lifequestions
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Sidewalk
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Wisdom from Marc Hamer’s Spring Rain: A Life Lived in Gardens, in Rivka Galchen’s review:
“There are two kinds of old people,” Hamer writes. “There are the old people who are in pain and are miserable, and there are the old people who are in pain and are light-hearted. All old people are in pain.” He has an inclination to celebrate and express love—an inclination that seems built out of the humus of a difficult childhood, characterized by an angry and critical father. “There’s nothing else to do with life but celebrate it, believe me; I am old, and there’s truly nothing other to do with life than celebrate the fact that it exists.”
I’ve had this file, 20111229_fa_02.mp3 sitting on my desktop for a while. It’s Terry Gross’s final interview with Maurice Sendak, on the occasion of the publication of his book, Bumble-Ardy. I knew that, in 2011, it made me think when I heard it, but I had forgotten what it was: a creative human, successful in his time, looking back with his hand lightly brushing old scars and lamenting the accretion of new cuts as he watches, unable to affect the marching-on of time:
Today, I was sitting in the corner of our kitchen on top of the countertops, nestled into the area where the toaster oven is, while Mykala made apple-and-cheese sandwiches at the stove. I looked at the results of painting and decorating this home over the past six months, the way the early fall light warmed the walls, and the breeze of a perfectly clear 61° day cooled off the space. Esmé slept peacefully in her carrier, tired after a three mile walk with her mom and dad. There were no television or radio noises, just the gentle rush of breezes through screens and the staccato sounds of kids playing down the street. It was a perfect moment, the closeness of family, the esthetics of the surroundings, and the peace of a respite from the exigencies of daily, young-professional, indebted life.
Ok, have a seat. This is going to take a little longer than my heavily-edited moderately-stilted prose attempts at wit, wisdom, and condensed life experience. That stuff falls flat more often than not, anyway.
Some things have happened over the past few days that knit themselves into a little ball that I feel the need to tug the strings of. You know that part in a TV show where you know it’s the season finale because you can just feel the writers pulling hard at these strings they’ve strung between characters? I always imagine a sweater, and you have a hold of a few of the pieces and you keep pulling and the fabric is bunching and warping in places. You really see how it is all connected. Ok, this is possibly not edited enough. Starting again…
Two days ago, we saw a live puppet theater in the backyard of a Prospect Park neighbor on Franklin Avenue.
The title of the production was “The Adventures of Juan Bobo”, and the second half of it, which we caught, was really fun. The live accordion player made it really… lovely, too.
For my whole life, school is what has given me meaning. Now, starting my job, I realize that I have to find that meaning on my own. This has been unexpectedly terrifying; the framework in which I lived has melted away. For those accustomed to such existential freedom (to which most have unconsciously adapted), this is nothing — they just… live life, you know? Their adaptation happened gradually since their high school or college careers ended. So, I guess I’m not alone… but I do feel adrift sometimes. I shouldn’t expect too much since it has only been 4 weeks since graduation. Typing it out in black and white, i realize that, wow, it HAS only been 4 weeks since graduation. Life feels a LOT different in the rhythm of a job than it ever did in the rhythm of school. While I struggle to figure this out, I’m going to be a better husband to my wife, spend time with my family, and be better friends with my friends. I’ve been so goal-oriented, that I can’t decide if I should set more of them, or learn to focus my life without them. Probably, as is almost always the answer, a little bit of both.
Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes gave a commencement speech at Kenyon College in 1990. The number of topics Watterson addresses is striking. A few that caught my attention:
I don’t really have the time to fully parse out “Solitude and Leadership” by William Deresiewicz at The American Scholar, but holy cow are there some good quotes in there. I’ll follow one of his trains of thought:
Accelerating hard up the dark streets from the Ford Parkway Lifetime toward my apartment near I94, life felt perfect. I had just wrapped up another hard workout, and I was headed home to spend a lovely summer evening with my fiancée. It was late July, 2008. I remember the song I was listening to as the cool air whipped through the car: Cellophane Girl, by Graham Colton.
Lightweight lifestyle, or, what hiking teaches you about life:
This principle is not easy to see in our modern culture, where success is generally viewed as proportional to the value and quantity of one’s possessions. Society percieves the owner of a big house which can hold more possessions as more successful, when in fact he may be held in bondage by high house payments, taxes, utilities, repair costs, and a general lack of freedom. In an ever-increasing need for protection he acquires security lights, burglar alarms, double locks, fences, and moves into a subdivision with a locked gate. He pays large insurance premiums so he can afford to replace everything in case all his protection doesn’t work.
Kurt Vonnegut at the Blackboard - Lapham’s Quarterly:
But there’s a reason we recognize Hamlet as a masterpiece: it’s that Shakespeare told us the truth, and people so rarely tell us the truth in this rise and fall here [indicates blackboard]. The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.
