The five-paragraph essay is a phenomenon so universal, in the American education system at least, that it really should require no introduction, but I have it on good authority that when it comes to five-paragraph essays, a solid introduction is of the essence. So then, for the sake of form, I shall remind the reader that a five-paragraph essay is a simple form of written argument. It begins with a paragraph that introduces the topic and contains a thesis statement which briefly sets out the author's main points, which are elaborated upon in the three following paragraphs, and then restated and wrapped up neatly in the fifth, concluding paragraph. It's all very neat and tidy and efficient, and let me put it bluntly: I hate five-paragraph essays. I always have. I hated them when I was in school and expected to write them. I hate them now that I'm grown up and, in my capacity as an unofficial teacher's assistant, grading them. Five-paragraph essays hinder critical thinking; they stifle literary style; and, however indirectly, they encourage academic dishonesty.
The purpose of most academic writing exercises, up to and perhaps including the undergraduate university level, is to teach the student how to think. No one expects new insights about Shakespeare's soliloquys or the fall of Rome from a grade-schooler. Less important than the content of most student work is the thought process that goes into it: the ability to think through the subject matter, to take a position and state and support that position so that another person can understand it. In "The Ill Effects of the Five Paragraph Theme," English teacher Kimberly Wesley describes the way in which overemphasis on one particular format limits the development of thought in other directions. "But how can I fit seven pages into five paragraphs?" one of Wesley's students fretted, given the assignment of a comparative analysis of two novels. This question prompted Wesley to reflect that the five-paragraph essay tends to stifle critical thinking by forcing every argument into the same narrow form. Just as Orwell's fictitious totalitarian regime strove to remove from the English language all words redolent of freedom and rebellion, and in so doing make it essentially impossible to entertain the concepts thereof, the constrictions of the five-paragraph format channel student thought into limited and somewhat predetermined patterns. According to Wesley, the "emphasis on organization over content squelches complex ideas that do not fit neatly into three boxes." Repeatedly, she saw students touch upon ideas in their papers that were never fully developed, because they did not "fit within the neat, prescribed formula" of the thesis. Quite simply, not every argument worth making can be supported neatly by "three separate but equal points," and often critical thinking and relevant insight are sacrificed to the demands of form. Some arguments require far more than three points of support. Some don't need more than one or two. And not all points of support demand or deserve equal weight: in some cases, more than a sentence or two would be redundant; other ideas may require several paragraphs to be set forth with the barest adequacy. So deeply entrenched is the five-paragraph argument in the mind of some students that it shows up even when it's wholly inappropriate: when the assignment was a descriptive or narrative essay, for example. Many students consistently feel the need to include three paragraphs of support in anything they write, and end up valiantly defending such stupid theses as "The Roman patricians were very interesting."
Once, when I was in high school, there was an announcement read over the intercom of who were the four best writers in the school. I wasn't one of them. Nor were any of the other students I knew were original, creative, and insightful thinkers with a masterful prose style. As far as I knew, the ones who were named were competent and diligent students, but hardly extraordinary, and I was bewildered. Then I understood: the students who were chosen to be so honored weren't the ones most likely to be shortlisted for the Pulitzer in fifteen or twenty years. They were the ones who were best at writing five-paragraph essays: the ones who always adhered to the rubric and followed all the rules. I, on the other hand, found the rubrics and formats painfully constricting, and my need to express my thoughts in the way I truly felt they needed to be expressed often came into painful conflict with my desire to abide by the guidelines within which I had been told to work. I knew I was an excellent writer; I felt I had earned my artistic license, so to speak. But my teachers, jaded perhaps by years of dismally dull student writing, had learned to grade by the rubric: no exceptions. When students are taught to write to a formulaic standard, they learn to formulate, not to write. Literary style becomes something to cross off a checklist. Thesis and three points of support? Check. Vivid, precise language? Check. Quote from an expert? Check. Illustrative personal anecdote? Check. Strict adherence to the five-paragraph essay format offers no room to grow for those who already know the rules well enough to get away with breaking them, no chance for the writer to find his or her own solutions to the unique challenges and demands of each written work. With the structure and the direction of the essay already prescribed, where is the writer's chance to build rapport, to deviate briefly from the main course of the argument into some enlightening subtopic, to startle and shock and surprise? I grant that it may be possible for a writer of unusual gifts to compose a five-paragraph essay with wit, irony, and endearing braggadocio, but I for one have never seen it done. Overreliance on the five-paragraph essay format teaches students to be adequate, not extraordinary.
I'm not sure some of them are even bothering to learn how to be adequate. If writing can be reduced to a formula, if there's no reason why one essay shouldn't be very much the same as any other, why should students even bother writing their own essays in the first place? Of course, no matter what they're told to write, there is no excuse for plagiarism, any more than there is for copying the answers to a friend's math homework. But if there's anything duller than writing a five-paragraph essay (and there is), it's grading a whole stack of five-paragraph essays. Nothing makes my eyes glaze over faster, except perhaps spelling tests. Even with my near-eidetic memory for verbal material, too many essays saying exactly the same thing in exactly the same way can leave me wondering if there's some plagiarism passing under the radar - and, frankly, just how much it really matters. If the flow of thought can be reduced to a formula, if there's one simple right way to do it, what does it matter where you get your answers?
For the sake of simplicity and adequacy, the American educational system has become overly reliant on the five-paragraph essay, to the detriment of students' critical thinking skills, literary style, and, I believe, their respect for the process of writing itself. I believe it is time to retire this tedious form and start teaching students, especially those in the upper grades, to write with daring and originality, letting the direction of the their thoughts determine the structure in which they set them down.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Autumn Fever
"So," my friend asked, "how are you?" It was a Friday morning at the very beginning of October, a day of fierce almighty storms that battered the house with hot thunder and rain so sparse and windblown it was almost dry.
"I'm all right," I replied. "Feeling something change inside me. I'm restless."
"You feel like you want to do something?" she asked. "Like there is a burst of energy in you or you're longing for something? Perhaps feeling a bit anxious for something?"
"Yes!" I exclaimed, amazed how she had managed to elaborate my feelings so perfectly.
"Autumn," she diagnosed succinctly.
It didn't take much reflection before I realized she was right. I have always loved the "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness," in a most deep and personal way. I was born in the very heart of autumn; gifted with a spirit of soil and mist, and a proclivity to austerity and decadence. When the leaves begin to turn, I feel myself called back to a home I never knew, to an unsettling and familiar wildness.
With the coming of autumn I am feral and expansive and lonely - so full of feeling I can hardly stand it, and yet I wouldn't trade it for the world. I want to spin in circles and run into walls and be honest and honest and honest. I want to take risks and drink clear cold water. I want to write a song and stub my toe and sing and bleed. I feel so primal! and I want to love: without a destination or a target, if I must, just loving for the sake of loving.
I feel fearsome. Powerful. Tremendous. Untouchable. Charmed. Strange!
It is hard to capture the delicate tremulous expansiveness of it in words alone. When I go out to walk in the brisk moist autumn air, whether it be by day when the whole world is the bright color of scattered light, or by night when the streetlamps color the mist like the haze from a fire - I take my iPod. Everything sounds different against a backdrop of infinite possibility, but there are certain songs that enhance the effect. In this climate of sky and soul I want to hear music as plaintive and pensive as my own meditations, wide and acoustic and resonant.
Here is a playlist of the songs I love to hear in these days of brilliant gloom, songs that capture some of the beautiful yearning ache that surrounds me at this time. I have tried to reflect all the moods of the autumn here: tender and fierce, hopeful and despairing. It is my hope that I have captured in this list a small piece of the season's melancholy splendor, to dip back into at will the other three-quarters of the year.
TRACK LISTING:
Somethin' Grand (Madeleine Peyroux)
Black Winged Bird (Nina Persson)
Moving (Kate Bush)
La Soñadora (Enya)
Sibeling (Depeche Mode)
Scarborough Fair (Rosalind McAllister)
Who I Was Born to Be (Susan Boyle)
Anywhere Is (Enya)
The Ash Grove (Michelle Amato)
Circle (Edie Brickell & New Bohemians)
Pax Deorum (Enya)
Time to Say Goodbye (Sarah Brightman)
Fallen Embers (Enya)
Memory (Barbra Streisand)
Fields of Gold (Sting)
I Won't Stay Long (Sixpence None the Richer)
Although I'm sure any commentary on these songs would only be gilding the lily, I can't resist a few brief liner notes, as it were.
Somethin' Grand - This is a lovely, gentle song that somehow embodies that sweet restless feeling of great things on the horizon. "Wide awake, breath taken / I'm shaken by my sight / Couldn't sleep, couldn't keep / Quiet secrets on the wind I hear."
Black Winged Bird - The sweetness of this pretty tune belies the strength and resignation and painful maturity of the lyrics: "I made up my mind to be a black-winged bird / Never turn my head for how things were . . . And I'll soar on my way / Sad as the state of things we can't change."
Moving - The music and the lyrics of the hauntingly unusual song are perfectly bound together, and the unabashedly plaintive yearning is evident. "How I'm moved / How you move me / With your beauty's potency / You give me life / Please don't let me go / You crush the lily in my soul."
La Soñadora - This pensive tune casts a graceful spell, like waking up from a lovely but scarcely-remembered dream. "I; the autumn . . . I have been an echo . . . I have been everything, I am myself . . . I am she who dreams."
Sibeling - This ominous, airy instrumental evokes the cries of seagulls on a day heavy with portents of storm.
Scarborough Fair - The plaintive futility of this English folk song could break your heart, if you let yourself think about it (which I suggest you do): "Tell her to make me a cambric shirt . . . Without no seam nor needle work . . . Tell her to find me an acre of land . . . Between the salt water and the sea strand / Then she'll be a true love of mine."
Who I Was Born to Be - This is a perfect hymn of new beginning: acknowledging the hurts and damages of the past, but soaring beyond them. "When I was a child / There were flowers that bloomed in the night / Unafraid to take in the light / Unashamed to have braved the dark / Though I may not know the answers / I can finally say I am free / And if the questions led me here / Then I am who I was born to be."
Anywhere Is - The strong, sweeping melody could so easily overwhelm the lyrics if they did not possess a power all their own: "The moon upon the ocean / Is swept around in motion / But without ever knowing / The reason for its flowing / In motion on the ocean / The moon still keeps on moving / The waves still keep on waving / And I still keep on going."
