How My Brain Works or Doesn't Work

The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse was a book I read when I was far too young to understand its contents. Currently an old paperback copy sits on my bookshelf here. Pulled out from musty boxes filled with paperbacks with signets from the 60 and 70s, Grove, Dell, Avon, it has remained unopened since 1974 when at 18 years old I devoured it. I have had it out for about a year now with the intent that I should go back and reread this Hesse’s magnum opus when I have a few spare moments. Spare moments, ha.

The one thing I remember and my perception of this may be warped, is that the game was very convoluted and involved finding of connections between music, literature, mathematics and other disciplines. Synchronicity obviously had a role in the playing of the game. This would figure given that one of the characters in the book was a thinly disguised rendering of Frederick Nietzsche. Today as the morning progressed I felt I was playing my own Glass Bead Game as I was listening to Liane Hansen on Weekend Edition Sunday.

In commemoration of the King Holiday Weekend Edition Sunday played a piece where one of the men on the balcony with Dr. King at the moment of his assassination was telling his story, his oral history of that horrible moment. The clip was from Reverend Kyles and it was recorded more than a decade ago. The next thing that happened was they interviewed an obviously older version of the Reverend Kyles about what it felt like today looking back on all of what has occurred. Here is the piece.

http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=122670935&m=122670920

Reverend Kyles talked about what he would be preaching in his homily on this day the Sunday before the holiday. His message was going to focus on punching holes in the darkness. The Reverend stated that Robert Louis Stevenson was the source of his theme. Per Reverend Kyles the original versions of this idea were comments made when Stevenson was sickly child and the adults overseeing his care were concerned about his staring out the window. They asked Stevenson about what he could see looking out of his sickroom’s window into the dark night. Stevenson responded by saying that he was watching the old man punching holes in the night. When quizzed about he said the old man would climb up the ladder and light a light. Stevenson noted that he watched this old man repeat the process again and again as he was knocking holes in the dark.

I really liked that thought, knocking holes in the darkness. It was a metaphor for so much of what each of does in the course of day. We try to provide knowledge and reduce ignorance. We try to reduce uncertainty and bring knowledge based peace. We act to make life easier through disclosure punching holes in the empty ache of frightened unawareness. It was a very humanist theme. Before I was going to start riffing on it I decided I had better check out the original genesis of the quote by a quick Google search. It sounded too familiar.

What I found was that the quote is attributed to Stevenson. What I also found was that about every church and every pastor in America has had a sermon wherein Jesus was the awl punching the holes in the darkness. Here is the link if you want to check some of them out.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=punching+holes+in+the+darkness&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3DVFA_enUS313US315&ie=UTF-8&aq=0&oq=punching+hole

Jesus was not the theme I was heading for. I liked the act as a human endeavor, one of kindness and compassion. But something kept nagging at me where had I heard this phrase before? Another Google search changing the terms a couple of times followed. Finally I got it, “punching a hole in the night” It was Tom Waits of course. It is one of the most popular of Tom Wait’s songs because it has been covered by everybody.



Okay so the mental slipstream today goes like this…

The Martin Luther King Holiday -- Robert Louis Stevenson -- Tom Waits -- Glass Bead Game -- Herman Hesse -- Synchronicity -- Nietzsche

Not much point to all of this except to detail how my though process sometimes works.

Bus Moments

Warm morning this for January that is. Dead center of the month and I can stand at this bus stop writing in this eco friendly recycled journal with bare hands. Normally my digits each and every one of them, would be clawing their way into my pockets for warmth, but not today. A bit of a thaw is occurring. Standing water can be seen in the street. Looking down the road surface to the east where light is creeping into the sky the street view is ugly. Still with the air temperature hovering at a point well above freezing I will sacrifice and forgo aesthetic pleasure. The warm lets me grab this time for writing and that is something good.

Last night my dreams were tormented. From what I can remember I was at a lunch with an old friend, someone that used to matter in my life. In a very calm voice they were telling me they were dying. Okay what they were telling me was that they had a serious cancer one that is pretty drastic. Shocked I awoke and it was about 4 a.m. I lay there for a few minutes trying to figure out what was fueling the dream. The best I could come up with was that I was feeling a general sense of loss and it was rolling over into my subconscious.

