Live Forever!

When I was in Junior High, we went to see Ray Bradbury speak at Chapman University.  I employ no hyperbole in saying that this was one of the most important nights of my life.

At the time, I was just getting into my voracious reading habit.   The event was around the release of his HIGHLY underrated book Green Shadows, White Whale.  If you've never read it, you must.  It's about when he was in Ireland writing the screenplay for the John Huston film adaptation of Moby Dick.  It is a wonderful book and you should rush out and get it with all speed.

His speech was magical and, afterwards, I got to meet him.  I had one of those star-struck moments where you start babbling incoherently.  Bradbury was very gracious and encouraging, very kind.  He understood being the awkward little geeky kid.  As I learned, he spent much of his youth in Hollywood having similar experiences staking out in front of movie studios to get autographs.

He autographed our copy of Green Shadows, White Whale, my old mass-market paperback edition of The Machineries of Joy, and a copy of the photograph at the top of the page.  We asked him what the cat was named and he wrote "Tigger!" next to the cat.  I walked away mesmerized, as if I'd just met Twain or Hemingway, an American author of that caliber.  Not just a great American author, but The great American author of his time.  And, of course, I was correct.

I immediately read everything by him that I could get my hands on.  I think Bradbury would have liked that the news of his death took me back to that time in my life where it seems like I spent all of my time in expensive bookstores at South Coast Plaza and in libraries (I almost didn't say the libraries part because it still seems like that's where I spend all of my time), when I could be so consumed by an author that I would read their entire bibliography without pause, without hardly even looking up from the text.  Back in those days before the world became nothing more than germs trying to kill me and before I somehow got enmeshed in a religion that tries to heap shame on me for reading or listening to books or ideas that they don't specifically condone.  Back before life beat the enthusiasm out of me.  Today reminded me of a part of myself that is still in there deep down somewhere, like a dinosaur sleeping at the bottom of the ocean, waiting to be called back to the surface.

Ray Bradbury is a lot of why I am a pedestrian by nature.  His short story The Pedestrian made a compelling and visceral argument for me about the narcotic culture in which we live.  He has a lot to do with why I never watch the evening news willingly and when I am forced to for whatever reason it is all I can to do keep from throwing things at the screen.  Later he reinforced this by pointing out the truth that all of these yip-dog political pundits who are flooding our airwaves and shanghai-ing our political discourse are destined to be forgotten before their bodies are even cold.  Don't give the charlatans your press or your attention.  He wrote me a permission slip to be an optimist in spite of it all.  I wish I knew where I put that permission slip.  I seem to have mislaid it somewhere along the way.

He was also the only grown-up I knew who confirmed what I knew: that my classmates were brutes and beasts.

He also showed me that it was okay to love without abandon, to go mad with enthusiasm, to cry like a volcano when occasion called for it.  In his 1991 book of essays Yestermorrow, he inspired me through his reminiscences of his friendship with Renaissance scholar Bernard Berenson to stuff my eyes with great art in hopes that great art is what will come spilling back out of me.  He told me to write constantly and to write about what grabs me.  Also, no matter how old I get, I think I shall always be more than a little in love with the character of Clarisse McClellan from Fahrenheit 451.

On an individual level, I am sorry that he has died and I pray that his family can be comforted in this time of loss.  If I could, I would offer that he seems to have lived about as rich, full, beautiful, and happy a life as a man can.  His was a truly enviable life.  As a human being, the sorrow goes far deeper in that the world is truly poorer for the loss of Ray Bradbury.  He enriched humankind in more ways than I can reasonably list in a blog entry.

As for me, I only met the man that once.  I am given to understand that the man had thousands of encounters like that.  He was known for dazzling the enchanted kid at his book signings.  My interactions were with the ideas that he published.  I expect to read them to Ezekiel someday soon and I expect that, 500 years from now, Ezekiel's descendants will be reading Ray Bradbury to one another.  As for me, the death of Ray Bradbury makes me want to be a better man, in hopes of preserving what would have otherwise been completely lost.

Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species- Part 2

The second part of my reading began with the Laws of Variation.  Mr. Darwin writes at some length about the reproductive system being subject to changes from the conditions of life, how deviation must have causes, and how elements of an organism can be lost through disuse.  He cites many examples.  He talks about plants in different climates.  I am not entirely sure how to convey how interesting I find these sections, simply as a student of the world, but I kept feeling as if this book might do well to have illustrations.  Lo and behold, such an edition exists and now my heart is full of discontent over my measly Bantam Classics mass market paperback.  It would benefit from illustrations for those times when one is reading away from Google and Wikipedia and cannot look up the 550 species of beetles in Madeira or the opercular valves of sissile cirripedes.

While he readily admits our profound ignorance of the laws of variation, he, nonetheless, does illustrate to satisfaction that it is observable in nature that habit, use, and disuse have and do play an important role in the modification of organisms.  He also, as seems to be his custom, then examines the issue through the lens of what humans are capable of with breeding and domestication.  He points out that the tendency towards variation and the tendency to return to the original states both serve to make sustained traits difficult in breeding.

Returning once again to matters ecclesiastical, I was surprised to find this line at the end of a chapter, specifically referring to those who might argue for the independent creation of each individual species.  He says that this argument "makes the works of God a mere mockery and deception; I would almost as soon believe with the old and ignorant cosmogonists, that fossil shells had never lived, but had been created in stone so as to mock the shells now living on the sea-shore."  I was astonished at how similar this was to my own reasoning.  I have had discussions before over stars and our knowledge of the Speed of Light alone suggesting that either 1) the Universe is ancient beyond our imagination or 2) God made the stars look old to trick us.

It might also be prudent to note at this point another common misunderstanding.  Mr. Darwin is not writing about the Origin of Life.  He is writing about the Origin of Species.  As of writing this I am about 2/3rds of the way through the text and so far that is his entire focus in this book.  It is a book suggesting that species evolve(d) from other species.  It does not mention the point of singularity.  

Another section which surprised me was his addressing of Difficulties on Theory.  Have you ever heard any of these arguments against Darwinian Evolution?:

-If species evolved from other species, where are the transitional forms?
-Why are there seemingly trifling organs?
-How could an organ as complex as an eye evolve?
-What about the seeming intelligence of, for example, the bee and the cells which they create?
-What about sterility in crossed species?

I have heard all of these arguments from those who oppose the concept of Darwinian Evolution.  I have heard those questions from pulpits and in Christian books.  What I had not heard from those sources is that all of those questions are addressed and answered by Darwin in this book.  This alone would, in my opinion, be sufficient reason to recommend reading this book to anyone.  I do wonder if the reason these arguments are used by the opposition is from a lazy cursory reading of Darwin or simply feeling safe in the assumption that none of their readers will actually go and read Darwin for themselves.  However, again, I feel I should state that belief or disbelief are moot.  You can disbelieve gravitation all you want, but you're still not going to float off into space.

Also, I am not going to go over his responses here because you should read the book (and write your own paper.)

Darwin likens how certain variations emerge at certain times to how at certain points in time you will find two men coming up with the same invention completely independently of one another.  Which is funny because that is precisely the case in the book that I am reading.  Darwin hastened publication of this book because Alfred Russel Wallace had come up with the same idea on his own.  Darwin wanted to beat him to the punch and so rushed to press.

