Calvin + Hobbes

I got the complete Calvin + Hobbes boxset for Christmas; I finished the 4th and final volume at 1:30 this morning.  Excuse me while I gush.

I had just the slightest fear that this comic would be yet another artifact of youth that failed to quite live up to my most primordial memories, leaving me again feeling disconnected from my childhood.  Utterly unfounded fears.  If anything, I laughed with,  appreciated, and adored this cartoon even more thoroughly than I did as a child (and that's saying something!).  I quickly moved on from mere relief to awe at this comic's overwhelming brilliance.

The buzz I'm feeling right now is akin to the first time I read Catch-22 or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance or Tom Stoppard's Arcadia; or when I saw the Mona Lisa in person at the Louvre, or saw The Shawshank Redemption for the first time; or the first time I listened--really listened--to the Beatle's Abby Road, U2's Joshua Tree, or Arcade Fire or Animal Collective or Debussy; or when I saw the sun set on the Guajataca in Puerto Rico, or the fog rise off Yellow Mountain in China...

Yet Calvin + Hobbes predates all these experiences; and it's been both humbling and exhilarating to realize that everything I've ever thought, values, or known--everything I learned in college, grad school, and life in general--about materialism, art, philosophy, representation, semiotics, the Protestant work ethic, the innate worth of souls, goods of first and second intent, the sublimity of passion, Emersonian whims, the revolutionary potential of romance, the power of language, the wildness of words, the hugeness and incomprehensibility and grandeur of the universe, the uncharted possibilities of existence and imagination--I first encountered as a youth on these comic pages.

It's comforting, rejuvenating, and frankly incredible to consider that, in my own lifetime, there was a bona fide popular artist who refused to dumb down, who never sold out, who consciously went out on top on his own terms, who openly critiqued our destructive consumerism and pretentious posturing in the face of the terrible questions, and did so without condescension, without smug self-satisfaction, but rather with a complete and wondrous joie de vivre, the joy of life.

I loved Calvin + Hobbes as a child; but now I stand back in absolute wonder of Bill Watterson's achievement, at the utter rarity that is this jewel of a comic that both fulfilled and transcended its medium--and how profoundly blessed I was to encounter this strip in its first run, while still a child itself, when it could still enrapture my imagination in youth.

Maybe I'm overselling the comic right now, maybe my reflections are more tinged with nostalgia than I'm conscious of, maybe it's best to approach this cartoon on its own terms and not with any overhyped promises of grandeur from me--no matter.  David Markson wrote in Wittgenstein's Mistress that he could imagine a world without people easier than he could a world without Mozart; I, too, can picture the world ending easier than I can a world without Calvin + Hobbes.

2013 and the Fear of Joy

Well, we're all still here, aren't we?  Though as more than one comedian noted, deep down some part of each of us was really hoping the Mayans were right, weren't we?

(Though don't count out 2013 just yet!  Serious, 2013?! That's just asking for some hackneyed-sci-fi cataclysm! We should skip over these bad-luck years the way hotels skip the 13th floor.)

(No, wait, if it were 2014, we'd already be dealing with another election wouldn't we. Nevermind!) 

But then, why this silly little doomsday fixation?  Why this secret hope, even in jest, that the curtain would finally hit the cast at last?  I have a gut-hunch that the sudden end of the world would have let us off the hook--but I don't mean from our bills, our debts, our so-called responsibilities, etc and etc.  I'm mean we'd be let off the hook from living life.

Nibley once noted that what mankind fears most of all, more than death and pain and hell, is joy.  He declares more articulately than I:

"What are we afraid of?  What do men fear most?  Believe it or not, it is joy.  Against joy, society erects its most massive bulwarks...It is not hell that men fear most, but heaven...Everything in our society conspires to dampen and control joy.  Our sordid little pleasures are carefully channeled and commercialized; our pitiful escapes to alcohol and drugs are a plain admission that we will not allow ourselves to have joy in our right senses.  Only little children can face up to it.  They have no hidden guilt to admonish cautious behavior or make joy appear unseemly...Why do we insist on taking ourselves so seriously?  Because we're scared to death of being found out...

"...to lend dignity and authority to this pretentious fraud, we have invented the solemn business and drudgery of every day life.  To avoid answering questions, we pretend to be very busy--my how busy! 

"In every conservatory of music, there is the student who practices scales and exercises with dedicated zeal, for 8 or 10 hours a day; or works away for months or years, with terrifying persistence, at a single piece.  This is the devoted grind that impresses others with his matchless industry, but don't be fooled!  This drudge is not working at all!  He is running away from work.  His ferocious application to dull routine is but a dodge to avoid the novel and frightening effort of using his head.  And never, never, for all his years of toil, does he become a real musician.  (He usually becomes an executive.) 

"In the manner of this poor dupe, the whole majestic world goes about its ostentatious enterprises, the important busy work of every day life... Sorrow is a negative thing...to live with it requires only resignation...humanity, in a thousand ways, declares it's almost unanimous preference for drab and depressing routine. 

"If the world is a dark and dreary place, it is because we prefer it that way; for there is nothing in the world that can keep a man from joy if joy is what he wants...It's altogether too much for us to bear.  We must learn by degrees to live with it.  It isn't strange that we are afraid of so strange and overpowering a thing, that we are overawed by the feeling that it is all too good for us; the fact is that it is too good for us!  Much too good!...We are not ready yet...we [must] come to support not the burden of great suffering, but the much greater impact of limitless joy..." ("The World and the Prophets," Complete Works Vol. 3) (please bear in mind that Nibley wrote the preceding before the '60s!)

It's just easier to be sad; but it's also more expensive, demanding, vicious, and fraught with mindless busy-work.  Just as its easier for a mediocre teacher to photocopy fill-in-the-blank worksheets, or construct elaborate and byzantine on-line curriculum, or drone on in recited lectures, than to actually teach, so too is it easier to self-impose mind-numbing routines and asphyxiating decorum than actually go to the trouble of being enjoying ourselves!  The yoke is easy, the burden is light.

But joy requires courage, humility, a native curiosity, and at least a dash of daring.  That's apparently too much to ask of most people, so we've formalized an entire system composing endless hours of meetings, reports, paperwork, rote memorization, and regurgitation.  We praise the "work ethic" of those languishing long hours at jobs they hate--and worse, don't matter (how many lawyers and salesmen does this world actually need?).  Protest all we like how we detest the tedium, yet still we barely even try to do anything else.

The supremest irony of all then is that such a society will end the world faster than anything else.  What's sadder, none of us are actually fooled--we all know deep down there are better ways we could be spending our time.  If the world had ended the 21st, we wouldn't have had to deal with our creeping guilt; the ever-frightening joy would have been kept at bay.  But the world didn't end, so we might as well face up to it--"men are that they might have joy," so we had better get along with it.

And what better time to start than New Years?

I'll finish by letting my nerd-flag fly high for this 2013, and quote Q from Star Trek TNG: "It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid."

