Treasure Island

I recently finished Treasure Island, mainly cause it was a book I feel like I should've read already. And indeed, I probably should've read it when I was 12--it makes a good primer for youthful imagination, a gateway to higher reading perhaps, but it's not exactly mind-blowing literature. A competently-told adventure story I suppose, and mercifully concise, but possessing none of the epic grandeur of a masterpiece.

I will say this though; the ending was much more melancholy than what I was expecting--for I do recall watching various cinematic adaptations of the tale growing up, all of which portrayed Treasure Island as a coming-of-age tale, emphasizing the relationship between the bright-eyed Jonathan Hawkins and the pirate-with-a-heart-of-gold Long John Silver, all set against the exotic backdrop of a swashbuckling adventure on the high seas.

But in the book itself, I beheld no coming-of-age self-awareness, no bildungsroman narrative of a boy becoming a man, no sudden moral awakening; the island itself is not lush and tropic and paradisaical or Eden-esque; the pirates are not romantic, adventurous scallywags--no, the pirates are filthy, cowardly, and despicable; the island is a hotbed of typhoid and extreme solitude; and the narrative leaves none morally awakened or mature, but rather leaves most everyone dead and the survivors damaged.

Hawkins himself has no romantic memories of the island or the pirates, but only nightmares of Long John Silver, and remembers the island itself only as "accursed."

What's more, none of the characters seem to exercise any real agency; everyone just gets sucked into the treasure hunt seemingly whether they want to or not. As soon as the characters, whether pirate or British, learn of a treasure, they all just head after it, mindlessly, without a moment of introspection. There is no noble purpose for the hunt--no mother's inn to be saved, no orphanage to rescue, just treasure to be dug up, for its own sake.

The treasure itself is a zone of negative energy, a sort of black hole that sucks everyone into its orbit against their will, destroying lives both literally and metaphorically; Silver loses a leg, Pew his eyes, Ben his sanity, the pirates their lives, and Hawkins his pleasant dreams, all in the pursuit of a treasure that is recovered as an afterthought.

All in all, if any lesson is to be gleaned from Treasure Island, it would seem to be a negative commentary on the pursuit of riches for their own sake.

Lawrence of Arabia

Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that the phrase "lightning flashes" is tautologically redundant, and is indicative of a central flaw in Western reasoning. That is, lightning doesn't cause the flash, it doesn't give the flash, it is the flash. Lightning cannot flash because lightning is, by definition, a flash. Nietzsche claimed we in the West commit the same mistake with people; we say "people act," when in reality people are the acts. We don't produce acts, we are them, we are made up of nothing else. We are what we do.

Nietzsche's thought has been on my mind ever since rewatching Lawrence of Arabia over the weekend. What stuck out to me is how much each character is inherently performing an act--Prince Fiesel, the British generals, the American reporter, the Arab chiefs, TE Lawrence himself. Their actions are all very deliberate, calculated--and concealing. The British are just as wary of revealing their true motives as the Arabs are. Every act is a concealment. The symbol never corresponds to the referent. In one telling scene, Lawrence is walking along the top of a toppled train, his shadow is cast by the sun, and the camera makes the people appear to be following a shadow, not a man; people are never following a person, but the shadow, the image. The image is more important than the man, for the image is the man.


But it's more complicated than that; for after a stretch, one gets the impression that though the signifier is unstable, there is also a lack of a referent behind the signifier. That is, the signifier alone becomes the thing that is important, not what it is supposed to represent. Hence, Lawrence's guide is killed on sight because he's wearing the clothes of the wrong tribe; flags are always displayed prominently for each tribe; the British soldiers are always portrayed in ceremonial stances; Lawrence, who saves a man from the desert to prove that "nothing is written" must later kill the same man to prevent tribal warfare, and a chieftan says simply, "ah, then it was written," signifying that the word is more important than the referent; the American reporter writes stories about Lawrence--for different motives than Prince Fiesal, but then the story itself becomes more important; and the chieftans refuse to have their picture taken, for the photo is a signifier, and the Arabs understand that the person's acts themselves become the signifier, and hence resent being replaced by another symbol of themselves.

In each case, repeatedly throughout the film, the signifiers replace the person itself (especially as Lawrence himself becomes a legend, and refuses it but can't), but then, the signifiers are the person itself. The lightning is the flash, the person is their acts. There is nothing behind the flash, there is nothing behind the person.

But then, there is nothing in the desert itself; it's emptiness is the point of it. It's utter lack of signification is the source of its significance. Perhaps that's why Lawrence says he prefers the desert "because its clean;" there is not significance. You are not the signifier any longer. All that is left is the sheer beauty itself, desolate, clean, over-whelming. The beauty of the movie itself is all that is left to consider.

Perhaps Rain on Your Wedding Day Really Is Ironic?

Over the years, Alanis Morissette's 1995 song "Ironic" has taken a lot of flack for not actually being ironic, e.g. the line "It's like rain on your wedding day" is merely inconvenient, not actually ironic per se, goes the argument. The running joke has become that "Ironic," by not actually being ironic, is itself an act of irony.

While no great Alanis fan myself, I can't help but note the word ironic is itself difficult to pin down; the on-line dictionary merely lists ironic's definition as:

1. Characterized by or constituting irony.

2. Given to the use of irony. See Synonyms at sarcastic.

3. Poignantly contrary to what was expected or intended

Needless to say, the first definition is purely tautological, the second only gives a synonym (which starts the referential cycle all over), and the third is broad and vague, inclusive of all forms of disappointment and contradiction.

So, really, if you were expecting sunshine and rainbows and puppies on your wedding day, naive as that may be, might rain coming instead be a precisely-inverted violation of your expectations, and hence sincerely qualify as ironic?

Also, I think if you paid for a ride but then found out that it was free all along, you would indeed relate the story to your friends later as an ironic incident.

And if you were to have a thousand spoons, but really only needed one knife (presumably to cut a box open or something, for which your curious over-abundance of spoons would be unhelpful), you might indeed sigh bemusedly and mutter, "ah, the irony!"

I'm not saying these are all clear-cut examples of irony; for example, meeting the man of your dreams and then meeting his beautiful wife, while certainly frustrating, perhaps even tragic, I'm not sure can quite be stretched to qualify as "ironic." But that's just the thing--what does qualify as ironic? How do you define it? If you can't precisely explicate its meaning, then perhaps you are unqualified to determine when a song is ironic and when it is not.

All I'm saying is that perhaps Alanis Morissette has the last laugh; the irony isn't that the song is unironic, the irony is that it is ironic, and we've been misunderstanding it all along.

Ashes to Asher

He should’ve been a member of the landed gentry, maybe two, three hundred years ago. I’m thinking somewhere in western England, maybe near Wales, though most anywhere in Western Europe would’ve suited him fine. There, he could’ve happily sat alone in his room, daintily drinking his tea, awaiting dinner, waited on servants and maids older than he, surrounded by whichever eccentric books and art alerted his fancy, entertaining visitors (and I do mean entertain), perhaps occasionally patronizing the traveling minstrels and puppet shows that passed through his country hamlet, inviting them in to delight and amuse him. He'd have given them his sincerest applause. And in that state he could’ve lived gloriously useless (and that at a time when to be useless was a compliment), fulfilling the sole function of carrying title, him and his wife of arranged marriage, happily all the days of his life.

Not that I’m saying we should bring back the landed gentry, or that that was somehow a nobler era. Good riddance to 'em and God Bless America, says I. I’m just saying that that one era in history, that one social class, would’ve been a perfect fit for him.

Mom probably would get mad at me for saying so; she'd have told me that back in those dark days, he would've been locked up in some sick asylum, filthy with disease and rats and ticks and such, in stone-cells dank and damp, where sadistic, shifty-eyed doctors in powdered-wigs would poke and prod him mercilessly while self-righteous priests, grown fat on indulgences, cast devils from him, beat him with stripes and called him wicked. Or something.

