The Swamped Fox

Assisted Living

2012-02-08T00:25:00.004-05:00

So tonight I saw a play with my writer friend (hi Chloe!). The show is called Assistance by Leslye Headland--a great writing last name--and it's currently playing at Playwrights Horizons on 42nd and 9th. The show revolves around the multiple assistants of a very wealthy man referred to-in alternating tones of affection and hatred-as "Daniel." For the most part the audience is shuttled between scenes in the office and monologues by employees at various stages in their relationship with the assistant life. The only real constant is the phone.

In the last 15 years I have watched the phone slowly creep into my life. From the old bricks my dad brought home from work, from my first cell phone my freshman year of high school (only for emergencies), my first forays with text messaging and, most recently, and iPhone, the lifeline has become more and more a way of life. The pressure to be constantly available, for work or for friends, makes us a slave to the tools designed to make our lives easier.

Just last night my dear friend-who had lost her phone only days before-talked about not knowing what to do as she waited for me at Chelsea Market. "I had to bring a paper book," she said. She later told me a story about having to wait for her ride in High school on the same street as all the cool kids, and how for weeks she pretended to have a conversation on her phone, so that no one would see her for what she really was--waiting. And as I waited in line for the bathroom, I saw everyone on front of me absorbed by their iPendages. (For a particularly fastidious grammar person, one of my ingrained flubs is the difference between "in line" and "on line"--these days the states go hand in hand...in your hand).

It's amazing how every person I've talked to who has lost their phone has also been at a loss, each inevitably describing the sensation of being untethered from his or her technology as feeling "naked" rather than "liberated." The phone (and other related devices) are miniature masks, shields with screens, which makes their inclusion in a piece of theater at once so interesting and problematic*. At times, half the "dialogue" is missing, the audience filling in blanks. In the first scene, leads Nick (the recently promoted, played by Michael Esper) and Nora (the new hire, played by Virgina Kull) speak to each other on their headsets.

15 feet apart.

I know I'm not the first person to say these things about the phone, to point out the absurdity of sending text messages up and down the stairs in your home or interrogate what has been happening to interpersonal communication. The mantra that Nick and Nora repeat to each other when they approach breakdowns at work is "That place you're going. Don't go there." On the surface this seemed like a warning to each other--don't go do the dark place, I am here. But when I think about it now, it is the tacit understanding between the characters that there is a limit to how much emotion you are allowed to express, a ceiling on the power of the play. The phone prevents us from being vulnerable, the best example of this being the "phone voice" we all have, the character we play as we hide our multitasking or miserable days.

The most moving scene of the play in my opinion was a monologue given by actress Sue Jean Kim, playing yet another assistant. She tells Nick she cannot go to Chicago with Daniel because of her Uncle's funeral, and her monologue takes place I would guess about a week after the service. She is on the phone with her mother, and we learn that not only has she lost her job but that she didn't even make it to the funeral. Having been known to call my mother from time to time, the range of emotions that Kim displays, from annoyance to sadness to rage, and the speed which she moves between them made me feel similarly torn. But she admits that she feels like she is "going crazy," but she can't get the help she needs**. Later on another monologue involves an assistant calling his therapist to "break up" with him, and the phone and the ensuing conversations work in tandem to push characters apart.

"Assistance" becomes a synonym for "crutch" in this case (how fitting that another assistant Justin (or Bird-man) spends his time on stage with a cast on his foot), since whatever help or connection the characters are getting from the phone is stunting their emotional growth. As Nora says at one point, "I've made a career out of dodging responsibility." This also seems to be a millennial theme, the Protestant work ethic derailed by the almighty Internet (among other things). Whether we are more irresponsible than our parents or just more people get attention for being irresponsible is hard to determine, but it's not unrelated to our attention spans. Nick's predecessor Vincent even calls paying attention a relatively "painless endeavor" in the opening minutes of the play, but he is slightly older, slightly less immersed in the memes and minutia. He's not dodging anything.

And so with no hope of getting past the impediments they've set up for themselves, all of the younger characters are held captive by the chaos, since this is the only thing they know how to do. Nick keeps saying he is going to be promoted at the end of the month, but his incompetence or laziness (or something else) is keeping him from leaving the pit. More than once a character returns to the stage desperately wanting her job back, despite the hell it has been for her. "It's like Stockholm's syndrome," Chloe said to me. But the dependence distracts from how we got there in the first place.

The only time we hear Daniel's voice is when he is telling off Nora. He tells her to call her mother to tell her what a failure she is. Nora tells Nick to get her mother on the line. Then Daniel tells Nora to instead "write her a letter." It's a strange moment because for all the time characters spend behind laptops and with headsets in, talking about email and voicemail, you forget there is such a thing as mail mail. The act of writing, oddly, is put forth as the only way to truly express to someone else how pathetic you are--an interesting statement for a playwright to make.

There are other millennial issues with the play-the way crudeness and cultural reference are intertwined or at least interchangeable (an office sex scene set to a YouTube video of cats singing Feliz Navidad, the equating of "gangbang" and "Titanic"-the ship) as if one is supposed to stand in for the other, or our desires for culture and sex are equally visceral, inappropriate, and dire as we search for some new sanctum of distraction and gratification. Whatever it takes to pass the time in the office, whether it be a casual fling or video of a break dancer kicking a baby.

Towards the end we come full circle; just as Nick took over Vincent's desk upon promotion in the opening moments, now Justin takes Nick's, and we are alone in the office late one night, and he's "the only one here." This whirpool of working life resonates with my twenty-something sensibility, as the fear of getting "stuck" or becoming "unimportant" overshadows every decision I make about my future. It seems to me that this could be a Godot-moment, a signal towards some sort of infinite regression which Nick has been allowed to escape by taking some responsibility for his feelings towards Nora.

The play actually ends (SPOILER ALERT) with one of the assistants (surprise!) sans phone. Finally. This is the first time any character speaks directly to the audience (and she goes so far as to hand one lucky guy an empty martini glass) but Jennifer--the always cool, collected, British (i.e. repressed) Jennifer (Amy Rosoff)--only seems capable of this because she is drunk. On the verge of any honest, triple-distilled emotion, she says she will "dance on [Daniel's] head like Gene Kelly" if he asks. And then she jumps into a full dance number, and the office proceeds to destroy itself. There was some strange joy in being surprised by this grand, absurd, theatrical moment, but in the end I saw it as a symptom rather than a solution. The play falls victim to the problem it tries to profess, distracting from honest emotions with something shiny and loud and fake. Just as the characters struggle to get there, so does the playwright, who for all her humor and corny You watch YouTube? I watch YouTube too! moments, proves she has such a good grip on our millennial generation because she is of us, and just as prone to our vices.

But what do I know? Maybe the fact that she keeps her word, that she attempts to express herself artistically and in a theatrical way causes the artifice of the office to collapse.

If there is any hope in the play, it actually comes at the beginning, in that scene with Nick and Nora on the phone. He is teaching her the ropes, and the first trick is how to mute her microphone. "This is how we keep things sane around here," he says. To be clear the assistants are not tuning out their boss; they are giving themselves a space to speak freely. Honestly. Emotionally. Even responsibly. For the playwright this space might be the theater; for you or I, someplace else. Nick has to create that space for himself outside the office when he follows Nora. The "don't go there" command (perhaps a warning to those of us who might suffer similar fates) becomes "never come back here" and we get the sense they are moving forward--she without her phone, he having put his on seemingly permanent hold. Of course, someone else will have to pick it up, but at least they stand a chance of connecting. Perhaps over an infinite playlist?

*I think back to Infinite Jest and DFW's wonderful passage about the failure of videophones. If you haven't read it, please do. He anticipates this phenomenon, in large part--"This bilateral illusion of unilateral attention was almost infantilely gratifying from an emotional standpoint" (146). The attention piece of this has further decayed because of the internet, making it all the more important, and probably the scarcest natural resource on the planet.

**Interestingly, when I type in "Assistance" in certain contexts, Google wants me to look at "The Help." This play is very, very different.

Drive**

2011-10-06T11:33:00.000-04:00

I have this recurring dream. I'm sitting in the passenger seat of a car, or sometimes the backseat. We're moving along until I realize that the driver has been incapacitated or, in the case of last night, there is no driver at all. I then have to climb into the driver's seat. The problem? I don't know how to drive. That fact combined with constant acceleration and/or non-existent dream brakes results in a Highway to Hell scenario, a roller coaster ride that ends with me waking up just before the car is about to crash.

When people ask me why I don't drive, I offer a number of practical rationalizations--I went to high school in the city, I went to college in the country, I take the train to work, I've never needed it--but rarely do I disclose how afraid I actually am. Instead, it's become a kind of joke. I once wrote a short play entitled "My First and Only Experience behind a Wheel of a Car as portrayed by the cast of Star Wars," in which Lando Calrissian (my dad) tried to teach Chewbacca (me) how to drive the Millennium Falcon (somehow our Honda Accord). Since that fateful day when a failure to explain how the car worked to inexperienced me resulted in yelling and accusations of thousands of dollars of damage done to the transmission (all in the space of fifteen minutes in the parking lot), I walked out of the car, convinced I would remain ambulatory forever.

A few years later I returned, this time with my mother.

My third time behind the wheel was September 26, 2011, with a complete stranger. It was my first driving lesson, and while most of my dreams usually involve ex-girlfriends or exploding buildings, this occasion has prompted a spate of fast and furious nightmares. But after four lessons I have not only made it out of the parking lot but actually driven on roads, stopped at stop signs, traffic lights, and done a few three point turns and parallel parks. But it wasn't easy--and it helps that there is an extra brake (and even an extra hand on the wheel).

My friends and co-workers still think it's funny that I can't drive, and my excuses have become stale. A lot of times people forget, or are surprised, their response one of the major reasons I quit in the first place. The embarrassment that this sixteen-year-old's milestone is coming six years too late is only exacerbated by the fact that my brother is rapidly approaching the age when he too could have his learners permit. When asked if he would start driving, he said, "I can barely pay attention when people are talking to me. How would I pay attention to the other cars?"

The only reason I pay attention to them is because I'm scared of them. I am afraid of driving, and for a long time I've been able to resist. I'm afraid of failing, in large part because failing while driving means dying and I'm afraid of dying. But Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "Do one thing every day that scares you," which I take to be a mantra for growth rather than a description of her sex life with FDR. So pedestrians, beware--I am about to understand all of the driving metaphors in "Moves Like Jagger," and grow a little in the process.

**This is the first in a series of posts I intend to write about learning how to drive. For those of you looking for my review of the Ryan Gosling movie, I apologize.

Life Soundtrack

2010-12-21T01:10:00.011-05:00

A couple of months ago I was at a seminar on applying for Fellowships, and one of the panelists was talking about his interviews and how one interviwer asked him for a book, a movie, and a song that together would create a good picture of him. Now this is a great question, (especially for someone who devotes some considerable mental energy trying to discern the greater meaning of the art he consumes) and if I had to answer right now, I would probably say:

Book: Always changing, but The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut have some staying power (maybe The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie? This is the hardest one...)

Movie: Stranger than Fiction

Song: "Son of a Preacher Man" by Dusty Springfield

The reasons for all of these could be discussed at length, but the reason I bring this up is because I recently realized while talking to my sister that my childhood can be pretty accurately summed up by five CD's. Years of memories can be related in (or reduced to) about six hours of listening--a scary thought. What was the point? How does it all fit? In other words, if you were to fill the CD changer on my dad's Bose speakers in the living room, you could get a good sense of me and my family. So this pastiche, this montage in stereo, this audio collage of my childhood is an experiment in exploring the duality of life and art that I am so interested in. Disclaimer: These are not to be considered great albums, or even good albums, and certainly not my favorite albums. It's just a reflection on my family and music. So here's the list:

1. A Night at Red Rocks, The Moody Blues--This CD will always make me think of my Dad. Because of classics like "I Know You're Out There Somewhere" and "Tuesday Afternoon"
and the power of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, it's certainly one of his favorites. It gets played a lot during the summer as we eat dinner on the porch or return from watching the sunset at the beach. It's one of those CD's where I don't have a real interest in the band, couldn't tell you anything about them, but the overture starts and I know exactly what it is and once one of the songs comes on, my sister and I are singing along.

2. Greatest Hits Volume 3, Billy Joel--As a Long Islander, this music is and has been in my blood as long as I can remember. I'm pretty sure Greatest Hits 1 & 2 was also playing in the car all those years ago, but this is the CD I remember the most. It's the reason I've known all the words to We Didn't Start the Fire since 7th Grade. It's also the reason I've seen "The Piano Man" six times in concert (twice while he was on tour with Elton John, four times with my mom, and once with my sister--some of those overlap). I've seen him in DC, at the Garden (twice in two days) and Nassau Colliseum, and even drove up to the Hartford Civic Center to see him (with the best seats I will probably ever have to a concert). I should probably write a whole post about Billy Joel, about how every time "Only the Good Die Young" comes on my mother tells the story of how it was banned when she went to high school, about how standing on top of the World Trade Center on September 3rd 2001 the chorus from "Goodnight Saigon" popped into my head ("And we will all go down together..."), how I will probably never hear him play one of my favorite songs ("Christie Lee") or how much I love his cover of "To Make You Feel My Love" (so much better than the Bob Dylan) and how I believe every word of it.

3. Les Miserables, Original Cast Recording--The second in the pair of my mom's car favorites, this CD got just as much play as Billy Joel until my sister and I knew the two+ hour musical by heart. Nevermind that my mom would never tell us how inappropriate Master of the House actually was (play it again, Mom!). One Easter, my sister, my cousins and I put on a production in our basement. I was about 10, and as the older of two males I was cast as Jean val Jean (even though everybody knows I am Javert at heart). Watching the video now you think we would have known that no one wanted to sit through the whole musical. This was not my last starring role in a musical (unfortunately), and this CD probably had something to do with jumpstarting my theater career (or at the very least made me the theatrical car-singer I am today). (Note: More recently, this musical has been replaced in the car by Jersey Boys, my dad's current favorite; my younger brother does a particularly hillarious lipsyncing of Beggin'.)

(Another Note: This car collection does not of course include my Dad's 60's Gold collection bought one late night from a TimeLife informercial, the Beach Boys Sounds of Summer--my first concert, at Jones Beach no less--or The Best of Bread or the Eagles, which I strongly associate with reading Nate the Great and Encyclopedia Brown in the back of the car. This also does not include my Mom's other favorites Queen: Greatest Hits (which does not include Bohemian Rhapsody strangely enough) or Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell.)

4. Sabrina (1995) Soundtrack, John Williams--When there is a fire in the fireplace, this album usually comes on. The movie is one of my mom's favorites, the remake with Julia Ormond, Harrison Ford and Greg Kinear, and the soundtrack can still lull me to sleep. And John Williams is the guy who did Star Wars, Jurassic Park, ET, Indiana Jones, Superman, Harry Potter--his work is epic. But this stuff is swirling, smooth--dynamic yes, but it has become for me a kind of lullabye. The only song with words is "Moonlight" sung by Sting, and there's something haunting and soothing about it. I close my eyes wherever I listen to it and instantly I am in my room, and I can hear the last cracklings of the fire and see the glow coming through the doorway. In other words, I am home.

5. The Christmas Album, Andy Williams--This was actually the album that prompted this list in the first place. A few weeks ago I texted my sister the opening of the CD: "Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Andy Williams." (Just listen!) Every Christmas party we ever had (with the exception of the year I put Jingle Bell Rock on repeat for a solid hour, so now no one will ever listen to it again) has begun with those words. If you've never heard the album, it's nothing special musically--just Andy Williams, Lorrie Morgan and the Osmond Brothers signing some classic tunes. But what makes the album special is the Christmases that I will remember because of it, the dessert parties where the house was filled with people and cookies or the leisurely brunches with Irish sausage and Dad's french toast. The album and I are like old friends, or should I say, old old old old friends. (Note: This is probably tied for Holiday Album with Kathy Mattea's Good News or in recent years, Point of Grace's self titled Christmas album.)

Holidays are a natural time to come home, to return to traditions and reflect on time spent together, and holiday music is one of the most powerful links in our chains of memories. Associations with Jingle Bell Rock are different from those with N*SYNC's Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday, Josh Groban's O Holy Night or even Adam Sandler's Hannaka Song. Like the Christmas Specials (Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer or A Charlie Brown Christmas) they carry one Christmas into the next, the joy we feel compounded by our good memories.

If you're like me, sometime around the middle of the summer, Christmas music starts popping in your head and stays there for a while. I am always amazed at how it happens like clockwork--Christmas music feels strange outside of its December bubble--but the more I think about it, the more I realize it's not just that I have become irrationally excited for Christmas (though we have passed the halfway point) and have started looking forward rather than backward. It's that the associations with those songs, the memories and the joy, cause the songs to bubble up in my mind. The result is a cycle where songs reinforce a feeling which reinforces the mental replay of a particular song. Iyaz's Replay (which for me will always be associated with a play I did titled Thoughts on a Subject) uses this music analogy to attempt to articulate this kind of cyclical thinking, but its effect is lost when you actually put it on replay (much like Jingle Bell Rock).

The five albums I've listed (and their runners up) come in and out of my life at various times, but I will never be able to escape their influence or the memories associated with them. There are plenty of other songs that touch me for various reasons (and maybe that's a post for another time), but these are the comforts, these are the things I will come back to and laugh about with my siblings. This list can't include all the songs heard on the bus rides too and from school (Kissed by a Rose on the Grave anybody?) or the soundtracks to various Disney movies (my sister and music (or life) in three words: Remember the Titans) , or even the songs I remember from various middle school dances (Shape of My Heart by the Backstreet Boys...oh how the mighty have fallen). These five are just part of the picture (an audio picture), a picture that won't change, no matter how many times we see a new pop star or Lady Gaga emerge, but in their own way have each impacted me.

And that's the funny thing about memories--they are triggered by sights and sounds and smells, brought up from the depths of our minds sometimes from seemingly nowhere, and yet they are the emperical data we use to determine who we are (see Memento). So if someone asks you who you are, it might be easier just to give them a soundtrack to understand all the intangibles and depth of experience we have trouble expressing concisely (if at all) in words alone.

The Boy who Read

2010-11-20T14:09:00.003-05:00

Like so many people, I was very excited for the opening of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. Part of the reason is the anticipation, the epic, sweeping theatrical trailer which conjures images of a much loved book and sets fire to the imagination; the possibility offered by magic, much like science fiction technology or comic book superpowers, opens up the world by granting us passage into a world with almost no limits. But at the same time, this is the culmination of years of experience, the beginning of the end of an era colored by these wizards and their ways. We don't want to see Harry Potter's story end, but we also want to be there when it does.

My relationship with Harry began when I was in fourth grade. I remember reading the first book and quickly moving on to the second. My friends and I, fresh off Big Bad Beetleborgs and Pokemon, began writing our own version of the stories. I remember being at camp the summer after fifth grade and getting Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban mailed to me from England and finishing it before it was released in the United States. I remember that fall when J. K. Rowling came to the Dolphin Book Shop, not far from my elementary school, and getting my copy signed. I remember seeing her only very breifly. She was very nice, and we gave her a copy of our stories. I doubt she read them, but I like to imagine she did.

I remember waiting in the Barnes and Noble until midnight to get the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and reading that first chapter and being scared out of my mind, not expecting to meet Voldemort so early on. My family would have to get multiple copies just so that everyone could read it at the same time, and my mother and brother would listen to Jim Dale read it in the car.

I remember when the second movie came out, my friends and I went into New York to see the actors go to the primere. Daniel, Emma, and Rupert actually stopped at the window of the Ziegfeld just to wave at my friend's dog. I remember waiting so long for the fifth and then the sixth and then the seventh books.

I remember getting home from Italy the summer after my sophomore year of high school and going directly from the airport to the bookstore to get my copy of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, and when I got home with my copy having my then girlfriend break up with me via instant messenger and riding the wave of jetlag into the wee hours of the morning as I read and read and read.

I remember the summer after graduating from high school, getting my hands on the final installment. It felt like the end of my childhood. I was going off to college, and there would be no more time for Harry Potter. But when I got to school, I realized that I was part of a Harry Potter generation. Anyone who liked reading had experienced these books, and it was something all of us had in common. The summer after my sophomore year of college, a car full of my friends drove out to the mall to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince at midnight in theaters.

How much changes in four years! It's something I keep thinking to myself now as my senior year of college is almost half way over. Harry Potter has been kind of like the pencil your mom uses to record your height on the kitchen wall. At almost every moment of growth, I have had a Harry Potter experience to mark it. And as we watch the characters grow up, we are growing up with them. The fact that Emma Watson, the actress who plays Hermione Granger, attends Brown University seems to make this all the more real.

About a month after I graduate from college, the last Harry Potter movie will be released. And that's it. No more movies. No more books. No more Harry Potter. The embodiement of my childhood imagination, the spark for my own interest in story telling, will have ended and with it I will embark on some adventure into the "real world." Whatever problems I have with the movies they are milestones, and in some ways are as magical as the things they depict; socerer's stones that keep us young, resurrection stones that remind us of our pasts, capstones of childhood. And with all these stones we pave our way into adulthood, educated in values like love and friendship, but also having experienced loss. Harry Potter may not be great literature, but like great fiction should it tells us about ourselves.

Remembrance

2010-09-27T00:20:00.004-04:00

There are nights like these which we never forget.

This past June, I lost a classmate. His name was Henry, and he was killed in a hiking accident in Switzerland while on a trip with some of my friends who had been studying at Oxford. Tonight a group of his friends organized a special evening where people were able to share their stories of Henry, giving a time and a place for the community to remember this bright star unfairly taken from us.

I didn't know Henry. I'm not even sure if I ever met him. But I sat in this room with people who I do know, who I care about more than most things in this world, and listened for three hours as a life was recreated from a collage of memories. It was a profound experience, one which I can not hope to recount or articulate or sum up in any fairness to Henry or those who shared their stories. I can only attempt to pour some of my feelings, however inadequately, onto the page.

When I had found out about Henry's death, I wrote something that I never really shared with anyone. It was for myself, and reading it again it seems trite, a twenty-one year old faced with his mortality for the second time in a few short months. But tonight, there were things I noticed, common threads in the stories that were for me the most meaningful, and I thought I would try again to process this loss and what I will take away from it.

The first is the value of a long conversation. There are reasons why we remember them, the profound nights when we reach into our hearts and minds and share those deepest parts with another and see the gesture returned in kind. So many people talked tonight about memorable conversations with Henry, and commented on his curiousity and his interest in the lives of others. Oh what a world we would live in if everyone took that time, took that interest.

Already I feel like I have missed some great opportunity in my life not having gotten to know Henry. He lived about forty minutes away from me on Long Island. He went to a Catholic High School I drove past to get the train to my Catholic High school some mornings. We ended up at the same college, living at most three hundred feet away from each other freshman year without ever knowing each other. Isn't that strange? How the universe can bring people so close together and yet the difference can be an introduction? My friend Santi brought up how Henry cared about people in small gestures everyday, and it's those kinds of small gestures that bring people into one another's lives.

When I went to Henry's funeral, I saw an old friend from elementary school, Tom, who had known Henry in high school. I hadn't seen Tom in probably seven years, and he saw me and said hi and asked how I was doing and how I knew Henry. "It's so sad," I remember him saying. It was and is and will be sad, but now that I think about it, I'm also just struck how one life has the power to bring worlds together, to fill a room with people and stories and love and in that way live. How a person who lives well lives long in the hearts of those he or she encounters along the way.

Missing the opportunity to know Henry has made me more aware of those opportunities I don't want to miss, not only in my post-undergrad future but in my everyday life, and how to use the many blessings in my life to the fullest extent. Yesterday we had Convocation, the shared restating of our purpose and the renewal of our class pride for a new year, a celebration of what is to come. As a college senior, it feels like the beginning of the end, but as our Dean said, our last change to take advantage of everything we hold dear here at school. Tonight, I saw with less pomp and less circumstance and more love that celebration of Henry and of life. In both cases there are clear messages--we don't have time to waste, we must live passionately and completely and unashamedly.

The last thing that struck me was how this presence exists not only in stories, but Henry can be felt in other ways. Little things like a pear, or a DVD that's come to the top of the pile, or making a particular shot in basketball when thinking of Henry, moments that appear in our time of need and strike me as more than coincidence. These remembrances, these points of contact with Henry's living memory that are seemingly delivered to us by the universe, give me faith in something greater than ourselves. So even though I didn't know you Henry, and I wish I did, I want to thank you. I will not forget tonight or the things that I have learned about you and about life from you.

My Generation

2010-09-01T15:42:00.008-04:00

After my last post, I came across this video. 6 years ago Jon Stewart went on Crossfire, and summarized the problem with the media perfectly.

Congratulations to Jon on his history making Emmy win this past week.

The reason I've been thinking about this a lot is that I saw a headline somewhere that suggests my generation might become a lost generation. A few years ago I wrote an essay in response to a column from the New York Times called Generation Q by Thomas Friedman. The title comes from the fact he brands my generation "the Quiet Americans," and now I am realizing why we seem so quiet; his generation is way too loud. Sound bites dominate the airwaves and as Jon Stewart reminds us, news has become theater. No one takes the time to explain to the American people the issues, offer researched arguments and listen to the opposing sides, to compromise. It's one of the reasons I was so impressed with Obama's famous speech on race--he talked to Americans like adults.

But on the verge of adulthood, my senior year in college, I refuse to become lost, and refuse to believe my peers will as well. I can't decide if the real world is beckoning or waving us off, but I do know our voices have changed. Glen Beck's recent rally on the National Mall was a demonstration of an older generations methods, based on what worked for the generation before them, and it's evident that the gravity of these kinds of events is fading. In my generation we use things like new media, and rather than a million man march we have facebook groups and views on Youtube to get our message across and to get organized. Friedman is right to be skeptical, and in the three years since I wrote my response, I am getting skeptical too about the virtue of some of this virtual media and the ways in which it reaches people.

We need someone who can give the speech, someone who people will listen to, someone who people will put their biases away for--a lot of people thought this would be President Obama, but that was little more than half the country, and in a country so divided it needs to be someone beyond politics. Maybe it is an entertainer like Stewart. But even if there was someone, would the news media cover it? Would they give it the time and attention it deserves?

