Through the Prism: Existential Bewilderment

The other day I was mowing the lawn for the first time this year and had a thought as I looked at our backyard "barn." (The name inherited from the previous owners, since it's quite large for a "shed.") I was mentally lamenting, for the thousandth time, just how old and decrepit it is getting. It still gets the job done, but the wood rot continues to spread and it's getting worse all the time. One of the windows not shown is missing a pane and the doors covered by the broken pallet are the worst part of all--the pallet and rock are there to keep them closed since they no longer latch properly and are more rotted out than the siding.

And as I was observing all of this, I thought to myself, This barn is like me. I'm slowly rotting and getting more decrepit with age (even at 50). I still get the job done, but not like when I was new, and it takes more adaptations all the time to keep me going. I haven't maintained myself the way that I should and haven't repaired all my damage. The barn is showing just about the right amount of decay to represent my wear.

And, somehow, this was a happy thought. Because part of the thought was that the wear is only to my physical side, which I feel has been a fair trade for all I've gained in wisdom, insight, perspective, and in mental, emotional, and spiritual growth. Somehow, in that moment, the visible physical dilapidation represented my intangible maturity, and I was glad for it.

I'm sure my positive outlook was encouraged by how much I was enjoying being out on a beautiful spring day while listening to an excellent book. My mood has been buoyant lately, I'm sure influenced by spring. Yesterday a friend on Facebook added this caption to a photo:

I am seduced every year by the first blooms. Fair warning, I’ll be posting lots of plant pictures, many of which are exactly like the pictures I’ve taken in the past.

I commented.

Me too. Spring is just as wonderful every time.

The delight never gets old and the wonder always feels fresh.

And the book. It was short enough that even in audio form I was able to listen to the entire thing in one afternoon, and it was one that made me happy from start to finish. I've said once before that what I'd really love to create is something like Shaun Tan's Tales from the Inner City, but I immediately followed that with, I just don't know how. Yet, anyway.

This book, though, this book is me through and through. There's a story to bind everything, but it's basically the author's thoughts about the world in conversation with lots of literature he's consumed. It's the way I write on this blog (except, you know, better). It's the way I think. And its central philosophy is mine. I'm not sure I've read anything else that I felt was such a clear reflection of myself.

My review says more.

Poison for Breakfast by Lemony Snicket

A perfect little gem of a book.

A book I quickly fell in love with. It may not be a perfect book for every reader, as we all have our different preferences. Not everyone will love it as much as I. But I love it. I find it hard to imagine a book that could be more perfect.

I rarely buy books. I work in a library, so I feel almost every day I have all the books I could ever want at my fingertips for free. I don't often feel the need to buy them for myself. Plus, buying a book means I am unlikely to read it.

These are (most of) the books I currently have checked out from my library, hoping to read soon.

That is typical. I always have too many books checked out that I am hoping to soon read. Which means I almost always have something overdue, which means I must read those next, before anything else. Books I buy never become overdue, so they never become the books I must read next, so I never get to read them.

So I rarely buy books.

Every so often I'll love a book so much that I'll decide to buy it anyway, which means I'll put it on a wish list and eventually, when the moment is right for a treat, get one.

I've already, before writing this review, the morning after I finished listening to the excellent audiobook read in a perfect, droll voice by Patrick Warburton, ordered myself a copy of this book.

Poison for Breakfast tells a mystery. And it is a book of philosophy. It is a book that grapples with the philosophical quandary of life's existentially mysteriousness. And it demonstrates with every page, sentence, and word, how literature helps us endure the bewildering mystery that is life. And it does it in the wry, humorous voice of Lemony Snicket.

Mr. Snicket declares right up front that this is a book of philosophy, admitting that might turn off some readers, soon after sharing he has inadvertently eaten poison for breakfast. This book tells the story of his day spent trying to solve the mystery of how he ate poison for breakfast and what to do about it.

The book tells that mystery story, yet most of the book is digressions into Mr. Snicket's thoughts, his constant philosophical ponderings and ruminations. Often it feels like the writing of old Russian and German philosophers. Yet he achieves this style while remaining entirely accessible to all readers, including the young. He is never stuffy or boring or any of the labels typically attributed to this kind of writing. Our library has put it in the Teen section, and I'm eager to try reading it with my six- and eight-year-olds. This is philosophy for everyone.