But this isn't three, two, or even one hundred years ago, and we have social security now and clinics with compassionate, competent professionals and entire academic disciplines dedicated to help with cases as him. I've even edited their dissertations. Sincerely, I'm not dissing on them, I'm just saying that all things considered equal, he should have been of the regency. I think his fastidiousness nature would have made him a perfect fit. He'd probably have made a delightful character in a Jane Austen novel.

But the thing about the past not being the past is that the future will come soon enough, and after we've lowered his casket into the ground and drive home I'll probably unthinkingly put on David Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes," and I'll half expect him to suddenly appear and ask with a big ol' grin on his face, saying, "What if Weird Al did a parody called 'Ashes to Asher,' about Pokemon, huh? Do you think that'd be funny?" and that thought would occur to me right when Bowie belts out "I've never done good things/I've never done bad things/I've never done anything out of the blue..." and the tears would stream down my face like the rain from the Washington sky...

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Quite frankly, he'll probably outlive us all. He called me once just to tell me that he'd almost been hit by a car but was ok now. Texted everyone he knew about it. He'll be the one listening to Weird Al himself while I'm off to meet my Maker, to be interrogated on how I treated the humblest of God's creations.

Raiders of the Lost Ark, Freud, Shakespeare, and Moby-Dick

Last night I had a dream wherein I analyzed the ending to Raiders of the Lost Ark in the context of Freud's Theme of the Three Caskets and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. See, Freud believed that the reason the lead casket, as opposed to the gold or silver ones, is the correct casket in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice is because boxes are representations of the womb, and therefore of woman; and that the gold and silver represent woman as mother and woman as mate respectively, while the lead represents woman as mother nature, or death. In other words, the hero must make friends with the necessity of dying, with dissolution. (With my car once again in the shop, I suppose dissolution is once again on my mind).

Anyhoo, in my dream I realized that Freud's analysis is complicated by the ending to Raiders of the Lost Ark, wherein the Nazis get their faces melted when they open the ark (a casket, or "womb"), while Indiana Jones and Miriam keep their eyes closed. In that moment, the Nazis have accepted the third casket, the casket of death, quite literally--too literally, in fact, as demonstrated by the aforementioned face-melting (not unlike a Jimmy Page solo, especially the one in "Heartbreaker" on Led Zeppelin II).

Yet Indiana Jones, by not staring into the third casket, isn't immediately absorbed into the dust of the ark (I use the qualifier "immediately" because we are all going to return to the dust, "for dust thou art..." one day, and the hero must still make reconciliation with the necessity of dying), but by not looking he still hasn't excepted the death that is his inheritance, and thus still does not inherit the riches of the ark--again, quite literally, for the ark is hidden up away in a warehouse for the film's dramatic ending.

In other words, the Nazis wished to control the third casket (that is, they wanted to control death) while Indiana merely wished to contain the third casket, yet neither got what they wanted--death remains permanently outside our control or containment.

Raiders consequently reminded me of the ending to Moby-Dick; Capt. Ahab, you see, wished to kill the white whale because for him it represented "the inscrutable thing...which I hate." Ahab, already maimed by the white whale, feared and loathed more than anything the inevitable dissolution of all things which perpetually threatens to swallow us all (as it had already swallowed his leg); Ahab's solution, then, is to slay the dissolution itself, the "inscrutable thing," basically, to destroy Freud's third casket.

Ishmael, by contrast, actually wishes to be annihilated, to lose his identity and subjectivity, and be absorbed into the ineffable whole; on the crows nest feeling the waves, or squeezing the oil out of the blubber and thus being intoxicated by its fumes, Ishmael keeps imagining himself getting lost into the whole, merging into some sort of mystical unity with God, the world, Creation, his fellow man, in everlasting brotherhood. Yet each time he feels himself in this reverie, his foot slips, or he goes back above deck, and the spell breaks, and he realizes that he is as isolated and separate from the world around him as before.

The irony of Moby-Dick's ending, then, is that neither Ishmael nor Ahab get what they want--Ahab is slain by the white whale, annihilated by the "inscrutable thing" he wished to annihilate, while Ishmael is left more alone than ever, not united with his shipmates going down with the Pequod, but instead adrift alone on the lonely sea, the final line of the book reading "It was the devious cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan." Ahab wished to be free from loss-of-self, while Ishmael desired to merge with it, but neither got what they wanted. Like the Ark itself, the dissolution defies our ability to either control or contain it.

Hamlet with a Southern Accent

My English teachers throughout college have been fond of pointing out that the American Southern accent is probably much more like the Renaissance English accent than the current English accent. Recently it's occurred to me that, assuming that's true, then Shakespeare probably sounded more like a Georgia planter than Ewen McGregor. That's when it hit me--how much more awesome would Hamlet sound in a southern accent?!

And I don't even mean a parody or a satirical version, I mean a strait-faced, Southern Gothic, gravely voiced Prince of Denmark gripping a skull drawn from the Mississippi mud, drolling, "To be or not to be, that is the question...for whet'er its nobler in da mind, to suffer da slings and arrows of outrageous fortune...." Just say it loud, try it, the more I do it that the more I think that this, this is in fact is how Hamlet should be performed, that this is how you convincingly deliver those lines that have defeated so many actors before! C'mon, say the following out loud in a drawl southern accent, it's fun, I promise:

"There are more things in heaven and hell than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio..."

"Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity."
"Ay madam, it is common."

"And since brevity is the soul of wit, I will be brief." (Polonius I think makes more sense as a long-winded old southerner)

"Use everyman according to his deserts, and who will escape whipping?"

"We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots"

"Lord we know what we are, but know not what we may be" (I'm especially attracted to the idea of Ophelia as a southern dame)

"There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all."

On The Semiotics of Sleeveless Shirts

Once, while interning for a newspaper in Mexico, I went with my office to Hard Rock Cafe-Guadalajara, for the CD-debut party of a local Anglo band whose members had apparently been moved there by their parents sometime in the late 80s/early 90s, as that's about when their musical influences seemed to end. This band's get-up could best be described as a watered-down combo of Skidrow, Bon Jovi, and Pearl Jam, only not as good. This time warp was best exemplified by the utterly un-ironic sleeveless shirt that came in the press kit:

It's an un-ironic sleeveless, I say! UN-IRONIC SLEEVELESS!!!

Because that's the thing about sleeveless t-shirts; almost anywhere else in the world, the worst you can about them is that they're kinda douchey.

Not so in Mormondom. A few weeks ago I went with a friend to Fork Fest, a music festival for local Utah Valley bands. My buddy was especially keen on seeing the headliner Joshua James, a nationally-touring indie-folk artist, as well as Provo UT native and LDS Church member. My friend described Jame's music as religiously-themed without being maudlin, intense in a way that would never make an EFY CD, in short, just the sort of LDS art he was looking for.

But when Joshua James finally took the stage, my friend left after only a couple songs, dejected and heart-broken. Why? Joshua James was wearing a sleeveless shirt.

Because we have a separate system of semiotics here in the LDS Church--and while in, say, Mexico, a sleeveless shirt merely says "Hey, I still think it's 1992" or "look at my arms, cuz I'm a douchebag," in Mormondom a sleeveless shirt is an unmistakable statement about your attitude towards the most sacred rituals of the LDS religion. Not once during his set did James ever have to say into the microphone "I've lost my faith" or "I'm currently having serious doubts about my religion"--he merely had to wear a sleeveless shirt, one that made clear he had no undershirt on, and every Mormon there could read it, wordlessly.

We talk sometimes about "Mormon culture" as a punchline, as though culture were some sort of monolithic bloc, or as though terms like "Molly Mormon" or "Peter Priesthood" weren't fictionalized constructs we merely apply to any Mormon we don't like. I almost want to dismiss the entire category of "Mormon culture" as a fiction itself, since no Mormon I actually know seems to conform to this elusive, ethereal beast. But, I do confess we have our own semiotics, our own system of codes and symbols, that can speak as forcefully as any words on a page.

