Educated

Read two memoirs, Educated by Tara Westover and Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance.

Both were good for different reasons and both resonated with me for different reasons.

Educated was truly gripping and I say this as someone who feels rarely gripped. [Insert joke]

Hillbilly was funny at times and the cursing felt familiar. Very fucking familiar [Joke Inserted]

As I bear down on my fiftieth birthday, feeling farther away from self-actualization than in my thirties and early forties, the mental illness and the addiction and family dysfunction highlighted in both memoirs resonated.

As did the education both received and how both Vance and Westover scream that it changed them. As mine changed me.

Consider these bits from my Stylistics Doubling assignment:

Jimmy Fallon: Tell us your life story.

Me: There isn’t much to tell. It’s a miracle I earned a college degree and it’s an even bigger miracle I earned a master’s degree. Can there be degrees of miracles?

Jimmy Fallon:
Me: So to make a long story short I work, parent, husband, and think about ranking miracles. I can’t believe, practically incredulous, I’m not back in Barberton, Ohio, drunk, working some soul-killing manufacturing gig, living in a double wide trailer, awaiting a triple bypass, after a fourth divorce. But enough about me, tell me your miracle.

Life story = biography = picture of life. My life. Is my life worthy of a picture? Worthy of a picture, others might care about? What have I done to warrant attention? To warrant interest in my life from dirt-poor Ohio kid with alcoholism in his genes, to married to an Ivy Leaguer, master’s degree educated, upper middle class, Rhode Island parent of three, still with alcoholism in his genes? You see any picture of life requires the past...the past that weighs like an anvil on your chest...All. Life. Long. No one escapes their past. Logicians, of which I count myself, don’t like to use “none” or “all” because “one” collapses the argument. But everyone has a past because they have a present. If you don’t believe me, and I don’t blame you for not, consider this line from Being There: “A man’s past cripples him. His background turns into a swamp and invites criticism.” So it seems I’m crippled. And in a swamp. Not a great combo. And for the trifecta I have you there, reading this, criticizing. Probably murmuring something about metafiction and how cheap and lazy it is. Great.

I only escaped Barberton and addiction and a crippling past, with EDUCATION. 

Now if Bernie Sanders would just get rid of my student loan debt I could, you know, inch closer to self-actualization…and a new car. 

Gifts Not Given

A passage from Mockingbird by Walter Tevis, 1980.

But had he been able to produce more Make Nines he would have made certain they would come into the world without the ability to feel. And with the ability to die. With the gift of death.

My children were recently baptized. I did not participate in the baptism as I am not a christian.

What does baptism have to do with the passage above?

Christians never die.

Coping Saws

I keep telling myself I’m going to die.

But not for the reason or reasons you might think.

I tell myself I’m going to die because its the truth. I dig the truth.

Who has two thumbs and loves the truth? This guy [thumbs pointed at me]. 

I also keep telling myself that I’m going to die to get perspective. Knowing I’m going to die makes the two hour commute a little easier ya know.  Some things truly are small stuff and don’t need sweated (can sweated be past tense?) so letting go of the tension from jerk-offs (massholes they call them in the Bay State) that don’t abide traffic laws, makes good sense. So does the occasional mishap at work, or gaining a few extra pounds, or fight with the wife, or when you get the stink eye from other parents at the soccer game because you are being a little too, ahem, loud on the sideline. All small schtuff in the big scheme o’ things. And nothing sets matters to scale better than imagining your death. You know, how not living -at all- minimizes all the trivial/minor/ho-hum/molehill “problems” of life.  

Which begs the questions…

But wait, does it really beg the question? Maybe it slightly pleads or strongly encourages the question.

I digress, which begs the question: what are the problems that don’t benefit from imagining your death? Don’t sweat the small stuff I got, but for heaven’s sake, can someone tell me the big stuff I do need to sweat? Certainly the it’s all small stuff, while fun for a t-shirt or bumper sticker, is inane at best and dangerous at worst.

I mean to play devil’s advocate a tad: Because the masshole going 88 mph on 195 east while creeping into your lane is taking your life into his me-machine clutching hands while his oblivious-to-you eyes are texting out 

tom brady is the goat bro

Failing to get angry (sweating) about this -the possibility of death via lack of concern from Pat Patriot driving like a masshole -shows a disregard for your own life on a par with suicide. Does it not?

In the parlance of our time, distracted drivers are, kind of a big deal, because they take your life and death into their me-machine clutching hands and distracted eyes. This is certainly not small stuff, right?

Someone tell me which is which. Someone tell me what I should get fired up, angry, irate, upset about because I honestly don’t know anymore. Imagining my death cannot be a sustainable coping mechanism...if it means not caring a hoot about the guy stabbing me in the throat with a chinese throwing star or inserting a civil war era, rusty sabre through my carotid artery...right?

But how to cope with all of this, this, or these, people, and all the nasty, horrible stuff they do, commit, violate? Reminds me of the George Carlin question about exactly how humans have passed chickens in goodness. Consider that chickens don’t torture their own kind, only humans do that. Neato.