I have a habit of including snippets of books in my reviews, to share key representational bits so those reading my reviews get a better sense of what the book has in store for them. I'm really struggling to do so for this book, not because I can't find anything worth sharing, but because I can't find anything not worth sharing. There are things on every page I want to pull out. Nevertheless, here, I believe, are his thesis and conclusion.

Right after opening the book with the sentence, "This morning I had poison for breakfast," Mr. Snicket writes:

This book is about bewilderment, a word which here means "the feeling of being bewildered," and "bewildered" is a word which here means "you don't have any idea what is happening," and "you" is a word which doesn't just mean you. It means everyone. You have no idea what is happening, and nobody you know has any idea what is happening, and of course there are all the people you don't know, which is most of the people in the world, and they don't know what is happening either, and of course I don't know what is happening or I wouldn't have eaten poison for breakfast.

And near the end, skipping the self-referential summary of thoughts from earlier in the book, he asserts:

Nobody knows anything at all. We have no idea what is happening. We are all bewildered. Someone may say that they understand something, to ourselves or to others, but they are wrong, or guessing, or making it up. . . .

We must try, all of us, a lot of the time, our best, and we must keep trying. We do not understand anything but we should try our best to understand each other. We should swim and walk in parks, thinking. We should watch movies and think about what might happen. We should buy food and think about where it comes from, and we should listen to music and wonder what it means. We should have conversations, real and imaginary, with translators handy so that everybody might understand everything we say. We may feel native to where we are, or feel displaced, or both, the way someone going on a journey is also a stranger in town, but nevertheless we should keep reading. We must read mysterious literature, and be as bewildered by it as we are by the world, and we should write down our ideas, turning our stories, as if by magic, into literature.

And that's what this perfect little book is about, which I love.

To show how he achieves philosophy that is entertaining, I want to share one longer section:

There is another thing that happens if you are clumsy, which is more interesting than being sore or embarrassed, and that is you get to see things most people don't. Being clumsy treats you to views of the world of which graceful people never get a glimpse. If you are in an art gallery, for instance, and scrape your leg against something that everyone else has managed to walk around, you will get to see the gallery's back room, where they store strange sculptures and bandages. If you drop a rolling pin in someone's kitchen, you will see an interestingly shaped smudge of butter and flour most people never see, not to mention the drawer where rags are kept, and if you drop the rag you will see what it looks like bunched up under the kitchen table, and when you bang your head on the kitchen table you will get a close-up view of a towel with ice inside of it as you hold it against your head to reduce swelling.

I was appreciating a close-up view of gravel, which graceful people walk on all the time without ever knowing what it looks like pressed up against their faces. It was an interesting sight, fragments of limestone and basalt, which were the kinds of tiny rocks looming in front of my eyes like boulders, and then I turned over and lay on my back looking straight up at the tree. That was a much more interesting view, if a little dizzying, with the branches and leaves hanging over me like drifting thoughts, and I was grateful for my clumsiness which showed me something I had never noticed about the tree, after years of walking past it, something that made me think I might be closer to learning more about the mysterious and menacing message in my pocket. I looked at what I was seeing, and then I had to blink again, because my view was blocked by a man leaning over to ask me what happened.

"What happened?" he asked.

"At first I thought I was dying," I said, "but it was just that a fragment of either limestone or basalt rolled under my foot as I stepped on it, which made my left foot slide slightly. I tried to move my right foot in the proper direction to regain my balance, but additional fragments of limestone and basalt interfered by rolling further. By then, my arms were splaying out like the wings of an airplane, in an attempt to distract the force of gravity from catching me in its claws, but I miscalculated and fell into a heap under this tree."

"In other words," the man translated, "you are clumsy."

And that is me being selective, because I have other selections I want to share almost as much.

Because I love this perfect little book.

I've written before how books can function as windows and mirrors. Lately I find myself reading lots of windows; this one is a great mirror.

Since I don't have to limit myself as much here as I do with my reviews, I want to share a few other things from the book. This first selection I like particularly for its gratitude and appreciation.