The Book at the End of the World

So last night I was talking with a friend about the ending of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Hundred Years of Solitude," wherein the final Aureliano finally reads the undecipherable book given by the gypsies at the novels beginning. As a final catastrophic storm destroys the town of Macondo, Aureliano realizes that the book is describing the entire history of Macondo right up to this final storm, ending with a description of Aureliano reading the book; that is, Aureliano is reading himself reading Hundred Years of Solitude.

I was reminded of this ending again this morning as I read the following in the Book of Mormon:

"But the words which are sealed he shall not deliver, neither shall he deliver the book. For the book shall be sealed by the power of God, and the revelation which was sealed shall be kept in the book until the own due time of the Lord, that they may come forth; for behold, they reveal all things from the foundation of the world unto the end thereof.

And the day cometh that the words of the book which were sealed shall be read upon the house tops; and they shall be read by the power of Christ; and all things shall be revealed unto the children of men which ever have been among the children of men, and which ever will be even unto the end of the earth." (2 Nephi 27:10-11)

I thought that was pretty trippy. Of course, the difference is that for Marquez, a book that contains everything and that can't be read till the end of the world is moment of great melancholy, while for Nephi it is a thing a of great joy. I've been trying to localize why that is.

For Your Info

About a year ago I did some freelance work for a mortgage broker; he was writing an article for the real estate section of a newspaper and he needed someone to dumb it down, and, well, I was his man.

In the process of said "dumbing-down," I got him to explain to me just what caused the sub-mortgage crisis in '07 that culminated in the recession of '08-present, which was useful for a non-economics major like myself.

According to him, since home-owners spend upwards of 30 years paying off their mortgage, the mortgage brokers themselves make their actual money by taking all the mortgages they sell, bundling them up into a Bond, and then selling them on the stock market. People buy these bonds because they have guaranteed interest rates; and as home-owners pay off their mortgage over the years, part of that payment goes into the interest rates.

Mortgage bonds aren't as lucrative as stocks, but nor are they as volatile--people invest, say, their retirement in mortgage bonds instead of stocks because bonds always have a guaranteed return (at least that was the theory).

The mortgages themselves are pro-rated; that is, a mortgage given to someone with excellent credit is AAAA rated, while someone with worst credit is considered "sub-prime" and isn't supposed to be approved for mortgage--or if they still are, they aren't put into a mortgage bond, because mortgage bonds are supposed to composed strictly of AAAA rated bonds.

But some unscrupulous brokers decided to sneak some of these sub-prime mortgages into the AAAA rated bonds, in hopes of increasing the number of bonds they sell, figuring that one little sup-prime, or just a few, won't make a difference (you see where this is going).

Now, the govt. is supposed to regulate that sort of thing,but in a culture of de-regulation, no one was paying very close attention. Besides, the money was too good--major brokers like Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns bought up the supposedly AAAA rate mortgage bonds, in part to enable mortgage brokers to continue giving housing loans out at an accelerated rate.

This was during the housing bubble, and we could only keep building houses indefinitely as long people were buying houses; so to keep people buying houses, we were all willing to let some sub-primes sneak in there, figuring the market could easily handle them.

Of course it's impossible to keep building houses indefinitely, just as it's impossible for the market to rally upward indefinitely, and there was dip--a very minor one at first. Some people got laid off, couldn't make their mortgage payments, and suddenly those supposedly AAAA bonds weren't able to give their interest payments.

There turned out to be quite a few more of those sub-prime mortgages than brokers had gauged, and so suddenly all these bonds were toxic, that is, incapable of giving steady interest rates and therefore worthless and unsellable. Before a full year had passed, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns had collapsed, and the govt. was bailing out banks just to ensure that brokers could still sell houses; otherwise (according to him) the entire housing market would have collapsed completely.

This broker also informed me that during the housing bubble, the U.S. was creating 250,000 jobs a month, the most in America's history; now, these were mostly low-level construction jobs (even I had a construction job then), but they were still jobs nonetheless, and unemployment hovered around 4%.

But as of year ago, he said the U.S. economy had in fact been creating 100,000 jobs a month. However, by then millions of jobs had already been lost, and an average of 120,000 people were entering the work force a month--college grads, immigrants, housewives re-entering the workforce when their husbands got laid off, retired people re-entering after losing their retirement, etc. He said that even if we were magically able to get back to 2006 housing bubble rates of job creation--and somehow sustain that job creation indefinitely--it would still take us roughly 7 years (I suppose it's 6 now) to get back to 4% unemployment.

All this is just a round-about way of explaining my impatience for those who blame the economy on the present administration, who believe that unemployment benefits, welfare, and health care reform are part of the problem (and not a response to the problem), and who believe the market should be further deregulated and allowed "to work itself out."

Day of the Dead

A short story in five parts. Fiction.

1

I went to Mexico as a reporter; there’s no such thing as an objective reporter, incidentally. You become a part of whatever you report. I’ve made my peace with it. I’ve made my peace with a lot of things. Never by choice.

I was walking along the rows of shops—temporary stands, set up only for the month of October, selling their wares for el día de los muertos, The Day of the Dead. A holiday unique to Mexico, which I always found curious, since the alliteration is so much more pleasing to the English ear than the Spanish. Two voiced alveolar plosives, that hard “deh” sound, “D-ay” of the “D-ea-D,” a harsh stop of air that brings a sudden halt, like the sudden cessation of breath that comes with death itself. A triple-decker of ds, at that—a double-death, further enunciating what the day is about, death. Day of the Dead should’ve been an English holiday, I’m telling you. Or at least an American.

But it’s a Mexican one instead; it will always be foreign to us, it will always be foreign to me, just as death will always be more than we can face, just as life will always be more than we can bear. Because that’s the other thing about being a reporter—no matter how much you become a part of what you report, it will never fully be part of you, it will always be othered, foreign, alien, outside of you. I’ve made my peace with it. I’ve made my peace with a lot of things. Never by choice.

These rows of shops, I called them temporary stands, but only in the sense that they’re up only a month a year. As I interviewed some of these owners they revealed that some of these stands had been in the family since the 1910 Revolution. Emilio Zapata was riding around for real, and not just as a spectre haunting the hills of Morelos, overlooking the small shops and gringa stands scattered across the Republic, when this family began selling skeletons dressed as mariachi singers.

“You talk too much,” said Mike, while I examined a skeleton shaped chocolate bar. Everything has to be skeletons with Day of the Dead; they euphemize nothing, they have no equivalent phrases for “passed away” or “kicked the bucket” or what have you, people, loved ones, forgotten ones, all “se murio,” all just die, and become skeletons.

“I don’t recall saying any of that outloud,” I replied at last, “Or saying any of that to you, anyways.”

“No, I told you that first day of High School, don’t you remember? You talk too much, it puts people off, you’ll make more friends if you just keep your mouth shut, is all I’m sayin.”

“I remember.”

“Dammit man, look at me, it’s me, Mike! Your good buddy Mike; I was, like, your best friend Freshmen year.”

“I think you were my only friend,” I replied, “And I bitterly resented every moment of it.”

“Ah, is that’s how it’s gonna be?” he said, “Dude, let me tell you what, if it wasn’t for me, you’d of just cried yourself every day in the bathroom after school, crying, crying that nobody liked you!”

“Yeah, I learned to stop crying,” I said as I tried to translate a poster for sale in my head:

No vale nada la vida

La vida no vale nada

Comienza siempre llorando

Y así llorando se acaba.

Up in the states we’re normally just content to have a banner read, “Happy Halloween!” But this isn’t Halloween, and certainly isn’t the states.

“Hey, man, you can read that?” Michael asks me.

“Life means nothing, nothing means life, it begins in crying, and so in crying ends,” I translate.

“Dude, that’s depressing,” he says.

“It rhymes better in Spanish.”

“You always did pay attention in Mrs. Fay’s class,” he reminisces, “Everyone else was just trying to get the stupid elective out of the way—the Mexicans were just tryin’ to get an easy A! Ya remember? Honest to God, the only Spanish word I learned was ‘fea,’ because I knew it meant ‘ugly’ and I could call her ‘Mrs. Ugly’ whenever I wanted!”