In the past three years I have moved from feeling like an ageless thirty something to something more approaching old. Cancer, heart disease and all the aches and pains that creep in at odd times like when I am [insert activity here from sex to hiking]. These twinges and maladies have stripped me of about half of the good day mornings I used to have. You know those days, the ones where you wake up and think “I don’t know what I am going to do today, but it is going to be good day. I am going to make it be good.” Yeah I feel loss about that. I guess I had better start working through the steps to the point where I gain acceptance.

Oh well, on to other topics. Last night I returned to reading Chesterton again. Yes it did put me out drooling at one point but hey so does television. Despite the valium like nature of certain expositions he is among my favorite writers. My guess is that he was a good chess player. His words, sentences and paragraphs are all structured like clever and well nuances gambits on the 8 x 8 board. Each word, each sentence is picked with a view to what will happen ten moves ahead. His finishing sentence in a chapter is always an emphatic statement of “Checkmate”.

Back to the here, back to the now. Today I am riding a later bus than usual. The kids’ lives were a train wreck and I got dropped off at the bus stop late. This bus takes longer and I will be late for work. C’est la vie.

These people are real different. On the earlier bus the population has oxford shirts, ties and sack lunches in special little reusable bags. The early bus catches the frugal or eco-friendly middle managers and shuttle them off, all good civil servants dressed in grey. On this bus which will arrive downtown after the set starting time of this city of 8 a.m. the garb and the faces are a little more desperate.

Sitting directly across from me is a woman with a puffy face like a long time steroids user. She is as the term goes one of God’s special children. I have seen this woman a number of times before. She rides the bus every day and any variation in seating patterns gets her agitated. She likes a seat near the back on the curb side. If she can’t find one she makes noises and fumbles her bags and personal materials about. She will sit elsewhere but she will keep looking back to her spot. If a seat opens up she will dash back nestle in and then her world will be alright again. She will flash a little smile of victory.

Once downtown she will get off at the library. She works there doing shelving. It is most likely her highest and best occupation. My guess that by placing books in order and neat formation on shelves is the means by which she channels her particular brand of OCD into making some kind of living. She sorts books according the Dewey decimal system or some other alpha-numeric arrangement course and then finds them their rightful place. With her laser like focus she is excellent at her job.

Next to her sits the tall and lanky late teen community college student. He looks as if he has slept in his clothes. Maybe he got lucky last night and he hasn’t had the chance to go home yet. Maybe but I doubt it. His face is splotched with acne and his hair is greasy and flying wildly awry in clumps. A quick glance reveals he doesn’t have a book bag thus adding to the theory of no trip home last evening.

Tap, tap, and tap his thumbs pound away on his phone and then a blip noise. He sort of smiles, in a pained way, it is almost the look you would expect if he just passed some silent but intestine pressuring gas. Taken as a whole cloth he just looks sad and out of place in this world and in this morning light.

A man sits directly across from me. His winter knit cap is black. He has black faux leather gloves and shoes. He has cast several sideways glances at me as if he is trying place where he knows me from. Perhaps I put him on this bus (or rather keep him on this bus). His body language is tense; perhaps like me he has missed the early bus and is running late for work. He has pulled his small canvas bag that contains some oblong into his lap draping his hands over it. His hands now form an upside down v.

My bus has arrived at its stop. The air is warmer yet. Enough of the free people watching; now I move on to where I get paid money to do it.

It beats Melatonin

Tonight I decided I would try to return to academic pursuits. I opened up G.K. Chesterton’s tome on St. Thomas Aquinas. The part where his brothers kidnapped him from the pilgrimage to Paris and threw him in a room with a hooker kept my interest. The part where he drove her out of the room with a hot poker glowing red from the fireplace had some action. And then he burned the wood which barred the door branding it with the sign of the cross, way cool. We don’t have saints like that anymore. However when he got to the part at university where he was trying to suss out Aristotelian logic and his belief structure, uh well I can still taste the ink from the book where it came to rest on my face. Can we say soporific?

