Reconciliation With Our Failures

“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned by a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure.” ― Alexander Supertramp (Chris McCandless)

I would consider myself a flight risk. Not for any crime-related reasons, but from society. This is something I have written about before - the desire to just get in the car and drive away into the sunset, never looking back....Alexandria Supertramping this nonsense we call "modern living." But I have a child and a family and financial obligations, so it's likely too late in the game for me to really get away from the trappings of what I find stifling about the "norms" of life. To quell that desire to ascend up a mountain and become the ultimate introvert, I read or write. I never wanted to be a writer - the desire to write is more of an exercise in exorcising my mind of thoughts and feelings that plague it. It helps because I have some difficulty expressing my emotions to someone face to face - partially it's my temperament as being someone who's a bit more reserved but there's also a fear (...of rejection or embarrassment) that makes me clam up in regards to oral, face-to-face expression. When I do have the ability to express myself in writing, the thoughts and emotions that flow from me are very honest. There's a degree of vulnerability that does not always come through in person.

Thus, in my compulsion to write and purge, therein lies a limitation and a pattern of being unable to write fiction. The labels of "embellished narrative" or "gonzo" - however fictional they may seem - reflect whatever it is you'd call these pieces on my blog. The "narrative" style of my thoughts have occurred since I can remember - through play with toys when very young or idle contemplation about my surroundings, the world and my place in them. In high school, outside of school or work, I spent a lot of time alone. When my students today ask me whether or not I partied, was wild, etc, and I simply laugh. The hours in which I could have been loitering at the mall or drinking in the woods or whatever was popular teen culture in the late 90s were instead spent in my room. We didn't have a computer in my house until I was a junior in high school, and even then, it was still a tool primarily used for typing rather than distraction. Most of my formative years were spent being with myself for long stretches of time -listening to music, drawing, studying. My inner self is rich with desires and curiosity about the world around. So it would seem as though a degree of that would be satiated by interacting with the outside world, and especially with other people. Yet, paradoxically, as someone who takes a long time to ever become "real" with someone else, any sort of shared experience looms much larger in my memory bank than theirs likely. Whether positive or negative, its impact seems to hit me harder than it would others.

Locations are easier for me to be "real" with, however. Exploring a new area stimulates the mind without the same degree of socio-emotional investment that I sometimes find to be scary. There are a few places I've become completely fascinated by how old they are. Like Florence, Italy - OLD. Rome - OLDER. Oldest fucking place I have even been. That oldness is something Americans shy away from. American culture blows when it comes to preservation. I don't mean keeping the shitty aspects of days gone by - like racism and misogyny. Rather I am referring to the passing down of a recipe or a holiday tradition- something that makes your family unique, discernible and perhaps, compared to wider American culture, folksy.  But those sorts of practices are, to an extent, shameful, shunned in this country. I'm not trying to placate conservatives here either; there are benefits to having a history, maintaining tradition and recognizing the importance of identity as part of a lineage, but only if it can evolve. That's the key - the evolution of that identity. Allowing something to be non-exclusionary and open, but still retaining a thread of what came before. It's the attitude -that's what makes people, things, practices, last. When attitudes include a nod to the past but an acceptance of the future, well, then why not? New is marketed as better, but is that true or does it reflect a marketing scheme more than a necessity? Progress-minded people aren't always progressively-minded people. That is to say (beyond any political terminology that might have just been activated in the reader's mind by the previous sentence), a progress-minded person is interested in moving on, getting to an end point. A progressively-minded person is interested in the development of something as much as more even more than the end point. To  make a musical analogy, playing a number of chords in a practice set achieves the goal of having gained finger dexterity or speed whereas a pleasing chord progression takes you on a sonic journey.

On a wider, more metaphysical level, the topic of maintaining a piece of the past and its role in the present and beyond opens up ideas surrounding what it means "to be." The human conception of “being” is one of consciousness and yes, technically that is also included in the “being” I’m referencing. But for me, that’s one small aspect of the full extent of “being” as I refer. That “being” encompasses all and any degree of consciousness, but also all that is not directly revealed to our minds. We are the universe in some material configuration that connects with and interacts with other material configurations. Though separate, we come together to produce more of each other – literally grown out of each other’s cells. And yet, I have to consistently explain that we are truly not separate in any real or long-term sense – clearly we’re all made of the same building blocks – which goes through all humans as well as literally any other carbon-based life-form and the surrounding environment. When we don’t exist in these current manifestations with (seemingly) separate consciousnesses, it also doesn’t mean we don’t exist on other material levels. Whether a plastic bag that will take 10,000 years to disintegrate or the average human that’ll be dust in a century or two, there are a finite number of possibilities for configuration. That should not be taken as: come into consciousness, fuck shit up and destroy the ride, but rather, enjoy the ride so that others can too. From an empathetic perspective, imagine having to wait until you get to experience some consciousness again – maybe never – do you want to leave everything a damn mess so that someone else who has one shot to drink clean water and eat fresh fruit has to instead pick through a wasteland of nuclear detritus just because you couldn’t turn lights off when you left a room? The universe is so vast, one may be the only time around.

