monastic living
in a city dwelling
Lent, like old man river, keeps rolling along. This is pretty much all it does, in fact, and that’s why we tend not to be very good at it. Anyone who has lived in a city with a river understands that the typical perception of the waterway is very different from Heraclitus’s (i.e. you never step in the same river twice, on account of its flowing). No, we tend to think of the river the same way we think of the bridges that cross it: just a thing that’s there. Static, and you can go to it if you wish, or you can ignore it.
Lent doesn’t like this fixed, observational relationship. It would like you to dive in and feel the rush, and be changed by it. Lent is understanding, though. It knows we aren’t monks, and it knows we have lives, so it would be rather content for us just to take dips in it daily, re-feel its swirls, the gritty mud it carries (it’s a swollen, rain-fed, silty river), the hard current. And it asks us to get used to it, and never to get used to it.
(Jenny Downing)
I remember, when I transferred schools in the , being ahead of the class in math lessons. “Ha,” I thought to myself, “these nincompoops can’t do double-digits yet.” And so I ignored most of the lessons, using that time instead to zip ahead in the SRA game (some sort of incremented reading comprehension thing).
There was a lot to learn there, not only in the obvious sign of my ditching numbers for words, but also in the value of practice. Sadly, I didn’t get some comeuppance where my lack of practice led to a great , but I remember well what I was shirking, and I remember feeling that, despite my self-certainty, I was somehow impoverishing myself. I always cast a quick glance to the sum at hand, mostly in case I was called upon, but also to ensure I still knew it.
A wise friend whom I owe an email once posed me these rhetorical questions:
How many times have you seen a flower?
How many times have you looked a flower?
Well?
(James Jordan)
The fundamental difference here is agency. I see flowers all the time (although less so in this concrete-coated city), but I rarely choose to look. When I do, usually the flower has reminded me, by its contrast, of the concrete coating that silently depresses us daily. It is as different from the stone as the water is from land, and I do so like to choose to look at it. I wish I did it more.
In my current state of affairs, I’m supposed to write a book. Thus far, I’ve excused myself: I don’t have a genre, I don’t have a theme, I don’t have to do it — it will do itself. I thought of it the way I thought of the Ohio: something that was just there. But, as at my back I hear time’s winged chariot, I have lately begun to look at it, and to go to it. I see its motion; I see its current; I see its true and unsettled shape. I have a lot of work to do, I know, now that I feel what water really is.
Lent keeps rolling along whether we go to it or not. It seems like a shame not to, just like it seems like a shame that so many front lawns around this city are barely tended, overrun, and never in any real bloom. I understand; people here make themselves so very busy, and a good garden demands a lot of water and a lot of careful watching. But oh, what a thing to look at!
Speak, no others have.
The best word to characterize the daily Mass readings of Lent is dismal. Even today’s Hebrew Scripture portion, in which Moses discusses how God kicked some Egyptian tail and why that deserves some dap and some grub, emphasizes words like “suffer” and “toil” and “harsh” and “oppression” and I have no shortage of further examples. So yeah, these are clear even for the dense.
And yet they aren’t. The readings offer a certain amount of ambivalence in appraising the aforementioned miseries — more switches than a nun-run Catholic school. Sometimes, as from Moses, these torments count as reasons to exult: the hard times have melted away. Sometimes, as in Isaiah 58, they count as reasons to mourn: look what you’ve done! It’s a no-win situation for humanity. If there was injustice, and it ends, then hooray God! If there is injustice, however, then boo us. No wonder we get a little snippy toward God sometimes, and toss some blame heavenward.
Which brings us to the ancient, infuriating topic of theodicy. If you look up the etymology — OK, fine, — you’ll see that theodicy is not an epic poem attributed to Homer but rather a form of justifying God. The book of Job is theodicy. What Moses said is theodicy. Pretty much every theologian dabbled in theodicy. I’m about to do it.
Theodicy is a bit like criminal defense — God is accused of either not caring or not being able — although the whole thing is a ludicrous Yakov Smirnoff courtroom: in human kingdom, you judge God! But despite the hints of absurdity in the reversal, the trial is serious business (we’re talking eternal sentences here) and probably won’t end (at least not until the defendant tires of it and bangs a bigger gavel). Barring that, the defense lawyers will continue to speak out, and theirs is a tender and beautiful practice.
