I finished reading Anna Karenina tonight on the farm. I would like to do a full review here, but as Francisco d'Anconia would say, I'm not a happy enough man to do it.
The book is a masterpiece. However, although the book is named for the female lead, I finished reading it with the thought that Anna was not the main character, but rather a foil for the real main character, Levin. Levin's final epiphany, in which he accepts that the entire, irrational meaning of life is circumscribed by the admonition to "love thy neighbor as thyself," is the essence of the book. And that main point has particular significance for me, given the peculiar (and not so peculiar) road I have traveled in life.
One other observation about the book. The characters in Anna Karenina, as in other books about educated people, often discuss serious topics in social settings. We can't do that now. It's considered taboo to discuss politics, religion, or philosophy in social settings, and it is out of the question to suggest that anyone's view on a question might be incorrect. In essence, everyone is right and correct about whatever they might think. Thus, our social conversations center on opinions about clothes, homes, possessions, and gossip about others' personal relationships. This gets very tiresome. No one communicates anymore~
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Factions
I have never united myself with any U.S. political party, Republican, Democrat, or any other. I have justified this on the ground that by joining a faction, I am obliged to accept all of its tenets, though I am usually in agreement with only a portion of them.
However, I just read this passage in the Athenian Constitution regarding the laws of Solon:
"Further since [Solon] saw the state often engaged in internal disputes, while many of the citizens from sheer indifference accepted whatever might turn up, he made a law with express reference to such persons, enacting that any one who, in a time of civil factions, did not take up arms with either party, should lose his rights as a citizen and cease to have any part in the state."
In point of fact, I often accept "whatever turns up" from sheer indifference, having much to say on any issue, but in the end casting no meaningful vote because I am not allied with either contestant. Perhaps, in the spirit of public-mindedness, I must choose~
However, I just read this passage in the Athenian Constitution regarding the laws of Solon:
"Further since [Solon] saw the state often engaged in internal disputes, while many of the citizens from sheer indifference accepted whatever might turn up, he made a law with express reference to such persons, enacting that any one who, in a time of civil factions, did not take up arms with either party, should lose his rights as a citizen and cease to have any part in the state."
In point of fact, I often accept "whatever turns up" from sheer indifference, having much to say on any issue, but in the end casting no meaningful vote because I am not allied with either contestant. Perhaps, in the spirit of public-mindedness, I must choose~
Sunday, June 10, 2012
In Short
In the past I have thought that blog posts should be long, drawn out affairs of the consciousness, epic conflicts of the soul painstakingly splayed onto the (web)page, thoughts and arguments drafted and revised until perfected and ready for instant communication to anyone in the world with a mind and a machine.
It takes too long to do that once a week. To craft such a thing every seven days, while one lives as a mere mortal, is an undertaking of deep reflection on each and every one of the seemingly trivial coincidences that season the day-to-day of an ordinary life. But an ordinary life leaves little time for this. When one has a religion, a marriage, children, and a profession, there are few moments for quiet meditation, and certainly not sufficient to admit serious reflection and composition every 168 hours.
So this post will be brief, and many future posts may also be so. And the post is this: God has given us so many beautiful things to see, hear, smell, taste, touch, think, feel, investigate, ponder, absorb, capture, appreciate, believe, imagine, apply, embrace, and love. The irony is that He created so much of it. As we get older and begin to comprehend the magnitude of His creations, we start to realize that we’ll never know it all, we’ll never experience it all.
And when we realize that we’ll never get to everything, we start to think that, maybe, if we worked a little bit faster, a little bit more efficiently, we could get to more of it. So we start to run, trying to osmose it all at once. But this works against us. Instead of experiencing His creations, we see them through a glass, darkly, and discern their form but do not comprehend their substance, like watching a cinematic masterpiece on a 10 inch black and white TV with no sound~
It takes too long to do that once a week. To craft such a thing every seven days, while one lives as a mere mortal, is an undertaking of deep reflection on each and every one of the seemingly trivial coincidences that season the day-to-day of an ordinary life. But an ordinary life leaves little time for this. When one has a religion, a marriage, children, and a profession, there are few moments for quiet meditation, and certainly not sufficient to admit serious reflection and composition every 168 hours.
So this post will be brief, and many future posts may also be so. And the post is this: God has given us so many beautiful things to see, hear, smell, taste, touch, think, feel, investigate, ponder, absorb, capture, appreciate, believe, imagine, apply, embrace, and love. The irony is that He created so much of it. As we get older and begin to comprehend the magnitude of His creations, we start to realize that we’ll never know it all, we’ll never experience it all.
And when we realize that we’ll never get to everything, we start to think that, maybe, if we worked a little bit faster, a little bit more efficiently, we could get to more of it. So we start to run, trying to osmose it all at once. But this works against us. Instead of experiencing His creations, we see them through a glass, darkly, and discern their form but do not comprehend their substance, like watching a cinematic masterpiece on a 10 inch black and white TV with no sound~
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Mild Travels
I have a travel log.
Last weekend we visited Dinosaur National Monument in eastern Utah. I took Friday off from work. The kids and I got up early to put gas in our red Windstar, get the oil changed at Jiffy Lube, and borrow a few sleeping bags from Grandma and Grandpa’s house. W and L had fun just getting ready for the trip, especially at Jiffy Lube, where they got free red popsicles.
We zoomed away from home at at 11:00 a.m., beginning a 3 1/2 hour tour that would take us to Vernal. It was a long way, but the kids did very well (we only heard "are we there yet" a few dozen times). W and L started to get more and more excited as we neared the monument, as life-sized dinosaur statutes began to appear along the road side to advertise motels and gift shops.