Darwin begins employing a Latin phrase in this section as well which seems like it is to recur throughout the rest of my reading: Natura non facit saltum.  It is the natural selection mantra.  It means "Nature does not make jumps."  We will return to this concept many times I'm sure.

I also read the section on Instinct.  We spend a lot of time watching insects in this chapter.  I was surprised by the existence of philanthropy in nature (as illustrated by the behavior of aphides towards ants.)  Also about the existence of slaves in certain insect communities.  He rounds out the chapter with a fascinating look at the structure of honeycombs. 

Another surprise to me has been how readable I've found this book.  I have not found it difficult in the least.  So far St. Augustine has been the biggest slog in this series.  I am finding Darwin if not overly charming at the very least quite interesting.

Ask Paul Mathers- Vegan Gifts

Here's another installment of Ask Paul Mathers. If you have a question you would like Paul Mathers to answer in video form, send your question to: askpaulmathers@gmail.com

Here is a link to the book mentioned in the video.

Enjoy!  And good luck!

Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species- Part 1

 

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

- Galileo Galilei

I have decided to cut my reactions to The Origin of Species into four sections as I am reading it.  In hindsight, I ought to have done this with Wealth of Nations as well.  I feel like 1/4th of this book will provide ample material to fill a blog post.

When I came to read this book, I half expected the central theme and thesis to be something along the lines of this:

"Peoples is monkeys and there ain't no God."

That is because, since early in the history of this book, that is how a good portion of Western organized religion has characterized Mr. Darwin's work.  I am given to understand that this included the former captain of HMS Beagle.  Darwin, along with Copernicus and Freud, deals one of the Three Major Blows to the Human Ego.  Its reception by certain types within religious circles has become a self-parody of the ostrich-like effects of insecure faith.  And, there I go, tipping my hand as to what I think.

I have been more than a little astonished to find, in recent years, certain members of the scientainment community arguing Darwin as if the Christian mischaracterization were accurate.  So, let me preface by saying that I am about to say some things that I know will make some group of people out there angry and/or feel the need to correct me.

I don't "believe" in Darwinian Evolution any more than I "believe" in plate tectonics.  It simply is.  I object to being called a "guided" evolutionist on the grounds that we don't feel the need to apply "guided" before "physics" or "gravitation."  I am a Protestant Christian with deep and heavy roots in Quakerism.  Therefore, I hold that there is a God, and that we humans, in our natural state, have a sin nature which separates us from Him.  He, in His infinite goodness, became human, was willingly sacrificed to atone for our sins, rose from the dead, and will return, and that all who believe in Him will have eternal life with Him.  This, to me, has nothing to do with what Mr. Darwin is writing about, save that we are able to better understand the workings and processes of the universe around us through the scientific method.  What Mr. Darwin had to say seems to be an entirely reasonable presentation of the observable facts available at the time, and the information available after him seems to only further back up the concepts.  I feel that people within my religion who fight so hard against this reveal some pretty hefty latent doubts.  I feel that a hoard of charlatans and carpetbaggers have exploited this false dichotomy.  There is an industry and people profit from it.  I can't say whether or not profit is their primary motivation.  Be that as it may, you can go into stores and spend money on things exploiting this false dichotomy.  This occurs on both sides of the argument.

I have no desire to discuss why people think I am wrong about what I've just written.  I am a little sad that I had to write all of that just to be able to talk about the ideas in the book that I'm reading.  I should have liked to have interacted with the ideas presented here without the loads of baggage.  But, don't let's set up camp there.

So far, this is largely a book about animal husbandry and gardening techniques.  It mainly reads more like this:

The emminent naturalist, to whom I am indebted for having shown me countless sketches of various beak types, Dr. Geisel states that a certain variety of Sneetches in generally clement and fair littoral climate have manifested a pattern surrounding their navel in a distinct pentagram while others in the same locale have no such marking.

(not an actual quote)

He will then explain why diet, climate, or some advantage has caused this change.  He will also talk about similarities or differences in producing these effects in domestic varieties.  This will go on for a page or two and then he will move on to some other bit of flora or fauna.

I wrote in the margins around the third chapter that, were this just slightly more pastoral, it would be exactly what I wished Thoreau was like when I was reading Walden.  It's like talking to someone who has an encyclopedic knowledge of varieties of plants and animals.  He lists why certain birds have certain kinds of beaks, certain plants have certain flowers, certain shells in certain places are brighter than others in other places.  Let me put a fine point on this: This sort of thing is the bulk of what I've read in this book so far.

Of course, there are parts of this which argue against special creation, which is to say the idea that God created every variety of every plant and animal.  At this point in history, it would take a very special kind of person to actually make that argument.  We know that we made mules.  We are so far beyond this concept now that we are actually creating new forms of life.

Some of the language is a bit archaic, although I feel that anyone with a successful high school level education would find the book within the grasp of their comprehension.  There are portions where he talks about what he refers to as "monstrosities."  Yes, he is talking about cleft palets and microcephaly and those sort of things.  To my modern eyes, I found his liberal designation of disabilities as "monstrous" as, well, a bit monstrous.  Like a good scientist, he defines his terms:

 "By a monstrosity I presume is meant some considerable deviation of structure in one part, either injurious to or not useful to the species, and generally not propagated."

I know that this is where some make the link to some of the more unfortunate ideologies of the early 20th century.  I would hasten to point out that Mr. Darwin is not putting a philosophy forward.  He is simply attempting to make objective observations about the available data.

Another area which pushes the envelope of my comfort zone is when he unabashedly admits to vivisection.  In fact, so far, for me that's been the most morally problematic section of Darwin.

The main point so far seems to be inherited traits, peculiarities appearing in similar times and circumstances, our known, observable, and re-creatable capacity as humans to employ selection in agriculture (think dogs and splicing produce plants.  Now think of dozens of pages of examples), observable instances of selection in nature without the guiding hand of man, examples from history (our hero Pliny once again makes an appearance to show that pears of antiquity were an inferior fruit, but have since been cultivated to one of the finer fruits), how diversity equals success (a concept which I am tempted to conflate into philosophy, but shall restrain myself in deference to our esteemed host), how the record of animals seems to focus almost exclusively on those animals which humans find useful in some way, how the struggle for life births variations which will tend towards survival (careful to note that this is not to be confused with willful selection, but rather an emergent outcome from conditions), and entropy as an essential.  At the end of one chapter, he gets as close to optimism as we're going to get in this work when he writes:

"When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief, that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply."

From what I know of Mr. Darwin's life, he was not a man I would describe as vigorous, healthy, or particularly noted for his happiness.

I wonder if Dr. Eliot might have placed this work at this point in our series, just after Adam Smith, to further explore the concept of an "Invisible Hand" which guides certain observable processes.  Our time is brief and nature's work is staggeringly long.  However, the minutiae counts in ways we couldn't have imagined.

We are that minutiae.

More soon.

 

New Clairvaux

Today we went to visit the Abbey of New Clairveaux in the town of Vina which is also the home of the New Clairvaux Vineyard.  We had spoken to our friends Troy and Molly recently over how we've meant to visit the place for years, but had never gotten around to doing it.  It is only around a half an hour's drive from our home.  Last night, Troy called to invite us to join them as they visit the vineyard. 

The Abbey of New Clairvaux is a Trappist or "Cistercian" monastery.  Trappists, as you may know, are one of the monastic paths that focus on labor and efficiency.  If you're like me, you have a smattering of knowledge on the subject from that time in your 20s when you read Thomas Merton and thought you might like to become a monk (but not seriously.)  One of the most influential early Cistercians was Bernard of Clairvaux (for fellow church history buffs, you will remember his famous debate with Abelard.)

