Living Well 30 April 2018
On Twitter the other day, a lady solicited a "living well is the best revenge" thread. In it, she asked people to tell her about times when they were disparaged, discouraged, or somehow dissuaded from doing something, only to "stick it to the man" later in life. Stories poured in, 280 characters (maximum) each. Stories about rude teachers. Stories about dismissive professors. Stories about condescending bosses. Stories about thoughtless parents. Each one ended with the equivalent of a "Ha, ha! They were wrong! Now I make money doing [the thing]!" I even participated, having had a rough time with one of my professors back in college. She was one of the reasons that I had a year between graduating and getting the job that I currently enjoy. I am not ignorant of the fact that, without her interfering with my potential job, I wouldn't be where I am. However, it's also fallacious to say that I wouldn't have found a lot to enjoy, to fulfill my life, and to teach had I been a more traditional English teacher. That is, just because I love where I am now, it doesn't mean that I wouldn't love being somewhere else, too. (That being said, I wouldn't want to shift over now. I still gain far too much satisfaction from the classes that I teach where I am to want to go roaming for other classrooms.) As for the Twitter thread, I don't necessarily disagree with the lady who brought it up. I mean, there's a lesson to be learned. There is, I would say, a degree of pettiness that I'm not too keen on, though it makes a certain amount of sense. Someone else's damaging myopia, being proven wrong, is something to consider. What stood out to me more than anything, however, was the quantity of professors and teachers who expressed their honest feelings. I wrote about this kind of thing before, but to see it so pervasive as these stories made it seem was shocking. When I first saw it, I wondered if I could add anything to the thread. Had I ever been put down like what others were saying? It didn't take long for me to think about the example I gave above, but that's about as far as I could take it. Again, I'm very happy where I ended up, so it's hard to really foster any animosity toward her--though she does provide a useful example of this sort of thing to my students--and there are better, more important things for me to spend my energy on. The larger takeaway, I think, is instead counting myself as fortunate as I am. When it comes to support, I have been immensely blessed. It helps that I'm a cishet White male, meaning that most of life is custom-made to pander to me and my tastes. I don't have to deal with gender identity issues, life-altering disabilities, or any monumental difficulty that would fracture my relationships with those around me. I struggle with my dysthymia, and my oldest has a severe heart problem that requires vigilance. But massive, foundational problems? Nah. That is, I'm coming to understand, fairly rare. My parents have always ever been supportive of me, encouraging me to pursue my different talents, paltry though they are. Art supplies, books to read, even guitar strings (I broke so many when I was learning how to play, I'm embarrassed to remember it now), and far beyond that, my parents always gave me space to grow and balance with which to steady myself. As at home, so at school. I took a far-beyond-my-real-ability math class in my senior year. I've never been particularly interested in math--which, unsurprisingly, translated into believing I wasn't any good at it--and I went ahead and tackled it anyway. My teacher, Mr. Jackson, didn't ever pull me aside and say, "What are you doing here? You're never going to use calculus. You're on a different path. You shouldn't be in this class." And why would he? He wasn't trying to convert us all to being mathletes. He was teaching what he was passionate about to a bunch of kids whose hormones were exploding and all of them wanted out of these desks and classrooms where they had to listen to an adult talk about some subject that didn't interest them. They wanted to get into college or university, a place where they would…um, sit at desks in classrooms where they would have to listen to an adult talk about some subject they wouldn't care about… Yeah, chomping at the bit to get out of high school is kind of dumb, especially for the college-bound. I digress. My point is, even up through college, whenever I wanted to move beyond just what I was doing in the classroom, I would get nothing but excitement and eagerness. I remember one professor, Christa Albrecht-Crane, spending a lot of extra time with me after class to talk about the course I was in with her, to read some of my short stories, and to help me prepare for the NCUR experiences that culminated my college years. She didn't pull me aside and say, "Your writing is terrible and pretentious and you probably ought to stop pursuing your English degree." (I don't know that she thought that; if she did, she never gave a sign to me.) With that one noted exception above, I've always had support. So what gives? Why don't more teachers do more for their students? I had one student who confessed to me her broken heart because the drama teacher had told her that she wasn't lead material and that she should probably do something else with her life rather than acting. But acting was her life. And though she wasn't as easily a natural talent as those that surrounded her, she had found what she cared about. That, for me, was what mattered more*. As she cried about being so firmly shut down, I took the opposite tack. I asked what her goal was, and she answered without hesitation: "To perform on the Globe Theater in London". I told her, she gets to the Globe, I'll get into that audience. So far as I know, she's no closer to her dream than I am to mine. But I fail to see how giving her a "reality check" about her passions would in any way help her out. Additionally, I don't feel I gave her false hope. Believing in the potential of other people is one of the addicting aspects of my job, a benefit I don't get to enjoy nearly as often as I would like. Why would I throw that away and make others' lives less as a result? So, maybe George Herbert is right. Maybe living well is really where it's at. But if it's just about revenge? Well, I don't think it's worth the bother, then. --- * I would bet that the reason I feel this way is because I have so many hangups about the validity of my passions. I constantly war with myself about attaching value to monetary validation, which is pernicious and poisonous but also very natural in our late-capitalistic world. If I rely on net worth to determine self-worth, I would have empirical evidence of my own relative worthlessness, especially compared to the affluence that America generates. So, yeah--caring about something is more important than the dollars you can get by it. So sayeth Steve. I'm a fan of Malcolm Gladwell. He writes passionately, articulately, and intelligently. His ability to take an idea and give the ramifications of what he's discussing, as well as his evidence for it, is really enjoyable. Much like Freakonomics, I think there may be some gaps and hidden assumptions in Gladwell's work, but on the whole I'm okay with most of what he discusses.