The Ash Grove - This traditional Welsh folk song has lent its tune to several hymns and even a political ditty, but these lyrics by John Oxenford perfectly capture the nostalgia of the melody, celebrating the beauty of nature ("The ash grove how graceful, how plainly 'tis speaking / The wind through it playing has language for me") and the memory of lost loved ones ("Each step brings a memory as freely I roam . . . The dear ones I long for again gather here / From ev'ry dark nook they press forward to meet me"). And in autumn that ash grove might look something like this, which is enough to justify its inclusion here, I think.
Circle - This is a perfect song of defiant solitude, and it sounds just amazing outdoors on an autumn night, when "the streets are wet" and "the colors slip into the sky." "I quit, I give up / Nothing's good enough for anybody else / It seems / And being alone is the best way to be . . . When I'm by myself, nobody else can say goodbye / Everything is temporary anyway."
Pax Deorum - The chanted Latin lyric that constitutes the greatest part of the song doesn't quite make grammatical sense, though it's clearly some sort of summoning invocation. The power of the chant is more important than the meaning, though; this lovely piece evokes the awesome force of a storm rising, raging, and breaking. Turn this one up loud.
Time to Say Goodbye - You don't have to know a word of Italian to hear the yearning in this beautiful song, but the lyrics are deeply powerful in their own right: "I'll leave with you / On ships upon seas / That I know / Exist no longer / It's time to say goodbye." I can't listen to this song without wanting to love with all my heart, even if hurts.
Fallen Embers - This is an almost painfully beautiful song about the memory of something impossibly poignant. "Once, as the night was leaving / Into us our dreams were weaving / Once, all dreams were worth keeping / I was with you."
Memory - There are songs of resignation, and their are songs of resolution. And then there's "Memory." Autumnal in setting ("The withered leaves collect at my feet . . . Burnt out ends of smoky days") as well as ambience, this song makes me ache and dream in the same tone. "I remember the time I knew what happniess was / Let the memory live again . . . I must think of a new life / And I mustn't give in . . . Another day is dawning."
Fields of Gold - This truly haunting song seems to reveal a new mood to me every time I listen to it: joy, love, tension, loss: "You'll remember me when the west wind moves / Upon the fields of barley / You can tell the sun in his jealous sky / When we walked in fields of gold." I'm not a huge fan of music videos, but I watched this one twice, then downloaded it. It's simple, powerful, and perfectly suited to the song. If you've never seen it, please don't deny yourself.
I Won't Stay Long - I can say for certain that my friend and I aren't the only ones afflicted with autumn fever. Lyricist Sam Ashworth clearly gets it too. I couldn't express the feeking of sweet autumnal melancholy better than the words of this song: "Leaves are falling, and something's calling me here / The state of depression that I'm walking in / Got the impression that I won't stay here long / I know I am like this, but still I don't know what to do / The sky is darkening, I can feel it in the air / My heart is sinking, I know winter's on its way."
"I'm all right," I replied. "Feeling something change inside me. I'm restless."
"You feel like you want to do something?" she asked. "Like there is a burst of energy in you or you're longing for something? Perhaps feeling a bit anxious for something?"
"Yes!" I exclaimed, amazed how she had managed to elaborate my feelings so perfectly.
"Autumn," she diagnosed succinctly.
It didn't take much reflection before I realized she was right. I have always loved the "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness," in a most deep and personal way. I was born in the very heart of autumn; gifted with a spirit of soil and mist, and a proclivity to austerity and decadence. When the leaves begin to turn, I feel myself called back to a home I never knew, to an unsettling and familiar wildness.
With the coming of autumn I am feral and expansive and lonely - so full of feeling I can hardly stand it, and yet I wouldn't trade it for the world. I want to spin in circles and run into walls and be honest and honest and honest. I want to take risks and drink clear cold water. I want to write a song and stub my toe and sing and bleed. I feel so primal! and I want to love: without a destination or a target, if I must, just loving for the sake of loving.
I feel fearsome. Powerful. Tremendous. Untouchable. Charmed. Strange!
It is hard to capture the delicate tremulous expansiveness of it in words alone. When I go out to walk in the brisk moist autumn air, whether it be by day when the whole world is the bright color of scattered light, or by night when the streetlamps color the mist like the haze from a fire - I take my iPod. Everything sounds different against a backdrop of infinite possibility, but there are certain songs that enhance the effect. In this climate of sky and soul I want to hear music as plaintive and pensive as my own meditations, wide and acoustic and resonant.
Here is a playlist of the songs I love to hear in these days of brilliant gloom, songs that capture some of the beautiful yearning ache that surrounds me at this time. I have tried to reflect all the moods of the autumn here: tender and fierce, hopeful and despairing. It is my hope that I have captured in this list a small piece of the season's melancholy splendor, to dip back into at will the other three-quarters of the year.
TRACK LISTING:
Somethin' Grand (Madeleine Peyroux)
Black Winged Bird (Nina Persson)
Moving (Kate Bush)
La Soñadora (Enya)
Sibeling (Depeche Mode)
Scarborough Fair (Rosalind McAllister)
Who I Was Born to Be (Susan Boyle)
Anywhere Is (Enya)
The Ash Grove (Michelle Amato)
Circle (Edie Brickell & New Bohemians)
Pax Deorum (Enya)
Time to Say Goodbye (Sarah Brightman)
Fallen Embers (Enya)
Memory (Barbra Streisand)
Fields of Gold (Sting)
I Won't Stay Long (Sixpence None the Richer)
Although I'm sure any commentary on these songs would only be gilding the lily, I can't resist a few brief liner notes, as it were.
Somethin' Grand - This is a lovely, gentle song that somehow embodies that sweet restless feeling of great things on the horizon. "Wide awake, breath taken / I'm shaken by my sight / Couldn't sleep, couldn't keep / Quiet secrets on the wind I hear."
Black Winged Bird - The sweetness of this pretty tune belies the strength and resignation and painful maturity of the lyrics: "I made up my mind to be a black-winged bird / Never turn my head for how things were . . . And I'll soar on my way / Sad as the state of things we can't change."
Moving - The music and the lyrics of the hauntingly unusual song are perfectly bound together, and the unabashedly plaintive yearning is evident. "How I'm moved / How you move me / With your beauty's potency / You give me life / Please don't let me go / You crush the lily in my soul."
La Soñadora - This pensive tune casts a graceful spell, like waking up from a lovely but scarcely-remembered dream. "I; the autumn . . . I have been an echo . . . I have been everything, I am myself . . . I am she who dreams."
Sibeling - This ominous, airy instrumental evokes the cries of seagulls on a day heavy with portents of storm.
Scarborough Fair - The plaintive futility of this English folk song could break your heart, if you let yourself think about it (which I suggest you do): "Tell her to make me a cambric shirt . . . Without no seam nor needle work . . . Tell her to find me an acre of land . . . Between the salt water and the sea strand / Then she'll be a true love of mine."
Who I Was Born to Be - This is a perfect hymn of new beginning: acknowledging the hurts and damages of the past, but soaring beyond them. "When I was a child / There were flowers that bloomed in the night / Unafraid to take in the light / Unashamed to have braved the dark / Though I may not know the answers / I can finally say I am free / And if the questions led me here / Then I am who I was born to be."
Anywhere Is - The strong, sweeping melody could so easily overwhelm the lyrics if they did not possess a power all their own: "The moon upon the ocean / Is swept around in motion / But without ever knowing / The reason for its flowing / In motion on the ocean / The moon still keeps on moving / The waves still keep on waving / And I still keep on going."
The Ash Grove - This traditional Welsh folk song has lent its tune to several hymns and even a political ditty, but these lyrics by John Oxenford perfectly capture the nostalgia of the melody, celebrating the beauty of nature ("The ash grove how graceful, how plainly 'tis speaking / The wind through it playing has language for me") and the memory of lost loved ones ("Each step brings a memory as freely I roam . . . The dear ones I long for again gather here / From ev'ry dark nook they press forward to meet me"). And in autumn that ash grove might look something like this, which is enough to justify its inclusion here, I think.
Circle - This is a perfect song of defiant solitude, and it sounds just amazing outdoors on an autumn night, when "the streets are wet" and "the colors slip into the sky." "I quit, I give up / Nothing's good enough for anybody else / It seems / And being alone is the best way to be . . . When I'm by myself, nobody else can say goodbye / Everything is temporary anyway."
Pax Deorum - The chanted Latin lyric that constitutes the greatest part of the song doesn't quite make grammatical sense, though it's clearly some sort of summoning invocation. The power of the chant is more important than the meaning, though; this lovely piece evokes the awesome force of a storm rising, raging, and breaking. Turn this one up loud.
Time to Say Goodbye - You don't have to know a word of Italian to hear the yearning in this beautiful song, but the lyrics are deeply powerful in their own right: "I'll leave with you / On ships upon seas / That I know / Exist no longer / It's time to say goodbye." I can't listen to this song without wanting to love with all my heart, even if hurts.
Fallen Embers - This is an almost painfully beautiful song about the memory of something impossibly poignant. "Once, as the night was leaving / Into us our dreams were weaving / Once, all dreams were worth keeping / I was with you."
Memory - There are songs of resignation, and their are songs of resolution. And then there's "Memory." Autumnal in setting ("The withered leaves collect at my feet . . . Burnt out ends of smoky days") as well as ambience, this song makes me ache and dream in the same tone. "I remember the time I knew what happniess was / Let the memory live again . . . I must think of a new life / And I mustn't give in . . . Another day is dawning."
Fields of Gold - This truly haunting song seems to reveal a new mood to me every time I listen to it: joy, love, tension, loss: "You'll remember me when the west wind moves / Upon the fields of barley / You can tell the sun in his jealous sky / When we walked in fields of gold." I'm not a huge fan of music videos, but I watched this one twice, then downloaded it. It's simple, powerful, and perfectly suited to the song. If you've never seen it, please don't deny yourself.
I Won't Stay Long - I can say for certain that my friend and I aren't the only ones afflicted with autumn fever. Lyricist Sam Ashworth clearly gets it too. I couldn't express the feeking of sweet autumnal melancholy better than the words of this song: "Leaves are falling, and something's calling me here / The state of depression that I'm walking in / Got the impression that I won't stay here long / I know I am like this, but still I don't know what to do / The sky is darkening, I can feel it in the air / My heart is sinking, I know winter's on its way."
