In Ordinary Time
It's been a couple of weeks since my last post, and I've been collecting things for this one. It's become an odd assortment that doesn't all mesh, yet the parts are all meaningful in different ways. I would like to add some commentary explaining why I chose each and what it means to me, along with introductions and transitions to tie them all together. However, I'm feeling short on words for that right now and don't want to let it keep piling up, so I'm going to organize and share as is. Here's a somewhat random bunch of words and ideas.
Spring is pure, simple joy. The happiness of rebirth. The return of color, warmth, and life.
Autumn is melancholy. The gradual, imminent encroachment of dark, cold, barrenness. A looming sense of dread.
Yet every year I find myself yearning for that melancholy. Not only as a relief from the heat of summer. For within that dread is a tranquil acceptance that this is a necessary stage in reaching the next spring. It, too, is ephemeral, a period of retreat and rest that leads to regrowth. It is sadness with a hidden core of joy.
Autumn is contradictory, complex, complicated. I hate it and I love it. And I always look forward to its confusing happy-sadness.
I wrote that the other day trying to capture the somewhat dissonant ambivalence I feel at this time of year. Not intentionally, but somewhat in the style of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig. Here's a related entry from that.
n. a wistful omen of the first sign of autumn—a subtle coolness in the shadows, a rustling of dead leaves abandoned on the sidewalk, or a long skein of geese sweeping over your head like the second hand of a clock.From autumn + auspice, an omen, or a divination derived from observing the actions of birds. Pronounced “aw-stis.”
I think we're just getting to a very late bit of austice today.
Every day at school drop-off, our two boys (ages 8 & 9) rush out of the car and sprint to the building, apparently racing to see who can get there first. It's not much of a race, though, as they must both exit on the same side of the car, which means whoever sits on that side gets out first and takes off while the other is still exiting the vehicle.
In our driveway the other morning, watching them push and pull each other at the car door in their fight to get the preferred seat, I suggested, "Hey, how about whoever gets out of the car first waits for the other one to join him, then you can run to the school together and arrive at the same time so you can both win?"
"Yeah, that's not going to happen," responded [Older] for both of them.
A recent morning on the way to school I made mention of the egg vs. chicken quandary. [Older] said, "But that's an easy one to figure out."
"Oh, you know which one came first?"
"Yeah. The egg."
"But then where did that egg come from?"
"An almost-chicken that was in the final stages of gradually evolving from a dinosaur. Generations and generations of dinosaurs slowly changed until one finally laid an egg that hatched the first chicken."
. . . dinosaurs have really changed since I was in fourth grade.
A poem.
José A. AlcántaraNeither do I, but yesterday, in the hospital,for two hours, I held the hand of a dying woman—my friend’s grandmother, 94, barely intelligible,and in unrelenting pain. Every few seconds,she slurred what could only be, Help me.Help me. Help me. Over and over. Nothingwe did worked: not water, not raising or loweringthe bed, not massage, nothing but canned pineapple,the little piece we would place in her mouth,the chewing, something she could do; the juice,a blessing on her dry tongue. But all too soonthe pain bit back down—the moaning, the grimace,the Help me. The human remembering the animal.Suffering and more suffering. Until my friendplaced her phone next to her grandmother’s earand played Alan Jackson singing “What a FriendWe Have in Jesus,” when, from the first chordon the guitar, her body stilled, her face went slack.For two minutes, she went somewhere else,somewhere quiet, beautiful, free of pain.We played it again. And again. And whenshe fell asleep, when her breathing deepened,her mouth and eyes still open; when the Furiesstopped their gorging, we were so grateful,not to God, but to her faith, to her belief in somethingbetter, something kinder, and with fewer teeth.—from Rattle #81, Fall 2023
Empathy.