Christmas: The Last Carnival

About a month ago I finished Barbara Ehrenreich's "Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy," in prep for a coming conference SLCC's hosting this Spring.  In it, she details the ancient, widespread, and global phenomenon of the festival, wherein mankind gathers together to dance, party, get ecstatic, go wild, forgets their differences, and just all-around enjoy ourselves!  This need for gathering, for release, for festival, is hard-wired into us genetically she argues--we need to come together, we need to cut loose, we need get outside ourselves, we need this communal catharsis, and that often and repeatedly.

And indeed, throughout the super-majority of human history, that is precisely what we did; every major and minor culture on earth has its regularly scheduled festivals dating back to pre-history.  From the Spring and Autumn Festivals of China, to the Dionysian Cults of Greece, to the Years of Jubilee of the Jews and the ecstatic warrior-dances of African tribesmen and Native Americans and the Carnivals of Catholic Europe, these festivals provided rich and poor, male and female, young and old, with the release, the togetherness, the wildness, the sheer joy we needed for the sake of our own mental health.

(One of my favorite anecdotes of early LDS history is that in Nauvoo, with Joseph Smith shot dead and mobs burning down farms and as the Saints prepared for the punishing journey west, Brigham Young each night would clear the Temple to hold inside a party--dancing, music, the whole shebang.  Each night.  He even assigned a brass-band to each wagon company heading west.  That was a man who understood the importance of the Festival impulse).

Of course, the powerful always had an uneasy relationship with Festival--any gathering that so regularly violated the oh-so-carefully-constructed hierarchies of the state, that leveled and erased the distinctions between rulers and ruled, was obviously a threat to their positions. Hence, the ancient Roman state, for example, would hold solemn and dignified processionals in honor of Emperors, in order to compete with the festivals; try as they might, though, they could never fully stamp Festival out, so just learned to co-exist with them.

The Catholic Church tried to just straight-up co-op the festivals as solemn religious holidays--hence the Spring Equinox became Easter, Winter Solstice was assigned Christmas, etc--but the festival impulse is not so easily squashed; the Catholic calender became filled with religious holidays, but as every one who's ever lived in Latin countries (as I have) knows, all those Saints' days are just excuses to party.  Always have been. 

Ironically, it was the Protestants, then, who succeeded where the Catholics failed--following the Reformation, the Festivals that occurred almost weekly were snuffed out across Europe.  Even the Catholic countries suffered a noticeable drop-off in Festival; sure, Rome and Rio de Janeiro still have Carnival, and formally-French New Orleans still has Mardis Gras, but nothing to the level of what once was.  The Protestants won.  Festivals were crushed across Europe, and then the Europeans crushed 'em wherever they colonized, which was pretty much everywhere.  In the West, all the old festivals were dead...

...all except Christmas.  Tenacious, wonderful, stubborn Christmas.  The Puritans and the Utilitarians would've cancelled Christmas if they could've (Dicken's Scrooge was really not all that strange of a character, frighteningly enough), but they couldn't.  Oh to be sure, we no longer have the unrestrained Christmas parties of ancient yore like our fore-bearers did; but consider the unprofitable-excess, the costly-expenditure, the exhaustive-spending that by all rights should drive any "sane" economist mad, that is associated with our Christmas gift-giving, gaudy-decorating, and gleeful wrapper-destroying.  Consider how this is the one time of year where the word "festive" (adj: like unto a festival) is applied un-ironically.  Consider how in English we apply to this holiday the anachronistic-modifier "Merry," an adjective reminiscent of England's distant, pre-Protestant, joyous past, back when it earned the appellation of "Merry ol' England!"

Consider the multitude of set songs and carols, the approved colors, the sacrosanct traditions, the seasonal foods and drinks, the trees, lights, near-non-stop parties, gifts, and communal gatherings, the hardy insistence that we celebrate and be happy that is all associated with the Christmas season--all these are the classic props and tropes of Festival!  The muted-yet-still-not-silenced Festival impulse dies hard in us, and throbs all the more powerfully during the Christmas season. 

If some of us find the Christmas season so exhausting, maybe it's because we get so little practice with proper festivals the rest of the year--our carnival muscles atrophy with so little exercise--such that we have to cram in all our festive impulses into this one month, lest we never get the chance and we all go mad with melancholy.

And thank the Good Lord above that we were spared this one last Festival, that Christmas at least was left us, and that when we needed it most--just after the Winter Solstice, the darkest evening of the year, when we receive the least direct sunlight and Seasonal Affective Disorder is wrecking havoc on our moods and physiologies, when the whole land is barren and covered in silent and silencing snow frigid as death, and the haunting gloom closes in around us (consider what a depressing month January often is)--that this, this is the day we chose to throw up our brightest lights, embrace our most generous instincts, release our most joyous passions, give our biggest gifts, and hold out largest parties!  The Earth is at last turning back closer to the sun, but we decide not to wait that long for our light--right when things are darkest, Christmas swoops in and saves us from slitting our wrists in despair!

It is a Festival of near-Bakhtinian proportions, an expenditure of near-Batailleian extremes.  Christmas is a revelation of our best selves, of the wild potential we could've been, of what we still should be, of the celebration that United Order will look like.

Please don't mistake me, as though I'm suggesting a religious holiday be returned to its worldly roots--remember that Christ's first miracle was to deliver more wine to a wedding party, and I do mean party.  The Savior understood the importance of the Festival impulse.

And on that first Christmas, the angels declared to the shepherds, "I bring you good tidings of great Joy!"   Like every Festival, the first Christmas was a call to shake ourselves from our doldrums, to wake up, be glad, and partake of rejuvenating, redemptive joy!  

And all to what end?

To have, "on earth peace, good will toward men."  It's the true peace that comes of good will, earned from the erasure of the distinctions (as Festival strives for) that separate us and isolate us and depress and oppress us; a joyous reuniting of man with each other, and of each other with God; a supreme and joyous At-one-ment. 

Have a Merry Christmas.  And I mean it.

The Englishness of The Kinks

I recently downloaded The Kink's "Father Christmas" (tis the season, after all), and I gotta say, what a wonderful, biting bit of social commentary wrapped in a joyous, holiday sing-along!  I do believe it just edges out John Lennon's "Happy Xmas (War is Over)" for coherent social commentary and sheer fun, and of course blows Sir Paul McCartney's insipid "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time" out of the water--and I say that as a die hard Beatles fan.

I am constantly surprised by the virtuosity of The Kinks, and lately I've been wondering why--why am I surprised by them?  Why are they always just one of those other English bands?  When we speak of British Invasion bands in hushed, reverent tones, we inevitably mean The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Queen.  Why are the Kinks so recurrently relegated to also-ran status?

Don't get me wrong, it's not like they're unknown or anything--they're Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame inductees, had a massive and acknowledged influence on Punk and New Wave, "Lola" is surely playing on some classic rock station as we speak, "Tired of Waiting" in some commercial, and the twin hits of "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of The Night" contain hands-down, no contest, the two most famous, awesome, and imitated guitar riffs in the history of rock, bar none.  Van Halen got its start covering "You Really Got Me." The Doors ripped them off for "Hello, I Love You."  The Kinks are not followers, not imitators, no, they are the pioneers, the trend-setters, the influential.  Guaranteed one of their songs is one of your favorite songs.

