I just can't picture a limited universe - I mean, automatically, I would think "what is outside the boundaries of the universe?" 

But a universe can't have spatial boundaries, can it? Can the laws of physics just stop at some point? 

Maybe they could if there were other universes with different laws of physics crowded in around us - but then we would have to quibble about the definition of the word, and at the end of the day, whatever word we chose to mean "everything that exists" would replace our definition of universe, and we would still have the boundaries problem. 

Bah. Infinity, you are vindicated. Finity, you are in a league of your own. People who are still reading, you almost rate a league of your own too, but if I said that, then we'd have another problem...

It's not only Monty Python that's funny

You know how you can love old writing and dislike it at the same time? I'm talking about that contrast between  "Ooh, it's good because it's a classic" and "Why would you ever write a sentence like that?"

Arthurian legend in Thomas Malory is like that. 'And' sometimes means 'if', 'or' means 'before', and 'maugre' means 'notwithstanding'. 'Passing' is sometimes an adverb meaning 'very', oddly enough. The syntax takes some getting used to, even if you've been broken in to  inversion by the Anglo-Genevan Psalter.

Chretien de Troyes is odd too, if you use the English translated version. Somehow the niceties of twelfth century medieval French poetry have failed to make it into English prose. Take this example from the Penguin Classics edition: "The fact that his lady had been consoled, and this was the news that the lady brought him, made him suddenly very happy. The king himself was happy about it; he had been very joyful before, but now his joy was even greater." The way it's put, I just can't help being skeptical about this supremely happy king's happiness.

On the other hand, the plots are fascinating once you start understanding the cultural context. Though they are sometimes hilariously implausible (In Malory for example, Sir Tristram, the famous french flower of chivalry and knightly pwnage, poses as Sir Tramtrist when he wants to hide his true identity. Obviously, he was a master of the subtle art of disguise.) they almost always provide interesting insights into human nature and the culture of the time.

There's a great scene in Chretien's Lancelot story where Lancelot and Gawain are at the window in a castle. The window has a nice view of the nearby meadow, and it so happens that Queen Guenevere passes right by. Lancelot is immediately infatuated at the sight of her. At this point, Gawain barely knows Lancelot, so he's completely unprepared for Lancelot's abrupt decision to defenestrate himself. The queen had kept right on passing till she was out of our hero's line of vision, you see, and this was very upsetting to him.

Nevertheless, Gawain's years of experience with saving those in distress serve him well. Lancelot is only half way out of the window before Gawain hauls him back inside. I think he then says something to the effect of, "Are you mad? Don't ever do that again." Probably an understandable reaction.          

Anyway, the image of Gawain grabbing Lancelot (who would have been struggling mightily to dash himself to pieces) bodily around the waist and dragging him back inside is uproariously funny to me. The melodramatics are wonderful. Arthurian lit in general is just so good. Read it if you get the chance!

Sorry, Another One About Night

Aldergrove:
      
        a bright light cluster at night,
        
a modest solar system tucked between Galaxies,
      
        a western constellation visible with the naked eye
         from a certain gas station on Fraser Highway.

As I fuel there,
 the stink of gas and the winter air
do not damp my answering glow.

          I love this evening orbit
                                      around my incandescent home.

                             ------------

I'm not sure why I organized it like this. It looked interesting. Thoughts? 

Geography Profs Are Usually Excellent

While I was reading an inspiring post on my friend Heidi's blog, I was struck by an interesting pattern in good teachers. My sample population is pretty small and in no way useful for a research study, but I've found that Geography professors are usually excellent. There is no doubt about it. Two out of three of my Geography experiences have been inspiring, thanks largely to the influence (and estimable character) of the professors involved. The other experience, I feel, is only limited by virtue of its internet setting - online classes are the worst. But that is another rant story.

In case anyone does want to undertake a research project regarding the whys and wherefores of this claim, I have drawn up a few hypotheses to help you apply for grants:

Geography professors are usually excellent because:

1. They study everything. Geography is the broadest discipline that ever was. It covers everything from mushrooms to skyscrapers. It is a discipline which provides scope for a healthy thirst for knowledge.

2. They're a perfect mix of Arts and Sciences. They're not always entrenched in their labs with beakers of nitroglycerin and scribbling chalkboard sized equations, nor are they always torturing the written word in order to wrench grand abstractions from it. What follows is an obviously logical syllogism: well balanced people are usually excellent, and geographers are always well balanced people. Therefore, geographers are usually excellent.