The Heartbreaking Simplicity of Ordinary ThingsMost living things don’t need to remind themselves that life is precious. They simply pass the time. An old cat can sit in the window of a bookstore, whiling away the hours as people wander through. Blinking calmly, breathing in and out, idly watching a van being unloaded across the street, without thinking too much about anything. And that’s alright. It’s not such a bad way to live.So much of life is spent this way, in ordinary time. There’s no grand struggle, no sacraments, no epiphanies. Just simple domesticity, captured in little images, here and there. All the cheap little objects. The jittering rattle of an oscillating fan; a pair of toothbrushes waiting in a cup by the sink. There’s the ragged squeal of an old screen door, the dry electronic screech of a receipt being printed, the ambient roar of someone showering upstairs. And the feeling of pulling on a pair of wool socks on a winter morning and peeling them off at the end of the day. These are sensations that pass without a second thought. So much of it is barely worth noting.But in a couple hundred years, this world will turn over to a completely different cast of characters. They won’t look back and wonder who won the battles or when. Instead, they’ll try to imagine how we lived day to day, gathering precious artifacts of the world as it once was, in all its heartbreaking little details. They’ll look for the doodles left behind in the margins of our textbooks, and the dandelions pressed in the pages. They’ll try to imagine how our clothes felt on our bodies, and what we ate for lunch on a typical day, and what it might’ve cost. They’ll wonder about our superstitions, the weird little memes and phrases and jokes we liked to tell, the pop songs we hummed mindlessly to ourselves. They’ll try to imagine how it must’ve felt to stand on a street corner, looking around at the architecture, hearing old cars rumbling by. The smell in the air. What ketchup must have tasted like.We rarely think to hold on to that part of life. We don’t build statues of ordinary people. We don’t leave behind little plaques to commemorate the milestones of ordinary time:HERE ON THE TWENTY FIFTH OF MARCHNINETEEN HUNDRED AND NINETY FOURSOME NEIGHBORS WENT OUT WALKING THEIR DOGSTHE CHILDREN TOOK TURNS HOLDING THE LEASHIT WAS A FUN AFTERNOON FOR EVERYONE INVOLVEDBut it all still happened. All those cheap and disposable experiences are no less real than anything in our history books, no less sacred than anything in our hymnals. Perhaps we should try keeping our eyes open while we pray, and look for the meaning hidden in the things right in front of us: in the sound of Tic Tacs rattling in a box, the throbbing ache of hiccups, and the punky smell that lingers on your hands after doing the dishes. Each is itself a kind of meditation, a reminder of what is real.We need these silly little things to fill out our lives, even if they don’t mean all that much. If only to remind us that the stakes were never all that high in the first place. It’s not always life-and-death. Sometimes it’s just life —and that’s alright.A tribute to Maru Mori, a friend of Pablo Neruda, whose gift of wool socks inspired his poem “Ode to My Socks.” Compare memento mori, a poignant reminder of your own mortality. Pronounced “mah-roo moh-ree.”
It ties in well with what I was trying to say with my last post, The Patron Saint of Mediocrities.
I've finished reading the excellent book Truth: How the Many Sides to Every Story Shape Our Reality by Hector Macdonald. Here's my review:
An illuminating look at just what truth is and how it can be used--and misused.MacDonald describes his book's theme as:There is usually more than one true way to talk about something. We can use competing truths constructively to engage people and inspire action, but we should also watch out for communicators who use competing truths to mislead us.He doesn't even get into the business of lies, as there are enough dimensions to truth to keep the waters muddy all on its own. Life is complicated and complex, and the best anyone can hope to perceive and communicate is partial truths from different perspectives through different lenses. Truths regularly compete with and even contradict each other.MacDonald considers many facets of truth, such as context, statistics, morality, social constructs, and more, offering guidance for constructive conveyance of truth and teaching awareness of how truth can be manipulated in each realm. His writing is clear and effective, and delivers important information in an interesting manner. Recommended.