Contradiction and the Divine

Many times when I am quoting Merton I try to expand on his conception of God in the lines that I write. What I mean is that while I am Christian I know, respect and love many others who are not. These are people who hold serious and considered opinions about life, death and meaning. Sometimes what Merton says has a broader application than is apparent at first blush when you read it in light of the large C Catholic context of his writing.

Personally I believe that my best conveying of what my faith is comes through my actions in living my life, not repetition of Pat Robertson like portrayals of a lake of fire to motivate capitulation of the unwashed. (My take on damnation is a little different than Mr. Robertson’s; I believe that hell is absence from the presence of the divine). So when it appears clear Merton is talking about God in the broadest unknowable sense of the term I use terms like peace or divine or the infinite depending on the context in my reposting of the text. Also I try to look at the pronouns carefully so as not to promote an XY centric world.

Today’s quote as mangled by me, “The divine reveals itself in the middle of conflict and contradiction-but we want to find the divine outside all contradiction”. AYWTM 01-14 (paraphrased).

I live with two children. One child is 14 the other twelve. They are both boys. I think you can see why I like this quote.

Working to Soft Music I Clean the Kitchen

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

In solitude I unlearn all tension; I rid myself of the strains that have falsified me in the presence of others and which have put harshness in my words to others. Merton paraphrased

Domestic work can be cathartic. Faced with the tough choices my current economic realities present throwing myself at an unkempt kitchen can lighten the soul. With summer camps, vacations, home repairs and sports activities all needing funding, and with my investments in auto companies and banks having under performed a little soul lightening made sense. Okay, I hear you thinking he is weird. Hey when life turns tough I turn toward cleaning.

My better half was hurting from a crushing sinus headache brought on by an infection that never seems to abate. Her aches sometimes lay her out. On Monday she stayed home. Despite her hope in staying at the house to just crawl under the covers she realizes as I often do in those situations that life in our world just does not stop. Between moments of respite she carried out the planning and cooking of our week’s meals. As she pointed out to me she cleaned up the cooking pans with one exception, a roasting pan that needed to soak.

The roasting pan is big and unwieldy. Sitting in the sink it really doesn’t allow other dishes, cups, knives and forks to accumulate with it. These get parked on the counter next to the now bubble less slime that is the soak material for the pan. Dishes back up fast with two kids and a voracious husband about.

Last night my goal was not to attack the roasting pan. I had a simple plan. Because the morning prep for school and work is often chaotic I would make lunches in advance. As I have postulated before, my life is ruled by the theory (or is it law) of multiplying antecedent steps.

To make lunches I had to have clear counter space. To have clear counter space I had to deal with the amassed dishes. To deal with the grit encrusted, mint ice cream tinted plates and flatware I had to scrub by hand the roasting pan and to load the dishwasher. To load the dishwasher I had to empty it of the clean dishes first. To effectively clean the roaster I had to empty the detritus around the sink into the kitchen waste bin. To empty the scraps and like into the bin I had to remove the completely full bag of trash that was already there and take it to the outdoor garbage can. To make that trek I had to put shoes on and shovel a path to the dumpster. Back inside I put a new bag in the waste basket relining it and thus actually beginning to get the whole job done. Oh I cleaned off the glass stove top as a bonus.

What started as a six minute job took two hours and put me to bed after midnight. When I was done I felt good. I was catharticized. Today I am dog ass tired but last night I was proud of accomplishing something tangible. With all the stresses of the world sometime you just need to clean something.

Quietude-Just Being Normal is Enough if Done Right

As I often quote him, I again paraphrase Merton. I have greater peace and am closer to the holy when I am not trying to be anything special, but rather when I am orienting my life fully and completely toward what seems to be required of a person like me at a time like this. What a powerful thought. It seems almost stoic as we use that term today. But what is being called for is more. The phrase is an urge to take action. We are to meet the requirements of a good life that only we can fulfill in the place of the world that only we occupy.

I really don’t have much else to say on this. For today I will try and do what is required of me and do it well. I will also try to reach out beyond my comfort zone and make something better, something I can fix.