The first ingredient in my bread was flour made from wheat, a plant I actually had growing in my tiny backyard. A friend had planted it for me as a gift, but only a little bit had sprouted, because I wasn't much of a gardener and didn't know how to make it thrive, a word which here means "grow tall and bushy rather than shriveled and dead." Somewhere someone was a proper farmer, and somewhere was a bigger piece of land--much, much bigger--where people were growing enough wheat to make all these loaves of bread arranged before me, and all the extra loaves that were likely in a refrigerator behind that door marked No Admittance, a phrase which here means that you can't go in, even though two people in aprons were walking through it at that very moment. And think of all the markets, I thought, super and not super, all over the world with all their loaves of bread. Somewhere was enough land to grow all that wheat, but it was impossible for me to imagine. Field after field of wheat, stretching out as far as my mind could picture them, but how could there be enough room for them, and have there still be space on Earth for scorching deserts and icy mountains and all the places wheat cannot grow?

All that land was just for the wheat, and the wheat was just for the flour. My bread had other ingredients, and all the other breads had still more, salts and yeasts and seeds and nuts and chemicals and additives harvested in marshes and picked in groves and cooked up in laboratories and manufactured in factories. People worked in all those places, making all those ingredients and mixing them together to make bread, and someone made the label and the sack and the bag and the basket. Someone had loaded a truck, and driven it to town to be unloaded, and someone had arranged all the loaves in the supermarket, all to bring me this loaf of bread I would buy for a pittance, a word which here means "hardly any money." This pittance, of course, would be split among the grocers and the farmers and the label makers and all of the people I had imagined, plus all of the people I hadn't imagined and would never imagine. Surely it was not enough money for everybody. Surely someone was not getting enough money. I could imagine them living in poverty, maybe even starving, and yet there was so much bread, right here, that they might eat. The whole story was bewildering, and perhaps even cruel, and yet I did not want it to end. I did not want the supermarket to close down and stop selling its abundance. I liked this bread.

Mostly focused on others, it still manages to add the complicating complexity of self-interest that is present in the dynamic.

Lemony Snicket always shows love to libraries, and this bit is especially nice.

Books, however, are just one part of a library. A proper library has at least one fantastic librarian, preferably more than one, so if the fantastic librarian goes out to lunch or falls into a tar pit, there will be a spare. A fantastic librarian can help you find what you are looking for, and not just if it is a book. A fantastic librarian can help you find a hobby or an occupation, a cure or a challenge, a quiet fact or a loud opinion, or a small town where you might hide for months. A fantastic librarian knows more about what you are looking for than you do, the way a cookie in a bakery knows you want to eat it before you even know it is out of the oven, and like a good cookie, a fantastic librarian doesn't show off about it, just waits silently for you to open your mouth.

This is just so accurately eloquent.

I always feel hopeful when I step into a park. When a city or town sets aside a piece of land for public relaxation, it is a sign that someone is thinking about the happiness of someone else, that some people are trimming grass and sweeping pathways just so other people can have picnics and take walks or perhaps just sit and think.

A little more fun with libraries (and philosophy).

All books of philosophy end up mentioning death, which is one of the reasons that many people do not like reading books of philosophy, just as many people do not like to leave their beds at night to sneak out of the house. I mentioned this book to another author I will not identify, and she said, "Oh, Mr. Snicket, who would want to read such a thing?" I know exactly what she means. If you enter a library looking for a particularly quiet place to read, head straight for the philosophy section. Because no one likes to read philosophy, no one will be there, and you will be undisturbed to read, to write or just to think and keep watch, as I do and have always done.

And this is truth.

It is almost as if enormous philosophical questions are not designed to be answered at all, but just to make you think.

Someone forgot to tell these flowers the grass is always greener . . .

One of the things that makes Lemony Snicket's philosophy enjoyable is his humor. He always adds in some nonsense, delights in bringing absurdity to the fore. As do I, which will you quickly see if you read one of my less earnest posts or in any way converse with me. I'll reproduce a few recent Facebook posts as examples.

Damn. I really wish I'd read this book before we went with tradition and told the boys they were delivered by storks.

source

They fell to the earth as flaming blobs of goo.