And that's just my point--given all their accomplishments, why are they so rarely spoken of in the same hushed awe as, say, The Beatles or The Stones? 

My theory is that The Kinks are just, well, so much more English than these other bands.  They don't just happen to be English you see--no, they are thoroughly, proudly, quintessentially English.

By way of comparison, yes, the Beatles make fleeting references to the Queen in "Penny Lane" and Side B of "Abbey Road," but for the most part their musical influences and ethos, from their early R&B covers to their psychedelic experiments, are firmly rooted in America.  John Lennon was initially trying to be Elvis; the American Bob Dylan is who first introduced them to weed, Timothy Leary to LSD; "Rubber Soul" was their attempt to sound like The Byrds; "Back in the USSR" was their send-up of the Beach Boys; Tuscon, Arizona is name-checked in "Get Back;"  John Lennon chose to live in New York over London.  They came from Liverpool, but their goal was clearly America.  Some pop-culture neophyte could be forgiven for assuming the Beatles were actually an American band.

Same deal with the Stones, the Who, Led Zep--all these bands got their starts covering American R&B standards.  Their favorite acts were Elvis Presley, Bo Diddly, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc.  The Rolling Stones are named for a Muddy Waters song, an American, not a Brit.  From the start, they were all openly trying to sound like Americans--and by the end of their careers, had all functionally become adopted-Americans, no matter their nationalities.  Robert Plant sings of "Going to California," not the Isle of Wight.  Your most meat-headed, 'Murica-lovin', patriotic red-neck will proudly get the Led out to Jimmy Page, blissfully uncaring of his British citizenship.

Note that the least-revered parts of these bands' oeuvres here in the U.S. are typically the most British parts: David Bowie, for example, is best known state-side for such hits as the NASA-mimicking "Space Oddity" than his more recent "I'm Afraid of Americans."  The Who are best known in the States for such concept albums as "Tommy" and "Who's Next," while the more explicitly British "Quadrophenia" (about warring Mods and Rockers in 1964 Brighton), remains a favorite only of dedicated Who fans--State-side, anyways.

In other words, the British bands we Americans revere the most are the ones that sound the most American.

But there is absolutely no confusion about where The Kinks come from.  They make none such attempts to imitate American singers; their thick North London accents shine through at all times, you can almost hear their bad-teeth belting into the microphone.  Note that their Christmas song is called "Father Christmas," not "Santa Claus."  They composed an entire album entitled "Arthur: The Decline and Fall of the British Empire," which featured the hit-single "Victoria," about, yes, Queen Victoria and the height of British imperialism.  "Waterloo Sunset" paints a romantic scene of Waterloo, London, not Kansas City or California.  "Lola" takes place in "Old Soho," London.  "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" references the "Boutiques" and "Discotheques" of some fashionable dandy the way only an Englishman could.

That is to say, the gaze and locus of The Kinks was always firmly in their native England, never on America.  They are not adopted-Americans; they are, as I said, thoroughly, proudly, quintessentially English.  I'm sure they appreciated having hits state-side, but they were never writing for the U.S.; they were writing for themselves.

And I fear that may be why they are perpetually the also-rans of the British Invasion--no matter their undisputed accomplishments, no matter how awesome their songs, how fun their music, they are just too English for us Americans to fully embrace, deep down in our gut, like we have, say, the Stones.  We are not nearly so cosmopolitan as we might hope; even someone who's just firmly English is too foreign, too alien, too incomprehensible to our mainstream sensibilities.  Music written even in our native language must still be filtered through American lenses for our pop-culture to adopt it sub-consciously.

Which is a shame--the Kinks really are amazing. Our loss.

Tibetan Book of the Dead

 I wonder if some ancient Hindu mathematician (knowing what wonderful and advanced mathematicians India had back then) came to the same conclusion as Poincare and Nietzsche would millennia later, namely that if the Universe is finite, then there are ultimately only a finite number of repeatable combinations...and therefore we have done all this before...and will do all this again...repeatedly, ad infinitum, into eternity.

This is what's called the Unbearable Heaviness of Being, this burden that everything we've done, are doing, and will do--all of our mistakes, successes, joys, downfalls, pains, sufferings, births and deaths--has already happened before, and we are destined (some would say doomed) to do so again.

I wonder if this ancient mathematician's calculations is what resulted in the Hindu belief that we are trapped in an endless cycle of reincarnations and rebirths (a belief as distinctly Indian in origin as Ethical Monotheism is Middle-Eastern).  For so certain is the Hindu belief in reincarnation you see, that the Buddhists are trying to escape the cycle of rebirths--that is, to escape the Unbearable Heaviness of Being.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead (or, "The Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Intermediate State," as it apparently should most properly be translated), is concerned specifically with ending the cycle of rebirths, and contains poems, rituals, and guidance for the dying subject, in how to successfully navigate the moment of death so as to enter Nirvana, the great emptiness, the final death.  

I found the book to be strangely...filling.  Not for its esoteric theology per se (I am sure that my thorough ignorance of most Buddhist practice left me not grasping half of the references therein), but rather in its assumptions that we are able to leave the great weight of existential meaning that bears down on each of us.  Modern man, of course, is afflicted with (as the Milan Kundera novel is entitled) the Unbearable Lightness of Being, the assumption that all that is happening is happening only once, and then never again, and what occurs once might as well never have happened at all.  It is made manifest in the physicist's growing and sober suspicion that the Universe will not reshuffle a la Poincare, but will instead just peter out and fade away.  

That is, in the East, the great quest is to attain Nirvana; in the West, it's to avoid it.  It takes the Buddhist great energy of soul to reach the state the Westerner fears he will come upon inexorably.  

So which is it?  The Unbearable Heaviness or The Unbearable Lightness?  Doubtless we've written ourselves into a false binary here, and there is something else, something further, that we are not considering.  For both the the Heaviness and the Lightness begin with the presumption of a finite Universe.  Have you played with the Hubble Deep Field on Google Sky?  We still have not seen the edge thereof.  Might both these categories prove insufficient if the Universe turns out to be...infinite?