New Clairvaux was, in fact, established in the 1950s when the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky grew too large.  They sent a group out to California to start a spin-off.  Yes, not spoken in any of the history material I found at New Clairvaux, but easy to piece together, the Abbey of Gethsemani was the very monastery where Thomas Merton abode.  And, yes, he was there and world-famous in the 1950s.  So, this monastery could well exist because of that very impulse I cited earlier, but rather for those who did take that thought seriously when they read Thomas Merton in their 20s.

First, we got right down to business and visited the tasting room.  We tried the St. James Albariño from 2011 (a lovely white wine which we very nearly bought), the 2010 Poor Souls Barbera (which we did buy), the 2009 St. James Syrah (not our favorite), and the 2007 Abbot's Reserve (quite possibly the best wine I have ever tasted.) 

Had I a psychic connection with Laurie and known that she would have agreed that we should flagrantly flaunt our budget restrictions and buy it at any price, we would have a bottle of the Abbot's Reserve in our wine rack right now.  We console ourselves with the knowledge that this was not "our trip to the New Clairvaux Vineyard" but rather "our first trip to the New Clairvaux Vineyard."

All around the campus there were these gorgeous spots that seemed like time had come unhinged.  One kept glimpsing the modern right next to the antique right next to the ancient.

Which brings us to the rebuilding of the Santa María de Óvila Chapter House.
 

The building was originally a building in Guadalajara circa somewhere around 1190.  In the mid-1800s the Spanish government confiscated the property and disassembled it.  Almost 100 years later, William Randolph Hearst bought the stones, intending to use it to build some castle for himself somewhere that he never got around to.  They sat in a warehouse in San Francisco until the monks of New Clairvaux purchased them to rebuild the Chapter House on their Vina property.

Standing in the building, in the midst of construction, I felt both the weight and insignificance of eternity, as if I were enveloped in something at once much older than I and, in spite of appearances, fragile.

Their website shows what they are planning for the completion of the project.

After the vineyard, we had a picnic at the Woodson Bridge park and played Kubb in the grass by the banks of the Sacramento River.  It was one of the more splendid Saturdays we've had in recent memory. 

My Laocoön: Alternative Claims in the Interpretation of Artworks by Richard Brilliant

"[A] well known piece of baseball philosophy.  Three umpires are discussing how they do their jobs.  The first, who is also the least experienced, says, "I call 'em as they are."  The second, who has been in the game a little longer, says, "I call 'em as I see 'em."  The third says, "They're nothing till I call 'em."  These three could be characterized as objectivism, relativism, and postmodernism respectively." -Andrew Rawlinson

The above quote is simultaneously the epigraph placed at the beginning of the final section of  My Laocoön: Alternative Claims in the Interpretation of Artworks by Richard Brilliant, as well as the first and last time you will see a sports metaphor on my blog.  Be that as it may, it sums up Professor Brilliant's thesis nicely.  My Laocoön is, in one sense, a book about the famous masterpiece known as Laocoön and His Sons or the Laocoön Group which resides in the Vatican.  Pliny the Elder attributes the piece to three sculptors from Rhodes.  You are most likely familiar with some variation of the image.  It looks like this:

  But it also looks like this:

There is a rich and complex history of the images which, if memory serves, Professor Brilliant finally totals about 4 different versions.  The first is the Book of Q version which is the original which we shall never see.  The second is the image immediately above, if I've followed the labyrinthine narrative properly, discovered in 1506 and highly influential on Renaissance artists.  The last is the restoration of the 1950s (the first of the two I've posted above) which is considered more "correct."

Professor Brilliant also speaks of a third image which is extracted from the 1506 version, but achieves an "otherness" even to the point of requiring another category as the image becomes "a vehicle for critical discourse on the nature of art and its powers."  A portion of the text deals with specific critical responses.  There is also a moment, early in the work, where Professor Brilliant tells about a time when he sat by the two sculptures in the Cortile del Belvedere (which people pass through on their way to the Sistine Chapel) and watched the tourists pass by, observing their responses.  A good deal of them were confused by two similar statues placed side by side. Some knew the history of sculpture and knew to some extent that the less authentic is still largely the authoritative version in our culture which has weaved so much time, thought, and history into the 1506 version.

Professor Brilliant writes, "Yet, rarely did they appear to engage the sculpture as a work of art having meaning for them as an aesthetic object of value."

I felt that, at this moment, he reveals a sort of superobjective, an unspoken thesis.  By no means is this an anti-intellectualism argument.  I do know art, and I like what I know.  Notwithstanding, there is a danger of opacity on either end of the spectrum: be it through ignorance and apathy, or be it through seeing the image so much through the filter of what others have written/thought about it that one cannot see the image for itself.  Indeed, the book is also, in fact I would dare suggest primarily, about ways of seeing art, using a piece with a history of interpretation and reproduction variants wrapping around the piece like so many snakes.

He also compares the ways of seeing the Laocoön with other masterpieces that have suffered similar contortionistic manipulations.  He mentions Titian's Sacred and Profane Love:

Which is likely not even the original title or subject matter.  He spends a portion of the book talking about titles, both important as reference points and misleading.  For example, he also talks of Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.  Picasso himself was reluctant (petulant even) to name his paintings.

He also brings up Velasquez's Las Meninas (I have a reproduction of it in my living room.)  The enigmatic presentation of the image has inspired volume upon speculative volume on the piece:

I cannot speak for Professor Brilliant, although I thoroughly enjoyed the ameliorating experience provided by way of his work.  I have my suspicions that he would agree with a metaphor of my own devising on the matter.  There is little in this life so enriching as to be excited about art.  The arts reflect the highest aspirations of humankind.  To seek to know more is a natural outworking of said excitement.  Looking to what's been observed about a work is a bit like spicing a dish.  Properly measured, it can make the entire experience much richer than it ever could be on its own.  Poorly measured, it can drown all of the inherent flavor of the dish.  I'm not sure if it was his intention to put so fine a point of this danger, however I find it was my primary takeaway from the book. 

Infinite Riches in a Little Room

Every year, I have 12 inter-library loans allotted to me by the Butte County Library.  I do my best not to waste a single one.  The inter-library loan system is as follows: if you go to your library and ask for a book and they do not have it in the building, there are people whose job is to track down a copy at another library and then convince that library to loan it to you through their library.  You, the patron, have only to fill out a chit of paper with the book title and your name and contact information.  Then you go home and, usually, in my experience, after you've forgotten that any of this went on, you get a call saying your book is there.

The time limit is up to the discretion of the lending library.  I was told this time that my book came all the way from Humboldt and that they were one of the stricter libraries in regards to the amount of time they allowed their books to disperse into the hands of the public.  In this case, I think I have about a week with the book.

On the few occasions where necessity has lead me to thin my personal library either for moving purposes or lack of space (a process which is like deciding which of your fingers to cut off) I tend to look first to the books that would be easily accessible in any library.  Looking directly over the top of my laptop as I write this, I can see two copies of Jane Eyre on my shelf.  In the circumstance of a book thinning, at least one of those would probably go.  I also should state that I have no intention of thinning out my personal library again so long as I live if I can help it.  Be that as it may, there are other types of books which are not readily available at any library.