This is why the Tea Party fascinates me. It is closest we have to a viable third party in this country, and it's incredibly radical. We seem to have in this country an ideological Manifest Destiny, where in the face of where we are now the only option seems to be to push farther. It's based on what people feel entitled to (and this is different from entitlements; this includes people who think they need guns, people who feel that their freedoms of speech and religion should be prioritized over others), and claiming the Constitution for their own gain.

At the same time, for all the talking our President does do, from his fireside Youtube videos to press conferences, interviews with everyone from Matt Lauer to Ryan Seacrest, Jon Stewart to Joy Behar (and the rest of The View), he has lost his power. His over exposure has sucked the gravitas from the presidency by making him indistinguishable from celebrity. Maybe the reason is that the speed at which information travels and unwanted transparency have shown us the cracks in the armor; maybe there are just more cracks than anyone knows what to do with.

There is obviously a difference between the values of the generation that makes the money and the generation that spends it--or to paraphrase Stewart, the first generation works hard to send their kids to college, then the members of the second generation become lawyers and doctors and work hard to support their kids, then the third generation takes improv classes. Is that why we don't care as much as we should about the debt? The coming defaults on municple bonds by bankrupt state and local governments? If the country is "too big to fail" then we believe that it won't fail, rather than think of what we will do when it does.

I frequently dream about buildings exploding and wake up trying to remember if I'm twelve or twenty one. I know the world changed nine years ago, but I remember before that feeling like the color was fading, the golden age was turning grey. My friend the other night said America was transitioning to a "victim state" but I don't want to think that I am a victim of that transition. When I wrote about my uncle Bill and his generation, what they faced, I am scared and trying to be hopeful that we can similarly overcome all our challenges. But it starts with listening, not yelling--it begins with deciding to compromise, not compromising decisions. And it has to start soon, or my generation isn't even going to have a chance.

AutoTune-Out the News

2010-08-26T13:50:00.006-04:00

I developed an interesting habit while overseas. Most TV from the United States is not available online (aka Hulu, Comedy Central, things I would like to watch), but most of the cable news channels are, and so when I was getting particularly homesick I would watch the news to see what was going on in my home free home.

When I watch the news at home, I usually turn to CNN for 3 reasons; David Gergen is awesome, Anderson Cooper used to host ABC's gameshow The Mole, and because it attempts to reach that audience whose opinions are somewhere between those of FOX news' viewers and MSNBC's viewers. It's the middle ring in the 3 ring media circus, the Goldilocks of cable news programming; too conservative, too liberal, and just right. But there are particular anchors who get a lot of facetime on the web for their personalities and their viewpoints. Glenn Beck is one of them, who is often described as fanatical and crazy. I will admit that I watched some Glenn Beck this summer, and he is certainly radical in his views, unnecessarily extreme in his rhetoric, and actually kind of entertaining.

Now I said nothing about news, because the amount of information that you get in an hour of Glenn Beck. He's bombastic, energetic, unapologetic. He could have been a great stand up comedian, he has that kind of manic presence you see in Lewis Black (though Jon Stewart did a great parody of Beck's style). He does voices, he uses props like the chalk board--essentially he's theatrical, and that's because his show is not news. It's a combination of comentary, current events, and entertainment. It's theater.

This is not a new trend in news, just one that is spreading to self proclaimed "real news." Jon Stewart and more recently Stephen Colbert have created news for a younger generation, information and commentary, satire and sarcasm, that ultimately do a better job of calling out the major players in media and politics than most news programs. Not only that, but they are built for television in an age of viral videos and short attention spans--fast paced, smart humor. People who criticize these shows and claim that their clever musings are being accepted by young people as fact haven't been watching real news lately.

Bill O'Reilly, with his combination of yelling and a split screen so you can read everything he says, is either very conscious of his deaf/hearing impaired audience OR (more likely) knows that the combination of hearing and reading the same thing will actually help you remember it better (unlike the ticker, which divides our attention during most other news/sports programming). Keith Olberman of MSNBC uses big words and a combination of self-love and moral superiority complex to proclaim the worst people in the world every night. These big personalities get watched because they are big, because they are outrageous, and because they attempt to say that you are in on something, we are better than those other guys. If there were only one cable news network, no one would watch the news--the rivalry, the one-upsmanship, is what helps them survive.

But it is also what has brought them to such an extreme place where gimmicks and gaffes are the norm and soundbites replace sound reporting. The Sherry Sherod scandal showed once again how taking things out of context and clever video editing can create news out of nothing and bring unnecessary pain to normal working Americans. As I've mentioned before, this consumption of hyperbole has become a fact of American life. But if the news is supposed to be how we determine what is important and going on in the world beyond our own lives, then this hyperbolic treatment of opinions and theatrical showmanship is corrupting our priorities and corroding our perspective.

As the top rated cable news network, Fox News seems to be giving a majority of audiences what they want (that is audiences who actually bother watching cable news as opposed to the vaster majorities who watch network news, American Idol, Shark Week or prefer getting their news from The New York Times, or just don't care). And it's trying to get those people, those people looking to be entertained, that also pushes news into the realm of entertainment. It also changes what makes the headlines--rather than hearing about the floods in Pakistan or bodies on the Mexican border, we hear more about Elin Wood's divorce. Entertainment news has become synonomous with real news and gets a painful amount of airtime. (This news=entertainment identity goes both ways; programs supposed to be entertainment like The Daily Show have had to step up to the news plate and are often judged by more rigorous journalistic standards by their critics than the major networks).

Here is a very breif TED talk by Alisa Miller, the CEO of Public Radio International which makes this point abundantly clear:

It's not all bad (but it's pretty bad). There are people like Jon Stewart who have taken on the mantle of watchdog (because no one else will) and points out how ridiculous this all is every single night. There are also people like Rachel Maddow, who hosts a show on MSNBC that I also have been watching recently. Like Beck (sorry Rachel), her charism is what makes her fun to watch. She has a presence and a great sense of humor. But Maddow, a Rhodes Scholar, is also incredibly intellegent, asks tough questions and calls out her fellows in the media circus. I don't agree with her on everything, but I admire the fact that she has never yelled at anyone, that she explains her points clearly and logically, that she uses evidence, and while opinionated, is respectful and aware of those opinions. This should be what we ask of all our journalists. Did I mention she doesn't yell?

In the midst of all these yelling pundits and the overwhelming amount of extreme opinion and cable news rivalry out there, it's easy to just ignore the news, to think that nothing important (or more important than anything else being screamed at you)is going on--see the title of this post. It's like if your parents scream over and over about the same thing, you get used to it. We've become used to the problems in this country and the way they are portrayed on the news, and apathetic as a result. Does this mean we need someone to just say in a low voice "I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed"? Some people are trying other approaches. A group on YouTube called AutoTune the news does this somewhat effectively, taking news broadcasts and turning them into music with the help of auto tune and a beat. Here's one of the better examples:

The group highlights the ridiculous of headline news and I wonder if we would be better off if all news was set to music--would it be any less ridiculous than Glenn Beck likening everyone to Nazis? Would it be more enjoyable than Bill O'Reilly or Keith Olberman yelling?

I don't know what the most informative news network is, or if there are any truly reliable sources out there. I don't know how you can be informative or reliable if each story only gets a few minutes of air time explanation in the carosel of the news cycle, or how our priorities can be considered reliable when soundbites dominiate the headlines. It feels like every cable news network is taking a lesson from the New York Post, a newspaper known for it's absurd, tabloid-esque headlines.

At the same time, those people who should be most responsible for directing our attention to major issues are falling into this trap--whever you think about Obama, he is overexposed, appearing on Late Night Talk Shows and The View, Primetime television addresses seemingly every few weeks. There should not come a time when we tune out the President of the United States (though plenty of people did for Bush and Clinton), but it's going to when we see him everyday next to a story Lindsay Lohan or Lady Gaga on our homepage.

As the news continues to trade substance for spectacle and simultaneously find it's way into our everyday lives (on our phones and in our email), we will lose sight of what is important as our schema for prioritizing (Top Story, Breaking News, New Development, Prime Time) becomes obsolete. People say newspapers are dying, and part of that is because cable news gives us a fast paced version of the news for our fast paced lifestyles; but they also give us the Microsoft Word Auto-Summerize equivalent of the news. If we really want to be contributing to the world we live in, we need to take the time to learn about it. I don't know if that means that in the near future our news will come from Twitter (like during the Iranian presidential elections) or blogs or even Facebook or Youtube, or if the personalities and the views will just continue to get more extreme. I just want to be informed.

The Monster Mash

2010-08-16T17:37:00.003-04:00

I was listening to my iPod today, when one of my top 3 songs from this first season of Glee came on--a mash up of Bon Jovi's It's My Life and Usher's Confessions, Pt. II. Having recently written about Glee (not for the last time, I'm sure), I was struck by the fact that I did not mention this song, but due the magic of shuffle, as I formulated talking points in my head another mashup came on, this one by Norwegian Recycling (google him) called 9 Songs to Save the World, which uses Madonna's 4 Minutes as a base and then moves into Britney's Gimme More before it's final move to Blue by Effiel 85 (brilliant in my opinion), with six other songs sprinkled in (including Timbaland's The Way I Are and Usher's Yea). And then I got started thinking about this new art form--the mash up--and it's implications for creativity.

Unlike most Glee songs, which are covers, the mash up combines two (or more) existing songs to form a new song. In the best cases, the parts compliment each other both musically and lyrically to create a more interesting whole. But while covers are often reimaginings of popular songs that are focused on the individual's performance (relative to the original), mash ups do not often change the voices they use. Instead, they pick songs apart and form a kind of collage, and any praise is for the arrangement of the pieces. It's a kind of artful plagarism, a musical collage, which is the fully realized form of sampling. Sampling is using existing music and adding new elements to it, like Sean Kingston's Beautiful Girls using the melody from Ben E. King's Stand By Me. The benefit of doing something like this that an audience is more likely to like your song due to what psychologists call the familiarity effect. Just like you will rate a stranger's face higher the second time you see it because it is familiar, you will like a song that contains a tune you already know, even if you can't place it. Homages like California Gurlz by Katy Perry works in a similar way (if we know the Beach Boy's song), but the mash up is unique for it's distinct lack of new material.

Is it creative? In a way. The combinations that people have come up with are genius, ingenius and everything in between. Some are better than others, but you would be surprised how many combinations there are (for example Golddigger by Kanye West and Beethovan's Fifth). But at the same time is it "new"? I don't know. I am also not particularly an expert on this cultural phenomenon, but I am concerned about all this. Does it mean, as Newsweek Magazine suggested a few months ago, that there is a creativity crisis in America?

What is more troubling is that the "mash" trend is no longer limited to music. The sucess of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and it's peers (Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters and Android Karenina from Quirkbooks) have shown that great literature and monsters, high and low arts, can be mixed together with great success. On one level this kind of art is good, giving new life to the classics (which I am pretty sure are in public domain?) while trying to capitalize on current cultural trends (like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter). But I guess my problem with the pastiche is that it feels like cheating--all artists have to deal with the burden of what's come before, and using it verbatim just seems too easy.

Part of this trend's popularity may come from our generation's struggle with the concepts of intellectual property in an internet age. Privacy is not the only victim of having access to so much material on the web--who feels the need to all the creative work when there is so much available on line. And people may disagree with my description of mash-ups as artful plagarism, but compared to start up artists on My Space Music, mash ups have the distinct advantage of the familiarity effect. The hard work of getting songs put on the radio has already been done, and the right mash up can simultaneously reap the benefits of more than one song.

But another part of it comes from the fact that we come from an increasingly referential society. References built upon references, until it becomes increasingly hard to get the joke. Points are given to obscurer refrences, more intellectual ones, and people are trying to make it harder to be "in" on it. Golddigger itself is a great example, since it references/samples Ray Charles' I've Got a Woman, but as sung by Jamie Foxx who played Ray Charles (and won the Oscar for Best Actor) in the movie Ray. So the song simultaneously references the song and the movie, which both lead back to Ray and his own life. We are lucky that we have tools like Google and Wikipedia at our fingertips to decode these references, to keep ourselves in the loop, but the availability of these resources means the references can get more and more complex. The problem with references is that often they have diminishing marginal returns--with each layer you get further away from the original and something is lost. A reference to the Lion King does not have the same weight as one to Hamlet. That's not to say reimaginings of work are bad, but we pay a price for them; for everything that is gained (singing animals) and something is lost (Shakespeare's "words, words, words") (This also does not even to begin to skim the surface of "intertextuality" and its effects on post-modern culture, but I don't want this to be too academic).

Despite the fact that I have been complaning that mash-ups do not create any new material, the mash-up or the pastiche is not even a new artform in and of itself, and neither is the borrowing of old elements, plotlines or even characters to create new work. Shakespeare is famous for this. The book I have been spending a lot of time with, Ulysses by James Joyce, is a hodgepodge of several different styles and perspectives AND based in Homer's Odyssey. But what makes these names stick long after they are gone, in a way that Girl Talk will not, is that they have managed to create beyond the base they have started with, whether it is with poetry or character or enormity/modernity of vision. Seth Grahame-Smith is not the next Jane Austen, because while his zombie story may complement, it does not complete or enhance anything we know about the human condition or do anything more than parody Austen's language.

Ultimately the problem of mash-ups becomes when it's popularity discourages people from creating for themselves and we run out of material for future efforts in this genre. The quantity of art created is finite, the possibilities, infinite. Here's an analogy: Mash-ups are to existing art as America is to oil. The Mash Monster needs pieces to continue, and it has the capacity to consume all of it and leave us with nothing. The creative ones will be those who find ways to avoid the monster, or provide the art that will feed it in the future.

SuperFreaks & GLeeks

2010-08-09T09:13:00.003-04:00

A friend of mine recently sent me the last moment of Season 1 of Glee during which Schuester (Matthew Morrison) and Puck (Mark Salling) sing the Israel Kamakawiwo'ole version of "Over the Rainbow." He said "I don't watch Glee, but seeing this out of context strikes me as a little bit much."

Sentimentality of the moment aside, that's exactly what Glee is--much, too much, a testament to hyperbole and it's grip on American life.

In terms of the writing, the strength of the characters, and it's depiction of high school, Glee falls way short of the benchmark set by Freaks and Geeks (which with Judd Apatow's writing and stars like James Franco, Jason Segal, and Seth Rogen). Freaks and Geeks manages to artfully assmble the full range of emotions associated with high school, from the awkard and afraid to sentimental and even nostalgic. But Glee, exaggerated and overstated, is a completely different animal, and there is a reason why Freaks and Geeks got cancelled after one season, while Glee already is locked in for three.

Part of it is that FOX understands that in a country when more people watch American Idol than the news, people are looking for certain things. The most obvious of these is music, but it's not just the soundtrack that gets people going. Freaks and Geeks has a killer soundtrack, featuring Van Halen, the Who, Billy Joel among other artists (the music was actually the reason the DVD release took so long). But not only is it good music, it's authentic to the time period of the show, and used to enhance the reality of the character's existence (the season finale's use of The Grateful Dead's American Beauty is just one example).

But the music on American Idol and Glee is a different kind of music. They're covers, yes, but also covers of that combination of musical theater staples, classic soft-rock, radio favorites, and homage to new pop sensations. Simultaneiously new and old. Songs ripped straight from Now That's What I Call Music. Some of the best songs, like "Don't Stop Believing" and "It's My Life/Confessions Part 1" do their job in making us see an old favorite in a new way.

Glee has it's finger on the pluse of American culture, but at times we wonder if the episodes are choosing the music or the music is writing the episode. There are cases like "The Power of Madonna" where this is clearly the case, but other examples like Regionals where "You Can't Always Get What you Want" is telegraphed by Finn right before the commercial break with that very line. Sometimes the pieces fit together too perfectly in the soundtrack, and the result is a cookie-cutter feel. Other times, they feel out of place, like when Rachel asks her mom (Idina Menzel) to sing one last song with her, and rather than being emotional (something like "For Good" from Wicked) it has to fit the theme of the episode (Lady Gaga), and we listen to an awkward acoustic rendition of "Poker Face."

But the music isn't the only thing the show has going for it. The cast of Glee, with their varying backgrounds, is said to reflect the diverse genres of music they are able to do on the show. There's someone for everyone. But for a show that proports to be about following your dreams and being yourself, the message seems to be that "It's okay to be yourself...if you're a stereotype." But characters like Rachel (the theatre diva who sings "On My Own" from Les Mis and "Don't Rain on My Parade" from Funny Girl a la Barbra Streisand) Mercedes (the over-weight black girl whose first song of the series is "Respect" by Aretha Franklin) or even Kurt, (the gayer than gay member of New Directions whose dream is to sing Defying Gravity from Wicked) are just the beginning. These are hyper-stereotypes, stereotypes compounded by more stereotypes, to the point where these archetypes might be considered a kind of comedia del America.

So if the music is writing the show, and the characters themselves are a reflection of the music, and the music in turn a reflection of our culture, Glee has moved from phenomeon to meta-cultural. It is very aware of the story it is telling and the picture of America it is painting, so much so that there are moments when Glee slips and becomes a kind of public service announcement. In Dream On, Shucester and Neil Patrick Harris get into an argument about arts in schools, quoting statistics. My favorite moment from the Pilot is when Finn saves Artie and immediately references the drop-out rate. Is Glee trying to save us? Or is it's extreme pace and over-the-top merchandising just a reflection of the culture that loves it?

Probably both, maybe neither. In the end Glee uses music to do what it can't in words--express particular emotions and add drama to already unbelievable situations. Combine that with a rushed pace, plot action that you could might as well ignore as you wait for the next song, and wrought sentimentality, and you have a musical. But a musical comedy where the music (and in this way, the characters, the emotion, the plot and everything that flows from the music) is unoriginal. Even that message--Everyone is special. Be yourself. Follow your dreams.--all of this is cliche, but Glee's use of hyperbole and theatricallity makes it seem new. In an entry from a while back titled Not-So-Superlative, I poorly articulated what the problem with our national focus on the superlative. Ambition is great, but in Disney's The Incredibles the point is made clear first by Dash, and later by Syndrome: "Everyone can be super! And when everyone's super--no one will be!" The same thing is true of Glee.

One flaw in the logic is that this story is being told almost in reverse. A character like Rachel Berry (Lea Michelle) is some version of Michelle herself; you don't become the star of a Broadway show without that kind of drive. But if that's the case, the people we are being convinced are misfits are in fact already successful, and capable of feigning vulnerablity because they have already made it. Things like "talent" and large amounts of it are prerequisites for a life like Glee, but the cast is never going to tell you that. Even previously unknown Chris Colfer (Kurt) is now Emmy-Nominated for his cartoon like performance.

In my opinion, the best characters on the show are cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) and Brittany (Heather Morris). Lynch is not only a break from the singing and dancing, but a goofy kind of villian whose own intensity points out the show's unabashed hyperbole. Her recurring line "You think this is hard! Try _________. Now that's hard!" actually paints her as a kind of realist, a conscience for the show that says "This is not as life or death as we all make it out to be." Brittany on the other hand doesn't really seem to be listening to what's going on around her, and with her great one liners ("Did you know Dolphins are just gay sharks?"), she reminds us again not to take it all too seriously. She too is a stereotype, but in a PC age where the cast is neccessarily multicultural, she is positioned as the dumb blonde who "it's okay to laugh at."

Ultimately, when I watched the season finale of Glee, my sister asked me. "Do you think this is a good show?" And I told her, "No." She was shocked, and asked "So why do you like it?" My answer is that because it's so bad, so ridiculous, that I watch it to criticize it, to hear the music and see the unreal antics. But I think that critical distance is the only way to approach the show.

The truest moment in the season (spoiler alert) is when the group of "losers" actually loses Regionals. The hope we have built up all season is torn down, and the show almost laughs at us saying "we tricked you." It was not a surprise to me--in some ways they kept their promise--but at the same time it seemed cruel. A baby born during "Bohemian Rapsody" is hyperbole; but the lack of happy ending is too real. That's why that last moment feels like too much--Schuester needs to build us back up.

It reminds me of the end of Little Miss Sunshine, how the performance of Superfreak is so strange, so extreme, that we embrace it slowly, like the rest of Olive's family. But in the sentimentality and other-ness, the unification of that family, we find ourselves wanting to be other as well. We don't want to be a part of the club, we want to be a part of the club that's not part of the club. This is a precursor to Lady Gaga and her Little Monster. This is New Directions. Underdogs who are superior to everyone else, outsiders who are exotic; what we want to be, what we want to be because we feel somehow other, and what we want to be because we have the luxury of being in a country where that kind of success is possible.

Now I could go into more specifics, go episode by episode, build a better critique of this phenomenon. But I can't right now. My point is that it's a phenomeon BECAUSE it is over the top, because we can't settle for anything less, and that Glee is extremely telling for the future of American pop culture. Glee typifies the problems of our culture, condenses them and puts them to song, resulting in Comedia del America.

Who's Afraid of James Joyce?

2010-07-27T17:20:00.005-04:00

I'm sitting in a restaurant by myself, reading my book as I wait for my dinner, not listening as the gentlemen at the table beside me talk about something less interesting than Peter Ho Davies.

But suddenly, one of them says "We could make a play out of it," and for some reason I begin to pay attention. Maybe it is some perverse form of the cocktail party effect, the one that allows you to recognize your own name said from across the room, but the notion of making anything in Dublin has me on edge. I'm here doing research and writing fiction, and while I feel like I'm doing neither particularly well, I've convinced myself that the whole of my experience will be greater than the sum of its paltry parts.

The second gentleman says, "I've got a title for you." I wait with probably more anticipation than either man, and while I can't hear the first title proposed, it doesn't matter. It gets shot down rather quickly. I go back to my book.

Then I hear, "Who's Afriad of James Joyce?" A play on "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" (which I have not read), to which I had a visceral response.

I am. I AM A...fraid of James Joyce.

The author of Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses, Dublin's pride and joy, the Prick with the Stick, old Jamesy has simultaneously been my ghost and my comfort these few weeks. It's almost impossible to walk down a street in Dublin without some reminder of him, either from his work or his memorials, of which there are several. This is the reason why I came here, the allure and intricacy of Ulysses and the reality of Portrait and the atmosphere Dubliners somehow are supposed to inform a story about myself.

Let's get a few things straight though. It's not just that he wrote the greatest book of the 20th century. It's not even that he's everywhere. It's that he's driven many a writer to the brink of destruction who use his standard to attempt to judge what comes next for literary art.

The example that comes to mind is Flann O'Brien, author of At-Swim-Two-Birds, who while smart in his own right and ahead of his time, is so obsessed with trying to beat Joyce that he ultimately comes undone, simply because he can't. It's not that he has not done good work, but for a contemporary of Joyce to see beyond what Joyce saw and push further was an impossibility. When I attempted to describe what I was doing in Ireland to an Irish girl sitting next to me at a comedy show, she laughs in my face and goes "Oh James Joyce, you might as well give up."

So that's my other thing: I am not here to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscious of my race. To try tobe Joyce is to end up like Flann or David Foster Wallace (who, yes, killed himself) trying to push the novel to it's extremes. Even Joyce in Finnigan's Wake (which I have not read and thus omitted from the other lists) tries to push himself to the point of being nonsensical, and in that way not worth my time (especially considering all the other books that I haven't read). Pushing to this extreme also requires the kind of mania that in itself necessitates depression, which are things I don't necessarily want to induce even in the process of trying. I don't even know if my soul is a "smithy" or if the metaphor has overstayed it's welcome.

What I do know is that I enjoy writing and I want to keep doing it. And so Joyce tipifies a problem I have every time I walk into a bookstore. There are sections upon sections and shelves on top of shelves of books about everything you can possibly think of; the looming questions of what's left to write, and how do I get anyone to read it, are like Pain and Panic, the publishing industry itself off to Hades.

The odds are not in my favor to begin with, but I've seen people who have worked hard and made it work and work incredibly well. But what consciousness remains uncreated? The answer of course is in the question (duh, the uncreated ones) and that answer is in itself infinite. And that's the other thing, there are so many books I haven't read, so many things I don't know if I'm referencing or echoing unconsciously, that sometimes it feels like trying to think outside the very large box of human experience. Or remembering that even Ulysses is based in something else, the Odyssey, finding those stories that are relevant today. But I wonder about the diminishing returns that come with layers of reference, the way a reference to Hamlet depends on the greatness of Hamlet and can never exceed it.

Some of the real frustration here comes from the fact that a few nights ago I feverishly started a story about a library, channelling my book store anxieties along with some other things I have been thinking about lately and on a mind-racing post-Inception high, only to tell my girlfriend about the story. She says, "Oh, you mean like Borges." I am perplexed, not being a Spanish major myself, and being constantly reminded that in the ever expanding faster than the universe list of books I need to read to be an intellegent person, I am grossly underread. "The Library of Babel." While it's not exactly the same (Borges never knew about the internet), the similarities are uncanny, and the more I learn about this guy, the more I feel 1)hopeless and 2) connected to some collective consciousness, some underlying knowledge that makes us human and 3) like I'm playing catchup as the great novels of the 21st century go on being written.

Part of my trouble is that I need to let go, loosen up, think less about this and just feel, but to do that I need to let it all out. I need to come to grips with an unbelievably high standard set by the limits of my education and maybe even read something a little less literature-changing. A professor of mine once said that good fiction breaks down our world and then builds it back up again, allowing us to see it in a different way. The only cure for my fear is to engage not only with Joyce, but my fiction, and other fiction, as best I can and leave Ireland with something to show for it.

Toy Story Story

2010-06-22T09:34:00.000-04:00

I have always loved toys. My mother has told me that I spent most of my early years with a small plastic Mickey in my hands. This particular Mickey has a yellow shirt and purple overalls. The toy that predicted my college choice. It's in a frame now with some baby clothes and a lego brick meant to encapsulate my childhood.

I still love toys. My younger brother has allowed me to cultivate that love, his youth extending my own. Nerf Swords, new lego sets, trading card games, Transformers, action figures. When I was a child toys were the actors in stories too elaborate to put on paper. I have always been good at entertaining myself. When I didn't have many friends I always had books and toys.