I finished Outliers a couple of days ago, which had a handful of thoughts that were really interesting to me. One was the power of language: In his chapter about the stereotype about Asians being good at math, he begins by talking, of all things, how to grow and harvest rice. As he was going along, I kept wondering what this had to do with his undergirding thesis (success of an individual has almost everything to do with how and where and when the person was born and raised and almost nothing to do with talent) and how it might possibly pertain to high math scores in Asian countries. Soon enough, however, he pulls the about-face needed, and points that the way in which rice is harvested creates a particular kind of culture. It has to. Much like our agricultural history has generated certain behaviors in us in the West, so, too, has the agricultural necessities of the East shaped the ways that Asians not only see the world, but move through it as well. Then, to cap it all off, Gladwell points out that the way in which English speakers approach numbers is so screwy that the Asian languages, which go about numbers much more logically, have an instant advantage. He points out that English speakers' short-term memory can handle about eight digits. For Asian language speakers, it's closer to ten. This has to do with the fact that all of the numbers follow a pattern (think of how we count up the teens but not the twenties and you'll see that our way of counting is quite bizarre) that allows for easier comprehension of math. Not only that, but because of the length of time it takes to say a number for an English speaker as compared to, say, a Chinese speaker, we can see a reason for the superiority in Chinese number calculation. A person can fit more Chinese numbers into the same amount of time as trying to do the same in English. That there's so much linguistic, cultural, and geographic influence on a person's life isn't really what's shocking about what Gladwell argues: Instead, it's that there is much more effect on a person than our narrative of a success allows. He doesn't mention Shakespeare, but if you think about it, he won the cosmic lottery. Here's a quick run-down of things that Shakespeare didn't control but still had an effect on his life: Born to a family with the economic resources to send him to school; proximity to a school where he could learn to read and write in multiple languages; exposure to the art form that would eventually prove his career; access to Elizabeth's London, a time when people were expanding the language, wordplay was common, and a growing permissiveness in the culture that allowed plays to be enjoyed by many; the first permanent theaters being erected in London; plague ravaging the city, thereby forcing him out to work on his poetry (in the form of the sonnets) and, perhaps, go on tour in the Midlands. The list could go on, but the point is that Shakespeare wasn't really in charge of most of the ingredients he needed to become the world's greatest playwright. Gladwell doesn't dismiss the need for work, however. He talks a great deal about the 10,000 hours of practice rule--the idea that people need to put in the hours of practice to become the greats that they are. How Shakespeare got that number is anyone's guess, as none of his "apprentice" works survive (though Tina Packer, in Women of Will, makes the claim that 1 Henry VI was the equivalent of Shakespeare's high school project, since it is, honestly, really bad). Nevertheless, Gladwell uses the dedication of Bill Gates to be at the computer terminal, programming, in tandem with the one-in-a-million chance that the right kid could be at the right place at the right time in order to have the opportunity to gain the experience of 10,000 hours of work to become good at what he does. The same holds true, I would argue, with Shakespeare. Where his crucible was most likely lies in "the lost years", the gap of time when we only have legends and myths about what the Bard was doing. Based on Gladwell's book, I'd argue that he was writing. A lot. Every day. Anyway, Gladwell doesn't speculate on the Bard (doesn't even mention him, really, which is always a point against an author, if you ask me). Instead, he focuses on other, better documented examples of extraordinary success. Part of the takeaway is frustrating: We've lived with the idea (and it feels almost like a lie, after having read this book) that by working hard, having some grit and tenacity, and always looking to improve, we will be successful. But there is an uncontrollable variable at work, however, and that's impossible to account for. If you're in the right place at the right time, with the right amount of practice in the skills that you'll need, then you'll be successful. Sheer talent and hard work aren't enough. There are too many communal tweaks that shape a person. On the other hand, it is also inspiring to think that, because one does all one can in the background--writing every day, practicing for hours, constantly reading--that it can one day (if all turns out right) be the moment of success that the person has been hoping for all along. As far as the book goes, I recommend it. I felt he belabored his point when talking about the airplanes, and occasionally I found my attention wandering. (Oh, I just remembered that his stuff about how to make sure kids do well in school involves making sure they continue to grow and stretch during the summer. Interesting stuff. Should've mentioned it. Oh, well.) Nevertheless, I would pick it up if you want to restructure your thinking. In fact, that's what Gladwell's books always seem to do. A shake up every now and again is probably good for you. I am almost out of time to deliver an abstract to the people at the Wooden O symposium. I think it'll be useful, then, to spend my time doing another bought of revisions. While last time I simply threw a couple of ideas down and called it good, this time, I'm going to use the editing feature on my word processor. Because of how my website handles formatting, I will take screenshots of my work for you to see, since the actual text isn't really transferrable. Here's the abstract that I liked the most from last time: Othello's racial themes are founded on the language of the oppressor. As the Other within Venetian society, Othello must navigate the difficult process of living within a world replete with white supremacy and insinuations of his insufficiencies. This paper focuses on the Derridean idea of racism as an outgrowth of language, drawing attention to the ways characters casually bandy about racist ideas as well as driving in their bigoted concepts more forcefully. This paper seeks to explore the complicated structures of racism that both create the world of the play and, in the inimitable Shakespearean way, critique our world in the process. And this is what it looks like after I've gone through a process of editing. Okay, so one of the problems that I'm seeing is that my "edit" has been more of a "rewrite". (I don't know why I put those in quotation marks. But I'm not changing it now.) Additionally, it's tricky to look at all the reds and underlines and strikeouts. Obviously I wouldn't send it in looking like this. Here's the same thing, tidied up: According to Jacques Derrida's analysis of racism being founded in the language of the oppressor, Othello (both the play and the character) relies on that inimitably Shakespearean difference through his unique use of language. As the Other within Venetian society, Othello must navigate the difficult process of living within a world replete with white supremacy and insinuations of his insufficiencies, almost all of which are generated verbally. By using the Derridean idea of racism as an outgrowth of language, this paper seeks to draw attention to the ways characters casually bandy about racist ideas as well as driving in their bigoted concepts more forcefully. By exploring the complicated structures of racism within the play and its language, we gain a greater insight into the dangers of racism in our world as well. The tricky thing for me is that I feel like I should go through and tighten the language more. But academia has a noted and distinct tendency to bloviate vociferously. (Yeah, that sentence is supposed to be ironic.) They like to hide a multitude of sins through the multiplication of words (thanks to Neal A. Maxwell for that