Skyfall: Random Observations

• My goodness, the Bond franchise really is 50 years old now, ain't it!
• Good to see this franchise reboot has completed the character-development arc begun with Casino Royal, of Bond transforming from an angry, reckless young recruit into the classic Connery-era gentleman, complete with fine Oxford suit, Q, and Moneypenny.
• I only wish the Martin DB5 had had more to do.
• The caretaker of Skyfall lodge: that role was totally written for Sean Connery, wasn't it.
• Man, Javier Bardem really just played his same character from No Country For Old Men, didn't he.  When he and Bond first met, I half expected him to flip a coin and ask Bond to guess which side.  At least I got to see Javier die this time.  (I admire the Coen brothers' technical proficiency, but seriously, I hated No Country For Old Men).
• "And what is your hobby, Mr. Bond?" "Resurrection."  Given the stubborn tenacity of this franchise's vitality through multiple actors, directors, incarnations, etc, that was probably the most meta line of the movie.
• Javier Bardem's character was also just a rehash of 006 from Goldeneye.
• Come to think of it, he was also the computer hacker from Goldeneye, as well.
• I think it's officially time we retire the ol' "He wanted to be caught!" plot-twist--the Joker already used it 4 years ago in The Dark Knight.  Shoot, Loki used it just this last summer in The Avengers!
• The motorcycles atop the rooftops feels like it was from a Bourne film--and James Bond needs to be the O.G., not the copycat of his manifold imitators.
• I believe this is at least the third time Bond has faked his death--first time in You Only Live Twice and again in Die Another Day.
• But maybe I'm being too harsh on all of Skyfall's Bond-trope re-treads: perhaps these re-treads were all, like the Martin DB5, winking references to how this film was taking the series back to its farthest roots, to the point of actually showing us Bond's ancestral birthplace.  In order to take this series into the future, this film first had to go deeper into Bond lore than any previous film had dared go.
• If so, then perhaps the film's most meta moment instead belongs to Bond's decision to finally be one step ahead of Bardem by returning to the distant past.  
• Final verdict: Skyfall's better than Quantum of Solace (which I still defend, btw), but Casino Royal remains the best of the reboot series.

Election Day Facts

I hope I have treated my conservative roommates and friends with the same respectful deference as I am sure they would have shown me if Tuesday's outcomes were reversed.  Nevertheless, I feel the need to express my gratitude, for as I woke up Wednesday morning, I was reassured of certain American facts:

• My friends with pre-existing conditions will continue to have access to health care.
• The uninsured and underinsured (myself included) will not be left all alone in a medical crisis.
• Rape apologists do not get elected in this country.
• Millionaires and billionaires cannot just buy elections, Citizens United be damned.
• Voter-restriction laws backfire.
• Bosses cannot intimidate employees into voting a certain way, for we are free Americans.
• Anti-Union referendums get voted down across America--including the South.
• Auto-workers will keep their jobs.
• Minorities believe their voice can be heard--and they are growing.
• Those who would make the rich richer through further tax-breaks while expanding the world's largest military, all at the expense of literally everyone else, will not be setting policy.
• A Utah Democrat in a gerrymandered district can still defeat a Tea Party radical.
• A brazenly opportunistic and flagrant liar will no longer serve as the most prominent face of my faith--nor will he be leading my country.
•  And perhaps most comforting of all: after living near all my 20s in the ultra-conservative bubble of the Idaho-Utah corridor, I was reminded that there are far more Americans who think like me than I realized.  

Please don't get me wrong, none of us are naive--this country still faces many grave and perilous problems in the coming weeks, months, and years, none of which magically disappeared Wednesday morning.  We are as divided and polarized as before.  But for all the manifold things wrong with America, it was nice, for once, to wake up reminded of all the things that are still right.

Young Goodman Brown: How It Should've Ended

(Please first read the classic Nathaniel Hawthorne tale of devils and witches meetings in Puritan Salem here.  The original ending is one of those Inception-y ambiguities that leave the reader unsure of what exactly happened.  But as one of my students said yesterday, the story really should've ended like so!)

...Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest, and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting?

Be it so, if you will. But, alas! it was a dream of evil omen...for Salem!

Our Goodman Brown, thou seest, was Salem's truest black-smith, and didst spend the remaining day in shop.  With fire burning and furnace blazing, Young Goodman Brown swung hammer upon anvil, ceaselessly and with great exertion preparing for the great cleansing he knew must shortly come to pass.

As the Salem sun lowered upon another day, Young Goodman Brown didst at last emerge from the doors of his iron smithy, his face and clothing blackened with the soot and ash of his forge; a most curious sight didst the Goodman present as he marched down the streets of Salem town, with multiple muskets of black-powder, loaded and ready, strapped across his backside, and blades of steel in crucifixes dangling from his sides.  

Again was the good old minister taking a walk along the graveyard, to get an appetite for dinner and meditate his sermon, and again did he bestow a blessing, as he passed, upon the most curious of visage of Goodman Brown. Hardly had the good minister spoken, however, when Goodman Brown didst straightway remove his first musket from his arsenal, and without warning or remorse blew away the good minister with thunder.

In a fright, Old Deacon Gookin didst emerge from his stately old home in a wonder at the thunder--"what wizard dost thou pray to!" shouted the Goodman, and didst thrust a blade of steel through the air, and direct into the heart of the poor Gookin.

Continuing down the streets of Salem, Young Goodman Brown didst again spy Goody Cloyse, that excellent old christian, catachising the young girl delivering her evening milk.  With one fluid motion, Goodman Brown didst launch a lasso with one hand, by which means he grappled and drew away the endangered child, and with the other hand removed yet another musket and blew the witch through her front porch door.

In great alarm didst all of godly Salem emerge from their habitations, armed hurredly with pitchforks and torches and a general aclaim of, "Forsooth!  A devil hath possessed Young Goodman Brown and he dost go on murder spree!  Burn him, burn him!"

"Ha-HA! Hypocrites, villains, fiends, devils!" cried out Young Goodman Brown, a fresh loaded-musket in each extended arm pointed at the encircling townsmen, "Didst I not behold the each of thee in the Devil's worshipping assembly the night previous?  Clamber not to confuse nor distract me, for I have beheld thine true visages.  Dissemble no longer!  It shall not save thee."

"Goodman! My dearest Goodman!" came the plaintive cry of his goodly wife Faith; her voice was strained and her eyes redenned by her hours of sorry weeping since her husbands stern reproach of that morning, "Of what dost thou speak?  I knowest not what wickedness hath possessed thee, but I pleade, drop thy instruments of death, by the love of all that is just and holy--"

"Just and holy, BAH!" shrieked our Goodman, "Seek to deceive me no longer my wife, for didst we not behold each other in the wicked one's awful baptism of yon fortnight!"

"Goodman!  Oh, dearest Goodman, I knowest not of wost thou speakest!" cried Faith despairingly, "Dost thou not well discern and behold, that it be not we who deceive thee, but the devil himself, who hath gained possession of thy soul?"

"Be it so?" said Goodman, "Then what of this?!"  And from his left gun hand, Goodman Brown let fall a single pink ribbon.

Absently did Faith Brown check her own hair for the pink ribbons.  "Why, Goodman Brown, thou hast, um, recovered mine purloined ribbon --"

"Fiends!" cried out Goodman Brown at the steadily closer creeping crowd, brandishing his muskets wildly, "Stay back or feel my holy vengeance!  Tell me this alone, my dear Faith, didst thou resist the wicked one?  Art thou a witch as Goody Cloyse?!"