“Uh-huh.” I looked at the Mexican wrestling masks; always so colorful in the late afternoon sun.

“But you man, you,” he continued, “You seemed to actually want to learn! Well, I’m glad it all panned out for you, you actually learned Spanish, I knew you would.”

“I didn’t learn Spanish in High School,” I say off-handedly.

He jogs up to keep pace with me as I meander along. “Well, where the hell did you learn Spanish, if not in Mrs. Fay’s class?” he asks me.

"Oh, you learned right here in Mexico?" he said at last.

"No, I knew Spanish long before I came here," I replied.

"Dude, where've you been?"

For the first time I stop casually and look him in the eye. “Michael, High School happened a long time ago. Many things came after High School. In fact, High School is a distant memory.”

I keep walking. “Oh, is that’s how it is?” he repeats, “You’ve already forgotten your good buddy Mike, all he did to keep your spirits up Freshmen year, that’s all nothing, I’m forgotten now, a distant memory?”

I answer by walking silently.

“C’mon, man,” he tries again, “Do you remember anything about me at all? The mere fact that I’m here talking to you at all must mean I mean something to you, right?”

“Mike, I cried all night the night you died,” I say casually, pausing to take a picture.

“Oh, no, you didn’t,” he cocks his head, “After all the things I did to you? I used you cruelly, man, I don’t deny it for a second. I bet you breathed a sigh of relief when you heard the news.”

“I cried all night,” I repeated, “But I haven’t cried since, don't get me wrong.”

“Dude, I know you better than that,” he said, “I may’ve only known you Freshmen year, but I know you better than that.”

“Do you now,” I said nonchalantly, making a note on my press pad.

“You weren’t just crying over me, give me a little credit, man.”

I turned and faced him again. “Yes, Michael, you’re right,” I say dispassionately, “I was crying that I didn’t go to that party with you, because there was drinking, and I was too scared to go somewhere where there was drinking, and hated that I was too scared, and hated that even if I wasn’t too scared you would’ve been the only person I could’ve hung out with, and I hated that I resented my only friend so much, and hated that I wasn’t there to stop you from getting in that car, and angry that I probably wouldn’t have been able to stop you even if I had been there.”

He stepped back a little, his face falling a little. “You really got over me, didn't you,” he said at last, “Not a tear, not even a quiver for your old buddy Mike.”

“I’ve made my peace with it,” I said, pulling out my camera to take some more pictures of the displays, “I’ve made my peace with a lot of things.”

“You’ve changed, man,” he said, “You’ve really changed from the scared little boy I tormented in High School, haven’t you.”

“I should certainly hope so,” I said, purchasing a dulce. “Cinco pesos” said the shop owner. “Gracias,” I smile, accepting my change for a veinte.

“Are those good?” Michael asked me.

“I like ‘em,” I replied.

“My, my, my,” he enthused, “Things certainly have changed since High School; things have changed since freshman year, even, I suppose. I guess none of it really mattered after all, what happened back then.”

I pause for a second. “I’m sure if you’d lived, you’d still be living in the olden days,” I said at last, “Most everyone does. I try not to.”

He laughed out loud at that one. “I’ll say!” he snorted, “But hey, I’m gonna call you out man; if you’re not living in the past with everyone else, then why am I here, huh? Why did you remember me here?”

“I think the better question is why did you come here,” I said.

And then I saw something I’d never seen him do before, something that caused me to think maybe this wasn’t really a hallucination, a memory gone wild, but perhaps a ghost after all, preparing to visit his loved ones on the Day of the Dead.

He began to tear up.

Not cry, mind you (I’m not entirely sure the Dead can), but it was a dejected look, a sad vulnerability, like he’d never shown before.

“I guess I…I…I’m just looking for someone to remember me, is all,” he said at last.

“Michael,” I said walking ahead without looking at him, “I never forgot you.”

2

This was in Guadalajara, mind you; named for a much smaller city in Spain. It’s an Arabic name, meaning “singing rocks,” like in a brook, left over from the Moorish occupation, before the reconquest of 1492, and the conquest of the Aztecs soon afterwards. But Day of the Dead was an Aztec holiday first, but it soon conquered the conquistadores instead. Wherever the Spanish have conquered they’ve been conquered right back, from the Arabs to the Aztecs, they couldn’t fight them with their swords and steel.

The town Centro of Guadalajara is filled with Baroque buildings from that first colonization—towering edifices, breath-taking in their beauty, proclaiming the glory of an empire that long ago disappeared off the earth. And beneath these noble shadows, shops, restaurants, hotels, tourists, from both near and abroad. It was while walking these cobble-stone streets that Jessica caught up with me.

“How’s the kid,” I asked.

“How did you know I had a kid?” she asked with that mischievous smile of hers, her amber hair glowing in the sun.

“Heard it through the grape vine,” I said, still not looking at her.

“I have a second on the way now,” she said coyly, like she always did.

“Good for you.”

“You never did meet my husband, did you,” she said flashing her pearly whites.

“I’m sure he’s a wonderful man,” I remarked, striding into a wall-side restaurant, “Dos gringas, por favor, con carne del pastor y chonchillo.”

She giggled flirtatiously. “You’re so cute when you speak Spanish!”

“Why don’t you go bug your husband, instead,” I said, waiting for my food.

“Oh, is that anyway to talk to your lover?” she pouted with those irresistible baby blues.

“Jessica,” I said, at last turning to look at her, though it pained me to, “If you have a second kid on the way, then by that very grammatical construction you must still be alive, so what are you doing here?”

“Ooh, such deductive logic,” she cooed teasingly, “You must be a genius or something!”

“Una Coca tambien, por favor,” I ordered. Mexican Cokes use real can sugar, not high fructose corn syrup, like in the states; makes it sweeter, hits the spot on an 85 degree day.

“I never died, at least not yet, of course,” she continued, “But I’m pretty sure our love did, honey.”

“Dead and buried, huh,” I took a sip.

“Oh, c’mon sexy, it wasn’t that easy to get over me, was it?”

“Was it that easy for you?”

Finally she dropped her heavenly smile and heaved a sigh. “I waited forever for you, you know,” she said at last.

“I know,” I said, accepting my change from the waiter.

“You don’t know how many nights I lost over you, waiting for you to come around, trying to forget you and never being able to.”

“I can imagine.”

“You know, at any moment you could’ve had me, do you know that?”

“I was aware.”

“Any time, you could’ve taken me back, and I would’ve come running into your arms.”

“I know.”

“Said the word, and I would’ve been putty in your hands. You could’ve proposed to me, and I would’ve said ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ a million times over.”

“Aquí, señor,” said the cook, serving me my plate; gringas are like quesadillas, only larger and with much more meat inside; a Guadalajara local favorite. I picked up a lime and squeezed the juice on it.

“I would’ve been yours forever, I wanted to be yours forever.” Now she sat on the stool next to me and smiled again. “But then one day, the fever broke, the spell disappeared, and I didn’t want you anymore.”

I took a bite from my gringa, chewed thoughtfully. “I know,” I said after swallowing.

“Dead and buried,” she echoed, “And when Matthew asked me out—that’s my husband, you really should meet him, a wonderful man, like you said—well, he caught me at the right time, and I fell madly in love…”

“You were always good at that,” I said, taking another bite.

“I’ll just ignore that last comment, honey-bunches!” she giggled, slapping my arm playfully, “I loved you so long, I guess that love sort of just took on a life of its own, because now that it’s dead and buried it still wonders the earth after you.”

I took another sip to wash down my gringa.

“So, yeah,” she became serious again, “It took me far longer than you, but I did finally get over you.”

Now I turned and looked at her, puzzled by her comment. “Jessica,” I said, “I never got over you.”

She blinked a few times, like she did whenever she got choked up at a bad chick-flick. “You mean…you still…”

“Mm-hm,” I said, taking another bite.