one). Additionally, as far as abstract lengths go, this one is still shy of the two hundred word minimum (I guess? There isn't anything on the website that lets me know otherwise). How long are these papers supposed to be? My original essay is about 1,500 words (four pages, with the spacing like what you see here). Is that enough? I feel like I was just getting started…would they want more? Is it going too long? That's the thing: I'm shooting in ignorance here. That's rather frustrating, I will admit, but I'm probably overthinking it. I should do this, see what the response is, and modify accordingly. Right? So here's the final edit on the abstract, which I'm sending off once I've finished this essay. Okay, that's probably enough. In case you want it, here's the clean version: According to Jacques Derrida, racism is founded in the language of the Oppressor. William Shakespeare's Othello relies on that inimitably Shakespearean difference of language to put pressure on that possibility. As the Other within Venetian society, Othello must navigate the difficult process of living within a world replete with white supremacy and insinuations of his insufficiencies, almost all of which are generated verbally. By using this Derridean idea of racism as an outgrowth of language, the paper seeks to draw attention to the ways characters casually bandy about racist ideas, thereby demonstrating the verbal complicity in maintaining the racist power structure. By exploring the complicated structures of racism within the play and its language, Shakespeare demonstrates a greater insight into the dangers--and ubiquity--of racism in our world as well. This ends up being 131 words long and, I think, a fair representation of what I was trying to do in my short essay. If accepted, the abstract would also give me a small outline to work off of whilst improving the essay, as the ideas above would be crucial to what the Wooden O Symposium would be expecting from me.
Wish me luck. Having finished my Hard Day™ at school on my birthday, Gayle and I went out for a rare date. We went to the Smoky Apple for barbecue, then visited Barnes and Noble. After a dessert at a frozen yogurt place, we went to watch something that would be the opposite of the complex, weighty matter I'd been wrestling with all day.
I picked Rampage. I had some specific criteria for what I wanted out of a movie: It needed someone burly who would shoot weapons and scowl a lot. It needed contrived moments that didn't bear up under scrutiny, but served the plot well enough. Above all, it needed building punching. Just as much building punching as I could get. Fortunately, that list was amply met by Rampage. Because I'd already seen the trailer, I knew almost the entirety of the plot upon walking in. Since the plot is pretty straightforward and there are only a handful of wrinkles in an otherwise familiar and expected formula, that isn't saying too much. I didn't think there'd be a lot of character depth or thoughtful conversations about what was going on, and I was right. In fact, that's something to consider on its own. As far as character development, it goes along well with other "popcorn movies". There are some glimpses into the past, but nothing that really dives too deeply. We learn that Davis (The Rock's character) befriended the albino gorilla, George, when Davis stopped some poachers in Africa. That, and Davis' training as Special Forces (to explain how he can fly a helicopter and knew what to do with a grenade launcher) are really all we get. The movie is lean, tightly put together so that any more than five minutes of backstory would detract from the pacing. And, frankly, I don't know if I would have cared to know more about him. The plot armor over the lead couple was so thick that there wasn't any chance I would think things wouldn't turn out for our heroes. Since I knew they weren't in jeopardy, I didn't have to worry about a detailed life goal that was frustrated by the conflict in the film. The thing is, all of the pieces of a character arc were there: Davis' misanthropy is established (more through dialogue than action, I felt); his relationship with George is emphasized; his desire to save his gorilla friend is made clear. These pieces then have a purpose (by the end, his misanthropy is changed, his relationship with George is enhanced, and the desire to save his friend saves the city (which, of course, is lying in building-punched ruins)). As far as hitting the beats that are supposed to happen in a story, they're pretty much all there. So why isn't Rampage a more satisfying movie? Part of it is that I don't think it's trying to be. It doesn't want the audience to get bored with what is essentially a turn-off-you-brain monster flick, but it doesn't want to be (too) hollow. Hence the way the movie goes. Thinking of why Rampage and its predecessors (including Jurassic World and, though I haven't seen the trailers, I'm willing to bet Jurassic World 2) all fail so thoroughly to live up to the godfather of CGI monster movies, Jurassic Park, is the fact that there's so much attention put on the things with the teeth that the implications of the science that has been brought about--the, as it were, real-world component of the story--is lost. In Jurassic Park, it takes nearly forty minutes before we see what we paid for: The dinosaurs. And when we do, we get them calm, majestic, and harmonious. That sets up the beautiful promise of what the technology can do. However, the characters then sit down for dinner, having seen the remnants of the Velociraptor meal. They're given some of the promise, then some of the danger. This spurs them to argue (a type of conflict, which allows the scene to still have tension, stakes, and an eventual payoff) about the possibilities of what has transpired. Compare this to every other major monster movie. Nine times out of ten, if this kind of conversation occurs, it's in the midst of the catastrophe. As the monster approaches the city, that's when the I-knew-it-all-along character points a finger at those responsible and says something about "playing God" or an argument along those lines. Then the hero goes in to save the day. The problem with that is, we're not interested in the argument. Yes, arguments can have conflict, as I mentioned above. But an argument is not nearly as interesting when we're in the middle of seeing a skyscraper get laid low by a porcupine-wolf that's larger than a city bus. Putting the subtlety and nuances of character concerns into the end of the second act isn't going to work because everything around it is too loud. In my mind, this is why monster movies are, ultimately, incapable of being as emotive and powerful as Jurassic Park. Spielberg's first movie in the franchise set the bar so high that not even he could surpass it in Jurassic Park: The Lost World. No, they aren't the most important, profound movies that a person can watch. They're not supposed to be. But they don't have to be pure fluff, either. So what about Rampage? Well, it doesn't really try to get too deep into the implications of what's going on. While (thankfully) they avoid the "playing God" accusation as a result, it means that they never have any time to look into the…moral, I guess, of the story. Since their story structure doesn't permit anything like the dinner scene--and its follow up Petticoat Lane scene--from Jurassic Park, the movie avoids any attempt of the humans to come to grips with the fantastic power that's on display. They're too busy fighting the monsters. Lastly, the villains were so cartoonish that they never exuded genuine malice. I didn't much care about them and their financial woes fail to generate anything approaching empathy in me. They were exposition machines and a way of creating closure at their defeat. Forgettable antagonists, that's for sure. All that being said, I enjoyed Rampage. I would have wanted just a little more of the building punching stuff, but even the first Pacific Rim could use a touch more, in my opinion. I love that sub-genre, so it's natural that I liked Rampage. I didn't feel cheated by what happened, and though I would have preferred to see Infinity War, I still had a good time at the movies. Sometimes, especially after a hard day, that's really all a fellow is looking for. Because today is my birthday, I'm working on my daily essay early. This frees me up to enjoy my celebration tonight.
