Deep Reading and Emotional Connection:Your Transformation Is Being Processed

Today's post lacks a unifying theme, is simply an eclectic assortment of thoughts I've had and things I've read recently. I'll start with this take on the "inside you there are two wolves" meme I felt inspired to write last week.

picture source

There are not two wolves inside me.

No, inside me are two musk oxen butting heads, forever violently ramming into each other in a battle for dominance.

Their heads are built for this clash, so neither will become injured or suffer actual defeat, they'll simply take turns gaining and losing ground without end.

One is characterized by despair. It fights with anxiety and insecurity and frustration. It is misanthropic, sees only the failings of myself and others; sees us as worthless. It wants to be a hermit.

The other is characterized by love. It fights with empathy. It sees beauty and connection and value in everything. It is a feeling of contentment. It wants community.

Both urge acceptance. One wants to accept that everything is awful and there's no point in trying. One wants to accept that everything is sacred and every moment should be one of gratitude. Where they meet there is no acceptance, only the struggle, the constant push and pull toward one or the other.

And so it goes.

The battle has been particularly intense lately. I've had to work really hard to suppress rage and frustration to deal with things more healthily.

A particularly random thought I shared on Facebook:

Croutons. Add a few to a salad and they're the best part. Eat them by themselves and they're as plain as can be.

A genuine thought, though I think it has metaphor potential as well.

And: One of my little joys in life is being amused by the ways closed captioners find to describe music and other sounds.

My wife and I both prefer to watch with captions always on, so we see many amusing offerings. (These are not the best, they were just the ones at hand.)

In lieu of anecdotes about our two children, as I often include, a parenting thought:

It's not the best show, but we've spent a few weeks working our way through The Parent Test with our boys. It's been really good to consider different styles and perspectives with them and has led to some good discussions.

I recommend not the show, but the viewing experience that includes kids.

I articulated this feeling after a particularly nice bit of reading:

There's reading a book and then there's getting so immersed in it that the rest of the world ceases to exist for a while. Pure flow. I liken it to my experiences of runner's high back when I was in top shape. It's a magical altered state of consciousness.

It was from reading City of Orange by David Yoon.

My thoughts about City of Orange by David Yoon

The end of the world.

"The end of the world." It's a phrase that gets used a lot. In a lot of different contexts. So just what does it mean? The dinosaurs experienced the end of the world--but the world itself didn't end, did it? For millennia people have worried the end of the world is imminent. Natural disasters, war, disease, famine, climate change, artificial intelligence, aliens, and so much more. For millennia people have told stories about what life will be like after world's end. What life will be like for those who survive the end of the world. Because in every scenario we imagine, someone or something survives to experience ongoing existence. There are always survivors.

So what does "the end of the world" mean, exactly? It doesn't mean the end of all life or, in most cases, destruction of the earth. Existence goes on. So is it really the end of "the world?" Or is it the end for some. Is it less an existential, collective end and more of an individual one? Because individuals--their small, personal worlds end in isolated ways everywhere all the time. Individual grief, trauma, financial ruin, natural disasters, war, disease, famine, and other forms of loss experienced by a person or a family or a community. Their personal, individual worlds have ended.

How many individual worlds have to end at the same time for it to count as the BIG "end of the world?" Because, as we know, there will be survivors, so it won't be everyone all at once.

Anyway. I'm supposed to be writing about a book, aren't I, instead of my extended, tangential thoughts prompted by it? I mean, the above is related to the book, but only slightly about the book.

City of Orange opens with a character regaining consciousness in an apocalyptic landscape. He has a head injury, is groggy, confused, and amnesiac. He can't remember who he is or how he's gotten where he is. He knows something awful has happened. The world has ended and he is a survivor. He knows he is scared and scarred. But he can't remember any details, doesn't know anything more than that.

So he stays hidden, afraid of the other remaining survivors of the world's collapse and the desperate lengths they must be willing to go to for continued survival, sure he has just unexpectedly survived an attack by some of them. Cautiously, ever so slowly, over the course of many days, he gradually explores his surroundings and tries to remember. But he doesn't want to remember, afraid the traumatic memories will completely overwhelm him. He ekes out a desperate, terrified existence, at times almost drifting into apathy by the idea of facing continued existence.