I love the Chico Library, but... Well, to put it nicely, if I had a disposable income, I would donate liberally to the Chico Library in hopes that they could improve the sphere of their offerings.  Nonetheless, if I suspend my demand for instant gratification and put in an inter-library loan request when (inevitably) I want to read a book that they don't have on-hand, they can get me that book!

In this case it was My Laocoön: Alternative Claims in the Interpretation of Artworks by Richard Brilliant.  Cost prohibitive left to my own means and not a title one finds in every library, but something I desperately wanted to read as soon as I heard of it.  More on it in a few days when I've finished it.

The clock is ticking.  The beautiful thing about your local lending library is that they are strengthened by use.  We've recently had a little struggle in Chico where the city severely cut the hours of the library, but were forced to reconsider when reports confirmed how important and valuable the library is to the community.  Also, it confirmed what a great job they do.  I encourage everyone to exercise all of the uses of their local library.  It is a place where heaps of information are there for the taking, totally at your disposal.  It frightens and disturbs me that they are not more widely used.  As the line from Auntie Mame so famously puts it, "Life's a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!"  Libraries are, in my opinion, one of the greatest concepts humankind as come up with.

Paul Mathers on Earth

First, let me state I am not just woefully late to the party.  I downloaded the Google Earth program a long time ago on one of my earlier computers (one in which I would have to work the clutch and throttle after Laurie wound up the crank to get it going), but it made my computer slower than the Second Coming.  Nonetheless, I loved the idea of the program and so, soon after getting my new laptop, I downloaded Google Earth again.

The reason I was so fascinated by the program is that one can look at any place in the world and oftentimes find photographs that individual users have taken of that place.  For example, I have a friend I met online several years ago who lives in India, and I have found that I can see the town where my friend lives through this service.  It is a place I earnestly desire to visit one day, but now, while means forbid, I am able to view the place in my own home.

In 2012, this should not be news or any great revelation to anyone out there.  What was a shock, to me, was when I then turned my Google Earth eye upon myself and found sparsity in the photographs representative of the town in which I live.  Some major local landmarks had no photographic representation while (sigh) some pictures of shoes on telephone wires and people's backyards were, in fact, represented.  Well aware of the crowd source model and one's personal responsibility when discouraged by what others have elected to represent, I have become a contributor.

I am under no illusions of the permanence of this particular contribution to the furtherance of human understanding, I would add that I am also under no illusion of the permanence of even the Aztec Pyramids in the face of eternity.  However, seemingly fixed as we are in the temporal, I see it is an act of good to establish a sense of place for the global community to share.

I have been fascinated with senses of place my entire life.  I fall deeply in love with some places and am haunted by the memory of others.  I seek to describe place in painstaking detail (something that as a writer I have had to force myself to reign in.)  Many of my dreams revolve around architecture.  A right angle can send me into ecstasies.  First there is the desire to "stuff my eyes with wonder" and see all of the blessed miracles this world has in store.  When I was a child, we had a computer game, an adventure game in a sort of Dungeons & Dragons-knock-off universe, in which you could access a map that showed all of the places where you had traveled thus far.  The areas of play where you had not yet trod were black on the map until you you went there.  This left a powerful impression on me and I still think of my life in terms of that map at times.  There is also the wonder of space-time and the horror of the great unknowable, sort of a panicked desire to preserve everything you possibly can if even for one moment beyond your own death in hopes that it will help humankind in some way.

In establishing a sense of place, one can choose the beautiful and iconic:
Here is one I took of Bidwell Presbyterian Church.  I was amazed that such a noted part of Chico was not represented on Google Earth.  It towers over downtown, sort of like a spiritual pillar jutting out of the lugubrious, sulfurous fissure of Downtown Chico.  A reminder of the higher aspirations of humankind in full view of anyone who stumbles out of the myriad of bars otherwise comprising the area.

Or the oddities one might observe on a walking tour:
Across the street and around a corner from the church is Celestino's pizzeria.  I've known a remarkable number of people who walk past it, even dine there, daily who have never noticed the stools in front of the establishment which I believe are a collage of heads of Michelangelo's David.

Or the mundane:
If I were to stand up, walk out of my front door, and walk about 20 paces up the street, I could see this bar by inclining my head slightly to the right.  Every weekend (I anticipate tonight, in fact) we can hear whatever band is playing at The Maltese in the distance if we keep our front door open (sometimes even if we don't.)  It appears to be a decidedly proletariat bar, catering to the bluer of collar.  One notes the iron cross in the logo which is often associated with fire fighters although I am given to understand that those of less noble life-choices are also known to frequent the place.  If you came to visit, we could walk to the Maltese, enjoy some drinks, and walk home. We would not.

I bring it up because it is something I pass every day, as are so many of the places I find myself painting a portrait of Chico with in this venue.

I think everyone should take a camera around with them for a while and snap photos of the places surrounding them.  It is a way of waking up one's eyes to one's daily environment in an entirely new way.  If you were to come visit me, I would take you around this charming and flawed little town that I love and show you many of the places that I've photographed, giving stories and facts of interest as we toured.  In doing so, your sense of newness would rub off on me vicariously.  That is the sensation I've felt from this hobby, except that the invisible tourist walking beside me is, at least potentially, the entire world.

The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

For the first third or so in my reading of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, I kept describing it to Laurie as being a bit like one of those short films that Mr. Rogers would show on his children's television show.  Do you remember those?  He would go to a place of business, take a tour, walk the audience through what goes on in that business and how the trappings of daily life come to the homes of the audience.

Adam Smith would have been more concerned about the economics of the farm (rather than the mechanics and the temperament of the of actual cows) as he toured us around the global (actually, Western to be more accurate) economy of the 1780s, but I chose this video advisedly.  The world of Adam Smith was a decidedly agrarian world.  It was also written from the unique vantage-point straddling the times of feudalism and the Industrial Revolution.   

In a lot of ways, I found the book to be an anachronism.  While parts of it were of great interest to me, there were also these sprawling sections listing prices of what something or other cost in Scotland in the 1780s or a tax on the Continent that probably hasn't existed for over 100 years, in values that are nothing like contemporary values.  I found a great deal of food for thought in the topics he covers, but one of my major takeaways was that this work does not fit into the contemporary economic box.  I would add that I certainly don't think it's a work that I would suggest we attempt to return to either.  It is my opinion after having read the entire work that we have gone too far from the world of Adam Smith to try to apply his models in our time.

Here is a partial list of some important forces which have evolved in current Western economics that Adam Smith had no category for: insurance as we know it, healthcare, social security or even the basic concept of retirement, the military industrial complex and the reasons why we go to war, Bitcoin, a national debt of our staggering proportions, subscription based discount warehouse stores, any form of communication advanced beyond handwritten letters, advertising, Paypal, the Federal Reserve, credit cards, China, the Euro, outsourcing, welfare, national parks, public education as we know it, farming subsidies, the whole barrel of worms revolving around petroleum, copyrights on intellectual property in the age of eBooks and iPods, Berkshire Hathaway, pharmaceutical companies, lobbyists, Karl Marx, John Kenneth Galbraith, heck, even John Maynard Keynes for that matter, the housing bubble, the bursting of the housing bubble and certainly sub-prime mortgages, labor unions, hidden fees in banks, our baroque taxation structure (not that his was any less "vexing" as he puts it), environmental concerns and the extinction of entire species, and these are just what I'm rattling off the top of my head after reading the book.  It is by no means comprehensive and merely an attempt to illustrate that we are not in the days of Adam Smith and any attempt to superimpose his world over ours strikes me as injudicious.