On Charity

Life isn’t simple by any means. Where you stand observing an event can color all that you see in a way that separates you from every other observer of the same incident. No two eye witnesses ever see the same thing despite our belief in an objective reality of the moment. Clearly these differences in perception can cause problems.

The actions we take in life, those choices we carry out in our living in this material world, each has a reaction. The immutable laws of physics pretty much demand this. Speaking words out loud in a one on one conversation or even setting them down without speaking on paper or a web page are actions. Every single word we communicate can have impacts and repercussions that last far beyond the moment. The ramifications of words spoken can last long after the air carrying the vibrations from larynx to the bones of the middle ear has ceased its moving.

Today these fingers with which I now type seem to have set in motion ripples that have become much bigger waves, much uglier waves at least on an interpersonal level than I ever anticipated. Consequences will follow and I will live with those consequences; there really isn’t any other choice. I am neither happy nor sad with this state of events. What I am is disquieted and disappointed that the people I spoke to didn’t understand and still don’t seem to understand their actions didn’t pass the smell test.

In so many meetings that I attend the phrase “see the big picture” is used. It is trite jargon. Usually the speakers declare the term is shorthand for progressive thinking or for having a focus on organizational good. But what does seeing the big picture really mean? Literally it means to perceive the broadest perspective of an issue or a situation.

When big picture talk is used in a meeting it is usually part of a persuasive syllogism, one asserting that taking a particular course of action is for the greatest good. Having the skill or foresight to really do big picture thinking accurately would be admirable. Goodness knows I wish at times I truly could move beyond my focus on the acute demands of right here, right now.

Too often the real meaning of “seeing the big picture” is more insidious than those four words would seem to convey. More often than not claims of seeing the big picture are merely a way of rationalizing the abuse of some class of persons for the sake of expediency. Actions that would never be taken if you were face to face with all the involved impacted parties, because these schemes don’t pass the smell test, get pushed through with the bigger picture being the banner followed. Poor choices or bad choices get adopted because a persuasive speaker claims “greater good” of “the big picture” demands it. Simply said jargon overrides reality.

You know the smell test mentioned above is really rather simple. As they taught us in legal ethics (yes it is an oxymoron) if it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. Versions have been codified by any number of faiths and philosophies; do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Christianity laid it out in the New Testament with, “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 7:12. Jumping back to ethics class the instructor circled around to the crux of the application of the smell test for new lawyers, “If it is not your money don’t take it.”

Charitable giving is defined as the kind and generous giving of money or other help to those in need. I spent a good time looking up the components of this phrase recently and nowhere did I find a reference that implied it was still charitable giving if you required others to give. This week I called some people out on an attempt to institute mandatory charitable giving. They backed off. However as a result I have been told pretty much point blank that I have hurt children in a material way and that I am selfish and mean-spirited person. Some of the comments hurt me quite a bit.

I am not ashamed of what I have done. In these rough economic times when our region’s unemployment rate is well into double digits and virtually everyone is facing the risk of job loss, or the loss or reduction of job benefits or of a salary reduction, acting to impose a mandatory charitable gift is indefensible. To begin with the demand for payment negates the “charitable” component. Demanding such a payment, no matter what size or how noble the purpose, was wrong.

Those making the decision should have been taking into consideration the bigger picture of the status of the economy as a whole. Clearly they should have at least thought about the timing of their claim for payment in the midst of the holiday season. Right now is a period when large demands are made on all family coffers. This decision truly needed to be based on the broadest perspective of the situation. Big picture thinking it wasn’t.

Do I have regrets in this situation, absolutely. Do I wish this could have been resolved in another manner, again the answer is absolutely. Do I think it was my actions that brought us to this place of conflict? Absolutely not.

I hope that over time the people who are calling me out right now realize that there were two equally valid viewpoints on what happened here. While helping those in need is a noble cause, you can’t do it by executive fiat. Everyone in this economy is hurting; the demands on family budgets are great. To those that came up with this strategy I say this, next time when you consider sticking your hand into someone’s pocket in a tough economic times ask yourself one question. Would I want someone to treat me this way? Next time I think your choice will be different.