24 Hours

Know how I know this isn't a safe neighborhood? There are over 20,000 students here, and there's not one all-night diner or cafe. Whereas necessity drove me and many others to the gas station or Wal-Mart for places to talk during my undergraduate years, that trend hasn't spread to the Dunkin' Donuts that stays open 24 hours here. I'll pass on hanging out with the locals who hang out at Dunkin' Donuts at 2:00 in the morning.

Right?

Let me start this by saying I'm not aware that anyone who reads this blog is guilty of doing the thing I'm about to talk about, so I'm not trying to call you out.

Imagine a person giving the following explanation to you. Imagine that this is just a normal person, not good, not bad, not pretty, not ugly. And don't pay attention to the inane content. "Well, I mean, the story is clearly about the resolution of the Oedipal crisis, right? Cortazar obviously intended that as a surface reading." What you may have skipped over but has gone past irritating and onto hilarious for me, is the little word, "right."

"Right?" is not a useful thing to say. Not when you're explaining something, not when you're describing something, not saying anything at all. It does not add anything to an explanation, and it is usually just an attempt on behalf of the speaker to cover all their bases so they don't look stupid in the event they're wrong, or more likely, it's an attempt to make them look smarter and make you look stupid in the midst of a discussion. When a person says "Right?" in this way, the implication is either 1) that what the person is saying is incredibly obvious and will not be disputed, in which case it's a superfluous rhetorical device that still sounds patronizing, or 2) that what the person is saying is not at all obvious, but they're trying to make it sound like it is so that if you disagree, you look like an idiot, because their tone already made it clear that what they were saying is obvious.

Everyone around here does this, and I once caught myself doing it and was horrified and apologized to the person immediately. I have probably done this more often than I'm aware of, since it's in the air here, and to those who have spoken to me recently, my sincerest apologies. But I will try my best to avoid it, no matter how many professors and students do it. The only time I will do it (the only time anyone should do it) is if I feel like I'm going crazy. If, for example, I suspect that there might be a man floating outside my fourth-floor window, I might turn to the person next to me and say, "That's not a man floating outside my window, right?" In that case, I would be asking a genuine question which required an assuring answer. Or it might even be okay if I needed assurance in other areas of my life (e.g. "I don't smell bad, right?"). But that is certainly the exception, not the rule.

Obviously, it's a play for confidence that hardly anyone in graduate school actually has, but the lack of self-awareness here is slightly disturbing.

Personal DNA

If you're into this sort of thing, I thought this personality test was fun to take and had interesting results. My results are in that pill-shaped thing to the right; if you mouse over the colors, it says what they represent.

I Need Proof

If you ever needed proof, here it is.

Panic! at the University

Not funny, I know.

So I just read some huge chunks of Kant's Third Critique, which talks about making aesthetic and teleological judgments. I think I actually understood it, which is great.

But now I can't remember what you're supposed to say about philosophy. When you write about books and movies, you talk about the things that are in them; there's no right or wrong. As one of my professors often says (and I think I will be saying or thinking this for the rest of my life), "Henry James said, 'In the arts, feeling is always meaning.'" And even if that's not true, just pick any number of critical perspectives and go at the text, and it works out.

Philosophy is totally different, though. I'm not sure I have intelligent questions about it. Kant seems right to me (as he does to everybody at this university), and even if he didn't, who am I to think I could come up with a decent argument against him. I guess I'll just try to relate it to Goethe somehow, which is what the class is about, anyway...

Guts

So that professor, the one who pretty much humiliated that girl? Well, I went to talk to him today. No, not about that. I finally got up the nerve not only to answer a question during class - he had prefaced his question by saying there was no wrong answer - but to ask him a "serious" question afterwards. And guess what? He was extremely nice. After answering my questions, he asked me about why I'm here, my background, where I think I'm heading. And it wasn't phrased in the way that so many people around here phrase things, which always implies, "Are you really supposed to be here?" He even knew my undergrad university and was able to commiserate about how limiting a school like that can be.

But of course, now that I'm looking back, I'm incredibly anxious. Did I say something stupid and not even realize it? Was he just humoring me the whole time? He seemed really interested in talking to me. He encouraged conversation when he could have ended it any time. It wasn't even during his office hours. I wish I could just be content, knowing that we had a decent conversation, and that I can feel free to talk to him in the future.

Anyway, it felt like writing these thoughts out might help, and maybe it has.

Please Stop

This is an open letter to everyone who lives in Chicago.

Dear Chicago drivers,

Do you really think that the proper way to exit an alley, particularly the one out my bedroom window, is to honk and just keep going? Any time of night or day, you really believe this is the rule? Let me set the record straight: There has never existed and will never exist a rule for driving which says this. Stop. Look both ways for pedestrians. Then go.

Please, please, please stop honking. Please? I tried to write to my alderman, but she said all they can do is put up a speed-limit sign, that stop signs aren't allowed in alleys. So there, I tried to be nice about it, I tried the legal route, but I might have to start going crazy on your asses.

Would it help if I passed out fliers and put them on all your cars? Would it help if I smashed your windshield, like some crazy person did to the car sitting out in front of my building that's been parked three-quarters of a car-length away from the bus stop zone? If I asked nicely, would you stop? If I held up a sign all day saying "Please don't honk any more" would consider it or just try to run me over?

I don't have money to bribe you and I won't have sex with you to make you stop, but I'd be willing to do some things. Just ask.

Love,

Primer & Get Well Soon

Primer
I'm sure this film won first place at a university film festival somewhere, but it has no business being on Netflix. If you can't understand their version of time travel from the voiceover explanations, you certainly won't get any help from what's happening on screen. These college kids had a decent idea for a movie, but the terrible acting, mediocre dialog and obviously low budget didn't add up to anything worth watching.

Get Well Soon
You should only see this movie if you're a big Vincent Gallo fan, and I happen to be one of those lucky few. There are actually some pretty funny moments, thanks to him, but the rest of the film is full of cheesy acting and a pretty terrible plot. And who would ever believe Courtney Cox and Vincent Gallo as a couple?

Sharks

You know how I know this is a cut-throat program? The other day in class - and this is a lecture with around 150 people in it, including every person in my program, the two directors of the program, and our preceptors (PhD students who lead our discussion groups) - we were talking about a play we had all gone to see, and the lecturer asked something along the lines of, "What do you think the director was trying to do by staging the play in such a way that it blurred the lines between the time in which it was written and present-day?" A woman raised her hand and responded something like this: "I think she was trying to make us realize the importance and relevance of the play for a modern audience, to help us understand that the themes apply to our culture, not just that of Roman times."

Okay, now, I know enough not to give this response. It's the easy response to "Why are the arts important?" But it could just as easily have been a question to which I didn't know the answer, and thought I did. This woman could have been me.

The lecturer said, smiling, "Well, um, any time someone makes a comment like that I - like Nietzsche said - I reach for my gun," and he made the blowing-my-brains-out gesture. But that wasn't what made me realize that no one here cares about any other person's success or well being. It was this: Almost everyone in the lecture hall laughed. I could feel humiliation burning my tear ducts and my temples, turning my face red. I can't imagine that that did anything less than break that woman's spirit. I watched her for the rest of the class, and she kept shaking her head at what he was saying, with a sneer on her face, and making comments to the person sitting next to her, loud enough so that I could hear. Things like, "That's not what he said before."

I'm just going to keep my head down, write my papers, and only raise my hand if I'm sure I know the answer.

What are YOU studying?

Why do I have to answer this question? When you're an undergrad, it's enough to simply state your major. You don't have to have some lifelong purpose behind it. You don't have to have traveled extensively in Europe to be interested in European literature, and you don't have to have grown up with a mathematician for a father to do game theory. Isn't it enough that I'm here? That I'm interested in what I'm studying and that I'm trying my best to understand what we're talking about?

The question, "Why are you taking that class?" only means "Why do you think you're good enough to be here?" I mentioned I might be interested in literature of the Americas, and someone asked me, "Oh, well, where have you traveled then?" Like it's a prerequisite to read something to have actually been in the place from which it originated.

Fucking bullshit people.

Great Success!

So somehow, I must have faked my way through Lacan. Fools, you think he's actually saying something! You think I think he's saying something! Ha!

Well, one presentation down, seven papers left to write over the next nine weeks. Here's hoping.

Naomi Klein

So on Friday night, I went to see Naomi Klein speak at a little event here. You might have read her book, No Logo, a few years ago, and now she has a new book out. Anyway, I went in thinking it would be kind of propagandist, and wasn't heartened when there were war protesters handing out tons of fliers outside the event when I walked in.