Monday, October 25, 2010
The Egregious Excerpts: Truth Reads Lemony Snicket (So You Don't Have To)
First off, let me make it clear that I in no way mean to discourage anyone from reading A Series of Unfortunate Events. I shall offer my very free disclosure that I had no desire whatsoever at first to dive into a long and reportedly ridiculous children's series, but I finally decided that I had better read the first two books, at least, since my mothers' students have sometimes chosen them for a Language Arts assignment, and I have taken it upon myself this year to read all the books that they have to choose from, as I have often found myself in the position of grading their papers and it's much easier to do if I really know what I'm reading about. (It's not always necessary, however. When, for example, a student states that the climax of The Bad Beginning is when the Baudelaire orphans learn how to make pasta with puttanesca sauce, I don't have to have read the book to feel reasonably confident giving a very low grade.)
I give fair warning to any reader who might deem it suitable to follow my example: Lemony Snicket can be addicting, particularly if you have a passion for wordplay, metafiction, and underdog stories. If you have the time to read thirteen increasingly lengthy books, comprising 170 chapters in total (not counting two non-chapters and one moment of déjà vu), there are certainly worse ways you could spend it. There is more to this series than the very frivolous diversion it may at first appear to be. However, I recognize that many of you have better things to do with your time, or believe you do at any rate, and it would be most unfortunate if for this reason you were to be deprived of the wit, wisdom, and violently funny diatribes of Lemony Snicket. The moments that have made me laugh out loud are too numerous to reproduce here, and many of them would lose something out of context, anyway. But there are a few passages scattered throughout the series that are so brilliant they simply take my breath away, and it is these that I have felt it necessary to share with the readers of this blog. Enjoy this moment of vicarious fiction discovery.
It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things. (from The Reptile Room)
There is a way of looking at life called "keeping things in perspective." This simply means "making yourself feel better by comparing the things that are happening to you right now against other things that have happened at a different time, or to different people." For instance, if you were upset about an ugly pimple on the end of your nose, you might try to feel better by keeping your pimple in perspective. You might compare your pimple situation to that of someone who was being eaten by a bear, and when you looked in the mirror at your ugly pimple, you could say to yourself, "Well, at least I'm not being eaten by a bear." You can see at once why keeping things in perspective rarely works very well, because it is hard to concentrate on somebody else being eaten by a bear when you are staring at your own ugly pimple. (from The Wide Window)
If you have ever had a miserable experience, then you have probably had it said to you that you would feel better in the morning. This, of course, is utter nonsense, because a miserable experience remains a miserable experience even on the loveliest of mornings. For instance, if it were your birthday, and a wart-removal cream was the only present you received, someone might tell you to get a good night's sleep and wait until morning, but in the morning the tube of wart-removal cream would still be sitting there next to your uneaten birthday cake, and you would feel as miserable as ever. (from The Miserable Mill)
It is true, of course, that there is no way of knowing for sure whether or not you can trust someone, for the simple reason that circumstances change all of the time. You might know someone for several years, for instance, and trust him completely as your friend, but circumstances could change and he could become very hungry, and before you knew it you could be boiling in a soup pot, because there is no way of knowing for sure. (from The Vile Village)
Entertaining a notion, like entertaining a baby cousin or entertaining a pack of hyenas, is a dangerous thing to refuse to do. If you refuse to entertain a baby cousin, the baby cousin may get bored and entertain itself by wandering off and falling down a well. If you refuse to entertain a pack of hyenas, they may become restless and entertain themselves by devouring you. But if you refuse to entertain a notion - which is just a fancy way of saying that you refuse to think about a certain idea - you have to be much braver than someone who is merely facing some bloodthirsty animals, or some parents who are upset to find their little darling at the bottom of a well, because nobody knows what an idea will do when it goes off to entertain itself, particularly if the idea comes from a sinister villain. (from The Vile Village)
You might think that being humiliated, like riding a bicycle or decoding a secret message, would get easier after you had done it a few times, but the Baudelaires had been laughed at more than a few times and it didn't make their experience in the House of Freaks easier at all. The Baudelaire orphans knew that they weren't really a two-headed person and a wolf baby, but as they sat with their coworkers in the freaks' caravan afterward, they felt so humiliated that it was as if they were as freakish as everyone thought. (from The Carnivorous Carnival)
Grief, a type of sadness that most often occurs when you have lost someone you love, is a sneaky thing, because it can disappear for a long time, and then pop back up when you least expect it. With the Baudelaire orphans, it was as if their grief were a very heavy object that they each took turns carrying so that they would not all be crying at once, but sometimes the object was too heavy for one of them to move without weeping, so Violet and Sunny stood next to Klaus, reminding him that this was something they could all carry together until at last they found a safe place to lay it down. (from The Carnivorous Carnival)
It is hard for decent people to stay angry at someone who has burst into tears, which is why it is often a good idea to burst into tears if a decent person is yelling at you. (from The Carnivorous Carnival)
Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant, filled with odd waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like. (from The Slippery Slope)
It is always tedious when someone says that if you don't stop crying, they will give you something to cry about, because if you are crying then you already have something to cry about, and so there is no additional reason for them to give you anything additional to cry about, thank you very much. (from The Slippery Slope)
Deciding on the right thing to do in a situation is a bit like deciding on the right thing to wear to a party. It is easy to decide on what is wrong to wear to a party, such as deep-sea diving equipment or a pair of large pillows, but deciding what is right is much trickier. (from The Slippery Slope)
If everyone fought fire with fire, the entire world would go up in smoke. (from The Slippery Slope)
It is one of life's bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting. (from The Grim Grotto)
If you are considering a life of villainy - and I certainly hope that you are not - there are a few things that appear to be necessary to every villain's success. One thing is a villainous disregard for other people, so that a villain may talk to his or her victims impolitely, ignore their pleas for mercy, and even behave violently toward them if the villain is in the mood for that sort of thing. Another thing villains require is a villainous imagination, so that they might spend their free time dreaming up treacherous schemes in order to further their villainous careers. Villains require a small group of villainous cohorts, who can be persuaded to serve the villain in a henchpersonal capacity. And villains need to develop a villainous laugh, so that they may simultaneously celebrate their villainous deeds and frighten whatever nonvillainous people happen to be nearby. A successful villain should have all of these things at his or her villainous fingertips, or else give up villainy altogether and try to lead a life of decency, integrity, and kindness, which is much more challenging and noble, if not always quite as exciting. (from The Grim Grotto)
The way sadness works is one of the strangest riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire. You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You may find that happy things are tainted with sadness, the way smoke leaves its ashen colors and scents on everything it touches. And you may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down. (from The Grim Grotto)
People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict. (from The Grim Grotto)
Deciding whether or not to trust a person is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree, because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch, or you might simply get covered in sap, and for this reason many people choose to spend their time alone and indoors, where it is harder to get a splinter. (from The Penultimate Peril)
One can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways. (from The Penultimate Peril)
Dewey was wrong when he said that being noble enough is all we can ask for in this world, because we can ask for much more than that. We can ask for a second helping of pound cake, even though someone has made it quite clear that we will not get any. We can ask for a new watercolor set, even though it will be pointed out that we never used the old one, and that all the paints dried into a crumbly mess. We can ask for Japanese fighting fish, to keep us company in our bedroom, and we can ask for a special camera that will allow us to take photographs even in the dark, for obvious reasons, and we can ask for an extra sugar cube in our coffees in the morning and an extra pillow in our beds at night. We can ask for justice, and we can ask for a handkerchief, and we can ask for cupcakes, and we can ask for all the soldiers in the world to lay down their weapons and join us in a rousing chorus of "Cry Me a River," if that happens to be our favorite song. But we can also ask for something we are much more likely to get, and that is to find a person or two, somewhere in our travels, who will tell us that we are noble enough, whether it is true or not. We can ask for someone who will say, "You are noble enough," and remind us of our good qualities when we have forgotten them, or cast them into doubt. (from The Penultimate Peril)
There are some who say that you should forgive everyone, even the people who have disappointed you immeasurably. There are others who say you should never forgive anyone, and should stomp off in a huff no matter how many times they apologize. Of these two philosophies, the second one is of course much more fun, but it can also grow exhausting to stomp off in a huff every time someone has disappointed you, as everyone disappoints everyone eventually, and one can't stomp off in a huff every minute of the day. (from The Penultimate Peril)
It is very difficult to make one's way in this world without being wicked at one time or another, when the world's way is so wicked to begin with. (from The Penultimate Peril)
The burning of a book is a sad, sad sight, for even though a book is nothing but ink and paper, it feels as if the ideas contained in the book are disappearing as the pages turn to ashes and the cover and binding blacken and curl as the flames do their wicked work. When someone is burning a book, they are showing utter contempt for all of the thinking that produced its ideas, all the labor that went into its words and sentences. (from The Penultimate Peril)
If you live among people, whether they are people in your family, in your school, or in your secret organization, then every moment of your life is an incident of peer pressure, and you cannot avoid it any more than a boat at sea can avoid a surrounding storm. All day long, everyone in the world is succumbing to peer pressure, whether it is the pressure of their fourth grade peers to play dodge ball during recess or the pressure of their fellow circus performers to balance rubber balls on their noses, and if you try to avoid every instance of peer pressure you will end up without any peers whatsoever, and the trick is to succumb to enough pressure that you do not drive your peers away, but not so much that you end up in a situation in which you are dead or otherwise uncomfortable. This is a difficult trick, and most people never master it, and end up dead or uncomfortable at least once during their lives. (from The End)
Sooner or later, everyone's story has an unfortunate event or two - a schism or a death, a fire or a mutiny, the loss of a home or the destruction of a tea set. (from The End)
There is a kind of crying I hope you have not experienced, and it is not just crying about something terrible that has happened, but crying for all of the terrible things that have happened, not just to you but to everyone you know and to everyone you don't know and even the people you don't want to know, a crying that cannot be diluted by a brave deed or a kind word, but only by someone holding you as your shoulders shake and your tears run down your face. (from The End)
It is likely your own eyes were closed when you were born, so that you left the safe place of your mother's womb - or, if you are a seahorse, your father's yolk sac - and joined the treachery of the world without seeing exactly where you were going. You did not yet know the people who were helping you make your way here, or the people who would shelter you as your life began, when you were even smaller and more delicate and demanding than you are now. It seems strange that you would do such a thing, and leave yourself in the care of strangers for so long, only gradually opening your eyes to see what all the fuss was about, and yet this is the way nearly everyone comes into the world. Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the crimes, follies, and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all stay in our mother's wombs, and then there would be nobody in the world but a great number of very fat, very irritated women. (from The End)
The world, no matter how monstrously it may be threatened, has never been known to succumb entirely. (from The End)
I give fair warning to any reader who might deem it suitable to follow my example: Lemony Snicket can be addicting, particularly if you have a passion for wordplay, metafiction, and underdog stories. If you have the time to read thirteen increasingly lengthy books, comprising 170 chapters in total (not counting two non-chapters and one moment of déjà vu), there are certainly worse ways you could spend it. There is more to this series than the very frivolous diversion it may at first appear to be. However, I recognize that many of you have better things to do with your time, or believe you do at any rate, and it would be most unfortunate if for this reason you were to be deprived of the wit, wisdom, and violently funny diatribes of Lemony Snicket. The moments that have made me laugh out loud are too numerous to reproduce here, and many of them would lose something out of context, anyway. But there are a few passages scattered throughout the series that are so brilliant they simply take my breath away, and it is these that I have felt it necessary to share with the readers of this blog. Enjoy this moment of vicarious fiction discovery.
