Relation and Relations

My fiance is sending text messages to my phone while I’m in class, and we’re having something of a conversation. She is on campus for her cousin’s dance recital, which is in the Fine Arts Auditorium, and she has vehemently suggested that I attend after class. But my class goes from 1810h-2140h, and the recital starts at 1930h—I didn’t think I’d be able to make any of it. Luckily, there are around 47 acts, or so, to this recital; I can make some of it (which turns out to be most of it) after class, and with more luck still, her cousin doesn’t perform any of her routines (I can’t be sure that this is the right word for what these kids did, or even if it’s the accepted word for what these kids did) until after my class gets out (but that isn’t important here).

The classroom for this particular class is on the second floor of a building that relates to the FAA via an expanse of grass, approximately fifty yards, called (with glib grimness) The Green. I’m on the second floor; my fiance is on the first floor. What is more is that The Green lays on a 10-15 degree grade downward, and once inside the FAA, an aisle-strider would notice another comparable grade (you know, stadium-seating). I’m on the second floor; my fiance is on a much-farther-down first floor. What is more is that we’re staring in opposite directions, being entertained (to different extents) by what is in front of our eyes, which are staring (again) in opposite directions.

[You've got to understand that a recent, domineering strand of thought is that I'll be joined together with this woman in six weeks: one flesh. A fundamental hindrance for me with regards to relationships is a tangible understanding of experience (See: Autistic/Solipsistic)—I can't make total sense of the existence of others' experience. (And this other person, who has other experiences, who experiences experiences differently than I do, is joining me in flesh, which is how we experience physical things) (!).]

Bring yourself back to how my fiance and I are physically related. A straight, immaterial line around 115 yards could probably connect us. But it’d hit our backs first, as we’re back-to-back across this distance, and we’re at very different levels of height, facing different objects of interest. And I haven’t been in a dark FAA for a dance recital; nor have I ever witnessed a dance recital; i.e, I haven’t an idea as to what she’s experiencing. (Though she may have some vague, cerebral vision of what is happening in my classroom, I don’t really know, as I didn’t ask her. In fact, I haven’t brought any of this up to her, and she will most likely choose not to read this.) We’re both having singular experiences. (And I know, that last sentence incited a “Duh!” from you, but just take “singular” loosely, not as literal as normal—apply it to this situation).

But anyways, after the class finishes, I head straight (I say “straight,” but there is an erroneous, extraneous detour that is rather embarrassing) to the dance recital. An early-evening rain soaked the grass through which I tread. But I make it to the FAA, and obey her text of, “walk in the door, right to the right of the concession stand and walk all the way down til you see [my grandma] on your right.” I find them, and sit directly behind my fiance in the row behind their group, which includes my fiance, her mom, her aunt, her grandma, and a cousin.

Her family is here—that is, a lot of people I know are here. An uncanny feeling came fast upon me (it could be attributed to my having worked a 12-hour shift before such a long class). Because of the performers’ talent-level and the performances’ presentation, the recital has an air of television, and the group I joined acts like they were watching television. The situation wasn’t unlike removing us from my future grandmother-in-law’s living room and placing us in this pretty-full auditorium. It is fun, and I am sleepy. It is uncanny.

My sleepiness and bad eyesight, in addition to the incessant pointing of crowd-members to specify the kid they’d come to see to parties who couldn’t make out the children’s faces, provoked this fictionalized scene:

A father or adult or some man [it was important (rather, necessitated by realism) that it was a man] is at a dance recital, in which his daughter or a related child is performing, but he can’t figure out which one is the child he knows. At some point during the performance, he decides on one of the young children who will do, who looks similar enough. If he focuses on the wrong child during the extent of the performance, while thoughts of adoration and enjoyment of his relation encompass his mind, is anything lost? Effectually, he’s been romanced by a mirage. But that’s ok, right?

I thought about this for about half of one of the acts, and it seemed sufficiently significant or inventive for a piece of fiction I’d like to write. Then I gave up, going back to this strangely significant feeling of my own, real situation. I was with the girl I love, and I was happy. But I had to situate myself. I had to figure out why this moment I was in felt so meaningful in itself.

Not only was I let into a heretofore unexperienced experience, but I was able to jump into a place in which my fiance was already. She was there, living; I was elsewhere, living. And then I came into her place, and lived with her. But when I got there, she explained, “You didn’t miss anything. Chloe hasn’t performed yet, and they’ve all pretty much been the same.” That was it. I was able to experience this certain experience with her, but also, I was given access. By her saying that what I was experiencing was similar enough to what had preceded my attendance, I could superimpose what I knew to what I didn’t. This made the recital she viewed without me real, in a tangible way.