3.They often do field work. Literally. Maybe it's just because I'm an English major, but there must be something strongly bucolic about digging holes for soil samples in the grassy wilderness, with the animals frolicking around you and the smell of honest dirt. If you prefer the city, fear not. As per hypothesis number one, geographers work in the city as well, right in the middle of the bustling, hustling, rustling crowds.They know the world from first hand experience, and that's where the good stories in class come from.

4.  A handful of weather geographers do tornado chasing. I think the outright coolness of this is self-explanatory.


Note that these hypotheses may be interconnected factors in the usual excellence of Geography professors. In the course of your research, you may also find that I have been exaggerating shamelessly all along, but there are a few grains of truth sprinkled here and there. In the meantime, happy researching!

Sleepy

The lamp is on - the tall one with the fuzzy lampshade. It's a bit redundant because the computer screen is so bright, but there's still something warm and friendly about it. Song for Paris is tugging at nameless emotions in my throat. I don't know if I'm happy or sad. Memories can be like that. Mostly, I'm fighting sleep. There might be a poem up my sleeve, and I'm not ready to wake up at Tomorrow yet.

If I were to sketch the day, what medium would I use? I might use crayons for the morning, which was a refreshing mix of quiet sun and icy wind and cranberry juice with a cheese bagel. Maybe pencil for the scribblings of a mid day essay - 2H for the planning and 3B for the thick font in my book. A watercolor wash for the vague disappointment of winding up far from where I wanted to go. Ballpoint pen for doodling in class and the tight ranks of words that glared up at me from the pages of the text.

But I would save charcoal for right now - for the soft dark which smudges the light so gently on cloudy nights. And I would press hard and make it crumble a bit on the paper, to make the dark so thick you could stick a song in it and the notes would kind of linger like the steam that curls off of hot coffee, which is probably way up there on the list of coziest things. And if I was careful, the whole thing might look a bit like the excellent day that God drew up for me.

Sky

Flying a kite:

       dreamfishing with a ribbony lure,

or imagination's periscope?

Dialogue

I love writing dialogue. It's fun to think about what someone would say in any given situation, and how their conversation partner(s) would respond. Response duration, dropped words, irony - the works. But even at the height of my creative ability, I don't think I could ever come up with a conversation as good as this one.

Ah, I had a unifying paragraph between the above and the next dialogue I'm going to share, but it suffered from a distinct lack of awesomeness. So we'll be skipping it and moving right along to the context. You should know that my eldest sibling is tough as nails. She's great, as far as sisters go, which is why the rest of us enjoy bugging her by outrageously overstating her ferocity and uh... forgetting to mention her good points. Thus:

Sister 1's Boyfriend: "Is she pretty competitive?"

Sister 2: "Well, she did bad at track and field because she was always trying to beat down the other kids."

James: "Yeah. No wonder they don't have javelin throw in track and field anymore. The principal was like, 'Unfortunately, we will not be having the javelin throw this year. Last year, a certain student managed to spear and injure several others."

Sister 1's Boyfriend laughs

Sister 2: "Now you can't injure people anymore!"

Sister 1: "Hey!"

Longish Pause

Sister 1: "...there's still shotput!"

A Smidgen of Story

I'm searching for inspiration right now. Sadly, I haven't been able to find it in my notebooks, my daily activities, or under the cushions on the couch. So while I continue this quest, I offer a smidgen of an old story I wrote.

Nobody could agree about the exact details, but everyone said she was the most beautiful woman in the world. The cook and the King were skeptical.

“She might be a sorceress, or she might not. Anyway, rumors often exaggerate. Even if she is incredibly beautiful, it’s what’s inside that counts.” the cook pointed out. The King nodded.

“I agree completely. Take this, for example. It looks like an ordinary pie. But when the filling explodes onto your taste buds, bursting into tasty Blueberry fireworks, staining the tongue with the tart taste of unabashed culinary excellence, and etching indelible pleasure into sweet memory, it is far more than an ordinary pie!” He wiped his mouth.

“That was poetic,” said the cook.

            However, the King and the cook were unable to stifle their curiosity. Eventually, they invited the lady to the castle. She was everything the stories said, and more. Both men fell head over heels in love with her. This had an unfortunate effect on their friendship.