“Well,” she sighed at last, “Just so you know, I really did! Get over you, I mean. Our love is long dead and buried, like I said and I will never ask for you again. I don’t even think of you when I look in his eyes; I don’t consider what our babies would’ve looked like instead. I don’t even compare you to him when we kiss, just so you know.”

I took a sip of coke.

“It seems like you were trying to spare me, spare my feelings, if I recall right,” she said thoughtfully, “But I guess you’re the one who needs to be spared, huh, babe?”

“I’ve made my peace with it, babe,” I replied, lifting the Coke to my lips without looking at her, “I’ve made my peace with a lot of things.”

3

If you want to experience a foreign country, you must ride their public transportation. You can tell a lot the character, the spirit, of a country, by how punctual their buses pass, or how hard the driver takes the turns down narrow alleys, or how passionately lovers kiss while sandwiched between drunks, school children, elderly women selling dulces for a peso apiece, shoppers, and day laborers on their way home to their families. During rush hour there’s standing room only in Guadalajara. But late at night or middle of the day, you can have a couple seats to yourself.

“Well, hello-uh there, my boy!” said the old man, sitting next to me, in spite of the near empty bus.

“Hi grandpa,” I said, not looking up.

“And-uh, how do ya like ol’ Me-hee-co?” He always loved to over-pronounce the h-sounded “x” in Mexico.

“I’m enjoying it,” I said, still looking out the window, admiring the shops that must be a mundane view for them.

“And what sorts-a sights are ya seein, ma’ boy?”

I pulled out my press-pad to review my notes. “Nothing I haven’t seen already.”

“Oh, ma’ boy,” he almost sang, “You gotta see new things every day, or you’ll start to grow old, like me! Seeing new things is what makes each day worth it; otherwise the days just fly by, and then one day you’re 90 years old, and you wonder where the days went.” Like he ever got old, really.

“I’ve seen plenty of new things, grandpa.”

His eye gleamed. “I'm sure ya think so, my blessed boy,” he said with a wink.

I got off at my stop. He followed me. We were at another park filled with Day of the Dead shops, displaying their wares. “You know, you weren’t just another grandson to me,” he began again, “I always took a sort-a likin’ to ya, even from the first time your Momma showed you off to me…”

I looked at the pavement as I stepped. “I appreciate it, grandpa.”

“No, I’m not sure you quite do yet, ma’ boy,” he continued, “I loved all my grandkids, ma’ boy, and I think I saw through all of you better then ye all saw yourselves.”

I approached a stand and examined the figurines, one by one; there were handmade skeletons teaching class, playing trumpets, playing soccer (futbol, excuse me), getting married (the Freudian implications there were staggering), dancing, sitting on the toilet (that one made me smirk), even little skeleton pall-bearers.

“And I love ya’ll anyways,” he chuckled, “Each and every one of ya! That should provide ya with a bitten of perspective, dunnit, ma’ boy?”

I confessed I smiled a bit. “Beauty in everyone, eh?”

“I’ve made my peace with it,” he smiled, winking at me.

“I’ve made my peace with a lot of things,” I said to myself.

“Have ya, now?” he cocked his head towards me, stroked his white mustache, “Ma’ boy, I’m not sure yous is quite ol’ enough to understand what it means to make peace with somethin’.”

“What does it mean to make peace with somethin’,” I said quickly. The Mexicans, it seemed, didn’t take much notice of me seemingly talking to myself, I considered. Guero loco, they probably thought, just another crazy white guy who thinks he can change by crossing borders.

“What does it mean to make peace with somethin’?” he declared in that dramatic pause that old people know how to use, that infuriates you because they of all people should not want to waste time you consider, though you miss that joyful drag terribly once they’re gone, “Ma’ boy, ma’ good-hearted boy, it means exactly what it means! There’s a peace, and you make it, simple as that. No hidden puzzles to confuse and confound ya, no, ma’ boy, to make peace is as plain-spoken as the nose on yer face; you know you’ve made peace cause there’s a peace that follows.”

He paused again, before continuing with, “Have you had a peace follow, ma’ boy? Have ye really made peace?”

“Never by choice,” I replied.

He roared at that one. “Oh, ma’ good boy!” he laughed, wiping a tear from his eye—a tear from laughter, “ye just might learn yet, ye might just learn yet!”

I couldn’t help but ask, “Learn what, exactly?”

“Ma’ boy, you’re still so very young,” he said, “I know you think you’re old already, but you’ve got a whole life in front of ye to make peace with.”

I put down a figurine I'd been examining. “Hey Grandpa.”

“Yes, ma’ boy.”

“I miss you terribly.”

“I know, I know…” He said cheerfully, patting me paternally on the back.

4

There is an appropriate run-up festival to the Day of the Dead here in Guadalajara; the Catholic festival of the procession of the Virgin of Zapopan, on the 12 of October. In the states, October 12 is of course Columbus Day, and a time for school children to crudely crayon out three brown ships in descending size and rhyme-ability—the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. In Mexico, however, there is no observance of Christopher Columbus’ fateful sighting of the Americas; nor are there monuments to Cortez, nor Universities named for Pizzaro. None of the conquistadores that shaped modern Mexico are remembered—for though the Mexicans speak the language of their conquerors, they pride instead in the blood of the Aztecs they brutalized. Hence, when a two foot statue is carried from the Cathedral in Guadalajara to the Bascillica in Zapopan, the little-lady will beat the Italian navigator every time.

Which I found to be exceedingly curious, since the religion through which they snub Columbus is the same faith the Italian imported over. For though the Mexicans may by and large be Aztec in ancestry, that bloodline is irrevocably mixed with the Spanish,as well—unlike the English, the Spanish married their conquests, rather than just slaughter them. I wondered sometimes what I would be like if my Puritan ancestors had married into the Delewares, the Hurons, the Cherokee, the Navajo. Perhaps the states would have a Day of the Dead, too, and we could finally claim the alliteration for our own.

But we don’t, and I’ve made peace with it (I’ve made peace with a lot of things), and so, though I could learn all I needed about the Virgin of Zapopan by the surfing the net, I decided that that’s not why I came to Mexico. So I got up at 4AM to join the throngs of the faithful, men, women, and children of all ages, whole families, to line the streets all the way from Guadalajara to Zapopan, waiting for their chance to glimpse and pay their respects to the Virgin.

Not that there wasn’t a show; when they call it a procession they mean a procession—a parade passes of native-dressed dancers, mariachi bands, priests, nuns, and children dressed as ghouls for the coming holiday. The excitement of the crowd kept me from drifting asleep again, and my vigilance was at last was rewarded when a grand wagon wheeled by to great fanfare, and someone in the crowd would cry out jubilantly, “¡Mira la Virgen de Zapopan!” and all the faithful around her echoed back, “¡Mira!”

“What does mira mean?” he asked me.

It took me a moment to recognize him. “Alex!” I exclaimed at last, “Oh, no, don’t tell me you’re dead, too!”

“Fallujah offensive, ’06,” he said with his trademark grin, “Roadside bomb, didn’t even see it coming.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” I say dejectedly.

“Hey, it wasn’t your fault, don’t worry about it.” I snort.

“I wasn’t accepting responsibility,” I say facetiously.

“So, hey, hey, you didn’t answer my question, what does ‘mira’ mean?”

“‘Look,’” I tell him.

“Look, the Virgin de Zapopan, eh?” he smiles good-naturedly, “That’s profound man, that’s profound.”

“Well, what are you doing here?” I ask, “I haven’t seen you since college, and I don’t think we were ever that close even then.”

“Hey, man, I’ve been dead a few years now,” he leans in, “It’s not like you were on the top of my list or anything.”

“Of course not,” I can’t help but smile. He was never anything but good natured. For some reason, he was the last person I expected to drop out of college and join the Army.

“I have been thinking of you though, man,” he says at last.

“The dead think?” I ask.

“Well, yeah, man, it’s not like we got a whole lot else to do,” he chuckles.