Obviously, most people don’t seem to need this sort of entrance, but I did. And the layers of significance erupted after inspection.

Questions and Responses – The First Two

 At the prompting of myself, a great friend sent me some questions of his origination. The hope was that I’d write: I did. And I’m titling these thoughts, originally enough, “Questions and Responses,” but you know that already.

Q: What is the potential for re-purposing or redesigning phrases that used to have a basis in reality, but that reality has faded away? For example, in this e-mail, I can CC or BCC someone. The CC stands for Carbon Copy, but carbon copy machines are long gone. What will this do to language?

R: The potential has been actualized, right? When phrases become re-purposed, they’re stripped of the initial meaning–as the reality in which the phrase was borne has also been stripped from the speaker. A replacement of meaning isn’t necessarily a danger; it just upsets the literal-minded curmudgeon, like myself. My favorite semi-example of this comes from the everyday speech of every cellphone user when one explains how he’ll “text you” later. That’s a slightly diguised noun, acting as a verb. But who cares? As long as points are being made, and thoughts communicated.

However, I do think there is a potential danger with a correlative problem. Though I’ve never read 1984, I know of Newspeak–defined here by Wikipedia: “the deliberately impoverished language promoted by state.” Media saturation has purged our speech of nuanced language, and with the extraction comes the loss of an ability to articulate big ideas. There is also a transference of meaning (of which your question spoke) or an overall reductive revision of our language: the vocabulary is shrinking, but ideas are not, leaving less words to bear more meaning. In an attempt to explain, I’ll cite the old joke/observation of the word “cool”: this word, in a not insignificant amount of speakers’ vocabularies, has been infused with every bit of positive meaning from complete indifference to the infinity of goodness (only vocal inflections–or worse, exclamation points– can be relied on for a somewhat nuanced meaning). With all of us audience to the same language–the language spoken by our televisions and radios and every other medium of communication–we forfeit words as they become antiquated by non-use. This is what makes 19th-Century novels or Faulkner difficult to read. There is a loss of words; I just hope we aren’t in turn losing ideas.

Q: Describe a super power that no one has ever had.

R: Super. Powerful. Singular. Incomparable.

As ? Lay Dying

What follows is an answer to the question, “What does the title As I Lay Dying mean for Faulkner’s novel?” The question of titles is fun and sometimes fruitful, so I ask myself. Knowing the novel isn’t imperative to join in the discussion, because ultimately, this essay is only about life and death. And we all have experiential knowledge of both, maybe.

Before the textual beginning of the narrative, Addie has already been dying for ten days (she may argue that she’s always been dying) in her bed. In those ten days before her death and the eight days after, what is the difference? The family is in her service while she’s in bed: Dewey Dell with the fan, Cash with the coffin. And when she’s on the journey to Jefferson, the family is still ostensibly focused on serving Addie’s wish of burial.

Furthermore, what is the difference between how the Bundren’s are “living” and what will become after they pass? There can be no death without life, and I am not sure that Darl or Addie would claim that the family is living. Of course, this calls into question the meaning of the word “life”–and the text, particularly Addie, is concerned with the worth of words. If nothing is being done, if there is no progress, isn’t the family just lying in wait, in a static condition that a physical death may not effect. All of the kids serve their family in various ways; they are insulated in a way similar to Mokketubbe. And Anse does what he can, peaking with maiming his oldest son, to constrain his family to his own desires.

If there is no progress in what you call life, is there a point of living? I think this question is a contributor to Darl’s madness. If life means only a changing of scenes that all produce pain, what’s the point? And if everyone you come into contact with can’t see through the insignificance of their actions, the triviality of their plans and words (like “love”) and the implacable human situation, how does one reconcile his own “life”?

Rewilding UNF

Our mascot is the osprey, presumably because the bird of prey status may pervade the university’s athletic endeavors. Whatever the reason, it only seems natural. Animal mascots are everywhere: schools, sports teams, companies, etc. I am ignorant to any ties the school or land may have to the actual animal osprey as I am only aware of the geese on campus. The campus also has a couple of ponds that hold various fish and turtles. Most of the trees I can think of have been implanted with regard to aesthetic desire. We have sidewalks that go through the natural flora (which surely must hold fauna), but there is always yellow tape surrounding man-made burrows for pipes to lay or drying cement with steel and plastic flags marking the business of someone else, of progress, of construction. I think it’s only repulsive (and only slightly still) when I see a trapped lizard in the cement or a frog sharing inch-deep water with a soda can. The campus has sufficient areas for disposing of unwanted plastics and such, but we’d rather get it out of our hands as soon as we’re done with it. And so, it ends up next to our feet, kicked around, at the base of a tree, lodged in an osprey’s throat. The argument that arises is that we aren’t wild. At least not in the way we consume, not with all this plastic, all this synthetic material that discolors, misshapes, harms, and ruins the whole thing (the word environment leaves us–the talkers–out, and this [expletive] is certainly hurting my body). People choose to be ignorant, and they forever will. Regardless of this, I do not hate them and I will not stop speaking what I think can help. If science has ever shown me anything, it has illustrated that the power of even the smallest thing can be unimaginably immense. Or maybe history taught me that. Yeah, I think it was history, and whatever it was that happened in response to Pearl Harbor.