As the work progressed, more of Smith's personal opinions emerged.  He attempts to frame them within an economic framework, but economics is an imperfect science.  With economics, there is always the unspoken elephant that this is simply the model which we are operating under presently and is not "The Way It Must Be" as opposed to, say, the laws of physics.  It is, in fact, arguably one of the sciences most subject to the socio-political point of view of the economist.


"So, what DID he talk about?" I hear you cry.


He talked about a lot of things, but mainly, I thought, he focused on three topics from which he elaborated outward to give a full picture of economics as he knew it.  The three topics were: trade and labor, money, and taxation.  He actually divides the piece into five "books" but I found those three topics to be the key points. 


In the trade section, we discuss materials, wages, labor, apprenticeship and craftsmanship.  One of the most striking points of the entire piece to me, in its relevance to my own life, was when he spoke of productive and unproductive labor.  I should put a fine point on the fact that he is not making a qualitative judgment, at least not in saying that unproductive (or menial) labor is not important.  Rather, he is saying that productive labor is one who mines, produces, or improves a material.  In this section I thought quite a bit about how I have never been a productive laborer in my life.  It reminded me of when I was in college and one of the men who worked in the technical side of the theater department urged me to go to a local community college and take a welding class.  He told me that if I did I would never want to for work.  Like a darned fool, I did not take his advice and, I confess, have had periods of my life since in which I have regretted that choice.


There is also a sort of proto-Industrial Revolution argument made for specialization.  He talks about how, for example, a shoemaker does not raise and cut his own beef, the baker does not tailor his own clothing, and so forth.  This is because their labor is deemed worth payment for those other services that humans find necessary and also because it would be too expensive for them to try to do everything.  We see modern examples in purchasing bread at the grocery store for $1.85, while baking my own bread at home would be around a $4 loaf.


In the section of money, he discusses inflation and valuation, stock, and coinage (one of the more fascinating sections I thought.  Turns out there was a problem for some time with variations of the amount of metal used in coins.  People would hoard the heavier coins, melt them down, and wind up with more money than the coins were worth!) 


In the section about taxation, he starts to say things like, 

"There is no art which one government sooner learns of another, than that of draining money from the pockets of people."

Which sounds rather toward the Right to our modern ears.  He then goes to on to talk about the proper uses of funds gleaned from taxation on the part of the sovereign.  One is to protect the citizens of the nation while within the nation from other nations attacking them.  One is justice within the nation.  And one, I was charmed to see, is the funds required to maintain the necessary dignity of the sovereign.  He also states that the citizen ought to pay taxes without vexation due to the citizenship that they provide, the position within a community.  He encourages the citizen that taxes are not enslaving, as some would say, but rather liberating in that they are a sign that one is, in fact, capable of owning enough privately to be taxed.

Speaking to this, however, I get the impression that Mr. Smith would be a little shocked and scandalized by Laurie and my recent predicament.  He states that proper taxation will not cut into the necessities of life for the citizen.  I think Mr. Smith would take some issue with the working lower-middle-class cutting into the necessities of life by the current rates of taxation while nothing but some of the luxuries of the wealthy are touched by their taxation.  

I was also a little charmed that he chides Great Britain a bit at one point near the end in accusing them of attempting to create a nation of customers with North America.  He says words to the effect of "and look how that turned out" from his point of view in the 1780s.  From my point of view in 2012, I thought "My goodness!  That's pretty much what we've become, isn't it?"

This really was the briefest of flyover reviews of an almost 600 page book.  There was so much more to it that I couldn't possibly cover in one blog entry without losing followers.  But I also want to say a few words about why someone should read it today.  First of all, it is clear that this book was highly influential on the early thinkers of the United States (so, yes, at least as far as ideas were concerned, Mr. Smith did go to Washington.)  I don't think that Mr. Smith's ideas are to blame for our current predicament of a society collapsing under the weight of its own covetousness.  At one point, I felt, he addresses human nature indirectly. 

He talks about smuggling towards the end, specifically that smuggling will be on the rise in times when importation taxes are high.  He suggests two ways of stemming smuggling.  One is to lower the importation taxes and the other is to hound smugglers out of existence by oppressive police measures.  I think, here, he speaks to something deep within human nature.  He also talks, earlier, about provision for the poor and those who cannot provide for themselves (although the British 1780s version is vastly different from the Chico 2012 version of handling those issues.)  I felt that this shows a human concern.  More to the point, however, I feel that Smith exhibits, throughout his text, a concern towards a reasonable and, I daresay, wise economy.  All of the short term profit views, the pulling up of the planks of our own boat to sell while we're still at sea, that mark our sinking global economy would be folly and horrific to Mr. Smith. 

More to the point, I think that returning to such an early piece that talked about such incubating versions of the economy that we know and rue today, we can get a better grasp on where exactly we diverted course, ideally with an eye specifically toward where we've gone agley.  Not that I think that Adam Smith had all of the answers or that he was particularly correct in his model for how, essentially, humans treat one another during this brief tarriance on the mortal coil.  More to the point, I feel like this book, especially now, might be a source of some relief to those holding the pieces of a broken dream and crying out "Why?!!?" to the silent heavens.

The Cruellest Month

You may well have noticed the dearth of posts on this blog so far this month.  I have decided to dedicate a few of my precious moments of internet access (spoiler) to giving a brief update on the condition of my temporal life.

The first matter, which I shall return to later in the post, is that Laurie is self-employed.  We had been operating under the assumption that this would be the last year that we would have one of the major deductions that we have enjoyed in our annual taxes thus far in our marriage, but it turns out that last year was, in fact, the last year in which we could do that.  The freedom of entrepreneurial independence is not free in our great nation.  Indeed, it will set you back a few grand.  Barring any deductions to offset said cost, one finds one's self in debt to the United States Government a couple thousand dollars.  One, in this case, being me.  Us, more precisely.

Meanwhile, we are offline.  I wrote a long explanation, but, upon reflection, have decided that this will suffice: AT&T screwed up our internet service and I dumped them as our ISP.  Due to circumstances beyond my control, my new ISP cannot take control of my IS until the 24th or thereabouts. 

You may, at this point, have thought of suggestions as to how I can circumvent problems of this sort, but I refer you to the first part of my story.  Circumventing problems is a luxury reserved for those who are standing financially pat.  We are more than a couple thousand dollars in the red at the moment, which, despite what you might expect at this point, brings me around to a much happier part of my April 2012 story.  My parents are visiting on what seems to be a vacation with the joint goals of celebrating my birthday, seeing my nieces perform in a local theater production, and a last hurrah before my father's retirement. 

It occurred to me that if I had a bicycle, given the current circumstances of my life, I would no longer have the absolute necessity of owning my own automobile (Laurie, of course, still has hers.)  It further occurred to me that if I were to sell my car, it is entirely plausible that such a sale would harvest at least enough to render unto Caesar.  Long time readers will know that I have always been a pedestrian at heart and never even wanted to drive a car in the first place.  My parents have given me a bicycle for my birthday.

And that is how I came to seize the helm of unfortunate circumstance to steer myself to more clement and pacific waters.  We are not through the storm quite yet, but the end is in sight.