Because today is the day that I teach the Holocaust, I'm not really able to focus on writing my book during the time in which I normally write. Because today is a writing day during my Novel Writing class, I'm not skipping out on other work that I could be doing. Because I would rather keep the pieces of my life separate, I'm trying to make jokes and laugh and be happy with my students in the two classes I teach that aren't my history classes. Because I had to teach about the horrors of the past today, I chose to be more patient with my son, who had shoved an SD card backwards into his new camcorder, essentially breaking it. Because the waiting for the Holocaust lecture is worse than going through it--almost--I'm doing everything I can to recoil from that responsibility. Usually, when I have a large and complicated day in front of me, I find that I run through the motions the day before. I think this bothers my wife, as it means that I'm not as keen on setting things down and crossing things off of a list. If I'm headed to the cabin for three days, I'm going to pack everything up the night before, trying to figure the absolute bare minimum of what I need in order to make the trip successful. She's interested in getting it planned, organized, purchased, and packed in a timely manner. I guess that's why we get along so well? Or maybe she's just far too patient with a perpetually flawed person. Whatever the case may be in that instance, I have been trying hard to overcome this tendency to wait until the last minute to improve things. Notice I didn't say "do" things: I have my entire school year planned out--to the day, as a matter of fact--so that I'm rarely at a loss for what to do. Sure, curveballs come my way every once in a while, but it's nothing too big. So I have plans and things like that. It's just that when it's on me to get prepared early, I often forget about what I've done. A good example is an assignment that I've given out to my Shakespeare students: I asked them to bring food tomorrow because reasons. It was as I typed this paragraph that I remembered that I ought to remind them of their assignment. I haven't tried to secure extra utensils or serving equipment, ensure that everything goes according to plan…nothing. I set it so far in the future that my mind has already checked it off the list. What that means is that I don't start enhancing my knowledge about my school topics until I'm actually in the unit. So, for World War I, I wanted to read a book or two about the war before I jumped in with the students. Despite my attempt to do things early, I only finished Blueprint for Armageddon in the middle of the unit, and I didn't finish Price of Glory until after we were done discussing the Great War. And I'm only a third of the way through Okinawa. My point is that I still have this nasty habit of having to be "in the mood" to do something that I need to work on. This happens less often with writing these essays, as I've continually forced myself to write even when it was a blatant waste of time. But my novels? Yeah, I have, like, three of them languishing in the torpor of my apathy right now. And my personal improvement--what I need to know for my job--is the same. I don't want to read about imperialism until I'm studying imperialism. As a result, I don't have a greater well of knowledge to draw from. Sometimes that's laziness; other times, it's a coping mechanism. The Holocaust would have to be one of those. I don't study it carefully outside of this time of year. It's too painful, too familiar, too strange, too sad. The result is that I try to think and feel the Holocaust only on this one day, on this one week. I compartmentalize my emotion because I don't want to have to deal with it more than this one time. And, now that I'm halfway through the day, I am trying to do that again, to push away the responsibility I've given myself. My eyes are still hurting from the tears I've shed, and the ghosts of sadness haunt the fields about my heart…and so I try to shut it down, tuck it far from me. I make jokes. I work on my computer. I smile at my friends. I thank those students who wish me happy birthday. This leads me to wonder if I'm doing it right. How do we keep going on when faced with enormity? How do we grieve for something that is far beyond our control or even our time? Art Spiegelman says, in volume II of his graphic novel on the Holocaust Maus, "I don't know. Maybe everyone should feel guilty…forever!" I don't think he means it--or maybe he does--but I don't know if that is the right response. How do we remember? Sometimes I hear the argument, "We should live life to the fullest. It's what they would have wanted." I'm not so sure. If I had to guess, they would have wanted to have lived their own lives to the fullest. Yet depriving myself of whatever joy or happiness I can even feel, how does that help? Maybe it shows a solidarity to the sadness of the past, but as a symbol it has no one to accept its meaning. I have listened to a survivor of the Holocaust, sat at his feet as he wept thinking of his mother in a pile of corpses. If I harbor the sadness that's inside of me whenever I think of the Holocaust, do I help ease his suffering? I wrestle with this because of how I view the Holocaust as the touchstone for empathy in the face of the atrocities that we've seen unfold in the world. The sacrificial fires of Poland and Germany and Austria and Hungary are the most visible of the brutality of mankind, but they're hardly the only ones. Yet I don't weep when I talk about the Opium Wars. I shed no tears when talking about the Russian Revolution. And though I get some emotion into the Armenian genocide and even the way the soldiers of WWI died, I never aim for the same emotional resonance with, say, the starving peasants of France in 1788. But the pain and sadness of slaughter and callous treatment of human beings…it's all there. Every time. All of the time. In that sense, I guess, I use the Holocaust (and that's a horrible way to phrase it) as that moment that shows the suffering is widespread throughout history. It's almost as though I'm saying, "If you can understand why this hurts us so deeply, maybe you can look over at the scope of history and see why violence is so harmful, why war is so hateful, why hatred is so terrible. Maybe you can use this small piece of the much larger picture." It is, as it were, an entrance point into empathy. But does that diminish it? Does that make Holocaust "just one more horrid thing" that happened? The last thing I want to do is cheapen anyone's suffering. I take seriously the idea that I am required to "mourn with those who mourn" (Mosiah 18:9). So I'm leery of distracting from the unique horrors that must be understood, faced, comprehended, and remembered by saying, "Oh, and gulags were bad, too." Yet gulags were bad. The numbers of dead that come from those prison camps far exceeds what the Nazis were doing. Getting all of these pieces to fit together in a coherent way is taxing. It drains me to balance so much misery and try to make sense of it. I think that's why I just try to keep it compartmentalized*. --- * As I look at it, I can't help but see the word "mental" inside of compartmentalized. That not only conjures worries that I have of ableism, but the fact that some of this stuff really is enough to drive one crazy. It's a complicated word for a complicated subject…and that's about all I can handle at this point. My oldest, Puck, turned eleven today. Things that also happened today: My middle son, Oberon, had his first pinewood derby. Unfortunately, Oberon was feeling sick all day, so not only did he miss school, but he also slept through the pinewood derby.