In this court, no one is guaranteed legal aid. Those who speak up for God do so of their own volition, and with nothing guaranteed to gain. Job, who lost everything but his wife and his life when God decided to have a cosmic bet with an adversary, laments, wails, and defends against prosecutors eager to saddle God (and Job) with wrongdoing. The victim became the advocate.
Back to Moses. Perhaps the Israelites fell into slavery of their own fault, perhaps God got a little tired of saving them and took a quick nap thinking they could handle themselves. Either way, the call was to praise. The tendency, however, was to grumble. After all, it did not take long for the elation of liberation to wear off; soon, the Israelites whined that this wilderness was worse than slavery. They did this a lot, even when they had a nice city with thick walls to themselves. Not the complaining, but the lapse of focus: in Israel’s kingdom, God serves you!
A quiet, lovely function of is submission, and this is exactly what a Lenten fast is. The previously noted Isaiah 58 features a : “If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer you food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.” Later, it calls to “refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day” and thereby connects spiritual justice with .
Both are forms of realignment. Both call for an abdication of satiation, a fasting from the self. Tonight, I greatly desire a beer, but I will not have one because this Lent, on Sundays, my most tiring days, I am committed to quenching my thirsts spiritually. Which works, actually. Composing this essay is far more peacegiving than even a Rochefort 10, the Trappist ale I presume is on tap behind the pearly gates.
What we discover in these realignments is that, as God thunders in Ezekiel 18, it is not His ways that are unjust, but ours. There’s a real contorted arrogance to acting as the prosecution in a theodicy. I don’t mean glass houses and stones; hypocrisy really isn’t a satisfactory reason not to speak out; if a pederast condemns child pornography, he’s patently a fraud and an asshole, but he’s not wrong. No, I mean it’s pretty cheeky to pretend you know enough to stick your nose into sacred things, things too wonderful for you: the creation of all things, the cultivation of the soul, the salvation of man. Mind your own eye, God says, and serve Me alone; the rest will only be dismal. This is why the tempted Christ did not falter: in spiritual kingdom, you yield only to God.
Speak, 1 other has.
I think most of us know what Catholic schoolboys give up for Lent. (You don’t? Well, it rhymes with fornication and has other similarities). And thus, most of us know what Catholic schoolboys are doing at 11:55 p.m. on Fat Tuesday. (Not that you should be thinking of such things). The theory, of course, is the springboard: a final furious burst for the aspiring lad to ride and glide toward the far-off finish line of Easter.
In this mind, Mardi Gras is a holy practice: a feisty final preparation for the arduous (and, I hope, ardent) fasts of Lent. This approach never really worked for me. If anything, a last-minute indulgence served merely as a fresh reminder of the delight I was, as of Ash Wednesday, missing. One strategy I never tried, though, was true excess: taking the indulgence so far as to be sickening, à la A Clockwork Orange. Maybe that would be a better propulsion into asceticism. Let me know.
My approach, in the odd years when I was wise, was to build momentum. Giving up meat? Start squeezing out sausage (meant as literal, not as schoolboy euphemism) in late January. Forgoing sweets? Cut the candy before Valentine’s Day.
I don’t do any of these anymore. (OK, I did have a big slab of lamb shoulder on Tuesday, but only because I was hungry). I don’t think they’re Lenten.
The Lenten season has a much more oblique root than Advent, which is brazen in its Latin import of an impending arrival. Lent is kinda blah in its earthy literal meaning: the days are getting longer. No kidding?
Ah, but the call is not to length (this being too reminiscent of so many spam emails I receive). It’s to depth.
Plumbing toward profundity is the real purpose, the one those antsy-handed schoolboys just don’t get. Lenten abstinences are practices designed just like those fancy machines in your gym; they make a user stronger. Although, actually, they’re more like the (far more lovely) iron bars and lumps that don’t beckon you to do anything particular other than work. You have to decide how you ought to be molded.
Once, I decided that I would be a fast man. In those days, everything I did was modeled around making my legs a bit more rabbity — even the things I did with my arms. I lived thusly for a time, and I became a sorta fast man. I wasn’t an Olympian, but that shortcoming was largely due to my genetics (not that I’m bitter, mom, dad). Still, the changes that happened from my pursuit were shocking.