For my part of the drive, I was mesmerized by the beauty of the small, high mountain desert towns we sauntered through. I longed to stop and explore the 1940's era Main Streets and eat at the drug stores and soda fountains that made them up. My marvel blazoned an overnight in one of the sleepy brick inns, drifting off to sleep after a long red sunset and a movie at a drive-in movie theater nestled amongst the crimson sandstone buttes.
I took all of this in as we meandered toward Vernal. As we went, we consumed heavy amounts of licorice, Cheez-its, and peanut butter M&M's. I had nearly lethal levels of peanut butter in my body by the time we got to Vernal. It was a fun drive.
We arrived at the park at 3:00 p.m., and solemnly passed a $10 bill to the lady ranger at the gate for the right to take part in the prehistoric peep show. We briefly made use of the Visitor's Center and its impressively clean and well-appointed restrooms, and then climbed the hill to the Quarry.
My family paid a visit to Dinosaur National Monument when I was about 8 years old, and the one vivid image I have retained from that trip is from the Quarry. The Quarry is a rock face enclosed by a building whose primary purpose is to facilitate observation of the dinosaur bones in the rock. From outside the building it is easy to see from the vertical orientation of the sedimentary layers that this particular rock was, on some violent day in history, rammed from the depths to the surface of Earth by some primeval force many orders of magnitude more powerful than the most terrible man-made explosives.
This enormous mineral slab, which we were told once formed part of a river bed in the ancient world, collected the fragments of many dinosaurs of the Morrison era, mostly Sauropods (think Brontosaurus), who mostly died of natural causes at the river's edge. Their corpses were overlaid by sand and soil, encasing and preserving them until they were driven to the surface again, to be discovered in 1909 by paleontologist Earl Douglass, who happened upon the tailbones of an Allosaurus protruding in perfect formation from the top of this impressive mound.
The image of the Quarry that is burned into my memory is actually of a different building which used to enclose the Quarry but, because of shifting soils, eventually became unstable and was torn down. I can see in my mind's eye the excavators crawling up the rock face like marionettes covered in ropes, painstakingly chiseling away at the stone wrappers that had protected these bones for 150 million years.
They stopped taking bones out of the Quarry in the 1990's. Now they have left the remaining bones in relief for public observation. It was amazing to see the, and think of what the world was when these beasts were alive.
(Side Note: I took all the photos in this post with Instagram. It partially hides the fact that I'm a terrible photographer taking pictures with a cell phone camera.)
While we looked at the dinosaur bones, one of the rangers, Ranger Celia, was giving tours of the facility and reviewing its history. J and I started to notice that L was following her around like an obedient puppy. When she would walk ahead of him with the other grown-ups, L would run after her and yell "Wait, I'm coming!" After we left the Quarry, L told us, "Ranger Celia is my girlfriend." He's 3.
When we left the Quarry it was raining. Not a good sign since we had been planning to camp and break in the tent J and I got from the brotherhood for our wedding and which had never yet seen the light of day. We briefly considered driving back to Vernal and getting a hotel room, but quickly resolved that we had come to camp, we were going to camp, and if nothing else we would make some memories on this trip.
We jetted down to the Green River campground, all the while watching the sky and hoping for a break in the clouds. We had to be a little patient, but our break finally came and everything dried off. The kids were ecstatic to be on a real camping trip. I got the tent set up while J got the fire going and cooked the savory foil dinners she had assembled the night before.
After we finished dinner, we roasted marshmallows and made Smores with little chocolate covered shortbread cookies.
Even though it was their first time sleeping in a tent, the kids did well. Before bed we took a walk down to the river bank to watch the cliff swallows cherry pick bugs from the surface of the Green River. On the way back we discovered mutant centipedes (didn't get a picture of those unfortunately), deer droppings (Winnie collected a few of them thinking they were rocks) and even a little toad quivering in the cheat grass. Things were peaceful.
In the morning we broke camp and drove through the park. We saw wild turkeys, rabbits, lizards, and lots of petroglyphs chiseled into the sandstone. I got plenty of pictures.
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We got to walk through her log cabin home. It was very simple, just logs, mud and pitch. There was a stone fireplace in the middle which must have cost her pains to put in. She had wallpapered the log walls once, and bits of the newspaper the underlay the wallpaper still clung to the walls. I was fascinated to read the little bits of newspaper that were still legible, and to think of all the great and ostensibly important things that had transpired in the world while this spunky lady toiled alone in the wilderness, each day just like the last.
We ended our trip with one last visit to the Quarry, and then made our way home. I hope to build many more memories like this in the coming years with J, W, and L~
Last weekend we visited Dinosaur National Monument in eastern Utah. I took Friday off from work. The kids and I got up early to put gas in our red Windstar, get the oil changed at Jiffy Lube, and borrow a few sleeping bags from Grandma and Grandpa’s house. W and L had fun just getting ready for the trip, especially at Jiffy Lube, where they got free red popsicles.
We zoomed away from home at at 11:00 a.m., beginning a 3 1/2 hour tour that would take us to Vernal. It was a long way, but the kids did very well (we only heard "are we there yet" a few dozen times). W and L started to get more and more excited as we neared the monument, as life-sized dinosaur statutes began to appear along the road side to advertise motels and gift shops.
For my part of the drive, I was mesmerized by the beauty of the small, high mountain desert towns we sauntered through. I longed to stop and explore the 1940's era Main Streets and eat at the drug stores and soda fountains that made them up. My marvel blazoned an overnight in one of the sleepy brick inns, drifting off to sleep after a long red sunset and a movie at a drive-in movie theater nestled amongst the crimson sandstone buttes.
I took all of this in as we meandered toward Vernal. As we went, we consumed heavy amounts of licorice, Cheez-its, and peanut butter M&M's. I had nearly lethal levels of peanut butter in my body by the time we got to Vernal. It was a fun drive.