What I vividly remember are seeing the previews. The weight of the characters. The lack of outlines. The sense of space. I remember being unsure of what was happening on the screen as I waited for the big cartoons to start. This movie was not the Lion King, not Pocohantas. I knew Disney, and this didn't look like Disney. I didn't realize it was the first of something, but I felt the change under my seat, my feet swinging above the theater floor.

I remember getting the the McDonalds Happy Meal Puppets. My mom found one of Rex this past week.

I can't say I remember seeing the movie in theaters but I know I did. Now I watch it and it looks so primative compared to the sequels.

I remember getting the toys for Christmas. My own Buzz and Woody. They are somewhere in my basement.

My senior year of high school I tried to preform a version of the movie as a duo with my best friend. I was appalled when he didn't know the lines. I was Woody, not only because I knew the words, but probably because I deep down imagined myself the reliable friend in the shadow of some superior craftmanship. My friend is certainly spacey. At one point, I would move behind him and he would pound the invisible red button on his chest, and I would extend my arms sharply to form the carbonic alloy wings. I still know most of the movie by heart.

I was six when the first movie came out, and fifteen years later I was not surprised to see myself as Andy. Andy off to college, and me about to be a senior. I was surprised at how moved I was. I had been excited for this movie since the moment I heard it was in production, and have been talking to everyone I know about it since. I had high expectations. I did not expect to cry.

At one point Andy's mom begins to cry that he's leaving for school, and I could feel my mom behind me doing the same. I'm not home very often any more. I'm spending most of my summer abroad. This summer has been the first in a while where I have spent a few solid weeks at home, getting the chance to play with my brother and his toys.

I feel old. I loved WALL-E for it's beauty and artful use of silence, the Charlie Chaplin meets 2001 a Space Odyseey quality. I loved UP for the emotions, the bittersweet chocolate that lured me in like Kevin, the love I felt for characters I had only known for 10 minutes, the innocence and adventure. I thought Toy Story 3 was perfect, communicating with the character's past as well as it's audience's future, the importance of toys as well as the stories we create with them. In all three of these stories there is lonliness, friendship, whimsy, unconventional family and all-encompassing love. It's why I am such a sucker for these movies.

Improv Your Life

2010-01-20T23:43:00.003-05:00

I have become increasingly involved in activites here at school, and yet have discovered that I am the kind of person who while constantly stressed, strives under the pressures of increased responsibility. I take on a lot (probably too much) and find myself sometimes unable to see the big picture under the ensuing pile of To Do lists.

One of my stress-relieving activities has been my improvisational comedy group. They are my good friends, and we get together two or three times a week to goof around. It's the ultimate break, requiring no real preparation of any kind. It requires me to drop everything, trust other people, and have fun, and I would probably go insane without it.

Unfortunately my type-A, first born, overachieving personality recently leaked into my off-the-cuff oasis when I took on planning our group's 25th Reunion. Planning events, securing funds, sending out and revising the schedule (an ungodly number of times), and just trying to make everyone happy made the days and weeks leading up to the reunion incredibly stressful. I felt that no one was supporting me, that my team was unwilling to help in the planning, when in reality I had just taken the responsibility like I always do. Everything went well, but when I look back on it now I wish that I had gotten to live in the moment the way usually I get to on stage with my team.

One event that we put on for the weekend was an intramural improv tournament--IMprov. The idea was to get a bunch of people who wanted to give improv a try and split them into teams and have a competition. It went well (despite being on two losing teams), and what was remarkable to me was the excitement kids had for something I loved so much (while I was of course stressing about trophies and ballots). Even the kids who didn't do particularly well couldn't deny that it was fun, and others still said that by going on stage and doing improv they were facing some of their greatest fears.

I believe (and say fairly often) that life is improv. We are often not prepared for the all the things that happen to us every day. Like coming off the back line, walking out the front door is an adventure where all we have are locations and relationships. We create scenes and find the words, react honestly and try to support those around us. We make it all up as we go.

And that is terrifying. It's not the stage but the unpredictablity of improv that frightens people. What if I don't know what to say? they ask. Thinking of life as improv puts in the forefront of our minds our lack of control. We want to always do the right thing, but there is no script for our daily lives. That's probably the reason why I suffer the stresses I do throughout the school year--being overscheduled reduces the possibiliy that I will be caught off guard, that I will have to use those improv skills I cultivate in practice when the stakes have been raised to the level of my own life. Routine is comfortable, like a script, but ultimately you're missing out on spontenaity, honesty, and the chance to create something in the moment.

Now that the reunion is over, that things have calmed down (slightly), I'm looking forward to finding comedy calming again, and maybe even let it spill off the stage every once in a while. Seeing so many older alums return, some with spouses and kids, I was amazed to see what sharing a background in improv does for a group of strangers. We're more likely to start a conversation, more likley to go out on a limb, and generally we're just more fun. We shared Improv, and when we shared a stage it didn't matter if we were class of 1991 or 2011-we trusted each other to be able to deliver something. I recommend that everyone try improv, if you get the chance. The homework is easy, and the payoffs last long afterwards.

Mending Wall-to-Wall

2010-01-19T12:43:00.005-05:00

I realize it's been a while since I've written, but I was recently reflecting on why I started this blog in the first place. It was a gift to myself on my twentieth birthday, and with another birthday behind me I find myself drawn back to this now year-old blog, looking for a place to catalog and chronicle those thoughts which are unique to this point in my life.

Being my birthday, I found myself inundated with emails notifying me of the many Facebook wall-posts sending birthday wishes. My personal theory is that if people take the time (even if it is only two seconds on their Blackberry) to wish me a happy birthday, I can take just as much time to thank them, and in some cases take the opportunity to get back in touch with an old friend. What I found when I went to respond by clicking on our wall-to-wall conversation, in an alarming number of cases, was that our exchanges were often limited to two things:"Happy birthday" and "thanks!" The years in the timestamps would change but the message stayed the same, the three hundred and sixty four day gaps in our conversation going seemingly unnoticed. I have a large portion of friends on Facebook who seem to soley exist for the purpose of bolstering the number of posts (and therefore my self esteem) on my birthday, with the implied hope that I will do the same for them.

Usually I end up writing about how things like Facebook destroy the personal touch of a note or a birthday card, the thought put into a present or even a phone call; today my goal is different. I was inspired to write today because one of my classmates had us read for class today a poem called "Mending Wall" by Frost, famous for it's repeated line "Good fences make good neighbors." It is a poem about two neighbors who meet every so often to repair the wall between the property, and somehow the object that divides also joins. But unlike Frost's wall, Facebook gives us a Wall-to-Wall, a literal pair of barriers that make conversations superficial. The writing is literally on the wall, and often goes no further. That there are two of these obstacles imples that they are more difficult to overcome than stones in a field. Like Frost seems to imply, the only way to really meet someone is to break through.

I'm probably being overly cynical (a symptom of a year's worth of maturity and the legal permisson to consume alcohol). Facebook and other sites like it have allowed communication to increase, as evidenced by the many "Happy Birthday" text messages I recieved from family, or the Facebook message I recieved from my aunt who recently moved to Virginia. If people were always so kind and thinking of others, even in superficial and small ways, we might experience a little more peace in our lives. Maybe all these friends are trying to make sure no one is alone on their birthday, so they won't have to be when their time comes.

Frost's line seems to be begging for some reworking in an era of Twitter and Myspace--"Good Facebooks make good neighbors" and while this is true, it reminds us of our global community and the many connections we have to other human beings, we can't forget that real communication only happens when the wall comes down. We have to ask ourselves, like Frost's narrator, what we are keeping in and what we are keeping out with these virtual barriers. Are we seeking to protect like the Great Wall of China, or divide like the Berlin Wall? Do we talk to the wall, or bang our head against it?

Unlike a Facebook Wall or the wall of my room, this blog is meant to be like a journal, a place where I can make connections and share my thoughts with you in the hopes of some thoughtful response. So here's to a new year mending walls and building bridges.

Welcome Home

2009-09-01T23:44:00.006-04:00

After sitting in the car for six hours my dad, brother, and I arrived at our hotel tired, hungry, and in some cases more than a little annoyed at each other. We had been driving down the West Coast Highway for two days now, starting in San Francisco and then spending the night in San Simeon before finally coming to Anaheim. When we pulled up to Disney's Grand Californian, the woman at the booth asked us if we were checking in, and my dad explained that my mom and sister had done so hours earlier and were waiting for us. My whole family was about to be together for practically the first time all summer, and while I should have been excited or just exhausted, I was instead taken aback when the woman who had been helping us said "Welcome home" as she pointed us to the main lobby of the hotel. I couldn't decide whether or not it was appropriate.

It is a Disney policy (as I would imagine it is in most hotels) to try and make guests feel like their room is actually their home away from home. While on vacation your hotel not usually your destination but rather the place where you have some of your meals, keep your clothes and make yourself clean, where you come back to every night to crawl into bed. It functions like all other dwelling places in that way. But what struck me about my experience was that the Disney people were not trying to make it feel like home, they called it "home" and operated as though the hotel was just as much your home as the house you grew up in. And there were times when either after dinner or on my way out of the pool I found myself saying that I was going "home" rather than "upstairs" or "to the room." The fact that their use of the word had begun to affect my own was shocking, especially because it happened within the matter of days.

I don't think I am the only person to experience this phenomenon, if only because this is not the first time I have felt this way about a particular place. I can't point to when exactly my dorm room became "home" my freshman year of college, but I can say that somewhere in that first two months or so, as if someone flipped a light switch, my entrymates and I all began to use the word. What is remarkable about this, in my opinion, is that we were all undeniably away from home, some of us for the first time. We were without our families. For the first time in years I had a roommate. And the food was certainly not "home" cooking. So why the semantic switch-over?

Part of this I have to credit to the freshman housing system at my school, but this doesn't cover everything. The only way to understand why we find it easy to call our temporary domiciles "home" is to pin down what home actually means in a world that has become increasingly standardized. We can access our email and the news wherever there is an internet connection, and with cell phones we can be found almost everywhere else (and with iPhones the distinction is further blurred). While it's nice to have a place to call our own, we really don't need a base of operations for anything except our larger possessions. We are not tied to place in the same way anymore. There is the platitude that has been the subject of many a needlepoint project--"home is where the heart is"--which might be the easy answer to this question.

But it's more specific than that (and I'm not one for easy answers). There is something about the combination of the things that you do (brushing your teeth, going to sleep, etc.) and the people you are with (your family, your friends) that makes us feel at home. This is why I can sit in an apartment I've never seen before and work on a computer I've never used and because I'm writing and sitting with my best friend I can feel as comfortable as anywhere else. So your "heart" is literally those things essential to your self concept, or those things that place you in relationship to the world around you.

This doesn't mean home is not without it's creature comforts. I don't know if I would feel at home immersed in the Kibera slums or a village outside of Quito. And while there is something to be said for journeying outside of our comfort zones in order to expand them, we have to realize that a large portion of human ingenuity has been directed at making us more comfortable. Food, entertainment, indoor plumbing. We spend our lives trying to find our way, and attempting to earn enough money so that we can have all these comforts. So there's something to be said for being able to find our comfort zone, too.

I am taking a class this semester all about breaking out of my comfort zone as a writer of fiction, and so far it's succeeded in getting me to stop writing the first person story I have become so comfortable with and do something different. Second person. Third person omniscient. First person plural. Non-linear. Mosaic. But even though it is an extended exercise in doing something different, it's the class I love the most. And it's because I feel at home writing.

So months after coming back from Disneyland with my family, months after coming back to the school I've come to love, months after my last post, I am back home, writing here.

The Frisbee Kids

2009-08-11T11:46:00.008-04:00

There isn't much to do in Scranton, Pennsylvania. There's even less to do when you are working at a camp for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade boys from New York City, who would rather play basketball all day than go to the train museum. So after their long days of class we would give the kids time to play on Poly Hi or in the gym. There was often a large game of soccer, either wiffle ball (if you wanted to be a Met or a Yankee when you grew up) or football (which I think had something to do with the recent Super Bowl victory by the Giants), and always at least four games of basketball with kids who could name more current NBA players in a minute than I could if you gave me an hour. And I was expected to participate (or facilitate) some of this athletic activity in order to tire these kids out.

Now I was never a very athletic child. When I was eleven and twelve I was spending my summers learning about aerodynamics and doing logic proofs, and the summer I spent in basketball camp was one of the worst that I can remember. I hated almost every sport I ever played (soccer, basketball, tennis, baseball, golf) not because of anything having to do with the sports themselves, but because I didn't become coordinated until I was about fifteen (and I have plenty of friends who will even dispute that number). So during that summer after my freshman year of high school when my right hand finally knew what my right hand was doing, I became comfortable with not any sort of ball or racket or club or bat, but a plastic disc.

The next summer I was playing Frisbee with a bunch of my friends in Northern Italy, where bad throws ran the risk of ending up in the Adriatic. From then on we played in Central Park, usually getting a fairly large group together, not using any sort of stack but running around trees and just trying to get open. It was the summers that I played the most Frisbee that I felt the most in shape. Frisbee was the first sport I had actually come to like playing.

Now when I got to college Frisbee was not only ubiquitous but at times unrecognizable. At one extreme, there would be people tossing in the quad, and at the other, the cult team (I mean club team) where the intensity of some of the upperclassmen and the number of drills brought me all the way back to St. Dominic's Basketball camp. As a result I stopped really playing Frisbee except for the occasional catch with a few friends or intramural game. By the end of the year I missed it, and with summer rolling around I was looking forward to some quality time with my disc.

And then I found myself at Scranton, in a sea of kids who idolized professional athletes because for minority kids growing up in New York City these were role models. Not that I don't appreciate all the work that athletes have done for the community, but I just felt like I had moved from one sports culture to another and was oddly in between. But I was not alone.

Every year I've worked at this camp, I've noticed there are a few kids who remind me of myself. Some because they aren't very athletic, others because they would rather read than play sports. On the other hand, one group of kids used the sand by the volleyball courts to build imaginary cities and civilizations to play some sort of RPG they had created. One kid actually spent most of his time doing handstands and other very dangerous looking, oh-my-god-we're-liable-for-this-kid acrobatics. These were kids who weren't quite sure to do with their Rec time, and while some of the other counselors would pitch for Wiffleball, play Automatic QB or organize Knockout, I realized one day that these were kids who needed something different. And it all started with Philip.

Philip was an eleven year old Polish boy from somewhere in Queens. He had a great sense of humor, but the content of many of his jokes was meant to please the counselors rather than his peers. He had some great voices, and his Pillsbury Dough-boy was usually enough to make even the most stressed of counselors smile. But thinking about it now, this was probably funny for some of the wrong reasons. To say that Philip was as wide as he was tall is only a slight exaggeration (possibly too many pierogi), and surrounded by his more athletic peers it was definitely on his mind. Unlike his classmate Kofi, who was half my age and probably close to twice my size and despite his lack of coordination (or maybe because of) was like a resident Shaq during rec time, Philip was the Chris Farely of camp, and he spent his recreation telling jokes to whoever would listen. And if no one would listen, he would just sit on the side and complain.

Until I started throwing around the frisbee. Every year about six to eight kids really take to the disc. Maybe it's because they are impressed by the number of throws I've mastered (three and a half on a good day) or the incredible distance I can hurl this piece of plastic (and then still find it on the nearby railroad tracks). But part of me knows that it's because frisbee is something that anyone can learn to do. I taught them how to throw (backhand for starters), how to read a disc in the air, and how to glean from a bad throw what you had done wrong (if you are right handed and throwing backhand and you release too late, the disc breaks right; to early, left; if you tilt the disc right it curves right; left, it curves left; etc.) I was spreading the game.

Philip took the the disc immediately, and almost definitely threw more accurately than I could. He was a natural, and with every new throw Philip would be the first one to get it. He would ask me questions about Frisbee, and when he succeeded, I always told him how impressed I was. It was good to see him actually playing during rec, and every day whenever he would see me in the hallways or at lunch he would say to me "Hey Chris--Frisbee?" and he would make sure I brought them. We would play inside or outside, and all Philip wanted to talk about was Frisbee, how he was going to go home and buy a Frisbee. It had become a reason for Philip to want to come to rec, and I was just happy that I could spread the game to these kids who didn't quite fit in anywhere else.

And then I made a huge mistake. For the previous two summers I had maybe three kids interested in Frisbee, but this summer was the first year I had a group that was big enough and talented enough for me to think about teaching them how to play Ultimate Frisbee. I was so excited. Now rather than just throwing around, we could actually get competitive, run around, and make some sweet catches in the end zone (And for my Frisbee friends, some sick cuts, nice D's, and even a lay out or two...but no stack). I thought these kids were ready, and they seemed relatively eager. We got ten kids, myself, and another counselor and good friend of mine (Inha) to play. The teams seemed evenly matched, but we were playing on a different field and it was windy, so the conditions were less than ideal. And things only got worse.

The first play of the game kids were running down the field, making short passes, usually from one kid to myself or Inha to another kid to myself or Inha, back and forth like the Frisbee would disintegrate if it were out of either adult's hands for too long. We tried to get the kids more involved. One team scored a point. I don't really remember a lot of the details because I am too focused on what happened next. Philip screamed "THIS IS STUPID" and stormed off the field. He was upset, and as soon as he left I started to see why. While Philip was probably the best thrower (or handler) of all the kids, and got to throw as much as anyone else, when kids started running Philip was left far behind. And without Philip, the game started to fall apart.

Philip didn't want to really have anything to do with Frisbee for the next couple of days, and I don't blame him. Something that he felt like he could do (and could do well) was in an instant made just like every other sport he didn't want to play. I felt awful for being insensitive to the needs of not only Philip but the a lot of the other kids who had started playing Frisbee that summer. I had forgotten that the whole reason I brought out the Frisbee was to give the kids who really didn't fit in with everybody else something that they could enjoy without having to be athletes. It was supposed to make them feel like they had a place, the way it had given me one when I was their age. They were the Frisbee Kids for a reason.

It often feels like there isn't really that much to do in Williamstown either, but this summer I didn't really play any Frisbee. It's not that I don't still enjoy it, but my relationship with the disc has become a little bit more complicated. While I taught Philip how to throw a hammer and catch with two hands (like a pancake or, the more manly, alligator), the things Philip taught me are far more important. I've learned to fight my impulse that "more complicated" means "better" and appreciate the simplicity of just having a catch or being happy with another person. It's not about rules and points and winning and losing but about finding those things that we can enjoy as we grow. In other words, it's about playing. Which is why despite the fact I am very much out of shape, I'm signing up for Intramural Frisbee in the fall. Let's just hope I can keep up.

You Are What You Eat

2009-08-04T22:09:00.023-04:00

Usually when we go to the movies we want to be entertained in some way. We go to laugh at jokes, or to be moved by a character's pain. Sometimes it's to see an impossibly cliche but happy ending, and other times it's to feel the adrenaline that comes with suspense and being scared. We go to feel the entire gamut of human emotions, to escape into worlds much more self contained than our own, where every event is leading towards some sort of climax and resolution as crafted by screenwriters and directors alike.

Ideally we also leave having learned something true about the world and ourselves, whether or not we realize it at the time.

And that's what happened last night I when went to the little theater by my school: I was not escaping our world but engaging a real problem, not feeling happy or sad but queasy, doomed and powerless. I saw not a movie, but our self destruction in miniature.

The movie was Food, Inc. and while I am not someone who seeks out documentaries, I was simultaneously impressed and distressed by this film. Basically, the film seeks to expose the food industry, a collection of a few multi-billion dollar corporations that control almost everything that we eat. They trace how fast food and the desire for standardized food produced at record speeds has resulted in these massive factories that produce chickens, cows, pigs--all to be slaughtered and consumed. Not only do you see the mass slaughter, but you begin to understand how companies use technology and tamper with the biological processes of these animals to breed them bigger and breed them faster.

It's not just the meat that's disturbing. It's tomatoes artificially ripened so we can have them all year round. It's the fact that corn, a crop so subsidized and overproduced, is present in almost 90% of the processed food we eat. It's fed to cows instead of grass in order to fatten them up and causing them to get sick. It's the fact that these companies have the power to control Congress and the agencies that are supposed to regulate them. That massive amounts of money have the power to tip the scales in our legal system and put the last real farmers in America out of business. It's the fact that people are dying every year from E.Coli that was overlooked, and that more and more people suffer from obesity and diabetes.

We're being fed like the animals and it's making us sick too.

What impressed me about the movie was how well put together the various stories of real people, including a mother-turned-food safety advocate after the loss of her two year old son to a hamburger, a family whose income limits their food choices, a farmer who still feeds his cows on grass, a seed cleaner sued into submission, and workers for these food companies who are treated like livestock. Combine this with the insights of authors Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma) , and you have an engaging movie about important issues.

But what distrubed me most all is that this movie tries to illustrate the scale of the Problem with these expanding shots of corn fields and huge farms with thousands of cows ankle deep in their own feces waiting to be slaughtered. It's disgusting and sad, but relative to the big picture, it's only a small slice of what we're up against. I left the movie not energized about making a difference but consumed with the idea of this impossible task as only one of many, and I couldn't avoid the sense of impending doom. The food problem is only a small piece of a much bigger puzzle, that when you start to put it together you realize just how in trouble we really are.

Let's start with the one that's most likely to be on everyone's mind--Climate change. Global warming. Environmental issues at large. The earth's temperature is rising and we are filling the air with carbon dioxide. We are killing the trees that use that carbon dioxide to make oxygen for us to breathe. Energy is being used to make new products while all the old are heaped into piles and dumps that will take several lifetimes to decompose. And while we can recycle, be cool and "green" we can't patch the holes in the Ozone layer. As we've been told so many times before by our government serious action needs to be taken. And that's not all.

Next there's water. We've all heard it--water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink. The water crisis is an issue most people don't think about (especially in the shower), but every year 3,575,000 people die from water related issues according to the World Health Organization. And our supplies of fresh water are dwindling, leading some people to predict that water will become like oil and be the source of major conflicts around the world. (Some more water facts.)

And of course we can't forget about oil. The price of food is directly linked to the price of oil, because of the amount of it used to farm, transport, and process all of our food. And so you don't think I'm exaggerating, here's a piece by Chris Jordan, an artist who has taken statistics and really put them in perspective. The description on his website reads "Oil Barrels 2008: Depicts 28,000 42-gallon barrels, the amount of oil consumed in the United States every two minutes (equal to the flow of a medium-sized river)."

And what about over population? As more and more people need resources to support them, the more scarce those resources become. The demand goes up and the supply has to match so large companies find ways to do things faster and cheaper in a way that ends up harming everyone.

And I haven't even really addressed poverty, drugs, war, starvation, corruption, poor education, and so many other problems that we face. My point is that I could keep listing these crises forever and give you facts and you might never stop being surprised. The situation we are in is dire, and our (relatively) comfortable lives make it easy to ignore what's going on in the world at large.

It's not as though we are totally unaware of all the crises that face us. The recent talk of swine flu has made people more aware of the possibility of some sort of global outbreak of an infectious disease, while the current debate in the United States over health care is highlighting some of the problems with that particular system. Al Gore and others have done so much for promoting awareness about climate change that it actually gets some air time between celebrity gossip.

But I think what escapes us is how everything is connected, and how our approach to resources as basic as food and water and our complacency towards these crises is building. Right now the human race is more efficient than it's ever been and yet we are so comfortable that natural selection seems to have lost it's touch. We aren't getting better, we're not evolving. Instead we are turning our competitive instincts upon ourselves. We are not just killing ourselves with what we eat, we are literally consuming beyond a point of no return. We are the only ones going to suffer in the end.

We are what we eat. And we are eating ourselves alive.

We are unwittingly paying companies to let us be both predator and prey.

But it's not just the fact that we need all of these resources to survive that links these crises. As Joel Salatin says in the trailer for Food Inc., everything is about doing things "faster, fatter, bigger, cheaper." It's this mentality of moving forward without thinking about what might happen while at the same time not reflecting on the ramifications of our current actions that is so poisonous. We have selective foresight and hindsight. We are so concerned with the final product that we don't think about it's recipients or it's origins. We are comfortable so why should we do anything about it?

This is the real problem--our attitude. Now I am in no ways a crusader for each and every one of these causes, but I understand that they are important. What I don't understand is why we aren't talking about them more. Either we are unaware of the gravity of the situation, either because corporations want things concealed or because it isn't yet our problem, or we are ignoring it. Maybe it's because that when we think about it the sense of doom sets in and we are paralyzed because we don't know where to start, which cause to support. Or maybe we are more paralyzed by the idea that nothing we do is going to effect any sort of real change, that we could never possibly succeed in such an undertaking.

I don't want to patronize people and tell you what to do, because the worst part about Food Inc. was probably the pedantic message at the end telling people what little things they could do to make a difference. But I will say that the one way we can address all of these different crises is by addressing the attitude at the source. Rather than be consumed by a consumer culture, we need to find the Atkins or the South Beach diet that works for us (metaphorically speaking). Because even if you say that this impending doom won't happen anytime soon, maybe not in our lifetimes, it's going to happen, and rather than help dig the graves of future generations we should start filling in the hole. Something has to give and we have to stop being so complacent about it. We have to learn the meaning of sacrifice.

We have to sacrifice lower food prices for higher quality food. We have to sacrifice long showers so that people can have clean drinking water. We have to give up our cars for long walks or bike rides. We have to sacrifice partisan loyalties and discuss practical solutions to these problems. We have to stop being comfortable and start getting worried about the state of this world. Most importantly, we have to rid ourselves of this limited worldview and get riled up enough to address our largest problems.

And there is plenty of hope out there. New technology and caring people innovating every day, scores of organizations working to help get resources to people in need and lobby government to prevent things from getting any worse. For me the most important thing is that we start talking about it. We have to see the whole rock before we can start pushing up the hill, and whether we choose to compartmentalize or delegate it's many parts, we can't loose sight of the whole. We are not Sisyphus, though our consumer culture pushing us forward forever might feel like it. There is still a chance for success, but to do that we have to be Atlas, and take the weight of the world's problems on our shoulders.

Villains

2009-07-30T14:41:00.014-04:00

It seems only logical to follow up a post called "Heroes" with one called "Villains."