Her whole thesis is just really interesting, though. Maybe it's not her idea, but she's calling this "new economy" which seems to be thriving on natural disasters and terrorism, "disaster capitalism." As opposed to the dot-com capitalism of the 90s, where rich equals flashy, this capitalism is secretive, trying to hide their wealth. And we're not doing anything about it because we don't know about it because they're good at hiding it. She's proposing that the only way to overcome the "shocks" (her book is The Shock Doctrine) we've sustained is to reclaim history, and by understanding it to have our eyes opened to what's going on now.

I'm always hesitant to read a book like that, since I know hardly anything about economics, and even less about history, politics and current events. I'd like to learn things for myself and then decide, instead of having someone present information in such a way as to render me unable to make my own conclusions. (Not that every history book doesn't have its own point of view.) But there's only so much time to read things, and if this idea makes sense on the face of it, and she had obviously done her research, I suppose it couldn't hurt to take this shortcut.

Do you think it's probably not a good idea to read a book like that for information, rather than to find out one person's opinion? Not that your opinions will stop me.

(By the way, an interesting tidbit. I was sitting there, waiting for this thing to start, and all of a sudden there's this really tall guy blocking the light near me. I look up, and it's John Cusack. I was like, weird, John Cusack's here. I guess he must be a big fan. (This thing was held in sort of a shithole.) Turns out he was there to introduce her, and they're friends. Funny.)

First Day

Pretty uneventful, with only one class. Basically just handed out the syllabus. Interesting, though, because this professor's thing is "close reading," which obviously I should have done plenty of as an undergrad, but haven't, at least not with a cogent argument driving it. Close reading will be a part of anything I do with literature, so even if it would be remedial for some people, I need to learn how to do it well.

(Close reading is what it sounds like, by the way. Just looking at the way a text is structured, what kinds of effects word choices and syntax have. He gave this whole spiel about Henry James's quote, "In the arts, feeling is always meaning." I don't quite see how you get around the fact that there really are misreadings of texts, but oh well. That's a different class.)

Lacan

Is this a real sentence?

This passion of the signifier thus becomes a new dimension of the human condition in that it is not only man who speaks, but in man and through man that it speaks; in that his nature becomes woven by effects in which the structure of the language of which he becomes the material can be refound; and in that the relation of speech thus resonates in him, beyond anything that could have been conceived of by the psychology of ideas.

I don't think you're allowed to have that many prepositional phrases in a row.

Two Pages

All I had to do was write two pages, and it didn't even need to have any of my own thoughts. Just explain someone else's argument. I didn't write my paper to be the most mediocre in the class, or the worst in the class, I wrote it to be the best in the class. Of course, when the top four papers were chosen (one of which I happened to think was the worst of all 13 papers, but no matter), mine was not among them.

What am I doing here if I can't even write a good two-page, ungraded, analytic-argument paper?

But I guess this is a good time to make these mistakes, before it really counts. But honestly, if I can't be the best at what I do, I don't even know why I would bother.

End self-deprecating post.

Orientation

Graduate-student orientation today. Since my program has been going for a week and a half now, we've already heard from most of these people. By around 3:30, people were in a line somewhere between 50-100 people long, waiting for free beer, soda and appetizers, after having had a free lunch of really good, substantial food only a couple of hours before.

Also read through my discussion group's papers today. I really can't tell if the ones that were bad just didn't try since it wasn't graded, or if there are really some idiots in this class.

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If you've read Dawkins's God Delusion, you already know that this is really funny, especially starting with #36: http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm

An Open Letter to My Fellow Students

I try to believe the best about people. I really do. But then, you go and spill coffee on the floor in the row behind me, and since it's stadium-style seating, the downward grade of the floor helps it find its way to my personal belongings. I try to believe you're not all cowardly, insecure, privileged douchebags, but then not only does the coffee-spiller not say anything but no one at all says anything to me about it, not even giving me the chance to pick up my bag and save the things inside from being ruined.

"You should feel lucky," you think, "that it didn't soak into your iPod, your phone, your wallet, coin purse and headphones, and only ruined one book instead of two. Your notes were spared, and isn't that the most important thing? Besides, now the smell of coffee will permeate your bag for years to come. And look, the girl in front of you has a Louis Vuitton, so it's probably best this way."

Thanks, fellow students, for letting my bag, my book and a jacket I've had for 12 years get soaked through with coffee. You now number among the many hundreds of reasons why I will never assume that anyone is ever going to be nice to me.

All my best,

Day Six

Registration this morning. Despite fears to the contrary, I got into all my classes (with the help of a signature from a professor). One on fiction in North, Central and South America, one on Goethe and one on interpretive theory. I can't wait for Monday.

The people in my program are as I expected. I've found a few people who seem like potential friends, but for the most part, the students are overly sure of themselves and think they know everything already. The first paper we wrote demonstrated pretty clearly that they don't. Some people have even started skipping class already, which I understand where undergrads are concerned, but really? Paying $35,000 to skip class?

At any rate, I love it already, and I think this year is going to be really challenging. Which I need.

Te Quiero

Just now, in the alley outside my building, a hispanic guy pulled up in his white Suburban, left the lights on, got out (minus a shirt) and blasted a Mexican love song, hoping that the woman on the fourth floor of the building across the street (that was the only apartment with the lights on) would come out and embrace his naked, sweaty torso.

He left the music going for about three minutes and, before the song was over, turned it down out of apparent embarrassment and resorted to honking the horn and shaking the chainlink gate to the complex. After about 60 seconds of walking back and forth from the horn to the gate, he finally got in his car, turned on the ignition and squealing his tires, gave up.

Oh wait, he's back...

...........................................................

This time, he put his flashers on, left the music off, honked the horn for about 15 seconds, walked once around the Suburban, then drove off. Don't give in, lady!

Year of the Dog

Molly Shannon starts this movie as an incredibly likable, lovable person. She's a people-pleaser, a pencil-pusher's assistant buying donuts out of her own pocket for the office staff. As a sister and aunt, she's generous and thoughtful even in the face of her brother's and sister-in-law's overprotective, neurotic behavior towards their children. She's alone and without real love and of course, she's a dog lover. Her dog really is very sweet.

What she clearly wants more than anything is a real relationship with a real person. Her brother has a life and family of his own and her best friend at work is occupied with keeping her soon-to-be-fiance in line. Incidentally, her brother's wife, played by Laura Dern, is great, constantly talking out of the side of her mouth, quietly, so as not to be understood by children, even when none are present. She and her husband play a great modern couple, preoccupied with being modern parents with typical modern needs.

This film is full of people I would normally look down on: a boss whose life seems to be composed of nothing more than his conviction of his own self-worth and consequent undervaluation by his managers, a best friend completely clueless about real love and relationships who is making the most obvious mistakes and the happy couple who seems oblivious to anything but the lice in their daughter's hair and the red stains - surely put there by the Benadryl with which their nanny is doping their infant son - on their nanny's shirt.

I love the first 20 minutes of this movie. Molly Shannon plays a character unlike any she's played before, with no quirks, no twitchy movements of the body or mouth, no wild enunciation or nervousness. But she quickly goes down a path of blind fanaticism and activism brought on by a truly traumatic event. At first, I found myself trying to identify with her need to plunge into something bigger than herself, to wallow in her grief and feelings of helplessness. After a while, though, it became more and more apparent that her new-found passion for activism wasn't filling the need she had in the first place.

I don't know that we're supposed to feel happy for Shannon in the end, pursuing the cause she has embraced, but I definitely don't. She has become yet another person on whom it's easy to look down, for becoming single-minded in her approach to life, in abandoning truly meaningful avenues of expression for superficial activism that seems for a while to fill a void. Instead, I became happy for the other people in her life who, though from the outside they appear to be shallow and full of meaningless stock phrases and attitudes with which to confront life, have true depth of feeling behind their facades.

Everyone has to find some way to deal with their lives, and if you work at a boring office job, you learn to put on the happy-office-person face and pretend to be upset by office politics and made wildly happy by small percentage raises. If you're a parent living in a suburb, you put on the face that signals ultimate concern over the mental health of your child and general interest in the lives of the normal people around you. But that doesn't mean you give up actual feeling underneath it all, and that you can't show real care and emotion when it matters most.

I don't recommend Year of the Dog because it starts feeling a little unbelievable after a while, but Molly Shannon really puts in a great performance and gives a glimpse into the heart of someone who feels unable to take hold of her life and make it what she wants it to be.