We arrived at the park at 3:00 p.m., and solemnly passed a $10 bill to the lady ranger at the gate for the right to take part in the prehistoric peep show. We briefly made use of the Visitor's Center and its impressively clean and well-appointed restrooms, and then climbed the hill to the Quarry.
My family paid a visit to Dinosaur National Monument when I was about 8 years old, and the one vivid image I have retained from that trip is from the Quarry. The Quarry is a rock face enclosed by a building whose primary purpose is to facilitate observation of the dinosaur bones in the rock. From outside the building it is easy to see from the vertical orientation of the sedimentary layers that this particular rock was, on some violent day in history, rammed from the depths to the surface of Earth by some primeval force many orders of magnitude more powerful than the most terrible man-made explosives.
This enormous mineral slab, which we were told once formed part of a river bed in the ancient world, collected the fragments of many dinosaurs of the Morrison era, mostly Sauropods (think Brontosaurus), who mostly died of natural causes at the river's edge. Their corpses were overlaid by sand and soil, encasing and preserving them until they were driven to the surface again, to be discovered in 1909 by paleontologist Earl Douglass, who happened upon the tailbones of an Allosaurus protruding in perfect formation from the top of this impressive mound.
The image of the Quarry that is burned into my memory is actually of a different building which used to enclose the Quarry but, because of shifting soils, eventually became unstable and was torn down. I can see in my mind's eye the excavators crawling up the rock face like marionettes covered in ropes, painstakingly chiseling away at the stone wrappers that had protected these bones for 150 million years.
They stopped taking bones out of the Quarry in the 1990's. Now they have left the remaining bones in relief for public observation. It was amazing to see the, and think of what the world was when these beasts were alive.
(Side Note: I took all the photos in this post with Instagram. It partially hides the fact that I'm a terrible photographer taking pictures with a cell phone camera.)
While we looked at the dinosaur bones, one of the rangers, Ranger Celia, was giving tours of the facility and reviewing its history. J and I started to notice that L was following her around like an obedient puppy. When she would walk ahead of him with the other grown-ups, L would run after her and yell "Wait, I'm coming!" After we left the Quarry, L told us, "Ranger Celia is my girlfriend." He's 3.
When we left the Quarry it was raining. Not a good sign since we had been planning to camp and break in the tent J and I got from the brotherhood for our wedding and which had never yet seen the light of day. We briefly considered driving back to Vernal and getting a hotel room, but quickly resolved that we had come to camp, we were going to camp, and if nothing else we would make some memories on this trip.
We jetted down to the Green River campground, all the while watching the sky and hoping for a break in the clouds. We had to be a little patient, but our break finally came and everything dried off. The kids were ecstatic to be on a real camping trip. I got the tent set up while J got the fire going and cooked the savory foil dinners she had assembled the night before.
After we finished dinner, we roasted marshmallows and made Smores with little chocolate covered shortbread cookies.
Even though it was their first time sleeping in a tent, the kids did well. Before bed we took a walk down to the river bank to watch the cliff swallows cherry pick bugs from the surface of the Green River. On the way back we discovered mutant centipedes (didn't get a picture of those unfortunately), deer droppings (Winnie collected a few of them thinking they were rocks) and even a little toad quivering in the cheat grass. Things were peaceful.
In the morning we broke camp and drove through the park. We saw wild turkeys, rabbits, lizards, and lots of petroglyphs chiseled into the sandstone. I got plenty of pictures.
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We finally ended up at the Josie Bassett homestead. Josie was a remarkable woman, who when she was divorced in the late 1910's decided to find a new life. At age 40 she built a simple log cabin, some animal pens and fences, and there she lived for the next 50 years.
We got to walk through her log cabin home. It was very simple, just logs, mud and pitch. There was a stone fireplace in the middle which must have cost her pains to put in. She had wallpapered the log walls once, and bits of the newspaper the underlay the wallpaper still clung to the walls. I was fascinated to read the little bits of newspaper that were still legible, and to think of all the great and ostensibly important things that had transpired in the world while this spunky lady toiled alone in the wilderness, each day just like the last.
We ended our trip with one last visit to the Quarry, and then made our way home. I hope to build many more memories like this in the coming years with J, W, and L~
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Out of Water
Got to work early this morning. Internet down. Left work. Now on BYU campus for internet access. I could pay Sprint $1 to use the internet over my phone, but like the atmosphere here on campus so decided it was a travel day. Had loads to finish this morning, let’s see what happens next.
I experience this Jekyll/Hyde thing between morning and night. In the morning I’m motivated. The sun comes up, the weather is nice, the air is fresh, and it feels like a time to be honest with myself and get things done. At night, the sun is gone, everything is bedding down, my energy is sapped, and it’s a lot more difficult to keep control of my mind and focus on something important. So I make now a new resolve to rise early and labor by dawn
I love to read, but I don’t do it often. As my wife says, it’s too easy to be overcome by a story and wallow in words through the hours of the night. But I find myself more and more wanting to do that, feeling to forget my own details and absorb the consciousnesses of other people. It’s impossible to be candid in reality because the feelings of others require restraint. Reading and living another’s life in a way allows me to express myself fully by adopting the impossibly interesting, insouciant sensibilities of book characters.
I’m here in the lobby, and a college student in warmups just switched on ESPN, which is now interfering with my mojo. I got a text that internet is back up in my office, so I guess I’ll go back there~
I experience this Jekyll/Hyde thing between morning and night. In the morning I’m motivated. The sun comes up, the weather is nice, the air is fresh, and it feels like a time to be honest with myself and get things done. At night, the sun is gone, everything is bedding down, my energy is sapped, and it’s a lot more difficult to keep control of my mind and focus on something important. So I make now a new resolve to rise early and labor by dawn
I love to read, but I don’t do it often. As my wife says, it’s too easy to be overcome by a story and wallow in words through the hours of the night. But I find myself more and more wanting to do that, feeling to forget my own details and absorb the consciousnesses of other people. It’s impossible to be candid in reality because the feelings of others require restraint. Reading and living another’s life in a way allows me to express myself fully by adopting the impossibly interesting, insouciant sensibilities of book characters.