Cautiously, ever so slowly, burdened by an existential suspense about every mundane moment and the mounting dread of "something out there," the character begins to have encounters with others in his apocalyptic world and pieces of memory come back to him. A puzzle starts to emerge.

Eventually, of course, the puzzle pieces come together to form a picture. I won't spoil it by saying what, only that it is immersive and absorbing and absolutely affecting. Because the end of the world is horrific, particularly for those who live through it and have to learn to live with the trauma. But there are always survivors who can, with enough time and the right circumstances, create some new kind of life after the old one has ended.

I like this quote from the book:

To compound the cruelty, he's just bashed a creature to death. Don't fool yourself into thinking that was some kind of mercy killing, he thinks. You got dealt shit, so you in turn dealt shit to someone else to compensate. They say an eye for an eye, but what they forget to say is that if you can't reach the eye of the one who wronged you, then any nearby eye will do.

Paying it forward?

A related reading thought:

People Who Read Live Longer Than Those Who Don’t, Yale Researchers Say

“Further, our analyses demonstrated that any level of book reading gave a significantly stronger survival advantage than reading periodicals. This is a novel finding, as previous studies did not compare types of reading material; it indicates that book reading rather than reading in general is driving a survival advantage.”

The reason books had greater gains than periodicals is because book reading involves more cognitive faculties. The readers didn’t begin with higher cognitive faculties than the non-readers; they simply engaged in the activity of reading, which heightened those faculties. “This finding suggests that reading books provide a survival advantage due to the immersive nature that helps maintain cognitive status,” said the study’s authors.

As any book lover knows, reading involves two major cognitive processes: deep reading, and emotional connection. Deep reading is a slow process where the reader engages with the book and seeks to understand it within its own context and within the context of the outside world. Emotional connection is where the reader empathizes with the characters, and that promotes social perception and emotional intelligence. Those cognitive processes were cited by the Yale team and used as markers for this study.

Deep reading and emotional connection.

Speaking of . . . 

What parents and advocacy groups are challenging in these books is difference itself. In their vision of childhood, white, straight, and cisgender characters are G-rated. All other characters, meanwhile, come with warning labels. When childhood is racialized, cisgendered, and de-queered, insisting on “age-appropriate material” becomes a way to instill doctrine and foreclose options for some readers, and to evict other readers from childhood entirely.

That's from:

What Are We Protecting Children from by Banning Books?

Forty-one per cent of the banned books featured L.G.B.T.Q.+ themes, protagonists, or prominent secondary characters; the next-largest category of non grata texts has “protagonists or prominent secondary characters of color.” Other problem subjects include “race and racism,” “rights,” and “religious minorities.” . . . 

Knowledge is power, but it can also age you, make you vulnerable and afraid. Wishing to protect children from the realities of adult life—grubby, earthbound, disappointing—for at least a little while is deeply human. Kids mature at different rates, and it’s not unreasonable for the parents of twelve-year-olds to want to keep their own children from reading the same books as eighteen-year-olds.

But a glance at the list of most frequently banned books makes clear that “mature content” is a fig leaf: what parents and advocacy groups are challenging in these books is difference itself. In their vision of childhood—-a green, sweet-smelling land invented by Victorians and untouched by violence, or discrimination, or death—-white, straight, and cisgender characters are G-rated. All other characters, meanwhile, come with warning labels. When childhood is racialized, cisgendered, and de-queered, insisting on “age-appropriate material” becomes a way to instill doctrine and foreclose options for some readers, and to evict other readers from childhood entirely.

The recent wave of bans comes as many Republicans, in their opposition to gun control, climate science, food stamps, public education, and other social services, work assiduously to render the lives of American children as unchildlike as possible. A number of grownups apparently feel emboldened to spend their lives playing peekaboo with reality. Their kids may not have that luxury.

Difference is a good thing, not bad.

I really like this poem:

Candace Moore

PROJECTION

What I took to be a man

cradling a woman in his arms and kissing her

turned out to be the gardener carrying

a pile of leaves he had gathered

 

What I took to be a billboard that said Gold Cock Motel

turned out to be a billboard that said Gold Crest Motel

 

What I took to be a sentence that said, I have an officer in my garage

turned out to be a sentence that said, I have an office in my garage

 

What I took to be a screen at the ATM machine 

that said your transformation is being processed

turned out to be a screen that said

your transaction is being processed

 

What I took to be a friend anxious to see me

turned out to be an intruder kicking in the door

 

What I took to be a Buddha sitting under the tree 

turned out to be an old lady reading

 

What I took to be an old lady reading

turned out to be me

 

—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022

Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist

Your transformation is being processed.