"Witches?  Good Cloyse?" cried Faith, "Really?  The woman who taught thee thy catachism?!"

"Aye, yeah verily," intoned Young Goodman Brown deeply, "and she was all anointed with the juice of smallage and cinque-foil and wolf's-bane--"

"Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a new-born babe!" came the cackle, as Goody Cloyse, a most awful and otherwise-mortal ball-and-powder wound gaping from her face, emerged from her front porch and on broomstick, "Thou knowest the recipe well--and be that thy epitaph!"

And with another cackle and a cry, she flew threw the air at Young Goodman Brown.  In an instant, he dived to the side and escaped her assault, but not before his lasso latched the sweep end of her broom and was carried off into the sky with her.

Wildly did she navigate her broom between the buildings and over the trees of Salem town, struggling to smash the dangling Goodman into any of the edifices and obstacles below.  But Young Goodman Brown held fast, climbed the short length and onto the flying broom itself.  With a bloody thrust, he drove a steel blade through her heart, threw her desecrated corpse to the streets below, and now rode the flying broomstick like a surfboard.

"Behold!  Forsooth Young Goodman Brown hath uncovered our secret forms!" cried the townsfolk, "The need for appearances is past, destroy him!"

Quickly and frighteningly, the Salem townsfolk didst transform into werewolves, vampires, and witches, and with one accord attacked the rampaging Goodman Brown.

But Young Goodman Brown was prepared.

Soaring close to the ground his broom stick, Goodman pulled out his specially-forged three-shot repeating-musket, and fired trios of molten-silver-bullets into the charching werewolves, killing them instantly. 

The witches flew after him, launching fearsome fireballs from their accursed hands--Goodman on broomstick avoided these weapons adeptly--allowing the fireballs to destroy the surrounding stately buildings--and as he did so, let loose spinning steel blades that didst sail through the air and decapitate the witches, each in turn.

The vampires set flight through the air blood-curtling screams--yet before they could react, Goodman Brown lassoed them in with strings of garlic cloves, and whilst they now screamed in painful agony, he didst drive a crucifix-handled-stake into their hearts.

But then, without warning, an awful lightning bolt pierced the sky, which threw Goodman Brown from off his broomstick and into the Salem graveyard.  Quickly recovering from this most unwelcome shock, Young Goodman Brown arose to his feet, to behold in the cemetary gates, sillouetted against the burning hell-flames of Salem town, the sable form of he, the traveler with the withered staff, with whom he had discoursed the night before.

"Well, well, well..." said the image of his grandfather, Old Goodman Brown, "It appears the Young Goodman has disavowed the heritage of his race..."

"Thou art only of a race of fiends!" cried Young Goodman Brown, preparing a pair of blades—one emblazoned with John 3:16, the other with Romans 12:19— "And thou art not my grandfather!"

"Indeed!" laughed the sable form, "Thou art not, for mine children cannot die!"  And with a maniacally laugh, he raised his hand, and the corpses clawed their way out their graves. 

Suddenly zombie-Puritans marched on Young Goodman Brown with a wicked moan, intent on tearing him limb from limb. With violence and precision, Brown swung his blades through the air, decapitating each of the walking-corpses with a speed and swiftness that defied the eye to follow.

The cemetary was now littered with putrid corpses, and filthy buckle-hats and bonnets strewn about.  Young Goodman Brown turned to face the sable form.  "No more images," he intoned, "No more tricks.  Show yourself!" The traveler dropped his withered stick, cracked his knuckles, and said with a suddenly deeper voice, "As you wish."

In an instant the Old Man’s clothes ripped off, as his red-muscles greatly expanded to three times their size, his cloven-feet tore open his boots, and great horns sprouted from his head. The terrible form towered high over head, his eyes glowing red.  Young Goodman Brown prepared his battle stance.

But at critical moment, as the Demon fired his lethal lightning bolts from his eyes, a witch on broomstick sped by and snatched away our Goodman. "Faith!" cried out Young Goodman Brown, "Thou hast saved me!"

"I didst not resist the wicked one," confessed Faith, "And was indeed initiated into his assembly, and became a witch myself, my beloved husband.  But now I repent, and use only my witch's powers for good!"
"I'll allow it," said Young Goodman ruefully.

But now the Demon had turned around and was firing lightning bolts from his eyes at the erratically flying pair of lovers.“I’ll destract him,” said Faith to Goodman, “Do what you must!”  And with a passionate kiss, Goodman leaped off the broom and into the burning town, sprinting to his blacksmith shop.

The Demon roared with rage, as Faith flew wildly through the air, defying his eye-bolts.  So enraged was the wicked form that he did not notice Goodman Brown emerge with a shoulder-cannon of sorts, loaded with a barrel of holy-water.

He took aim.  “Hasta la vista,” he said, and fired his artillery into the beast’s open, roaring mouth.

The Devil stopped, chocked, staggered—bright beams of holy light shot out of his mouth, eyes, and ears, as he screamed in pain—and then, in a massive mushroom cloud, the Devil was blown to smithereens, taking wicked Salem with him.  Young Goodman Brown only walked away, not looking behind him.

Faith snatched him up on her broomstick, and they kissed passionately as they flew across the sky before the rising full moon.  “Let’s haul ass to Rhode Island!” said Faith.  “You got it babe!” said Goodman.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Prometheus

Enough students have asked me what I thought about Ridley Scott's sort-of-Alien-prequel Prometheus that I finally rented and watched it this last weekend.  Here's my initial, scattered thoughts [this post assumes you've already seen the film]:

The big mystery of course left at the end of the film, as articulated by sole-survivor Dr. Shaw to decapitated-android David, is, "First they created us, then they changed their minds.  I deserve to know why."

Now, there are numerous problems with this film's understanding of biology, linguistics, physics, even consistent plotting, but we won't get into that now.  Instead, I want to focus on this film's themes of unwanted children.


That theme is perhaps best expressed in the infamous "alien abortion" scene, wherein Dr. Shaw uses an automated-medical-chamber to remove an alien-face-hugger from her abdomen, in a sequence that is visceral, grotesque, clautsrophobic, and intense. 

Dr. Shaw had earlier revealed, and lamented, the fact that she's infertile.  But, the news that she is suddenly pregnant instead freaks her out, and she rushes to have the abomination removed.  The first indication for why, perhaps, the Engineers changed their mind about humanity, is implied by the fact that humans, like these aliens, turned out to be something far more grotesque and frightening than the miracle of life that the creators had hoped it would be.

We also get a theme of unwanted children in Vickers and Weyland--the latter is the CEO whom it turns out had snuck himself on board the Prometheus in cryo-freeze in hopes of meeting his maker before he died; the former is the corporate representative on Prometheus who, in a reveal, turns out to be Weyland's daughter.

In a less visceral yet still emotionally-fraught scene, we see that Weyland has, for all intents and purposes, disowned his own daughter.  When I rewatched Prometheus the next day, I noticed how resentful Vickers appears when a hologram of Weyland calls the android David "the closest thing I have to a son."  Weyland had replaced his own creation, his child, with another creation, a robot.