Freud

So now I live in Chicago. I'm not quite settled in, but I'm getting there. It's hard to become attached to a neighborhood where I don't know anyone and don't really have anything specific to do (and also having happened to encounter only rude or unhelpful people), so I've spent most of my days inside my apartment, reading Freud in preparation for my upcoming academic year, which is too bad, since the weather is so great and I only have one more week before classes start.

If I had come straight from undergraduate school (and hadn't had my experience overseas or any revelations about science or truth; in short, if I were still an evangelical Christian), I think I would have literally gone home before classes even started after reading Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. What I can't imagine is that this program is full of over a hundred other people who aren't offended by Freud's openness about sexuality, but I hope in this case that the unimaginable is true.

Freud was never even mentioned at my undergraduate university, let alone made an author worthy of study or consideration, and while I'm not yet convinced he is worthy of too much study, I'm at least grateful to become acquainted with his work. His ideas have obviously become an integral part of our culture, and it's nice to know the foundations on which so many people are working. Also, I like the idea of psychoanalytic criticism of literature, I think it's fun and interesting, but since I've also started to believe that the ways in which we behave are arbitrary and unnecessary, if biologically and causally determined, it's hard to take such criticism too seriously.

Now, I've never studied Freud and I'm extremely unsure of my scholarly ability, but what seems clear is that while his ideas may in many cases be helpful in describing the effects of modern culture on individual sexuality (and overall behavior), they don't do anything to answer the questions of whether things are this way of necessity; whether they are this way across all cultures, classes and races; or whether this is better or worse than other ways of behaving (as far as either individual happiness or the advancement of culture and society). Am I wrong, or does that seem to be the central problem? (Totally ignoring the fact that he had no empirical evidence or basis for his theories about the sexuality of children or women or that his focus on male genetalia as opposed to female seems to be a serious oversight.)

What I'm also troubled by is the pairing of these Freud books with Romeo & Juliet and The Canterbury Tales for my class. Sure, I do think there's something to analyzing these works in light of Freud's theories of psychological and sexual development, but I feel like it comes short of saying anything very important. It seems like it would be as helpful as analyzing literary texts in light of Christianity; that is to say, completely unhelpful and irrelevant for actually trying to get at a real understanding of something.

Help me figure this out.

Secretary

I recently wrote this to a friend of mine who saw my ranking of five stars out of five for the movie Secretary. She was surprised that I liked the movie because she felt it was an apologetic for abuse and dysfunction. I'm not sure that my response will convince her to like the movie, but I really think she has it wrong. I'd like to take more time to edit and flesh this out, but I've got better things to do. Finally.


Among other things I've done in the past several months, I took the time to watch Secretary again, which is one of my favorite movies. It's just so funny, and both Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader do such a great job with their characters. I was surprised by your reaction to the movie, especially by the idea that the movie is about abuse or even tries to promote it. Basically, I see the film as the story of two people who feel unloved and unlovable finding that their faults and needs don't have to be their downfall.

Lee Holloway turned to cutting herself as a means to deal with feelings of alienation caused by lack of attention from her alcoholic father and her abused mother, as well as by the suspicion that she's just not quite normal compared to her sister or people she knew in high school. What Lee Holloway lacks in herself and those around her (especially her father), she gains in Mr. Grey. Among other things, Mr. Grey instructs her (in carefully setting humane mouse traps, taking care with her appearance and mannerisms and answering the phone with confidence), guides her (in setting aside shyness in order to interact with others more successfully and in understanding the motivation behind cutting herself, thereby making it unnecessary) and demonstrates genuine, specific tenderness (albeit towards his orchids). As long as Lee can't supply her own self-esteem or confidence, Mr. Grey supplies it from without. His behavior towards her is straightforward, authoritarian and, yes, sadistic and domineering. However, because of Lee's longstanding confusion of pain with pleasure and because of her felt need to be controlled, Mr. Grey's behavior couldn't be called abuse.

Lee does her best to try conventional methods of finding love and happiness but meets with failure several times. She notes that Cosmo says that in order to get a guy to open up about his feelings, you should use a disarming joke, but when she tries this with Mr. Grey the advice falls flat. Her attempt to establish a relationship with Peter, a likely match, also meets with semi-unpredictable failure. On the face of it, Lee and Peter seem like a great pair, both having recently gone through nervous breakdowns leading to the realization that they are unlike others around them; both are young and good-looking and both are vulnerable, seeking direction and love. However, Peter's affection and love for Lee seem aimed in only a general direction, happening by pure chance to land on Lee. When they're flirting on their first date, Lee asks whether he's the kind of guy who washes his clothes right away or only when they're dirty, and he says, "I'm the kind of guy who wants to get married and have a kid." In stark contrast, Mr. Grey's affection is very specifically directed, as seen in his treatment of his orchids and in the humane release of the mice in his office. Lee is at a point in her life when the general love of those around her doesn't mean very much because she feels unlovable. In the middle of the movie, Lee says she starts to feel something unlock in Mr. Grey as he begins to learn more about Lee and the things she tries to hide. He loves her, specifically, because of who she is, and his advice and behavior are directed with the aim of making her life better.

At the same time, Mr. Grey sees his behavior as "bad," and being older, it seems likely that he's had enough encounters to reinforce the idea that he's not well, that his pleasure in pain is unacceptable and inappropriate and that he should resign himself to being alone. His insecurities and fear of rejection have led him to push everyone away (hence the constant need for a "Secretary" sign outside his office), afraid that once they know the real Mr. Grey they will be (rightly) disgusted and leave him. Everything Mr. Grey despises about himself, Lee shows that she loves, and vice versa.

I won't argue that it's not an apologetic for dysfunction. I think there is something wrong with the relationship between Mr. Grey and Lee, but not wrong morally, only wrong as compared to social norms. Sadism and masochism are not normal and are manifestations of feelings that could be dealt with in therapy or other ways, but that are in this case expressed sexually. The movie is trying to say that if that works for them - and it does - then let's wish them all the best. But we can still wish that they both deal with their underlying problems of self-worth and eventually stop feeling the need to inflict or receive pain.

Park Chan-Wook's Vengeance Trilogy

Part of what I love about movies is living vicariously through their characters. This might at least partially explain my love of bad sci-fi films, since I can never hope be the world's leading expert on ancient Egyptian languages who translates hieroglyphics on some stones and opens a portal to another planet. It might also explain my love of certain children's movies and bad romantic comedies, since no one can stay so happy and naive for so long. Sometimes it's important to experience what the characters feel, as in Schindler's List or House of Sand and Fog, precisely because you will never - you hope - experience the horror and injustice the characters face.


But of all the emotions I relish experiencing through film, the one I might love most is vengeance. It's dirty, it's bad and it's not nearly as fulfilling as pardon and redemption, but it is entirely satisfying while it's happening and it is so far from my own experience that I can only experience it through film (or literature). When characters experience unthinkable tragedy, their quests for revenge are all-consuming, enveloping not only those they seek to punish but themselves as well. They become single-minded to the point of insanity, obliterating everything that stands in their way, inevitably leading to complete self-destruction.

For my money, no films have pursued the concept of vengeance as fully or as graphically as Park Chan-Wook's Vengeance trilogy, comprised of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. I started with Oldboy in November last year and ended with Lady Vengeance several weeks ago, watching character after character invite vengeance to destroy their lives. These movies are full of some of the most awful violence and some of the darkest humor I've ever seen, without exaggeration. (Is it funny when someone has just cut out his own tongue with a pair of scissors and then starts to sing a song? Maybe, maybe not...)


It's hard to see the problem with revenge when it's warranted, but the complication is in deciding who gets to make that call. In Park's trilogy, everyone does, from the evil to the innocent. So when one person does it you're cheering them on and when the other does you're horrified. This is the problem with vengeance: you can't make it universally okay because not every person will exact it for the right reasons and because it's really difficult to tell when you've gotten it. If your child is murdered, is it enough for the murderer to be murdered? If your kidney is stolen, is it enough to take the thief's kidney? What if he only has one?

The Host

Film critics always like to talk about horror films actually meaning something. The Saw trilogy is a comment on the apathy of the bourgeoisie. Hostel is about Americans' xenophobia and non-Americans' justified hatred of America. But when movies are bad (as are the above), I don't really care what they mean. To some extent, they're nice to have for cultural reference, but until they're on when I can't find anything else to do, I'll pass.

Joon-ho Bong's Gwoemul (The Host) looked pretty scary in its trailers, but I think that was partly due to the trailers' artificial lack of dialogue (similarly mute misrepresentations happen with a lot of foreign films' English-version trailers, often with comic effect). What looked like a monster-horror film turned out to be, well, still a monster movie, but also a family comedy-drama and a smart political satire.