I’m here in the lobby, and a college student in warmups just switched on ESPN, which is now interfering with my mojo. I got a text that internet is back up in my office, so I guess I’ll go back there~
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Things Never Happen the Same Way Twice
Whenever I feel like writing, it takes a few minutes to decide whether to write to my blog or my personal journal. Things I don’t want anyone else to know go in my personal journal. Things I don’t mind if others know go on my blog. So here I am.
I spent about 5 hours yesterday working on the lawn. We let the lawn go this season until last week, and by then the dandelions were well-rooted and the white top had crept in from the fallow field behind our house and infiltrated about 10 feet into the yard. So I had my work cut out for me.
I wrestled the string trimmer and was able to beat down most of the mature weeds (didn’t flip any rocks into my eye this time fortunately) and edged the grass all the way around. Then I mowed. We have one of the “Reel Mowers” that is essentially two wheels attached to a set of whirling blades. It’s nice and quiet, environmentally friendly, and a pain in the back to use. Especially when the grass is a little bit longer. I’ll bet I went over each piece of lawn three times to get the grass evenly chopped. But I slept well last night
Jo and I just finished watching all three extended versions of the LOTR movies. One of the joys of life is that feeling you sometimes get when a person, a group of people, a book, a movie, or something else takes control of your mind and heart, your perspective suddenly changes and you temporarily lose the ability to think about anything else. That happened to me when we finished Return of the King at about 11:00 p.m. on Friday.
I think some people refer to this feeling as “falling in love,” but to me it’s something different than that because it can happen with almost anything and isn’t accompanied by any urge to commit or make sacrifices. It’s the difficult feeling to describe, but I know if I could describe it everyone would acknowledge having had it at one point or another in life.
It’s been a while since I’ve had that feeling. I used to have it all the time when I was younger, but it’s more rare now and more fleeting when it does come. It’s different now too. It used to be a feeling of joy, but in the past several years I’ve noticed that it’s become more of a feeling of sadness.
Maybe I feel it differently now because I have experienced depths of pain and loss that I hadn’t felt when I was younger. Since my teenaged years, I have stood at the cracks of Mount Doom, considering whether to throw the most precious thing in the world to me away forever. I have waited at the Grey Havens and watched my best friend sail away to Valinor, never to return. And I have returned home again to my life, wondering how I was ever going to go on.
Maybe that’s why I simultaneously love and hate the ending of Lord of the Rings. Maybe that’s why I simultaneously loved and hated the ending of LOST. They hit too close to home.
It’s Sunday now, and the feeling has subsided. I’m tempted to watch all three movies again right away, and try to bring the feeling back. But that feeling always comes upon you unexpected. If there’s one rule of life that’s very clear to me, it is that things never happen the same way twice. So I’ll have to wait until next time~
I spent about 5 hours yesterday working on the lawn. We let the lawn go this season until last week, and by then the dandelions were well-rooted and the white top had crept in from the fallow field behind our house and infiltrated about 10 feet into the yard. So I had my work cut out for me.
I wrestled the string trimmer and was able to beat down most of the mature weeds (didn’t flip any rocks into my eye this time fortunately) and edged the grass all the way around. Then I mowed. We have one of the “Reel Mowers” that is essentially two wheels attached to a set of whirling blades. It’s nice and quiet, environmentally friendly, and a pain in the back to use. Especially when the grass is a little bit longer. I’ll bet I went over each piece of lawn three times to get the grass evenly chopped. But I slept well last night
Jo and I just finished watching all three extended versions of the LOTR movies. One of the joys of life is that feeling you sometimes get when a person, a group of people, a book, a movie, or something else takes control of your mind and heart, your perspective suddenly changes and you temporarily lose the ability to think about anything else. That happened to me when we finished Return of the King at about 11:00 p.m. on Friday.
I think some people refer to this feeling as “falling in love,” but to me it’s something different than that because it can happen with almost anything and isn’t accompanied by any urge to commit or make sacrifices. It’s the difficult feeling to describe, but I know if I could describe it everyone would acknowledge having had it at one point or another in life.
It’s been a while since I’ve had that feeling. I used to have it all the time when I was younger, but it’s more rare now and more fleeting when it does come. It’s different now too. It used to be a feeling of joy, but in the past several years I’ve noticed that it’s become more of a feeling of sadness.
Maybe I feel it differently now because I have experienced depths of pain and loss that I hadn’t felt when I was younger. Since my teenaged years, I have stood at the cracks of Mount Doom, considering whether to throw the most precious thing in the world to me away forever. I have waited at the Grey Havens and watched my best friend sail away to Valinor, never to return. And I have returned home again to my life, wondering how I was ever going to go on.
Maybe that’s why I simultaneously love and hate the ending of Lord of the Rings. Maybe that’s why I simultaneously loved and hated the ending of LOST. They hit too close to home.
It’s Sunday now, and the feeling has subsided. I’m tempted to watch all three movies again right away, and try to bring the feeling back. But that feeling always comes upon you unexpected. If there’s one rule of life that’s very clear to me, it is that things never happen the same way twice. So I’ll have to wait until next time~
Saturday, April 21, 2012
What Should Have Been
Spring is here, it is April, and it's already hot. The temperatures are right for summer, but we still have the vibrant Spring colors everywhere. I'm not a photographer, never have been, but I'm enjoying using Instagram to take pictures.