             *            *            *

            “Jon! This is incredible! You’ve outdone yourself.” cried the Lady, nibbling a pastry delicately. She was dressed all in white and looked quite stunning. Jon smiled shyly. The King, who was sitting beside him, chewed on a piece of bread with alarming intensity. “Honestly, has the King never told you what a good cook you are?”  The King savagely gnawed another chunk off of his breadstick.

“I respect a man who can cook, and you have a rare talent! They must miss you in Torwick!” gushed the Lady.

The cook smiled at the praise. Then he cast a startled glance at the King, who was holding his lip. It was bleeding.

“Bi’ my lip” said the King, and left the room. 

                                                                        

                                                                              *            *            *

The day of the annual Harvest feast, which was held outdoors in the beautiful royal gardens, the King had his seneschal do all the announcing. While the seneschal was droning out the necessary formalities, he took his place at the head of the table beside Jon and the Lady. Noticing with annoyance that Jon was flirting in a disgusting manner, he cleared his throat and whispered,

“Cook – ah- Jon, I made another pie. Why don’t you try this one? It should be better than my first.” 

Jon and the Lady looked pained, but Jon was eager to make amends, and bravely took up a spoon. It was a large wooden ladle, too big for eating with, but it was the first thing that he grabbed. He poked clumsily at the pie. There was an interminable pause. The King began to sweat. It was poisoned. The ladle pierced the crust with a crunch. Jon winced. It was more than a little overdone. The filling was unrecognizable. He dug in, and the pie parted with an ominous schlup. Globs of glistening jelly fell from the spoon. He closed his eyes and slowly opened his mouth.

              “What, bit your lip again?” said the Lady to the King. Jon opened his eyes.             

              “Are you all right?” he asked. The King nodded weakly. Before Jon reluctantly returned his attention to the pie, the Lady spoke.

              “Jon, Your Majesty, I’m sorry to bring it up now, but I must. I’m afraid I’ve destroyed a friendship. I hope you can understand what I’m going to do.”

  Jon was concentrating on a wobbling spoonful of piecrust and jelly. The King twitched. Oblivious, the Lady continued.            

            “I think it really is time.” She got up and smoothed her dress.

            “Jon, you’d better watch too.” Jon looked up, his mouth full of pie. The King’s face was contorted into the oddest expression. The Lady looked solemnly at them, her beautiful brown eyes full of emotion. And then she vanished. Jon choked on his pie and the King made a strangled noise. The King sprang across the table and pounded Jon on the back. Jon was trying to say something but it was unrecognizable through the coughing and wheezing. Finally, he spit out the mouthful. The King seized the remaining pie and hurled it into the garden. Everyone at the feast was staring. Then the Lady reappeared. The King and the cook were speechless. 

             "I am the stag," she said. And she became the stag, just as the King had seen it the year before. The dumbfounded court gaped for a split second, and she was off in a blur of white. 

             "After her!" roared the King, and the whole court surged forward, knocking drinking goblets and cutlery in every direction, upending tables and shouting madly for horses and ropes. It was a glorious chase: they pursued her out of the gardens and into the countryside, up and down the wooded hills, through the brush along the river and into the woods again. The hounds bayed uproariously and the hunting horns trumpeted, and they very nearly caught her, but it is one thing to hunt a stag with weapons, and quite another to catch it with nets and ropes. Though the King and the cook turned the whole country upside down in their search, they never did catch the stag. Eventually, however, the lady's absence cured the king of his madness. It is said that the cook generously forgave the king, and they became friends a second time, on the condition that the king would never bake another pie. It is also said that every Harvest Feast after, the cook baked a special pie just for the king. And at every feast, it is remembered that the king always pronounced his first bite "bittersweet". 

The End

Daedalus

I thought I'd share a humorous comic that my friend discovered (Baartman, 2011). For those of you who know Greek myths, this will probably be hilarious :D (Just click on the comic to enlarge it)

Whoever created this, I take my hat off to you. 

Res Miranda

Even when he is late to rise, you could never describe the sun as groggy. He is too bright, too cheerful, (too splendid!) the minute he stretches, clambers out from under the rumpled horizon, strides to the window and hurls wide the brilliant curtainous clouds,

and stands, hands on hips, chest out, and smiles warmly at the shivering morning (who blushes so prettily whenever they meet)

and shouts greetings down to the moon, who is hurrying his way home from the night shift with glad feet,

and ascends the staircase of his apartment in the mountains with confidence

and gulps down a quick breakfast of hastily buttered toast and a half full glass of orange juice, which is full of pulp today, though sometimes he buys it without pulp, even though it doesn't matter, really - he likes it both ways -

and turns out every light when he leaves, as instructed by the Landlord,

but there is a certain sleepy charm to his waking routines that the disgruntled winter grasses fail to appreciate.