So, I will be back to my regular blogload somewhere around one week for now.  I thank you for your patience, hope all of you are doing well, and wish you a lovely April.

The Letters of Pliny the Younger

There have been a number of pieces in this series to which I've grown so attached as I read that finishing them was like saying goodbye to a close, dear friend.  The letters of Pliny the Younger was one such piece.  I was grateful for the placement.  Just as before what you suspect will be two very starchy, heavy meals later in the day, it can be some great comfort to take a pleasantly light meal.  My next two are Adam Smith and Darwin.

Which is not to say that Pliny the Younger was not rich material.  By no means!  The letters of Pliny (pronounced Pl-in-ee, not Pl-eye-nee, although I have found that inevitably when you speak of him in a group of any size, someone will try to correct your pronunciation with the wrong one.  You have my permission to make much of their faux pas and shame them out of the room) are a historical jewel.  They put you right into the lives of the Romans.  I found Pliny himself to be charming, warm, intelligent, and informative.

His letters take on a number of forms.  Some are words of encouragement, a remarkable number of them are letters of grief over a recently deceased friend or loved one, some are accounts of important events of his day, some of those events may have seemed more important to him than they do to us, but be that as it may, even that gives us a rare portal into another time in human history.  I was continually amazed at how little difference there actually was between the world of a man nearly 2,000 years dead and my own time.  People live and die, they fight, they learn things, economics and class struggles appear to be just about the same as they ever were.

Some of my favorite passages came from Pliny's love of gardens and architecture.  He had several letters where he would try to entice people to visit his estate by describing beautiful features (the flowers and plants, the different rooms, books, streams, and so forth) of the place in great detail.

 Aside from just being charming, he also exhibits great wisdom in his letters detailing legal proceedings to be sure, but especially in his letters to Emperor Trajan.  These letters are a bit drier than the rest and seem a bit obsequious to modern American eyes, but they show a discerning character.  Of special interest is the section concerning the treatment of Christians.  It's finally decided, if I understood them correctly, that the policy of that administration would be that the Christians wouldn't be persecuted so long as they don't do it in the town square (where they might scare the horses.)

One thing I am learning about this series is that all of the material has been profitable and undoubtedly educational.  There are, however, some books that I expect to reread again and again over the course of my life and others which I will be perfectly happy to have read once.  This is, without a doubt, one of the former.  

As Smoke Is Driven Away

I was having coffee with my friend (who is also my pastor) and, within the natural course of the conversation, he handed me a metaphorical key.  It was an answer I had been seeking and, in fact, an answer that, to some extent, I had already found.  I told him that, since he had preached on Psalm 68 the previous Sunday, I had been reading the Samuels, specifically the life of King David.  He said, "So much of my own mental health comes from that section of scripture."

Intellectually speaking, I understand that having heroes can be a good practice, to set up a standard toward which to aspire.  I feel like I've always been too cynical to do this properly.  I don't have Homeric heroes who are perfect human specimens.  I don't have great, perfect men up on pedestals whom I fancy myself to be like.  But show me a smarty-pants with glaring personal flaws and I'll immediately put a poster of them up in my bedroom.  I mentioned Spalding Gray before and thought of my internal list.  Alexander Woollcott could be venomous and childish.  Andy Warhol was, in some ways, an extremely destructive force in the lives of those he surrounded himself with.  Glenn Gould makes me look socially well-adjusted.  Ben Franklin hated his son.   

I asked Laurie before writing this how she would respond if someone asked her "Does Paul consider Karl Lagerfeld one of his heroes?"

She hesitated, "I wouldn't say a hero.  Certainly he admires his work a great deal and he is a person of great interest to Paul, but he wouldn't want to emulate Mr. Lagerfeld."

I think I put certain people in flimsy, biodegradable hero baskets for two reasons.  Firstly because it's an out, a way to distance myself from the hero if I choose.  Secondly because I know my own failings and admiring people with failings keeps me from despairing under their harsh gaze in my own less admirable moments.

Let us rewind the narrative to a few weeks ago when I was wrestling with some of my more persistent demons.  As I mentioned above, the Sunday morning exegesis of the 68th Psalm (which you can listen to or download for yourself here) had me thinking of what I knew of King David.  He was a lowly shepherd and the runt of the litter.  He killed Goliath.  He got chased around by a mad king.  He misbehaved with/for/towards (as well as diverse and sundry other prepositions) Bathsheba and paid for it.  But I also knew that he was a peculiar figure in the Bible in that there is all of this highly personal, emotional response to what he was going through in his life contained in the book of Psalms.  I mentioned to Laurie that I was hard pressed to think of another Biblical figure like this.  You have stories like Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac with almost no emotional exposition, only the bare journalistic facts of the story.  You have some peripheral emotional exposition in the Prophets and the Epistles.  Laurie said, and quite astutely I think, that the only other person in scripture she could think of that had a similar thing, albeit more briefly, was Mary.

So, I went right home and picked up the Samuels and starting reading about David from my own place of plaintive prayer.  Laurie reminded me, upon reading my previous post about Spalding Gray and my recent epiphany associated with same, of one of my pet peeves (and hypocrisies).  I so often see people associating themselves with people in movies or television shows or behaving as if they are the star of their own movie or television show.  Boy oh boy, did I ever enter this reading expecting to identify with David.  But what I found was myself identifying with having a mad king chasing me around inside my own head. I feel like I have the guy in there who trusts God and tries to do what is right, good, to live holy and with austerity and virtue.  I also have a guy upstairs who goes barking mad every once in a while.

David lives in a world of absurdities in the Existential sense of the term, especially in his pre-annointment days.  He is destined for royalty entirely without designs toward that end.  His people are threatened by a seemingly insurmountable foe and, in one of the early manifestations of the Salvation from Death by way of a Savior motifs contained within scripture, David is able to defeat the undefeatable all the more remarkably with the barest minimum of a weapon.  There is also crazy, crazy Saul who fixates his raging malice on David for no good reason at all.  The madness leads to the end of Saul, Jonathan, and many others, as well as to the ascension of David to the throne.

How does David handle all of this?  He focuses on what is pleasing to God and walks in beauty and righteousness.  He will not tolerate regicide, or any disrespect to the office of King, although I suspect some practical aspects of one destined to be king himself in setting the example of meticulous reverence of the Divine Right of Kings.  Perhaps it is another image of Christ in the Old Testament in a "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" example.  I felt that this is driven home when, long after the strife with Saul is over, David honors Mephibosheth.

I mentioned before and in my previous posts my psychological "Goliaths" and "Sauls" if you will.  I mentioned earlier my rejection of chemical intervention in my psychological battles, but also hastened to add that I am not prescribing that to anyone else.  I've known people who genuinely can't make the 4 foot long, blue-green, screaming cockroaches on the walls disappear from their sight by mere will-power and chemical intervention may be a helpful solution for those people.  I suffer from mere hysterical misery and know that I grow stronger with each successful experience in overcoming my own manias, by the grace of God of course.  Martin Luther said:

"I would have nothing whatever if I did not plow and sow. God does not want to have success come without work, and yet I am not to achieve it by my work. He does not want me to sit at home, to loaf, to commit matters to God, and to wait till a fried chicken flies into my mouth."

In this, I know that I am blessed.  I know that there are others less fortunate than I.