Attendance

Attend/Tend: “to direct the ears, mind, energies to anything; to turn one’s ear to, listen to; to give one’s presence.”

Please, this talk will not work without your help. Contemplate the two words. What do they mean to you?

From them, we get the noun attendance: “1. The action or condition of applying one’s mind or observant faculties to something; 2. The action or condition of turning one’s energies to; assiduous effort; 3.The action or condition of waiting upon, accompanying, or escorting a person, to do him service; ministration, assiduous service. in attendance: waiting upon, attending.; 4. The action or condition of an inferior in waiting the leisure, convenience, or decision of a superior.; 6. The action of coming or fact of being present, in answer to a summons, or to take part in public business, entertainment, instruction, worship, etc.” (Oxford English Dictionary).

Look at the evolution closely (OED numbers by chronological use). That fourth one is my favorite.

I think words can lose their flavor after they’ve been chewed and chewed, eventually swallowed according to our numbness. The word love has done this; we hear it too much. It isn’t the fault of the word, the sayer, or the real referent of the word that exists outside of language; it is, however, the fault of the hearer. Love is a slogan, an emblem, only a word, a blank stare maybe.

Perhaps learning a new word for a real truth will enliven the dead truth.

Go attend a stranger. Go attend a friend. Go attend a lover. Go and attend. Or, just attend.

Go attend God. Again, if one believes he isn’t attending God, that’s the fault of the listener. God can’t help but be attended. He is all that is. Be here now, in the only place one can be–the present.

Venture through that word evolution again, with the thoughts of your life in mind. To live is to attend. If one is always attending, he is living forever. This is eternal life.

“Change your mind, for the kingdom of heaven is now.” — Matthew 4: 17

“Mere words have something of quicksand about them. Only experience is the rope that is thrown to us.” — Georges Bataille

“15 Days to Experience Love”

I have been thinking about this for a few days, but now that I am writing, two initial worries spring up: it may sound like common sense (or at least something that has been mulled over, in different words) or it may sound like a waste of work and breath to get to a simple thing.

Now, I’m thinking: I’ve spent almost the entire summer working out a way to navigate, communicate, and realize truth. And I believe writing around it is the best way. You can’t write to it, or even write it, because it can’t be two things–words and the real.

A first thought was to devise a plan. I thought I would be clever and call it something like “15 Days to Experience Love” or something equally distasteful. The “plan” would consist of little ways to exhibit love through a generic daily routine (i.e., Monday: Buy your lunch today, but give it to someone who needs the food. In the time that you had set aside to eat your lunch, spend that time meditating, contemplating what your position is. [There'd be a hint or tip here too. Something like this: Try to say the least amount of words to this person. The smile on their face will teach you how weak words truly are.] ; Tuesday: In every conversation today, do not volunteer any unasked information of yourself. Ask clear, caring questions to the other person in your dialogue. Truly listen to what they’re saying. Get into their life, their answers. Attend them–here and now; this is love.) And after the titled fifteen days, there would be a surprise 15a or 16th day, and it would only say: start back at day one. I thought this would be ingenious.

The hope was that it would spotlight the inadequacies in a number of areas–namely, that you’re never done loving, that fifteen days is an arbitrary number, and committing to limitless love is almost a prerequisite to truly loving. I also think it would be one of the only ways to discuss acts of love in a truthful manner, because the person trying out the (ingenious) “15 Days to Experience Love” plan would have these actual experiences with which the text could dialogue. There would be questions at the back of the book like, “How did you pick the person who was in need of food?” ; “Where did you meditate? And why was it so hard to keep one single line of thought in your meditation?” ; or, “Why did you stop giving people food on Day 2, when you told all your friends how good it felt to give food to people in need on Day 1?”