When a monster (which happens to have been accidentally created by the American military) starts running amok in Seoul the Park family - a little girl, her idiot father, her feeble grandfather, her medal-winning archer aunt and her alcoholic uncle - comes together to try and stop it in order to preserve their lives and relationships. Much of the time, it was a lot of fun watching them run around trying to find and fight this thing, but there was something very serious about the realities of such a monster infiltrating the city and the Park family.

As they chase after the monster, the Parks run into obstacle after obstacle set in place by the government. Playing on the southeast Asian fear of SARS and other viruses, the Korean government is convinced that the monster has brought a deadly virus, with symptoms similar to the common cold and which ultimately lead to a swift death. When it seems the Koreans can't handle the situation, the American military swoops in and proposes using Agent Yellow, a biological weapon, to destroy the monster and the deadly virus it has brought with it.

At a time when the American military is being questioned domestically and abroad, a lot has already been said to the effect of, "Americans stick their noses in where they're not needed or wanted, and they need to get the hell out. The rest of the world hates them." The more helpful and as I see it, more accurate sentiment as portrayed in Gwoemul is, "Thanks for coming over to help, we really appreciate it, but why do you have to always think you know what's best? Listen to us! Our way of seeing things is different from yours, but it is valid." There was an unexpectedly poignant moment I think I'll never forget when one of the characters says, "My words are words, too!"

It's trendy, I know, for some Americans to be obsessed with southeast Asian cultures, but I can honestly say I've never had a desire to visit them until these past six months or so of watching their films. There is something I'm missing, some piece of all the films that won't fall into place until I read some history books and take a trip or two. While film might not be the best way to understand a place, Gwoemul, A Taste of Tea (which I watched recently, too) and several others have confirmed for me the indispensability of film and other media as a way to enlarge experience. I may never get to travel to southeast Asia, but film has brought me past the veneer of the place.

It's me

Just now, outside my seventh-floor window, Iz Kamakawiwo'ole's cover of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" started playing loudly. I walked to the window and a flock of white birds was flying back and forth against the backdrop of the monument and a bright blue sky.

If I had been contemplating some major life decision and at that moment had said If God exists, He will give me a sign right now," I would have found the answer. Since I know there's no such thing, at least it gave me something to smile about.

Who's setting me up here?

Of course

Whenever I write on this thing, I always find it necessary to edit myself pretty heavily. My cutting floor is full of words and phrases like "of course," "obviously," "clearly," "I think," "in my opinion," and others which turn my constant doubt of the worth and ubiquity of my own knowledge into what appears to be arrogance or over-confidence. Whatever I write, I worry that readers are either wondering who in the world I think I am to be saying these things, or that what I'm saying has been said a thousand times, and better.

I've started a little late down the path of self-examination and critical thinking, but I know I'm further down the line than some, and that my thoughts are starting to be interesting. Not everyone reads what I write and thinks, "Yes, that's just what I thought 40 years ago" or "Doesn't everyone know that already?" I will have to continue to fight against this kind of self-doubt when I go to school, finding a balance between confidence in the things I know and commitment to honest inquiry. My self-defense mechanism when people take an attitude of superiority is to pretend to know more than I do, or to start talking in vagaries. Not helpful to anyone. This blog has been really helpful in getting started writing again, even if only to start purging myself of that extreme self-doubt and to encourage my commitment to be honest about the things I don't know.

The Painted Veil

I should tell you right away: I didn't like this movie, so reading this will be a spoiler if you plan on seeing it.

In general I think I do a pretty good job at not being a movie snob; I like a lot of blockbusters, sophomoric comedies and overpriced adventure movies, but I also love tons of classics and independent films. (Ebert & Roeper are always fun to watch because of this, balancing fairly discriminating taste with very indiscriminate viewing.)

The Painted Veil is a great story (based on the book by M. Somerset Maugham) with some of the best examples of people bearing the pain - and, later, satisfaction - of unwittingly making a good decision. Walter (Edward Norton) and Kitty (Naomi Watts) jump quickly into marriage: Kitty to get away from her mother (the couple almost immediately move to China for Walter's job) and Walter for love-at-first-sight. Each expects the other to behave in a way they know is inconsistent with their character and past behavior. Inevitably, the rebellious Kitty has an affair and Walter, shamed, threatens Kitty with either a scandalous public divorce or a move to the interior of China, where a cholera epidemic is ravaging the countryside. After Kitty's lover fails her and goes back to his own wife, she travels with Walter to the isolated province, Walter punishing her endlessly in every small way for her bad behavior.

The epidemic acts as a mirror, revealing to Walter his cold exterior and to Kitty her extreme frivolity. As they improve themselves they come to recognize the good in each other and begin to reconcile. As their dispositions improve, the cholera epidemic and political unrest grow worse. I'll leave it to you to guess which one of them comes down with cholera and finishes off the downward spiral of this melodramatic movie.

Yes, the story and dialogue are good, but Somerset Maugham provided that. And yes, the acting was great, but the director made bad decisions about pacing and the director of photography made really bad decisions when filming; the movie was too Hollywood, too glossy, too pretty. There was something gritty missing from their experience, the thing that made them turn into the people they were by the end. Too much emphasis was placed on costume and set design when subtlety would have made the dialogue much more striking.

Walter: I knew when I married you that you were selfish
and spoiled, but I loved you.
Kitty: I married you even though I didn't love you, but
you knew that. Aren't you as much to blame for what happened as I?

Lines that could easily be read as melodrama (and might have been when Maugham wrote them), but a skillful director could have made them powerful and subtle. Maybe this was the point, but the way the film was shot was more akin to a sightseeing show on the Travel Channel instead of an arduous, dirty, life-changing journey. What could have been a moving story was changed into a melodrama on top of a tourism pamphlet for rural China.

20 Favorite Albums

The albums below are presented in order according to how much I think I loved them, when I did love them. With the exception of OK Computer , these are all albums to which I still know every word of every song (what the hell is he saying most of the time, anyway - but I do know the words to Exit Music, and yes, I had to look them up).

1. Kings of Convenience: Quiet Is the New Loud - I put in more hours listening to this album than I have any other. Without exaggeration, I had this in my six-disc CD changer for three solid years, listening to it several times through every week. The listening culminated in going to see them in Columbus, which was one of the best shows I've ever been to.

2. Radiohead: OK Computer - Who hasn't loved this album at one point?

3. Iron & Wine: Our Endless Numbered Days - Another quiet album I connect with for an unknown reason.

4. Hootie & The Blowfish: Cracked Rearview - Soundtrack to my freshman year of high school and a trip to Poland.

5. Alanis Morissette: Jagged Little Pill - While at 14 years old, I probably wasn't the target audience for her music, this was definitely the soundtrack to my sophomore year of high school. I do find most of the songs pretty annoying now, but I like the acoustic version she released a couple of years ago; took the almost-whiny edge off and just left pretty songs sung quietly and with far less angst.

6. Elliott Smith: XO - Definitely my favorite mix of slow and fast Elliott Smith songs, and maybe his only album on which I like every song.

7. Weezer: (blue album) - Another album everyone in the world liked/likes.

8. Aqualung: (self-titled) - I'm not sure why they thought American audiences would like this cheesy cover more than this awesome one as well as liking the addition of the stupid title "Strange and Beautiful," but they were wrong. I was walking around a Virgin Records store during my semester abroad when I heard this album playing overhead. The addition of a few not-very-good songs on the American version, and his subsequent mostly-failure of a follow-up album have been extremely disappointing, but every track on this debut is worth listening to.

9. The Cranberries: No Need To Argue - I got on this train fairly late, but also loved "Everybody Else Is Doing It So Why Can't We" and "To the Faithful Departed."

10. Mariah Carey: (self-titled) - Say what you will, but she does have an incredible voice, and her debut album showcased it well (according to my nine-year-old ears).

11. Weezer: Pinkerton - I don't think there's a better summer soundtrack out there.

12. Rufus Wainwright: Poses - His only album that's pretty consistently good from beginning to end; this one almost doesn't make the list because I hate "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk" which makes two appearances on the album.

13. Ben Folds: Rockin' the Suburbs - I can't stand tracks 7-11 on this album, but the rest is just so damn good I can hardly stand it.

14. Muse: Absolution - The blend of classical piano with strong melody, strong voice and heavy guitar is so great on this album, but they failed miserably with their most recent, Black Holes and Revelations.

15. Bright Eyes: I'm Wide Awake It's Morning - With four songs I really don't like on the album (sorry, Emmylou Harris, but I don't think you really contributed anything), this one barely makes it on the strength of the four songs I love ("At the Bottom of Everything," "Lua," "First Day of My Life" and "Road to Joy").