Of all of the vices available to humankind, Worry is the most attractive strumpet to me.  Worry comes to me with ease, indeed, often comes to me unbidden when I'm not paying attention.  As a result, I would often feel, if I ever would even reflect on such a thing, that worry was compulsory or entirely beyond my control.  Yet my propensity for worry was, in and of itself, a self-destructive act, perhaps the grandest act of self-destruction I've engaged in thus far.

 As David says,

 "Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil."

I think when I go searching for avenues to mental health in my reading material, what I usually seek is an instruction manual.  "Do a), b), and c) and then you will be mentally healthy."  Imagine my consistent disappointment!  In the writing of and about David, however, I find something very different.  I find hope.  Hope in spite of myself.  Which, in the end, I think is one of the main attractions of religion for humans. 

The Kelpie

It was in the mid-summer when I was 14 years old when I happened upon a film version of a Spalding Gray monologue on a cable movie network.  The monologue was Monster in a Box, which focused primarily on the time in his life in which he wrote his novel Impossible Vacation.  I remember the timing because my father had an annual work-related conference in late summer which changed location throughout America each year.  My family would go with him and be tourists while my father would go to his convention classes.  I remember reading Impossible Vacation in New Orleans.

The appeal of Gray's voice was instant for me as a young man.  It was one of those great moments in literature and/or the arts when you realize as though for the first time that you are not alone in the world.  Here was a man who had a career, a fulfilling artistic life, who was candid about his rather extreme neuroses.  His keen intellect was unabashed.  This was not the sort of thing that was being encouraged by my peers and teachers in public school, but it was, none the less, the sort of young man I was becoming.  It was like growing up in a jungle and finally meeting another human being one day.

If you've never seen the work of Spalding Gray, I highly highly recommend that you do.  They are excellent pieces of theater.  There are at least three film versions readily available: Swimming to Cambodia, Monster in a Box, and Gray's Anatomy.  The latter is the monologue I saw live in Irvine in the mid-1990s.  As we were walking from the parking structure to the theater, I saw Mr. Gray come out of the back door of the theater with a photographer from what I assume was a local or college newspaper.  In spite of knowing that he was preparing for a performance, I walked right up and met him.  He signed a few of his books for me that I had brought, and talked for a few minutes.  He seemed distracted, but also perfectly willing to talk to a young fan.

Spalding Gray was the reason I majored in Theater in college.  If someone had asked me what I intended to do with my life, I would say, "I want to be the next Spalding Gray."  In fact, the one play of mine that actually was produced was similar to a Gray monologue, autobiographical and addressed directly to the audience.  Mine was in the round and had a stool that looked like it came from a log cabin in the center, rather than a desk on a proscenium stage, but the influence was unmistakable.

Then, in 2004, after years of depression, Spalding Gray jumped into the East River from the Staten Island Ferry in the middle of Winter.  It took weeks for them to find his body.  I stopped saying that I wanted to be the next Spalding Gray so much.

Laurie says I have this dark cloud that comes over me at times like a Plinian Eruption.  I can go from pleasant and happy to the absolute depths of despair in an instant.  I am not proud of this, and I don't speak about it often.  It is something that seems completely beyond my control when it comes, like a tidal wave washing over me.  I am well aware that I could walk into any doctor's office in this country, explain the sort of things that happen inside of my brain, and walk out with a prescription for some form of anti-depressant.  I don't, and not just because I can't afford medical insurance.  I've never had a suicidal moment in my life, not because the Everlasting fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter, but simply because I am not wired that way.  So there doesn't seem to be any great danger to this. 

When Laurie was proof-reading this entry, she stopped at this point and said, "Wow.  You've never had a suicidal moment?"

"No.  Never."

"Really?"

"Well, I've had moments of intellectually considering the concept.  I suppose there may have been some moments in extreme depression where I might have thought of walking into the creek and putting a shotgun in my mouth, but never so much that I would actually go get the gun."

"Really?  Never?"

"No.  I would always think `But then I would never have another cup of coffee or the last thunderstorm I saw would be the last one I would ever see, instead of having the promise of possibly seeing another one.  I still haven't read Don Quixote.'  You know?"

"So, even in the depth of it, you still have hope of future happiness."

"Now, mind you, I've been extremely self-destructive at certain points in my life, which is sort of like a Schrödinger's Cat version of suicide."

I understand that there are people in this world with genuine chemical imbalances whose quality of life could be greatly improved by chemical intervention.  I personally feel that I am one whose quality of life is greatly improved by forcing myself to overcome these things on my own.  I will go into more detail on that in my next post.

When Rob died and my religious faith fell apart within a 6 month period, I went through one of those long dark nights of the soul that you hear tell of.  I had a high stress job for a time and, enmeshed in all of that angst, I had one of my latent fears come boiling to the surface in a bizarre manner.  I gradually became maniacally afraid of catching a cold.  I am not employing hyperbole.  I say "maniacally" advisedly.  I am speaking of opening doors with cloth or paper towels, a tremendous amount of hand washing and hand sanitizer, a phobic avoidance of shaking hands, constantly taking cough drops and Cold-Eeze, using the Neti Pot four or five times a day.  If I was in a supermarket and a child at the end of the aisle would cough, I would go home and use the Neti Pot.  
 
The fear transformed gradually from the fear of catching something into a fear that I was, in fact, coming down with something, and then evolved into the conviction that I was coming down with something.  Today, I have worked it down to asking Laurie to look at my throat and feel my forehead maybe once a day.  Maybe sneaking off to take my temperature only once or twice a day.  This is how I have spent a great deal of the past year of my life.  I should probably add the significant fact that, within that year, I have not fallen ill.  Laurie has taken to reminding me "You're healthy as an ox."

How did this happen?  Well, the Little Internal Analyst says that it is a manifestation of my fear of losing control on a number of levels.  There is the fear of an inability to work based on having spent almost a year and a half out of work a few years ago.  There is the fear of inflicting harm on others through no fault of my own (in fact, the fear of doing my best and failing anyway is one of my greatest fears.)  There is also the baggage of a childhood spent being on the receiving end of bullying.  Illness reminds me a great deal of being bullied.  It's painful and, once it's attacking you, there's not much you can do to get out of it.

History repeated itself.  As I was clawing my way out of that deep pit, I was given a copy of The Journals of Spalding Gray, which is exactly what it sounds like.  I found the same kind of identifying that I experienced when I was a young man.  One of the themes that recur in Mr. Gray's journals is that of a sort of doomed fate, a sort of infection of tragedy.  In his case, his mother committed suicide when he was a young man.  At one point he intimates his fear that that act of her's would, in fact, eventually drag him down, which is all the more startling in light of the end of his story. 

But then, about three-fourths of the way through the book, I had an epiphany.  I am not like Spalding Gray.  Spalding Gray was a man who lived on the East Coast and did performance art in the 1970s through the 1990s, gained a reasonable amount of fame, had the personal life which I was reading, and died.  I am living in Northern California in the early 2000s; I pour medications for a living, and have a very different personal life.  I am married, religious, introverted, and any number of other differences.  As a matter of fact, to identify myself with the experiences of someone whom I, in reality, have nothing to do with really just kind of cheapens both of us.  After that, it occurred to me that I am not a hypochondriac by fate like how I have brown eyes.  I sort of think that my earlier, regrettable dalliances with Calvinism left me with a nervousness around anything to do with exerting human will. 