This scene mirrors how the Engineers had apparently decided to replace humans with the xenomorphs of the Alien franchise.  Parents are forsaking and replacing children left and right in this film.

The android David especially complicates the film's themes in intriguing ways--as human-like as he appears, the crew is constantly reminding him that he is not human.  Even his creator, Weyland, straight up says David "lacks a soul"--and yet it is David that swoons with the most affected gazes upon the incredible technology of the Engineers throughout some of the film's most stunningly-gorgeous visuals.  If David can appreciate beauty as the audience can, how then can he be soul-less?  What does the term soul actually mean?

All this is intriguing because it is never quite clear if David is really as robotic as he appears; when David asks Charlie why they created him and he replies "Cause we could I guess," David replies, "Imagine how disappointing it would be to hear your own creator say thus."  When Charlie rejoins, "Well, it's a good thing you can't feel disappointment then, can you,"  David...while not contradicting him...does not exactly agree with him either.  David poisons Charlie shortly thereafter.

The implication, perhaps, is that the Engineers turn on mankind because, as their copies, they perhaps believe we lack souls worth considering...and our resentment at this dismissal may cause us to turn on them.  Freud's castration complex, of the father's fear of being replaced by the son and vice-versa, is on full, predictable display in this film.

The fact that both the ship and the movie are named for the Greek Titan who battled his own children, the Greek Olympians, in order to help their children, mankind, and was thus punished with eternal castration at the hands of the eagles for his trouble--further underlines the themes of fraught parent/child relationships permeating this film.

Also significant is that David is he that first attempts to communicate with the living Engineer.  That is, mankind's own creation speaks to mankind's own creators!

But then the resuscitated Engineer turns on his children and even his children's children, as he kills Weyland, decapitates David, goes on homicidal rampage, and prepares to fly his ship of death to Earth--a scene that mirrors Shaw's own abortion of the alien fetus.

The children, then, turn on their creators, as the Prometheus crashes into and destroys the alien craft; meanwhile, the alien fetus, which survived the abortion, grows far larger and kills the Engineer trying to kill Shaw.  That is, the creation the creator created to kill his first creation instead kills the creator, which in turn creates a second creation that gestates by killing its creator.  It gets complicated.

Yet thankfully, there are also positive parent/child relationships in this film.  Shaw is shown to have had a close relationship with her beloved late-father.  She also remains steadfastly religious (Catholic, specifically) throughout the film, in spite of all that happens--showing her faith and closeness to her heavenly father.

In fact, when her husband Charlie says she can now quit wearing her cross-necklace, since "now we know who actually created us," she rejoins simply with, "and who do you think created them?"  Just as David desires to meet the creators of his creator, so also does Shaw wish to meet the creators of her creators.

The penultimate scene, then, is of Shaw and David hijacking a 2nd alien ship to still seek out the Engineer homeworld.  As they launch into space, she says, "It is new year's day, in The Year of Our Lord, 2094."  She still seeks to meet her makers.

The actual last scene, however, is of the xenomorph from the main Alien franchise being born out the corpse of the dead Engineer.  A life affirming scene is followed by a life-destroying one.  We have a healthy parent/child relationship contrasted against a decidedly unhealthy parent/child relationship.  Decide for yourself what the difference between the two was.

Joyce's Exiles

For Halloween, I thought it'd be fun to spend all October with just the "Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe."  But, my "Complete Poe" is a bit unwieldy to carry to work (curse you e-readers, you win this round!), so I'm also reading a series of slimmer volumes to read at lunch.  This seemed as good an excuse as any to finally check out James Joyce's sole play, "Exiles."

As more dates than I'm proud of have learned, I have sort of a man-crush on Joyce.  I'm a fan.  Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, even that lovable lunatic Finnegans Wake, they all make me happy.  It's not even a literary-snob thing, I genuinely love Joyce's books--it makes me honestly sad that the general public doesn't read him--I'm even sadder when fellow English majors merely respect him, as opposed to enjoying him, like he was meant to be, like I do!

And "Exiles" is standard Joyce--it features yet another Joyce stand-in with Richard, a prominent Irish writer returning to Dublin after 9 years abroad.  He finds his old friend Robert still has feelings for his wife Bertha...who may or may not reciprocate.  Robert is willing to risk him and Richard's friendship to find out...and Richard is willing to let him to find out to in the name of freedom...and Bertha is (understandably) pretty peeved with the behavior of both...I won't spoil the ending--though like all Joyce, the ending merely marks a termination of the text, not any sort of final resolution.

So how is it I've never gotten round to "Exiles?"  Probably cause what's enthralled me most about Joyce has been the music and precision of Joyce's prose, the stimulating complexity of his texts; Plays, by their very nature, cannot feature those elements. Hence, with so many other books to read, I'd never considered "Exiles" to be canon, required Joyce.

Yet though "Exiles" cannot portray Joyce's innovations, I'm grateful for the play, because by restricting itself only to dialogue, it throws into sharp relief another element of Joyce's fiction that often gets lost amidst all the erudition and theory--namely, the characters.  Joyce's characters, from Dubliners to Ulysses, all feel disconcertingly familiar, passionate, fleshed-out, real.  All the textual experimentation in the world wouldn't mean a thing, his books would all just be parlor tricks, forgetful high-wire acts, novelty for novelty's sake, flash-in-the-pan stunts, if it weren't for the desperate realism of his characters.

It's Joyce's characters that give his books their blood and guts, their strum und drang, their heart and soul.  They are too much like us you see, they are a highly-polished mirror held up to our own selves.  And it's in "Exiles" that one can no longer take refuge in over-literate-allusiveness and High-Modern-irony, oh no--what's left in "Exiles," stripped of all other pretentiousness, is the characters alone--people with hopes and dreams, depression and despondency, loves, passions, and genuine friendships that they wouldn't trade for the world, but maybe would for their own souls.

"Exiles" is a quick read, easy to miss between the much more demanding Portrait and Ulysses, but worth your attention, worth the cursory attention of an hour or two it asks for.  It is Joyce.

A Poem I Just Wrote *Ahem*

My greeny, fresh from the MTC, trained in the PMG
(yet also a bit of an SOB, quite frankly)
(And though he said he was of the GOP
on the DL was LGBT, as his DL told me)

Nevertheless became AP, and studied the GRE
to enter, as an RM, the ROTC, and eat MREs
Well, he went to the ER, and received 20 ccs
For during a PPI, he OD'd on PCP
In the ECI, we read to him from the D&C, and PoGP
While he received a blessing from his EQP
QED

You're welcome, America.

On the quieter impulse behind Seasonal excess...

When I was a child I spoke as a child, and parroted the childish complaints of some adults--the most seasonal of which was that the Holidays have stretched too long, have intruded too far, that Christmas encroaches upon Thanksgiving, and now threatens even Halloween, all while Halloween spreads out into September and even Labor Day.  Where is the restraint! the boundaries! where will the madness end! seems to be the hue and a cry.  Reasons for seasons are lost, stresses elevated, budgets strained, etc and etc.