A lot can happen when a person decides to change for a long time. When the body is starved, it is astonishingly adroit at adjusting. First, it slows down. Then, it chews the fats that it has wisely stored. Then, at the very last, it gnaws the muscles it has worked so hard to build. It’s a smart thing, the body each of us has; it knows how to guard itself.
It’s a stupid thing, too. If we listen to it all day long, we’ll probably wind up eating a bag of chocolates, copulating repeatedly, lying on a soft bed for a few hours, jumping around aimlessly, then going out for pizza and beer before bed. It wants a rein.
Lent offers a rein. The real intention that those teacher-priests have for warning their boys against hands-on funtime is not just to avoid hairy palms but to learn to rule the fragile vessel in which we each live. And this fragility is exactly why a slow, sustained practice is the manner of change. Rapidity results in fracture and/or failure.
To stick with something — a commission or an omission — for forty days is to invite an alteration. It isn’t always what is expected. Ask the bodybuilder who starved himself before a competition; he might have found himself more lean but also less mean. Stuff is all mixed up in these skins of ours. Putting order to flesh is a stupid thing to do; our absurdities can be rather beautiful. Still, the reason that fireworks are spectacular is because they are constrained and aimed until they have reached the proper place to explode.
Speak, no others have.
Bake the pumpkin, spice the syrup,
Poke the pudding, sweep the floor.
Wipe the tables, check the oven,
What’s that burning? Buy some more.
Open windows, boil spices,
Probe the turkey, drop the heat.
Roll the pie crust, cross the lattice,
Drop the roller, ice the feet.
Twist the crepe blinds, primp the bouquet,
Place the settings, buff for shine.
Chase the cat off, smooth the toothmarks,
Pour some wine. Pour some wine.
Whisk the gravy, salt the stuffing,
Mull the cider, mash mash mash.
Form the banquet, keep it warm,
Corn and limas - succotash!
Smooth the linens, mold the butter
Polish platters, straighten chairs.
Dust the seat backs, fold the napkins,
Shine the mirrors, fix stray hairs.
Table’s gleaming, gravy’s creamy,
Turkey’s steaming, vapors dance.
Cars are bringing kinfolk springing,
Doorbell’s ringing — oops, no pants!
Speak, no others have.
(a really, really long look; brevity is not the soul of this post.)
(also, if you’re reading this on facebook, know that it looks better here. my words need all the beautification they can get.)
Once a day I am a golden god. Glistening with the salty glory of a run and stretched to muscular ease, I trot my exercised self inside for hydration, carbohydration, and a good long gaze in the mirror. So hot right now.
Yes, it’s true; I enjoy looking at . No, this doesn’t mean pure lust (there are plenty of better visuals out there for that), but rather a satisfaction that things on me are more or less the way they were meant to be, yet without crossing the line into all-out narcissism and thinking that all things are more or less meant to be the way they are on me. It is taking joy in being fearfully made.
Which is not to say flawlessly made. Much of the musculature I see in the looking glass is properly formed and not too thickly layered by lipids. It wasn’t always this way, but since the days of having the flab has been mostly incinerated. These are steps toward perfection, but they do not eliminate flaws, like the coast of chest hair that creeps dangerously upward, inching toward forming a follicular supercontinent, some new curly-ferned Pangaea breaching the smooth open sea that God intended for the skin between clavicle and larynx.
By and large I let this forest grow, mostly because razor burn sucks, but also because tending this particular garden has no bearing on practicality (unless I were a barechested seducer, which I am not. yet.) I like the look of my mostly naked corps not for being gorgeous, but for incarnating its potential to do so many things, like run a ways or jump over trash cans or toss large rocks. A wax-like skin around my pectorals gives them no further virility. (Notably, were I a swimmer, I almost certainly would own a lifetime supply of Nad’s, but I am as aquatic as a rooster.)
But then I also pluck my eyebrows, trim my hair, and occasionally even shave my face, none of which have any symbology or benefit beyond beautification. I don’t morally castigate these particular superficial alterations of appearance, but I will look down at someone who patronizes tanning salons or injects quasi-poisons into a sagging epidermis, although these, too, are similar temporary meddlings with flesh.