So much of my recent adult life has been finding myself at a place of bare foundations, trying to figure out what is my voice and what are the voices of external influences.  In my next post, I intend to consider some of the tools I've been collecting to build a structure inside my brain that is not at the mercy of the elements, blown over by the slightest wind of change or disappointment.  I want to talk a bit about how I am learning to tread water when the tidal wave washes over me.

Ubi est fumus...

Pliny the Elder laid prone in the afternoon sun, anointed with oil, corpulent and content.  As was his custom, he rose as the sun began to edge toward the horizon and waddled toward the bath that his servants had prepared to rinse the oil before the late afternoon meal.  He relaxed into the steaming pool, thinking back over his previous scholarly work and forward to the evening's study ahead of him.  His Natural History, an attempt at compiling the collected scientific knowledge of humankind, was already hailed as one of the great achievements in Roman civilization.  Unknown to him in that particular bath on the cusp of the gloaming on a day like any other in the year 79 was that nearly every achievement in his luminary life was behind him at that point.  Every remarkable act save for one.

Pliny walked into the dining hall and saw his nephew, young Pliny, already reclining with a speech of Cicero unrolled before him, thoroughly engrossed in what he read.  Pliny the Elder's sister, Plinia, walked in from the balcony that overlooked the harbor and said, "Pliny, you might be interested in this.  There is a bizarre plume of smoke rising from Mount Vesuvius."

What an oddity!  Everything about the character of the curious and scientifically-minded man compelled him to investigate further.  He sent his lead servant to prepare his ship and asked Pliny the Younger if he would care to join him.  "No, thank you.  I think I would prefer to stay with my reading tonight."

Pliny climbed into the boat and looked down the beach at a man approaching at a sprint.  It was one of the sailors under his command.  "Sir!  Rectina sends a call for assistance.  She is trapped in her home at the base of Mount Vesuvius and fears for her life.  Please go at once to rescue her!"

Cutting quickly across the water, the air around them blackened.  Ash collected on their bodies with increasing thickness the closer they drew to shore.  Suddenly, burning coals began to rain from the sky, burning holes in their sails as they fell.  The helmsman said that he highly recommend that they turn back.  Pliny shouted back "Fortes fortuna iuvat (Fortune favors the brave)!"  He saw his friend Pomponianus standing on the shore, waving frantically to Pliny's vessel.  "Steer toward Pomponianus!"

Pomponianus was beside himself with fear.  He was reduced to uncontrollable sobs when Pliny stepped onto the shore.  Pliny embraced him, told him not to be afraid.  "Come inside!  Let's have a feast while we wait for this inclement weather to pass." He said with a wink.

Pomponianus' home was about a dozen yards from the shore, built on a rock.  Pliny reclined at Pomponianus' table with all of the calm he could project in hopes that his ease would diffuse the alarm in his friend.  Instead, Pomponianus stood by and nervously asked, "Don't you think this would be a good time to flee in your ship?"

What Pliny meant to say was "By no means!  I would not do you the disservice of neglecting to partake in your hospitality.  Then, upon eating our fill and at our leisure, we shall pay a call on my dear friend Rectina.  Then, if the mood suits us, the three of us can repair to my ship and head for the clearer air."

But what he actually said was "By no me- {cough} {cough} {cough} {cough} sorry {cough} breath {cough cough cough} can't {cough cough} Let's {cough cough} to the boat {cough cough cough.}"

As they walked down the beach toward the ship, Pliny fell to his knees.  Pomponianus turned to come back and try to help him up, but Pliny said, "No {cough cough} you go  {cough cough} don't {cough cough cough cough} let me slow" and siezed by another fit of coughing, waved his friend away.  His friend made for the ship, calling out to the sailor's for help.  Two jumped from the boat and ran to Pliny's side.  They draped one arm each over their shoulder and began to help the large man stand.  He said, "I thank {wheeze...}" and collapsed.  His spirit left him, and they laid his body on a torn piece of sail on the shore.

Many days later, sifting through the disaster of Pompeii, a party came upon the body of Pliny the Elder on the shore.  The fire had not touched him.  He was not a mound of ashes like those in the city proper.  He looked rather peaceful, actually.  As though he were only sleeping.

The Letters of Cicero

Here we have a collection of letters from one of the great figures of antiquity, indeed arguably the giant upon whose shoulders the entire Renaissance later rested.  The man lived through at least one of the key events in Western Civilization and, in fact, was killed in the aftermath of that event.  His work was unspeakably influential on Shakespeare, Luther, and the founding fathers of America.  This is a volume of his personal correspondence and, as such, is a unique peek into the world of the ancient Rome at its zenith.

So, why are we not all reading this?  Why do more people get through the years that (unfortunately) are the only ones in which our society expects a citizen to gain an education with perhaps Caesar's Gallic war account, maybe some Marcus Aurelius, maybe even the speeches of Cicero, but more often than not neglecting this rare glimpse of unrehearsed humanity?  Well, I may be in a position to illuminate those questions.

These letters were not composed with posterity and publication in mind.  They are, rather, missives meant for specific people and to address specific points at a certain time.  They do not "cheat to let the audience in."  They do not offer much by way of exposition.  Loath as I am to compare with a piece that I have not yet finished, the next piece in this series is exactly what the letters of Cicero are not.  Pliny the Younger's letters were clearly written with publication and posterity in mind.  Aside from being a dash stagey, they are a much more compelling read in my estimation.

So, why did our wise and benevolent host Dr. Eliot include this piece in the series?

Cicero not only lived through the civil wars in the century preceding Christ as well as the murder of Julius Caesar, but he was directly involved in those events. First hand accounts of this type are virtually non-existent and, therefore, the historical value of this piece is beyond measure.  I would also add that we have just finished two topical pieces by Cicero on the topics of Friendship and Old Age.  This is not to say that these letters are "padding" per se, but perhaps rather a fleshing out of that particular portion of space-time in which the great orator inhabited. 

All of which may sound nice and pat to you, but let me speak for a moment about what I've read so far in this series.  It seems clear to me that Dr. Eliot has a specific plan for the education of the readers of this series.  So much of the earlier pieces were clearly intended for the moral and virtuous amelioration of his students (Ben Franklin, Epictetus, Plato, William Penn, et al.)  Then we had the Greek plays which were educational as well as marvelously diverting.  So it is a bit jarring to transition into the purely educational material.  I kept looking for the deeper lessons, but found that there may not have been an intended lesson aside from the historical value.  Evidence of my unprovable hypothesis here is that the next two volumes are an economic work and a work in the field of biology.  I do not expect my soul to soar outside of that which the joy of learning provides and intend to seek spiritual growth elsewhere as I continue to read this series.  All which is to say that when I finished reading this piece I thought, "Okay, what did I learn from Cicero's letters?"

I have to say that I "got it" infinitely more from his topical pieces.
 
On a personal note, I, Paul Mathers in the year 2012, found Cicero to be the ancient version of what a modern equivalent might be the much hated and derided 1%.  He is of the ruling class and, as a result, his problems are not the problems of the people (I seem to recall Friedrich Engels expressing a distaste for the classism apparent in the man.)  Much of the earlier letters are focused on land management and descriptions of improvement projects on what seem to be massive homes.  The later letters (culminating in the rather dramatic final letter to Brutus himself) are more focused on times of extreme political turmoil.   Both of which, I might say, struck me as having some definite parallels to contemporary America.

Aside from that, I confess I am happy to be moving forward from a reading experience that I don't expect to ever re-experience.