He took third place. Not only that, but whatever has been making him sick hasn't let up for the past week or so. He's had a couple of bouts with vomiting, some slight fevers, and now his entire body is covered with hives. So far as we know, he's not allergic to anything. We don't know where these hives are coming from or what to do to prevent them in the future. As I sat down to write this essay, my youngest, Demetrius, came rushing out of his bedroom, puking. He's now sleeping at the foot of the toilet while we clean up the mess. Puck has found a new passion in the past few months: Filmmaking. He's gone so far as to say that's what he wants to do when he grows up--a big change from being a paleontologist. And that's what has me thinking tonight: How to support my children. Living the dad life has been much harder, stranger, and omnipresent than I expected. Some of this stems from the fact that my own father spent a good chunk of my early childhood traveling--at least, that's how I remember it. When he wasn't traveling, he was at a gig, so I don't really remember him being around as much (as I've discussed before). When it comes to being a dad, then, and figuring out how to support my boys, I'm running off of dim memories and assumptions, where silence equaled approbation insofar as I could see. (I seem to remember getting kicked off the computer on occasion when I wanted to write but Dad needed the Mac for work, but otherwise that's about it so far as supporting my desire to be a writer.) In my later life--that is, within the past couple of years--my dad has commented on an essay or two that I've written (and, yes, he might even read this one, in which case…hi, Dad!) and the first time he did so, I was shocked. I mean, I don't say this as an insulting thing or trying to belittle him, but my writings seem so far from his interests that I didn't know how to feel upon learning that something I'd created had cropped up as something into which he would invest time. This isn't to say I don't know how to support my kids because my dad did it differently than I. It means that there's always a gap in being a parent that you don't realize is there until you're on the other side of the fence, as it were. In the case of Puck, I'm trying to support him by interacting with him as he figures out his new passion of filmmaking. To this end, I bought him a small, handheld camcorder for his birthday. I know that seems like a step back in our tablet-heavy present, but there's something to be said about having a dedicated device that is exclusively his and that, when he's using it, he won't be distracted by other possibilities of the device. He's already familiar with iMovie, so it will require additional steps for him to be able to edit his movies, but that's an area where he and I will be able to work together. I can (I'm hoping) show him how to improve his filmmaking techniques via my own limited experience and through pointing him in the right direction for areas where I'm bereft of knowledge. I guess it's the romanticized stories of now-great directors getting their "first video camera" when they were about Puck's age and how they'd run around town, filming their own silly stories with their friends. I want that for my son. I want him to take this little piece of plastic and wiring and use it to channel his thinking, his humor, his creativity, and put it down in a way that works for him. One of my good friends growing up studied directing in school, edits for a living, and is a massive movie-buff, in some part because he and I used a video camera for a school project one night, and he was hooked. I can't provide sports advice; I can't show my sons how to do any automechanical work. Heck, I didn't even help with the pinewood derby cars that they raced--their mom did that, since I'm worthless when it comes to that sort of thing. So I bought this piece of potential for him in the hopes that it will germinate. And, wouldn't you know it? On a night where my middle child is itching because of inexplicable hives, my youngest is feverish and vomiting, and my oldest is now eleven, it shouldn't come as any surprise at all to learn that the video camera that I bought for him has a broken zoom button. That is the pinnacle of dad life: All of your effort is ultimately frustrated, and there's vomit all over the place. And yet… …how could I want it any other way? This year, my birthday has both snuck up on me, and has been a date on which I've kept a wary eye. The former because of the latter, as it turns out.