I have since chosen to forgo this sort of exploration, but I have progressed to a couple of other things that I believe will work better. One of them was what I planned on talking about in this letter, but I digressed to something worthwhile to see the process through which I thought. So if the first two paragraphs seem a little disjointed or even ominous, they are mostly talking about what I hope to get at in my next posting. It will be a conversation on attendance and love. My idea for it involves some research and things that may not interest some readers (I’ve described it to myself as a sort of “linguistic journey”), but the thing around which I plan to write has been one of the most pleasant things I’ve learned. And again, these things have been said; I just hope to say them differently, maybe give new breath to dead words or a lifeless thought.

Yours in Love,

ts

I is for Interface

This is a paper I wrote for an American Fiction class. In an easy way, I can display some current thoughts on fictions. The books referenced are The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, White Noise by Don Delillo & Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger.

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You don’t know about you, without you have read a book by the name of…. You are a fiction that has all but lost its original sense—or trace—of self. Your fiction is your key to survival; the hero, the good guy, always wins. Dumbing yourself down to the third-person and denying awareness of self allows you to operate in this world of third-persons; you are everyone else, reduced to a few qualities. You act like a person. However, becoming aware of the fictive quality of this egotistical expanse you call life might kill you because you can’t reconcile the reality of death. So where do you go to find out who you are? You take stock in the narratives supplied by books and people you trust. If a narrative starts to fall apart, you look for a new one—anywhere but in. Everything you know has some sort of story, and stories can be reread; you think they never end. But what if you start taking what I, another blank space with black letters, am saying seriously? Isn’t that just succumbing to this narrative?

Living third-person is a constant act, a constant setting up of props. About Denise’s green visor, Murray says, “It’s her interface with the world” (White Noise 37). This is the literal representation of the things you do to live in this world—the fallacies that render that pronoun “I” you use to refer to yourself—Jack Gladney’s dark glasses and robe giving him the proper prestige for a professor. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn plays with this idea of acting as well. Mrs. Judith Loftus accuses Huck of doing a bad job enacting a young girl; she says, “You do a girl tolerable poor” (70). Also, Huck acts as a member of the culture with the infamous “No’m. Killed a nigger” (230). This is the same boy who just decided to do “wrong” and help Jim; he isn’t being himself. In the narrative, he must act within culture—to fool them. But just a little later Huck falls right back into the fold under the spell of Tom Sawyer, who is living his own fiction supplied by what is “in the books.” The mischief Sawyer invokes becomes his own little interface with which plays his part in his fictional world.

Living fictively demands that the story be kept alive; if it isn’t, you aren’t. The man in The Road constantly peddles this narrative of “the good guys” to the boy. They keep this narrative going while this destitute landscape surrounds them. The fiction keeps them alive. “Stories are supposed to be happy” (268). McCarthy forces the reader to see the arbitrary naming of things as good. It’s a meaningless title really, but the man depends on telling himself and his son the narrative to get through an unacceptable, real situation. Jack Gladney illustrates the same need to resuscitate a fiction, even attempting to appropriate a new fiction that might fit better as reality approaches him. Upon being exposed to Nyodene D, he’s told, “You are the sum total of your data. No man escapes that” (141). He then assumes he’s dying, and that becomes his new fiction. That becomes the thing that brings him prestige now, his near-deathness. “We kept inventing hope,” he narrates (147). And he does exactly that through the narrative; he must to stay alive. Once your life is a fiction, it must remain that way. You sentence yourself to living falsely, and as reality—in death—approaches, you will grasp for anything that can be reassembled into a fiction that means you’ll live. The good guys always win.

Understanding that you’re fake faults the entire world. You see everyone else in their fakery, and you will hate it; ask Franny. She can’t stand the way people are living their little fake worlds, making everything about them. And the worse thing is that she sees that same faculty inside herself, blaming her ego. Zooey laments this: “’God damn it,’ he said, ‘there are nice things in the world—and I mean nice things. We’re all such morons to get so sidetracked. Always, always, always referring every goddam thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos’” (152).

Understanding this fictive nature of man won’t help discerning yourself. That’s the last, unfortunate truth. Not even Zooey was exempt. Directly following the above passage, the next page accuses his hesitations as specious, “the way the other children on the program did” (153). Zooey cannot even make sense of himself—neither could Seymour. “For all I know, I may be a little jealous” (159). Zooey couldn’t tell what he was feeling. Maybe it takes practice, or maybe it is unknowable. Either way, it takes something more than understanding the secret. You will tell yourself a lie to get through life. You’re killing yourself, and you can’t help it. If you think you’re outside of this quality, you’re doing it again—thinking you’re somehow better than the others. There is no winning here. You are a lie. “There is no God and we are his prophets.”