It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things. (from The Reptile Room)
There is a way of looking at life called "keeping things in perspective." This simply means "making yourself feel better by comparing the things that are happening to you right now against other things that have happened at a different time, or to different people." For instance, if you were upset about an ugly pimple on the end of your nose, you might try to feel better by keeping your pimple in perspective. You might compare your pimple situation to that of someone who was being eaten by a bear, and when you looked in the mirror at your ugly pimple, you could say to yourself, "Well, at least I'm not being eaten by a bear." You can see at once why keeping things in perspective rarely works very well, because it is hard to concentrate on somebody else being eaten by a bear when you are staring at your own ugly pimple. (from The Wide Window)
If you have ever had a miserable experience, then you have probably had it said to you that you would feel better in the morning. This, of course, is utter nonsense, because a miserable experience remains a miserable experience even on the loveliest of mornings. For instance, if it were your birthday, and a wart-removal cream was the only present you received, someone might tell you to get a good night's sleep and wait until morning, but in the morning the tube of wart-removal cream would still be sitting there next to your uneaten birthday cake, and you would feel as miserable as ever. (from The Miserable Mill)
It is true, of course, that there is no way of knowing for sure whether or not you can trust someone, for the simple reason that circumstances change all of the time. You might know someone for several years, for instance, and trust him completely as your friend, but circumstances could change and he could become very hungry, and before you knew it you could be boiling in a soup pot, because there is no way of knowing for sure. (from The Vile Village)
Entertaining a notion, like entertaining a baby cousin or entertaining a pack of hyenas, is a dangerous thing to refuse to do. If you refuse to entertain a baby cousin, the baby cousin may get bored and entertain itself by wandering off and falling down a well. If you refuse to entertain a pack of hyenas, they may become restless and entertain themselves by devouring you. But if you refuse to entertain a notion - which is just a fancy way of saying that you refuse to think about a certain idea - you have to be much braver than someone who is merely facing some bloodthirsty animals, or some parents who are upset to find their little darling at the bottom of a well, because nobody knows what an idea will do when it goes off to entertain itself, particularly if the idea comes from a sinister villain. (from The Vile Village)
You might think that being humiliated, like riding a bicycle or decoding a secret message, would get easier after you had done it a few times, but the Baudelaires had been laughed at more than a few times and it didn't make their experience in the House of Freaks easier at all. The Baudelaire orphans knew that they weren't really a two-headed person and a wolf baby, but as they sat with their coworkers in the freaks' caravan afterward, they felt so humiliated that it was as if they were as freakish as everyone thought. (from The Carnivorous Carnival)
Grief, a type of sadness that most often occurs when you have lost someone you love, is a sneaky thing, because it can disappear for a long time, and then pop back up when you least expect it. With the Baudelaire orphans, it was as if their grief were a very heavy object that they each took turns carrying so that they would not all be crying at once, but sometimes the object was too heavy for one of them to move without weeping, so Violet and Sunny stood next to Klaus, reminding him that this was something they could all carry together until at last they found a safe place to lay it down. (from The Carnivorous Carnival)
It is hard for decent people to stay angry at someone who has burst into tears, which is why it is often a good idea to burst into tears if a decent person is yelling at you. (from The Carnivorous Carnival)
Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant, filled with odd waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like. (from The Slippery Slope)
It is always tedious when someone says that if you don't stop crying, they will give you something to cry about, because if you are crying then you already have something to cry about, and so there is no additional reason for them to give you anything additional to cry about, thank you very much. (from The Slippery Slope)
Deciding on the right thing to do in a situation is a bit like deciding on the right thing to wear to a party. It is easy to decide on what is wrong to wear to a party, such as deep-sea diving equipment or a pair of large pillows, but deciding what is right is much trickier. (from The Slippery Slope)
If everyone fought fire with fire, the entire world would go up in smoke. (from The Slippery Slope)
It is one of life's bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting. (from The Grim Grotto)
If you are considering a life of villainy - and I certainly hope that you are not - there are a few things that appear to be necessary to every villain's success. One thing is a villainous disregard for other people, so that a villain may talk to his or her victims impolitely, ignore their pleas for mercy, and even behave violently toward them if the villain is in the mood for that sort of thing. Another thing villains require is a villainous imagination, so that they might spend their free time dreaming up treacherous schemes in order to further their villainous careers. Villains require a small group of villainous cohorts, who can be persuaded to serve the villain in a henchpersonal capacity. And villains need to develop a villainous laugh, so that they may simultaneously celebrate their villainous deeds and frighten whatever nonvillainous people happen to be nearby. A successful villain should have all of these things at his or her villainous fingertips, or else give up villainy altogether and try to lead a life of decency, integrity, and kindness, which is much more challenging and noble, if not always quite as exciting. (from The Grim Grotto)
The way sadness works is one of the strangest riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire. You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You may find that happy things are tainted with sadness, the way smoke leaves its ashen colors and scents on everything it touches. And you may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down. (from The Grim Grotto)
People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict. (from The Grim Grotto)
Deciding whether or not to trust a person is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree, because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch, or you might simply get covered in sap, and for this reason many people choose to spend their time alone and indoors, where it is harder to get a splinter. (from The Penultimate Peril)
One can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways. (from The Penultimate Peril)
Dewey was wrong when he said that being noble enough is all we can ask for in this world, because we can ask for much more than that. We can ask for a second helping of pound cake, even though someone has made it quite clear that we will not get any. We can ask for a new watercolor set, even though it will be pointed out that we never used the old one, and that all the paints dried into a crumbly mess. We can ask for Japanese fighting fish, to keep us company in our bedroom, and we can ask for a special camera that will allow us to take photographs even in the dark, for obvious reasons, and we can ask for an extra sugar cube in our coffees in the morning and an extra pillow in our beds at night. We can ask for justice, and we can ask for a handkerchief, and we can ask for cupcakes, and we can ask for all the soldiers in the world to lay down their weapons and join us in a rousing chorus of "Cry Me a River," if that happens to be our favorite song. But we can also ask for something we are much more likely to get, and that is to find a person or two, somewhere in our travels, who will tell us that we are noble enough, whether it is true or not. We can ask for someone who will say, "You are noble enough," and remind us of our good qualities when we have forgotten them, or cast them into doubt. (from The Penultimate Peril)
There are some who say that you should forgive everyone, even the people who have disappointed you immeasurably. There are others who say you should never forgive anyone, and should stomp off in a huff no matter how many times they apologize. Of these two philosophies, the second one is of course much more fun, but it can also grow exhausting to stomp off in a huff every time someone has disappointed you, as everyone disappoints everyone eventually, and one can't stomp off in a huff every minute of the day. (from The Penultimate Peril)
It is very difficult to make one's way in this world without being wicked at one time or another, when the world's way is so wicked to begin with. (from The Penultimate Peril)
The burning of a book is a sad, sad sight, for even though a book is nothing but ink and paper, it feels as if the ideas contained in the book are disappearing as the pages turn to ashes and the cover and binding blacken and curl as the flames do their wicked work. When someone is burning a book, they are showing utter contempt for all of the thinking that produced its ideas, all the labor that went into its words and sentences. (from The Penultimate Peril)
If you live among people, whether they are people in your family, in your school, or in your secret organization, then every moment of your life is an incident of peer pressure, and you cannot avoid it any more than a boat at sea can avoid a surrounding storm. All day long, everyone in the world is succumbing to peer pressure, whether it is the pressure of their fourth grade peers to play dodge ball during recess or the pressure of their fellow circus performers to balance rubber balls on their noses, and if you try to avoid every instance of peer pressure you will end up without any peers whatsoever, and the trick is to succumb to enough pressure that you do not drive your peers away, but not so much that you end up in a situation in which you are dead or otherwise uncomfortable. This is a difficult trick, and most people never master it, and end up dead or uncomfortable at least once during their lives. (from The End)
Sooner or later, everyone's story has an unfortunate event or two - a schism or a death, a fire or a mutiny, the loss of a home or the destruction of a tea set. (from The End)
There is a kind of crying I hope you have not experienced, and it is not just crying about something terrible that has happened, but crying for all of the terrible things that have happened, not just to you but to everyone you know and to everyone you don't know and even the people you don't want to know, a crying that cannot be diluted by a brave deed or a kind word, but only by someone holding you as your shoulders shake and your tears run down your face. (from The End)
It is likely your own eyes were closed when you were born, so that you left the safe place of your mother's womb - or, if you are a seahorse, your father's yolk sac - and joined the treachery of the world without seeing exactly where you were going. You did not yet know the people who were helping you make your way here, or the people who would shelter you as your life began, when you were even smaller and more delicate and demanding than you are now. It seems strange that you would do such a thing, and leave yourself in the care of strangers for so long, only gradually opening your eyes to see what all the fuss was about, and yet this is the way nearly everyone comes into the world. Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the crimes, follies, and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all stay in our mother's wombs, and then there would be nobody in the world but a great number of very fat, very irritated women. (from The End)
The world, no matter how monstrously it may be threatened, has never been known to succumb entirely. (from The End)
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Truth to Power
They that have power to hurt, and will do much,
Who do the thing they most do show, a lot:
The wrath of heaven rightly rests on such.
I think they should be taken out and shot.
Who do the thing they most do show, a lot:
The wrath of heaven rightly rests on such.
I think they should be taken out and shot.
Monday, October 18, 2010
To Althea, from Prison
Seventeenth-century English poet Richard Lovelace wrote this in 1642, after he was imprisoned by order of Parliament for his support of King Charles I and the Church of England. It is a favorite poem of mine, one which has sustained me through many difficult times when I was limited by unfavorable circumstances.
When love with unconfinèd wings
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair
And fetter'd to her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air
Know no such liberty.