I talked about this before, albeit three years back, but the pattern is always the same: By the time we get to my birthday week, I have to talk about the Holocaust. This year, it lands on my birthday exactly. Because I've been eyeing the emotional trial that is coming, I haven't been able to think about my birthday as my usual time of celebration. You're familiar with this sort of thing, I'm sure: There's a large event--birthday, baptism, wedding, final…whatever--and that requires so much pre-planning and mental effort that the world after the date has to sit a bit and wait its turn. Gayle's been bothering me about what I want to do on my birthday. She knows that this is the hardest day of the year for me, and since it's supposed to be a happy day, there's an additional kick in the pants. But it seems so incongruous to go from the horrors of the Holocaust and the emotions and thoughts that I've been saving for this day, then slip into something light and fun and…comparatively less significant. I realize that it's a bit of a martyr complex for me to say that I have to make my birthday weeks so rotten, but in terms of the momentum, schedule, and depth that I have come to expect of myself in my classroom, there really isn't anything to do for it. It is what it is, and I dread it. I don't think a person ought to dread birthdays. Anyway, having so much sadness on my "special day" this year has proven only one of the difficulties of the week. My son, Puck, is turning eleven tomorrow. We were born twenty-four and one day apart, so we always celebrate our birthdays together. Usually, I ask for a specific cake for me and then he gets one for himself. That is, he gets a lemon cake and I ask for a brownie/ice cream/raspberry layered cake. But I just couldn't summon the energy to request it. Part of it is that Gayle is always really stressed out at this time of year. Finishing off a scholastic year requires quite a bit from the teachers--to say nothing of the students--and Gayle piles her plate high whenever we hit the late-April, early-May spot on the calendar. I know she likes to make food for her family--it's one of the ways that she shows her love--and so I know she wants to make my frozen raspberry heart-attack. But she's also finishing off a new curriculum that she hasn't taught before, we have two boys in the Cub Scouts who need pinewood derby cars (and, in case you know me not at all, I neither much care for the Scouts nor have any capacity to make a pinewood derby car; that's an area of expertise that falls more within my wife's purview than mine). There are probably another half-dozen other things that she's working on right now. So I didn't ask. This essay, though, isn't about the fact I didn't choose my favorite cake in favor of something simple, or the idea that I didn't set in motion any great plans. It's about the fact that, because of how chaotic this week has been, I have a Barnes and Noble gift card in my pocket that I won't be able to spend for a couple of days. And there's a brand new book that came out today that I've been waiting for*. Yet here we are, you reading this essay, hoping for I don't even know what from it, and me writing this essay, still not owning The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs. What a world. Anyway, because of the birthday stuff and pinewood derby and my own dread of Thursday, I'm having a hard go of it, to be really honest. I use Barnes and Noble as a bit of retail therapy, going there when I have some spare cash or too much dysthymia, using the smell of books and the hope of finding something worth buying as a way to cope with the sadness that all too often accompanies me. I know this is a strange connection--in the face of the horrors of history that I'm teaching this week (Leningrad tomorrow, Stalingrad next week, with Pacific battles and the a-bomb** not far behind), and a lamentation that oh, woe is me***, I won't get to the bookstore--but there's something to be said about seeking out the small and inconsequential in the emotional aftermath of such a topic. It is less about trying to diminish the hardships of the past, and even less relishing the gratitude one feels after revisiting the details of the Holocaust (which isn't a bad thing, necessarily, but I feel like one should be grateful for life because it's life, rather than comparing it to someone else's). Instead, I see it as the only way to make sense out of the world. If I spend all of my time mourning the atrocities of the past, not only will I never have cause to stop, but I will become yet another victim, struck through time by people like Hitler, robbed of my life because of how he robbed others of theirs. In my own weird way, I feel like me finding comfort and some modicum of happiness by wandering through Barnes and Noble for a couple of hours is a way of pushing back against the horrors of Third Reich Germany. The bookstore becomes a place of solitude and solace and where I can beat back the darkness that I've waded through. I just have to make it to Thursday night. --- * I totally get the idea of preorders. In fact, authors love preorders because it gives them, essentially, money in the bank. There are books that are guaranteed to walk out the door, because they've walked out before they even had legs. Okay, that metaphor got away from me. The point is, while I love supporting authors and try to, whenever possible, buy new books from still-living writers, I don't like to buy online. Part of it is that I get discounts when I buy at B&N in real life (teacher perk), but part of it is that buying a book the day it comes out is the perfect excuse for me to go to the bookstore. ** Back in 2013, when Iron Man 3 came out, Gayle and I postponed my birthday date to the first week of May so that we could watch that movie. The day before we went to see the film, I was teaching about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, complete with terrifying photos from the aftermath. If you don't remember much about that movie, just know that one of the plot points was to have people be annihilated so thoroughly that only their shadows were left on the walls. Yeah, that didn't help my sadness. *** Yeah, yeah, I know: It's grammatically correct to say "Woe is I", but it doesn't sound quite right so I didn't write it that way. While I don't normally focus my essays on specific, du jour topics, sometimes there's a thing going on that I want to comment on as it's happening. Knowing that the point of these essays is to explore things that interest me, this doesn't feel like I'm straying too far from the norm. And, since it's Shakespeare's birthday today, I feel like I get to geek out about the Bard and no one (for once) can fault me.