There must be a difference, a line. My corporeal conscience has certainly been heavily informed by traditional transfigurations as opposed to more avant garde adjustments. And certainly there are obvious cases that go too far, which tend to inherit their own whirlwind of harm, but, on a rational level, can we say how many hair plugs is too many?
I want to say 1. The rawness of Eden is the ultimate ideal — naked and untamed, stripped and untended — and this is an , but we no longer live there. That nakedness was meet when we were pure enough to be seen, to be beheld (literally?) by God, but now we must modestly cover our shame from Him and us all.
After over a decade of running, I’ve become brazenly comfortable with public near-nudity. My short shorts are purely utilitarian (well, OK, mostly), but they still have caused me to feel no embarrassment at baring rather large . Yet perhaps this is because I have truly seen that thigh so often for what it is — I know the particular lumps of the muscles that compose it, the swaths going longitudinal and diagonal, above and below — and so why should it be so remarkable or reclusive or re-presented: it’s just an organic spring that flings me down 16th street each afternoon. On the other hand (er, face), I’m not quite as intimate with the mutual passion between my left and right eyebrows that eternally draws them together, so I separate those lovers.
How dare I? Because I think that augmenting my public appearance behooves me and pleases people I may see (which behooves me again), and such a shared benefit trumps whatever natural causes keep springing forth so many hairs in certain places. The body has its rank and its authority, but it does not supercede everything. It must be put in its place, which is beneath plenty of mental and social and personal preferences.
Truth is, my initial objection to fake tans is that they look garish, not a concern that the glow-bed-dweller is leaping along the road to melanoma; my initial objection to breast augmentations is that they look unnatural, not that such surgical reformations imply a societally implanted attachment to shapeliness that is running far too deep (admittedly, an alluring (but false) deepness); my initial objection to smoothing facial wrinkles with some sort of flesh iron is that it looks grotesque, not that it denies that we are human mortals by being so obsessed about being a human mortal as to try to appear otherwise (often successfully but not beautifully).
There is a line, somewhere, be it determined aesthetically or philosophically (and perhaps those disparate approaches rise and converge). It’s probably still a little beyond my trivial trims and tweezes but definitely not so far as . As hinted in the popup note about easy standards, I’m not one to prescribe thick, uncrossable boundaries, so I’ll simply suggest that the line is self-drawn, and where to draw it most likely takes a long time to learn, perhaps from one too many piercings or that suddenly seems a little too visible. The ruler for drawing that line has an edge defined by how we come to understand what a body is.
Options abound: a temple, a canvas, a slave, a hunk of marble, a toy, a shackle, a trifle. Nor are they mutually exclusive, but they are themselves generated by a general philosophy of what we’re doing around here and how important physical delights are and if picking at seemingly ineradicable hairs in undesirable locations is really worth minutes and motions that could be spent on something astonishingly profound like writing for a website. If these quandaries seem a little too large for such small concerns, well, they aren’t, because it would seem that any particular behavior should be molded by an overall ethos.
Which is something most of us have, pretty much. While almost everyone could stand to fortify said ethos (mine, as you’ve seen, has plenty of self-contradictions between stated beliefs and performed behaviors), I think the vast majority of adults could, with the help of a competent writer, compose a good This I Believe essay. It would have holes and uncertainties, would probably be a little incomplete, but such flaws can be restructured by looking closely — perhaps literally — at the man in the mirror. Such a self-reflection once caused a beautiful young boy to drown (or to starve, depending on the version you read), but fortunately none of us are quite so really, really, really, ridiculously good-looking. That actual navel gazing can bring you closer to a wise way of seeing the body might sound bizarre, and perhaps the study required is more than skin deep (having been around medical types for so long, as in my entire life, I’ve applied plenty of acquired knowledge about various glands, organs, and systems to my fleshy philosophies), but to approach a physical issue through physical perception simply seems proper.
My ultimate claim is that this honest gawking will discover how humble (and, as I’ve previously mused about, fragile) the body human is, especially in its appearance. (The internal world is far more awesome, which I mean both physically and metaphysically.) While corneas are often gorgeous, and certain curves can induce salivary leakage (among other fluids), by and large (or small) we aren’t all that much to look at on a level of pure beauty, certainly no more than the lilies of the field. The level of detail — the grain of a toenail, the texture of a knuckle — is astonishing, but it’s also pedestrian.