"Cold, cold, cold!" they grumble, and "At last the Sun is up."

Evening's Sabres

"Soft as the massacre of Suns
By Evening's Sabres slain"
    --- Emily Dickinson

Brilliance. I have no words.The best two lines of poetry I have ever read.

Toast Responsibly

I don't know what kind of bread your mom buys or makes, but around this house, we get it from a bakery that delights in colorful packaging and delicious bread. One of the many types of bread sold at this location comes in a red bag. It is labeled "Squirrelly Bread." This label has to do with the extreme brown-ness of the bread. The bakery probably took a variety of nuts, ground 'em up, chucked 'em in the bread maker and crossed their fingers. As a result of such healthy ingredients, your sudden concern for the actual taste of the loaf is understandable. (I consider it a general rule that any time your parents tell you something is healthy, they either mistakenly establish a sort of mental connection with the idea that you will enjoy it, or they are actively trying to bamboozle you. I now regard anything 'healthy' with deep suspicion.)

This bread, however, is surprisingly tasty, even without being toasted. In the latter state, it is worthy of raptures. Of course, you'll understand that all rapture comes with qualifications - even toast-rapture. The perfect toast is an elusive creature. Once it cools, it will become too crunchy, a condition that even the most indifferent consumer of bread detests. It must be devoured before this happens, that is, with gusto at the opportune moment.

To provide context for this didactic little narrative, let us imagine my kitchen as it was this morning. You are expecting, at this point, a table, a counter, some cupboards, and perhaps a loaf of Squirrelly Bread accompanied by condiments and utensils. You are not wrong; they are all there. But sprawled sullenly between them are those most malevolent of manuscripts: textbooks. Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson lurks behind a bloated Cross-Talk in Comp Theory, which smothers several binders. Course syllabuses* are scattered about, and Arthurian Romance is belly up nearby. You'll find it a distressing scene, no doubt.

 In light of all this, it hardly seemed fair when breakfast turned out to be cold toast.** I crunched through it dutifully, but something snapped inside of me that day. Er, today. I immediately*** composed a threnody to properly convey my feelings. Here it is.

If you, as I
had swift unfurled
all the maps of all the world,
and spraying crumbs
and cursing, hurled
them from the lawn into the lake
this discov'ry you would make:


On our Earth
of all that's heinous 
this is most:
a stone dead bread,
a chillèd toast.

As you can see, my grief was so great that I was required to do singular injustice to the English language and poetry itself. The moral is clear. What goes into a toaster must come out. Do not put in more than the family can scarf down in one sitting. Toast responsibly.

*I refuse to write "syllabi." It's a matter of principle.
**If I had risen earlier, I might've been able to prevent the crime. Let that be a lesson!
***This is rather a stretch. I didn't start writing until after three. 

Dahlias

I'm going to let you in on a secret. Today was supposed to be a poem day, but I don't have a poem ready. Poetry rarely comes easily to me. I have to be 110% gung ho for an idea before I can write anything good. And ideas are kinda hard to force. But occasionally, just occasionally, I sit down and force myself to write something good. So this is going to be a bit of an experiment. You get to be in on the creative process. I'll try to show as much of my thinking as I can. Anything could happen!

Step 1. Discard the urge to write a poem about the current weather. There's a window behind the computer, you see, and I stare off into space through it when I'm thinking hard. I've already written plenty of weather poems, anyway.

Step 2. Words, words, words. Consider locating my "Book of Words," a notebook that I write down inspiring words in, along with useful rhymes and their etymologies. So far, it has two words in it: indigo and estival. Not festival. Estival. Briefly consider writing a poem called "Estival Festival." Smile, but scrap idea. "Ode to Toad" comes to mind, but really, this is becoming ridiculous. Moving on.

Step 3. Make tea. Rummage through cupboards looking for something besides "Breathe Easy." Discover "Sleepy Time" and shrug. Put water on to boil.

Step 4. Eureka! Suppose Icarus (my moth character, not the Greek schmuck who plummeted to his death) wrote a lament? Love scorned, and all that...ah, but nah...not really feeling it. Think, think...run to check on kettle. It's boiling, but not whistling yet. Interesting. Bright yellow flowers sit beside it on the counter. They'd be a good subject for a still life painting. Heeeyy...suppose a person wrote a "still life" poem? What would that be like? (And yellow flowers are summery - maybe we could get estival in there after all!)