My tenth-grade classes are knee-deep in our World War II unit, so though I brought it up in passing with each of those tenth-grade sections, I didn't do anything until my Shakespeare class started. Instead of reading from Much Ado About Nothing, I showed some fun videos with raps, talks, and analyses about Shakespeare and his work. In other words, I bought into the cult of personality and legend that is more lucrative and has broader appeal than Shakespeare's writings themselves. We celebrated our reception of the man, rather than focusing on anything specific that the man did. It's a tricky thing, being a Bardolator. There's a lot to look at in the Elizabethan/Jacobean time that informs and expands Shakespeare's worldview, his jokes, his mentality. Exploring that exhaustively can be exhausting and while it adds to one's appreciation of the work, it isn't really the purpose of reading his plays. It's almost like going to the Louvre only to appreciate the architecture. While that isn't necessarily a bad decision--that museum's architecture is iconic and beautiful--there's so much more inside that is worth exploring. Shakespeare as a man--and his world--are absolutely worth investigating and learning about. Yet by focusing too much on that aspect of the Bard's life, we sometimes ignore why we'd want to know about the guy in the first place. As I look over my (admittedly, small) collection of Shakespeare books, I have titles that range from full-on biographies to information about where Shax lived on Silver Street to his philosophies to the women of his play to a miscellany to what murder was like in England during the 17th century. I, of course, have analyses about his works, including stuff from Bloom, Garber, Greenblatt, and Bradley. My point isn't that there's a problem with having different points of view, but of my dozens of titles, most aren't about the plays. Part of this comes from the fact that Shakespeare sells, though very rarely does he sell tickets. I don't know the ins-and-outs, but there's a pattern, in cinema especially, where movies about Shakespeare (think of Shakespeare in Love as the example par excellence) make more money than movies by Shakespeare. Even with the combined star-power of Ralph Finnes and Gerard Butler, the 2011 Coriolanus (one of the best film adaptations of Shakespeare that I've ever seen) barely pulled in a million dollars gross. Being in love with Shakespeare and loving his works are two separate things. The first is easy and carries with it the cachet of appearing well-read. That isn't to say that people who profess a kind of Bardolatry don't actually read the plays and poetry. But I do see people who throw around Shakespeare as having particular qualities, yet, if they were pressed, they wouldn't be able to point to any one example of that quality. "Shakespeare talks about grief." "True. Where does he do that?" "Um…Hamlet?" "Okay, he talks about most everything in Hamlet. But what about King John?" "What about him?" If I had to pick between apathy and unfamiliarity, I'd choose the latter: At least Shakespeare is acknowledged as of exceptional quality, even if people don't necessarily know why. That goes along with the concept of loving his works. That requires effort. Without dividing time between the "stage versus page" argument, it's safe to say that regardless of how you approach Shakespeare, there is a learning curve. It simplifies the longer you're exposed to him, especially as his dirty jokes become clearer (but not cleaner) as he repeats the variations on those themes, but whether it's by picking up a tome weighing more than a newborn or going through the process of finding a babysitter and heading out to the theater house, you have to exert some effort to get into the headspace that Shakespeare demands. I should point out that I don't kick back and relax with Shakespeare. I will, on occasion, pick up one of his plays, but there's so much meat there that I need things like my Shakespeare class to give me the wherewithal to attempt a reading. It's always enjoyable, but not in the same way as sitting down to read, say, a novel by Brandon Sanderson. It's a similar sort of intellectual effort that is attendant with other great classics and modern, aspiring ones. I think of the fact that we're almost five months into 2018 and I still haven't finished Alan Moore's Jerusalem, despite really liking it. I find other things to read because Moore's prose is hard. Same goes for Shakespeare. So if even a professed and unabashed Bardolator such as me can't find the time to curl up with Shakespeare on the reg, what chance do others have? Well, that's where I think the cachet of his personality and the perpetual power of his reputation can play a positive role. So long as people are talking about Shakespeare, it keeps him pertinent. His mere presence can be a catalyst to push into his works, a reminder that there's something on which his reputation is built. In years past, I would curl up with a play or watch a fun movie about Shakespeare (rarely one of his plays). They're always positive experiences, no matter how I get into it. This reminds me of something one of my friends (the one who pointed out the idea of Shakespeare is more popular and lucrative than plays by Shakespeare) observed: "Shakespeare is like pizza. Even when it's bad, it's still good…because it's pizza." And, hey. Who doesn't like having pizza on their birthday? Many happy returns, William Shakespeare (1564-1616…and into eternity). Going about the laborious (and, if I'm being honest, probably irrelevant) process of transferring all of my previous blog posts to Word documents in order to preserve them, I had a moment of panic: I couldn't find anything that I'd written during April 2017.
I've been trying to write every day since August of 2016, so seeing an entire month missing frightened me. I mean, I knew that November of 2016 and 2017 would be blank, since I spent all of that time writing for NaNoWriMo, but I didn't expect to see the same blank in April. I flipped through Twitter, searching my handle and the website to my old blog, just to see if, for some reason, the backend had lost all of the text. Nope. Just a single entry, talking about World War I. I dug through my Dropbox, looking for any pile of documents that I may have overlooked. This was particularly useless because I've only started writing my essays on Word since I shifted over to stevendowdle.weebly.com as my blog site. (Which I should've been doing anyway; having my own copy, in case I'm away from the Internet, is a good idea that I cottoned on to far too late to save me hours of labor cut-and-paste labor.) Still, I thought that maybe I'd missed something and should give it a go. Nothing. The panic continued to grow. Where did my writing go? Did I not write anything? I've been pretty committed to this pattern: Did I really forget? For an entire month? By now, I was almost desperate to figure this mystery out. I texted my wife, who had no memory of anything going on in April 2017. I scrolled to my calendar of last year, looking at the different assignments I'd given to students, along with the day-to-day minutiae I had programmed in (like the fact that I played the guitar for the high school's production of Much Ado About Nothing). All of these investigations came up with the same conclusion: April was a blackhole for my writing. The biggest deal of the whole thing was that I was in church when I figured this out. I had been listening to the Sunday School teacher and feeling confused about implications of what was being taught--you know, the normal thing for me--and transferring over the text when I got to April. This was at the close of class, so as I packed things up, that's when the panic started to set in. As a result, I couldn't focus on anything else. On one hand, the fact that I was so worried about it is silly: I don't reread my old essays, save for when I'm actively seeking out a link. If they weren't published, they probably weren't written, and there was nothing to worry about. But it was the other hand that had me all tied up in knots. How could I fail to write for an entire month? Especially during my birthday/World War II month, when I'm at my most confused and sad? Writing is cathartic for me, and it's hard to see how I could have missed out on that much catharsis. I can imagine some people being less than impressed with my concerns. Those who don't write regularly tend not to think of how laborious the writing process is. Like any skill, it takes thousands of hours to gain something approaching mastery, and I am not even close to the 10,000 hour mark of being a proficient essay writer. I have a lot of work to do. So losing out on any of that work is terrifying. I don't want to have accidental gaps in the record of thought that I'm setting down here. By the time the third hour was underway, I could hardly put a single coherent thought together about anything else. I retraced all of my steps, desperate to see if I had missed something. Frustrated, I put away my phone and decided to try to pay attention to the conversation in front of me. It didn't work. I then jumped onto Facebook to see if there was a clue there. I tend to avoid that behemoth, but I do post on occasion, and there's been more than one instance where I posted on the Zuckerberg place instead of Twitter. Maybe I could find it? Scrolling through the record of my activities, I flipped down to April 2017. There was a single post, talking about having been off of Facebook for Lent. Crud, I thought. There goes that chance. Despite my desperation, I went ahead and checked in on March of 2017. There wasn't a lot there (Lent, remember?), but I did put a single post up that made me feel infinitely better: "I think I'm going to focus on editing this month," I wrote. Oh, yeah. I'd forgotten. I spent this time last year working on Conduits and trying to make it a better story. That was the answer to my moment of panic. Feeling better about the whole thing, I could now pay attention to the conversation, which was the same as two weeks ago, so I didn't get a great deal out of it. But I wasn't worrying anymore, and that was what mattered*. --- * Okay, so paying attention to the lessons and trying to get more out of church would have mattered more. I get it. I've never written a genuine sequel. I've tried to start a couple of times, only managing to get to maybe the quarter mark before abandoning it. I think this stems from trying to have concluded stories. I try to make the entire process, the growth of the characters, begin and end in the same book. While there are always tiny threads that could perhaps be explored, I never seem to want to pursue them.