Instagram is a good piece if software, and I can see why people like it (I like it very much myself). But it has a negative effect that is common to modern-day software that is intended to be used to create art. It makes it so quick and easy to create a finished product, that it tempts a lot of people like me (who have no eye for photography) to create lots and lots of finished products that have no substance. Instead of examining the substance of the photograph and admiring the photographer's peculiar genius in selecting the particular subject matter, lighting, and exposure, we revel in the ease of pulling out a high megapixel smartphone, snapping a picture of just about anything, applying a filter, and having the image shared with the whole world in under to minutes.
The same problems apply in other media software: DAW software, video editing software; heck, even word processing software to a certain extent. I admit, there are some benefits to all of this. We capture images we wouldn't otherwise capture, we hear songs that would never have been recorded, we see films that would never have been produced. But the ubiquitous and never ending stream of digital content produced by nearly everyone has made me appreciate more than ever the experience of seeing a good idea, fully developed and beautifully executed, presented by an artist who has taken the time to perfect it at every level, whether or not the artist chose to use modern tools to create it.
Not to digress, but this is why I have always been angered by George Lucas' refurbished Star Wars films released in the 90's. Lucas apparently didn't realize that his biggest fans not only loved the movies because they presented a masterfully crafted, soul-touching story, but because of what Lucas was able to achieve technically and visually with the tools that were available in the late 70's and early 80's. With the new versions, he has erased the simple beauty of what he achieved in the original versions.
Now back to the topic. Does the ease of the digital age make us artistically lazy? I think it does. Probably intellectually lazy too. I suppose the question is how do we make full use of the amazing tools available for creating art withou betraying the works that we create with them~
Instagram is a good piece if software, and I can see why people like it (I like it very much myself). But it has a negative effect that is common to modern-day software that is intended to be used to create art. It makes it so quick and easy to create a finished product, that it tempts a lot of people like me (who have no eye for photography) to create lots and lots of finished products that have no substance. Instead of examining the substance of the photograph and admiring the photographer's peculiar genius in selecting the particular subject matter, lighting, and exposure, we revel in the ease of pulling out a high megapixel smartphone, snapping a picture of just about anything, applying a filter, and having the image shared with the whole world in under to minutes.
The same problems apply in other media software: DAW software, video editing software; heck, even word processing software to a certain extent. I admit, there are some benefits to all of this. We capture images we wouldn't otherwise capture, we hear songs that would never have been recorded, we see films that would never have been produced. But the ubiquitous and never ending stream of digital content produced by nearly everyone has made me appreciate more than ever the experience of seeing a good idea, fully developed and beautifully executed, presented by an artist who has taken the time to perfect it at every level, whether or not the artist chose to use modern tools to create it.
Not to digress, but this is why I have always been angered by George Lucas' refurbished Star Wars films released in the 90's. Lucas apparently didn't realize that his biggest fans not only loved the movies because they presented a masterfully crafted, soul-touching story, but because of what Lucas was able to achieve technically and visually with the tools that were available in the late 70's and early 80's. With the new versions, he has erased the simple beauty of what he achieved in the original versions.
Now back to the topic. Does the ease of the digital age make us artistically lazy? I think it does. Probably intellectually lazy too. I suppose the question is how do we make full use of the amazing tools available for creating art withou betraying the works that we create with them~
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Who You Are
I went to a wedding last Saturday with my wife and her friends. One of them was talking about people who get married young, and she said something like, “Can you imagine getting married before 25? I didn’t even figure out who I was until I was 25.”
That statement struck me, and I’ve been thinking about it over the past week. I think I knew who I was well before 25. At 16 I knew exactly who I was. Since that time, however, and especially over the last 12 years, I’ve been forgetting who I am. It’s not supposed to work like that. You’re supposed to learn more about yourself, figure yourself out, and eventually come to some ultimate conclusions about who you are. You aren’t supposed to figure it all out and then go backwards.
So here I am, at age 33, trying to figure out who I am again. Since I (along with the rest of humanity) don’t know how to do that, I’m going to have to take some stabs in the dark. Well, that’s actually not quite true. I know how I figured it out the first time, but I can’t do it that way again. I’m going to leave that statement there without explaining it any more.
This is me. I’ve been through my daily routine before on this blog, but here it is again. I’m still trying to find the meaning in it. I feel like there’s got to be something more to it than what’s on the surface of the words.
My alarm goes off in the morning at 5:50 a.m. I usually hit the snooze button once or twice and get out of bed between 6:10 and 6:15. I shower and shave. I only recently started shaving regularly. Before that, I shaved as little as possible, because I kind of liked the way I looked with stubble. But my wife doesn’t go for stubble, and I’m trying to accommodate her.
All of my clothes are in the same place in my closet. I used to have some in the closet and some in the dresser (which is out in the middle of the bedroom), but I eventually realized that I was wasting time going back and forth from the closet to the dresser to get dressed. Plus it’s quieter to get dressed entirely in the closet, since we have a walk-in closet. My wife and kids are still asleep while I’m getting dressed, so getting dressed in the closet reduces the chance that I will wake them up.
It’s springtime now. It’s chilly in the mornings, but gets warmer in the afternoons. So I wear jeans, button up shirts, and a blazer style jacket that my wife gave me for Christmas about 6 years ago, the Christmas after we got married. We had seen it in the JC Penney, and I had really liked it. She knew I wanted it, so she got it for me and surprised me. She’s very good with gifts. I don’t think she’s ever given me something that I just didn’t like.