Still, George Carlin aside, how to cope?

How. To. Cope?

Small stuff ends where….worrisome stuff begins…?

I know it’s possible. Look at the life of Nelson Mandela for perspective. But I can’t get there when I need to get there. I can’t get there when I give a shit about something. When I feel mistreated or abused I can’t just tell myself that others are mistreated and abused, and sometimes far worse...can I? How would that mechanism work in the ole Kantian categorical imperative?

What if everyone just said “someone has/had it worse” every time some injustice was committed against them?

Seems like a recipe for disaster; seems like the recipe we’ve been following - maybe.

I don’t know man. Maybe I need a new paradigm? A coping paradigm. Current shit isn’t working.

(notice how Clooney pronounced it para-dine)

How To Talk To Your Children About Burning In Hell

Parents must, sometimes, have uncomfortable but necessary conversations with their kids. The birds and the bees come to mind. Often, the death of a family member can lead to a very real conversation about the d word: death. And its very discomforting corollary: burning in hell.

Thankfully, there are many, many resources out there to help you broach this topic with your children.

Youtuber and certain to burn in hell himself, Yves Gilvelvetstein has a series of instructional videos to help parents explain just what eternal damnation will be like. Yves is matter-of-fact, poignant, and even funny when it comes to covering the basics and more nuanced details of residence for the damned. With a following of over 12k and video views over 12 million, Yves has something to help most, if not all, parents.

Author and illustrator Brooke Bubez-Leeb has published a darling 3-book series, How Are You Hell? Nice To Meet Ya, aimed for early readers to tweeners that need the down-low on the down under (no offense Australia). Amazing illustrations of tortured souls in excruciating anguish alongside delightful, didactic prose will help even the most stunned children understand what hell has to offer. Parents rave about this series and many have commented that they feel very comfortable just giving these books to their offspring, knowing that the underworld won’t seem overwhelming.

Developmental psychologist Erlik Teufel has teamed up with theologian Luci Mephisto to offer a for credit online course entitled Hell: Everything We Need To Know. With videotaped lectures and weekly quizzes, parents can rest easy knowing that not only will they be prepped for explaining all aspects of hell to their children, they will also be earning college credit. And it is a complete boon knowing that it can all be done in just 5 weeks, asynchronously, from the living room sofa after the kids have gone to bed.

Last but certainly not least, there is Hell for Dummies from your local library.

“What’s an illusion Dad?”

Mom decided she wanted to go for a picnic. She rounded us up and told dad to go to the market to get some lunch meat. We drove out to North park. Mom unloaded the picnic basket as we waited at the table.

“Joseph!”

Whenever my mom called dad Joseph instead of Joe or Joey we knew the shit was about to hit the fan. We grew tense.
“Joseph,” she said again as she opened she paper surrounding the lunch meat. “What the hell kind of lunch meat did you get.”

We looked at each other as mom glared at dad then we looked back at dad.

“This lunch meat is all brown!”

Another glare-down and we didn’t dare move; watching mom stink-eye dad as he eyed us.

“Babe, you still got your sunglasses on.”

This story was told to me at a luncheon following a funeral for my wife’s grandmother. She was 98 years young. It was the best, most profound part over the two days of calling hours and a catholic funeral.

You see at this catholic funeral the priest used great grammy’s death to parlay her devout catholicism as more reason to follow jesus, believe in jesus, live a life in and through jesus, so you (we) can be reunited with jesus upon our death.

Mmm, hmm. They call it proselytising.

You probably think nothing of this.

But as I struggle, excruciatingly, with the baptism of my children, I can’t help but think of something else the priest mentioned at the funeral.

I picked up on it while no one else did because I studied Leibniz.

“god knew what Helen was going to do from the moment she was born.”

Actually father, god knew what Helen was going to do from the moment of creation, not just her creation.

Please see Leibniz and the Principle of Pre-Established Harmony. From the moment of creation god knew what every monad would do. Every. Monad. For eternity.

Mmm, hmm. We call it foreknowledge. No biggie right. But if I told you I was god and I knew what you were going to do would you feel like you had a choice?

What the hell does all this have to do with suffering the thought of baptism?

Baptism happens early so that there is not so much time to think, to ask certain, cutting questions about just how things work.

I seem to notice this much more than all my catholic in-laws but the words just seem to mindlessly flow by them at the xmass masses and baptisms and weddings and I don’t think it is because I’m the atheist in the room; I think it is because they have been hearing it from day one. It would be like questioning the alphabet.

Mmm, hmm. We call it indoctrination. And if you don’t start early the effects may not hold.

And I worry about how this will play out for my children. I want them to fearless to question and voracious for truth.

“How, what if I...but why not just...to whom, for whom…?

Can they get that after, well, you know....psst!... indoctrination?

Indoctrination is clothed in ritual. And ritual is the illusion of permanence.