And I pulled out many excerpts:
There is usually more than one true way to talk about something. We can use competing truths constructively to engage people and inspire action, but we should also watch out for communicators who use competing truths to mislead us.-----We all see the world through different lenses, formed largely by the different truths we hear and read. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, other people regularly steer us towards particular facets and interpretations of the truth. . . . What others report contributes to our perceived reality. But because we act on the basis of our perceptions, what others report also impacts objective reality.Competing truths shape reality.Competing truths inform our mindsets, and our mindsets determine our subsequent choices and actions. We vote, shop, work, cooperate, and fight according to what we believe to be true. . . .It is therefore no exaggeration to say that much of what we think and do is determined by the competing truths we hear and read.-----Truth is the shattered mirror strown in myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own.― Richard Francis Burton, The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi-----No one really has the whole picture. Life is far too complicated for that.-----Most of the issues and entities we deal with are too complex to describe in full; we have to communicate in partial truths because life is too convoluted for us to offer anything more comprehensive.-----When a motorcyclist in Colorado takes a tumble and breaks a leg, it's bad news for her but good news for GDP: she or her insurer will have to pay for an ambulance, for medical treatment, for a hospital bed, for physiotherapy, perhaps even for lawyers and a new motorcycle; her misfortune means an increase in economic activity, which boosts GDP. Similarly, if a rural African community suffers a drought and must buy food rather than growing it, GDP increases as a direct result of their hardship. And if primary rainforest is plundered for timber, or an earthquake necessitates new construction, GDP goes up. On the other hand, if an auto manufacturer invents a cheaper, more efficient car, expenditure on both vehicles and fuel may fall, causing a decline in GDP. So although GDP is seen as the best measure we have of the economic health of a nation, an increase in GDP does not necessarily imply increased happiness and well-being. The truth that the GDP as gone up may well coexist with the competing truth that many people are worse off in terms of their health and happiness.-----Somewhere around the fourth or fifth century BCE, a remarkable document was written in Greece. 'To the Spartans it is seemly that young girls should do athletics and go about with bare arms and no tunics, but to the Ionians this is disgraceful,' the unknown author observes. 'To the Thracians it is an ornament for young girls to be tattooed, but with others tattoo-marks are a punishment for those who do wrong.' Well, cultures vary. No surprise there.But the author goes on:"The Scythians think it seemly that whoever kills a man should scalp him and wear the scalp on his horse's bridle, and, having gilded the skull or lined it with silver, should drink from it and make a libation to the gods. Among the Greeks, no one would be willing to enter the same house as a man who had behaved like that."The Massagetes cut up their parents and eat them, and they think that to be buried in their children is the most beautiful grave imaginable, but in Greece, if anyone did such a thing, he would be driven out of the country and would die an ignominious death for having committed such disgraceful and terrible deeds."And that's not all. In Persia, reports the author, men are free to have sex with their mothers, sisters and daughters, while in Lydia young girls are expected to earn money through prostitution before getting married. Such things in Greece would be anathema.The Dissoi Logoi is not an anthropological survey of the ancient world's cultural quirks. It is an exercise in rhetoric, intended to teach students how to explore both sides of an argument. The author takes the view that good and bad are not absolutes, but that what is good for one person may be bad for another. The evidence for this view lies in the divergent moral values found in different cultures. We may think that filial cannibalism is a horror, but the Massagetes didn't; prostitution may carry a stigma in many societies, but it was the done thing in Lydia.As the author writes, 'If someone should order all men to make a single heap of everything that each of them regards as disgraceful and then again to take from the collection what each of them regards as seemly, not a thing would be left.'-----Anyone who feels an ideological dislike for business may be surprised to hear that many employees tend to enjoy their work more, and perform it more diligently, if they feel they are helping others in some way. Companies may be set up to make money, but their people often long to make a difference, and this tendency seems to be growing. If we want to make work more desirable, we need to understand and answer that longing.-----It is not easy to change tastes, but it can be done. In fact, it has probably been done to you. We all need to get better at recognizing when marketers, politicians and journalists try to redefine what is desirable in ways that may hurt us or others. At the same time, we have an immense opportunity to change our lives for the better by acknowledging and exploiting the plasticity of our desires. Where existing desires are destructive or problematic, using competing truths to change the desirability of things for ourselves and for others may be both effective and ethical. We really can want what's good for us if we try.
I think my favorite is:
Most of the issues and entities we deal with are too complex to describe in full; we have to communicate in partial truths because life is too convoluted for us to offer anything more comprehensive.
An interesting article:
Your neutral expression may tell people how well-off you are, according to a new study . . . eventually the expressions we make most often become etched in our faces, and that others see a positive-looking resting face as signifying a lifetime of wealth and satisfaction. Certainly a case could be made that the opposite — anxiety and worry — would leave telltale signs behind.The study “indicates that something as subtle as the signals in your face about your social class can actually then perpetuate it,” Bjornsdottir tells the University of Toronto’s Medical Xpress. “Those first impressions can become a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy. It’s going to influence your interactions and the opportunities you have.” . . .“What we’re seeing is students who are just 18–22 years old have already accumulated enough life experience that it has visibly changed and shaped their face,” says Rule, “to the point you can tell what their socio-economic standing or social class is.”
As MacDonald says, our perceived reality becomes our objective reality.
Reality is determined in the interactions between us.
A hint of a really good article about something troubling.