I walk to the bus stop and take the bus to work most mornings, so I take some things with me to do on the bus. I have an iPod Nano and AT noise-cancelling headphones that I use during the walk to the bus stop. I used to listen to music. Then I switched to podcasts. I would listen to “Tech News Today” and the BBC World Service. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been listening to the Old Testament podcast, which is a podcast of a gentleman with a British accent reading the King James version of the Old Testament. I’ve learned by listening to this that people have always been the same. We may have different customs, different normative behaviors, different languages, etc. but deep down we’re all the same. We all live for the same things. We all worry about the same things. There’s something about that sameness that’s comforting to me. It makes me feel like I can relate to people.
Once I get on the bus, I read the Book of Mormon on the way to work. I have the LDS Gospel Library app on my iPad, which lets me annotate as I read. I’ve never been one to mark my scriptures with colored pencils, as many like to do, but I don’t mind writing notes in the Gospel Library app. It’s a good way to create a journal of the thoughts and experiences I have as I read the scriptures. And there’s a lot more room to write in the app than there is in the margins of leather-bound scriptures.
I get off the bus near the Provo bakery. I walk by on the way to my office and take a deep breath. Smelling the fresh bread and doughnuts as I walk by is, in all honesty, nearly as good as eating the fresh bread and doughnuts, and you don’t have to spend any money to breathe. I think that few seconds when I catch the smell of the bakery might be my favorite part of the work day.
I then get to my office at the historic Utah County Courthouse. I may have described it before. It is a magnificent old building. My office is nice, with high ceilings, thick moldings everywhere, and solid wood doors. I’ve decorated my office with things from my musical past: amps, keyboards, guitars, mixers, speakers, music books, band posters, etc. Things that I used to love, but don’t use anymore since I’ve given up music.
I work at my job all day. It’s terribly interesting to tell the truth, but I can’t talk about that part of my life. I’m obligated not to by the laws of the land, by ethical rules, and by plain old common good manners. So I won’t go into that here.
When work is over, I ride home on the bus. On the way home I read novels. Right now, I’m reading Anna Karenina. I’m intrigued most of all by Levin. He’s got such an interesting conflict within himself, leading a life of position and productivity (he’s a wealthy farm owner) but longing for a life of simple good labor such as he sees the peasants around him leading. It’s a conflict similar to the one I often feel within myself. Tolstoy is quite good at getting to the meaningful bits inside of peoples’ personalities. I’ve been enjoying this book very much.
If smelling the bakery is not my favorite part of the work day, the walk home from the bus stop is. The weather has been very good this spring, and it’s a simple pleasure to walk home in it, carrying my little satchel and listening to the Old Testament, watching the people in my neighborhood as I make my way to my house. I want to get to know them better. I need to get to that soon.
When I get home, we have family dinner. After that, I’m in charge of putting the kids to bed. It’s a delightful job, even though I often lose my temper with the kids, whose attention span is so short it has to be written in scientific notation. But I love my kids, and my favorite part of the day as a whole is when I tuck them in and turn off the lights. It’s comforting to me to see the trust and the carefree looks on their faces. I sometimes wish I could have that look again, the look that the kids have just before they drop off to sleep, the look that tells me that they know nothing of the world and its troubles, that they care nothing for careers and finances, of disasters and calamities, that they trust that all will be well until the morning. I envy them that.
After the kids are in bed, I have a few minutes to do whatever I can to keep my affairs in order before I go to bed. I usually iron a shirt for the next day, make sure all my clothes are in order, and then write a few lines in my journal or on this blog.
That is my day. My wife and I recently had a conversation about who is interesting among the people we know. We also wondered whether others think that we are interesting. We decided that they probably don’t, because we probably aren’t very interesting. I certainly don’t feel interesting. My life, as I’ve just described it, goes about the same way every day. There’s nothing of interest in it to anyone else. Even to me, the only interesting parts are the feelings I have about things, the worries I have, the curiosities, the wondering about things I know nothing about. That’s what makes me up. I’ve traveled, I’ve lived, I’ve loved, I’ve experienced, there are lots of things that make up the fabric of my past, but what composes me now are not those bits of history, but the things of the present that I feel and want to know.
But I don’t know. Sometimes life feels so full, but other times so empty. I sometimes feel like I don’t know anymore. Like I’m just an unmanned ship adrift at sea. I sometimes wonder, as Vger did, “Is this all that I am, is there nothing more?” I find myself wondering about the meaning of things, the purposes. I suppose that’s the way everyone feels. We all want to know who we are~
That statement struck me, and I’ve been thinking about it over the past week. I think I knew who I was well before 25. At 16 I knew exactly who I was. Since that time, however, and especially over the last 12 years, I’ve been forgetting who I am. It’s not supposed to work like that. You’re supposed to learn more about yourself, figure yourself out, and eventually come to some ultimate conclusions about who you are. You aren’t supposed to figure it all out and then go backwards.
So here I am, at age 33, trying to figure out who I am again. Since I (along with the rest of humanity) don’t know how to do that, I’m going to have to take some stabs in the dark. Well, that’s actually not quite true. I know how I figured it out the first time, but I can’t do it that way again. I’m going to leave that statement there without explaining it any more.
This is me. I’ve been through my daily routine before on this blog, but here it is again. I’m still trying to find the meaning in it. I feel like there’s got to be something more to it than what’s on the surface of the words.
My alarm goes off in the morning at 5:50 a.m. I usually hit the snooze button once or twice and get out of bed between 6:10 and 6:15. I shower and shave. I only recently started shaving regularly. Before that, I shaved as little as possible, because I kind of liked the way I looked with stubble. But my wife doesn’t go for stubble, and I’m trying to accommodate her.
All of my clothes are in the same place in my closet. I used to have some in the closet and some in the dresser (which is out in the middle of the bedroom), but I eventually realized that I was wasting time going back and forth from the closet to the dresser to get dressed. Plus it’s quieter to get dressed entirely in the closet, since we have a walk-in closet. My wife and kids are still asleep while I’m getting dressed, so getting dressed in the closet reduces the chance that I will wake them up.