St. Francis, admittedly somewhat extreme with his worldview but also pretty extreme with his proximity to holiness, called his body “Brother Ass,” by which he did not mean that he was the most gluteally endowed within the confraternity he founded. Rather, that his head, shoulders, knees, and toes were useful but stubborn, noble but humble, and all in all simply non-adorable (i.e. unworthy of receiving adoration). It was, to put it obviously, merely human. It deserved some attention, but not so much. (NB: St. Francis was said to have received the stigmata, probably the most physical of all spiritual ecstasies.)
As many an alcoholic will tell you, moderation is difficult. Pitching out all the bourbons and beers is far easier than being careful only to pour a manhattan or two. I haven’t done especially well at avoiding being drunk on beauty in my life (among other inebriants), and as a result I don’t have a good appreciation for when the proper buzz arrives and when craving any more is mere gluttony beyond a healthy level, both in the sense of looking for gorgeosity in others and trying to shape it in (or rather, on) myself.
But fear not, beautiful people; I do not shun you. I merely am trying not to overvalue the gilded charms of luminous eyes or lean navels or huge…tracts of land (another oft-overrated appeal). The attraction of/to a person is strongest when linked with an actual person, and interpersonal appeal can outrank basic visuals. Which deserves the investment of two hours each morning?
Speak, no others have.
I’ve been gloriously disconnected in the Great Lakes State for a couple weeks. Here are some things that have happened up here in years past. The usual ideological blathering (up next: bodies) will resume shortly, so enjoy this moment of respite. That’s what happens in Pure Michigan.
A Jan DeOrio Moment
We always feared arriving in Detroit each summer because then the mothers would reunite, giggle-screaming over anything. Drew and I would demand to be in the dads’ van on the way up to Elk Lake, but our respective younger brothers would weasel and whine in first. So Drew and I would sit on the rear bench, planning the year’s moss buildup or jam session, but then it would, it always would start: “Free Willy!” my mother would squeal as she and Mrs. DeOrio carried some horrifying joke even further, here inventing embarrassing new sequels for the oversequeled kids film about a threatened orca. “How about…Free Willy gets a circumcision!” and there they went. We hunched down, lest anyone associate us with this maternally howling vehicle. “Oh, this is a real Jan DeOrio moment,” my mother would say then between her awful cackles, and would say anytime when trapped in Ohio with three men morally opposed to loathsome running gags. We each would have those moments that wanted to be shared — my Drew moments, Zack’s Scott moments, Dad’s Tony moments — but a Jan DeOrio moment remains both the most inimitable and most feared.
Dame Bays
Rex Terrace on Elk Lake was a loose confederation of independently owned houses that shared some amenities: the beach, a dock and a boathouse, tennis court. Each house had a quaint name (ours was the Dining Hall) as if a part of some nostalgic Michigan commune. There was even the Icehouse that really had been used to house ice. Point is, Rex Terrace was old, and this was the concern of one old lady, Mrs. Bays, when she saw Drew and I solving the issue of a wasps’ nest outside the Dining Hall by means of sturdy branches duct-taped together, terminating into a basketball-sized wad of newspaper, aflame. “This place could go up like a tinder box!” she exploded at us, then more at Mr. DeOrio whom she thought had permitted our incendiary eradication (which, one should know, continued unabated as she fumed). Telling the story at dinner for those who had missed the confrontation around the conflagration, Mr. DeOrio referred to her as “Dame Bays,” a moniker that subsequently applied to anyone calling for responsible living at the expense of great fun (and efficiency — we were blazing through those wasps).
Herr Suzie
After Dame Bays reported our pyroextermination, we were not invited back to Rex Terrace. Really, the place had been a dump — creaky floors, wood stove heating, snakes in the woodpile, leeches in the boathouse — so the trimmed lawns and centrally heated cottages (numbered, not named) seemed quite an upgrade. Other kids our age were around (nighttime lakeside flirtations ensued), and the greater sense of civilization meant our parents let us run a little more rampant (sans fire). The proprietress, a middle-aged tanned blonde named Suzie, disagreed with this liberation. We were only to whisper in the lodge’s breakfast nook. We were not to run in the game room. There was to be no music played above 50 dB. We all tolerated her militance for a few years — “Jawöhl, Herr Suzie,” we’d whisper after one of her injunctions — but when we found a nice, single-family house to rent on Glen Lake beneath the glorious Sleeping Bear Dunes, we left and began to call anyone acting officious “Herr Suzie.” An effective moniker, for no one wants to be a commandant in Michigan.