When flowing cups run swifly round
With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with roses bound,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
When healths and draughts go free -
Fishes that tipple in the deep
Know no such liberty.
When, like committed linnets, I
With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetness, mercy, majesty,
And glories of my King;
When I shall voice aloud how good
He is, how great should be,
Enlargèd winds, that curl the flood,
Know no such liberty.
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.
When love with unconfinèd wings
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair
And fetter'd to her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air
Know no such liberty.
When flowing cups run swifly round
With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with roses bound,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
When healths and draughts go free -
Fishes that tipple in the deep
Know no such liberty.
When, like committed linnets, I
With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetness, mercy, majesty,
And glories of my King;
When I shall voice aloud how good
He is, how great should be,
Enlargèd winds, that curl the flood,
Know no such liberty.
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Redefining Failure
This article by Julia Baird appeared in the September 20, 2010, issue of Newsweek. I don't particularly care for Newsweek and I don't generally post the recently-composed works of others to my blog, but Baird's thoughts on failure thrilled me, perhaps because they (and the framework in which she expresses them) provide an interesting comparison to my own.
We've spent more than 60 years dissecting Willy Loman, the character artfully sketched by Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman. Willy is, perhaps, America's consummate loser, a failure to his family. But if you can bear with me for one moment, imagine he lived in current times, not amid the postwar prosperity of 1949. Sure, his career was ebbing, but Willy kept a job for 38 years, he owned his house - he had just made the last mortgage payment - and had a wife and two children. Today he'd be a survivor.
Has our view of failure softened since Willy Loman's day? Ina a country with a level of unemployment so high that it is likely to determine the outcome of the midterm elections, and where promotions, bonuses, and retirement savings seem like relics, failure is something many of us are wrestling with right now. But if we begin to accept that success is not a simple, upward career trajectory, this economic crisis may not just reduce the stigma of being sacked but transform the way we think of failing. Shocking as it sounds, failure can be a good thing.
It's true, recessions can wreck self-esteem. In a nation built on success and a gloriously entrepreneurial spirit, the prospect of failure can make people fearful - and shameful - even when it is not their fault. "There is a crash in every generation," wrote Arthur Miller in 2005, just before he died, "sufficient to mark us with a kind of congenital fear of failure." Miller was commenting on a wonderful book by historian Scott Sandage called Born Losers: A History of Failure in America. Sandage believes Willy Loman was a success. But the message of the play, he says, is that "if you are not continuing upwards, if you level off, you have to give up. You might as well not live."
We did not always believe this. In his book, Sandage argues that America's ideas about failure were formed between 1819 and 1893, as busts followed a series of speculative booms. Before then, failure was not associated with individual identity. It just happened to you. Bankruptcy was thought to come from overreach - living excessively - not from lack of ambition. By the end of the 19th century, says Sandage, failure had gone from being a professional mishap to "a name for a deficient self, an identity in the red." Ralph Waldo Emerson encapsulated this in his journal in 1842: "Nobody fails who ought not to fail. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune." By the middle of the last century, at the time Willy Loman was hawking his wares, Americans could not face "the possibility of defeat in one's personal life or one's work without being morally destroyed," according to sociologist David Riesman. (Which may be one reason why the suicide rate in the Great Depression was remarkably high.)
This foolish, dangerous idea is under assault right now. Should financial success really be a moral imperative? Why do we think that an ordinary kind of life is of lesser worth? Studies have found that our most potent emotional experiences come from our relationships, not careers. Those who work in palliative care report that, on their deathbeds, most people don't regret not having clambered a rung higher, but having worked too hard, and having lost touch with friends.
And history shows that it is only when the economy is in the mud that Americans feel free to do what they want to do. As the author J.K. Rowling said so succinctly in her 2008 address to Harvard graduates, failure can mean a "stripping away of the inessential." When she was an impoverished single mother, she started to write her magical tales: "I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity." This doesn't mean it is an uplifting experience to be unemployed, of course. But it may mean we ease up on some of the judgment that springs from the false idea that a person without a job has not just hit bad luck or a poor economy - but is a failure. Having a job is hardly the only, or best, measure of a life.
It may also mean we can accept plateaus, understand that a life has troughs we can climb out of, and that a long view is the wisest one. A recession is a great reminder that all of us need to learn, as Samuel Beckett said, to "fail better." Which means rethinking what we really want to do with our lives, who we want beside us, and how we measure worth. Think of poor Willy Loman. Today his grandchildren might be proud.
We've spent more than 60 years dissecting Willy Loman, the character artfully sketched by Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman. Willy is, perhaps, America's consummate loser, a failure to his family. But if you can bear with me for one moment, imagine he lived in current times, not amid the postwar prosperity of 1949. Sure, his career was ebbing, but Willy kept a job for 38 years, he owned his house - he had just made the last mortgage payment - and had a wife and two children. Today he'd be a survivor.
Has our view of failure softened since Willy Loman's day? Ina a country with a level of unemployment so high that it is likely to determine the outcome of the midterm elections, and where promotions, bonuses, and retirement savings seem like relics, failure is something many of us are wrestling with right now. But if we begin to accept that success is not a simple, upward career trajectory, this economic crisis may not just reduce the stigma of being sacked but transform the way we think of failing. Shocking as it sounds, failure can be a good thing.
It's true, recessions can wreck self-esteem. In a nation built on success and a gloriously entrepreneurial spirit, the prospect of failure can make people fearful - and shameful - even when it is not their fault. "There is a crash in every generation," wrote Arthur Miller in 2005, just before he died, "sufficient to mark us with a kind of congenital fear of failure." Miller was commenting on a wonderful book by historian Scott Sandage called Born Losers: A History of Failure in America. Sandage believes Willy Loman was a success. But the message of the play, he says, is that "if you are not continuing upwards, if you level off, you have to give up. You might as well not live."
We did not always believe this. In his book, Sandage argues that America's ideas about failure were formed between 1819 and 1893, as busts followed a series of speculative booms. Before then, failure was not associated with individual identity. It just happened to you. Bankruptcy was thought to come from overreach - living excessively - not from lack of ambition. By the end of the 19th century, says Sandage, failure had gone from being a professional mishap to "a name for a deficient self, an identity in the red." Ralph Waldo Emerson encapsulated this in his journal in 1842: "Nobody fails who ought not to fail. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune." By the middle of the last century, at the time Willy Loman was hawking his wares, Americans could not face "the possibility of defeat in one's personal life or one's work without being morally destroyed," according to sociologist David Riesman. (Which may be one reason why the suicide rate in the Great Depression was remarkably high.)
This foolish, dangerous idea is under assault right now. Should financial success really be a moral imperative? Why do we think that an ordinary kind of life is of lesser worth? Studies have found that our most potent emotional experiences come from our relationships, not careers. Those who work in palliative care report that, on their deathbeds, most people don't regret not having clambered a rung higher, but having worked too hard, and having lost touch with friends.
And history shows that it is only when the economy is in the mud that Americans feel free to do what they want to do. As the author J.K. Rowling said so succinctly in her 2008 address to Harvard graduates, failure can mean a "stripping away of the inessential." When she was an impoverished single mother, she started to write her magical tales: "I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity." This doesn't mean it is an uplifting experience to be unemployed, of course. But it may mean we ease up on some of the judgment that springs from the false idea that a person without a job has not just hit bad luck or a poor economy - but is a failure. Having a job is hardly the only, or best, measure of a life.
It may also mean we can accept plateaus, understand that a life has troughs we can climb out of, and that a long view is the wisest one. A recession is a great reminder that all of us need to learn, as Samuel Beckett said, to "fail better." Which means rethinking what we really want to do with our lives, who we want beside us, and how we measure worth. Think of poor Willy Loman. Today his grandchildren might be proud.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Searching for Abby Fisher
There are people in this world who say they have no regrets: not a one. That they don't waste time wishing they could take back their mistakes, because of the lessons learned. That even the lowest and saddest moments are not to be disdained, for it is the entire course of their lives that has made them who they are today. For the most part, I am in agreement with this way of thinking. Yet I cannot truly say that I have no regrets. When I look back, there are many, many things I wish I could change, though they aren't what you might expect. I don't regret doing the things I believed I needed to do at the time to survive my sometimes difficult circumstances, even though some of them only got me deeper into trouble. I don't regret showing kindness to anyone, even to those who took advantage of me brutally. I don't (for the most part) regret my one romantic relationship, even though it left my heart broken. What I do regret is some of the selfish actions I have taken that have hurt or damaged others, innocent bystanders who didn't deserve to be driven off the cliffs by my demons.
If I could change one thing - only one thing - if I were granted the power to take back only one action, it would have to be the way I treated Abby Fisher when I was in the tenth grade.
Abby and I were in British Literature together, but she was a quiet one, a slender senior with long wavy reddish hair, and I never noticed her at all until the end of the year. Our last writing assingment in that class, at the end of May, was to write an essay dealing with some aspect of language. The only requirement was that it had to include a personal anecdote with at least two lines of dialogue. Within these broad limitations, anything was permissible. One of my classmates wrote about his irrational unease around mimes. One girl wrote about being bilingual, and a boy wrote about the etymology and usage of the word "fuck."
The reason I know what others wrote about is that after we turned in our essays, we each had to stand in front of the class and read them aloud. It's not as if I had talked with any of my classmates about their essays. I didn't have any friends among them. I didn't have many friends to speak of in the whole school - or, for that matter, in the whole universe. And that was the way I liked it. I didn't need any messy emotional entanglements to bring me down. Affections of any sort were a liability, a weakness. I didn't need anyone dragging me into the mud, diverting me from my course. With my intelligence, I was meant to aspire to better things than mere human attachment.
I wrote my essay on the frustrations of my life as a grammatical purist: my endeavor to speak and write utterly free of any trace of solecism; my audacious penchant for correcting handwritten signs in public places; the way my mother, annoyed with my elitist airs, mockingly suggested that in addition to split infinitives and prepositions at the end of sentences I might wish to eliminate contractions from my speech - a suggestion I met with a wistful, "I've tried." I concluded in the end that perhaps the most important thing about language was using it to communicate thoughts, not adhering so obnoxiously to the rules. It was a nice essay, a smart smug little essay, well-written, something a young Henry Higgins might have composed, and I was properly proud of it.
Abby Fisher wrote about how words could hurt. Perched on a stool not far from my front-row seat, she read what she had written about her emotionally abusive father and how expertly he knew how to tear her down. As she read about his cruelty, his endless dissatisfaction with her, I could feel the mood in the room shift. My classmates had listened to my essay with polite interest, but to Abby they were listening with their hearts, with their compassion. How could anyone be so harsh to this quiet, gentle spirit?