Before You

Before you, I didn’t know me. In fact, you and I make us. And half of us is me. I couldn’t have known us, nor myself, before you. Before you, there was no math. Not the way we learned or understand it.

Before you, you tell yourself, there were no fights. You think: they were happy, they’d be better off without you. But what you don’t know is that they stayed together for you—and that they’ll be together forever. Because of you.

Before you, Robert told me not to be scared. He meant for you. Before you, I never knew what to expect. I know now, because of you, that expectations are just an invisible line I make for you to crawl over. You’re beautiful, and I won’t be scared for your coming brother.

Before you, there was no happiness. Yeah, your parents lived in a different house, but that house doesn’t have a life. They don’t, without you.

Before you, there was no language. There was no Theresa. Your name didn’t exist. Not the way your mother says it. Not the images she sees in her mind while the sounds of your name play out of her mouth—the music you two make.

Reading Women

At the impetus of my girlfiend–she bought me the books–I read the stories of two women that opened my eyes. Both books are considered Modern Classics, moreover Modern American Classics. In April, I read Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter for the first time. And through this, I met Edna Pontellier and Hester Prynne respectively.

The books were different, but they were the same. But maybe this could be blamed on the temporal proximity in which I read them. Whatever the case, they were each rewarding and deserving of my interest. Where TSC possesses a plot that will pull the reader in because it delivers a mystery that demands an answer, TA moved with the character of Mrs. Pontellier.

Edna Pontellier lived in Lousiana in the late 19th century, and Hester Prynne lived in Boston in the 17th century. But both women faced the same problems; neither could claim freedom at the beginning of their stories. In Pontellier, we see the critique of the institution of marriage, and in Prynne, we see the critique of the institution of religion. Perhaps these are the most powerful social institutions still today?

As I discussed with a friend of mine last week, I believe Hester Prynne’s story would greatly serve a group of believers who were willing to study it. The main themes in it are the main themes of my faith–simply, guilt and grace. To dovetail this point, I don’t know what could be more exciting than a book club. I wrote a paper on book reviews this semester that continued with thoughts on how reading promotes community. Is literature performing its function if it only lives when a book is open? Of course not. I want to read, and I want to read together.

In the same way, I would recommend Chopin’s story of Edna Pontellier to every married man supremely. But of course, every woman could enjoy it, and any reader should. Not only does the reader learn about the inequality of American marriage at this time but also where joy and life is found here on Earth.

From these two women, I moved to Brandy Alexander… Being a creation of Chuck Palahniuk, s/he certainly couldn’t share this space with Hester and Edna.

Places I

From the dry heat of Phoenix, drive north, uphill, for something close to four and a half hours. The escalation is so slight that it becomes almost unnoticeable most of the way, but somehow when you arrive at Grand Canyon National Park, you’re over a mile higher than you were. To get into the park, you must stop a half mile before the gate and purchase tickets inside a gift shop/movie theatre/information center. You could spend a whole day inside here—learning. Once inside the park, you park in a lot assigned to a couple of viewpoints on the canyon; this is the South Rim.

The road to the lot doesn’t yield one view of the canyon, so you don’t know exactly what you’re missing. You join in with the droves plodding through a walkway that leads to a viewpoint. You’re almost there. Take a turn in the path; there are voices, but none of them mean anything. These are the only words being said: awesome, amazing, ridiculous. Letters, no matter how many there are together, cannot hold a meaning that portrays what you’re seeing. The closest I can get to descibing the scene is this: _______. “The pictures don’t do it justice.” “You have to see it to believe it.” These phrases would not exist if language—text, words—could function as sight does. I can’t bring you the Grand Canyon, no matter what I do. I was there for one afternoon, about 5 hours, but weeks would be spent getting to see it; months to learn it; a life to know it.

Ok, I’ve told you that text can’t accurately portray a place and that I haven’t fully seen or know the place I’ve chosen to write about. Where do we go from here?

The place—the Grand Canyon—had an effect on me. From it, I did learn something. Maybe what I learned wasn’t exactly about that particular place, but it was about all places, or my relationship with places—my place. I’ve never felt smaller, as insignificant, in my life. It was a good insignificant though: the kind that god-fearers experience as a comfort. My thoughts, my plans, my problems and my life are no bigger than I am. And I am unnecessary. I think “sobering” is a word that people commonly use to describe what I’m trying to say, and I don’t think it’s a bad choice.

Places change us. It’s easy to see in such an extreme example; the Grand Canyon is the most fascinating thing I’ve ever witnessed. But we are to some extent fashioned by our surroundings, altered by our environment. People are different in different places. People are different because of different places.