Speak, 1 other has.
One main factor in my decision to move to Washington rather than Fairbanks was my hope in cities. Or rather, in multiplicities. Not to say that Alaska lacks variety (catch salmon/hypothermia! hunt moose/civilization! see glaciers/Russia!), but an international hub like the District offers uncountable (and, sometimes, unsavory) possibilities. Just ask your local corrupt Congressman. Point is, we urban dwellers have a smorgasboard of life in front of us, and this is the very potential I want to reconcile and rule with monastic simplicity. The pain in the plenty is that not everything can be eaten. Let’s think maritally, despite my general avoidance of such mentation. An urban man can be somewhat polygamous in his pursuits, but he’ll never have a chance to rival Solomon (700 wives, 300 concubines, 1 overworked organ). Here and now, sometimes taking one option means releasing another or possibly every other.
This struggle with choice is the heart of the drama in Reconstruction. One man (Alex), his girlfriend (Simone), an alluring stranger (Aimee, played by the same actress as the girlfriend), and her husband (August, a writer, and thus probably deserving the cuckoldry he suffers). There are choices, switches, and rapid repercussions which are simply impossible and unbelievable. But the entire film is framed explicitly as a film; it opens on a man levitating a cigarette between his shifting hands, (over)emphasizing THIS IS AN ILLUSION!
The film groans from too much of this self-consciousness; the overt cleverness draws attention away from the patient character development it achieves in scene. It is at its best when it simply lets the characters run within the bizarre world that director has developed. The meta stuff is smart and provokes some thoughts about art, artifice, etc, but the basic narrative works on its own as a parable because it moves slowly enough (the basic story is very simple, and not all that much happens in the 89 minutes) with numerous shots lingering close to faces and expressions and body postures between characters. We become them each in turn.
We can identify with all of them because they are each confronted with similar multiplicities: girlfriend or new ladyfriend, husband or new boy toy, rewin the wandering wife or slap the cheating strumpet. There are choices, and there are costs. The internal agony of these selections is well-portrayed. When Aimee hears that her husband will be destroyed if she leaves, she herself is torn apart. And then she recovers her poise and makes her decision in a state of mind that lingers in the region we all know between confident decisiveness and paralytic doubt. This clarity and complexity is a remarkable achievement of both the director and the actors.
The film becomes surreal and sublime by how, whenever Alex makes a choice, his past disappears. After he sleeps with Aimee, his apartment becomes nonexistent, his friends don’t know him, and even Simone doesn’t recognize him. (This, again, is played up as AN ILLUSION.) The first instance of this reconfiguration is jarring and seems like bad sci-fi. Its reiterations, however, illuminate the axiom of opportunity costs when dealing with multiplicities: you can only grasp one after handing over an other.
NB: If you keep reading, you’ll discover the end, which doesn’t necessarily ruin the film but would ruin your suspense. Sadly, omitting it would ruin this post (don’t say that this tripe is already ruinous).
Alex re-meets Simone as he is preparing to run to Rome with Aimee. Though Simone knows no history with him, he remembers all of their days and wants to say goodbye. As he does so, moving his lips close by her ear, we feel the intimate temptation of another possibility. He finds himself lingering with her, pressing into his meetup hour with Aimee. Time passes, a choice is made, one history is lost, one future is gained.
Alex’s switcheroos bring up two points. 1) Bigamy could solve lots of problems. 2) We are seduced by dreams and sometimes don’t realize the expense of pursuing them: the surrender of the held present, yes, but also the surrender of another future. In the end, he has tried to pluck too many bites from the buffet and ends up walking alone down a deserted city street. Though the director empties it as Alex walks, first seeing him amidst the masses is a greater emphasis of his isolation.
And thus Alex has fallen prey to AN ILLUSION of his mind’s conjecture, that he can indulge every present without forfeiting any future. The use of the same actress (with different hairstyles and makeup) for both Simone and Aimee emphasizes the perceived similarity of their allures and makes us both understand why he can’t decide and wonder why he won’t just decide. With multiple delicious choices before him, he resists the sacrifice of surrendering any, and finds the cost of that decision by indecision to be quite high and complete.
ps: as you can see, i’ve grown fond of using films to discuss ideas. if you, too, like this approach, please tell me, and then i won’t stop. ever.