But now that I'm a little older, a little more tolerant, a little more wounded, I...maybe don't excuse the increasingly-bloated holidays...but understand the impulse, a little more charitably.

Time flies fast you know; and the older you get, the faster it moves, and the swifter you approach the day when time won't move at all.  Holiday seasons that seemed to last a lifetime as a child, are suddenly over almost before they begin.  Even now, I'm aware that Halloween will be over in less than a month, and I haven't even started to do anything to enjoy this quirky little season that was once so saturated in childhood wonder. No, I now have papers to grade, lessons to plan, bills to pay, and a myriad other real responsibilities that ration off my attention away from the holidays that once meant so much to me. And if October passes this fast, then what of December?

So what can we do?  Maybe we're a little weak, maybe more sentimental than we'd care to be, but we let the season expand a bit, last a little longer, not protest as loudly when the store-front decorations go up a little earlier, perhaps proportionally let the season fill the same amount of our lives that it felt like it filled when we were kids, all in our inevitably-losing battle against the end of time, lest we turn our heads and find we've barely acknowledged yet another of our limited allotment of Christmases...

Jurassic Park Revisited

So, last week I rewatched Jurassic Park for perhaps the first time since the Clinton administration.  I'd been meaning to recently, ever since I read David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, a novella-length essay which details the time in '95 when Wallace was paid by Harper's magazine to find out how an agoraphobic, neurotic hyper-intellectual reacts to a Caribbean cruise (unsurprisingly, not well).

Over the course of said essay, he mentions that JP (still a fairly recent release at the time) played on constant loop on one of the ship's on-board channels; he says he watched it 6 times that 1 week, and found the third act to be weak.  (Though he does say that, after losing a chess-match to a 9-year-old prodigy, he felt a sudden sympathy for the Raptors hunting the kids).  I wished to revisit the film and decide for myself.

So how does 1993's premier blockbuster hold up 2 decades later?  The first thing I noticed was just how 90s it looked--the haircuts, the clothing, the film-stock, the bulky macintoshes, the animation-quality of the Park's intro cartoon, Seinfeld's Newman as the villain, the hilariously-dated use of the word "hacker,"--the film just screams early-90s chick.

Now, to say that the film is dated (what film isn't?) is not say that the film hasn't aged well--on the contrary, whether enforced by then-technological-limitations or as a conscious artistic choice, Spielberg's decision to combine CGI with live-animatronics helps the film immensely.  (Just think original Star Wars trilogy with its models and sets vs the prequel trilogy with its...yeah).

What next struck me about this ol' childhood favorite is, well, just how much I remembered of the movie.  JP is now just in the air we breath, it has permeated our popular consciousness such that we don't even need to have seen, or even liked the film, to get the references.  (The fact that Natural History museums to this day still have videos explaining how you can't clone dinosaurs from amber-mosquito DNA proves the extensive reach of this film). To wit: the ripples in water-cup; "objects in the mirror are closer than they appear"; the lawyer on the toilet; "clever girl"; "nuh-uh-uh!  You didn't see the magic word!"; and so forth.

Now, none of this is to imply that JP is a perfect film, either, cause it's not: the big "reveal" that the dinosaurs have figured out how to reproduce in the wild has no follow-through; the "sick Triceratops" development gets introduced and promptly dropped; despite some token armchair-philosophizing about how "life always finds a way," the film's themes aren't particularly more profound than "folks almost get eaten by dinos, then aren't"; genetically, the film isn't far removed from the ol' monster films of the 60s; despite the actors' best efforts, the characters are never really more than bare stereotypes of themselves; the token black-guy predictably dies; and the merchandise commercials are shoe-horned into the screen-time rather obviously and clumsily.

But here now I'm being a curmudgeon--it really is a uber-fun film, isn't it?  The story is tight, the technical proficiency dazzling, and the dinosaurs delightful.  As much as I respect Wallace, I must heartily disagree with him that the third act is weak--perhaps he thought the T. Rex rescuing our heroes last second from the Raptors was a bit of a narrative cop-out?  On the contrary, I think the entire film was building up to that moment when the T. Rex throws the Raptor through the 70 million year-old skeleton, then roars in triumph as the banner reading "When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth!" flutters to the ground.  That's the money-shot, right there--when life breaks free of the carefully-controlled commercial restraints that had tried (and failed) to make kitch out of something transcendent.

The failure of commercialism to contain life is present from the opening scene, wherein Costa Rican workers sporting official "Jurassic Park" hard-hats wait with hard-stares for the raptor-container to be unloaded.  Those officially-trademarked hats give off a sense of professional control, of this Disney-fied de-clawing of danger, of this assurance that marketing professionals have carefully accounted for all quadrants and demographics, that powerful investors in board meetings have all processes streamlined and ISO2000 certified.  Of course, those kitchy logos rest on the sweating heads of hard-eyed men, and before the opening scene is over one of them will be dragged away and eaten by a raptor.  Man's folly in trying to control nature is a facile and broad theme; but, commercialism's attempt to Disney-fy and neutralize our chaotic world could've used some more attention.

I also found myself pondering if JP could be classified with such fear-of-technology films as The Terminator, Robocop, The Matrix, even Videodrome, films that express our deep-seated post-modern fear that technology is advancing too rapidly, that the machines by which we rush to master nature will rather master us, that even our best intentioned science may instead be our death (significant is the fact that the dinosaurs here are encountered not by time-travel or finding lost islands, but are actually cloned by human scientists with the latest tech).

Also fascinating is the femininity of the threat; remember that the scientists thought they could control the dinosaur population by breeding them all as female.  The implication of course is that femininity is something dangerous that must be repressed and controlled.  The appearance of the dino-eggs in the wild is threatening because women are reproducing without men, rendering men unnecessary.  The raptors are even first introduced as having claws that can "geld" the young boy in the audience; in Freudian terms, the dinosaurs represent man's unconscious castration complex at the hands of women.

But Freud's no fun! He would've gotten eaten by a raptor in the first five minutes, and the audience would've cheered when it happened.  Like I said, Jurassic Park is a genuinely fun film, one I was relieved to find out had lived up to my childhood memories.

And now, in conclusion, Weird Al's "Jurassic Park," a parody that, like most Weird Al songs, is now more recognizable than the original song!