16. The Flaming Lips: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots - An album put together nearly as well as "OK Computer," with the title track leading the way.

17. Band of Horses: EP - I saw these guys by chance as the opening act for Iron & Wine, and they blew me away. Their more polished album lost the intensity and sincerity of the EP.

18. Alanis Morissette: Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie - As good a follow-up as I could have hoped, at the time. I really did love all 17 songs.

19. Portishead: Dummy - Love every song.

20. MxPx: all albums up to Slowly Going the Way of the Buffalo; Slick Shoes: Rusty; Ninety-Pound Wuss: (self-titled); NOFX: Punk in Drublic - I have to put all of these together because they're all so ridiculous. I still feel naughty when I listen to NOFX's "Perfect Government." (And who the fuck are you, anyway? Who the fuck are they? Who the fuck am I to say? What the fuck is really going on?)

Look At Me

When I was a kid living out in the middle of nowhere, trips in the car meant a lot of time to pretend fight - always followed by real fighting - with my brothers, to play the alphabet game or 20 questions and mostly to stare at other cars. Passing cars were my first glimpse at a world bigger than myself, hinting at the enormous number of lives I wasn't a part of. I still have that feeling when I look over at another driver and am amused (sometimes scared) to think that they believe their lives are just as important as mine (probably more important), they have huge networks of people they love, hate and work with, and they have likes and dislikes similar in quantity - if not quality - to mine.

Reading Jennifer Egan's Look At Me felt like getting to see into the lives of the people in those cars. I was fascinated by the the way the characters used their own images and those they projected onto others to interact with everyone around them. They looked at themselves and others and thought about what it means to be pretty, ugly, average, sick, fat, foreign or famous, hiding those characteristics or desperately hoping they get noticed by others. If someone were to look inside my brain, I sometimes think they might be appalled by how much I think about my own image, but I wouldn't believe most people if they said they didn't do the same thing. Every person considers their own image and is at least aware that their outward appearance says something, even if they are mistaken about what they're really saying.

Several characters in the book were constantly on the lookout for "shadow selves," the person underneath the image. (These same characters were also practiced in appearing outwardly calm and uninterested.) On top of reading someone's clothes, expressions, gestures, haircut, glasses and facial hair, they look for whatever it is in someone's voice, eyes, stride and mannerisms that gives away their true selves. After reading the book I had begun to do the same thing, but being inexperienced I found I could only think about it in regard to myself. I am not usually very careful about letting my emotions and thoughts be read pretty clearly through my expressions and behavior, but it's interesting to think about the power that gives to other people.

My mom is fond of the idea that you shouldn't cast pearls before swine, and that to tell someone how you feel and what you think is often to open yourself up to someone who doesn't deserve it. While I don't usually buy into that thought, I have started warming up to the idea over the past few years. I spend a lot of time worrying about whether the average person on the street would find me attractive with my glasses on, or whether I could make my coworkers really like me if I tried hard enough, or whether or not my dad knows I'm right and he's wrong, or especially whether or not people know where I stand on important issues. While I hate to close myself off to the world even more than I already have (partly for fear that I'll never be able to be vulnerable with anyone), there is something to the idea of keeping myself to myself. It borders on the adolescent feeling, though, that "no one understands me," and seems likely to lead towards alienation.

Every person wants to be seen by someone: parents, siblings, the cool kid at school, a good-looking person, the media, the world. Look At Me explores what it means to be a person in 21st-century America through the eyes of idiots, geniuses, the mediocre, those outside our culture and those who embody it. While it might not withstand a lot of critical scrutiny, I highly recommend it for a solid, entertaining, fast read that's also pretty insightful. (Also - and I won't spoil it for those who haven't read it and want to - Egan created a character who makes her seem just short of clairvoyant. If you are interested in reading this book, don't dig too deep about it before you do.)


Side note: As so many contemporary books are, Look At Me was nearly ruined by a completely unnecessary epilogue. I empathize with the need to wrap things up neatly, but have come to realize that I, as a reader, am usually better off imagining for myself how characters end up. Most epilogues are just evidence of not trusting your readers to be thoughtful people, and this one epitomized that idea.

Pan-Blog Title

We are a group of clever people, if ever there was one, so we should come up with a good name for this thing, something that sets a tone. I'm horrible at coming up with names on my own, but with a group, I think we'll all feed off each other nicely.

So, first suggestion?

Pan-Blog #1: Religious Experience

I am embarrassed to say that the most meaningful experiences of my Christian life are incredibly difficult to recall. More than anything else, two things stand out from the first 22 years of my life: my absolutely certainty of the truth of Christianity and my deeply felt emotions regarding that truth.

During high school and college, I prided myself on knowing more about Christianity than most of the people around me, often including the adults and teachers in my life. My faith was rational, based on everything I had ever read and been told about the world. I loved reading the Bible and theology, and especially loved reading literature and works of philosophy through the lens of Christian belief. Towards the end of my faith and the beginning of my parents' separation and divorce, I recall giving my father a book by some leading evangelical (maybe John Piper?) to help him through the time of crisis. (A year later, in a similarly misguided attempt, I gave him A Very Short Introduction to Atheism.) I was sure enough - and evangelical enough - in my beliefs that it had cost me several friendships.

Equally important, though, were the emotional ties I had to my beliefs: most importantly through music. I have always loved music, and having been brought up as a Christian, I also loved hymns and many worship songs. There are still few pleasures greater to me than experiencing good pieces of music, sometimes even hymns. At one point in my life, I viewed those experiences as a direct connection to God, and I have never felt the complete and utter joy of worship in any other setting. I am sure I never will again.

Besides a few sessions at Christ In Youth conferences or chapel in college, my most vivid experience of this kind was completely alone at the house where I grew up during my senior year in high school. I was playing some of my usual classical pieces on the piano, and that day was playing particularly well. I played for hours and for about ten minutes felt absolutely certain that I was experiencing a small part of what it must be like in heaven. I felt as though I were literally in God's physical presence, playing for him, and he was pleased by me. It was possibly the happiest I've ever felt.

Looking back I do miss those experiences. The terrifying lows and highs of Christianity made me feel alive in a way that I don't feel now. My complete certainty that I was being rational in my beliefs gave me confidence and comfort intellectually, and my emotions, hopes and desires were all satisfied by those same beliefs. Whether or not I decide that no longer having those intense experiences is a good thing is beside the point since I can't imagine a time in the future where I will once again have them. While I can honestly say I am glad I have chosen more rational beliefs over Christianity, I would be lying if I said I traded up from the spiritual experiences I had.

An Inconvenient Truth

Why do people keep saying this movie is good? It's not. It's not even really a movie. If Al Gore doing voiceovers on his own slideshow is good filmmaking, I have to reconsider what I know. I don't deny that he is presenting important information, but he doesn't present it in a compelling way (which he could have done by having this movie look like a movie), he doesn't present possible solutions (unless you count the one-liners fading in during the credits), he doesn't give viewers the benefit of the doubt where comprehension and levels of knowledge are concerned (maybe this was on purpose) and he doesn't present his facts in ways that make it clear that what's happening on the charts and graphs and in his slide photographs, is bad.

Am I awful for thinking so? I recently overheard some of the higher-ups where I work considering showing this movie here for all the employees. If even I think that sounds really patronizing, what would the outspoken, figures-of-the-community, Republicans think?

Yes, it's sad to think of a polar bear drowning because the icebergs he thought would be there, weren't (in fact, it was really sad to watch a polar bear die on the "Planet Earth" series). But a poorly rendered computer graphic animation of that happening doesn't convince me to stop driving my new H3. Have so many people lost their minds, or do that many people just not know what good documentary filmmaking looks like? Why was this movie made? It can't be to convince people, because that would mean Al Gore didn't consult people who actually know how to persaude other people to do things through a medium like film, which I really don't want to believe because he seems smarter than that. Even though I like the guy, I may have to conclude (siding with a large group of people with whom I'd rather not be identified) that it was in hopes of a successful presidential campaign.

Thoughts?

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

If you were ever thinking you might watch this movie, please spare yourself. While I can appreciate in theory the idea that a movie made today is paying homage to some old style of filmmaking (in this case film noir mixed with moster movies), in reality bad movies made in the 50's without the benefit of today's computer graphics really are just as bad with the computer graphics. Besides the fact that the filmmakers were obviously in love with their particular style of animation, lighting and staging, the acting and storyline are purposefully weak, which serves no other purpose than to make this movie completely unwatchable.

Just in case you were wondering.

Really?