But in fact this has been something I've been thinking about for quite some time. While it makes sense why many of us would be attracted to heroes--they represent our best selves, a morality to strive for--I can't help but admit to the fact that my favorite characters have oftentimes been villains.

Granted this hasn't been always true. There are pictures of me as a child crying when I met Prince John from Disney's Robin Hood (particularly embarrassing considering he sucks his thumb for a large part of the movie). But for the most part in the Disney movies I grew up with the villains were clever, plotting, decidedly wicked. And they always had the best songs.

But it's easy to write this off as "loving to hate" villains. And yet it is not just that villains provide some opposition for our heroes and therefore some direction toward a story's moral center. Villians serve a much larger purpose. In his review of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Roger Ebert wrote:

Khan is played as a cauldron of resentment by Ricardo Montalban, and his performance is so strong that he helps illustrate a general principle involving not only Star Trek but Star Wars and all the epic serials, especially the James Bond movies: Each film is only as good as its villain. Since the heroes and the gimmicks tend to repeat from film to film, only a great villain can transform a good try into a triumph.

Some of the most memorable performances of all time have been of villians. The Dark Knight rests on the shoulders of Heath Ledger's Joker. In Silence of the Lambs, Anthony Hopkins is on screen for little more than sixteen minutes as the terrifying Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Sometimes that's all it takes.

There are of course more examples than just these two Oscar winners (these are just the ones that come immediately to mind). It's hard to deny that there is something about villains that we are attracted to. Watching them, on stage or on screen, we are drawn by their energy and the impending sense that something is going to happen. But not only do I think we like to watch villains, I think in some ways we'd like to be villains ourselves.

Let me explain. When I was in eighth grade I had the good luck of being cast as a lead in our production of Once on This Island, a Jamacin musical about a pesant girl and a rich landowner who fall in love despite the meddling gods and suspicious family members who stand in their way. I had the bad luck of having a character named Papa Ge, which when pronounced correctly is an unforutnate name to call any eighth grade boy. Yet when people finally came to see the show they were amazed at how the quiet, smart boy they had known for years transformed into a sly demon of death.

It was my first big part and I had so much fun that it's probably the reason I continue to do theater. I got to be everything I had ever seen in the movies--I would hide myself in my cape and leap out from the darkness and fill the gym with a maniacal laugh that spelt doom. I was scheming, threatening, terrifying. This was all on stage of course, but there was something empowering about being the villain. As Bender says in The Breakfast Club "Being bad feels good."

But why does it feel good? Why do actors and actresses love playing the villain? I think the reason has to do with the overwhelming freedom that comes with being able to do horrible things on stage or screen without being culpable. It's the reason we like Halloween. Underneath the mask you aren't yourself. As a villain, you are free from any responsibilities you have to morality or social propriety. You can do whatever you want because you don't have to care about anyone else.

So is being the villain actually desireable? Is the Joker really "just ahead of the curve"?

My suspicion is that while it's fun to pretend, real life villains don't have that same freedom. In fact, by relinquishing one's responsibilities to others, you become incarcerated, both by the police and by selfishness. You become trapped in a vicious cycle of hurting people because you know nothing else. This kind of "freedom" begins to sound less attractive, and this morning when I read David Foster Wallace's heartbreaking and insightful address to the Kenyon class of 2005, "This is Water" and found something I liked a little bit better:

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways. That is real freedom.

And maybe that's why we need villains, or at least, why we are attracted to them. They allow us to test and reassess our freedom to choose who we are and how we interact with the world around us. There can be no heroes without villains, but in a world with no absolutes, our fictional fiends like our heroes help us find that shade of gray we're looking for, if only from the other side.

Heroes

2009-07-29T10:29:00.010-04:00

Reading Watchmen these past few days was an interesting experience. For those who don't know the work, it takes the superhero genre and turns it on it's head, and while there are men in masks there seems to be no clear moral center. This is not Superman, who is the epitome of truth, justice, and the American way. It is a series of competing philosophies and moralities none of which is completely "right." In some ways, the book questions the notion of whether or not we can have heroes in the first place, and even if we have them, what are they able to accomplish?

In part this is the job of the artist, to take those vessels of our values, whether it be superheroes, the family, or religion, and inject them with a more conflicted (and as a result darker) psychology. A ritual tainting which is also a cleansing, revealing truth rather than obscuring it with absolutes. This is because in our own lives, despite our attempts at living by certain moral codes, nothing is truly pure, and everything is colored by our traumas and temptations, missions and mistakes. The intention is not to bring down our heroes, but to make ourselves feel less out of place. To make everyone suffer from vice, and justify as a part of human existence that feeling which, when we compare ourselves to Superman, might be called inadequacy. To see the imperfections in everything and know that we are all flawed together, and by the virtue of that togetherness less ashamed.

Two words--Nobody's Perfect.

But at first glance this seems like an exercise in self-exoneration. We are less guilty for our mistakes because everyone makes them. It is part of the human condition, and as a human being I am bound to make them. But to simplify this struggle with our imperfections and accept it as a fact of life is to miss the point of these examinations in art. The struggle between virtue and vice is obviously not as black and white as some fantasy portrays--as someone explained to me why they prefer Harry Potter "I need the clear morality of Harry Potter. This is the bad guy. He's in all black. His nose is fused to his face."--but the reason Watchmen challenges its readers is because it forces you to think about, if not choose, your shade of gray. Who do you side with in the end?

And this is how Watchmen, like so much other great art, rewards it's readers. It gives you an opportunity personal exploration under the guise of a story about superheroes (what Randy Pausch calls in "The Last Lecture" a "head fake"). I have a professor who says (I'm paraphrasing) that fiction should dismantle our sense of the world in order to rebuild it with us having gained some new understanding about the world and ourselves.

There are times I wish I could have Dr. Manhattan's powers (or more accurately, I would want to be Franklin Richards, but that's besides the point) --the ability to manipulate reality, make my thoughts real. And then this morning I realized that I can, I just need to do slightly more than will them into being. I have to write, and so I do.

Against All Odds

2009-07-28T22:51:00.021-04:00

I had the very odd experience today of being asked to think about the same concept by two very different pieces of art. The first is probably the single best graphic novel ever written, Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. While I could (and very well may at another point) go in depth into my thoughts about this fantastic work, it is this line from Dr. Manhattan (the god-like superhuman who experiences space and time at the subatomic level) that struck me (possible spoiler alert):

"Thermo-dynamic miracles...events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing. And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that precise daughter...until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air into gold...That is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermo-dynamic miracle." (IX.26-27)

And compare that with Woody Allen's latest, Whatever Works, where Boris (a misanthropic quantum physicist played by Larry David) ends his story by saying (again, spoiler alert):

That's why I can't say enough times, whatever love you can get and give, whatever happiness you can filtch or provide, every temporary measure of grace -- whatever works! Don't kid yourself, it is by no means up to your human ingenuity, a bigger part of your existence is luck. Christ, you know the odds of your father's one sperm from the billions finding the single egg that made you? Don't think about it or you'll have a panic attack!"

The similarities are striking. Two bald misanthropes take their understanding of quantum physics and focus it into something (relatively) life affirming. How often does that happen? More importantly, how often does that happen twice in one day?

I can't help but see past the coincidence. No wonder I'm writing about it.

But while both point out the incredible odds against our existence, they leave us with quite a different feeling. Boris starts off corny, giving us with a kind of mantra for living our own lives--"whatever works"--before trying to give us one last laugh. The problem is that he advocates not thinking about the odds. Whether or not this is ironic, the image he wants to leave us with is of his panic attacks ("I'm dying...not now, eventually"). He trivializes these staggering odds and attributes our lives to luck. And that's one way to look at it.

But when Dr. Manhattan is challenged--"But...if me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle..I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!"--his response is surprisingly uplifting:

"Yes. Anybody in the world. ...But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget...I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away. Come...dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly." (IX.27-28)

Rather than trivialize it, he reminds us why we trivialize in the first place and how we can go about changing our feelings about the world we live in and the lives we lead. Just as it does for Dr. Manhattan, so does this logic reaffirm my belief in the value of human life and my trust in something greater, something at work in our lives. It's hard to think about the universe and not ponder our own existence or the presence of something higher. But it's not just about us. We can't be egotistical and focus on just our individual existence. We see other people all the time, but do we ever pause to consider their value? The miracle of their existence? Against all odds we are alive and on this planet together, and everyday things are happening that force us to interact with one another.

Dr. Manhattan and Boris both see a bigger picture of the universe (Dr. Manhattan's verging on the eternal, Boris' on the academic), and initially use that picture to minimize our existence; we are no different from "inchworms" and "termites." Both see the quantifiable little things (cells and quarks, atoms and eggs) that make up human life and then come to realize that our statistical impossibility makes us beautiful.

Now I am not in the business of seeing quarks or neutrinos, but I am in the business on picking up on little things, the everyday anomalies, the mundane miracles. It's not just passages in books or chance meetings of strangers who become friends. It's how, as Tom Stoppard writes in Arcadia "The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is." (At one point in the movie, the female lead Melody screams "Entropy!" and I couldn't help but think of this play). Everything happens for a reason, from seemingly coincidental references to conception itself.

The most important thing is seeing the big picture and the little things simultaneously. It's like a pointillist painting. While the simile is probably now a cliche, the fact is that each individual point required precision and effort in order to create a much larger picture. Nothing was done randomly. The analogy can be applied to individual people making up our world, but also the events in our lives. Each day, each seemingly chance occurrence, that makes up our lives contributes to this miracle, this bigger picture. We usually can't see it right away, but upon reflection the answer to why things happen to us begins to make more sense--even if our life feels more like a Jackson Pollack than a George Seurat.

Someone very close to me is currently working in Mexico with a group of orphans and today told me that while she sees the kids are excited, she can't help but think she won't be changing their lives substantially in the month that she's there. She can't give them good parents or homes. She said that at least she'll be having a good time with them now and that's all she can do--she just can't help but see the big picture, and the big picture is bleak.

My response is that for the very same reason the picture can be bleak, it can be beautiful. From these experiences that give us boosts for our resumes or just stories for our friends we also get pieces of truth that we share with one another. These two pieces of art share a truth, two parents share something as they conceive a child, and you and I share something as you read my thoughts on this page. As Dr. Manhattan says, from another's vantage point these miracles can take our breath away, if we are only willing to see things outside of ourselves.

I can't help thinking of this quote:

"A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."
--Malachi Constant, The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

Boris' mantra "whatever works" may work for him, but not for me. For me it's all about that first part, the love that we get and give. It's about sharing life with other people. If we step outside of ourselves and see the miracles around us, the miracle that is each person, we might be in awe of what we find. We just can't become complacent; it's not about "whatever", but about appreciating and embracing life and living it well. ("You think this happens everyday?" the hero of the Princess Bride says about true love; for life we might ask "You think this happens everywhere?") Our existence is inherently special and we need to do everything in our power to preserve the lives of our fellow man, to maintain our planet, and ultimately, to love. Maybe I think that because I'm optimistic, but when I think about the big picture, I'm pretty sure it's no coincidence.

Note: For some of my previous thoughts on this subject check out this post on Luck, and one of my personal favorites, that talks a bit about coincidence.

The Witching Hour

2009-07-14T13:42:00.008-04:00

When I was very young midnight was this untouchable time reserved for New Years Eve and nightmares.As the center of night, midnight has long considered to be the darkest point of the day, the time when all that is evil comes out--most notably the supernatural. As a college student, however, midnight has become far less mysterious. Burning the candle at both ends makes "night" and "day" formalities and the only real measure of time is pages read and pages written.

But somewhere in between my early childhood and college midnight took on a more fantastic meaning. Midnight became magical because almost every summer I would spend my midnights with one of my parents and my friends waiting for something--not the change of day, or year, but a book.

Harry Potter made midnight magical. I remember that each celebration was bigger than the next. I remember the summer after fifth grade staying up to get the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and reading the first chapter in bed before I went to sleep. The appearance of Lord Voldemort in the old Riddle House was enough to give me nightmares. In the summer of 2005, I came home on a plane from Italy and went almost immediately to the bookstore, and I started reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince grateful to wide awake and on Italian time. And who can forget two summers ago, right after graduating from high school and getting back from camp, getting Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with my younger brother (who has since fallen in love with the stories) and reading it as fast as I could so no one could spoil the ending.

I grew up with Harry Potter and in many ways the movement of the series has forcasted and mirrored my own movement through life. I have often talked about how I would like to do some critical work on the books--the Christian themes, ressurection, love's triumph over death, etc.--in graduate school as an homage to what the stories taught and cultivated in me as a child. But I always liked reading--I was not one of the kids for whom "Harry Potter" saved my love of reading. For me Harry Potter is inextricably linked to the experience, the community, and the magic that exists in everyday life.

But it's not everyday that the new Harry Potter movie comes out! For me, it was a supposed to be a chance to relive the excitement of those midnights with the books, going through the motions a second time. Reserving tickets, waiting in line, theaters full of costumed fans. Compare this with last summer when I went to see The Dark Knight at a midnight showing--both groups were excited, both movies enjoyable, but only one has the potential to be magical.

Sadly, something's changed. Watching the movie, it's obvious that Harry and his friends have grown up and so have we, but at at much faster pace. Talk of "snogging," "butter beers," "liquid luck" all sound an awful lot like college, a place I've been for at least a little while now. Midnight may have permanently lost it's magic (we'll have to see when the next one rolls around), and with Dumbledore dead we can only wonder what has died in us. I can't help feeling old tonight.

I'll repeat something I know to be tried and true--the books are always better than the movies. And here's why: Books force readers to use their own imaginations, to be active participants in creating a world that only exists in words. Children made Harry Potter leap off the page, not Hollywood studios and special effects. That magic is all gone when we watch movies or lose our youthful daydreams and imaginings. We become complacent with age, content to see the world as it is and not as it could be. We stay up till midnight and realize that nothing special is out there. But for a young boy getting home from the bookstore, it was always a magical time. I hope I can get that back.

Blackout

2009-07-13T17:04:00.005-04:00

For about an hour today my entire campus mysteriously lost power.

Blackouts like this are fascinating. It's not like when a storm comes rolling in and dark clouds cover the sky and thunder and lightning and high winds are the obvious cause of our problems. Those kinds of blackouts cause us to break out flashlights and candles and maybe make sure the kids go back to sleep. But this is just the opposite--the sun is shining and without electricity you are at once not sure what to do and confronted by innumerable possibilities. There's a pause. It's at times like these I like to reflect.

It was about six years ago that I was playing with my younger brother and cousin in the above ground pool at my cousin's house. My mom and aunt were sitting nearby talking with my sister and other cousin. We were going to have lunch soon, and I don't remember what we were playing, but at some point I looked up and realized that the pool's filter was off. I asked my aunt about it, and we soon realized that the power was off in the house, and down the street. We waited for a while and then put some batteries in an old radio and found out that the blackout had spread all throughout the Northeast (Wikipedia calls this the Northeast Blackout of 2003). We were not entirely what to do, but we decided to wait for the power to come back on.

Meanwhile, my father and my uncle, both working in Times Square, decided to meet up and try and get out of the city. They walked all the way across the 59th Street Bridge into Queens and things were getting dark. But in the middle of the blackout there was a shining beacon, a building that was glowing with light powered by it's independent generators. It was there that my dad and my uncle found a car (the first car they talked to actually) coming back towards Hicksville and they were offered a ride.

This act of kindness was astounding as my dad and uncle recounted their story to us that night--not because people aren't kind, but compared to the 1977 New York City Blackout things had changed significantly. Rather than rioting and looting, people were helping each other. There were people out directing traffic and using flares to help people get home safe without traffic lights. There's been a lot of research on why people help each other, but it takes something like a blackout to show how despite all our technology and advancement we are still dependent on other people.

Power outtages really are loses of control for us. We can't turn on the light and do things after dark, so we must rely on the sun. We can't turn on the air conditioner, so we have to sit in the shade or wait to go outside until it's dark. We can't watch TV or waste time on our computers (unless we decide to run down the battery) so we play cards, read a book, or break out the frisbee. And even though cell phones allow us to keep connected wherever we are, every summer black out that isn't caused by some major thunderstorm usually results in people standing outside and talking.

And that's what I saw today--in the fifteen minutes after the power went out, after the inital wait for the power to come back on, people started interacting. The whole quad I live off of filled up with people playing frisbee, volleyball, bocce, or just sitting outside reading or getting some sun. It was beautiful, and in some ways magical, the way that everything seemed to stop and people started enjoying themselves. The "filter was off"--not in the sense of a pool where the filter keeps things clean, but in the sense of a camera, where a particular filter can change the way you see things. The hustle and bustle was gone, everything slowed down, the hum of the computers went silent and for the first time it felt like summer. Relaxing, like we had all taken a step back together.

While the power's back on I can't help but hope it goes off again. This is the real reason to turn off the lights and forgo television (though conservation is also important). And while I know how important electricity is and all the good it has done for us, I just hate the feeling that we are forgetting about people. Events like these, little blips in the forward motion of our days, are just trying to keep us aware. We don't need electricity to see the light.

Losing It

2009-07-10T10:53:00.022-04:00

I am 20 years old and I live in constant fear that I might be losing my hair.

This is not some sort of irrational paranoia that I developed upon becoming a vicenarian. My entire life I have been dreading the idea that one day I will, like my father did before me, start pulling out tufts of hair each time I touch my head. For my father this started when he was about seventeen or eighteen, and while my locks have staved off the grim barber for a few years, I'm not sure how much longer I can do this. I see strands of hair in my hand and begin to worry, and soon enough the stress over losing my hair begins to make me lose my hair. A vicious cycle (a male pattern even) begins to emerge. But while the stress in and of itself is enough to make a man shed, there are a few other reasons why I think my doo is doomed.

For starters, genetics are not on my side. Every Fox male--my father, my uncle, their father, their uncles (even a picture of my great-grandfather from the turn of the century showed him with my father's glaring hairline)--going back all the way to the O'Foxes in Ireland has been bald. You scholars will tell me that the gene that causes baldness is actually passed down through your mother's father, so I have nothing to worry about. Guess what--bald! That's right, my mother's father was also shining his head for most of his life. My only glimmer hope is that I end up like my mothers uncles who still, despite their age, all have their full heads of hair.

There are also some pieces of folk wisdom that are not going my way. I remember being in third or fourth grade talking with my friend Raymond. Ray said that if you ran your hand through your hair and it was "hard" you wouldn't go bald, whereas if it was "soft" you would. I wasn't entirely sure what his use of these particular adjectives were supposed to mean. I for one thought soft hair was a good thing, and usually when Ray did something like this it was to make me feel inferior. It was no surprise that after running our hands through each others hair and our own, Ray declared his hair "hard" and mine "soft." I couldn't feel a difference, but I trusted his judgement.

Even now, I'm not sure why I believed him. This is the same kid who told me Big Bad Beetleborgs were cool. Then again, Ray was named one of the GQ Best Dressed Real men in America for 2008. I should mention he's also the only one in a hat.

The list of memories goes on. When in middle school and my English teacher, Mrs. Aikman, telling us that you could judge a person's intellegence by the size of their forhead. The example she gave was Shakespeare--whose receeding hair line is not lost on anyone. (Oddly enough, it's the same hairline that my modern drama professor has...talk about "transhistorical" Professor Pethica!)

There was even a point when my sister thought she was losing her hair! (I should mention that this was soon proved to be wholly unrelated to my plight, but it never once escaped me that I was surrounded by baldness.)

And finally, the real reason I think I'm losing it is after years of poking fun at my dad and his clean cranium, all the mean monikers bestowed upon him (shiny, chrome dome, baldy, cueball, Mr. Clean) I'm pretty sure karma is coming to chop off my coiffure (say that five times fast). Granted it's going to get my brother as well, who has been adamant since he was about seven years old that we purchase my father a wig. But we'll wait until he gets older before we tell him.

"-Why, but there's many a man hath more hair than wit.
--Not a man of those but he hath the wit to lose his hair."--Comedy of Errors

It's an odd set of sensations, waking up and finding some strands of hair on your pillow, taking a shower and feeling a few pieces come out as you wash your hair, the occasional piece of hair in your eye--it all adds up! There will be days when I'm working in the library and I'll scratch my head and there it will be in my fingers. But maybe the only reason I notice all of these different losses is because I'm so convinced that they are signs of some sort of hair-pocolypse. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe.

But then again, if it comes to it, I think I'll be able to live with being bald. There are some benefits. I personally hate getting my haircut. I will save lots of money on shampoo. No more bad hair days. I could sell my head as ad-space. I will be more likley to be rescued if I am stranded in a desert if I use my head like a cosmetic mirror to signal airplanes. The possibilities are endless. But probably best of all, I'll be in good company:

At some point I'm going to have to face my follicle fate just like everyone else, and hopefully I'll be ready for it. Until then, I'm in the market for a really good looking hat.

(For your amusment, here's another famous baldy in action.)

Tennis of All Kinds

2009-07-05T12:32:00.006-04:00

Sitting on the couch yesterday, cheering on the underdog Andy Roddick as he tried to shock everyone in upsetting the now "Greatest Tennis Player of All Time" Roger Federer, I began thinking about tennis and it's impact in my own life. Now I'm no athelete, but in that stage of my life when my parents had me try a half-dozen or so sports to see if I would take to any of them (the ages of 6-13), tennis was on the short list in part because of what I would call it's "country club appeal." It was a good business move to be able to play golf and tennis, but all I remember is picking up balls and sometimes using them to make very large pyramids. While these lessons I took for a few years had no deep, lasting impact (nor did they leave any emotional scars) they were a good attempt at getting me to do something active.

But don't worry, that's not it. In the past year tennis has come back into my life in some strange and interesting ways. As I watched yesterday I listened to John McEnroe and others talk about the players and the sport, commenting on how tennis is not only incredibly physical, but also extremely mental. It's a thinking sport, which is something I wish I could have appreciated when I was younger. Now tennis for me exists in books, and I was surprised at how many great works from many different periods use tennis as a powerful symbol of competition, exchange, and the nexus of mental and physical struggle. So for you tennis fans and book worms alike, here are a couple quotes:

First from Shakespeare's Henry V. Henry has just been presented a gift from the French prince, a treasure that is meant to be a response to Henry's claim to the throne of France (here's Kenneth Branagh doing it in the 1989 movie)...

Henry V. What treasure, uncle?

Duke of Exeter. Tennis-balls, my liege.

Henry V. We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us;
His present and your pains we thank you for:
When we have march'd our rackets to these balls,
We will, in France, by God's grace, play a set
Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard.
Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler
That all the courts of France will be disturb'd
With chaces.

The wordplay in this short part of Henry's speech is fantastic, but one of the things I enjoy most is how tennis balls become synonomus with treasure. This is not because of the value Henry places on them (since they are meant as an insult) but both are means of exchange, and Henry adapts to the metaphor and talks of war and tennis simultaneously. Both are battle, and while the language of tennis is used to guild the more violent struggle implied, I can't help but wonder if this use of tennis as a metaphor doesn't apply to other struggles as well.

David Foster Wallace seems to agree with me in these quotes from his work Infnite Jest. The first is taken from a dream where a young man sees himself on a strange tennis court:

"The lines that bound and define play are on this court as complex and convolved as a sculpture of string. There are lines going every which way, and they run oblique or meet and form relationships and boxes and rivers and tributaries and systems inside systems: lines, corners, alleys, and angles deliquesce into a blur at the horizon of the distance net. I stand there tentatively. The whole thing is almost too involved to try to take in all at once. It's simply huge. And it's public." (67)

We can see ourselves in tennis, our lives as tennis, each one of us trying "to figure out where in all that mess of lines I'm supposed to direct service." (68) It's easy when you look hard enough:

"Nets and fences can be mirrors. And between the nets and fences, opponents are also mirrors. This is why the whole thing is scary. This is why all opponents are scary and weaker opponents are especially scary." (176)

And this begs a question.

"And then but so what's the difference between tennis and suicide, life and death, the game and it's own end?" (84)

I don't know if I have an answer to that one.

The title of this post comes from Lucky's famous speech in Beckett's Waiting for Godot. "Tennis" comes up in the speech nine times, and is listed as the first of the sports, and the only sport that is mentioned after the, um, sports section. At one point Lucky says "...in spite of the tennis the facts are there..." and tennis is one of the last words (even after "the skull") before Lucky finally finishes "unfinished." The speech is powerful, but the presence of tennis as an existentialist metaphor for life is certainly worth noting when the US Open rolls around.

My point is that there is "Tennis of All Kinds"--not just all kinds of tennis. Everything is a kind of tennis when you think about it, not just against some unseen opponent but against ourselves and our own mortal existence. There are lets and faults and volleys and close calls. Writing is tennis. Conversation is tennis. Breathing is tennis. The back and forth, ebb and flow, give and take, mental and physical we all experience is in fact tennis. And as Shakespeare said (though not in this context) we are all merely players. We must simultaneously focus on today, this point, and the match that is our lives. The nice thing is that there are no Roger Federer's in life--no one who is going to win in straight sets. Rather, we should all be like Roddick, play our hearts out, squeeze every bit of life out of our matches, and keep serving as long as we can.

(For those who are interested, I was just directed to this article by DFW on Federer from a few years ago:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html?pagewanted=all)

Dangerous

2009-07-03T16:50:00.004-04:00

Last week the world lost one of it's most famous and infamous personalities--Michael Jackson. Now while I enjoyed the King of Pop's music and came to understand his impact and influence on American culture, there is a part of me that can't separate him from the odd life he led prior to his death. In the twenty years I've been on this earth, MJ has done little more than be in tabloids and sing that song in Free Willy. But I don't intend for this to be a post about Michael--I'm probably not very qualified to speak on the subject--or a description of what I think really happened (I don't think this case is closed, and some kind of suicide is not out of the question). I've just been thinking about how more than just music died with Michael, and that's "bad."

My feelings on this stem from the phenomenon that occurred in the hour leading up to MJ's death. As soon as word leaked that Michael Jackson might be dead, Twitter accounts and Facebook statuses lit up with the possible news. My sister text messaged me at one point to tell me of the pop star's death, and I was confused. This is the same sister who rarely calls me to tell me what's going on in her life, but for some reason this death was worth my attention. The event was important, for some reason, to everyone and the word spread like wildfire over the internet.