Speak, no others have.
You can find, on Youtube, a video or two involving a hockey player, a sharp skate, and an appalling amount of blood spilled rapidly onto the ice. That man was dying; his remaining years were literally flowing out of him. Fast and smart medical sorts saved him, but the fact remains: a mortal wound, accidentally, had been struck, and half a century ago it probably would not have been undone.
After nearly vomiting the first time I watched it, I kept thinking about fragility, how a small, neat slice nearly ended a prime and fit man. The idea of tends to be seen as an indictment of feeble spirits — oh we of little faith — but these bodies human can also be crushed lightly.
But then you can also find, on Youtube, a video or two thousand involving a person, a violent phenomenon, and laughter because the person is almost entirely unharmed — indeed, often improved, as he (it’s usually a he) has hopefully learned no longer to try bicycle aviation or some other silly trick on wheels.
We are strange like this. One person nearly dies for protecting his (on-ice) house; another barely bruises while mortgaging his skeleton for a stunt. Some jars of clay are stronger than others, regardless of the treasure within. My youth group decimated a plaster piggy bank recently, and while the destructive blow was a careless and foolish action, I can understand why the young vandal thought the porcine savings receptacle would have been sturdier: it was a thing designed to hold riches.
This is why I am so shaken simply remembering the goalie’s gash. Our arteries are — well, I suppose I shouldn’t say designed — structured to supply the most basic elements (literally: oxygen) to our most basic parts. The blood is the life.
If you watch the , you will find yourself putting your hand to your neck, probably feeling for your pulse, and perhaps wanting to wear a titanium collar. You probably do not wish for your ten dark pints to spurt out, beat by weakening beat, should some gentleman on the street happen to slip on an oil patch and slash into your carotid with his razor cufflinks or too sharp business card (Patrick Bateman would approve). Nobody wants their life to drain silently and ceaselessly away.
And at the same time, nobody — not even a monk — wants to keep their life (their being, their vocation, their essential person) circulating entirely within. Something so fecund must be allowed out; there is too much pressure. Not very many seem to have a great talent for controlling this flow. I, for example, am too stingy much of the time (”No, I think I’ll stay in and sit in a dark chair.”) and wanton the rest (”Fill it up again!”) This is cyclical: I discover a hemorrhage, then clot up every pore to preserve as much vivacity within me, then some overburdened vessel pops and out it comes again, beat by weakening beat until I discover the source of the rupture. Veins of clay.
Some people I know are full of vim. They attend four events nightly (nine on weekends) or juggle twenty-eight pursuits per day or perform all three disciplines of the triathlon at once. You know them; you hate them. They make you feel slothful and dull, as if your light is megawatts beneath theirs.
I’m glad for them, both in being happy for their vivacity and in being able to benefit from it; they often lure me out of my aloneness binges. But I no longer think such geysers are the universal ideal (no offense, my gushing friends). Some of us are better as small, rare springs that are simply . But they/we are very frail: plaster swine at the oversized feet of teens, a thin skin on the main vein linking heart and mind as life. We should not play games too long.
Speak, no others have.
Over the years, I’ve come to realize that I am a sucker for anything that is unabashedly, unrealistically beautiful (excepting photoshopped cover girls). From magical novels by Salman Rushdie or Gabriel Garcia Marquez to amplified art by Georges Rouault or Vincent van Gogh to ultravivid films like Amèlie or The Fall, works of astonishment plow over my rational mind and enter my heart. In a sense, this violates my philosophy that plain human living is gorgeous and in need of no embellishment, but I’m willing to risk hypocrisy for the sensual enjoyment of these spectacles. They don’t realistically depict the lovely life that lurks beneath the rusted crust of our day; they jolt us out of that shell so that we can be aware that something, somewhere is waiting to stun us if we will only work and look for it.