Is it scary that 44% of Americans believe that Jesus will return to earth to judge the living and the dead in the next 50 years?

Yes. Yes it is.

Huh?

I blame growing up as an evangelical Christian for my having only recently begun coming up with interesting questions. Until my senior year of college, I never had an original thought in my life, or at least never an honestly curious one. In hindsight I was never truly curious until I lost religion for two reasons: I already knew the real answer to every unanswerable question (that God knows the answer even if I don't) and the importance of this life paled in comparison to the one I anticipated after death. It was always a wonder to me that the best students in my philosophy classes were usually the ones who didn't really believe in God, but I couldn't even ask the obvious question about that: Why?

There is absolutely no way to honestly evaluate the ideas of philosophers or the world around us if we wholeheartedly embrace a belief system like Christianity. Such beliefs leave no room for weighty questions; not only are these questions discouraged, but most believers lose the desire even to ask them, having replaced a thirst for knowledge with the peace that passes understanding.

As I prepare to go to grad school, I continually worry that I won't have anything to write. How do people come up with ideas for papers? After reading something, how do you know what questions to ask? And I do still often read without having any ideas about what I'm reading, which I realize probably isn't the best way to go about things. If anyone has any suggestions about how to become a better critical reader, I'd appreciate them.

Running with Scissors

Running with Scissors made several critics' "Worst of 2006" lists. It really wasn't all that bad, but since it's actually a memoir, and one that starts out telling us that that we'll only believe the story is true because no one could possibly make it up - which is true - it came across as silly and melodramatic, often in parts that were supposed to be important and poignant. I should have just read the book, which everyone says is pretty entertaining.

I just had to pull out one line that for no apparent reason struck me as hilarious. Dr. Finch, played by a bearded, glasses-wearing Brian Cox, opens the door to his masturbatorium (what it sounds like) to find his daughter (played by Gwenyth Paltrow) lying on his chaise, covered by a blanket. When Dr. Finch shows his disapproval, she defends herself, saying she was just taking a nap. Dr. Finch, incredulous, says loudly, "Naps? This is no place for naps!"

This is not a recommendation of this movie, but a possible recommendation for the book, which I haven't read.

Little Children

Note: Spoiler below

Before I saw it, Little Children seemed like the kind of movie where I'm supposed to be impressed by the sophistication of beautiful, suburbanite postcollegiates with too much time on their hands, having affairs and feeling very put upon by the world. But the characters quickly started looking like people I might know. People whose lives were outwardly mundane had personal dramas so intense I thought through the whole movie that someone would die a horrible death in the end, probably a child. Having seen it, I wish someone would have told me that's not the case; it would have made what did happen carry its own weight instead of a false sense of impending doom.

I wage a debate now and then with thecrazydreamer about free will versus determinism. I wholeheartedly believe in both, while he tends to feel that determinism is not only wrong but a harmful way to look at things. Little Children is full of people who believe they have come to this point in their lives unwillingly, that they have been unwitting participants in the sabotage of their own identities: a pedophile blames his mother; Sarah (Kate Winslet) and Brad (Patrick Wilson) blame their spouses and children.

My basic belief is that we cannot do other than what we do; our lives could never have been different. But only from an omniscient point of view. Someone who knew everything that went into every decision and action could accurately predict what would happen next; since it isn't possible for us to know what will happen, to our minds we act with complete free will. I can do anything physically possible in the next moments, even if it runs entirely contradictory to my character, because free will exists in my lack of knowledge about the past and future.

Acknowledging that I am who I have become through my own decisions is empowering. It can turn a life that seems suffocating into a life of newly realized purpose. Little Children is a clear call to personal responsibility: either realize your complicity in who you have become and feel the full weight and importance of human existence, or fail to admit or realize you're guilty for your own actions and live impotently, lacking that existential knowledge and feeling of importance.

Name That Blog

I've never liked my screen name. I made it in high school in a rush to be able to use AOL Instant Messenger, scrambling to find something that I could make into a name. The Neverending Story seemed a good place to find such a thing, and while that part isn't embarrassing (although some people probably think it should be), what it says to everyone else definitely is. I'm not interested in my dreams or anyone else's, I don't believe in dream interpretation as anything meaningful, and I'm not a hope-for-rainbows-and-unicorns sort of gal, which is what I imagine those who see the name imagine.

Naming things is too hard, which is the main reason I'll never have a baby. That and because they poop and I have to clean it up.

Old School

I picked up Old School around a year ago and put it down about fifty pages in. Books about boys in school always seemed to draw too heavily on Salinger, but it was helpful to start reading Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim to see that Salinger himself drew from a larger tradition of "university" novels, and to remember (duh) that no one ever writes anything truly original. In the autobiographical novel Old School Tobias Wolff explores this concept of of influence through the life of a boy on scholarship at a prestigious boarding school.

As the narrator shares the moments he feels shaped him into a writer, he reveals the dangers inherent in telling stories as they suggest themselves in life and writing. When writing a novel, I hear it's helpful to do character sketches that include a lot of backstory you won't put into the book. The more you know your characters, the easier it is to know what they will do and say. But applying the same idea to the people around us can be detrimental to our relationships. I've written recently about how reading widens our circles of acquaintance and helps us better understand those around us, but even we don't know ourselves completely. The stories we invent for those around us are incomplete and may often distort their true character.

If you have a friend with a secret and read a book about a person who shares the same secret, taking the character's thoughts and motivations as your friend's has complications: predicting their behavior can bring disappointment or may simply prevent you from getting to know the "real" person. In Old School, the narrator finds out that he shares a secret with his roommate, Bill: they're both Jewish. At their WASPy institution, that tidbit could mean social ostracism and both boys work hard to conceal it. While divulging their shared heritage to each other could bring the boys together, the narrator chooses not to reveal his background, turning what could have been a close friendship turns into estrangement when the narrator not only keeps quiet about his own story but parasitically takes on what he perceives to be Bill's story. The narrator was raised Catholic and is only Jewish by way of his mother whereas Bill actually goes to synagogue and is Jewish culturally; the narrator adopts an attitude of alienation and ostracism that are not his to adopt. (This is a comment I have seen made in movies and books by other Jewish people. Memorably, it was in a "Seinfeld" episode where a character wants to become Jewish just so he can tell Jewish jokes.)

Taking someone else's story for your own can be just as destructive as mistakenly telling their story. The misuse of story can destroy a relationship, but it can also damage self-knowledge. If instead of examining your motivations, actions and decisions through the lense of your beliefs and philosophy you take too literally the paths of characters in your life or in books, you risk stunting personal growth.

Ultimately, I think this is more of an adolescent problem, and this plays out in the book as well (to a certain extent; the narrator's sense of self is still questionable in the end). For lack of experience, teenagers have to have something to model their behavior on, and from my memory I know that I patterned heated conversations on TV shows and emulated the feelings of those around me when dealing with my parents. Until I turned inward to assess myself and my desires I took for granted that every person patterns her behavior on others. I think it's an important stage in development to pass from seeing the protagonists of every book as yourself to seeing them as beings all their own.

Music

I've had trouble with music lately. Of the hundreds of songs I love, not one has seemed worth listening to for the last year or so, which has been really difficult. I've been listening to audio books instead, which has sort of filled the gap. I've gone through times like this before, where I just won't listen to anything at all for a long time.

But now it's coming back.

The song that's doing it is so sad, but such is my penchant. "Between the Bars," by Elliott Smith. Even if I don't share the hopelessness of the song, its clarity makes it easy to connect with. Lyrics usually look pretty cheesy when written out, so I'll spare you, but if you don't know this song, you should listen to it several times in a row (it's only a couple minutes long) and pay attention to the words. I often have a problem with "emotional" music because it's usually not honest, but it's obvious to me that Elliott Smith meant the things he sang.

JPod

Douglas Coupland's flashy pop-culture novels have beckoned me with their promise of hip, irreverent humor and young characters I can relate to. Like MTV's "Best Week Ever" - only nerdier in a very good way - the up-to-the-moment culture references and jokes in JPod were its best feature; great dialogue followed at a close second.

If there are parallel-universe Laurens floating around out there, they would be: a Marine or police officer, a novelist, an actress and a video game designer/writer, so books that let me live vicariously through these kinds of people are off to a great start with me. JPod is a collection of great characters, people I wish I knew. Where I'm embarrassed to "be imaginative" or brainstorm in front of other people, they feed off of each other's bizarre thoughts and come up with great ideas. The book is mainly about finding identity within and in spite of a corporate environment. Each person in the book started their careers thinking what a cool thing it would be to have a job as a game designer, but the reality is getting stuck in a cubicle (pod) (albeit in a Google-type atmosphere), working 20 hours a day and getting beloved projects screwed over by idiot execs.