And yet whatever made it special enough to fill my Facebook Newsfeed with "RIP Michael Jackson", "RIP King of Pop", "RIP Michael-WE LOVE YOU" and on and on and on was also mundane enough that people would type these condolences into the same space where they would express their plans for a Friday night or reactions to the Laker game. As my friend pointed out, "It's the same place where people say 'I just ate a bunch of food and now I'm so full and going to take a nap." The death of this pop icon became trivialized by being publicized on a platform for trivial things. Do we live in a world where flowers and mass cards and wakes and obituaries become tweets and text messages? By making things digital, are we implicitly making them trivial? And if so, isn't that dangerous?

I'm not saying that using technology to communicate is in anyway bad--just look at the way internet communication has empowered young Iranians against a repressive government--but it needs to be handled properly. It's a tool, not a vomitorium. Priorities are important (Michael Jackson Coverage doesn't need the same box on CNN that Iran Crisis Coverage was getting). It reminds me of a few summers ago when Anna Nicole Smith past away--she was no Michael Jackson, but she filled the airways for weeks on end. Now this is an example of the other extreme, but it proves that we have yet to find the middle ground, a way to communicate imporant things quickly while still being able to update the trivial things constantly.

One person who I think has used this tool extremely well to communicate important ideas and issues and actually deal with people is Nick Kristoff from the NYT. Say what you will about his columns, but I am always impressed by the way Mr. Kristoff uses Facebook and Twitter to get people thinking about global issues, and people leave thoughtful comments AND he actually responds to them. That's what the internet is supposed to be in my mind--a way to continue and extend our conversations about important things. The problem is we carry around the internet with us in case we have to tweet or update our status, we answer the question "what are you doing?" rather than "what are you thinking about? what concerns you?"...and maybe that's really the problem. Do we always want to be connected to the conversation, or are we really just publicizing ourselves? Do we feel that our mundane acts should be broadcast, made as important as these newsworthy events?

We might. We are egotistical by our very nature--we see everything from our perspective and have an intimate knowledge of our own thoughts, feelings, and actions. While I cant recall the specific researchers who did this study, one psychological study that comes to mind involves people working in groups. They were asked to report as a percentage how much they contributed to a project they worked on with other people. These self-reported percentages were added up, and inevitably the totals were more than 100%. Why? Because we see what we do and remember it more than what other people do. Why shouldn't the same amount of egotism apply to the importance we give to our daily lives? We see it and remember it and think it's important enough for all our friends and acquaintances and followers to know about.

The "dangerous" part is when the trivial floods our inboxes and newsfeeds and monitors because everyone has their own definition of what is important, do we lose those things that should be important to everyone? Or are those things that are important to everyone made less important when communicated in this way? People used their tweets and statuses to say goodbye to Michael Jackson...and that was it. Now I can't speak for everyone, but I have the feeling that these digital actions allow us to feel like we've done something and then give us license to do nothing more. We type, click, and move on. Serious thought about serious things--life, death, "Thriller"--can't be summed up in 140 characters.

I read an interesting piece in the New York Times about how fame will never be the same after Michael Jackson. No one will ever sell 100 million albums again because nobody buys albums anymore, they get mp3s on iTunes or steal them from the internet. No one will have the kind of fan base, be known by everyone the way he was, because with the internet more people have a platform for more music, videos, genres, subgenres. Artists trying to make their way abound on the cheap easy platform of the internet (I should know, I'm writing aren't I?)

But the point the article doesn't make is that nothing is ever going to be the same because of the internet. The way we communicate, prioritize, and express ourselves has changed forever. The upside is that everyone has the opporutnity to have a voice that extends the world over, an impact that can spread far beyond the neighborhood you come from (Take Neda, the 24 year old Iranian woman who lost her life protesting the recent election results). The downside is that inevitably we've lost something in this electronic exchange, and I don't know if we know the full extent of what that loss is.

I can't help but think of Ariel in The Little Mermaid, who gives up her voice for legs and a chance at love. Our problem seems to be the opposite--we've given up meaningful action for a voice.

Not-so-Superlative

2009-06-19T16:59:00.003-04:00

Let's face it--we live in a superlative society. In other words, a society where everyone is focused on achieving the highest position in their company, the largest salary, the biggest office. Institutions looking for the best and the brightest, students are looking for the best education, shoppers for the best bargain, and the Men in Black are looking for "the best of the best of the best, sir." Just like the Pokemon theme song (the original) says, we are constantly saying "I want to be the very best." (Even the fact that we need something greater than the superlative, the "very best" should be alarming.) As a society we are constantly focused on getting what's "best" for ourselves and those we love.

And it's not just about adding "est." It's an attitude that nothing deserves our attention except the very best...or the very worst. If you watch the news you can see how everything seems to be phrased like it's the end of the world. "This is the worst _____ since..." they say, and only then do we seem to understand the gravity of what's going on. The crimes reported are awful, and one wonders if whether these tragedies need to be national news. In fact, the pressure for sensational news makes it no wonder that there never seems to be anything good to report--the stories need to be worse than the night before, more pressing, to keep people watching. Everything, even sports and weather, are focused on statistics so we can see where we are relative to the best, the highs and lows, the all-time greatest. It's the reason we watched every race by Michael Phelps last summer.

Other entertainment doesn't help either. America's Funniest Home Videos. The Biggest Loser. Best Week Ever. Part of our fascination with superlatives comes from the fact that they are on the edge--nothing goes beyond them (until of course next week). And it has become the way we speak--last night was either "the best thing ever" or just "the worst." But the more you say that something is "the best" or "the worst" the less those words actually mean. And we aren't just generalizing (something I know I'm doing during the course of this post, but bear with me), we're superlatizing. You can hear the teenage girls saying that "it was the best day of my life" and wonder how they know that when really they have their whole lives ahead of them.

And this is what I want to do about it: I want us to become more comparative. This sounds like the exact opposite of what we should be doing. If we are so focused on "the best," won't comparing just further remind us that we are not in fact the best? But that's not what I mean. Moms the world over have said that there is always going to be someone bigger, faster, stronger, smarter, funnier, richer, etc. than us. We don't have to compare ourselves to other people, and we most certainly do not have to be "the very best."

Rather we should focus on ourselves and being "better" than we were the day before. Any student of math will tell you that there is no highest number, and if you focus on just becoming a little bit better every day (whether it is at our jobs, our studies, or our hobbies), before you know it you've made a lot of progress. One of the things I've learned as a writer is that there's always room for improvement. When we drop the superlatives and pick up the comparative, we actually better ourselves.

So why do we care if this is the best week ever? Why worry who is the worst-dressed? And why settle for the best day of your life when you're sixteen (or sixty)? There can be only one best, but you can always do better.

Commencement

2009-06-19T01:43:00.005-04:00

It's June and that's the time where all over the country gowns are being donned and caps are being thrown in that glorious celebration that is graduation. But here's the thing: I just watched the three students who spoke at this year's graduation and a few weeks ago I read the speech that was given at my high school, and I realized something. I have this problem with graduation speeches--I always start to picture myself giving them. Maybe this is a direct result of the fact that I gave the speech at my eighth grade graduation (not to toot my own horn or anything, but it was awesome). Maybe it comes from the fact that I spent my entire senior year of high school competing in speech, letting my original oratory take me all the way to the final round of nationals (again I'm bragging). Maybe it's my now demonstrated ego that just makes me think that I could do better. Maybe it's the fact that I (once secretly, now clearly) hope that I have the honor of addressing my peers and friends at an occasion of this type.

Whatever it is, I don't think my reaction is the wrong one. I think speeches like that should make you think about giving them, and here's why. Let me go back to speech for a second--I spent all of high school competing in speech but only my senior year with a piece that I had written myself. I tried to fit as much of myself into that speech that I could, and you can't beat the feeling of people laughing at your jokes. Writing has always been something I've loved doing, but giving a speech takes it to a whole other level--you are literally giving the words life, and giving yourself over to your audience. Which is why I hated watching speech after speech that followed what I and others call a "cookie-cutter" format. A basic cookie cutter speech looks something like this:

Overdramatic introduction leading up to some "clever" way of stating your title and the problem you see in the world. Then you outline the structure of your speech, which always involves (some pun based on your title)ing the problem, (another pun based on your title)ing the implications, and finally (a third pun)ing the solutions. Then you walk and go into your first body paragraph about the problem, sentance, quote, sentence, quote, pop culture reference, sentence, sly turn with sarcastic/witty joke (could be replaced by a "and I thought I was the only person who..."), sentence, quote, sentence, quote. Transition (with puns and walking), sentence, quote, sentence, quote, really sad story loosely connected to topic (usually about overcoming adversity), sentence on how we can learn from this person (who may or may not be you), sentance. Transition (more puns, more walking), final paragraph filled with sentances and quotes (from songs you've heard or books you haven't read), and then final transition where you walk back to the center and re-cap, bringing us back to your introduction and finishing the overdramatic story with some quaint ending or your best pun.

Let me be clear--I hate these speeches. They are artificial, when giving a speech (and giving yourself) is supposed to be genuine, personal. The sad thing is that I don't think it would be hard to write up a cookie-cutter graduation speech. (...thank everyone, transition, "and finally" call to action, do something with your education etc. etc. last memory my class has of me--try to be funny) But I don't think that at these seminal moments in our lives we should really be trusting MadLibs to guide us. I think what students need (and what I hope to get from my own graduation speaker) is wisdom that really hits home, a reflection on a shared experience that the entire class can hold on to for years to come.

And that's why I think about myself giving the speech--not because I'm particularly qualified--but I think in these moments we have the unique opportunity to reflect. This makes me think about "Storytime," an organization at my school which every Sunday night has a member of the college community tell a story about themselves. It's supposed to be a time where students can come and learn about the smaller narratives that make up the fabric of our community, but often times I sit there and as I listen, I think about what I would say if given the chance. I also just finished Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture, and you can asked the same questions about a last lecture as you can about a story you tell your peers or a graduation speech.What would you say if you got the chance? If you could say something to your whole class, what would it be? If you had one opporutnity to impart your wisdom before you died, what would you say? I like to think about this because ultimatley the wisdom that hits closest to home, the reflections we hold most dear, come from ourselves. These speeches are best when they cause us to reflect, not when they hand us a pre-packaged set of thoughts about our last four (or forty-seven) years.

My senior year of high school when we were asked to select a class speaker my best friend Tully was the clear choice: smart, funny, ubiquitous, a force to be reckoned with, a performer, everybody's favorite. The Golden Boy. But when I cast my vote, (and I've told him this), I didn't vote for Tully. I of course wanted him to speak, but I knew that as my life long friend I could hear his reflections on our time together any time I wanted. I wanted to give the opportunity to someone less likely, someone whose voice I might not hear again. Tully got it, (and I should add he did a great job), but there is something about how specific individuals have the ability to offer specific wisdom that makes me wonder why we pick speakers at all. Can one person really describe our experience unilaterally?

No--which is why I have a plan. If I were ever asked to do something like this, I would ask every member of my graduating class (which is possible when you go to a small liberal arts school) one question: What would you say, if you were going to be up there? Give me one sentence. And then from those 500+ sentences try to cut down and weave the words of my classmates, synthesize the voices and experiences so that the result is something unique but perfect for the occasion. Not one particular voice, but the voice of a class. Not the class speaker, but the class AS speaker, embodied in one person as a symbol of the class' unity going forward.

If anyone else trys this you owe me some form of financial compensation.

The point is that asking the question "what would you say?" really involves asking questions like "what is most important to you?", "what have you learned?", "what are you going to take with you?", "what legacy do you hope to leave behind?", "what jokes do you hope they laugh at?" etc. Those are some questions that everyone needs to ask themselves, but for me, I hope one thing has become clear. Reflection is incredibly important to me, and I think that there is something to be said about reflecting on the human experience--it's something that we all share, being alive on this planet--but that reflection can be a narrow one, looking only at the things we have in common. But there is common-ground in our uniqueness, similarity in our differences, harmony in our many different voices. So that's probably something I would try to reflect in my hypothetical speech. With as few puns, and as many quotes from my peers, as possible.

So do you know...

2009-05-30T01:13:00.005-04:00

One of the common misconceptions people often have is that they think that other people think just as much about them than they do about themselves. People by their very nature are egotistical, but we are also by our nature social and prone to judge and evaluate those around us, considering how much we like them. But when we think about how much we think about others, it's not impossible to think that other people think about us. But once we realize that, we become worried--what do other people think about us? And in a social situation, what are groups of people saying (and agreeing on) about us? It's an odd sensation to know that people are talking about you--but sometimes it's a good one.

Tonight while hanging out with a bunch of people I've been working with this past week, I heard two people who I am now glad to call my friends talking about me. As I was listening to them, I realized all those times I've talked about people I like--yea he is such a great kid, she is so sweet, he is hilarious, yea I know isn't she the best?--and wonder whether or not people talk about me in the same way. It's not so much that I care what people think (though we all do in some capacity, whether it be our parents, friends, siblings, or God), but I care about whether the impression I'm making matches the impression I want to put out. Hearing my friends talk about me (though briefly) was somewhat gratifying--like Sally Feild is often misquoted "you like me, you really like me." The music was loud and they couldn't know that I had heard them, which led me to believe their testimony was honest...but this begs another question--what if the people you talked about could hear everything you said about them?

Granted we'd be more guarded, more polite, more politically correct--but don't people deserve an honest assessment of their personalities? Doesn't that give people the impetus to change? Then again, it seems to be the parent's perennial platitude--if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it--with the connotation that you will necessarily be saying these things to the person in question."Would you say that if Billy were here?" The idea is often one used in the teaching of Christian ethics, that God can see everything that you do and you must assume that you are under examination at all times. But we are not only being examined, we are also examining--and the act of examining others allows us to understand what we value in our friends and ourselves.

It is nice that these things we say about other people are often unfiltered, that we don't have to worry about expressing our opinion--and in most cases we are saying positive things. Complementing our new friends to our old friends can prevent our new friends from becoming too egotistical if they knew what we thought of them. And when our comments are negative, it is often better that the person can't hear them--the way we are able to tolerate these people is often by letting off some steam. Now maybe this is because I'm an egotist, but I think it's nice to every so often tell people what you actually think of them, or tell them those positive things you would normally only tell the outside world. You feel like you are being let in on a secret about yourself--and with negative things, they often have the power to change one's outlook on oneself.

Discretion is always a must, but in this moment I realized we often have no idea who is talking about us or what they are saying, but we do have control over what we say about other people--stressing the positive is always a good strategy, but honesty is often the best policy. There is a reason why we are judged by a jury of our peers--it is the judgment of our peers that hurts the most and also gives us the most confidence--our friends and what they think of us have the power to shape us. Because by our nature we are incredibly social, and that social aspect allows us (or prevents us) from being as egotistical as we want to be, talking about other people is kind of important. So whether or not you're gossiping after church or chatting about a friend while at breakfast, remember that the people you talk about might be talking about you too. And when you ask that question "So do you know..." be sure to take a look around and see if your subject is listening--it may not affect what you say, but it should at the very least remind you about the strange and powerful thing you are doing.

Equipment pt.1

2009-05-28T23:05:00.002-04:00

So every year my school runs an orientation program where freshmen go out into the woods on backpacking trips (or canoeing or rock climbing trips) in order to bond with their classmates and get excited about their new school. Behind the scenes, however, months of work goes into each trip, from selecting and training the leaders to assigning the routes and figuring out the food so that each trip is safe and successful when the fall finally rolls around. This year, I was asked to be in charge of equipment, an aspect of the trip planning that carries with it it's own challenges and rewards. This week I have been working mostly with leaders as they train, a small subset of the massive group that will descend on my new home (the equipment room) come September. But while gear has begun to consume my waking hours (the nightmares have not yet started), I can't help reflect on the oddities of my new office.

The act of equipping someone is a weighted task, because it often implies that you have some knowledge of what they need. You are giving them tools, with hardly any instruction on how to use them; entrusting them with what is yours for a truly selfless cause--their experience, the accomplishment of their goals. But to ask to be equipped is humbling--Batman puts on his own utility belt, but to ask someone for the gear you need to complete your journey is the same as saying you couldn't do it without them.

You can see I take my job seriously, but only because I think equipment goes far beyond gear. Granted I am in charge of very material things (I spent several hours today counting ropes and tarps), but equipment is much more than that. At school, for example, my professors are taking the notion of liberal arts seriously and trying to equip me with ways of thinking and approaching problems. They are giving me the tools (not the facts) so that later in my life journey I can call upon them to answer those questions I will inevitably have. Our parents teach us what we should and should not do, equipping us with a moral compass so we may navigate through life's tough choices, always looking to what's right and what's wrong.

That's very different from giving someone an actual compass, but both things help you get where you want to go. What's important is that even when the gear comes back and has to be cleaned and put away for the next set of kids, the lessons of experience that these kids have out in the woods will stay with them for the rest of their lives. I can only hope that those tarps made a difference.

The Return

2009-05-27T17:29:00.002-04:00

After many months of plays and papers, performances and exams, I am happy to say that I'm back with things to talk about and ideas to share. It's been a long time since I've posted, and those of you who follow this might appreciate the new look (I'm not sure how I feel about it yet), but hopefully this summer is going to be a kind of renaissance for my writing.

So where do we start? It seems silly to try to encapsulate experiences of the last three or so months in one post, and I find it frustrating just to summarize when I can just as easily synthesize my own experiences and ideas with pop culture or what's going on in the world today. So I'm going to assume that the things that have happened to me since I last posted will inevitably come up here, but I don't pretend that there will be any rhyme or reason to it.

So I feel like a terrible person...

2009-03-23T10:25:00.003-04:00

They say you learn something new everyday. Well I have spent the last three weeks learning almost non-stop that the combination of being in a play/taking midterms/blogging is not something I have learned how to juggle...yet! But now that I'm on Spring Break, I have a little more time and a lot less of an excuse for not blogging. So, where do we start?

Good question. It's almost as though I have so much to say after these last three weeks, that I don't even know where to begin. So I won't...yet! (This is becoming a trend) I'll come back later with hopefully something to think about for today. Hope all those imaginary readers out in Internetland are doing well.

A Hypothetical Answer (3 of 23)

2009-03-05T02:01:00.007-05:00

So I realized I skipped one--here's the Wednesday post--and the question is...

"Let us assume there are two boxes on a table. In one box, there is a relatively normal turtle; in the other Adolf Hitler's skull. You have to select one of these items for your home. If you select the turtle, you can't give it away and you have to keep it alive for two years; if either of these parameters are not met, you will be fined $999 by the state. If you select Hitler's skull, you are required to display it in a semi-prominent location in your living room for the same amount of time, although you will be paid a stipend of $120 per month for doing so. Display of the skull must be apolitical. Which option do you select?"

My honest answer--Hitler's skull, no question. In this economy, why pass up what is essentially free money? You don't have to display it in a way that praises him or the awful things stored in the brain that was once inside that skull, you just have to keep it on your mantle or wherever next to other knick-knacks you have there. And the fact is, I don't go into my living room that often at home, and those who do may be weirded out, but I'll live. I also know for a fact that my inability to remember to feed my friend's turtle does not bode well for me keeping one alive, and like I said about the horse, if I'm certain that I'm going to fail--why attempt and get fined?

But I won't deny this a proper Swamped Fox over-analysis. This could be seen as a choice between life and death--do we choose to nurture despite the risk (parents?) or deal with the rewards that surround death (Hitler)? But I think it also can be seen as a question about the weight we put in objects versus living things, symbols versus the real McCoy. I want to say that Hitler's skull isn't Hitler--but of course it in some ways is. It just is not, practically speaking, enough of him for me to worry about it. To be honest, it's a piece of history, one not to be proud of but at the very least acknowledged (I think of the Nazi plate from American Beauty). Also the idea of Hitler's skull, proof that he's dead, a sign of success for all those who lost their lives fighting his unprecedented evil, this prop for some modern Hamlet, is oddly inticing. (Martin McDonnagh's A Skull in Connemarra now comes to mind.) And this reminds me of something I want to talk about later--our perceptions of evil (I just want more time).

Maybe the question is really just about how every man has his price, and mine is apparently $120 a month. I just don't find this simple act as offensive as maybe I should have. And maybe that's the biggest problem--we put a lot of weight in little things. Flag pins made the news far too many times this past election cycle. Why do we care about these symbols on display? We hope, obviously, that they mean something--but compared to substantive debate, honest articulation of ideas, and gosh actual meaning, why should these sound bites and snapshots matter?

Hitler's skull doesn't make me anything more than a participant in Chuck's little experiment--a social experiment which I think doesn't make it's point strongly enough. Are we willing to take responsibility for the turtle with the knowledge that we may face ramifications? Or are we going to reap the rewards of basically no work at all (or I guess work that could be offensive to some)? I choose the latter for practical reasons--I know myself--but is it the right choice? I don't know--the stakes aren't high enough for me to feel like one option is more right than the other.

So I'll take the skull off the table, the way I remember choosing my first Pokemon in those gameboy games so many years ago. To take Charmander was to want Charizard, Squirtle Blastoise, but those are just turtles. If you can't make it with those you lose more than the game--your pride is gone. But Bulbasaur was a challenge to win with, and as a result he had his benefits--he grew fast, evolved quickly, and allowed you to get through the first two gyms with relative ease. He was a strategic pick in a lot of ways, and while he had his own drawbacks, they didn't present themselves for quite some time. The payoff for the skull is similar--let me deal with my conscience if I ever truly have to contemplate the skull of Hitler. For now, it's making me money.

A Hypothetical Answer (4 of 23)

2009-03-05T01:19:00.009-05:00

So this is actually my post for yesterday, and I'll do the one for tonight when I'm done. Sorry for the lack of variety, but I promise some will be forthcoming. So here's yesterday's question...

"Genetic engineers at Johns Hopkins University announce that they have a so-called 'super gorilla.' Though the animal cannot speak, it has a sign language lexicon of over twelve thousand words, an I.Q. of almost 85, and--most notably--a vague sense of self-awareness. Oddly, the creature (who weighs seven hundred pounds) becomes fascinated by football. The gorilla aspires to play the game at its highest level and quickly develops the rudimentary skills of a defensive end. ESPN analyst Tom Jackson speculates that this gorilla would be "borderline unblockable" and would likely average six sacks a game (although Jackson concedes the beast might be susceptible to counters and misdirection plays). Meanwhile, the gorilla has made it clear he would never intentionally injure any opponent. You are commissioner of the NFL: Would you allow this gorilla to sign with the Oakland Raiders?"

To actually address the specific question to start, the Oakland Raiders have been one of the worst teams in football for a long time now, and I don't even know if the enormous help this animal would give them would be enough to turn that around.

That said, this question could be taken a number of different ways--cost/benefit analysis, the nature of sports (the gorilla being no different from any other football player who makes it to the NFL, IQ and all?), or even about trust. Do you trust the monkey? It could be delving into our notion of what makes us human (language, self awareness, this guy has both) or, to keep it in a sports context, what constitutes fair? Does the gorilla have rights to play football? Or are the rights of other players to (more) relative safety greater than those of this ape? People get hurt in football all the time--how much worse would it be if it was by a guy who was twice as big as the guy you played last week?

To be honest I don't know how to take this one... Rather than jump in too deep I'd like to think it through for all of you. My first instinct is that the gorilla can't play, it's too dangerous. But remember these guys are getting paid an OUTRAGEOUS amount of money to play a sport where they KNOW going in that they are very likely going to get hurt. Does letting the gorilla play force these people to reexamine their lives and the profession they have chosen? What else are they going to do? Eli Manning isn't going back to school anytime soon.

And maybe that's the issue...when we think someone is perfect for something, we automatically assume that they should do it. This kid is good at math--he should go to MIT. This kid plays the piano so well--you should be in a band. This gorilla would be amazing at football--let him play. Is that fair? In most cases, yea probably. Lucky for the gorilla, it's also what he wants to do. Often times people don't have that luxury.

The conflict between what we want to do and what we are good at is not always present. Often times our inherent egotism drives us to like doing those things we are good at, if only to ensure we keep getting praise. But what if the kid who is good at math wants to write fiction? The kid who plays piano wants (God knows why) to be an economist? Do we let them? The phrase that gets thrown around is that "it's a waste of talent"--but going back to the horse question--would the opposite be a waste of time?

Billy Joel once said "If you are not doing what you love, you are wasting your time." Well that answers my question--or does it? We come back to this idea of whose rights are more important. If you have the potential to find a cure for cancer, but hate med school, does it serve the greater good to do something you hate? Yes...and no. Ultimately the best work is done by those who love what they're doing. Which is why if the gorilla loves football, he's going to do a damn good job--and probably hurt some dudes.

What convinces me that we should be doing the things we love rather than the things we are good at is that, often times we do the things we are good at for some return. Actors get applause, football players get money, and so on. But if something should happen that prevents you from doing that thing, (you lose your voice, break everything, etc.), that end is gone as well. (Eli Manning the accountant?) But when you do what you love, there is still a return, but it's internal. I love to write, not because of the feedback I'm getting from people who read this, but because it calms me, and allows me to think clearly and at times create. So out of this gorilla question comes important advice in the form of a cliche (not an uncommon thing on this blog)--do what you love. You won't regret it.

So, to answer the question, let the gorilla play if he loves it. But if there are quarterbacks and offensive linemen who don't--you should probably quit. Or move to Oakland.

A Hypothetical Answer (2 of 23)

2009-03-03T00:27:00.007-05:00

So yesterday I took a day off, mostly because I had a paper to write, and tonight because I need to catch up on some sleep I am going to take the easy way out and answer another hypothetical question from Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. Here we go:

"Let us assume a fully grown, completely healthy Clydesdale horse has his hooves shackled to the ground while his head is held in place with thick rope. He is conscious and standing upright, but completely immobile. And let us assume that--for some reason--every political prisoner on earth (as cited by Amnesty International) will be released from captivity if you can kick this horse to death in less than twenty minutes. You are allowed to wear steel-toed boots. Would you attempt to do this?"