How indeed? "Nobody wants to hear your whining," I blurted out suddenly. "If he tells you you're not good enough, it's probably because you aren't." For a second there was shocked silence in the room, while Abby looked down and fiddled nervously with the papers. Then came the chorus of outrage.
"Don't listen to her, Abby."
"Quit being mean."
"We love you, Abby."
Oh yes, bring on the outpouring of support for poor weak useless little Abby! "None of these people really cares about you," I snarled. "They're just supporting you because it's the nicey-nice sentimentalist popular thing to do. When push comes to shove no one really wants to hear about you and your stupid little problems."
I don't honestly remember whether I finally stopped because I'd had enough, or because the teacher threatened to call a proctor and send me to the principal's office, or because the bell rang. I do remember that I spent the rest of the day huddled shamefast in my little cloud of self-righteousness. I knew I had been cruel, and I felt awful about it, but I'd be damned a thousand times before I was going to hang my head and admit that I had been wrong.
We finished the essay presentations as the school year wound down to its close, and after a few days everyone's mind turned to other things and I no longer imagined I heard a fresh rustling of whispers when I came into the classroom, no longer felt thirty pairs of eyes boring spitefully into my proud back. We took our finals, and then we were turned loose into June with its endless possibilities. If I thought about it at all, I might have felt some relief that I would never have to see Abby again, never find myself face-to-face with the flesh-and-blood reminder that I was neither so noble nor so cold as I liked to imagine by turns that I was.
I would have been wrong. She was the farthest thing in the world from my mind that summer day when I saw her one last time. I was walking in the Claremont Village, headed to the library probably, when suddenly she was right there in front of me. I wouldn't have blamed her, I still wouldn't blame her, if she had looked at me with the purest venom, if she had spat on the ground at my feet, if she had slapped me across the face. Instead, she blushed a little as she smiled and softly said "Hello." And then she was gone.
It was a proverb of Solomon, quoted by Paul in his letter to the Romans: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." With Abby's gentle smile, I was stricken with shame as never before. I had to admit, in my very heart of hearts, that she was the noble one, the strong one. I was a bully. No, there's something about a bully that demands to be taken seriously, at least. I was just a nasty little shit.
I've never stopped wondering what Abby was thinking in that moment. Perhaps she was trying to do exactly what she did: take the high road, and in so doing, let my conscience condemn me to myself. Perhaps she would really have liked to glare or spit or slap, but was too intimidated by me to do more than smile appeasingly. I don't think that's what it was, and I wouldn't want it to be, but, being a timid soul myself under all my elitist posturing, I know the feeling well and have to admit that it's a possibility.
Perhaps it was neither of the above. I like to think that somehow in that second when our eyes met, she saw inside me as no one ever had, deep into my raw truth. I think in my eyes she saw herself reflected: the girl wondering at times if she really deserved to be hurt; if love was always a license to emotional brutality; if the years of torment would ever, ever end. I believe she understood, truly understood - and therefore forgave - the displaced wrath of one who knew as the school year was ending that she would not even have the sheltering excuse of scholastic obligations to serve as a buffer between herself and her tormentor, looking at someone who knew similar pain but was about to graduate and go off to college and get away from it all. I believe she understood the invidious trembling that such a one would feel, hiding her anguish away from an indifferent world, watching another speak openly about her sufferings and receive the compassion of others. I believe Abby decided, in that fraction of a moment, that I was "more to be pitied than censured."
I didn't want anyone's pity, of course, even more than I didn't want their compassion or their sympathy. Really, I didn't.
My experiment in brutal stoicism lasted a few more years before I abandoned myself to a life of quiet endurance. I searched for Abby online once, a couple of years ago, and I found pictures of her in a wedding dress. I haven't been able to find them again. I hope she has finally found the happiness she so richly deserves.
I hope she's forgotten me entirely.
If I could change one thing - only one thing - if I were granted the power to take back only one action, it would have to be the way I treated Abby Fisher when I was in the tenth grade.
Abby and I were in British Literature together, but she was a quiet one, a slender senior with long wavy reddish hair, and I never noticed her at all until the end of the year. Our last writing assingment in that class, at the end of May, was to write an essay dealing with some aspect of language. The only requirement was that it had to include a personal anecdote with at least two lines of dialogue. Within these broad limitations, anything was permissible. One of my classmates wrote about his irrational unease around mimes. One girl wrote about being bilingual, and a boy wrote about the etymology and usage of the word "fuck."
The reason I know what others wrote about is that after we turned in our essays, we each had to stand in front of the class and read them aloud. It's not as if I had talked with any of my classmates about their essays. I didn't have any friends among them. I didn't have many friends to speak of in the whole school - or, for that matter, in the whole universe. And that was the way I liked it. I didn't need any messy emotional entanglements to bring me down. Affections of any sort were a liability, a weakness. I didn't need anyone dragging me into the mud, diverting me from my course. With my intelligence, I was meant to aspire to better things than mere human attachment.
I wrote my essay on the frustrations of my life as a grammatical purist: my endeavor to speak and write utterly free of any trace of solecism; my audacious penchant for correcting handwritten signs in public places; the way my mother, annoyed with my elitist airs, mockingly suggested that in addition to split infinitives and prepositions at the end of sentences I might wish to eliminate contractions from my speech - a suggestion I met with a wistful, "I've tried." I concluded in the end that perhaps the most important thing about language was using it to communicate thoughts, not adhering so obnoxiously to the rules. It was a nice essay, a smart smug little essay, well-written, something a young Henry Higgins might have composed, and I was properly proud of it.
Abby Fisher wrote about how words could hurt. Perched on a stool not far from my front-row seat, she read what she had written about her emotionally abusive father and how expertly he knew how to tear her down. As she read about his cruelty, his endless dissatisfaction with her, I could feel the mood in the room shift. My classmates had listened to my essay with polite interest, but to Abby they were listening with their hearts, with their compassion. How could anyone be so harsh to this quiet, gentle spirit?
How indeed? "Nobody wants to hear your whining," I blurted out suddenly. "If he tells you you're not good enough, it's probably because you aren't." For a second there was shocked silence in the room, while Abby looked down and fiddled nervously with the papers. Then came the chorus of outrage.
"Don't listen to her, Abby."
"Quit being mean."
"We love you, Abby."
Oh yes, bring on the outpouring of support for poor weak useless little Abby! "None of these people really cares about you," I snarled. "They're just supporting you because it's the nicey-nice sentimentalist popular thing to do. When push comes to shove no one really wants to hear about you and your stupid little problems."
I don't honestly remember whether I finally stopped because I'd had enough, or because the teacher threatened to call a proctor and send me to the principal's office, or because the bell rang. I do remember that I spent the rest of the day huddled shamefast in my little cloud of self-righteousness. I knew I had been cruel, and I felt awful about it, but I'd be damned a thousand times before I was going to hang my head and admit that I had been wrong.
We finished the essay presentations as the school year wound down to its close, and after a few days everyone's mind turned to other things and I no longer imagined I heard a fresh rustling of whispers when I came into the classroom, no longer felt thirty pairs of eyes boring spitefully into my proud back. We took our finals, and then we were turned loose into June with its endless possibilities. If I thought about it at all, I might have felt some relief that I would never have to see Abby again, never find myself face-to-face with the flesh-and-blood reminder that I was neither so noble nor so cold as I liked to imagine by turns that I was.
I would have been wrong. She was the farthest thing in the world from my mind that summer day when I saw her one last time. I was walking in the Claremont Village, headed to the library probably, when suddenly she was right there in front of me. I wouldn't have blamed her, I still wouldn't blame her, if she had looked at me with the purest venom, if she had spat on the ground at my feet, if she had slapped me across the face. Instead, she blushed a little as she smiled and softly said "Hello." And then she was gone.
It was a proverb of Solomon, quoted by Paul in his letter to the Romans: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." With Abby's gentle smile, I was stricken with shame as never before. I had to admit, in my very heart of hearts, that she was the noble one, the strong one. I was a bully. No, there's something about a bully that demands to be taken seriously, at least. I was just a nasty little shit.
I've never stopped wondering what Abby was thinking in that moment. Perhaps she was trying to do exactly what she did: take the high road, and in so doing, let my conscience condemn me to myself. Perhaps she would really have liked to glare or spit or slap, but was too intimidated by me to do more than smile appeasingly. I don't think that's what it was, and I wouldn't want it to be, but, being a timid soul myself under all my elitist posturing, I know the feeling well and have to admit that it's a possibility.
Perhaps it was neither of the above. I like to think that somehow in that second when our eyes met, she saw inside me as no one ever had, deep into my raw truth. I think in my eyes she saw herself reflected: the girl wondering at times if she really deserved to be hurt; if love was always a license to emotional brutality; if the years of torment would ever, ever end. I believe she understood, truly understood - and therefore forgave - the displaced wrath of one who knew as the school year was ending that she would not even have the sheltering excuse of scholastic obligations to serve as a buffer between herself and her tormentor, looking at someone who knew similar pain but was about to graduate and go off to college and get away from it all. I believe she understood the invidious trembling that such a one would feel, hiding her anguish away from an indifferent world, watching another speak openly about her sufferings and receive the compassion of others. I believe Abby decided, in that fraction of a moment, that I was "more to be pitied than censured."
I didn't want anyone's pity, of course, even more than I didn't want their compassion or their sympathy. Really, I didn't.
My experiment in brutal stoicism lasted a few more years before I abandoned myself to a life of quiet endurance. I searched for Abby online once, a couple of years ago, and I found pictures of her in a wedding dress. I haven't been able to find them again. I hope she has finally found the happiness she so richly deserves.
I hope she's forgotten me entirely.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Boundary Lines
If you ask, you just might get
My blood and toil, tears and sweat,
But don't conclude that means I'll let
You closer than I won't regret.
My blood and toil, tears and sweat,
But don't conclude that means I'll let
You closer than I won't regret.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Washing of the Water
My first experience of the ocean was one of terror. I can't remember it, but I can remember remembering it. I was about three. I know I toddled into the shallowest parts of the water, just off the shore, and a wave knocked me hard into the briny sand. Of course, a parent was right there to scoop me up and carry me back to the safety of my beach towel. But I'd had enough. I didn't want to have anything more to do with the ocean, ever again. I believe it took them several hours to coax me back into another try, and this time I wouldn't do it alone. It was my aunt who lifted me up in her arms and walked into the ocean, holding me securely in the midst of all that thrashing immensity. And that, my second experience, is my first memory of the ocean: the moment I learned to love it.