Petersen, 48, is part of a small army of book objectors nationwide. School book challenges reached historic highs in America in 2021 and 2022, according to the American Library Association. And just a handful of people are driving those records. A Washington Post analysis of thousands of challenges nationwide found that 60 percent of all challenges in the 2021-2022 school year came from 11 adults, each of whom objected to dozens — sometimes close to 100 — of books in their districts.
With an excellent counterpoint.
You've had several of your works banned and challenged. How does that feel?There's anger, there's frustration, there's confusion. I find it to be pretty painful. It takes the wind out of me a lot of the times, because it offends me. When people are banning my books, what they're really saying, at least implicitly, is that I'm doing something to harm children, that I've written something harmful. And I would never do such a thing. I’ve dedicated my life to edifying young people and to loving them and to doing my best to present work that helps them feel cared for. I would never make anything that I thought was harmful or produce anything that I thought was harmful.That's my biggest issue; that's what it feels like. And I know it's not about that; I know that a lot of it is just political nonsense. But that's what my human emotions are. I'm frustrated and flabbergasted that someone would think that I would make anything that could put some young person—even their emotional state—in jeopardy. It's never my intention.Why is there an increase in book challenges at this moment in history? What do you think people are afraid of?I think that people are afraid to communicate. I think we're communicating worse and worse and less and less with each passing year. I'd like to believe that young people are getting better at it. I really think we don't even know how to communicate anymore, especially with our young people. I think they know how to communicate with each other. But instead of learning and leaning into difficult conversations about an ever-changing world, we'd rather just gnash at the gate, right? It's easier for us to tear things down or wall things off. Let’s put all the kids behind a stone wall so that they don't see the world they already know exists. It's a futile and silly thing to try and do.I think what writers are doing is creating safe places for young people to explore a world that could very well be glorious and magnificent and might also have moments of danger without them having to actually live in danger. This is sort of a soft place to land in the midst of a complicated and sometimes slippery place.I feel like so many adults don't have the language and vocabulary, the definitions, or the lexicon to explore these new ideas and the new ways that we talk about these ideas, so the easiest thing to do is to shut it all down and to turn them into these monstrous avatars. When really they're just simple conversations about race, sex and whatever else might be going on in the world that young people already know. Like they have phones in their hands, you know what I mean?There’s this strange sort of way that people look at their children as like cherubic creatures, when the truth is that your child is a human being living a real experience, a life, a human experience in a real world and they may not know everything. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with parents saying that my child isn't ready for this topic. That's totally fine, I get that, but to say that no child deserves to read certain things is just ridiculous and unfair. How can you parent everybody's kids? That's not your job either, you know? We all have different experiences. There's some 13-year-old who has never left his porch, and that kid might be terrified of a book like Long Way Down. And then there's the 13-year-old who's never had a porch. And to them, Long Way Down is very normal and very familiar.--Libraries are places for everybody, not just the bookworms, not just the students, the scholars, or people coming in to find information. Libraries are places that are safe and accepting of the community despite what you come into the library to do. They feel more like community centers, and they feel sacred, as sort of worship centers to me. Libraries feel like a little bit of both of those things, where they could be a rec center or they could be a church. I think it’s special that the library holds both of those energies in one building, and I like that.
The ordinary is sacred, and acceptance is all.
Reality is determined in the interactions between us.
After trying many different persuasion techniques over the years, the LGBT Center has its canvassers follow one called "analogic perspective taking." By inviting someone to discuss an experience in which that person was perceived as different and treated unfairly, a canvasser tries to generate sympathy for the suffering of another group—such as gay or transgender people. "We knew from our own periodic attempts at self-measurement that we appeared to be achieving strong, lasting results," Fleischer says, but the group wanted more proof.So the LGBT Center reached out to academic researchers to rigorously test the technique. . . .The canvassing technique virtually erased the transgender prejudices of about one in 10 people, and the change lasted at least 3 months.-Here, we show that a single approximately 10-minute conversation encouraging actively taking the perspective of others can markedly reduce prejudice for at least 3 months. We illustrate this potential with a door-to-door canvassing intervention in South Florida targeting antitransgender prejudice. Despite declines in homophobia, transphobia remains pervasive. For the intervention, 56 canvassers went door to door encouraging active perspective-taking with 501 voters at voters’ doorsteps. A randomized trial found that these conversations substantially reduced transphobia, with decreases greater than Americans’ average decrease in homophobia from 1998 to 2012. These effects persisted for 3 months, and both transgender and nontransgender canvassers were effective. The intervention also increased support for a nondiscrimination law, even after exposing voters to counterarguments.