The violence asked about in this question is graphic and scary, and while I am fully confident that I would not be able to accomplish such a task (I am not in the best shape), I think, like most of these questions we can make it about a bigger issue. Some of my "hippier" friends would say it's about the life of an animal and whether or not you think they have any worth relative to people. Some more politically minded people would question what "every political prisoner on earth" meant and whether this would be something one should strive for--some political prisoners must be a danger to society, right? Maybe not (I take this back after looking at the Wikipedia page on political prisoners). But even these questions are rather specific for my taste.

Let's take this back to the question part of the hypothetical--Would you attempt to do this? How do we decide what we are going to attempt? What struggles do we think have the promise of worthwhile gains? What causes or activities merit our considerable energy? If I cared enough about all these political prisoners and believed they needed to be released, then maybe I would try to kill this horse if presented with the opportunity. But I also understand my own capabilities, and know that the end result of any such attempt would be a mamed horse and no gains on the part of political prisoners everywhere. So my reason for not taking the chance is not really apathy, but an understanding that I would only fail.

This logic works contrary to the kind of self-esteem building mantras we were spoonfed as children. "If you don't succeed, try and try again," right? But is it worth trying if you almost certainly won't succeed? Or am I somehow more culpable for having the opportunity and not even trying? "You'll never know until you try..." your parents say when you say you don't like something or think you can't do something. But what do you know if you try and fail? All you gain is certain knowledge that you can't do it. Possibility is squashed with the finality of failure. My point is that why waste our time and effort "trying" if we know the end result already?

Here's an example. I was never really an athelte as a child, but even if I wanted to be a basketball player, I wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in Madison Square Garden. No matter how much I could have practiced in my twenty years, my lack of talent and relative hand eye cooridnation (not to mention my 5'10", skinny build) ensure my failure in this field. So even if I played basketball a little bit when I was younger, I didn't waste my time trying to make a career out of it because I knew there were better things I could do with my time (like blogging...hmm).

This kind of thinking is odd when we come from a society where the ideal, "The American Dream" is based on that achievement of the impossible. If this is the place where, unlike anywhere else in the world, a boy born of an African immigrant and a white mother from Kansas can grow up to be the President--so why not a generally wimpy kid become a point guard in the NBA? The reason is because at some point in my childhood (maybe even before I played basketball) I decided that that was not worth my time. My almost certain failure was not enough for me to dedicate my life to a pursuit that basically amounted to the embodiment of a "what if...?"

Maybe the logic is flawed, and I don't want you to think that I am advocating people stop trying new things or that we should give up on goals that seem out of our reach. Just the opposite--I want us to concentrate our efforts, spend our time working towards those goals that mean the most of us, rather than trying something only to fail. I mean, we went to the moon, and that seemed pretty impossible. But the group of people working at NASA had the knowledge that it could be done, and the questions they were asking were "how can we get this to work?" and "when will we be able to do it by?" not "will we be able to succeed?" The possibility of success was a given in the process, and what followed was pursuit of that success.

If NASA just started trying things in the 1960 without some sort of plan or asking the right questions, then we would have had more tragedies like Apollo I, and more instances of trial and error. But they were working off of a base of knowledge that made it possible to reach for new heights based on previous success. If I was the best kid in the history of CYO basketball, I would have considered giving it a shot. But I think, like I assume most math teachers do, that there is a reason why trial and error is not the preferred method of getting our answer. We have to narrow it down, have a process in mind, a goal we can reach, and then make a decision.

I am reminded of the words of one wiser than I--Yoda--when he says "Do or do not. There is no try." Trying is really a middle step that gets you to one of two possible ends, with time and energy being used regardless of the outcome. So I guess I am really advocating that we pick our battles in life, choose goals we can do and forget goals that do not think are worthwhile. We need not try "just to be sure" we can't do something. Because, if we're picking our battles, I would probably choose not to pick one with the horse.

A Hypothetical Answer (1 of 23)

2009-02-28T20:47:00.006-05:00

One of my favorite books is Chuck Klostermann's collection of insightful and hilarious pop culture essays Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. Tonight, just to spice things up, I'm going to take one of the 26 hypothetical questions he poses between two of his essays and answer it. Beware, this might become a theme for my Saturday nights (or nights where I am struck by writer's block). So here's the question:

"Let us assume you met a rudimentary magician. Let us assume he can do five simple tricks--he can pull a rabbit out of his hat, he can make a coin disappear, he can turn the ace of spades into the Joker card, and two others in a similar vein. These are his only tricks and he can't learn any more; he can only do these five. HOWEVER, it turns out he's doing these five tricks with real magic. It's not an illusion; he can actually conjure a bunny out of the ether and he can move the coin through space. He's legitimately magical, but extremely limited in scope and influence.
Would this person be more impressive than Albert Einstein?"

So there are a lot of different ways to take this question. It could boil down to how do we judge/compare the inherent talents of other people, or perhaps whether or not we are inclined to feel a certain way about the supernatural or the already famous. But in my mind it comes down to the word "impressive."

What impresses us? Talented people, yes, but also how they use those talents. This magician could become the greatest entertainer for the 6-and-under age group that the world has ever known, but that is because of his talent. More often, if you look to most books and movies, what impresses us is also how talents are often coupled with some sort of struggle, and how those struggles are overcome. (If you want an example of this you need look no further than Slumdog Millionaire.)

Now we get very little about this magician character, but there are some things about Einstein that make me answer this question with an unequivical no, this man can not possibly be more impressive than Einstien. Maybe our magician friend was cast out by his peers and forced to rebuild himself into the supernatural being he is today, but Einstein's story hits close to home. His early struggles with speech and school remind me of those of my younger brother, and the fact that he was able to win the Nobel Prize and be the influence on science that he was despite his own problems (some people retroactively try to diagnose him with Autism) is a great and inspiring feat.

There are more things that impress me about Einstien, but to generalize this question again, what does impress us? Is it the Nobel prize? Is it standing up to the President of the United States and calling for an end to nuclear weapons, something you made possible? Is it a title? A great influence on humanity, science, the arts, or all of the above? Or is it the struggle to do the best you can with what has been given to you? The ability to be a good person despite a world filled with opportunities to do far worse? Or is can you trace it back to the meaning of the word impress--someone who leaves an impression on your very soul?

I think it's different for everyone, but hopefully some things remain constant--there are some who transcend expectations and become "impressive" in our minds because of their insightful words, their laudable acts, or their incomparable contributions to our lives. My parents impress me, in this way. My brother and sister impress me in this way. Those who genuinely impress me are those who have, with their sincerity of word and deed, impressed (entrenched even) themselves into my life. So here's a hypotheical question to all of you--who impresses you? Why? And have you let them know this?

Opportunity Awaits: The Outlook of an Optimist

2009-02-28T03:02:00.004-05:00

Yesterday, I talked about how waiting for certain gives us an opportunity to reflect on our lives and decide if the path we have chosen is the right one. My mother reminded me today of another opportunity afforded by something like a waitlist--the "excuse" to persue a different, possibly better, option. If I hadn't gotten on the waitlist for Yale, I might be there right now, and not at Williams where I feel like I was supposed to end up. There are too many institutions, professors, and friends who I now can't imagine my life without for me to even toy with the idea of being somewhere else for college, and I often tell my tours how scary it is that there was a real possibility that I wasn't going to come here.

As my mom put it, "one door closes, a window opens"--it may not be the way you were expecting but often times that result you may not expect becomes the best possible outcome you could imagine. My phrase for it is that "everything has a reason" but I found this quote in my little brown book that puts it even better:

"It seems to me that everything that exists is good--death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly. Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well and nothing can harm me" Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

We make right choices and we make wrong choices, we succeed and we fail, but we are always met with some new opportunity. It could be the opportunity to redeem oneself, to prove oneself, to grow, to make use of a talent, to reflect, to be shown the things we don't like in order to be confident about the things we love.

And while I said we are in a perpetual state of waiting (is life waiting for death in that sense?), we are also surrounded by innumerable opportunities at all times. It only takes a good attitude to realize that these things are opportunities, and a keen eye to recognize the best of the bunch. There may be plenty of open windows, but only one of them has the truck of mattresses underneath. So to string together cliches, we must look before we leap while not being afraid to take the plunge. Life is all about this patient enthusiasm for the purposeful randomness that fills our days. And once we agree that it has a purpose, we are more and more inclined to see its meaning. And once we have that meaning, and we try to love and understand what it means in our lives, nothing will ever be bad. Nothing hurts as much anymore when everything has a reason. Everything is pointing towards something even better.

So maybe this is naive, but here's one more quote, from my favorite movie ever, that has become a favorite of mine because it summarizes this philosophy so perfectly:

"As Harold took a bite of Bavarian sugar cookie, he finally felt as if everything was going to be okay. Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies. And, fortunately, when there aren't any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys and nose plugs, an uneaten Danish, soft spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction.

And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are effective for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange, but I also know that it happens to be true. And, so it was, a wristwatch saved Harold Crick." --Stranger than Fiction

Every little thing we experience contributes to something greater--our lives--and some things that we don't expect to happen have the power to shape years of our existence. So anything, and therefore everything, has the potential to direct our life in some important way. And as a result, we need to appreciate everything, see purpose in everything, and enjoy everything. To live any other way must be miserable and, more importantly, missing the point.

Waiting

2009-02-27T00:46:00.003-05:00

A good number of the people who apply to college have had the experience of being told that you are on the "wait list." When I was first hearing back from schools, the day the Ivy League decided to send out acceptances via the internet, I was anxious. I wanted to go to Yale, and I had also applied to Princeton. I thought it would be fine to check Princeton while at school because it wasn't my first choice, and I was almost sure I would get rejected. When I used my friend's computer to check, I found out that I was wait-listed. I was shocked, and in a weird way pleased. I didn't even think I would get that much, and here I was a contender in the Ivy League. It made me feel better about Yale, but not good enough to check then and there.

On the train home, when I told my mom about Princeton, she was happily surprised. Then she asked "How would you feel if that happened with Yale?" I didn't really have an answer at the time, but when I got home I realized I was going to need one. I got on the computer, checked the website, and there it was--another wait-list. I was torn because I wanted to go so badly, but I couldn't be mad at myself. They were basically telling me that I was qualified but they didn't have enough seats. And while I wanted to feel differently than I had the day before, I was in exactly the same place--I was still waiting to hear what would happen.

It's common knowledge that waiting is the worst part. Waiting to hear test results at the doctor's office, waiting for your paper to be handed back, waiting for your next opportunity. Waiting forces us to sit in the silence of our own thoughts and imagine the best and the worst, to reconsider what we want the results to be, and to prepare ourselves for everything else. Today, I got wait-listed for something that would determine the next year of my life, and it's odd because I am left in a kind of limbo. Some might say that it's like purgatory, that I'm almost there and with a little time and work I can get to paradise. But limbo I think is the right analogy--floating around, abandoned by the rejected and selected, with nothing holding me in place.

At the same time waiting is an integral part of our everyday lives. We wait at traffic lights, subway stations. We spend the school year waiting for summer, the winter waiting for spring. Lent is, in a lot of ways, about waiting for Easter; Advent, for Christmas. We are always in a constant state of waiting. If not for this wait-listing, I would not be so seriously reconsidering my plans for next year, and in it's way waiting is an opportunity. Often times, we are moving so fast that the chance to stop and think is a blessing in disguise.

I am a firm believer in the fact that everything in this universe happens for a reason, and whether or not we know what those reasons are, we need to accept that they are there and keep moving forward. At the end of the Parable of the Ten Virgins, Jesus says "Be on the alert then, for you do not know the day nor the hour."(Mt 25:13) While he is talking about the coming of the Lord, or the end of the world, the advice rings true for our everyday lives. If we are to spend time waiting, why not be aware of the opportunities that come with that, and that while we wait for one thing, another may just pass us by. Life doesn't stop just because we do. And while some things may be worth the wait, more often then not lives are too easily wasted spent waiting for something that isn't coming. The best thing to do is keep going, and knowing that along your journey more opportunities are waiting for you.

Ash Wednesday

2009-02-26T00:23:00.003-05:00

Ash Wednesday has always been one of the most powerful days of the year for me. It's not purely because of the religious significance of the day, or even the fact that two years ago I received Ashes in St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome. While those things are special, it's something beautiful that comes out of the simple act of rubbing ash on another person's forehead.

When I was in high school, I would commute an hour and a half each way on trains, buses, and subways to get to school. Ash Wednesday was a day where I could sit in a subway car and rather than just listen to music, I could people watch, and see who had ashes on their forehead and who didn't. That's not to say that I was judging anyone, but in a world where I see more strangers than friends, it's nice to instantly learn something about someone. The ashes tell us something, whereas the lack of ashes does not--there's nothing particular that can be said of someone without them. But for two people with them, who lock eyes across a subway car, there is a moment where you realize the commonality of human experience. Because religion is such a personal thing, we often don't broadcast our beliefs in this way. But Ash Wednesday makes me vulnerable in some ways, and by breaking down certain barriers allows me to be open to this kind of moving experience. Sometimes all it takes is a knowing look, and often times it comes from people you wouldn't expect. And that's my favorite part about this day--the awareness it creates of our shared sin, suffering, and experience.

When the priest blesses you with ashes, he says "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return." Everyone's blessing is the same, because we are all created equal and we will all die someday. But the bridge between those two unbelievable equalizing forces, birth and death, is life...and it's a life we share with so many others. This glimpse of the intimate parts of other peoples lives is one reason why I love this day.

Mardi Gras

2009-02-25T01:13:00.003-05:00

So today is that day, the fattest of Tuesdays, where everyone who's anyone is drinking, throwing beads, and just getting gluttonous. And all before the start of...Lent? People often forget that Mardi Gras is in some ways a funeral for feasting, a celebration before penitence--literally, a party to end all parties.

But because it's a weeknight, I'm not out on the town doing any of those frivolous things you see going down in New Orleans. Instead, I'm sitting in front of my computer stressing about what I'm going to give up for Lent. I'm not very good at this sort of thing--I've tried sweets and television as a result of all these trivial things and that "rule" that Sundays don't count, the sacrifices I've made over my 20 years have nonetheless diminished. I forget when it was exactly that I stopped giving up things all together. It wasn't because I had "given up giving things up" (even though I may try that next year) but because I had discovered I could answer the question "What are you giving up for Lent?" with a simple "I don't believe in giving things up--I prefer to do something extra." I never actually defined what that "extra" was, but hey, who's really paying attention? Oh, right...God.

So this year as I stress out about the fact that I haven't posted for a while (sorry about that), I realize that it's silly to try to make up all the days that I've missed. Instead, this is my something extra. Every day during Lent I am going to make sure that I post on this blog (even if it's just a short bit), to make sure I am always reflecting. I imagine it as a type of prayer (I will also be praying more over Lent, of course), and in order to maintain this ritual I am going to have to give up all other forms of procrastination that are not helpful. We'll see how it goes...

A Dramatic Apology

2009-02-17T00:50:00.003-05:00

I'm sorry to anyone who reads this with any frequency for the last couple of posts--between delayed reactions and cutting and pasting old essays to make myself feel like I haven't missed a day, I feel like I'm just covering a hole in the wall with duct tape. I still have yet to write the piece I intended for February 11th, but that's coming soon. However, what I really want to apologize for is something that I have failed to mention before this, something that might color your opinion of me, but I have to say it. I am an actor.

I can only begin to imagine the sorts of stereotypes you associate with that, or the questions you have about why this applies. Well, first I just wanted to let you know that my excuse for being lazy the last few days is that I am currently in a play and have been spending a lot of time in rehearsal. Second, I wanted to at least start to talk about why I think theater is important to me as a writer.

My very first acting gig ever was at Sesame Place when I was probably about four. I got picked out of the crowd to lie on a skateboard and roll around on a green screen as one of Super Grover's helpers. Since then, I've done a bunch of plays and musicals and all sorts of performing arts. In my years of doing so, I've learned that there are on a basic level only two kinds of actors: 1) The emotional ones who either have trouble expressing their own emotions or do not want to deal with them, so they use their characters as a form of release and escape from bigger issues in their own lives or 2) The egotistical ones who do it because they like the attention, the sound of applause, and the feeling of getting out on stage and taking a bow. I belong to the second category.

But after rehearsal today I got to talking to one of my friends, a senior from Atlanta who has become one of my favorite people, about writing after he told me he had to work on his story for a Fiction class I took last semester. He was saying that he anticipated a lot of the stories he was going to read were going to be emotional vomit, just exercises in regurgitating melodrama. Not my cup of tea. But then I told him that I found myself writing at my best when I had adopted some voice and wrote in the first person--literally acting on paper.

I think this is an interesting distinction to draw because I am also trying to entertain my readers, make them think, or at least let them into this character I have become after 20 years on this planet. This blog is my performance space. So I apologize for those times when it is not quite what you had in mind. Believe me, I could get into how theater could be considered a metaphor for life and we are all performing and bring in quotes from all these plays I've read but I don't want to do that tonight. But I won't bother you with that right now. That's the thing about actors--they like to hear themselves talk. I'm sorry for those times it's not worth listening to...

Confirmation (2/15)

2009-02-17T00:38:00.003-05:00

A deacon, a priest, and a monsignor are sitting in an Italian restaurant. This sounds like the beginning of a bad joke about Catholicism, the kind that ends with a confused observer asking how these three could order so much food and the waiter’s reply “Holy Trinity special—three meals for the price of one.” But no, in fact, it was in Rome about a year ago that I sat at a table with this same assortment of clergymen, eating dinner on the first Friday of Lent.

In that hot and crowded dining room, the smells of pastas and pizzas filled the air. The clinking of glasses and the pouring of more wine blended into the music of the Italian language being yelled the nearby tables. As I ate my pasta and drank my wine, I not only tried to savor some of the best food I’d ever tasted, but I also listened to these three clergymen tell stories. But they are not just three men of the cloth. They are three friends from high school, three college buddies, and three people I could call “father,” one of whom I call “dad.”

That’s right. My dad is a deacon, a position which I sometimes like to describe as a “giant altar server.” But in layman’s terms, he’s an ordained minister of the Church who has several different functions. Some of these include, reading the Gospel during Mass, baptizing people, marrying people, and, at times to my dismay, giving the Homily at Mass. Now, he’s not a priest, so he can’t hear confessions or turn the bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. On the upside, though, he can be married (if he is before ordination), and have wonderfully smart and attractive children like me, my sister, and my brother. So it’s no surprise that my faith has been a big part of my life. But after nineteen years of going to Church, twelve of going to Catholic schools, and five of having a deacon as a dad, I’m somewhat surprised by what I consider my “moments of confirmation.”

The word “confirm” literally means to make stronger, and nothing on earth has as much power or personality than someone’s beliefs. In Catholic tradition, Confirmation is the last of the Sacraments of Initiation, after Baptism, Reconciliation, and Communion, and it is the point where you decide whether or not you want to be a Catholic (since baptism is determined by your parents). When you are confirmed, a bishop anoints you with oil and sacred chrism, and you take a new name in order to show that this is the beginning of your new life, a kind of second baptism. The problem is, sometimes kids feel like their parents are forcing them to be confirmed, or that this is the next expected step for them. It’s supposed to be a choice—you “confirm” what you believe, not “conform” to some beliefs. It’s supposed to be the beginning of your personal faith journey.

I didn’t see it quite this way when I was an eighth grader at St. Peter of Alcantara. I knew Confirmation was something I was supposed to do, and I knew I believed in God, so to push the issue any further was pointless. Right? Not as pointless as the Confirmation retreat the school had us go on to prepare for it. I distinctly remember thinking during one of the activities, standing around a messy table with my classmates with one hand behind my back, “How does making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with one hand prepare me for anything?” I was skeptical. And more importantly, I was worried that my faith was not my own.

This is not just a crisis about faith, though. It’s a kind of existential crisis most of us go through, whether it be about our politics, our tendencies, our goals in life, or anything else that we’ve gotten from our parents. It’s the kind where you stare at your hand and ask questions like “Why am I here?” and “Why aren’t I somebody else?” and then you start move your fingers slowly and are in awe of your power over your own body. For me, this crisis of faith came around the same time I realized I could no longer ask my parents for help with my homework—not because I suddenly felt I should be autonomous, but because they could no longer help. Confirmation, for me, was supposed to be the moment that I was sure about who I was, and at thirteen, it was really the start of all my questions.

To go to my high school, you had to be a baptized Catholic, but that didn’t necessarily mean that everyone was in the same place. While most kids had been brought up Catholic, there were some kids who converted in order to be considered for admission, others who had not been confirmed, and still more who no longer believed in God. In school, we didn’t talk about faith but theology, and the way we learned more about Catholicism was through studying and reading rather than thinking and exploring. And as much as I grew in high school, I found that my beliefs could not come from a classroom. They had to come from something more.

I mentioned “moments of confirmation” before. I have only experienced a few of these, but they are moments where everything seems to stop, you breathe in the whole world around you, a warmth spreads through your chest, and you can say “this is why I believe what I believe.” These moments can occur anywhere: in the quiet of nature or in the middle of a crowd of people; after long hours of contemplation about the meaning of life, or just all of a sudden; on the open road listening your favorite song or in the shower trying to sing it. And this isn’t just about religion. It’s about who you are.

My most dramatic “moment” happened in Germany outside the city of Köln, standing in a field under a starless sky with one million other people. While many people were looking at the Pope on the giant shining altar in the distance, I was looking out at the hundreds of thousands of lit candles that stretched out as far as I could see. I felt as though my head was in the stars, but I was brought back down to earth when all these voices, voices from all over the world, began to sing together. In that moment, I became completely sure everything that I believe. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever experienced.

One million people. That’s five hundred times the size of our student body! It’s a lot to think about, but even more awe inspiring to think about all the different people and different experiences that were united in this moment, and possibly in this emotional “confirmation.”

A lot of things have caused me to question the nuances of who I am, and I am constantly reshaping, reexamining, and reconfirming what I know about myself. This election year, thinking about how I want to cast my first vote has been an important struggle for me, much like my struggle with my faith. We all have these little existential crises, opportunities to confirm who we are, and with each we grow more fully as a person. The question to ask is no longer “are you confirmed?” but rather “has ‘you’ been confirmed?”

And in that little Italian restaurant I had another one of these moments, but a much humbler one. I saw three friends who had stayed close for years, who could talk about God in one moment and tell a story of high school in the next. Life and faith seemed to become intertwined, and I saw that both grow and change with time. I realized that being Catholic is about being able to go into any church anywhere in the world and feel at home. But more than the churches, it’s about the people you share with, and they will always be there. I sat back in my chair, filled with pasta and bread and wine, and thought to myself “This is why I’m Catholic.”

**This was also published in a previous issue of Monkeys with Typewriters, but I hope it proves to be interesting reading. Enjoy.

Mighty Morphin Power Racists (2/12)

2009-02-17T00:28:00.004-05:00

When I was growing up the hippest, coolest, newest kids on the block were the Power Rangers. They were just normal kids who one day got really cool suits and weapons and giant robots and fought evil all because this floating head in a jar told them to. It was great—every kid’s dream. Of course looking back on it there was more to it than a scheme to sell cheap plastic toys. It was a comment on race relations.

Granted, there’s a big leap between choreographed fight scenes and Star Wars type special effects and race, but it’s not an impossible one. Just look at the line up of the original Power Rangers. In order:

First, Mastodon! The black ranger. The only black guy on the team. Zack, I think his name was. Coincidence? I think not. But this is only the tip of the ice berg.

Second, Pteradactal? The pink ranger, Kimberly, the white cheerleader/gymnast who all the guys wanted to get with. (There was also a rumor for a while that she had left the small screen for adult films, but I don’t think there’s any truth in that.)

Third, Triceratops. The blue ranger. The usually depressed geek who was smart and I sympathized with as a child. While you can’t do much with this one race wise (unless you bring up that Effiel 52 song), this is still an important demographic.

Forth, Sabah Toof Tigah! Or at least that’s what it sounded like when “The Yellow Ranger,” as she is listed on IMDB, says the name of her zord. Aside from being hard to understand, she was only Asian member of the team.

And finally, Tyrannosaurus Rex. Jason. The Red Ranger. While red is just a cool color that has all other sorts of symbols attached to it, Jason still had a very strong, stoic, almost—I don’t know—native American chief feel to him?

This might be a stretch, but there are two more coincidences that really have me set in this belief that there was more to the rangers than meets the eye. The first of these is that, of all the weapons these characters have, the black guy is the only one with a gun. Think about it. Second, and more importantly, is the arrival of the Green Ranger.

Now for those of you who choose not to remember, the green ranger is another kid, Tommy, who is made a ranger not by Zordon (floating head guy) but by Rita Repulsa, the bad lady. He is incredibly powerful and at that point the Rangers’ most fearsome foe. With his great Dragonzord he is able to take on the Megazord all by himself. But eventually something happens that turns Tommy good and the Green Ranger becomes the most powerful weapon in the Rangers’ arsenal. And then something happens. Tommy, still the most powerful ranger, is no longer green. Now, he’s white.

Whether or not this racial component to the show was added consciously or not, I think it does present us with an interesting question—how do we see race nowadays? While the Power Rangers is not high entertainment, it still is art, and considered at least by some a reflection of us as a society. So is it racist? Racially charged? Or is it just that “everyone’s a little bit racist,” as the wise puppets of Avenue Q sing? My answer—modern racism, by which I mean to say modern perceptions of race-related issues, is in fact postmodern.

Let me explain. Racism these days is postmodern in the sense that it’s racism that knows it’s racist, but continues to be so with the intent of saying something about wider race relations, just in the way that art, aware that it is art, uses that perspective to say something about art. The Power Rangers are a poor example of this, but an example of this all the same. Only a group of young people as rigidly diverse as a jury can work together to stop the forces of evil. Let’s go back to Avenue Q. In the song they sing, “if we all could just admit that we are racist a little bit and everyone stopped acting so PC maybe we could live in harmony.” The fact is that “everyone makes judgments based on race,” sometimes without even realizing it. The idea behind postmodern racism is that we all put it out there and get past it because we’re all really the same—even if what makes us the same is a little bit of intolerance.