That was a quarter of a century ago, and today I am going back to the ocean for the first time in a decade, the first time since that day trip up Cape Cod back when I was going to school in Massachusetts. How have I let so much of my life slip by without really living? I have been sorely in need, and today, under this sweltering sun, I am to be reunited with the thing for which I have been longing. I haven't been this excited in - well, in nearly two months, which makes it sound like a less impressive thing than it is, but truly this has been a year of discovery and rediscovery.
My mothers are dropping off my brother and me at the Bolsa Chica State Beach, where we will join up with my brother's Boy Scout troop, but as we pull into the parking lot, all their comments are directed at me: The Scouts are setting up their base by lifeguard station 22. Remember that, Truth! Twenty-two! If I lose track of the time and get lost, they'll meet me by the snack stand, but they won't be happy.
I am tempted to ask them when they have ever known me to forget a two-digit number in the space of a few hours. I am tempted to ask them when they have known me to let myself become hopelessly disoriented in space or time, particularly when to do so would inconvenience another. Instead I keep my tone light as I indicate my brother and ask, "And what's he supposed to do if he gets lost?"
"He's not going to get lost," my mother says. "He's with the group. They've got responsible adults there." I don't let it show, but I feel as though I've been slapped. Does she have to make me feel like such a liability? She was never an overprotective parent. One of my brothers camps alone in the desert on a regular basis, and she never questions his ability to take care of himself. Yet here I am, her firstborn, and she talks to me as if it's a damn shame she can't legally keep me in one of those leashed harnesses that they make for toddlers.
I just bite my tongue and focus on the thought of being in the ocean soon. As the car slides into a parking place, I lean forward and look through the windshield and catch my first glimpse of that beautiful blue expanse. "Oooooh," I squeal, "I can see the ocean!"
"Truth," says my mother, "remember, these people don't know you. Please try to act normal."
"I am," I say lightly. Does she really think that a little demonstration of enthusiasm in the presence of my family is typical of the way I conduct myself at length around strangers? Besides, I know what she's really worried about, and I'm quite sure they wouldn't think any less of her if they knew she'd spawned something like me. Every family has to have its black sheep, after all.
"We don't mean normal for you," my other mother says. "We mean normal for other people."
"Hey," my mother says. "That's mean," and I think the miracle has happened: she's actually going to stand up for me. Then she adds, "She can't manage that," and I wonder when I'm ever going to learn.
We get out of the car and I help one of the Boy Scout mothers carry supplies out onto the beach, then I apply waterproof sunscreen and talk to another one of the mothers about onomastics. One possible meaning of her first name is the same as the most common (somewhat fallacious) interpretation of my middle name. A genealogy enthusiast, she informs me that one of her ancestors, the wife of a Revolutionary War soldier, had a variant of my uncommon first name.
Then, I go down to the ocean.
The water that laps out over my feet as I step into the wet sand is chilly, but not so cold as I might have feared. In the ocean, though, I don't worry too much about getting used to the temperature. I might find it uncomfortable a bit further in, and linger awhile in the shallows, but the ocean has no patience for my timidity, and sooner or later there will come a wave to knock me off my unsteady feet. For a moment I will feel nothing but the rush of cold over me, and I will rise up gagging on the searing saltiness, and then there will be nothing at all that can hold me back.
A little farther down the sand changes. No longer the softly abrasive sand I am used to at the beach, what I feel under my feet is the scraping of harsh little pebbles. Rough as the texture may be, this new sand is remarkably yielding under my weight; my happy scramble down to the water is halted, and I find myself sinking into the sand almost up to my knees. Just then a wave rushes up and knocks me down hard, and I am sitting now with my legs buried in the wet grit, feeling the water rush back powerfully over me. So, I am to be made accustomed to the water already! I pull my legs free, as well as I can, to continue on down into the ocean, but I find myself starting to sink again, then forced down by another wave. As the water rushes back around me, I cling to the rough sand on my hands and knees, feeling my handholds eroding away beneath my fingers and laughing with utter delight.
I'm not sure how long it is - five minutes or ten, or less? - that I stay like that, kneeling in the grit, clutching tenaciously to ephemeral things. It is a beautiful thing, to be so close to the earth as the ocean rushes mightily around me, yet I long to go further out, to crash against the waves in all their fullness. There is an astonishing power, though, even here at the edge of water, and I find myself knocked back to my knees whenever I try to move until it occurs to me that I've been going about this all wrong. I've been trying to push farther into the ocean while the waves are rushing in, then sinking myself in deep as the broken wave rushes back around me. I've been doing nothing but fight. This time, when the tide washes out, I let it carry me. From my crouched position I am quickly able to rise to my feet, and soon I am surprised to find the texture of the sand changing beneath my feet, back to the soft fine grains I was expecting in the first place. (I will realize later that the place I happened to enter the water was particularly thick with that soggy grit, and I would have had much less difficulty getting all the way into the ocean even a few feet away on either side.)
Standing up with ease now, the water around my waist, I look out west onto the ocean, foamy and dappled with early-autumn sun. There is really only one way I play in the ocean, though I take it so seriously it doesn't feel like play: I walk out into the sea, as far as I can go. It's that simple, because it really isn't simple at all.
The beautiful thing about water, about the ocean in particular, is that you can move through it, but you have to work at it. You meet resistance. The sea will not concede easily to your intrusion. You have to fight for every inch. Even when you're in shallow enough waters that you're still fundamentally in control of your movements, you feel the ocean pushing and pulling and tugging at you as if it had every right (which, by the way, it does).
Every wave peaks more than once, and walking into the sea is like peeling back the layers of an onion or ascending through the levels of a game. No, no - there's really nothing like it. The further in you go, the easier it becomes in some ways. It's not what you would have guessed, but it actually becomes easier to dig in your heels (your toes, actually) and stand your ground when a wave runs over you. When you get a wave that's too much for you, though, it's really too much. After you've been knocked down hard a few times and risen up sputtering with your eyes stinging and your throat brackish, you learn how much you can take, and you learn to read the ocean. You learn which waves you can take head-on, and which will slap you hard in the face. You learn when to turn sideways and brace yourself against the onslaught, and you learn to know when you've lost, when the force rolling toward you is greater than all your strength, and your only hope is to turn around and face the shore, extend your arms, take a deep breath, close your eyes, and surrender. You can lose a lot of hard-earned ground then, find yourself five or ten or more feet closer to the beach than you were just seconds earlier, and you have to push your way back out to where you were. But you don't mind, because those are the most exhilarating times, when the ocean overpowers you and sweeps you off your feet.
You aren't conscious of the things you are learning. It all makes sense according to the laws of physics if you stop to think about it, to contemplate buoyancy and drag and surface area. But you don't stop to think about it. You're living by body and by instinct. There's a terrible taste in your mouth, your eyes are as dry and sore as if you'd been crying all day and all night, your ankle aches a little when you land on it just so, and you are all wrapped up in the moment. All you see is the froth of the waves, a thousand bubbles you could almost scoop up in your hands, and every glimmer of light between here and the horizon.
Living in the moment doesn't come easily or naturally to me. I live in the past, or the future, or both at once - but I can't just be in the present. My nature is to think things over, and then to overthink them some more. In the ocean, however, it's necessary to be alert and aware, to be as immersed in the moment as in the seawater. If I forget myself for even a few seconds, that's when I get knocked down hard. No, that's not it - it's when I remember myself that I get in trouble, when my mind opens itself too much into consciousness of other things and I neglect to consider the tremendous force surging indifferently around me. I must attend to it; unlike Death, it will not stop for me. I throw myself forward, laughing with ecstatic abandon after each wave whether I stand or fall, and there is nothing any longer in this world but the ocean and Truth. More the ocean than Truth, I would say. There is nothing at all but the ocean, and Truth in relation to the ocean. On the shore of the wide world I stand alone and feel, with apologies to Keats, till all my earthly concerns to nothingness do sink.
For three hours I lose myself in the waves, my only concession to practical concerns being to reorient myself periodically in relation to lifeguard station 22. I'm out deep at the end, and there comes a wave so big that even throwing out my arms and letting it lift me up isn't enough to keep it from thrashing me down and tossing me like a toy for a few seconds before pushing me back up to the surface and letting me breathe again. I'm not about to take my leave on such an inglorious note as that, so I push out as deep as I was before and stay there until the next big wave comes and I surrender to it, swept up and carried as far as it will take me back toward the shore, then struggling to get a footing in the sand as the water rushes back around me, several times nearly falling but managing to come up standing in the end. And that's how I want to leave the ocean: battered but undefeated. With one last look out over the shining tumultuous sea, I struggle back through the water toward the shore.
I don't seem to be getting any closer to the beach, although I know I am. The ocean comes up to my waist, and then only up to my knees, and then I drop to a crawl to feel the ocean flow heavy around me the rest of the way to the shore. I look down, not ahead, and I watch the soft sand flow up in little brown clouds as my hands push through it. This is my last moment to be surrounded by the primal and raw, and I am drinking it in greedily, as greedily as I shall, when I get back to the group, gulp the warm water from the plastic jug I brought, washing the ocean's salt off my puckering taste buds. It comes almost as a surprise to me when I reach the very edge of the water. I try to rise to my feet, and then a wave washes up and knocks me sidewise. I spend my last two or three minutes in the ocean the same way I started: on my knees, as if in prayer. And then I rise carefully and make my way heavily over the hot sands back up the beach to rejoin the group.
They are having dinner now, and one of the mothers graciously offers me a plate of salad, a bag of chips, and a piece of fruit. The food tastes simple and good, and after I finish I lie back on one of my towels and wrap myself in another - not really drowsy, but quiet and thoughtful. I know my mothers will be back soon; I know I'll have to shake the sand from my things, brush the sand from my damp legs with damp sandy hands before I get in the car. I know no matter how many times I shower, it'll be the better part of the week before I stop finding grit in my hair. I know all these things, and none of this matters. When it's time to leave, and I rise to walk the twenty or thirty yards to the car, every muscle in my body screams, and that doesn't matter either. I just threw myself headlong into the single largest object on the surface of the earth and let it batter me around a little. Of course it hurts. Chilled and aching, my skin flavored with salt, I brush away the sand and fall stiffly into the backseat. Most of the windows are down, because I'm the only one who isn't hot, so I cover myself with my towels as if they were blankets, rest my head in the shoulder strap of my seatbelt, and surrender again to the current, to the delta waves rising and falling and crashing and breaking against the backs of my eyes. . . .