When I think about how that could be translated into a livable system,that's where I get both super hopeful and existentially depressed all at once. When I am explaining for the fiftieth time that no, I don't think any one person should have the right, regardless of ability, to accrue as much as possible while any one other person has nothing to eat, the mountain hermit retreat begins to call to me in my mind. At this point, we’re advanced enough to automate most of our needs and we literally have stockpiles of shit in warehouses to last us generations, but if and only if everyone is willing to  wear trends from 20 years ago so we can finally get rid of all of those fucking pairs of JNCO jeans.

Zen and the Art of Raising Children

Hands down the most influential book I have ever read is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I suffered through the first 50 pages or so for the book to take off and was so glad I did  afterward. The story of Robert Pirsig's mental breakdown, its effect on his family, career and outlook, as well as his recovery, put into perspective the emphasis our society puts on the "image" of success and having it all together. Pirsig underwent electroshock therapy to "cure" him of his neuroses. In the aftermath, he felt wiped of his personality, like an actor playing a part in his life. Part of his re-connection with his family (his son, Chris, in particular) is the basis for the substance of the book - the motorcycle road trip. One of the complaints his son had after his treatments was that his dad wasn't his dad anymore. Despite his dad being "unstable" prior to EST, he was also fun, interesting and loving. As Pirsig and his tween son travel together, he finally understands the full impact of his illness and recovery on his son's life. Their connection reforms and grows ever stronger as a result of the discoveries both of them make about themselves and the world through their shared experience.

Obviously, the book touches on so many more topics, but the afterword that was written a decade or so later refocuses the work to make their relationship so much more poignant - it was written after his son's death. Chris was randomly (and fatally) stabbed in San Francisco while leaving a Zen center at the age of 22.  In the wake of his death, in Pirsig's own words, "I go on living, more from force of habit than anything else" [Thinking about my own child, I could not agree more with this sentiment. There would be times of great grief, no doubt, if my closest friends or family members passed, but the loss of my child would be a crushing experience]. Pirsig continues on, writing that his second child, conceived accidentally, almost did not come into this world (his wife and he had originally agreed to terminate the pregnancy) but now that she was here, her life-force was one and the same as his son. His imagery of a death being a hole in the pattern of life makes sense of the loss felt without turning to gods or the inexplicable (especially important for someone who isn't interested in supernatural explanations) . In fact, I'd take his thoughts on his daughter one step further, though I think he gets there too - being in the presence of a child is wondrous. Their tiny existence has not yet been pressed upon by thousands of interactions (good, bad and mundane) and so they radiate pure life. When you ask someone to strip life down to what's most valuable, for most people, the answer will never be, "my iphone" or "my yacht" or some other material possession. A much more likely answer will be, "time with my children/partner/family." Yet in our daily interactions, something so basic as human connection gets pushed aside by the demands of our society - material possessions, career, prestige, ambition, image, and so on. 

After being around children in almost every job I've ever had, having a significantly younger brother and raising my own child, I can tell you one thing for certain - children represent raw material. Young children especially haven't been initiated into our societal norms yet and so they're amazing to watch. In fact, they often seem downright weird. Eating food off the floor? Sure. Rubbing their noses on the rug? Absolutely. Riding the cat? Yes. We put children in schools, organized activities, church groups, et al., to inculcate them into what we consider to be "acceptable." Sure, it's cute when they do wacky stuff at 2, less so at 12 and definitely not at all by time they're 22.