Where they find meaning is in their fellow JPod-ers [as a side note, I can't stand the word "pod" because my mom says "Gotta go pod" before going to take a pee], and eventually using their work to better ends. I'd like to be one of those office assistants who finds small pleasures and/or humors in her job, but I've found it difficult. (Maybe I should start journaling?) The obligation to find a hundred and one ways to tell people there's no way in hell they're going to get to talk to my boss, not even for three minutes, could be an opportunity to get creative, but it ends up being draining when people have the nerve to get mad when they're refused. My job is made up of a series of moments like those, some less demeaning than others, and I am so grateful that I'll be going to school so soon. Maybe I'll end up in a job that actually encourages me to be a human being.

Deja Vu

All time-travel movies unravel into nonsense at some point and I don't care. If time travel is possible, it's impossible to know what's going to happen next, and it gives the characters something interesting to talk about: the method, physics and ethics of time travel. As a person with wide-ranging movie taste, I highly recommend Deja Vu. I love watching a good, fast-paced thriller and being distracted from the details that could drive me crazy about it. Every character had something interesting to contribute to the story, and they made me feel like the things on screen might really be happening, right now. After all, if there is a team of time-travelling cops who go back into the past and change things, it could be happening right now and we would never know; we would never meet them, assuming thier efforts always brought us back to a time before we needed their intervention (and they would then only exist in some sort of parallel universe able to intersect with ours).

This might sound silly, but it's exactly why I like every sci-fi/fantasy movie I do. The Nevending Story, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Labyrinth, Stargate, The Fifth Element, Total Recall: they all explore either the power of human imagination or the possibilities that could be in store through sheer effort or advances in technology, and they all center around a single character who takes a chance in realizing those possibilities. Sometimes, when I feel like nothing ever changes and people will never change, watching a movie that's beyond possibility gives a tiny little hope of something better in store.

Autism

So the book I'm reading right now, JPod, has a character in it who is convinced that everyone around her has a mild form of autism. She works at a videogame development place, so certainly there are some odd people, but it's got me thinking about that diagnosis. As some people know, I am not a believer in most "syndromes" (ADD, ADHD and others I won't name so I don't blatantly offend anyone). They are not helpful in any practical way and often encourage "solutions" that detract from the real (psychological, social and environmental) problems at hand.

However, autism is definitely real (although I it's not really a "syndrome") and people definitely have it in different degrees. But what in the world does that mean? And can I ask a question that could come off as incredibly insulting and ignorant, but which I have no answer for: is autism what used to just be called "mentally retarded"? Because then, of course, I would have to say that all people are autistic in some degree, just as they are all mentally retarded in degrees ranging from nondetectable to debilitating.

When does it start becoming helpful to refer to someone as autistic? How autistic do they have to be in order to get this diagnosis? For instance, if disliking loud voices and being touched by strangers are symptoms, I share them with an autistic person. This is helpful in an I-can-empathize-with-you way, but mild autism would not be a helpful diagnosis for me. It doesn't do anything for me and could only serve to have negative effects (such as feeling helpless to change myself in spite of the condition or lowering my self-esteem or giving me an excuse for bad behaviors). And for a highly functioning autistic, why would the diagnosis be helpful when in theory they could already be counteracting the condition by behavioral therapies not directly related to autism? Is autism only a helpful diagnosis for those it effects most severely and can't comprehend what it means, and if so, how is it helpful to be diagnosed in this way?

Anyway, random thought for the day.

The Art of Travel

After reading How Proust Can Change Your Life, I bought two more books by Alain de Botton. His novel, On Love, could quite possibly be unreadable, but I'll try again soon. The Art of Travel, though, was a nice reminder to start paying more attention to what's around me and, of course, to travel when I have the chance. [I've gone back to using commas where appropriate. I can't help it.]

One particularly insightful chapter was on anticipation. "The anticipatory and artistic imaginations omit and compress; they cut away the periods of boredom and direct our attention to critical moments, and thus, without either lying or embellishing, they lend to life a vividness and a coherence that it may lack in the distracting wooliness of the present." Everything I hope for, read, watch, remember or anticipate has some piece of reality omitted or changed; when I am doing any of these things (hoping/anticipating/experiencing art/remembering) either I don't have all the information (anticipation/hope of the unknown), I'm distracted by what's in front of me (books, movies, art), or I consciously (or unconsciously) throw aside or distort or enhance pieces of the things I know (memory).

People talk a lot about living in the moment, but the moment is informed by all my experiences, the things I've read and watched, and the things I hope for. These things determine the way I interact with the present and I use them to make sense of what's in front of me. De Botton reminded me that the thoughtful person is the one who doesn't stop with observation ("That's pretty") but attempts to understand ("Why does that seem pretty to me?"). Art is always made by answering that question, but this is also how rich experiences in the present are made. You might answer the question objectively ("The lines are symmetrical, the colors do this or that"), with reference to human characteristics ("The oak tree gives an impression of stoicism"), or informed by your own experience ("That reminds me of the time when..."), but in some way my present is always informed by the answers to those questions and it becomes richer and more memorable when I think about the answers for more than a split second.

I worry sometimes that grad school will stump me; it's all about asking good, thoughtful questions. But asking why is always a good place to start in real life and in art; maybe I like literature because there's a great chance of getting to a satisfying answer.

Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading!

Maureen Corrigan does the book reviews on NPR's "Fresh Air." My love for books about books (while not as strong as yours, Chris!) led me to buy yet another book to show me what else I should read: Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading!. I bought Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim on her recommendation, and I'll probably go back to buy a few more. She has unassuming taste, even though she has her PhD from Penn and is a college professor. However, she goes to far as to embrace contemporary "hard-boiled" mysteries, her specialty in both personal taste and academia, whereas that's a genre I tend to stay away from now (after reading plenty in junior high).

Corrigan examines the hard-boiled mystery, the Catholic martyr stories and something she calls the female extreme-adventure tale. The first two I will probably never pursue, but I was intrigued by the third since I wouldn't normally put that label on Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice or Wuthering Heights. Her main argument is that as male extreme-adventure tales focus on physical strength and courage, their female counterparts describe the psychological strength and endurance a woman must have in the face of their seemingly innocuous trials. A woman's life hangs in the balance when, for instance, she considers or waits for marriage proposals, when she cares for aging parents or her husband, or when she dares to deviate from the path usually laid out for her according to her gender.

As a girl who often fantasizes about being a police officer or joining the Marines, I would like to take refuge in the idea that stoically facing life changes amounts to some sort of heroism. It's a valid comparison in many ways. However, the value of dubbing these kinds of stories "female extreme-adventure tales" is dubious. As Joseph Campbell notes, many stories are journeys or quests. While the female version of a quest usually takes a different format from the male version, the quest motif is a much more helpful way to talk about "women's" stories.

An extreme-adventure tale is as narrow a genre as the name betrays and trying to squeeze the female experience into that category takes away from the importance of the story. I don't see the use in comparing Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennett to John Krakauer; on the other hand, I do see value in comparing their plights with those of Odysseus or Raskolnikov or Holden Caulfield or any other male character who "goes through" something. Besides, the name "extreme adventure" is derogatory given recent popular culture's usurption of the word "extreme" for soft drinks and pseudo-sports.

There is value in pointing out that women go on meaningful journeys even if they never leave home, and highlighting the similarities in the physical versus psychological challenges faced by men and women. But as much as I hate to admit it, men and women are different and that's not changing any time soon. For now, men are still the ones who excel at mountain climbing, military careers and fixing cars and women are the ones expected to deal with children, aging parents and breast cancer. If Corrigan wants to remind us that Women Are As Good As Men, point taken, but the comparison to extreme-adventure tales is one to mention and then move on from and not one that deserves any lengthy consideration. As a woman I don't care about feeling as manly as someone who climbs Everest, but I would be honored to be counted among the ranks of those who take a meaningful, often perilous, journey through life.

Blood Diamond

I like a good horror-slash-political-slash-educational film. Nothing short of going to war-torn countries and seeing the carnage yourself could have as much impact as a good film or book about what's been going on. Blood Diamond follows the tradition of the most moving of these films (Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan being the most obvious) by closely following the life of an Everyman who, we come to realize, could have just as easily been us.