That was a quarter of a century ago, and today I am going back to the ocean for the first time in a decade, the first time since that day trip up Cape Cod back when I was going to school in Massachusetts. How have I let so much of my life slip by without really living? I have been sorely in need, and today, under this sweltering sun, I am to be reunited with the thing for which I have been longing. I haven't been this excited in - well, in nearly two months, which makes it sound like a less impressive thing than it is, but truly this has been a year of discovery and rediscovery.
My mothers are dropping off my brother and me at the Bolsa Chica State Beach, where we will join up with my brother's Boy Scout troop, but as we pull into the parking lot, all their comments are directed at me: The Scouts are setting up their base by lifeguard station 22. Remember that, Truth! Twenty-two! If I lose track of the time and get lost, they'll meet me by the snack stand, but they won't be happy.
I am tempted to ask them when they have ever known me to forget a two-digit number in the space of a few hours. I am tempted to ask them when they have known me to let myself become hopelessly disoriented in space or time, particularly when to do so would inconvenience another. Instead I keep my tone light as I indicate my brother and ask, "And what's he supposed to do if he gets lost?"
"He's not going to get lost," my mother says. "He's with the group. They've got responsible adults there." I don't let it show, but I feel as though I've been slapped. Does she have to make me feel like such a liability? She was never an overprotective parent. One of my brothers camps alone in the desert on a regular basis, and she never questions his ability to take care of himself. Yet here I am, her firstborn, and she talks to me as if it's a damn shame she can't legally keep me in one of those leashed harnesses that they make for toddlers.
I just bite my tongue and focus on the thought of being in the ocean soon. As the car slides into a parking place, I lean forward and look through the windshield and catch my first glimpse of that beautiful blue expanse. "Oooooh," I squeal, "I can see the ocean!"
"Truth," says my mother, "remember, these people don't know you. Please try to act normal."
"I am," I say lightly. Does she really think that a little demonstration of enthusiasm in the presence of my family is typical of the way I conduct myself at length around strangers? Besides, I know what she's really worried about, and I'm quite sure they wouldn't think any less of her if they knew she'd spawned something like me. Every family has to have its black sheep, after all.
"We don't mean normal for you," my other mother says. "We mean normal for other people."
"Hey," my mother says. "That's mean," and I think the miracle has happened: she's actually going to stand up for me. Then she adds, "She can't manage that," and I wonder when I'm ever going to learn.
We get out of the car and I help one of the Boy Scout mothers carry supplies out onto the beach, then I apply waterproof sunscreen and talk to another one of the mothers about onomastics. One possible meaning of her first name is the same as the most common (somewhat fallacious) interpretation of my middle name. A genealogy enthusiast, she informs me that one of her ancestors, the wife of a Revolutionary War soldier, had a variant of my uncommon first name.
Then, I go down to the ocean.
The water that laps out over my feet as I step into the wet sand is chilly, but not so cold as I might have feared. In the ocean, though, I don't worry too much about getting used to the temperature. I might find it uncomfortable a bit further in, and linger awhile in the shallows, but the ocean has no patience for my timidity, and sooner or later there will come a wave to knock me off my unsteady feet. For a moment I will feel nothing but the rush of cold over me, and I will rise up gagging on the searing saltiness, and then there will be nothing at all that can hold me back.
A little farther down the sand changes. No longer the softly abrasive sand I am used to at the beach, what I feel under my feet is the scraping of harsh little pebbles. Rough as the texture may be, this new sand is remarkably yielding under my weight; my happy scramble down to the water is halted, and I find myself sinking into the sand almost up to my knees. Just then a wave rushes up and knocks me down hard, and I am sitting now with my legs buried in the wet grit, feeling the water rush back powerfully over me. So, I am to be made accustomed to the water already! I pull my legs free, as well as I can, to continue on down into the ocean, but I find myself starting to sink again, then forced down by another wave. As the water rushes back around me, I cling to the rough sand on my hands and knees, feeling my handholds eroding away beneath my fingers and laughing with utter delight.
I'm not sure how long it is - five minutes or ten, or less? - that I stay like that, kneeling in the grit, clutching tenaciously to ephemeral things. It is a beautiful thing, to be so close to the earth as the ocean rushes mightily around me, yet I long to go further out, to crash against the waves in all their fullness. There is an astonishing power, though, even here at the edge of water, and I find myself knocked back to my knees whenever I try to move until it occurs to me that I've been going about this all wrong. I've been trying to push farther into the ocean while the waves are rushing in, then sinking myself in deep as the broken wave rushes back around me. I've been doing nothing but fight. This time, when the tide washes out, I let it carry me. From my crouched position I am quickly able to rise to my feet, and soon I am surprised to find the texture of the sand changing beneath my feet, back to the soft fine grains I was expecting in the first place. (I will realize later that the place I happened to enter the water was particularly thick with that soggy grit, and I would have had much less difficulty getting all the way into the ocean even a few feet away on either side.)
Standing up with ease now, the water around my waist, I look out west onto the ocean, foamy and dappled with early-autumn sun. There is really only one way I play in the ocean, though I take it so seriously it doesn't feel like play: I walk out into the sea, as far as I can go. It's that simple, because it really isn't simple at all.
The beautiful thing about water, about the ocean in particular, is that you can move through it, but you have to work at it. You meet resistance. The sea will not concede easily to your intrusion. You have to fight for every inch. Even when you're in shallow enough waters that you're still fundamentally in control of your movements, you feel the ocean pushing and pulling and tugging at you as if it had every right (which, by the way, it does).
Every wave peaks more than once, and walking into the sea is like peeling back the layers of an onion or ascending through the levels of a game. No, no - there's really nothing like it. The further in you go, the easier it becomes in some ways. It's not what you would have guessed, but it actually becomes easier to dig in your heels (your toes, actually) and stand your ground when a wave runs over you. When you get a wave that's too much for you, though, it's really too much. After you've been knocked down hard a few times and risen up sputtering with your eyes stinging and your throat brackish, you learn how much you can take, and you learn to read the ocean. You learn which waves you can take head-on, and which will slap you hard in the face. You learn when to turn sideways and brace yourself against the onslaught, and you learn to know when you've lost, when the force rolling toward you is greater than all your strength, and your only hope is to turn around and face the shore, extend your arms, take a deep breath, close your eyes, and surrender. You can lose a lot of hard-earned ground then, find yourself five or ten or more feet closer to the beach than you were just seconds earlier, and you have to push your way back out to where you were. But you don't mind, because those are the most exhilarating times, when the ocean overpowers you and sweeps you off your feet.
You aren't conscious of the things you are learning. It all makes sense according to the laws of physics if you stop to think about it, to contemplate buoyancy and drag and surface area. But you don't stop to think about it. You're living by body and by instinct. There's a terrible taste in your mouth, your eyes are as dry and sore as if you'd been crying all day and all night, your ankle aches a little when you land on it just so, and you are all wrapped up in the moment. All you see is the froth of the waves, a thousand bubbles you could almost scoop up in your hands, and every glimmer of light between here and the horizon.
Living in the moment doesn't come easily or naturally to me. I live in the past, or the future, or both at once - but I can't just be in the present. My nature is to think things over, and then to overthink them some more. In the ocean, however, it's necessary to be alert and aware, to be as immersed in the moment as in the seawater. If I forget myself for even a few seconds, that's when I get knocked down hard. No, that's not it - it's when I remember myself that I get in trouble, when my mind opens itself too much into consciousness of other things and I neglect to consider the tremendous force surging indifferently around me. I must attend to it; unlike Death, it will not stop for me. I throw myself forward, laughing with ecstatic abandon after each wave whether I stand or fall, and there is nothing any longer in this world but the ocean and Truth. More the ocean than Truth, I would say. There is nothing at all but the ocean, and Truth in relation to the ocean. On the shore of the wide world I stand alone and feel, with apologies to Keats, till all my earthly concerns to nothingness do sink.
For three hours I lose myself in the waves, my only concession to practical concerns being to reorient myself periodically in relation to lifeguard station 22. I'm out deep at the end, and there comes a wave so big that even throwing out my arms and letting it lift me up isn't enough to keep it from thrashing me down and tossing me like a toy for a few seconds before pushing me back up to the surface and letting me breathe again. I'm not about to take my leave on such an inglorious note as that, so I push out as deep as I was before and stay there until the next big wave comes and I surrender to it, swept up and carried as far as it will take me back toward the shore, then struggling to get a footing in the sand as the water rushes back around me, several times nearly falling but managing to come up standing in the end. And that's how I want to leave the ocean: battered but undefeated. With one last look out over the shining tumultuous sea, I struggle back through the water toward the shore.
I don't seem to be getting any closer to the beach, although I know I am. The ocean comes up to my waist, and then only up to my knees, and then I drop to a crawl to feel the ocean flow heavy around me the rest of the way to the shore. I look down, not ahead, and I watch the soft sand flow up in little brown clouds as my hands push through it. This is my last moment to be surrounded by the primal and raw, and I am drinking it in greedily, as greedily as I shall, when I get back to the group, gulp the warm water from the plastic jug I brought, washing the ocean's salt off my puckering taste buds. It comes almost as a surprise to me when I reach the very edge of the water. I try to rise to my feet, and then a wave washes up and knocks me sidewise. I spend my last two or three minutes in the ocean the same way I started: on my knees, as if in prayer. And then I rise carefully and make my way heavily over the hot sands back up the beach to rejoin the group.
They are having dinner now, and one of the mothers graciously offers me a plate of salad, a bag of chips, and a piece of fruit. The food tastes simple and good, and after I finish I lie back on one of my towels and wrap myself in another - not really drowsy, but quiet and thoughtful. I know my mothers will be back soon; I know I'll have to shake the sand from my things, brush the sand from my damp legs with damp sandy hands before I get in the car. I know no matter how many times I shower, it'll be the better part of the week before I stop finding grit in my hair. I know all these things, and none of this matters. When it's time to leave, and I rise to walk the twenty or thirty yards to the car, every muscle in my body screams, and that doesn't matter either. I just threw myself headlong into the single largest object on the surface of the earth and let it batter me around a little. Of course it hurts. Chilled and aching, my skin flavored with salt, I brush away the sand and fall stiffly into the backseat. Most of the windows are down, because I'm the only one who isn't hot, so I cover myself with my towels as if they were blankets, rest my head in the shoulder strap of my seatbelt, and surrender again to the current, to the delta waves rising and falling and crashing and breaking against the backs of my eyes. . . .
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