As someone who loves nature and being outside, I find this interesting.

Beware Creeping Biophobia

When a person begins to view nature as something to be avoided—because of direct experience, family or friends, or the media—it sets the stage for biophobia, say Soga and his colleagues. Over time, this may cause someone to increasingly avoid nature, or worse, try to eliminate it. The person’s progressively infrequent experiences with nature can lead to a feeling of disconnection. And since people are generally afraid of the unknown, this can feed into the phobia.

Even just one person’s phobia has worrisome implications, the researchers say. If a person lacks the knowledge to interact with wildlife safely, or never learns to tell the difference between approachable and potentially dangerous species, aside from avoiding nature, they become ignorant of the natural world. This ignorance often leads to the sharing of sensationalist stories and spreading of misinformation. The result is growing biophobia at the societal level and fewer people interacting with nature. And, since people are unlikely to protect something they fear, the end result is a cycle of environmental degradation.

To reverse the cycle, the researchers say, education is essential. Children are especially impressionable, and multiple studies show that early exposure to nature in a safe environment, such as with a schoolteacher or parent, greatly impacts their attitudes. Parents’ behaviors have a big impact on kids, too, Soga says.

Our younger son has shown signs of biophobia the past year.

At a work meeting last month when I was letting some of my ragey frustration show, I explained that I think everyone in our organization is hard working, capable, and well-intentioned, so if there are problems they are due to the systems and structures that control how we relate to and interact with each other. I'm not frustrated with individuals, but with systems. Then this came across my feed.

Productivity Is About Your Systems, Not Your People

The problem isn’t with the intrinsic logic of any of these approaches. It’s that they fail to account for the simple fact that most people don’t work in isolation. They work in complex organizations defined by interdependencies among people — and it’s often these interdependencies that have the greatest effect on personal productivity. . . . 

As legendary statistician and management consultant W. Edwards Deming argued in his book Out of the Crisis, 94% of most problems and possibilities for improvement belong to the system, not the individual. I would argue that most productivity improvements belong there as well. Personal solutions can be useful, but the most effective antidote to low productivity and inefficiency must be implemented at the system level, not the individual level.

We don't exist in isolation, but interdependencies. Effective antidotes happen not at the individual level, but at the system level.

My review of Roll for Initiative by Jaime Formato touches on many of my recurring themes in this blog, including an article I shared in the last post, Green Grass & Goblins.

As I begin to think of what I want to say about this book, my mind goes to a recent article from Psyche, A Game Is Not a Game Without a Special Kind of Conflict. Consider:

The community of players that emerges from a game offers chances for individuals to practise being better, together. These are not just abstract ideas. Every moment of play is an opportunity to exercise collaboration with other human beings and to explore the social contract of play.

Through games, we get to try out new versions of ourselves. Some are aspirational, some are transgressive. Play is a context in which identities can be discovered, explored and evolved.

In games, we engage with and transform identities, taking part in collaboration and conflict, with and against each other and ourselves. As an ancient form of human expression that has remarkable relevance for our digital lives today, it is high time to take games and play seriously. Because it’s through play that we discover who we are, and who we might become.

All of which is to say playing games helps us grow as individuals and learn how to to be together better. That's what this book is about.

Sixth-grader Riley is on her own in a new way, her mom busy with work and the older brother that's kept their family together for so long across the country starting college. She has to take care of herself in ways she never has to before and is faced with the daunting prospect of finding new friends to fill the social void left by Devin's departure. Over the course of the story, Riley learns to do things she never thought herself capable of and becomes the heart of both her household and a group of new friends. She amazes herself.

The catalyst for Riley's growth is her love of Dungeons & Dragons. That shared passion is how she finds and bonds with her friends, and taking on the roll of Dungeon Master teaches her she is capable of leading. The game that has always connected her to her brother now connects her to others and helps her figure out how to navigate difficult interpersonal dynamics. The book manages an excellent balance of life and game. Many D&D moments are conveyed, from character creation to gaming sessions, plus her brother's video game aspirations, comic books, and more. Yet Riley and the other characters' real-world concerns are the substance of the story.