“I see.” Silence between us for a minute.

“That seems to bother you,” he notes, “What’s up, man, you’re not the kind of guy I’d expect to be bothered by having time to think.”

“I do like to think,” I confess, “But to have nothing else to do but…”

“Oh, man, it’s not like that!” he laughs, “Besides, it’s a different kind of thinking, really; you make your peace with things.”

“I’ve made my peace with a lot of things,” I begin.

At that he really roared.

“What?” I ask, a little irritated, as he wipes the tears of joy from his eyes.

“Oh, you living!” he manages, before bursting out laughing again.

“Oh, what, we’re a sub-group now?” I note wryly.

“My friend,” he says, finally composing himself, “You may not have thought of it this way, but you guys are so in the minority! There’s almost none of you, really, and are here for almost no time at all. You think you’ve made peace with things? And you’re alive? Man oh man oh man, I don’t even know where to begin with that one!”

His laughter was infectious, so in spite of myself, I couldn’t help but chuckle too. “That’s what I liked about you,” I said at last, “You were always so good-natured, nothing ever got the best of ya, you know that?”

“Oh, stop,” he said dismissively, “I was tortured by things too, man, we all are. I just hid it well, I suppose.”

It was another minute of silence before it finally occurred to me to ask: “So, what’s it like?”

“To die, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

Now he fell silent; his eyes got lost in the distance, probably the most pensive I’d ever seen him. “I would say…hm…man, it’s like a…I would say it’s like a fog lifting, but that’s not quite it, either...” He turned to face me, “It’s something you really have to experience for yourself, before we can talk about it, you understand?”

“No, not really,” I confessed, “I guess’ll find out soon enough, eh?”

“Eh, don’t be in a hurry,” he shrugged, “I know everyone says this, but everyone says this cause its true, man—just enjoy the moment you’re in, that’s all. The past, the future, man—it’s all one, really, all in the same moment.

“No, wait, man, listen to me for a second, seriously!” My attention had drifted away into thought, but now I turned to listen to him. “You know how many sunsets I watched in Iraq? The most brilliant colors come out of the horizon in the Iraqi desert. Took my breath away every time. And sometimes, even if it’d been a long day of fighting before, I’d still get up early enough the next morning to make sure I caught the sunrise, because it was just too brilliant to miss!

"You know, I’d actually volunteer for patrol duty outside the green zone? 'Cause that was where the stars were the most brilliant, and I tell ya, it doesn’t matter how bad things get, when you’re staring at the stars, away from the city lights, everything’s right, everything’s alright. Oh man oh man, I’m tellin’ ya, you shoulda’ been there man! You of all people woulda’ appreciated it...”

“I shoulda’ been in Iraq, huh?” I smirked.

“You should see the beauty around you,” he said, “It’s everywhere, waiting for you, no matter where...”

Finally I confess. “Alex, I wish I’d gotten to know ya better back in college.”

“You know I was thinking the same thing?” he said, “I wish I’d gotten to know you better, too.”

“It’s not like we hate each other or anything…”

“Oh, no, not even close! We just should’ve been better friends, is all. That’s why I decided to see how you was doin’, you know?”

“Making peace with things?” I asked.

“You betcha.”

5

The Day of the Dead itself is November 1^st, but you wouldn’t need a calendar to let you know; my widowed landlady, for example, had candle-lit shrines up to her dead loved ones. But it wasn’t a quiet night to herself—she had her children and grandchildren visiting, loud music playing, and fine tequila flowing. It’s not a time of mourning, you see—they did their mourning at the funeral—it’s a time of celebration, for this is a family reunion; even her dead husband will be their to dance with them.

But it’s at the cemeteries where the Day of the Dead is clearest of all; candles are lit and scattered through out all tombs, some with one or two, some blazing bright beneath the devotions of the multitude. It caused me to furrow my brow to consider that even in death there is popularity and loneliness.

And it was while I walked the candle-lit cobblestones of one of the city’s oldest cemeteries that I heard her walking beside me at last. “Hi, hon,” she chirped.

“Hey Mom,” I replied, not looking up.

“How was your day?” she said, as though I were just getting home from school.

“Turned in a couple pieces to my editor,” I replied, still fixated on the cobblestone, “Did some research on another.”

“So you decided to become a journalist after all.”

“I always said I would.”

“It’s really competitive out there,” she warned, “And I’ve heard that the newspaper industry itself is falling apart, so it’s only going to get harder out there for you. Oh, my son, are you sure you don’t want to still look for a career in something a little more…stable? Secure? Why, with your talents…”

“Look, Mom,” I turn to her, “It’s wonderful to see you again, more than I can put into words. But doesn’t it strike you as a bit ironic for you to be telling me about a dying industry?”

She looked at me with a perplexed expression, much like the one I’d given Jessica, “My son, what are you talking about?”

“Nothing,” I said sighing, and turned to walk again.

“I just don’t want you to be so reckless, my son,” she began again.

“I’ve been too cautious, Mom,” I replied, “And that’s killed me over and over again. I’ve been reckless ever since, and it’s kept me alive.”

“Eventually it will catch up with you, son,” she admonished, “You can’t runaway forever.”

“Running away?” I nearly shouted, “Mom, you were never reckless, and death caught you anyways, so what difference does it make?”

“Death?” she said, “Son, that’s not what I was talking about.”

Now I was confused. I turned to examine a well-lit tomb, that has a recreation of Michelangelo’s Madonna—the one where the Virgin Maria held her crucified Jesus in her lap.

“My son, my son, my dear, sweet boy…” she began again, putting her hands on my shoulders, “You thought you were already old, a full grown man, when I passed on…”

“Moriste, madre,” I corrected her, “You died Mom, you died, let’s not euphemize—”

“When I passed one,” she gently interrupted, “You thought you were an adult, but you were still just a child, a boy, barely even born. I could still remember holding you in my arms when I passed on, as though no time had passed at all. I knew even then how young you were, and what I feared more than anything, more even than death itself, was that you wouldn’t know how to handle it…”

“I’ve made peace with it, Mom,” I replied, “I’ve made peace with a lot of things, not just you.”

“Never by choice,” she added.

“Never by choice,” I echoed.

Now she put her hands on my face and turned it to face her. The candles and the stars reflected softly in her eyes. “My son, you have more in me than you realize. And I’ve watched you grow more than you realize. And for all you’ve done, I’ve realized that you’ve been afraid—like I was afraid on my deathbed, you’ve been afraid ever since.”

“I know, Mom,” I said, “Believe it or not, I know that. I’ve made peace with—”

“My precious boy, you don’t make peace with fear. To make peace is to not have fear anymore—”

“So has everyone been telling me—” I rolled my eyes.

“Ssh, Ssh,” she said, “I just want you to know, more than anything, that everything will be alright, you’ve been my pride and joy, and everything will be ok, everything will be fine…”

“Mom, I’m…” I didn’t finish.

“Everything will be fine in the end,” she continued, holding my tear filled face to her shoulder, patting my back, “I know you already know it, but you need to do more than know it; everything will be fine, everything will be fine in the end…”

I pulled my face from her shoulder and wiped my eyes. We sat on a nearby bench and watched the pilgrims lay candles on a nearby tomb.

“It’s a beautiful holiday, really,” I said.

“I’m glad I could spend it with you,” she said.

“Mom, I miss you most of all,” I said.

“I know, son,” she said. I turned to gaze on the candles again. They filled the darkness of the cemetery, until they merged with the city lights of Guadalajara over the hill, then to blend into the stars of the moonless sky, till the earth mirroredthe sky as one brilliant canvas of light against the everlasting night.

Mormons and India in Sherlock Holmes

After I took the GRE Subject, I decided that now, at last, was the time for me to actually read something that other people actually read for a change, to actually read leisurely, with no pressure, no deadlines, no burn-out. The question then became as to what I should therefore read; my mind had long ago rebelled against so-called "light" or "vapid" or "escapist" reading as insufferably unreadable--there's a reason I first picked up Dante's Inferno instead of another Dan Brown novel all those years ago; like Sherlock Holmes, "my mind rebels against lack of stimulation." So I split the difference between fun and literary by picking up "The Complete Sherlock Holmes" itself at Barnes & Noble, and then just kicked back and let Sherlock do my thinking for me.