Step 5. Brainstorm a personality for the poem. Delicate? Abrupt? Outrageous? Google "yellow flowers." Turns out they're dahlias. Grab a pen and scribble some experimental lines.

Sock it to him, right in the retinas.
We're yeller, boys, an' we're gonna put some colour in that face. 
Rise and shine!

Shudder. Drink some tea and grab a granola bar. Food will help.


These dahlias are cut: 
they are still lifes in real life,
sunset photographs which never quite live up to splendour
like the genuine article did. 


(in the making of those four lines, the dahlias were originally one dahlia, and everything was singular. "genuine article" evolved from "real thing", because I already have "real life", which is cliche enough.)

Rework the last two lines: sunset photographs that never quite lived up to the splendor/ of the genuine article. Change "genuine article" to the prototype flower. Delete 'flower'. Change first part of the second last line again: sunset photographs that never quite bloom/ to match the splendour of the prototype.




We now have:
These flowers are cut:  (changed 'dahlias' to 'flowers' in order to save the more specific word for the title)
They are still lifes in real life,  ('lifes' seems more suitable than 'lives', so we're keeping that)
sunset photographs which never quite bloom 
to match the splendour of the prototype.


Add more lines.

still,
life in the kitchen,
in their corner by the kettle,
is nearly estival. 


In the winter, I brew tea
and they brew memory in me.


Now we have a rough sort of poem! Huzzah!

Step 6. Remove all capitals to appear avant garde and voila:

Dahlias

these flowers are cut:
they are still lifes in real life,
sunset photographs which never quite bloom to match the splendour of the prototype.

still
life in the kitchen,
in their corner by the kettle,
is nearly estival.

in the winter, i brew tea,
and they brew memory in me.

Step 7. Add a fictional author (because guys aren't supposed to be emotionally affected by flowers.)
Example: "by Isabelle Castille, author of critically acclaimed Plante's Inferno and Chlorophyllis and Chlorophilip."

Big White

In a far away land, there is a collection of buildings called Kelowna. A little farther yet, there is a happy and magical place called Big White Ski Resort. With seven friends, I journeyed there. It was like Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, except that my friends aren't dwarves and I'm not Snow White. Since the similarity of the two tales is obviously so striking, I won't trouble you with all the details, but there are some that might excite interest. This conversation, for example:

Friend #1: "Ask me what I'm wearing."

Friend #2 looks confused and suspicious. Friend #1 is obviously barefoot and shirtless.

Friend # 2: "Okaay...what are you wearing?"

Friend #1 (to the tune of Just Dance, by Lady Gaga): "Just pants! Doodoodoodoo doo doodoo! Just pants!"

Friend #2 shakes his head.

Friend #1: "Hahaha! I've been waiting to do that all day!"

This conversation was also rather interesting. I believe it immediately followed some uproarious singing along with Taylor Swift in the car on the way home. Note that Friend #2 is severely addicted to Tim Hortons' Iced Cappuchinos.

James: "Hey, feeling better now?"


Friend #2: "I am actually! I can't believe that singing Taylor Swift made me feel better and didn't make me want to puke."


Friend #3: "You just didn't have enough icecaps, that's all."


James: "Haha, true. He probably has icecap instead of blood."


Friend #2: "I had too much blood in my icecap system."


Funny conversations aside, the mountain was the best part. Conditions were a mite foggy, but the snowboarding was supremely fun, and some of us went night skiing. I was busy eating and sleeping, but by all accounts it was extremely fun. I gather there was more fighting with ski poles than actual skiing.

Useful contraptions, ski poles. If you don't have at least one, consider purchasing. They are very handy for such activities as fishing Coronas and Powerades out of the snow on your deck without freezing to death. Not freezing to death allows a much greater appreciation of the incredible scenery in these places: stunted trees bowed by huge clumps of snow (some so bent over that they form arches), the snow covered village center, and happy boarders and skiiers traversing the snow covered streets.

Conclusion: This trip was grand. We haven't hit Happily Ever After yet, but I prefer this story to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves - even though the two tales are so very similar. See?

• A cornucopia of delicious food > Poisoned apples
• Eight charming fellows > One Prince Charming.
• Singing Dire Straits > Singing "High Ho, High Ho, It's Off to Work We Go"
• Zero wicked queens > One wicked queen