Just Some General Observations Concerning Teaching College Freshmen:

• When it comes to choosing paper topics, it is my older students who are more likely to pick something light and fun; it's the younger students who pick dull, heavy topics like abortion, immigration, gay-marriage, etc.  There appears to be something about growing older that causes one to lighten up, take one's self less-seriously.
• The super-majority of the time, students who pick the "heavy" topics (e.g. abortion, etc) do so not because they are passionate about the topic, but because they are lazy and unimaginative.  This assumption is proved by their writing.
• Drug-users (both current and ex-) are usually among my strongest writers.  Conclude from that what you will.
• Students from truly turbulent countries--e.g. Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Bosnia, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, former Soviet Republics, etc, rarely tell personal stories from their home countries.  I suppose there are just some stories that war-survivors won't even share with their closest loved ones, let alone their freshman composition instructor.  Understandably.
• A roommate suggested that maybe these international students don't share their war-stories because they perhaps consider their tales too common, too normal, to be worth attention?  Americans, by contrast, perhaps consider any personal tragedy to be a strange and great thing, for we don't ever expect tragedy to occur to us; hence, Americans will write long and dramatically about a car-crash where everyone survived, while a civil war survivor who saw his family butchered won't even think to bring it up.
• Or, perhaps these refugee-students simply don't have the words for their experiences--not in English, maybe not in any language.  I don't know which of all these explanations is more tragic.
• A native English speaker can absolutely jack-up one's own language--misspell, mis-punctuate, mis-capitalize, write both run-ons and fragments, etc--but they will still always use the indefinite article (a, an, the) correctly.  It's uncanny.
• Conversely, a non-native English speaker can master every other element of English grammar, but still mess-up the indefinite articles--Romance Language speakers over use them, Asiatic Language speakers leave them out.  A misplaced "the" gives them away immediately.  Articles appear to be first English grammar principle mastered by natives, yet the last mastered by new-comers.  It's uncanny.
• It is the A- students who are most likely to take me up on my offer to let them revise their papers for a higher grade; the B, C, and D students only take me up on the offer sporadically.
• Of the lower-graded students who do take me up on it, most only make the most superficial corrections to their papers, often ignoring the notes I've made detailing what they can do to improve their paper.  I no longer give these students higher grades for just turning in a token "revision."  At such times, I consider withdrawing my offer to let students revise their papers.
• But on the same token, I get just enough outliers who take my offer seriously and turn in superbly improved revisions, that I don't dare withdraw my offer.
• One of the saddest sights you'll see are the occasional students who clearly coasted through high school as class clowns, but who now find their antics no longer amuse their classmates nor get a rise from the teacher. The emperors have no clothes.  I almost pity them.
• But again, some of my most engaged and interesting students are high school flame-outs who are now determined to salvage their life.  I wish them good luck and godspeed.
• In a similar vein, it is also perversely gratifying to encounter the occasional former-honor-student who previously coasted by on sheer ability and teacher indulgence, who now suddenly realize that in college, one actually has to try.
• Whether because the blood is draining from students' brains to their bellies post-lunch or what, early-afternoon classes are usually my least-engaged, poorest attended, and hardest to teach.
• Night classes tend to be the funnest, presumably because they are populated by adults with day-time adult responsibilities, and, as earlier noted, it is grown adults who tend to lighten-up.
• Genuine tragedy seems to render people more charming, thoughtful, and interesting.  Bitterness, by contrast, is naive.  Again, draw your own conclusions as to why.

Real Problems

Words I thought I'd never type: I enjoyed the last stake high council speaker at church.  Normally when these speakers are announced, I crack open a book, play on my phone, try and flirt with the girl next to me, or even just drop all pretense of paying-attention, conk my forehead on the front-pew and take a nap.

I'm largely uninterested in yet another string of luke-warm platitudes constructed around such hard-knock life-stories as "I was a star center/quarterback/home-coming-king at East/West/Skyline/whatever who was AP on my mission then immediately married high-school-sweetheart/the beauty-queen/a model, attended the U/the Y/USU to became a lawyer/dentist/CFO, became rich and successful as a matter of course at everything I touched because monetary wealth is a clear sign of God's approbation and blessing," and "sired my race of Aryan superman through which I could vicariously fulfill my juvenile and sophomoric teenage fantasy to win the state basketball championship."  (I'm not even exaggerating about that last bit).

So it was genuinely refreshing to hear a story from someone who'd actually had real problems--we heard from someone who was divorced with kids and inactive in church when he remarried his girlfriend of 10 years (they didn't get sealed in the temple till a year later); someone who once had to work 4 jobs just to make ends meet; someone who was laid-off from his grounds-keeper job at 49, so went back to school for his Associates--not his BA, MBA, or Doctorate, but his Associates--which took him 6 years.

This was someone for whom tithing was once a sincere test of his faith, for whom there was never a clear, guaranteed light at the end of the tunnel, for whom the church was perhaps once a burden than a support, someone who's genuinely suffered emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually, yet somehow got through with his sense of humor intact--that is, for once, I heard from someone who actually had something to say!

These are the sorts of people I actually look up to--these are the sorts of folk that I suspect God can actually do something with--that in the eternities, I have the gut-feeling that it will be better for these passionate ones than all the MBAs, beauty-queens, and high-tithing-payers of the church together.

Song of Solomon

So, I was reading "Song of Solomon" a couple weeks ago.  Quick, which Toni Morrison novel is an episodic narrative concerning an ensemble of eccentric and pseudo-mystic African-Americans living in the colored ghetto part of a post-Civil War, pre-Civil Rights Midwest town, and includes an open and frank discussion on bodily functions and gender relations?  The answer of course is "All of them."  After trudging through "Sula" and "Beloved," Morrison was precipitously close to being yet another one of those important-sounding-authors that I respect more than I actually like.  Nothing personal against her, maybe I'm just too white or too male, or even too 21st-century to totally get what she's doing.

Of course, I used to say that about Victorian novels, too--I read "Middlemarch" you see, and I found the whole affair to just be so dreadfully stuffy, petty, and foreign to my American sensibilities to feel accessible.  Who cares if understanding English class-structure might help me comprehend the book better, bollocks on the whole thing, good-riddance to England and viva la revolucion! 

But then, "Great Expectations" and "Jane Eyre" were both written in that era--indeed, neither of those novels could be written today, given how much has changed since then.  But there is still something hauntingly personal, something distractingly familiar, about these characters, that cause self-reflection and  an aching longing, so that even though they are thorough products of the Victorians, they've long outlasted them.

I had a similar experience once I breached the second-half of "Song of Solomon."  Now, doubtless there are simply certain facets of the novel I still haven't comprehended simply because I haven't experienced being Black--just as there are doubtless parts of "Great Expectations" I don't get because I'm not a Victorian Englishman.  Nevertheless, somehow the character of Milkman Dead, as he engaged on that most banal of plot-devices--the buried-treasure hunt--transcended the text in that second-half to become something far more real, a character who was alarmingly familiar, one who both condemned by association the worst in me while mapping out the best of our potential. 

He doesn't transcend his circumstances, oh no--he transcends because of his background, his family, his roots, the whole, strange, wild, eccentric, sordid, mad, lunatic pageantry that produced him.  The book made me consider how much more I should value my own strange family-ties, in a manner that no mere greeting-card salutations or maudlin-Hollywood-celluloid could ever do.  No, "Song of Solomon" has blood and guts to it, it feels, it strikes, it's as messy as life--it's head and shoulders above "Beloved."  And in the climactic, self-destructive finale, I'm tempted to thinnk that Milkman really does fly away.