It's an excellent story told well. Highly recommended.

My wife and I loved the book because it featured so much character growth, interpersonal dynamics, and reality. Our kids loved the book because it satisfied their craving for fantasy adventures and taught them about the game. And they've insisted we start playing D&D ourselves.

I don't have a lot to say about The Waiting Place: When Home Is Lost and a New One Not Yet Found by Dina Nayeri, just:

A photo essay about life for a group of children living at a refugee camp in Greece. Short descriptions of their daily activities with hints of their pasts and aspirations. It humanizes them. Framed by a description of how the location dehumanizes them. Simple and effective.

I really like the introductory and concluding frame the books uses to surround the stories of the children.

Inside its gated mouth is a dreary, lazy encampment where there is nothing to do but drift. Children wait, letting time slip away. They forget things: first their sums, street names, their best books. Then beloved faces, stories.

The Waiting Place doesn't mind. It wants more children and mothers and fathers. It doesn't want you to visit the nearby lake, to hike the frosted mountain, to learn your new language, or to work or build or learn. It craves your hours, weeks, years.

Here is a place that always sees you, it whispers in the night. You must wait. Any day now. Tick tock. Why bother with plans? Sit, sleep, fight. Don't be caught unpausing.

The Waiting Place wants children to stay. It wants them to forget the hours, the days. It doesn't want them to go to school, to see a doctor. It likes the dust to accumulate, the pretty paint to peel off the doors. It likes strange things: idle teddy bears on the wall. It whispers, No need to bathe. You'll be gone soon anyway. What's another day?

The Waiting Place wants you to be a child forever.

The Waiting Place never wants you to grow up.

The danger stops being war and becomes lack of life.

And I really love the picture book Julia and the Triple C by Staffan Gnosspelius. Here is the text:

It was Wednesday and Julia was in a bad mood. She was waiting for her uncle to pick her up from school and he was late.

When he showed up she told him straightaway: "I've had a horrible day."

"Oh no," said the Uncle. "The only proper cure for horrible days that I know of is either apples or carrots or both."

He took his hands out of his pockets, which were full of apples and carrots. Mnching on a carrot each they began their walk home.

Julia told her Uncle all that had happened that day. A boy had borken her favorite red crayon. She had spilled ketchup on her knee and then her teacher had told her off for jumping in a tiny puddle.

"Outrageous," said the Uncle.

"And she said I should grow up and stop being so childish."

The Uncle thought long and hard as they walked. Finally he said: "Luckily I'm not only an uncle."

"No?" said Julia, a bit surprised.

"First of all I'm an uncle, but I'm also a member of the Triple C, which stands for Childish Children's Club. The club is for anyone who wants to carry on being as childish as they like."

"What do you have to do in the Triple C?" asked Julia.

"There is nothing you have to do. No rules. No regulations. Only encouragements."

"To do what?"

"To take your time and walk at your own pace, even when everyone else is rushing past."

"To smile at strangers. To dream, make up and imagine things."

"Wow! Can I be a member of your club?" asked Julia

"Of course! Anybody can join. But it's not my club. It's a global club, with memmbers all over the world. In Japan, Brazil, and even at the North Pole."

"What else can you do?"

"You can ask 'Are we there yet?' as many times as you like."

"You can believe in magic, fairies, trolls, and goblins."

"Are you allowed to collect conkers in the Triple C?"

"Yep."

"And can you try to do things you know probably won't work?"

"Absolutely."

"And are you allowed to giggle about anything you like?"

"Of course!"

"How about having leaf fights?"

"It's highly encouraged."

"But do you know what the best thing about the Triple C is?" said the Uncle.

"No.

"That you are allowed to jump in as many puddles as you like."

And so they did. All the way home.

No rules.

No regulations.

Only encouragements to:

• Take your time and walk at your own pace, even when everyone else is rushing past.
• Smile at strangers.
• Dream, make up, and imagine things.
• Ask 'Are we there yet?' as many times as you like.
• Believe in magic, fairies, trolls, and goblins.
• Try to do things you know probably won't work.
• Giggle about anything.
• Have leaf fights.
• Jump in as many puddles as you like.