“What’s an illusion Dad?”

“Christianity.”

Yeah maybe I’m full of shit but I do know this, not much of Helen’s humanity was mentioned at that funeral. Not much at all.

I liked Helen. She was always nice to me and we both liked to do crosswords and baseball. I don’t think that had anything to do with the rosary or jesus.

“You still got your sunglasses on.”

Take em off and see the light.      

The 505 - Last Assignment

ENL 505 - Stylistics

Reflection On Style Assignment

Style is the way a person engages and reflects the world. This is my understanding as of mid-February 2019.
Or maybe...style is better understood as how one perceives THE world but/then reflects THEIR world. Like digestion, what goes in is NOT what comes out. An “objective” world is sensed but a subjective world reflected. Whittle this down to literary style and we might come to the consensus that literary style is the process by which a writer (and ergo a reader) engages the world and reflects that world in or through the act of writing (and ergo reading).
But, as Ben Yagoda painfully points (alliteration) out: style IS the person. Style is not a person/attitude/culture/genetic/geographic/generation neutral proposition. So you’ll (shift to 2nd person) have to accept that you’ll never be Joshua Ferris or George Saunders or Toni Morrison or Tim Kreider but deep down in places you don’t like to talk about at cocktail parties, you knew this. Oh you knew it all right. You, of all people, rail against the mundacity (neologism [mundane+audacity=mundacity]) of tautological utterings practically day in and day out (“it is what it is”) as the most boring, offensive offerings of words for the sake of words. And there is nothing as tautologous as you not being someone you aren’t. No, what you don’t like about style being the person, is the person you are.
And nothing, NUH-theeng, has changed over the course of 14 weeks of learning about style. Should it have? Maybe (hypophora). What really changed is that I’ve learned, even more concretely, I am more still incapable of change. And this is dreadful. Depressing, truly (anastrophe). So very awful. And so it goes.

Dude: “What was that?”
Bro: “What?”
Dude: “What do you mean what?”
Bro: “What do YOU mean what? From earlier, ‘what.’”

Interlocutor Emeritus: Enough! We all heard it you dopes! It’s obvious. Shannon is waxing on again about facticity. He’s got a complex or some shit.

You are stuck with you and you can’t change. Not a bit. Human all too human as Nietzsche said...but

You. Can. Write about it.

Engage the world and reflect that engagement WITH WORDS on the damn page. String sentences together and have end-focus and throw in some rhetorical figures and learn grammar rules so that you can bend em’ and try the upper, middle, and low styles and use Latinate and be colloquial and imitate the authorial silence of Capote or try your best for some powerful status details a la Didion (a lone, dusty, plastic poinsettia adorned his desk - no pictures of children dressed in Halloween costumes) and don’t you dare argue - instead dramatize, the way Mailer would and don’t forget to try to Tom Wolfe-it and just throw everything against the page and see what sticks...but you’ve got to, must, put SOMETHING on the page.
You know you are special, right? You know that spatio-temporally you are unique in all the universe and yet you are going to NOT write for fear of, fear of what? Criticism? Did I mention that you have a point of view unrepeatable in space/time? I did (hypophora). What are you waiting for?
Style be damned!
Humanity be damned!
Inability cursed, brainpower (or lack thereof) ba!
Forget ALL that.
Do I have to quote that puke-green skinned, Dagobah swamp residing, jangly-toothed Jedi, Yoda and tell you that you must unlearn what you have learned?
Style is the person but your fallacy is thinking only the styles of others matters. Maybe write till you do matter or maybe write because writing matters...to you.

Maybe when we talk about style we are really talking about what matters to you.
I could be wrong and my opinion may not be worth a hill of beans in this crazy world but I do have a question. Tis a simple one:

What matters to you?

Your style is what you care about, what you value, what...matters to you; if you are afraid of what others think about what matters to you, it doesn’t REALLY matter to you and you aren’t done learning your values. No sin there. And good news, you can write about it.

What are you waiting for?
Either way, write. Right?

(Psst! I lied about tautologies. I fucking love tautologies. Not really. But…)

***

Word Count: 716

Please compose a brief (500-750) word reflection on this semester and your understanding of style, fourteen weeks later.

The 505 - Haikubes

12 Sentence Piece from Haikubes in ENL 505

“Fortune tellers are bullshit,” he said.
“They may be,” she retorted, “but I might remind you that your partner disagrees.”
He wasn’t ready for this and it stuck inside his cranium like an al dente noodle.
“Yeah well, suckers are born every minute and suckers partner up every minute.”
“Smart,” she said. “Make a mountain from a molehill and a war from a woe-is-me.”
“It’s the principle of the thing,” he yelled.
“Man, do you hear yourself? Your lips keep smacking, mistake after mistake after mistake. Man, woman, child, your stubbornness knows no bounds. You should accentuate the positives of your girl, eliminate the negatives. That’s what a man does.”

“What a man does?” he yelled. Do me a favor, look up ‘man’ in the dictionary.”