If ever you're talking to me and I appear distracted, it's most likely because I've distracted myself pondering thoughts such as these. (My contributions to a discussion about whether to have fixed schedules or not.)

In case you can't read it, I wrote: So is "fixed" in this context the opposite of "broken" or of, uh, "fertile?" Though I kind of think I'd want my schedule to be both--not broken and not able to reproduce. And, yes, this was in the middle of a serious exchange at work.

Even on Easter morning I think the same thing I do every week: our church is being invaded by a Star Destroyer.

A supervisor at work just wrote this about me on Monday morning:

[Degolar’s] authenticity & candor has long been something that I’ve admired about him. He challenges norms, asks crucial questions, and splashes in his humor at just the right moments. In retrospect, I do wonder if [his] humor is an inherent gut check – where are we at & what are trying to accomplish? He’s dedicated, funny, and an active team player.

I'm known for my humorous nonsense.

This cartoon has been making the rounds on Facebook recently, and I was not surprised when someone shared it with me.

I even responded with the comment that, just lately, our elder son has started asking when I bring a new picture book home if it's a "lesson book." He will no longer listen if he feels it is one, a "lesson book." He only wants a good story.

(Of course, I had to fight a little internal offense at his comment; I don't care for preachy, condescending "lesson books" myself and always prefer a good story--so I completely understand and agree with what he says. Which means I'm very picky about the "lesson books" I bring home to share, feeling they pass muster for other reasons. Apparently he disagrees.)

My one quibble with the cartoon is that I believe it sets up a false contradiction. The best stories accomplish both tasks: help make sense of the world and provide enjoyable nonsense. Because life is inherently bewildering, so engaging with bewildering nonsense in fun ways is healthy grappling with that existential bewilderment. Life is confusing and silly, so we should embrace that by being the same.

A bit of nonsense is always appropriate.

The dew in the grass this year created fascinating and beautiful patterns in our Easter egg dye when we hid them.

I have raised my boys with an abundance of silliness, which they often reflect back at me, and I try to capture their most amusing moments. Here are some recent ones (as previously shared on Facebook).

[Spouse] took the boys to buy what they wanted at the school book fair on Friday. They each came back with a diary; their first(s). Locking diaries, along with pens that write in invisible ink that shows up under UV light. They are very excited about having a place to record their secret thoughts. [Older] said he was going to add a warning to the start of his: "This diary may hurt your feelings."

I'm not sure I want to open [Younger's] other selection from the book fair, as I'm afraid it could give me nightmares.

Last week, [Older] was home with me while I was taking phone calls on my computer for the library (work)--so he had to entertain himself. He told me after that he had decided to spend the time "cleaning up the yard." When he showed me his handiwork, the centerpiece was this stack of bricks he had made.

There's something vaguely sculptural about it, sitting in the middle of the lawn by itself.

As we were in line at church to approach for Easter Communion, the boys were trying to knock each other's hats off while [Spouse] and I were trying to control them without drawing notice. I saw the Father smiling to himself in sympathetic amusement. When it was my turn to receive the bread, he quietly said, "It gets better; the Body of Christ, broken for you."

(No picture for that one.)

[Older] recently started cutting up pieces of paper to make his own jigsaw puzzles.

Okay, that one's really funny; just something interesting to share.

[Older] felt the need to leave a note on the porch for the Easter Bunny after its visit.

[Uncle] has been reading The Hobbit to the boys, and they are almost finished. On the drive to school today, they tried to turn Smaug into a misunderstood hero. An abbreviated memory of the dialogue:

"In defense of Smaug, he was just being a dragon. I mean, he has to eat."

"But he wasn't looking for food. He was mad that someone stole his treasure, so he was trying to destroy the city and kill as many people as possible."

"Well, if you went to someone's house and stole from them, wouldn't you go to jail?"

"Yeah: jail. They wouldn't kill me and burn down my house."

"But a dragon's got to burn."

(No picture.)

While this series is a good choice for bedtime because the boys are motivated to head into the bedroom to hear it, I'm not sure it sets the right tone for sleep to start things off with, "Hey, guys, let's go do some Total Mayhem!"