So imagine my surprise when I read the first novella in the collection, "A Study in Scarlett," wherein we learn how Watson met Sherlock, are introduced to Holmes's acute abilities of reasoning and observation, and see him one-up Scotland Yard in catching a vengeful murderer, only to find roughly 5 chapters of intense anti-Mormon propaganda. Part I of "Scarlett" ends with Sherlock aptly nabbing the murderer, named Jefferson Hope, who then goes on to explain at length as to why he went about with his murders; it is a tale involving salacious Mormon polygamists in Salt Lake City kidnapping Hope's bride-to-be under the direction of Brigham Young. She dies shortly after she marries one of them in the endowment house; Hope swears vengeance, tracking the two polygamists responsible across the United States, then across Europe, finally catching them in London where he exacts revenge.

Mormonism itself has absolutely nothing to do with how Sherlock solves the crime; he resolves the crime through logic and clues, as he is famous for; he isn't finding clues in the Book of Mormon or Temple symbolism or any nonsense like that. My point, simply, is that the Utah back story is utterly gratuitous; Doyle could've saved himself five chapters by having Hope just say, "they murdered my wife so I tracked them down and killed them," and none of Sherlock's dazzling detective work would've been upset. The long Mormon back-story all smacks of pure penny-dreadful sensationalism, exploiting the worst slanders of Mormonism then circulating in England, just to make the story "sexier" and create sympathy for the villain.

Upon finishing the first tale, I reflected that, well, Mormons were hardly the only marginalized group to be characterized by degrading stereotypes in Victorian England; this thought was apt going into the second novella, "The Sign of Four," which features degrading stereotypes of India. For while the clues and deduction varied, "Sign of Four's" basic structure remains the same as "Scarlett's"; sensational murders, bizarre clues, the police baffled, Sherlock catches the sympathetic villain, who then gives his lengthy back story.

In this case, Jonathan Small is a British Army enlistee stationed down in India during an infamous mass uprising of the barbarous natives (that the people of India perhaps did not wish to be occupied by a foreign force and were justified in revolt never seems to occur to anyone). Down in India, "where a man's life is not as valued" as in Worcestershire (as though to commit murder is solely the predilection of "uncivilized" nations needing the restraining influence of noble Anglo-Saxons), Small has a knife put to his throat by one of his Indian guards; they tell him that if he swears to join him and two others (hence the "Four") in murdering a nobleman traveling in disguise, that they will split his wealth with him. He consents, the dirty deed is done that night, but after the uprising is quashed, all four of them are caught and put in prison, but not before they hide the fortune so none can find it.

Years past, and he finds that the English Captain running his prison is hard up in gambling debts; he uses the buried treasure to bargain with the Captain for an early release. But, the Captain betrays him, and takes the whole treasure for himself and returns to England. Small, with the help of an Indian "savage," escapes from prison and slowly makes his way back to London where he exacts his revenge. As in "Scarlett," all this back-story could've been spared if Doyle had just written,"He stole my money so I got revenge."

Just as the Mormons are portrayed as salacious and perverted in "Scarlett," the Indians are gratuitously portrayed as uncivilized and savage in "Sign of Four;" Doyle certainly wasn't deviating from established stereotypes when he wrote Sherlock Holmes.

Except...he still kind of was. Sherlock himself, for example, is a confirmed bachelor, which in family-friendly Victorian England was itself socially deviant (a BYU English prof. once said Mormon lit. is like Victorian lit; lots of kids runnin' around, nobody talkin' about how they got there). Times have certainly made that particular deviancy less jarring; but then, perhaps to ensure that time wouldn't lessen Holmes's brand of deviancy, "Sign of Four" explicitly opens with Holmes jabbing a hypodermic needle up his vein while Watson says with a sigh, "What is it this time, morphine or cocaine?" Now that's all sorts of deviancy, even for today.

At one point in "Sign of Four," Watson, while admiring Holmes's incredible intellect, says how lucky it is that Holmes chose to be a detective rather than a criminal, for he would have been unstoppable. In other words, Sherlock Holmes the detective, punisher of crime, champion of justice, help of the police and bane of crooks everywhere, is only a notch away from being a full-fledged deviant himself.

All this is just a round-about of saying that although Doyle was still reinforcing dominant stereotypes about "deviants" like the Mormons and India, their mere inclusion in the opening tales of Sherlock Holmes reveals a preoccupation with deviancy itself, implying that deviancy is where Sherlock's true sympathies lie. Now, neither Mormons nor India are the better for their portrayal in Sherlock, but it is note-worthy that both groups are used to to create actual sympathy for the chief deviant, the murderer! Rather than the standard Scooby-Doo ending where the captured villain says, "And I would've gotten away with it, if it hadn't been for you meddling kids!", Doyle goes long out of his way to ensure the readers' sympathies are not with the police, not with law and order, not with the victims even, but with the deviants themselves!

Also, in both novellas Sherlock employs "the Baker Street Irregulars," a gang of filthy "Arab" street urchins, to gather his intelligence, preferring them over the entire police force; that is, Sherlock excels at catching deviants precisely because he prefers the deviants themselves. Sherlock constantly declares his distaste for the "common" and "mundane" of the "everyday," because it is out in the margins, in the deviancy, where he prefers to exist, even flourish. Sure, he protects the "everyday" through his detective work, and he keeps the deviant marginalized as the "everyday" demands; hence in Sherlock's world, the Mormons must remain salacious, and India must remain uncivilized. But I suspect that even if Doyle had known better, even unconsciously, he still couldn't have "legitimized" the Mormons and India, even he'd wanted to; for to legitimize something is to normalize it, so that it is no longer unusual, no longer stimulating, and Holmes's mind "rebels at lack of stimulation."

Doyle makes the murderers sympathetic even as he punishes them; he brings in Mormons and India without redeeming them. In every case, Sherlock Holmes casts in his lot with the deviants without normalizing them, because somehow, intuitively, Holmes understands that the greatest crime he could commit would be to normalize something interesting.

Perhaps the kindest thing Guy Ritchie's recent Sherlock Holmes movie did was make Sherlock deviant again (any who complain about his Ritchie's characterization clearly hasn't read the books).

And though I can't speak for India, perhaps the kindest thing Doyle did for Mormonism was to keep us in the margins; Hugh Nibley once said that we in the Church spend far too much time trying to include ourselves in the world, to participate in Babylon, to go "mainstream," sweeping the "weird" things we do under the rug, forgetting that the scriptures themselves say that we are to be a "peculiar people." Brigham Young himself said that his greatest fear was that this Church would become popular, and thus all earth and hell would join and drag us down to hell with them.

So, while I can't excuse Doyle's regressive characterizations, I can at least give thanks to Sherlock Holmes himself, for keeping us "peculiar," for keeping us unpopular, deviant, and interesting; in this manner he keeps us from stagnating, he keeps us stimulated, he keeps us from being dragged down to hell.

On China

Jacob and I share the same first name and briefly the same bed--I slept in it Fall '06, he in Winter '07. The bed in question was in an apt. complex in Anqing, Anhui Province, People's Republic of China, just about a 10 minute walk away from Anqing Foreign Language School, where we both taught English to Chinese middle-school students--again, I in the Fall, and he taking my place after the New Year while I returned to school.

While our times there did not overlap, we both walked past the exact same farmer's market on the way to class each morning; since it was the same school year, we taught the exact same students in the exact same grades; taught from the exact same text books; played the exact same guitar; worked with the exact same teachers, befriended the exact same students, watched pirated DVDs on the exact same TV, ate out at the exact same restaurants, and wandered around the exact same city. We both visited Beijing, both stood on the Great Wall, we both hiked Huang Shan and saw the view that inspired countless poets and artists before us; in the middle of the most populous country the world has ever known, we both stood in awe at intersections where all walked at once--old women, children, rich, poor, fast, slow, all together with bikes, mopeds, cars, trucks, and buses, and somehow all knew at once how to walk around each other, obeying an order out of chaos alien to our narrow Western consciousness.