It’s springtime now. It’s chilly in the mornings, but gets warmer in the afternoons. So I wear jeans, button up shirts, and a blazer style jacket that my wife gave me for Christmas about 6 years ago, the Christmas after we got married. We had seen it in the JC Penney, and I had really liked it. She knew I wanted it, so she got it for me and surprised me. She’s very good with gifts. I don’t think she’s ever given me something that I just didn’t like.
I walk to the bus stop and take the bus to work most mornings, so I take some things with me to do on the bus. I have an iPod Nano and AT noise-cancelling headphones that I use during the walk to the bus stop. I used to listen to music. Then I switched to podcasts. I would listen to “Tech News Today” and the BBC World Service. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been listening to the Old Testament podcast, which is a podcast of a gentleman with a British accent reading the King James version of the Old Testament. I’ve learned by listening to this that people have always been the same. We may have different customs, different normative behaviors, different languages, etc. but deep down we’re all the same. We all live for the same things. We all worry about the same things. There’s something about that sameness that’s comforting to me. It makes me feel like I can relate to people.
Once I get on the bus, I read the Book of Mormon on the way to work. I have the LDS Gospel Library app on my iPad, which lets me annotate as I read. I’ve never been one to mark my scriptures with colored pencils, as many like to do, but I don’t mind writing notes in the Gospel Library app. It’s a good way to create a journal of the thoughts and experiences I have as I read the scriptures. And there’s a lot more room to write in the app than there is in the margins of leather-bound scriptures.
I get off the bus near the Provo bakery. I walk by on the way to my office and take a deep breath. Smelling the fresh bread and doughnuts as I walk by is, in all honesty, nearly as good as eating the fresh bread and doughnuts, and you don’t have to spend any money to breathe. I think that few seconds when I catch the smell of the bakery might be my favorite part of the work day.
I then get to my office at the historic Utah County Courthouse. I may have described it before. It is a magnificent old building. My office is nice, with high ceilings, thick moldings everywhere, and solid wood doors. I’ve decorated my office with things from my musical past: amps, keyboards, guitars, mixers, speakers, music books, band posters, etc. Things that I used to love, but don’t use anymore since I’ve given up music.
I work at my job all day. It’s terribly interesting to tell the truth, but I can’t talk about that part of my life. I’m obligated not to by the laws of the land, by ethical rules, and by plain old common good manners. So I won’t go into that here.
When work is over, I ride home on the bus. On the way home I read novels. Right now, I’m reading Anna Karenina. I’m intrigued most of all by Levin. He’s got such an interesting conflict within himself, leading a life of position and productivity (he’s a wealthy farm owner) but longing for a life of simple good labor such as he sees the peasants around him leading. It’s a conflict similar to the one I often feel within myself. Tolstoy is quite good at getting to the meaningful bits inside of peoples’ personalities. I’ve been enjoying this book very much.
If smelling the bakery is not my favorite part of the work day, the walk home from the bus stop is. The weather has been very good this spring, and it’s a simple pleasure to walk home in it, carrying my little satchel and listening to the Old Testament, watching the people in my neighborhood as I make my way to my house. I want to get to know them better. I need to get to that soon.
When I get home, we have family dinner. After that, I’m in charge of putting the kids to bed. It’s a delightful job, even though I often lose my temper with the kids, whose attention span is so short it has to be written in scientific notation. But I love my kids, and my favorite part of the day as a whole is when I tuck them in and turn off the lights. It’s comforting to me to see the trust and the carefree looks on their faces. I sometimes wish I could have that look again, the look that the kids have just before they drop off to sleep, the look that tells me that they know nothing of the world and its troubles, that they care nothing for careers and finances, of disasters and calamities, that they trust that all will be well until the morning. I envy them that.
After the kids are in bed, I have a few minutes to do whatever I can to keep my affairs in order before I go to bed. I usually iron a shirt for the next day, make sure all my clothes are in order, and then write a few lines in my journal or on this blog.
That is my day. My wife and I recently had a conversation about who is interesting among the people we know. We also wondered whether others think that we are interesting. We decided that they probably don’t, because we probably aren’t very interesting. I certainly don’t feel interesting. My life, as I’ve just described it, goes about the same way every day. There’s nothing of interest in it to anyone else. Even to me, the only interesting parts are the feelings I have about things, the worries I have, the curiosities, the wondering about things I know nothing about. That’s what makes me up. I’ve traveled, I’ve lived, I’ve loved, I’ve experienced, there are lots of things that make up the fabric of my past, but what composes me now are not those bits of history, but the things of the present that I feel and want to know.
But I don’t know. Sometimes life feels so full, but other times so empty. I sometimes feel like I don’t know anymore. Like I’m just an unmanned ship adrift at sea. I sometimes wonder, as Vger did, “Is this all that I am, is there nothing more?” I find myself wondering about the meaning of things, the purposes. I suppose that’s the way everyone feels. We all want to know who we are~
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
For Its Own Sake
I’m writing tonight for the sake of writing’s sake. As I’ve said before, that’s the beauty of this blog. Since no one knows about it, no one reads it, and I have the freedom to say whatever I want however I want to say it.
Yesterday I was reading the first few verses of Leviticus 26. These are some of the most beautiful verses in all scripture. In these verses, the Lord promises Israel that if they will keep his commandments, he will draw near to them, will bless them, and will bring them peace. This is what I want in my life. This is why I try to keep the Lord’s commandments. I want the things he promises in those verses. I was so touched last night by what I read that I tried my hand at writing a Psalm last night. I’m afraid I’m not very familiar with the rules of usage in King James English, so some of what I wrote sounded awkward, but I was pleased with the end result. It’s written in my personal journal.