“Harmony” really is the goal of this postmodern racism, and no one does it better than comedians. Everyone can laugh at a racial joke, and the ones telling them are really just trying to show how ridiculous racism is. Some of the best people doing this are Dave Chappell and Carlos Mencia. Granted both these guys may not always be funny (that Africa incident of Dave’s certainly wasn’t—as was most of season two of ‘Mind of Mencia’) but when these guys talk about their race, they are trying to break down the rigid boundaries that make race the topic of a seminar and instead make it a conversation. Even people like Tiger Woods and Eminem are making strides for this, not just because they are breaking down boundaries, but because they are aware of their place in industries dominated by particular races, and they still succeed. It is this type awareness that these figures have that allow us to try to become more aware of our own position in this whole race game.

Except not all people see it this way. In my senior year of high school I participated in a category called Original Oratory where you write a speech and deliver it from memory. In the final round of the State Championship, a girl got up to give her speech entitled “The Greatest Game Ever Played.” [1] It was a speech about race, how we shouldn’t make assumptions or stereotype people because appearances are not what they seem and you can’t judge a book by its cover because we all have to be ourselves and not buy into ‘we have to be this because we’re this color’ and blah blah blah blah blah. It was a chore to sit through because it was corny and built out of oratory nuggets that are hoarded and recycled by orators faster than soda cans by homeless people. And you know what the worst part is. She won! Granted she was very well spoken, but the speech itself was nothing new or helpful. If we keep looking at race as just a “be yourself, don’t judge a book by its cover” problem, then those are the only answers we’re going to get. But if we look at it as something that we all share, if only just a little, something that we can all laugh about, and something that we can be aware of in our daily lives then we get dialogue.

So I guess in the end I’m saying that we all need to be Mighty Morphin Power Racists—or in other words, people who can change the issue of race into something that is more of a discussion based on respect, rather than a dialogue based on clichés. With issues like Kanye saying that “George Bush hates black people” a few years ago, the case of the Jena 6, and bills on immigration, we can’t say that race isn’t an issue. We have to be postmodern about our racism, or racialism, which sounds better but basically means the same thing, and at times it’s even okay to laugh about it. Then maybe this incredibly diverse group of kids lead by the same big head can fight some evil and bring about a little bit of that “harmony” for everyone else.

[1] Interestingly, this is the title of a Shia LaBeauff movie about golf. I’m still trying to figure out if there is a clever connection I can invent between the two.

**This was previously published in an issue of Monkeys with Typewriters, and because I'm behind in posts and super busy I'm going to throw up here a bunch of stuff that I haven't looked at in a while. Enjoy!

Friday the 13th pt.1 (2/13)

2009-02-14T20:05:00.004-05:00

So every so often (at least once a year), because of the way our calendar works, there comes a day where people become increasingly superstitious because they believe the combination of the number and the day of the week as the supernatural ability to make them particularly unlucky. This According to my friend Wikipedia, a study done by the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Ashville, North Carolina states that 17 to 21 MILLION people are afraid of this day. I find this number incredibly high, but the more I dwell on this day, the more I find myself thinking about something very essential to it's existence--luck.

What is luck? It's supposed to be some kind of outside force that influences the way the world works, favoring certain individuals over others. But if you have ever played any Role-Playing Games (I am of course a huge nerd) luck is always something that increases with level or the use of particular items. This somewhat silly illustration implies, however, that luck is something we actually have control over. And of course the only way to prove this is with a series of nerdy references.

In The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent uses a two-faced coin to make his own luck. When he seems to leave things up to chance, people are more likely to pay attention because there is a sense of uncertainty. It also makes things more impressive when they go his way, and he seems less responsible for what comes to pass. However, when he becomes Two-Face and uses chance to decide whether people live or die, this transference of responsibility goes to an extreme and Harvey claims that chance is the only unbiased, fair decider in matters of conflict. So luck, is in some ways, the universe making decisions for us? Not so much. (I should mention that the only other thing that is called "fair" in this movie is "chaos" by the Joker--and we all know that luck can be quite a chaotic force.)

Sometimes I feel like it's easier for people to blame their own faults or shortcomings or inadequacies on luck--not only in uncontrollable things like appearance and sets of talents, but also in their performance at certain tasks. You get picked for a job not because you are lucky, but because you know someone. You do better in a competition because you practiced, not because some cosmic force pushed you across the finish line. And I think the most blunt way to put this comes from Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, who tells hot shot Han Solo that "In my experience, there's no such thing as luck."

What I like about this assessment is that while there is no such thing as luck, there is "the force"--this great thing in the universe that keeps everything in a kind of balance. For me that's God, but in general I think that things have more of a purpose than is readily apparent. Luck is a way to explain away the bad and minimize the good, but I have this odd notion that there are no coincidences. What is good now may be bad later and vice versa, but ultimately I think everything happens for a reason. We're just lucky if we ever get to find out what that reason is...

For me, Friday the 13th has always been a lucky day, if only because none of these days have been particularly unlucky. Luck, on the other hand, remains this sort of relativistic measure that allows us to judge the world. It is this out-of-our-hands element of our lives that has been called upon for thousands of years, with names like Fortune or Chance. But at the same time it is also a state of mind. The Roman dramatist Seneca once wrote that "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." Friday the 13th, is our yearly opportunity to reexamine luck for ourselves. Good luck...

Happy Valentine's Day

2009-02-14T10:51:00.004-05:00

So first and foremost I must confess that I do not have a Valentine, so if I sound particularly bitter take it with a grain of salt. Second, I must apologize for being particularly behind--I have had quite the busy week but I promise you that I will put up my actual posts for 2/11, 2/12/ and 2/13 as soon as possible. But while it's still topical let's talk about Valentines Day.

Now I could be completely cynical and remind you that Valentine's Day in its current form is a concoction of the card companies that can be traced back to the belief by Europeans that birds began to pair around this time every year. I could tell you that we spend so much money trying to express our feelings on a day that should be no different from any other, or that the pressure to be paired or find someone at times becomes so great that it often leaves people depressed rather than more aware of their loving relationships. I could point out how much it sucks to be single seeing people paired off and being all lovey-dovey, telling me about the gifts they will be exchanging, and finding myself jealous in some peculiar way at some of this superficial celebration of a baby whose weapon inflicts the greatest pain of all--love.

But I won't do that right now. Rather I will talk only about love, something people are thinking about today, and hope that they come to think about it more every subsequent day.

First, when I am faced with all of this pomp and circumstance of the day, I am reminded by what a French relative of mine once said:

"Here is my secret. It's quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes."

Ok, so it's the fox from The Little Prince, but I think you get my point. Love is something that needs to be seen with the heart, not necessarily in a card or flowers or balloons or expensive dinners or any of the other things people do for Valentines day. Unfortunately today those things have become the language of love, the symbols we use to express affection, especially on a day like today, and their absence is almost as frowned upon as their presence. I have always felt that the more personal and thought out a gift, the more meaning it has, and so for me one of my favorite things to recieve (on any occassion) is a letter. Unlike a card, a letter forces you to write more than just your name. You have to incorporate a message, think about how you feel about the other person, and find a way to express it that will cause them to understand how you feel about them. They can literally see, with their heart, how you feel. I have found that few things are ever as moving.

This is also, I should mention, my theory behind hugs. When I hug someone I hold them close and tight enough so that they can almost feel going from my chest into theirs the intensity of emotion I feel for them. It's a little corny, but my philosophy is that if you are going to express emotion, why half-ass it? It has to be genuine in order to be meaningful.

My friends make fun of me because I hug pretty much everyone in this way. Why? Because I love everyone. I think you have to--I love my family, my good friends, my old friends, my new friends, people I have only met a few times but find interesting, cast mates, lunch dates, everyone...I love people because I see something good in every one of them, and know that there is always something to love if you look hard enough. So maybe this sounds cornier than most Hallmark cards, but it's genuine, and here is (in part) where it comes from:

"It seems to me, Govinda, that love is the most important thing in the world. It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate eachother, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect."

This passage from Siddartha I think sums up how important love is in this world. There are so much negative feelings out there, gloom and doom, hatred and misunderstanding, that maybe Valentine's Day is a neccessary thing--we need to set aside a day for people to think about love because otherwise it get's lost. But I could go on and on and on about love, and at some point I might. But let me leave you with just two more. The first comes from Les Miserables, the musical, which was introduced to me by my mother:

"To love another person is to see the face of God"

And the second, comes from the Bible, and is my favorite passage from scripture. Here is the crux of it:

"So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love." 1 Corinthians 13, 13

So today, before you buy that last minute box of chocolates, or write out that card, or talk to someone you love...think about what that means. Love. It's more than just a four letter word; its a force to change the world.

Just Keep Swimming

2009-02-11T01:49:00.004-05:00

For some reason, the one thing I will always remember about Finding Nemo is hearing Ellen DeGeneres' voice come out of that blue fish (Dory) and say over and over again that seemingly mindless mantra--"Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming...."

One of the reasons I remember this so well is because it's something I repeat to myself. (Or because it's so damn catchy, I happen to repeat it to myself.) I am embarrassed to say that I used to repeat it to myself softly when I would be forced run in Central Park during gym in high school. I sometimes use it to encourage my friends or my self during particularly stressful times here at school. But for some reason, I never thought about applying it to writing until I saw this quote:

"All good writing is like swimming underwater and holding your breath." --F. Scott Fitzgerald

One of my favorite authors of all time has compared writing to swimming. At first glance, I feel as though that's like calling Lance Armstrong the next big painter or waiting for Michael Phelps to produce the great American novel. (However, A-Rod certainly looks like that guy who wrote A Million Little Pieces right now.) The whole reason I took up writing in the first place is so that I wouldn't have to be athletic, and here comes this great writer (Great-Gatsby dude for all you non-English Majors), who says that writing is like flailing your hands and feet in a chlorine and water filled hole.

But, not one to take things too literally, I gave this little aphorism some thought. I love to write, and the reason why I have this blog is so that I have a place where I can write everyday. When Fitzgerald says that good writing is like swimming underwater, I actually know exactly what he means. Writing should be an attempt to go under the surface of any situation and probe the emotions of the characters, to envelop yourself in surroundings that may be unfamiliar and very well dangerous. And we hold our breath to keep us alive, to keep us sane. Far too many writers throughout history have not been able to do that.

It reminds me of something my creative writing professor, Jim Shepard, said to our class--to paraphrase, writers are lazy. We are most likely going to gloss over the most emotionally challenging and interesting parts of stories because they are obviously the most difficult. We want to come back up to the surface, to use the swimming metaphor, but in the process we lose the most powerful stuff. The problem is that in order to get to those difficult places, we have to be willing to go deeper than we ever thought necessary. In the swimming analogy, the pressure builds around us and threatens to crush us, and going deeper can become rather dangerous. We only have a certain amount of air--but good writing, Fitzgerald says, will take those risks.

Writing is something I think about a lot, mostly because I enjoy doing it so much. Writing is powerful, writing (in my case) relieves stress, and writing involves constant learning. It's hard, but in order to create truly great works we need to just keep swimming. It might be painful, our chests might burn and our lips may start to lose small bubbles, but it might be worth it. I may be caught up in the metaphor but I think you see my point. "Just keep swimming..." There is great treasure to be found in these waters. You only have to dive in.

For My Sister

2009-02-09T23:05:00.003-05:00

I was barely a year old when my sister came into the picture. My mom likes to tell the story of how, when my sister came home from the hospital, I did not believe that she was ours. I hid all of the toys because I did not want this strange baby taking everything that was mine. But as a result, I have very few memories of my childhood that do not involve my sister. For years my mother would dress us up in themed Halloween costumes: I was Mickey and she was Minnie, I was Pooh and she was Piglet, I was Peter Pan and she was Tinkerbell. We were inseparable because we were related, and no matter how cute we were or how many people asked if we were twins, we would fight for most of our childhoods.

This strikes me as funny now because of the kinds of fights we would have. We would have very physical fights, (like when she pushed me into the plastic bowling pins we had as kids) sometimes in the presence of friends or family member. She's my sister and she knows how to push my buttons better than anybody, and since I was more of a student and she was more of an athlete, I was the one getting beat up more times than not. Lucky for me, as we got older we became less interested in smacking each other and more interested in smack-talk, and our verbal fights were sometimes just as bad. It's funny because looking back on it all now we laugh about it just as much as we laugh about the time where we used rubber stamps as makeup and covered our faces in ink.

And even though we did fight, I know that my sister would be the first to fight for me if I ever needed help, and I would do the same for her. As we have grown older we have gotten closer, and I love her for her fierce energy, her kind heart, her thoughtfulness, and her (usually) positive attitude. I love the fact that she still, even as she's in college, loves Disney World more than most small children, and that on the volleyball court she can be an absolute beast.

I know things have not been easy for her either. Going to the same school for eight years with me a year ahead of her meant that I had all of our teachers first, and while they came to love us both, my memory haunted her throughout elementary school. I remember watching her come into the house crying from school because of something a teacher had said about me that made her feel inferior or unappreciated, when in reality she had so many accomplishments of her own. I never knew what to say in those moments, except try to make her understand that I loved her, but that wasn't enough. I felt like it was somehow my fault, and sometimes I wished that I could erase my accomplishments so that she could be happy.

I remember seeing her during high school, fighting with my mom in the way I imagine all daughters sometimes fight with their mothers, and seeing her in pain but wondering also if she understood the big picture. I remember trying to talk to her and feeling for the first time that me and my sister, who I had spent all of my life with, were on completely different pages. When we were younger, we would inevitably wake up the night before the first day of school and I would come into her room or she would come into mine and we would talk into the early hours of the morning about our fears and worries, our hope and excitement. But since I have gone to college there has been this distance, more so than in high school. I remember coming home one break to have her scream at me "You haven't been here, you don't know what it's like" and realize how far removed I had become. I hate more than anything those times when I don't feel close to her. But this past Christmas, when she had the perfect gift idea for my mother, I realized how much she has grown up and become a beautiful young woman, while still being my little sister.

My sister is a very important part of my life, but often time the significance of our relationship goes unspoken. Unlike my brother who worships me, my sister (miraculously) tolerates me, defends me, and sometimes even needs me. As we get older our relationship has grown and changed and I can't help thinking about her today, on her birthday, and wanting her to know how much I love her. In some ways she is still the little girl with the curly hair who called California, "Cali-roe-nia," and she is also the beautiful woman who straightened her hair for prom. She's so much cooler than I could ever hope to be, and I hope that we continue to become better friends. We are so different in terms of the way we look at the world, but I know I would not be the person I am today if not for her. So Meaghan--Happy Birthday--This one's for you.

Scars

2009-02-08T23:41:00.003-05:00

Every morning, I look at myself in the mirror as I brush my teeth. Sometimes I notice it, sometimes I don't. It's a small scar, about an inch or two long under my left eye. I got it when I was six.

I was on the playground with all the other kindergartners and I was building myself a fort. To do this I had to run back and forth from my nascent fort to the wooden shed that we had on the playground that was filled with hula-hoops and shovels and pails and all sorts of things for kids to play with. I had found these wall pieces and I was making a kind of fort, or maybe it was an obstacle course. In any case, while I'm doing this some other kid had found this wooden shovel in the shed and was throwing it around like a javelin. I was minding my own business until suddenly the shovel hit me in the face. I don't remember it hurting a lot, but there was blood, and I remember my friends asking me to see if and they were all really grossed out. I remember walking with my hand over my eye up to my teacher, who as soon as she saw my eye picked me up and ran me to the nurses office. I hadn't actually hurt my eye, but I needed either six or thirteen stitches (the number is fuzzy) and I have had the scar ever since.

In Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, one of the characters states that "Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real." If not for this scar on my face, I would not have such a vivid memory of this occurance when I was so young. I remember laying on the table in the hospital getting the stitches and how painful it was getting them out. The physical line on my face carries with it something that is very real, but it wasn't until I got older that I realized what an essential part of our culture scars really are.

It started when I was about the same age as I got my scar and The Lion King came to theaters. The villian? Scar, the old lion who has a scar over his eye. The fascinating thing about the scar is that it not only gives him his name, but it literally affects the way he sees the world, and can be linked to why he is so different from his brother Mufasa. Scars not only remind us that our past is real, but they inform everything we see thereafter.

After that it was Harry Potter, whose scar was so famous because of what it signified. He was "The Boy Who Lived" and the scar was a constant reminder of how he had survived the Dark Lord, but also kept him connected to it. Scars never let us forget the events that caused them, and they keep us bound to these events whenever we see these marks on us.

The next scars that stick out in my mind are those of this guy Abrahm on Road Rules. I don't even know if that was his name, but he was this guy who gave himself a scar for every significant experience he ever had in his life. The result was that on his chest he had all of these scars that he had inflicted ( I think with some sort of hot iron or something), and I found that kind of stupid when I watched it the first time. But as I think about it now, they are just the manifestation of something deeper, and he wants to have that reminder always.

My last set of scars I have to reflect on are probably the most important. In The Dark Knight, one of the Joker's scariest lines is "do you want to know how I got these scars?" The scars on his face are part of what he is trying to hide with his clown makeup, but what I found even more terrifying is that the two times he tells the story, they are completely different stories. One is about his father, the other about a lover, both believable stories. What is scary is that after talking about how scars make the past real, create a connection to the past, and we are unable to forget those things that caused them, the true depth of the Joker's emotional scars and his maddness is encapsulated in how the scars seem to have lost their original meaning. For us they are manifestations of things we can never know about the Joker's past, but his attempts to tell us frighten us because either they are real, or they are creations of his mind that he uses to explain away these scars. In either case, the disconnect is so great, that the actual wounds must be greater still.

This became evident to me tonight when one of my friends told the story of losing his mom on September 11th in the World Trade Center. In the group of people listening, I could see so many people who were moved not only by his story, but by their own memories of that day, parents thought lost, friends and family affected, and the feeling that these scars were still fresh even now more than 7 years since.

There are some scars that don't go away. Scars are a reminder that some healing has taken place, but even still things are not and will never be the same. The tissue isn't as strong anymore, the wound has left it's mark. Scars change the way we look at our world, and that change needs to be something we are mindful of--we can't just take it for what it is. Where the scars have come from is just as important as where we go after the wounds have healed. All of these things are part of a greater story. And that's what I think scars are--stories that have attached themselves to our bodies or rendered themselves on our hearts. They don't need to be shared, or even treasured, but just acknowledged. They are very much a part of us.

I have this other stupid scar on my knee from bumping into a table on a backpacking trip. When I look at it I just think about how silly I was to walk into this picnic table, but there's nothing I can do about it. The scar isn't some deep, meaningful reminder of great pain, but it is there. And I think about the pimples on my face and what other scars I might be getting now and I worry about the person I am becoming, and what these scars say about me. But whether it's a lightning bolt or just a little line under my eye, I can't help but feel that there's a reason they stay with us. We could just heal completely, without these symbols of our pain and our courage, but instead we are marked for some greater purpose. We are scarred so that we may grow.

A Matter of Perspective

2009-02-08T09:12:00.006-05:00

Yesterday, my parents picked me up to take me to my sister's birthday dinner. On the drive from Massachusetts to Rhode Island, we passed mounds of snow, walls of ice, and one particular steeple in some small town. When my father saw the steeple, he remarked "Look at that steeple--it's collapsing." And it looked like it. A lot of the shingles were cracked or missing and you could see the wood beams that were holding it in place. But then my younger brother saw it and said, "Well, maybe they're building it."

This simple example of two people at very different points in their lives looking at the same building and seeing the opposite situation is what gives me hope for the future. While my dad is talking gloom and doom the more we hear about this financial crisis, there are young people like my brother who will see the state we are in as an opportunity rather than a death sentence. Some might call my brother's sentiment naive and childish, my dad's realistic and born from experience. Others might call my brother's optimistic, my father's overly pessimistic. One way is good, one way is bad, but either way there is a glass and there's not nothing in it.

Ultimately the cliche is that it just depends on how you look at things. And in these times perspective becomes more important than ever--the ability to see far in the future and make plans is just as good as the ability to see the day that we are in and be thankful. Sitting with my family last night at dinner, I couldn't help but be thankful for all of the things that we have, the position that we are in, and the fact that we all love each other. We had a lot to celebrate last night when other families might have very little to be happy about.

But here's the bottom line. When I looked up at that steeple, I saw a steeple, not in the best condition, but also not on the verge of any major improvements or major catastrophes. I try to see things for what they are, and then make the best out of them. And I hope other people are learning to do the same, because until we see these problems as they are, without exaggeration or overly-delicate language, we will never be able to see what could be.

It's going to be people like my brother who look at what we are faced with and start building. Because maybe we are trying to rebuild a nation, rebuild an economy, and rebuild our sense of pride...but at least we're building it.

**Note: This is my post for 2/7/09. My post for today will come later.

My Little Brown Book pt. 1

2009-02-06T22:25:00.004-05:00

Today as I was rummaging in my bag for a pen I found this little brown notebook I have had since the winter of my senior year of high school. I had gotten it in Florence on a trip with my dad. We were in this market buying souviners for the rest of my family, but when I saw this leather notebook with a lion on the front cover, I knew I wanted it. I wasn't really sure at the time what I was going to use the book for, but now it has come to hold some of my favorite quotes--quotes from books mostly, but also movies, anything that I stop and think about, that I like the way it sounds or what it says about life. To sound stupid I could say I got the idea from having seen A Walk to Remember, but really it was more that my dad's mom had left behind a small notebook of her poetry and things that were important to her. And so I have this notebook to look at when I need to be inspired or need to restore my faith in people. Here are three selections from this notebook (I might start doing this a lot now):

"Important things are inevitably cliche, but nobody wants to admit that."
--Chuck Klostermann, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

Writing like this, writing about ideas and feelings and my life is probably a gold mine for cliches, but I also hope that I am touching on some important issues too. Maybe I spend too much time metablogging, but I do think that this cliche thing is a problem in our society. We don't like greeting card lines, but we like getting those very cards. I once told a girl something, I can't remember now what it was, but she replied "That's so cliche." I responded "Cliches are true things that guys say to girls that girls choose to ignore." If it's true, why write it off so quickly?

"A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."
--Malachi Constant, The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

One of my core beliefs in life. There are so many other iterations of this, both in my notebook and in literature. The Golden Rule is the first one that comes to mind. That Whitney Houston song "The Greatest Love of All" is the second. But I think the Beatles were right to say that "All you need is love"--I love my family, my friends, every person that I come in contact with because everyone has something worth loving in them. You can call it God, you can call it their humanity, or that connection that binds everyone on this planet. But it's there, and I love it.

"I think that one of these days,' he said, 'you're going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you've got to start going there. But immediately. You can't afford to lose a minute. Not you."
--The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

Last one, and I realize now that I should probably try to have come up with a theme, but this one is probably the most pressing quote in my life right now. As I get older and realize that I have to come up with some sort of direction for my life, and the world is pushing me in so many different ways (parents, teachers, friends etc.) I'm realizing that I am going to have to make a choice. And the immediacy of this is what scares me the most. Because what if I get it wrong? There's no turning back. What is also so powerful about this quote is that last "Not you." It implies that there is something special about Holden and therefore everyone who has been in his position, something that can't be wasted. I hope that I don't put to waste those things I've been given when I finally find out where I want to go.

And so, there are more quotes, some that might provoke longer reflection. But in this book lay the roots of my thoughts, the inspiration for my words, and the foundations of my feelings. The best part is that it's barely started, and there are so many more pages to fill. It reminds me to keep reading, keep thinking, and keep looking for that meaning in life. It's cliche (and therefore important) but it makes me think about that song "Unwritten." I'm glad the rest of this book is empty--that just means there is a whole lot more to say about life.

Have you ever had one of those days?

2009-02-05T19:39:00.004-05:00

This morning I was first awoken by my phone buzzing. Then my alarm clock went off. Then, I turned both of these devices off and put my head down and went back to sleep. Several hours later I finally decided to get myself out of bed because I had no idea what time it was and was afraid I had missed something. I slowly made my way through the morning, checking my email, taking a shower, shaving, brushing my teeth, eating lunch, etc. etc. etc. until it was time for me to go to rehearsal and I finally left my room. But in that time before I left, I had a moment where I was staring at my computer, with so much I could be doing and no idea what to do first, that I just said in a voice too loud to be just to myself, "What am I doing with my life?"

Have you ever had one of those days? Those days when you feel like there is nothing you could possibly do that is worthwhile, like you should be doing something but can't bring yourself to start, like you have no idea where to start and end up sitting in a somewhat content daze trying to imagine how you got to this crossroads of introspection and laziness. I had one of these days today.

I imagine the fact that I had very little that I was required to do today contributed to my feeling of drifting through my day like a raft on a stormy sea. Often fear is what wakes me up in the morning. And I don't mean that I am startled by my alarm clock (I have become used to it's obnoxious blaring). It is a paranoia that creeps into my dreams and causes me to sit bolt upright when my alarm clock goes off because I am afraid I am going to miss something important.

But as I get older and my hours get later, my ability to motivate myself in the morning has become significantly diminished. I can't just wake myself up to do reading in the morning. There has to be a event that I need to be at and people who I could potentially disappoint for me to force myself out of bed. And this worries me now as I am about to take a class that meets three days a week at 8:30 in the morning. I do not have the self motivation or the self control to do this without being utterly afraid every morning, and I wonder if all the things I do are also motivated by some sort of fear. I am afraid of failure so I work hard. I am afraid of making a fool out of myself on stage so I rehearse for plays. I am afraid of being wrong so I do not speak up.

And then there is the other question. If fear motivates the things that I do, does it also motivate me to stay in bed? Am I afraid of the social interactions, the academic challenges, or just of the bitter cold that waits for me outside? I don't know, but I am becoming more aware of the fact that I need to find something more than fear to get me out of bed, because fear can't be the driving force of my life. As FDR said, "There is nothing to fear but fear itself." And I am afraid this fear thing is getting out of control.

But is it? I guess our ancestors were conditioned by evolution to be afraid of certain things, and as a result of their prehistoric paranoia our species was able to survive. To be fearless is to be stupid, especially when it comes to things like snakes and sabertooth tigers. Our fear of being lonely causes us to reach out to other people, our fear of being poor and hungry that makes us go to school and get jobs, and our fear of death that keeps us from taking too many risks.