Maybe that's my biggest struggle as a writer (after the loathing of editing…er, revising…er, improving process). I wouldn't say I get bored with the world or characters, per se, but I feel like I've finished. It's done, so why would I return to it? The thing is, I like a book series to be just that: a series. Watching Harry Potter grow up and learn through seven books is very enjoyable--though I think that works because he begins as a young, hardly capable kid. His story is one of continual, young growth, something that I see reflected in my students all of the time. Their "books" end with me at the end of the tenth grade, but I see them grow and change, catching glimpses of their sequels as juniors, seniors, and--occasionally--beyond that. So, the Harry Potter books' nature works for me. I also like large-scale epic fantasies. Vin's journey throughout the first three Mistborn books is exciting and enjoyable. After so many thousands of words with her, it heightens the full ending of the book. And since the world is so vibrant (despite its dirty appearance), the spin-off series that starts with The Alloy of Law also works…that and all of the characters are new. And maybe that's what's needed: A blending of the familiar with the new. All good fiction relies on that formula, but there's something different about the direct sequel. The familiar, of course, can be the world, the characters, or the broader conflict. The new, then, becomes difficult to parse out, especially if the reason for the enjoyment of the first is tied up in all three. (Though far from perfect, the Harry Potter books do this so well, every time, that it's little wonder so many people so thoroughly love the series.) For my only "sequel", I have only approached the first in that list of the familiar, with a touch of the third. I put the word sequel in quotes because it's a direct successor to the first book in the series I wrote, Conduits. Conduits is about a woman who was genetically designed to be the perfect space marine. She is sent to the first planet that's been found to have life on it ever since humanity got lost in the stars. When she arrives with her space-tech, she finds out that the life on the planet is human life and they all have, for lack of a better word, magic that they can use. In the course of finishing her mission, more space-farers arrive and I get to do a lot of fun things with magic versus technology. Also, spaceships fight a dragon at one point. Anyway, the story ends with the character, Andi, having finished her goals and choosing to move into a state of rest for the rest of her life. Okay, yeah, that's a bit of a spoiler, but there are, like, three or four people who've read the book and it's likely to remain that way for a long time, so… But that's it. She's done. Job over, retirement ahead. The logical (or, at least, expected) sequel would be that a crisis pulls her out of retirement, that the things she thought she'd taken care of would crop up as needing her attention again. Instead, I relocated the "sequel" to another continent, unknown by Andi and the others she's met. In it, I allow what I already knew about the magic system--which is active in this new area--and the world in general to inform the experience. In fact, the book works best read in order (Conduits followed by Ash and Fire). I tried to write Ash and Fire in such a way that you didn't need to read Conduits first, but I think I failed there. The point is, I tried to take the same world and slivers of the broader crisis to write this "sequel". I skipped the familiar characters entirely. (For the third book, I wrote something that takes place completely in the science-fiction part of the universe; it's my NaNoWriMo 2017 project, if you're curious to see more. You don't have to have read the other books for it to make sense.) This leads me to the brainstorm that I woke up with this morning. I already wrote about War Golems, though I was sparse on the plot details. Suffice to say, it's a retelling of World War I tragedies, mingled with these cool golems that helped with the fight. Historically, we all know what comes after WWI: The Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and World War II. This morning, I wondered what Cori (the main character of War Golems) would do if her country became embroiled in another massive conflict…but this time, it was her daughter who had to go out to experience the terror of war*. Since I came up with the germ of the idea about, oh, fifteen minutes ago, I don't know what else would be in this story or what themes I would want to explore. If I did pursue it, though, it would be the closest thing to a direct sequel that I've ever written--but notice, even with Cori being a character of the novel, she wouldn't be the character. In other words, I still wouldn't have written something like a Robert Jordan or Terry Goodkind story in which the preceding book's conclusion makes for the succeeding book's commencement. I can't decide if I like that about me. Perhaps it shows that I am too distractible to be able to stay with characters for that long, that I lack focus. Maybe it shows that I'm too inventive! Yeah, that's it! My creative mind is so powerful that… I can't think up a way to end that sentence. Well, at any rate, I'm excited to think about this new idea. Maybe I'll pursue it, despite already having a pretty interesting story on my plate right now. I don't know if I'll put down Theomancy for a third (or fourth, I'm losing track) time in favor of a War Golems sequel. I guess we'll see. --- * My NaNoWriMo 2016 project deals with the far-flung future of this same world. The eluvium of War Golems turns into the dregs of Cloudfarmers. So there's another "sequel", I guess, but, again, it's more of a "same world" than "sequel" concept. |
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