Recently, I read an article in New York magazine about the trend of parents turning to "coaches" to "fix" their children and families' home lives. The upper middle and upper classes are no strangers to spending money to give their children a leg up. I understand the idea of wanting to help your child in any way possible. Yet, as an educator, I can attest, from years of experience, that the most important thing you can give a child is your time. Children develop at their own pace - there are average experiences you can read about in books that may provide you with an idea of when your child will develop a particular skill or hit a certain milestone, but human development is not hard science in the way determining the velocity of a falling object is. Strangely, toward the end of the article, the author of the piece equates the swim lessons she pays for to the life-coach for a toddler in a wealthier neighborhood. She posits these two "extravagances" as a difference of degree rather than a difference of kind. I could not disagree more. Swimming skills have the potential to save someone's life. A life coach for a small child is a bunch of image-boosting bullshit. The "raw material" of childhood is just too good to not be tapped into as another market. Fears of one's child falling behind, being less talented or special in some way is just too much to bear, especially if one has the means to make it different. In reality, most small children don't need to have a coach for anything other than loosely organized sports like t-ball. They'd benefit more from time to explore the world around them with a supportive guardian nearby. The less time they have being penned inside with adults who monitor and correct their every move, the better. This trend is mirrored by the many day-cares and preschool facilities that promote play over academics. Sure, it's probably a cycling trend (and next year, baby Calculus will be all the rage), but hopefully it will be around for a while.

Of course we want to make sure our children are socialized enough to be able to function in wider society, but do we ever ask if we've gone too far? The pace and shallowness of modern, post-industrial life leaves many people with the same neuroses of those living under extreme physical duress. We're not living in a culture of scarcity by any means, yet people report feeling anxiety at the levels of unprecedented in historical record. We have the material comforts but we are still afraid. Why?

One answer may lie in the removal of spontaneity from our lives. With more and more connectedness through improved technology, we gain knowledge, but we also lose an ability to wonder. We can know immediately: who's calling, what's in our mailbox, where we're going, what song is playing next, if someone we'd jive with amorously is on the same block as us...We live in a world of potentials that are often never actualized, maybe because they are right there in front of us, so easy to find. The "chase" is gone. There's only the capture. Everything has been calibrated, ergonomically created, means-tested for us. And sometimes what we want IS the chase, the messiness and the whimsy of life.

The same metaphor of chase/capture can be applied to child-rearing. The chase approach allows a child to explore their options.The guardian offers guidance and support. The capture approach is an attempt to achieve the image of what the guardian thinks the child should be - an end goal has been preset. When the child veers off the path, we push them back on, no matter what. This pressures both parties to potentially be something they're not. It initiates the child into the anxiety of an adult world predicated on scarcity of resources (both emotional and material), when in fact we're living in a country where resources are truly not scarce at all. As teacher, I have sat through countless meetings and heard politicians wax on about the importance of everyone taking honors classes, going to college, securing "prestigious" employment and it makes me roll my eyes. Hard. Not everyone is cut out for academic life. Or for life as a professional. Some of  my students are better with their hands, or have great people skills, or are budding musicians, and yet, most of them are told that the same path is ahead of them, whether they want to pursue it or not. Why can we not allow life to be a journey, bumps and all?

I leave you with Pirsig's words, as I think he taps into the Sisyphean nature of life and human existence on the whole but assures us its worth weathering the storms (both as individuals and as a species)."Nell teaches aspects of parenthood never understood before. If she cries or makes a mess or decides to be contrary (and these are relatively rare), it doesn't bother. There is always Chris's silence to compare it to. What is seen now so much more clearly is that although the names keep changing and the bodies keep changing, the larger pattern that holds us all together goes on and on. In terms of this larger pattern the lines at the end of this book still stand. We have won it. Things are better now. You can sort of tell these things." - Robert Pirsig, ZAMM

The Bridge

"Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman--a rope over an abyss." - Nietzsche

Admittedly, I've never read any work by Nietzsche in full. Quotes, synopses, excerpts, analyses, but never a complete work. I probably should because whatever I have read, I've really enjoyed. In fact, I am also reminded of my own thoughts when I do, which is somewhat scary, and not because he was a secret Nazi (he wasn't), but because he went insane. Always a little eccentric, the story goes that he saw a man flogging a horse on the streets of Turin, Italy in 1889 and he ran to the animal, crying and throwing himself over its body to protect it. After this public breakdown and a series of strokes and other health ailments, he died in the summer of 1890. In that interim, his ability to communicate effectively with the outside world broke down to the point that it was incomprehensible.