I’d like to start working on my novel again. I had made significant progress last year, but the story got away from me and I stopped. The story is about a man named Aron who is immortal, and who is so old that he can’t remember anything about his youth, where he came from, how he came to be. He lives among other immortals like him, who suffer from similar memory problems.
What Aron and the other immortals (called the Nephesh after the Hebrew word for “life” or “soul”) do know is that they have a law among them that no one is to cross the Mavet desert, which lies to the west of the Nephesh city. The tradition among them is that the Admon Adaia temple is across the desert. Admon Adaia was a burying place for a race of mortals called the Anash (after the Hebrew word for weak, sick, or frail). This temple and the death that it covers are an abomination to the Nephesh, and the source of their greatest fear.
Nevertheless, Aron’s curiosity overcomes him, and he chooses to cross the Mavet, leaving behind his friends. As he crosses the Mavet, Aron comes in contact with a group of outcasts called Zarath (after the Hebrew word for sowing seed or conceiving), a group of Nephesh who are outcast because they have had children, which is also in contravention of the law of the immortals. Aron befriends the Zarath, but finds that, like the Nephesh, they are obsessed with producing Gehah, a drug which is consumed by the Nephesh in an attempt to find escape from their meaningless lives spent seeking mostly pleasure.
This is where I lose the story. I know that Aron reaches Admon Adaia, and finds that there is writing on the walls of the temple which foretells that he will bring death to the Nephesh. I know that Aron returns to the city of the Nephesh, and finds that Katherine, his best friend, is pregnant and in danger of being cast out and becoming Zarath. I know that Aron returns to the temple followed by the Nephesh, who seek to destroy him, and that he stands on the steps of Admon Adaia and tells the Nephesh that they will die, that their immortality is coming to an end.
I know that Aron must enter Admon Adaia through the western door to bring death to the Nephesh. I know that Aron shrinks from this responsibility because he wants to marry Katherine, but that he ultimately gives her to another so that he can fulfill his destiny. I know that when he enters Admon Adaia he finds a new place and watches Katherine’s future unfold in a river of water that runs through the temple. And I know that is where the story ends.
But I can’t seem to make the dots connect right. Every time I’ve tried to write down this story, something goes wrong. There aren’t enough reasons for things to happen. I feel like I’m trying to get to the climax too quickly without developing the characters enough for the reader to care anything about them. And I feel like I don’t know how to develop the characters enough for the reader to care anything about them.
I think I need a writing intervention. Anyone that can help~
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Thinking About Yesterday
I’m just a beginning writer. I write a lot, to be sure, about 50 pages a week. But most of that is stuff for the courts, and even though it’s very important -- sometimes life-changing -- there’s an element of enjoyment lacking in that kind of writing.
For enjoyment I write a personal journal, this blog, and a few poems here and there. I’ve probably finished about a hundred poems over the last fourteen years. So not very much. But even though I’m not very good with a pen, I can’t leave it alone.
Writing is like running for exercise. Running is the most popular way to exercise because it’s the cheapest and easiest. It doesn’t require a ball, bat, hoop or goal. It doesn’t require expensive equipment or permits, and you don’t have to go anywhere special to do it. It doesn’t require any particular technique if you’re just doing it for fun. And the health benefits of running are just about as good as those of any other kind of exercise.
It’s the same with writing. It doesn’t require any unique paraphernalia, just a paper and pen, or a laptop if you have a little bit of extra money (which thankfully I do). And if you’re just doing it for fun, without caring whether your product is good or bad, you can be free to use any words you like in any order to say anything. That’s the beauty of writing.
I had a fun email exchange with an old friend today that made me think: Am I ever going to know anyone as well as I do those I grew up with? There are friends that I haven’t seen in years who I comprehend just as well now as I did in the days when we were close. Even though we communicate infrequently, I’m still able to accurately imagine their thoughts, feelings, and reactions.
And yet there are many that I have interacted with daily for the past several years and still cannot read. I don’t get them. And it seems like I’ve somehow lost the ability to understand new people at any level underneath the surface. Is it because being an adult requires more formality in relationships? Or do I just not care to get to know anyone anymore? Or is it something else? This is troubling to me~
For enjoyment I write a personal journal, this blog, and a few poems here and there. I’ve probably finished about a hundred poems over the last fourteen years. So not very much. But even though I’m not very good with a pen, I can’t leave it alone.
Writing is like running for exercise. Running is the most popular way to exercise because it’s the cheapest and easiest. It doesn’t require a ball, bat, hoop or goal. It doesn’t require expensive equipment or permits, and you don’t have to go anywhere special to do it. It doesn’t require any particular technique if you’re just doing it for fun. And the health benefits of running are just about as good as those of any other kind of exercise.
It’s the same with writing. It doesn’t require any unique paraphernalia, just a paper and pen, or a laptop if you have a little bit of extra money (which thankfully I do). And if you’re just doing it for fun, without caring whether your product is good or bad, you can be free to use any words you like in any order to say anything. That’s the beauty of writing.
I had a fun email exchange with an old friend today that made me think: Am I ever going to know anyone as well as I do those I grew up with? There are friends that I haven’t seen in years who I comprehend just as well now as I did in the days when we were close. Even though we communicate infrequently, I’m still able to accurately imagine their thoughts, feelings, and reactions.
And yet there are many that I have interacted with daily for the past several years and still cannot read. I don’t get them. And it seems like I’ve somehow lost the ability to understand new people at any level underneath the surface. Is it because being an adult requires more formality in relationships? Or do I just not care to get to know anyone anymore? Or is it something else? This is troubling to me~
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