Empathy.
WRITING IS MAGICHowdy! It's me, Adam. I wrote this book.Well, technically, I typed this book into a laptop, but all the same, here we are now, you and I together, on this very word.Strange, right? It's almost as if these sentences have formed some mystical, telepathic connection directly from my brain to yours. You are reading my mind right now, and I, in turn, have you hypnotized.I can prove it: Imagine a dog eating a diaper.You couldn't help it, could you? As long as you're reading my words, you're under my spell. That's the thing they never mentioned when they made me practice lowercase z's between the dotted lines. Back then, I thought writing was boring and useless and difficult, but now I know better.Writing is magic.For example, imagine you recently painted a bench in the middle of the park and you need to make sure no one sits on that bench before the paint dries.You could stand there all day, shooing people away, or you could write Wet Paint on a big piece of paper, gently set your writing on the bench, and saunter off to get a snack.Booyah! You cast a no-sitting spell on that bench. This particular anti-butt spell is so powerful, it can prevent people from sitting someplace even if that place has not been painted recently . . . but I would never suggest you use your magical powers for mischief.Here's a good one: Write I love you on a piece of paper, sign it, and slip it into your mom's coat pocket when she's not looking.Blammo! You just traveled into the future. Someday (no one knows exactly when), your mom will find that paper, open it up, and melt into a jiggling puddle of warm fuzzies while she thinks about how sweet and considerate you are. I promise she will let you know when she finds that note and she'll tell you how happy it made her, and if you ask for a present that day, you'll very likely get it.I'm telling you: Writing is magic. It allows your thoughts to escape your body and go venturing off into the world on their own. Writing lets you capture an idea like a genie in a lamp. It sits there, waiting until someone comes along to read the words, then--boom--your idea explodes in the mind of a total stranger!This is an ancient kind of magic. There are writers who've been dead for centuries and we're still talking about their ideas to this day.For example, more than twenty-five hundred years ago, a Chinese writer named Lao Tzu said: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."Pretty deep, right? That's an idea that stands the test of time. I mention it here because it's as true about writing as it is about walking.Staring at a blank page has stopped many would-be writers from ever getting started. Even for me (professional writer guy), a blank page sometimes scares me into thinking I'll never have another idea in my life.But the truth is, everybody has ideas. Not just writers. Firefighters, doctors, shoemakers, treasure hunters--it's hard for any human being to go through their day without having at least one idea. The tricky part is giving yourself permission to think that your idea is a good idea. Some people have the opposite problem: They think all their ideas are good ideas. These people often go into politics.Maybe I can help eliminate the pressure of coming up with a "good idea" the next time you feel like writing a story. An idea is really just an excuse to get started anyway. It doesn't need to be some groundbreaking concept like electromagnetism or democracy or SpongeBob SquarePants, it just needs to be something that tickles your brain. Something that makes you go "Oooh."Look at the words on the front of this book: The Ice Cream Machine.Doesn't that sound like a good idea for a story? I thought so. I thought it sounded like a good idea for lots of different stories frankly, and to prove it, I wrote six. Each story is totally different. The only thing they have in common is their title. Actually, they have a half a dozen little wormholes in common too, but I'll let you discover those on your own.I had a lot of fun writing these stories, and I hope you'll have fun reading them, but my real hope is that this book might serve as encouragement for aspiring young writers to create their own versions of "The Ice Cream Machine."If so, I left a few tips in the back of the book for how to get started. I've also included my mailing address. Someday soon, it could be me reading your words.Write whatever you want. Anything you can imagine, you can put in your story. If you want to eat ten thousand pizzas, you can. If you want to play basketball on the moon, you can. If you want to turn into a giant monster or ride an octopus or travel back in time, you can do that too.And here's the most magical part: No matter how ridiculous, how outrageous, how downright impossible the things you make up are, once you put them in writing, they become real for whoever reads them. The people, places, and things that you plucked from thin air suddenly exist in someone else's imagination.So here we go. You're about to enter a universe of my own invention. Multiple universes, in fact. If things go well, the time you spend in my multiverse might make you smile. If things go very well, you might laugh or gasp or even cry!How incredible is that? Little black squiggles on paper, when placed in a certain order--when "spelled" correctly--gain powers. Writing enchants you to see things and feel things that don't really exist.What else can you call it but magic?
Reality is determined in the interactions between us.
Even the most ordinary.
Magic.
posted by Degolar @ 3:23 PM
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