This is not a piece of self-aggrandizement - I'm no Nietzsche. It's more of an inquiry into genius, insight, and madness in our own society.
Societally, how do we treat those who think differently? Do we lock them away? Medicate them? Let them run rampant? When I teach history, I like to ask these sorts of questions because it helps to shed light on what a culture was in a particular time. If you've ever see the movie Amadeus, the composer Salieri is placed in an asylum after slitting his own throat. He is incredibly lucid but the other patients (more aptly, inmates) seem to run the gamut from the psychotically deranged to the mentally retarded. This practice was not all that uncommon, even in the United States through the 1970s - children with severe learning disabilities or emotional disturbances were oftentimes shuttered away rather than being given an education suitable to their abilities (or even having their abilities, whatever they might have been, cultivated in some way to allow them the freedom to enjoy a life outside of a confined space). Luckily, with the advent of laws that protect the differently abled, many children are now afforded opportunities that most other "normal" children are given - to be around their peers, have access to enriching educational environments, participate in sports and clubs, etc.


In Art History class last night the professor was discussing Van Gogh. His life was, to put it bluntly, depressing as fuck (she didn't describe it in those terms, though that would have been ahh-mazing). She joked that if he had lived today he probably would not have produced his most famous works, like Starry Night, because he would have been so heavily medicated. In fact, art historians have noted that his signature style can be closely tracked with his departure off the deep end. And what if she is right? What if our current society's obsession with making sure people are on the right drugs to help them through the day, to "normalize" behaviors are actually killing off human creativity? Sure, Van Gogh lived a shitty life and died a horrible death, but at the same time, he became completely immersed in his work and has been immortalized through it. I don't believe in fate, but her comments made the wheels start turning - What if that sacrifice was a necessity for the progression of art? How would modern art be different without Van Gogh's contributions? What would be the impact on those that followed if his works had not been made to learn from and enjoy in its mere existence?

In France, ADHD isn't really a "thing" that kids have. It's just called being a kid. Parents there aren't as quick to medicate their children. Why? Is there something to be learned from struggling that we, as Americans, are afraid to do? Of course I see a lot of this at work - parents concerned about their child's grade when its not what they expected (an A). Their child never got lower than an A before, how could it be that they're not doing as well as they (re: the parent) had expected? That's something we all need to learn - how to be able to work within the parameters set to succeed. And those parameters are not always fair either - throw in institutionalized racism or sexism and a lot of people have to work doubly as hard to gain acceptance, let alone success. At times, that struggle will seem insurmountable; but then we also might really learn something about the system, ourselves, humanity, etc.

I see that desire to push humanity in Nietzsche as I do in myself. I can get pretty indignant about the apathy that most people express toward doing anything that would push them out of their comfort zone. In high school, one of my friends joked that if I kept up this pace of trying to right all of the world's wrongs, I'd eventually lose my mind. She prophesized I would be a babbling crazy person in the street (not too far off for Nietzsche, honestly). Well, I do actually think about that a lot because there sure are times where I know I can't run away to Montana, but if I continue on here, I will lose. my. shit. So what's a girl to do? There is not an easy answer. At least not one that I have come across yet.

Recently, I read a biography of another one of my favorite philosophers Albert Camus. His works are more literary that straight up philosophical treatises and he was criticized heavily for this throughout his life. Readers, including his own friends (like Sartre), expected a logical approach to a problem and got poetic imagery-laden text instead. In the rejection Camus faced, he never stopped addressing the whole. While others focused on the trees, he saw the forest. He internalized the quote from Nietzsche at the top - that we represent the bridge between what we came from and what we can be. Critical of both the French colonial forces AND the Algerian armed resistance movements, Camus refused to take sides, preferring to work with civilians on the ground who were stuck in between the cycle of violence perpetrated by both groups. Indeed, his commitment to a cause likely led to his demise as well, but he too left behind a legacy of ideas and actions for succeeding generations to consider.


In today's world of constant internet outrage, I can sympathize with Camus not wanting to take a side. It's easy to jump on the latest cause bandwagon and to vociferously state an opinion from the safety of your smartphone screen. But that's virtual. Sure, you support the cause by posting a meme, signing a petition, et. al, but what else will you do about it? It's a lot more difficult to walk outside and find someone who needs help. Especially when no one quite understands what you're doing (poor Nietzsche). I know I come off as a luddite many times, but there has to be a balance between how we can use technology to our advantage and what we rely on it for (no boredom, ever!!) Panem et circenses meet res ipsa loquitur - we're doing this shit to ourselves and it's only getting worse.