Nevertheless, as Jake and I caught up this last weekend and compared notes, we quickly discovered that our Chinese experiences were utterly foreign from each other--he stood on the old, collapsing Great Wall, while I stood on the one restored for the tourists (and we each envied each other because of it); I was in Beijing in the Fall, he in the Spring; I hiked Huang Shan with a friend in the rain, he alone in the sunshine; our friendships and relationships with students, teachers, headmasters, roommates, so on and so forth, were miles apart.

It was good to realize this as we swapped stories--for a few years there I'd begun to gently dismiss my Chinese experience, as something unoriginal, even derivative, for countless English majors and others have made the same pilgrimage over the Pacific as I had, to engage in the exact same occupation. Not that I'd gone to be unique or popular--I went to see something fantastically foreign and boy did I get it--but I confess to feeling slightly embarrassed to have engaged in an adventure that was, after all, rather "pedestrian" after all.

And yet, if ever two Chinese experiences should have been carbon copies it should have been ours, yet though mere days separated my departure from his arrival (and none separated our sheets), our experiences of China were fundamentally different. If these two Jacobs should be see the Middle Kingdom so differently, how much more have I seen China differently than all the other countless Americans who've gone before and after me--and they likewise from me?

My experience was unique, for the exact same reason that all I do is unique--because no moment ever repeats itself, and my experiences and knowledge and perceptions are unreproducible in another. China was consequently reborn to me, and I could treasure that experience once more.

Jake and I's conversation caused me to remember the bright, Sunday morning, a brash young 21-year-old, reporting on my mission to the Stake High Council of the Centralia, WA stake. They asked questions, I answered truthfully and candidly, yet all along I could see in their eyes that these men, these full grown men with knowledge and experience beyond what I could comprehend, had no idea what I had just gone through! Their eyes even spoke silently of how they were then remembering with joy their own missions from years past, yet even as their eyes spoke their minds remained fundamentally inaccessible to mine, just as mine was to theirs'.

Many Post-Modernists found reason to despair at this epistemological/ontological alienation of one from another; but long before I ever learned the names of Derrida and Beckett, I already knew that this separation was cause for rejoicing, for exaltation--for my common experience was inexpressibly singular, unique, separate from the world and therefore beyond its reach. Take all I have, but you can never take me from me.

I said many Post-Modernists, not all--a professor of mine last semester discussed her book, God Between the Lips, wherein she posits that Post-Structuralism, a theoretical framework constructed to dismantle and deconstruct religious assurance, nevertheless having to utilize a religious vocabulary, one of faith that a world exists beyond our private perceptions. Such was the project of my mission itself--we gave a book and begged the Puerto Ricans to read it and have an experience for themselves, something incommunicable, un-transferrable, inaccessible even to ourselves, for mine was mine alone, and theirs was theirs alone, and therefore was ours and none else could take it from us. Thus an experience we desired all to have was inexpressably singular, unique, to each of us, a treasure beyond appraisal, a pearl without price, worth the world and inclusive of it all.

Fortuitous, I suppose, that I had this insight on China, for the Buddhist prayer beads, which I had bought as mere tourist kitch at the foot of Huang Shan yet was wearing when the fog lifted over Yellow Mountain and revealed the view the rain cloud and hidden from me (one of the few times in my life when the beauty of a thing brought me reverently to my knees) has recently snapped and scattered. I'd often worn that bracelet, not devotionally per se, but as a reminder that the cloud will lift for me alone and reveal things always there yet new and everlasting.

An end of an era, I'd supposed when it unceremoniously snapped on a Monday or Wednesday morning. But like the old women wandering around the buses in the seeming chaos of an Anqing intersection, the world does indeed flow much more intuitively and perfectly than we are willing to realize, and I'd soon received an invitation from the other Jacob to come spend the night, where we discussed China deep into the night.

Our experiences, like all experience, were singular, unique, ours alone, mine alone, yet these same experiences brought us together and connected us in a manner that happened only when our experiences were allowed to be alone, apart from the world. We had walked those intersections as well, as unique and alone as every other person crossing with us, yet we were altogether, all one, and flowing into and out of each other as ineffably and really as the cloud over Huang Shan, as the flight plans that intersected two Jacobs in space and time, as the Holy Spirit shedding it's light upon the hearts of man--

Isn't Halloween Just Weird??

For once a year, we decorate--actually go to the trouble to decorate--our homes with cobwebs, corpses, skeletons, and other such kitsch specifically reminiscent of death, corruption, darkness, and the inevitable encroachment of entropy on us all. And what's more, we don't do so somberly, solemnly, despairingly, with a grim acknowledgment of the dark mystery of the grave that envelops us all--no, no, we celebrate it! We dress up in funny costumes, give candy freely to small children (the one sample of the population that needs least to be hopped up on sugar), we throw parties, we enjoy ourselves on Halloween!

What's our motivation here? Are we unconsciously containing the dread of the hereafter by trivializing it, making levity of it, neutralizing the nameless horror by embracing it whole-heartedly, not simply "staring into the abyss until the abyss stares back into you" but jumping on it gleefully and giving it a fat, wet kiss on the lips?

Maybe we reconcile ourselves to (or at least hide ourselves from) the necessity of dying by swathing ourselves in dead signifiers, since the symbol itself is lifeless? Perhaps we explore, through our costumes and kitsch, not the representation but the absence of signification, for we shall all one day be literally absent from this earth itself?

Perhaps even we collectively participate in some some sort of Bakhtinian Carnivelesque, a burlesque grotesque-realism that degrades everything down to the ground in order to fertilize it and bring it back from the dead, more radiant and full of life than before, just as the Autumn leaves that Halloween inhabits will crumble down to silent (deathly) winter and be reborn as Spring again?

Some combination of all of these? None of these?

All I know is that I have a sudden hankering to carve a Jack-O-Lantern, be in a house with some cobwebs and plastic spiders and black cats, and that I will be dressing up as a "recursive Che" for the fiestas, and I sincerely hope I get some small children Trick-or-Treating for candy. If one of them is dressed in a white-sheet with holes a la Charlie Brown, it will make my night.

English and Computer Science: Same Words, Different Languages

A former roommate and I once did a quick comparison about how each of our respective fields (computer science and English lit.) used similar vocabulary but with completely different definitions. For example:

Deconstruct:
-In English, to identify the unstated implicit assumptions underlying every textual statement.
-In Computer Science, to carefully take apart a machine piece by piece.

Binary
-In English, to artificially construct two sides as being inherently opposed to each other, with one side being privileged over the other by virtue of said construction.
-In Computer Science, the series of open and closed circuits by which computer language and software interface is constructed.

Explode:
-In English, to invalidate a previously accepted assumption that has far-reaching implications.
-In Computer Science, to lose the machine itself in a burst of flames.

Language
-In English, style, content, and meaning.
-In Computer Science, the code by which the engineer interacts with the software.

Same goes for Grammar, Syntax, and Text.

Unpack
-In English, to explore every possibility of meaning in a statement.
-In Computer Science, to remove things out of a box.

Registers
-In English, to acknowledge the co-presence of multiple possibilities of meaning at once.
-In Computer Science, for a program to function at multiple levels and/or to register a new product on-line.

To Create a Space
-In English, to formulate an argument in such a manner as to allow for new avenues of discussion.
-In Computer Science, presumably to move some boxes and/or furniture around to make room for a new device.

Piracy
-English: A Robert Louis Stevenson novel!
-Computer Science: Free music/movies/software!

Deus ex Machina
-In English, a lazy plot resolution maneuver.
-In Computer Science, worship of the machines that will one day take us over (just kidding).