Blood Diamond wasn't a great movie, even if it was full of incredibly poignant moments. Previews with Leondardo DiCaprio's affected accent had made me skeptical, but he put on a great performance, and the main character, Solomon Vandy (played by Djimon Hounsou), was likeable if one-dimensional. But character is where the movie failed: every one was a cliche except for Leonardo DiCaprio, whose story played out in a very predictable way. (Don't even get me started on his love interest.) Sure, sympathetic journalist Jennifer Connelly had the added interest of being a tough gal, but it was hard to see why she was in the story at all. Additional details about Vandy's life could have added much more vitality to the film than Connelly's serene face; all we got to see were a few domestic scenes and him being wide-eyed and innocent through the rest of the movie.

Blood Diamond failed to be complex where it needed to be; it seemed as though the movie's makers wanted to simplify the situation for us, unsure that we'd be able to understand without a white American woman showing us the way. They took out the details in order to make the story more relatable, making it dull and predictable when it should have been moving and surprising.

How Proust Can Change Your Life

So, Chris, I read Plato, Not Prozac! and came to a slightly different verdict than yours. I, too, found it tedious to read through the cases he presented, but only when they were not relevant to my own life. I do wish he would have presented some sort of method by which a person might face her own problems, but as you mention, the method he offers is to talk to him or one of his colleagues, since they are obviously so much more qualified and well read.

Bullshit.

You and I have read more than most people in the world. As I always say, I think I and many of my friends are unquestionably smarter than 99% of the world (and before being falsely humble or appalled by my arrogance, consider that 1% of the world still amounts to 65 million people). All Marinoff does is pay attention to the lessons learned in what he reads. He has read and understood the work of philosophers around the world, just as you and I have read and (at least sometimes) understood countless works by philosophers, novelists, filmmakers, songwriters, and friends.

The importance of Marinoff's book (and his profession) is the recognition that the things you learn are tools for living; even if you feel you have found a philosophy or viewpoint that you feel is true, when it stops working for you or when you have come to an apparent impasse in your life, you must consider other possibilities. Not as a replacement for your own philosophy, but as an aspect of your philosophy you need to emphasize in order to make sense of things and solve your problems. Sure, there are some truly contradictory philosophies (idealism vs. materialism, theism vs. atheism), but when it comes to living, nearly every philosophy has something helpful to say (and nearly all of them say the same things in different ways). Marinoff urged me to consider more carefully those ideas which for whatever reason (their label, my ignorance of them, their followers) I have moved on from.

Marinoff's value lies in the fact that he has read widely of useful things and remembers what he's read. More helpfully, perhaps he could cross-reference his philosophers with problems and ways of looking at things in order to either remind people of things they've forgotten or open their minds to viewpoints they've never considered.

Which brings me to a book that has been an important, practical lesson (reminder?) for me. Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life examines the author and his work, basically answering the question, How on earth could those one-and-a-quarter-million words be worth the read? Using a little of Proust's life and work paired with his own philosophies on life and love, de Botton's take on the importance of art might be the best I've read.

Do you really miss out by not reading In Search of Lost Time or any other book? De Botton first proposes a very practical value of literature and art: improving our relationships. By reading a good book, you recognize in the characters those in your circle of acquaintance and by doing so realize that you are not alone, no matter where you are. Through an author's eyes, you can attend to details you might never have noticed had you not read a 100-page description of someone's troubled sleep habits. By more fully understanding people and being able to recognize characters from a novel in the world around you, you will also not feel so out of place in foreign situations or places. Reading widens your circle of acquaintance and opens your eyes to the plight of those around you, and the unread person limits herself to knowing in a very limited way only those people and things in her immediate vicinity (an unfulfilling, usually prejudiced and unenlightened, state).

Proust wrote his novel about the people and places he knew intimately and showed his readers aspects of them that hold an endless power to fascinate. Proust talks of a particular artist who painted tablescapes and ordinary people and settings, noting that he takes what is overly familiar and makes it beautiful merely by drawing attention to its existence. If we fail to see the beauty in the things around us, we fail to take the lesson of art: it is not the particular things being written about, painted, sung, but the way of seeing things that the artist wishes us to delight in. If we visit Notre Dame in Paris because we read Notre Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), we are missing the point entirely. By paying attention to how an author tells a story, we can use the insight to see our own worlds more clearly.

If, instead, we cease thinking (or writing or creating in some way) after we read, we put too much importance in the book itself rather than its point of view. A work of art allows us to recognize in our own worlds those things worth painting, singing, writing.

De Botton also offers very practical advice from Proust, but for me he sparked a realization that I can't let authors paralyze me. He noted that Virginia Woolf was incredibly depressed when she read Proust, since how could anything be written after that? Eventually she was able to write Mrs. Dalloway. Proust could have his sphere and she her own, however insignificant it might seem in comparison. Proust, Faulkner, Dickens, Jonathan Safran Foer, Scarlett Thomas, none of them have lived my life. I do have a unique perspective and I do have something worth saying; I just need to find out what that is. In the meantime, I will try to be more attentive to what authors and artists are trying to show me, after being reminded that they are not writing travel guides and self-help books, they are writing their own particular way of seeing.

Dear Mr. Spencer

Seeing you and some of my other favorite teachers always brings back some of my best memories of being at Covenant. It is absolutely a different place now than it was when I was there; it reminds me more of the second four years I spent in Christian education than the first. I was troubled by your implication at the auction that I had separated myself from you and others at Covenant after graduation when from my perspective, the responsibility – if there is any – lies on both sides. Because of my current beliefs (or lack of particular beliefs), I am not an exemplary Covenant graduate and I have saddened many of the teachers, including yourself. Rather than be faced with that dismay in me and my choices, I choose to focus on the good parts of my life, since I realize that no matter what my academic or personal achievements, I will continue to be a disappointment to some.

[As a side note I would like to say that your comment about my parents' divorce being "not unexpected" is completely contradictory to my own experience of it. When we were told, it had never occurred to me that my parents were having trouble in their relationship. Not once. I was shocked and devastated, and am still reeling from the blow.]

I am aware of the "frustration" my family members have expressed regarding my search for truth. There has been a noticeable difference in how a few family members treat me since the time I decided to be honest about my beliefs. (It may go without saying, but the difference is not for the better.)

As I see it, there are very important questions that we as 21st-century people all think about at some point: Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? An important purpose of our lives is to try to answer these questions. It has been very clear to me for the past five years that religion, especially Christianity, does not answer these questions in a satisfactory way. Their answers are, at best, grossly incomplete, inaccurate and contradictory.

Taking Kierkegaard's leap of faith - that is, choosing to believe and knowing that it is not rational – is, for me, the only valid option that could lead to being a Christian, and the reasons to choose such an option are not acceptable to me at this point in my life (specifically, to placate my family or anyone else or to pacify or bolster myself with beliefs I know are false). My goal is to continue to seek truth and to urge others to do the same, unfettered by guilt or fear.

I will become a professor of literature and teach my students to rationally examine what they hold to be true, just as the teachers at Covenant and Taylor say they do. The deceit of Christian education lies in telling students that they are developing their own point of view and learning how to think for themselves, while also teaching them that there is actually only one right thing to think and that they deserve eternal suffering if they do not continue to hold the beliefs they are taught about Christianity.

I will read your book. I have always enjoyed your straightforward way of putting things and have tried to be similarly candid in this e-mail. While I wouldn't write this way to everyone, I know that you are open to dialogue and that it is useless to sugarcoat things I know will not be to your liking. I will continue to search for truth, but am certain (as much as certainty is possible) after eight years of thorough Christian education and training that Christianity is not true.


Sent today.

Finally, A Spokesman for the People

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq6vufmTJ9Q

Best. Job. Ever.

Imagine someone tells you that you can make great money just sitting at a desk all day, now and then answering phones, writing a few e-mails and making someone else's travel arrangements. You'll get a great office with a huge window that looks out on the city, access to the Internet, a free parking spot downtown, an hour lunch break and you'll hardly ever be bothered during the day.

"Sign me up!" right?

Now imagine that you are allowed to do nothing except work - or pretend to work - on the computer. "Not bad," you say. You'll just start every day by checking your two e-mail accounts, two webcomics, your Netflix account and your two closest friends' blogs. That'll take at least 20 minutes. Then you can even play some online Sudoku or do some crossword puzzles. At least an hour right there! Maybe you'll start to get really bored and rank over 2,000 movies on Netflix and over 6,000 items on Amazon.

"Well, why aren't you taking all this time to improve yourself? Read some books, for fuck's sake!"

Ah, but that's the thing: you must work or pretend to work. So, NO READING ALLOWED!

There's no excuse for not writing more, of course, other than that I'm afraid that I've forgotten how to do it. But here goes nothing. As long as I don't need to reference anything I'm reading, I should be fine.

By the way, I'll be accepting applications for my replacement in July.