Like much of my life, everything comes back to Batman. In Batman Begins, Liam Neeson tells Batman that "What you really fear is inside yourself. You fear your own power. You fear your anger, the drive to do great or terrible things." And maybe that's it. I'm more scared by my inability to get out of bed and what that says about my powers of self-motivation than I am about the class I might miss or the grades I might get. I don't want to know the answer to the question "What am I doing with my life?" because I might not like the answer. But I do want to know how I can better motivate myself, and maybe this class tomorrow morning will help.

Who knows really? I just have to hope that I'm not the only one to feel this way. Have you ever had one of those days, the kind where you over analyze everything? I'm afraid I have.

The End of an Era

2009-02-05T01:48:00.006-05:00

It was my first wake in a long time. The last of my father’s uncles, Uncle Bill, had passed away, and the phrase that kept floating around the room was that it was the end of an era.

When I walked into the funeral parlor, the local chapter of the VFW was playing taps from a small stereo. There were several distant relatives who recognized me from our Christmas card. They called me “Tommy’s son,” said I had gotten “so big,” held my hand and told me my great uncle had loved me very much. I felt embarrassed asking my mom for their names over and over again.

I spent a few minutes kneeling before my uncle’s open casket, saying prayers and looking at the mementos inside—pictures of his wife, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, prayer cards, rosary beads, and a small bottle of his favorite Scotch. There were photographs all around the room, a mix of black and white and color which told the story of my uncle’s life. The picture that struck me the most was of my great-grandparents and their children and children’s spouses sitting together around a table. I recognized my grandfather and my uncle Bill, as well as the grandmother who died when my dad was nine. They lived in a world very different from mine; now all but one is dead.

Family gatherings and old photographs remind me of how the O’Fox clan, from County Meath in Ireland, made their way across the Atlantic over a hundred and thirty years ago to settle in New York. My great-grandfather, John Fox (his family having dropped the O), manned the railroad switches at Jamacia, Queens, and with his wife raised nine kids through two world wars and a great depression. My grandfather, Joe Fox, came home from fixing airplanes in Florida during World War II to find his dad had had both legs amputated because of an infection. He had to lift his father out of the wheelchair and put him into the car to take him home.

One of the photographs is of Uncle Bill with his shirt off from when he was serving in the Philippines during World War II. There’s one with Uncle Bill and my grandfather at the post office where they worked together, and I remember the story about how Uncle Bill took a drink at every house on his route one Christmas and got so drunk my grandfather had to pick him up before he finished delivering the mail. Uncle Bill could never turn down a glass of Scotch.

The only thing separating these photographs from history books and documentaries on public television is that it’s my family. These black and white pictures are the only remaining window into a bygone era. After the funeral, my cousin shows me pictures of his seven- month- old daughter on his Blackberry, and I am in awe of how far humanity has come technologically, and how much we’ve lost because of it.

My grandparents’ generation was that “new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage” that John F. Kennedy was referring to in his inaugural address.

Barack Obama reminds us that “we are the keepers of this legacy.” But what will they say about me, tempered by so little and disciplined by even less? Even with 9/11 carved into my brain, it’s different. I still can’t help but think that the life I have led has been so much easier than that of my grandparents, and when faced with similar trials, how am I supposed to show similar strength?

My grandparents lived in a time when the world was still big and the towns they lived in--places like Levittown and Hicksville—were small. Back then, the whole family lived close enough to have Sunday dinner. Now I have cousins in Virginia and Chicago who I rarely see at holidays. Sure we have the technology to stay in touch, but the word cousin doesn’t even mean the same thing in my family. My dad tells me about how my grandfather introduced his brother to his girlfriend’s sister and when the kids of both couples arrived, he called them “double first cousins.”

And I can’t imagine, short of nuclear war, being asked to sacrifice what my grandfather Joe and his brother Bill did for this country, and I’m not sure I would volunteer on my own. It’s amazing to think that I’m around the same age as Bill was when he was drafted, as my Uncle Larry was when he was almost drafted to go to Vietnam. I can thank and honor those men who have served, see that service made them tough, but I feel like I’m made of different stuff. It’s the difference between U. S. Steel and Made in China. One is taken from the earth , forged in fire, and made strong enough to be the foundation for great buildings; the other is modern, can bend and melt, and can be put to so many different uses, but you wouldn’t build with it. It’s just not the same.

Now, phrases like “the world before 9/11” have become synonymous with clichés like “the good old days” and “a simpler time” and as we look ahead at the challenges we face everything looks simpler. Life is about to get harder, and everyday the headlines we read are history in the making. The word “depression” get’s thrown around like we know what we’re talking about, but we haven’t lived through it, even though we can take comfort in the fact that these people who came before us made it through hard times. But the fear comes back when I realize that I may not have learned anything at all.

My cousin Jeananne said during her eulogy that as my Uncle Bill got closer to death, he started to talk more and more about his experiences during the war. Someone told her it was because that other than death, that was the greatest unknown he’d ever faced. And that’s why I talk about him here, because his death has made me realize that I am on the brink of my own unknown and I want to look back to him for help. But it’s more than fear of the unknown, its fear of the unprepared, the untested, the inadequate—me. There’s so much to learn from "the greatest generation", and as a result so much that could be forgotten. There are just some things that we can’t afford to forget right now. The words we hear are “hope” and “responsibility” but I don’t think I truly understand “struggle,” “character,” and “sacrifice.”

After the burial I sat in a room with the last of the Fox clan. My mom made the point that now my Dad’s older brother, Larry, is the new patriarch, and it’s only him, his four sons, my dad, my younger brother, and I who hold on to the family name. To think that I am the last, best hope for my family, that I am supposed to carry a name that has made it across oceans, over obstacles, through hardships and history, I feel as though it’s a task I am not ready for, a torch that I cannot wield. I hope Uncle Bill asked the same questions when he got on that plane to the Philippines, and that I will be able to rise to the challenges that come with growing up. And it makes me wonder: Can we make the world a better place for our children, like our ancestors did for us? Or will history say otherwise?

**Note--This essay is to appear in the next issue of Monkeys with Typewriters, and because I'm lazy, and it's late, and I didn't have solid idea for today, I posted this. Enjoy.

A Warning

2009-02-03T14:22:00.003-05:00

I came to a realization today riding in the back of my friend's car as I reflected on the first week in the life of my little blog. While my intent has been to just write everyday, my previous posts have all resulted in some big questions about life. Now I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, but those wonderful people who edit my essays for the magazine I write for here at school would tell me that these kinds of general statements are misplaced. What I really should be doing is asking questions about my own life, and if they become questions about our greater human experience so be it.

The point is, how could I ever adequately examine human existence in these casual blog posts when really I should be examining my own experience. As Socrates once wrote, "The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being." And as a result, in my examinations, these posts will range from the general to the specific, the very intellectual to the very personal.

What this means is that, for those of you who I know and love who I have let see the inner workings of my mind on this page, be forewarned! You could easily (and probably will) show up on these pages and posts, and depending on my mood, I could say some incredibly witty, praiseworthy, or altogether horrible things about you. I can only promise that I am going to be honest.

Dante's immortal words from the Inferno are somewhat appropriate for my purposes:

All hope abandon, ye who enter in.

Except here's my version:

Hope you are forgotten, ye who enter in.

You have been warned.

Live Everyday like it's Groundhog Day

2009-02-02T23:59:00.005-05:00

So I was initially going to write about the Super Bowl and how interesting it is that despite our hard economic times, we are pouring even more money into these kinds of rituals. I was going to ask whether it is better that we be comforted by these rituals or that we be stingy and buckle down for the crisis at hand. I was going to examine where I think this whole idea of rituals as comfort comes from and whether or not I thought it was a distraction from the situation we are in now.

And then I realized that it's Groundhog Day.

Groundhog Day, that great festival of a regal rodent and his fantastic power to control the weather just by reacting to his shadow for a crowd of misguided followers. Groundhog Day, that day of days that has the ability to disappoint you with hopes of spring, or condemn you to the certainty of a long winter. Groundhog Day, that Bill Murray movie about life.

Of these three, I hope it is now obvious which I want to talk about--as always, the one about life.

I unfortunately haven't seen the movie in a long time, but basically it's the story of a local weatherman condemned to live February 2nd over and over again until he learns something about life and lives the perfect day. Some could see it as a movie about second chances, about appreciating each and every day, about noticing the details. But I'd like to look at it slightly differently. Take this quote:

Phil: It's the same things your whole life. "Clean up your room.", "Stand up straight.", "Pick up your feet.", "Take it like a man.", "Be nice to your sister.", "Don't mix beer and wine, ever.". Oh yeah, "Don't drive on the railroad track."

Gus: Eh, Phil. That's one I happen to agree with.

Our entire lives are just that, a series of commands that come from our parents, our friends, our spouses, society, the government, and even ourselves that we choose to accept or to totally ignore. And while the movie is an interesting (if not somewhat cliche) thought experiment about living the same day over and over again, wondering about all the choices we could and didn't make, I think it's also an interesting allegory. Everyday, in essence, is the same.Nothing really ever changes (Sorry Barack). It is only the collective choices that we make and how we influence one another that make them each unique.

This is fascinating, because what if we all are in Phil's position of trying to live the perfect day in a world where everything is relatively stagnant, but our time is limited. We don't get to come back after being run over by a train, blown to pieces in a quarry, or electrocuted in a bathtub. We have to deal with the consequences of our actions, and then push forward and continue our search for something meaningful. And it's not a question of why should I do this--but if it was the answer is that it's the only way to escape that sameness.

It's really a question of how do we do this, and there are a lot of different answers. People use (among other things) art, religion, even rituals like the Super Bowl to keep things from becoming exactly the same, but in the process even these attempts at escape become monotonous in their own right. Mass is every Sunday, the Super Bowl is every year. But everyday we have the opportunity to make choices and live our lives better (a subjective term I know), and for Phil this meant treating people as they should be treated.

It's comforting to point out that the only way Phil was able to do this was by living all those other February 2nd's in preparation for his final one. He learned what to expect, what answers worked, and most importantly learned a lot about the people around him. We have our entire lives to figure out what it means to be a good person, but once we figure that out for ourselves, we have to put it into practice. We can try different things every day, like introducing yourself to someone new, or we can be predictable and always hold the door open for someone else.

But the most important thing we can do is roll with the punches. We can't control everything, but we can control what we do about things and that's how we can affect sameness in our lives. We can take risks, engage opportunities as they come to us, even fail every once and a while. Rather than wait for the perfect day to hit you, live every day like it's Groundhog Day and try to make it perfect.

Phil says in the movie "Anything different is good," and while I don't neccessarily agree with that statement all the time, I think we could all use a different, if not better, way of looking at the world we live in. Happy Groundhog Day!

It's Always Snowy in Canada...pt. 4

2009-02-01T15:57:00.003-05:00

So I'm writing early today and only because my current complaint is timeless. As long as we've been in Montreal, I've been amazed at how covered in snow the roads and sidewalks have been. My friends get annoyed at the lack of plowing or shoveling while they slip and slide down the Rue Saint-Whatever trying to keep their balance.

Now don't get me wrong. I am very humbled by Canadians who spend their winters in such frigid temperatures. I can imagine those frontiersmen who never felt anything like the -24 degrees (Celsius), and beat the odds and started a settlement. But what is amazing to me is that it is no longer some triumph of the human spirit--it's laziness. These are not explorers on some frontier but residents of a city, brimming with modern convenience, who apparently see no need to do something about their constant snow-problem. And of course, because I like to make simple ideas into generalizing questions, this is really a matter of how human beings choose to interact with their environment.

I'm not talking about being green or whatever, but everything from shoveling to building bridges to even paving roads...where does the line get drawn between what we are willing to tolerate from nature and what we are angry enough to change? How has the line moved since those first explorers came to Canada?

I don't really know the answer, but the thought of this snow covered city reminds me of all those other impressive feats of human survival. The deserts, the poles, the jungles, the equator, the moon. Ultimately humans can survive wherever we want to, with the right planning and technology. But when it comes to the snowy streets of Montreal, that's all it feels like--surviving--and it wasn't until we went to this Winter Carnival today that I saw Canadians actually living. There were parents and children playing in the snow, making sculptures, sledding down ramps, racing in toboggans and snowshoes and embracing everything about their winter wonderland. But there is a difference between embracing your natural environment and being lazy--and not plowing is kind of lazy.

But then again, these guys get by, and thinking about the constant snow, that also means constant plowing. Maybe Canadians are just relaxed, not lax, about how they deal with snow and cold and accept it as a part of life. They can't stop the snow, only move it out of the way, play with it, or wait for it to melt. It is what it is. If only we could learn to be so tolerant of other parts of life that aren't the weather. Then it might be (I feel terrible doing this) always sunny in Canada.

Cast Off to Canada...pt. 3

2009-01-31T23:20:00.006-05:00

So this entire time I've been imagining how with the right soundtrack, my trip could easily be one of those Olsen Twin movies where they go to another country. You know the ones, Passport to Paris, When in Rome, Winning London, Our Lips Are Sealed (Australia), the list goes on and on. (I have probably seen far too many of these, and should be more embarrassed.) These are the movies where Mary-Kate falls for a foreign boy from the particular country while the Ashley falls for a boy from home who happens to be on the trip with them. But as I imagine the Olsen Twin's Canadian adventure, I am having a very difficult time trying to come up with a title for this hypothetical masterwork of their careers. Montreal Aboard? Montreal for One? Or my personal favorite (if you couldn't guess already) Cast Off to Canada...apparently there is a nautical element.

But more often than not the discussion between my friends and I is not the dialogue you would expect in an Olsen Twins movie, tonight spent talking about our pasts (our parents' lives before we were born) and our futures. In reference to this same friend, Tess, I mentioned in my post 'Desperately Housewife', I at one point said that "There is a difference between having goals and having plans, and Tess has plans." We talked a lot about how we are conflicted between not wanting to nail ourselves down to anything in particular and how we want to leave college with a sense of who we are and where we are going. I wonder if the two are incompatible.

I guess it's a question of visibility--if you can see the road ten feet in front of you, you can get there, and once you get past that then you can start worrying about the ten feet that come after that, and so on and so forth. Thinking about how I am going to spend my next year, I feel like I am being asked to plan so much more in the process, to take into account the ramifications of decisions made by committees that I have little control over. And this is my major anxiety as I write any of these posts--where is my life going? And the answer is not like that of an Olsen Twins movie.

If it was, I would end up hooking up with one of my best friends on this trip, and there would be some kind of kiss before the end credits. And then what? I imagine that all these potential long distance relationships can't work out, since a year later a new movie has come out with the exact same plot. Even the Olsen Twins have the kind of perspective necessary for living a normal life--look forward long enough to see your flirtations with X boy come to some sort of climax (a kiss). But there is no sense of dealing with consequences...those dominoes that continually collapse throughout our lives after every decision and shape our paths for us in unseen ways.

So here I am, cast off in Canada thinking about consequences and my future when my friends are being young and crazy and getting piercings...am I thinking too much about this? Possibly. And that's why we need "Walking on Sunshine" to play as we go to a costume shop in some corner of the old city of Montreal--so that Olsen Twin mentality can sneak into our lives long enough to give us a break from "consequences." I will have a future regardless of what I do today, but if I don't think about it, tomorrow I could be living a life I never would have picked for myself.

Right now, my feeling is that I should get to know myself and what I need to be happy in life, and then the things that I want and need for my future will make themselves readily apparent. For example, I have learned a lot about myself as a writer this past fall and it's something I want to continue to pursue, and here I am, writing everyday because it makes me feel at my best. Hopefully once I finish my list of goals for my life, I can then start toying with the idea of making plans.

Also, just for kicks, what do you call a Canadian Egyptian?
A Conniption.

An American in Canada...pt. 2

2009-01-31T01:22:00.003-05:00

I'm not entirely sure what I have to talk about tonight, but let me start out by saying that I almost just made this a series of jokes about Canada. It would be an easy thing to do, and as I walk around this city I feel as though I'm in some watered down version of Paris that is striving hopelessly for merits of its own.

But I digress. Today we went to a museum of Canadian history and I was disappointed but not surprised. What was supposed to be a history of Canada was an odd assortment of historical artifacts woven together by a constant theme of "the French and English speaking people lived together." Okay, so like America little to no talk of how Canadians mistreated Native Americans. But unlike America, infinitely boring and random. Maybe it's some bias I have, but I feel like when I walk into the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Museum of Natural History in New York I am at least told some sort of story. In Canada, I was bored, and it only served to bolster the reputation Canada has in my mind for being an oddly uninteresting place. Granted the food I've had here is great, but I think it begs an interesting question: Do the stereotypes we have in our minds come from some truth, or are we, once we acknowledge some stereotype, bound to see it everywhere we look even if it isn't true?

In Canada's case, I am tempted to say that the stereotype is true and on the whole things are uninteresting, but I can't help feel that I am having a good time. Between the underground city and of course the food, I am enjoying myself. So maybe it's just Canada, this amorphous entity that I don't readily associate with the city I'm in, that I am uninterested by...and maybe that comes from some preconceived notions I have about this place. As the characters of South Park said, "Blame it all on Canada" and after viewing their history, I am tempted to. Maybe my biases are just the inevitable effects of something that Canada has done to itself. Or maybe my need to blog everyday just have me waxing philosophic on a topic as germane as Canada. Either way, it's something to think about.

Oh Canada...pt. 1

2009-01-29T23:04:00.004-05:00

So after a long and arduous drive that I spent in the back seat, myself and a few of my friends arrived today in Montreal. It's an odd thing to drive through what looks pretty much like a toll booth and suddenly be in another country where all the signs are in French.

Going out to dinner and listening to people speaking French, I already felt like I was in some other place entirely. But when we were paying for dinner, we were looking at these odd emerald green bills that have the Queen of England on them and I feel like I'm holding monopoly money. It's a feeling that I've experienced before when I've been to Europe, the sensation of holding a two-dollar coin and feeling like I should be using it in an arcade rather than a restaurant. I'm not sure if it's some kind of inherent nationalism that drives me to feel this way, or just the general silliness of Canada, but I find it amazing that I can so easily trivialize the currency of an entire country.

Not long ago the American Dollar and the Canadian Dollar were almost virtually the same, but I immediately assume that the American Dollar is better. This probably rooted in a memory I have of going to Niagra Falls with my family when I was younger and buying my mom a soda with a five dollar bill and getting as change another (more monopoly like) five dollar bill. But the assumptions I find myself making go far beyond money, and I think they are interesting.

Things I take for granted in America instantly become more amazing an unexpected in Canada. Maybe it's because everything is in French, or maybe because I didn't know what to expect, but I guess I hadn't expected Montreal to be so much like any other American city. Granted, we just got here, and I could have much more to say tomorrow, but this is my thought: what is it about a place being "foreign" that makes us forget that it is also relatively "equal"? The first thing you think about when coming to another country is that things are new and different because you are in a different place. But why should this also be reason to be surprised by those things that remain the same across borders? People are people and some things extend beyond the places where we are.

So even though this place that I am in is really close to home, I am surprised at the assumptions I am making. Let's just hope that in the next few days my respect for a great country and a fascinating city outweigh my preconceived notions about a country known by some as just America's Hat.

The Curious Incident of the Blogger in the Night-time

2009-01-29T00:57:00.004-05:00

So today I finished reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, a novel written from the perspective of an autistic boy named Christopher Boone. What starts as Christopher's attempt to solve the mystery of a neighbor's dog's "murder" becomes an adventure into his own life, and the reader is given the opportunity to see the world through they eyes of an unlikely protagonist. Christopher does not understand human emotions very well, does not like being touched or looking at people in the face, does not like the colors brown or yellow, and he uses his incredible memory and math genius as ways to calm him down in a world where there is just too much to process.

One of the most difficult parts of the book for me was Christopher's discussion of God. As Christopher puts it: "People believe in God because the world is very complicated and they thing it is very unlikely that anything as complicated as a flying squirrel or the human eye or a brain could happen by chance. But they should think logically and if they thought logically they would see that they can only ask this question because it has already happened and they exist."

What worries me about this argument is that a lot of my belief in God is based on illogical, intangible things, and I can't imagine trying to explain my belief to Christopher. At the same time, I think his inability to see the emotional world around him takes away from his ability to see what I see. It's my philosophy that God is Love and Love is God, and I can see God in everyone that I am blessed to get to know. It's things like this that I don't expect Christopher to understand if he is unable to look another person in the face.

But, the real reason why I believe in God is something that, oddly enough, Christopher might be able to understand because this reason is a boy who Christopher, if he were real, might meet in his classes at school. This boy, who has his own set of learning disabilities and struggles that will make his life difficult, is my brother Andrew.

Andrew could best be described as a miracle. I remember calling the baby inside my mother "Big Bird" because we did not want to know whether or not it was a boy or a girl, and my sister and I were so excited for the new baby that would becoming in the spring. One morning, however, we woke up on the day of our joint birthday party to discover that my mom and dad were not home, but Grandma and Aunt Lori were making breakfast for us. My mom had gone to the hospital in the night and had delivered our brother, Andrew, 11 weeks early.

Now at the time I didn't understand what a big deal this was, how scared my parents were that this tiny baby had come into the world so soon. My sister and I went into the hospital that night to see him. He weighed 2 lbs. 11 oz. and his head was smaller than a baseball. We had to wear these yellow hospital gowns to go see him, my new little red brother, and my sister put a small plastic cake into his incubator that played Happy Birthday. My dad turned 38 years old that day, and he tells us now that he has never been more scared. He went into the hospital chappel that night and prayed to Our Lady of Lourdes, crying for his new born son who some thought did not have a chance.

I should mention that Our Lady of Lourdes is a name given to the Blessed Mother Mary from when she appeared to St. Bernadette in Lourdes, France. When she appeared, Mary showed Bernadette a spring that to this day heals people with its water. To this day, The Song of Bernadette is one of my dad's favorite movies. My father prayed to her that night because it was her feast day, and he continued to cry out to her to give my brother healing. There was a time when my brother wasn't gaining weight and they were scared that we might lose him. (I only grasped the severity of the situation when months later, the little boy in the incubator next to my brother's, died because his heart had failed.) Now the thought of losing my brother is terrifying, and I can't imagine life without him because he has become such an important part of my life.

It's those little things like the fact that my brother was born on 2/11 weighing 2lb.11oz. and was put in room 211 that make me feel like everything in the universe is working together and that nothing is totally an accident. The number still pops up to this day in the most remarkable of places. But now that my brother is a healthy, almost-13-year-old, it's those big things that make me believe in something higher as well. My brother looks up to me, and makes me want to be the best person I can be. But I can't help but admire him, his positive attitude despite his struggles with school and learning how to read, and his uncanny ability to love and accept everyone unconditionally and forgive wholeheartedly. When Christ said that we had to be like children, this is what he meant.

My brother is my inspiration, by greatest gift and blessing and my personal evidence that miracles truly exist. Even Christopher is able to end his story with hope, and I know that my brother gives me the strength to end each of my days with faith. And while I struggle less than he does with schoolwork, he has made me more conscious of my gifts and more willing to give them to others. I love you Andrew, and I know this is not the last time I tell part of our story.

Desperately Housewife

2009-01-27T17:32:00.003-05:00

So last night my friend Tess told us at dinner that she was going out to visit her boyfriend Trevor in California. She explained to us that some of the days she would be there, Trevor would be working and she would have nothing to do. She told us that she had decided to play housewife for the week, and went on to enumerate the dinners she was going to make for her boyfriend of all of seven months.

What scares me the most about this is not Tess' cooking or Trevor's appetite, but the fact that some one my age is so anxious to play house. And it's not just playing house. They have planned out their entire lives, from his law school to her next three years of college-dental school-medical school track. I imagine the big house and the attractive children have been planned out as well. And it's this excessive, obsessive planning that seems to have infected my generation that scares me.

I was sitting on the bus today, listening to these freshmen talk about their GPA's and applying for research positions and medical school and I had to laugh to myself. They have taken all of four classes, gotten all of four grades to make up a number that they are already stressing about. And it's not entirely their fault--they have to hyper plan, because if they don't someone else will and get so far ahead that they don't even have a chance. It starts in middle schools as kids work so that they will get into good high schools where they work so that they will get into good colleges where they work so they will get into good graduate schools where they work so they will get good jobs and it goes on and on and on.

The worst part about these hyper plans is that I feel like kids are just boxing themselves in, looking so far ahead that they don't even know where they are standing. I imagine that Tess, so set on being a facial surgeon, has very few options, very few chances to fail. I picture it's like buying a car that you can't drive--you are so sure of where you want to go, that you give up all control to take wheel or even stop if you have second thoughts. Because what happens when you graduate from college and have no other skills besides the pre-med that you've taken and you don't want to do it any more? Or worse, if you become a doctor and end up hating the rest of your life?

And that's my biggest question, why are kids so desperate to lock themselves into something? The fear of the unknown is something I can understand, and kids who set their sights on a particular career are eliminating that element of the unknown by solidifying their path for the rest of their lives. But more powerful, at least in my case, is the fear of such an extreme commitment while I am so young (maybe it's because I'm a guy).

The one thing that Tess and some of those like her have going for them is passion--Tess loves what she's doing and is excited about the path she has chosen. I just know that for all the passion I have I also don't want to be blindsided--I'm a realist and I know that some of the things I love doing now will not be the same things I love doing years from now. Planning out life seems in some ways an oxymoron to me. But you have to give these hyper-planners some credit--they are working against the odds.

Maybe we are all just planning out spaces where we will see what happens, planning for mistakes where others can't afford them. I know personally I wouldn't be where I am today if everything I had worked out the way I had planned, and I think that's a good thing. I can only hope that those hyper-planners out there find time to relax, so that when they finally get where they've been so focused on going, they can look back at how they got there and know that it was all worthwhile.

Here's the Story...

2009-01-27T17:10:00.000-05:00

So I was on the bus today back from taking skiing lessons and I was thinking about something I'm calling my birthday present to myself, my 20 goals for my 20's. I just turned 20 little more than a week ago and I figured rather than wallow in all those things I didn't do as a teenager, I would write down the twenty things I wanted to do before I was thirty. The list isn't done yet, and when it is I'll post it, but until then let me explain my hope for this blog. My new goal was going to be that I would write every day in my 20's, and I realized that this could be something where I could share my thoughts, my essays, my stories, and just keep writing. For those of you who find this I hope you enjoy it.