Ostensibly, the reason for my total radio silence on tumbledry is clear: the second half of my first semester of dental school was extraordinarily busy. For example: for the first time since I began working out in 1999, I voluntarily gave up the gym for six weeks. I ran through gross anatomy flash cards on the bus to and from school, I ran through flash cards before sleeping, I ran through flash cards with Mykala, I ran through flash cards while walking across the train tracks between my bus stop and apartment, I woke up running through flash cards in my mind. Incidentally, I slept little. I skipped so many meals that by the end of the semester I looked at the mirror and was shocked to see someone who appeared quite gaunt. So, that would seem to be the full story. It is not.
Bear with me on this: (kottke.org) is, apparently, the most popular post on kottke. It’s not actually written by Jason Kottke. I didn’t understand it when I first read it, almost exactly 8 years ago. Today, I think it makes sense.
It’s easy to fool yourself into thinking you’ve got “it” when you’re so busy that each day slides by in a swirl of homework and exams. When there’s a clear path laid before you, with structured credits and definite milestones, you can fool yourself into living and growing by the academic metric alone. Some are intelligent enough to see beyond the schedule and grow; others, such as myself, blindly follow the rigmarole.
I’ve always approached blogging from a rather pragmatic stance, complete with low expectations, no thoughts of a cult-like following, and no deluded visions of grandeur. For these reasons, I don’t usually link my blog, I’ve pulled it out of as many search engines as possible, it’s not listed on my Facebook profile, and I seldom bring it up in conversation. The whole idea is one of website as a hidden gem. I’d like the people who visit to only do so because (however limited in scope), they find a small nugget of value in reading my rantings/ravings. The reality is harsh, but generally goes thus: nobody cares what I had for lunch, they probably don’t think I’m funny, they aren’t interested in the things I link, and my photographs don’t speak to them. On the contrary, those who have a modicum of interest in what I’m doing here, I welcome you with open arms and an appreciation for every speck of feedback and comments you offer.
Computer programming teaches you to think logically, optimize for speed, relevancy, etc., and structure your thinking within a world where there are set rules. (Incidentally, that previous link points to one of the most insightful articles I have ever read — it’s about who nerds are, and proper care/feeding of nerds. If you haven’t read it… seriously, man, read it. And technically, I should say “seriously, lady” because the article is most useful to a woman looking at a nerd or nerd-like significant other. Anyhow, let’s break out of this parenthetical statement. BUT, before we do, note to self: install footnotes on the next revision of the tumbledry formatting system. That way, diversions such as this will end up at the bottom of the article in… a footnote.) So, this endless logic game within a world where the entire system is known is an excellent exercise for the mind. Indeed, I enjoy the exercise. However, I’ve never quite been able to articulate why a profession (above and beyond a hobby) in the programming arena does not appeal to me. Thankfully, somebody spoke my mind on the issue in a comment attached to a recent Slashdot article entitled “Obsolete Technical Skills”:
43Folders is a website dedicated to the finer points of organization, task tracking, and goal-completion. As such, an essay about the huge value of underachievement would seem orthogonal to the site’s goals. However, the ideas mesh quite well with the larger fabric of 43Folders; plus, this is easily the best blog post I have read in a long while (the vocabulary alone is perfection)… the mythology and philosophy references don’t hurt, either. A snippet:
Nils wrote this comment in January of this year. Given our recent discussion about life choices and comics, I think it’s appropriate to bring out his well-articulated viewpoint:
I think that we have to learn to deal with uncertainty for the time being. We’re 21 for christ’s sake, the possibilities and choices that lay ahead of us are virtually endless. The problem is that high school and college have not primed us to deal with the unknown. There has always been a set track that we have been required to follow and that track pretty much ends with college, I think. We should all be prepared for unforeseen conflicts and always have back up plans because you never know how things will turn out. I’ve been thinking a lot about post graduation lately and I have thrown together a few scenarios for myself: stay with TV and pursue jobs in TV market, move to LA and attempt the film industry, join the peace corp, or move to Norway and do something (read: I have no clue). I think can live with those options.
In the past five years or so, I have experienced a recurrent and surprisingly urgent need to “figure it out.” It must be that the changing scenery and conditions of my young life cause me to attempt to assure myself I’m on the “right” path. As a result, I’ve taken a simultaneous keen yet shallow interest in philosophy: as if a cursory overview of the topic would yield the viewpoint for which I search. The Weepies sing that, perhaps, “this is not your year.” However, if I was to take guidance on life from media, it would not be that particular song (great though it may be). I would, in fact, take inspiration from the most profound (and, incidentally, most existential) comic I have ever read. That would be this strip of Zippy the Pinhead published on my Mom’s birthday, the 16th of September:
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