So when I read that Tuvalu was surreal and visually arresting, I thought it would surely appeal to my desire for unrestrained visual glory. And immediately it did. Shot mostly in monotone (the camera filter varies between a sepia and a nickel-blue tone, with brief dream interludes in photonegative), it clearly means to transplant the viewer from a standard world into something new and fantastic. The sets, dilapidated yet (literally) incredibly functional, urge us to see that even the dismal can hold a treasure.
The film revolves around a decaying indoor pool. The owner is blind (yet still acts as lifeguard), and his chest needs artificial inflation to function. The hostess accepts buttons as payment. The young worker is timid and perhaps incompetent. Their patrons include a disabled woman on crutches, an old man and his young daughter, and a cadre of homeless men. And almost none of them speak a word; the film has nearly no dialogue, developing its dynamics by physical actions, facial expressions, and camera work.
Very quickly, the young worker falls for the young daughter. They flirt through secretive, meek encounters until an accident that kills her father causes her to blame him and run off with his rival (who plotted and performed the entire mishap), planning to take him on her ocean voyage to the far-off island of Tuvalu. Dramatics ensue — will the dilapidated pool be shut down? will she be able to fix her boat’s engine? will the young worker overcome his adversary? — and the multiple plots sprint forward at a dizzying pace, unencumbered by chitchat.
All the while, each and every scene is uniquely beautiful. The absolute otherness of the settings turns the film’s monochromatic presentation into a striking, mesmerizing, and even emotional world that is difficult to look away from. In a sense, it is grotesque; everything (including the (over)acting) is distorted to a surreal degree. But this merely amplifies the relatively simple narratives. By being caricatures, the characters pluck our heartstrings with a ridiculous but endearing force.
The film does occasionally dip too far into the deep end of silliness; some scenes are baffling not only in their content but also in their relevance to the film as a whole. But these are brief enough that they don’t seriously detract from the overall experience. What does hold this film back from being a classic is its feverish pace. That the directors wanted to be sure their nearly speechless film didn’t drag is easy to understand, but the rich scenes they crafted in lieu of language beg for a little extra lingering so we can soak in/up the gorgeous gorgeosity and dwell just a little longer in this extrareal world that deserves its whimsical name Tuvalu, at least long enough to remember that, in some places and times, the unbelievably beautiful does exist.
Speak, no others have.
When I finally started to run on my own, I thought there was a hierarchy about who could say hi to whom. If you were clearly the superior runner, then it was your privilege whether or not to acknowledge the turtles plodding around you, and woebetide any such slowpoke so uppity as to think he/she had the right to meet your eyes, let alone speak. This was, perhaps, a convoluted method to boost my self-esteem, preying cleverly on how Cincinnati and Cleveland runners rarely greet each other in passing. (Or maybe I was known statewide as a jerk not worth hailing.)
So imagine my surprise when a (not uncute but) slow girl smiled at me from twenty yards, said hello at ten, and maintained eye contact nearly until we passed. I returned her salutation and finished my run. Discussing this encounter later, I was even more surprised at a friend’s assertion that she was . Ultimately, my surprise came because I don’t expect authenticity in .
A Midwesterner can use the word “truth,”
can sincerely use the word “sincere.”
In truth the Midwest is neither mid nor west.
Bob Hicok’s poem “A Primer” actually revolves around Michigan, so it’s probably a wholly inappropriate reference for an Ohioan to make. However, these lines generalize about my Midwest, so I claim right of use. And I’ll say that his claim is true. I like the word truth. I like truth. So why don’t the skeptics on ?
What fascinates me is musing which part of truth is more disliked: the connotation or the denotation. I can certainly imagine priggish philosophical conversations on the upper East side talking about how Kantian models of perception prove that absolute truth simply does not exist. Or San Francisco hipsters refusing to call something true, scared of being associated with anything that whiffs of orthodoxy. But can you imagine an Indiana corn farmer or Michigan militiaman or any dumb Ohio State fan spouting any such stance?
Hicok’s schism, really, fits best as a rural/urban schism. After all, there are cynics in Cincinnati and Chicago and true believers in Boston and Los Angeles and even . Were I a good cultural analyst, I’d have some trenchant rationale for this association (I’m not quite willing to call it causal), replete with examples and studies, but as it is I merely conjecture this: the more people around and the more bustling the life, the less time/space/self-control a metropolitan feels able to devote to the serious labor of finding truth, thus simply concludes it isn’t, else he would have found it.
Speak, no others have.
