Mr. Self-Destruct

Part II: I’ll [Not] Be Hanging Out with the Lasses

In the previous post, I considered the case of Hemingway through his book, True at First Light and showed how Hemingway basically embodies the gloomy truth that men are biologically inclined to equate sex with existential satisfaction. It would be tough to dispute the evolutionary evidence that releasing one’s seed triggers a positive stimulus response. Nature’s goal—and on a more elemental level, DNA’s raison d’être—is to do whatever is necessary to produce copies.

So even though humanity has created civilization, even though we’ve agreed to behave more or less rationally and to attempt to suppress some of our more primal desires, biology remains a formidable foe for most men. We’ve advanced intellectually and developed better judgment, but reason is still undermined by our most base biological impulse. Ask Dave Letterman. Ask Bill Clinton. Ask a thousand well-respected men who built successful careers and/or raised mostly happy families and then were ruined by this innate philandering impulse.

It is no new revelation that desire is difficult to suppress. Desire is all the more difficult for men to control when we find our self in constant and close proximity to smart, attractive women. Though men have come a long way since Hemingway, Letterman shows we are far from perfect.

The Letterman debacle is interesting because, unlike most other philandering men, Dave wasn’t called to the altar of public humiliation by the women with whom he had affairs. Dave’s diddling was revealed by a guy trying to make a buck. In fact, in the days following the news that he had a series of affairs with women who worked for him, many of those women either remained quiet or defended him by making it clear that he had always treated them with respect. It seems that when many of those relationships ended, they ended at least somewhat amicably.

Even if Dave treated his lovers with respect, the fact remains that he was cheating on his longtime girlfriend, whom he only recently married. But the fact that he refused to marry for so long demonstrates that he knew he couldn’t live up to the commitment of marriage. So while Dave may be a philanderer, at least he didn’t proclaim the virtue of monogamy and then go about his diddling anyway. In fact, Dave’s biggest mistake seems to be not acknowledging his weakness. For years he created situations within the workplace that would provide him with the opportunity to have relationships with his female staffers. These relationships were consensual, but, like any workplace romance, they were ill-advised.

Nell Scovell is a writer and former staffer who Dave didn’t sleep with. She has now, a month after the initial news, come out and admitted that she left work on his show at NBC back in the early ‘90’s because she was annoyed by the atmosphere of sexual favoritism she felt permeated the workplace. She said a lot of men in senior positions at NBC had relationships with female staffers, not just Dave. In her accusation, Scovell says this created a hostile enough environment for her to quit the show after a few months even though it had been her dream job. Scovell makes it clear that she doesn’t want to bring Dave down or get money out of him. Her article in Vanity Fair (http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/features/2009/10/david-letterman-200910) is more focused on the fact that there are hardly any female writers on late night shows and she just wants Dave and Conan and Jay to hire women and then not sleep with them.

That certainly isn’t asking a whole lot. There should be more female writers in late night and on TV in general. But maybe there is another reason why Conan and Jay, who are both married, don’t have female writers and why Dave now has a male personal assistant, a reason that has nothing to do with the gender equality in the workplace that Scovell is calling for. Could it be that these men have finally learned the lesson that so many men before failed to learn?

This brings me to our president. President Obama has been criticized for failing to include women in his pickup basketball games with congressmen and White House staffers, for not inviting women on his weekend golf outings, and for having only men on his national security and economic teams. Most commentators have rejected the claims of the Obama Boys Club in the same way the president did, as a bunch of “bunk.” And given the fact that President Obama has appointed more women to Cabinet-level positions than any other president ever, the argument of male favoritism doesn’t hold much water. Even so, with the exception of Valerie Jarrett, all of the president’s closest advisors are men.

Political leaders have long been the most famous of philanderers. This is because in order to get elected they must stake a claim to higher moral ground than all competitors. It is a long fall from such high ground when they are caught with their pants down. But at the same time that male politicians are expected to not have sexual relations with female staffers, they are also endlessly pestered about political correctness and hiring as many women as men.

This highlights the basic dilemma at the heart of the recent battle of the sexes. On the one hand, men like Dave Letterman are criticized for getting too close to the women with whom they work. On the other hand, men like President Obama are criticized for not being close enough to the women with whom they work. It is a double bind in which men, especially men in positions of power, often find themselves. How can men with this dilemma do the right thing? If they eliminate temptation from the equation and not hire women who are qualified, they risk angering the politically correct watchdogs. If they hire lots of women, they open the door to temptation (and let’s face it, sometimes, many times even, the attraction in workplace relationships is mutual; it is not just men being sexual predators).

Most men in positions of power want to do the right thing. They want to hire women who are qualified—and in many cases more qualified than men—but are reluctant to put them self in a situation where they will be spending a lot of time in close proximity with these intelligent, attractive women.

What I’m getting at is that women often see a male bias in high-level hiring as an issue of inequality between the sexes. And this almost certainly explains some of the inequalities that still exist. But my point is that some of it may also have to do with men getting smarter. In the last two generations men have come a long way. Many men, like President Obama, are strong advocates for gender equality, but are much more interested in remaining faithful to their partner. One of the ways that men in positions of power remain faithful is to eliminate the opportunity for the philandering impulse to surface.

Hemingway was a sensualist and was never strong enough deny himself any pleasure. Letterman knew his weakness and still fell victim to it, though has perhaps finally mended his ways. President Obama embodies the smarter modern man. The President not only knows his male weakness, like some other men today, he avoids it at all cost. He will do anything to steer clear of a Slick Willie situation (I’m referring to President Clinton, people). I’m not saying the president would cheat, because I don’t think he would; I’m just saying that he is smart enough to avoid potential pitfalls before they even have a chance to materialize—even if that means looking a little like a chauvinist.


Epilogue:

The New York Times Magazine just published further evidence that President Obama is aware that a big part of temptation to cheat has to do with proximity to other women and the environment one creates in the workplace. The article (found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/magazine/01Obama-t.html?hpw) focuses on the Obama marriage. It reports: “Photograph after official White House photograph has shown the Obamas gazing into each other’s eyes while performing one or another official function. Here is a shot of the Obamas entering a Cinco de Mayo reception, his arm draped protectively around her back. Next, a photo of the president placing a kiss on his wife’s cheek after his address on health care to Congress. Poster-size versions of these and other photographs are displayed in rotation along the White House corridors. It’s hard to think of another workplace decorated with such looming evidence of affection between the principal players.” It seems that instead of surrounding himself with the temptation of lots of other women, the president has chosen to surround himself with reminders of his love for his wife.

Mr. Self-Destruct

Introduction:

The battle of the sexes is alive and kicking with some high profile skirmishes recently arising in the media. First was the staff-diddling scandal of Dave Letterman. Last week brought attention to what Maureen Dowd coyly called President Obama’s “Oval Man Cave” (see here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/opinion/28dowd.html?hp). Add these two public discussions to the Hemingway book I just read and you get this blog post, in two parts. Since the three men involved are, broadly speaking, representative of three successive generations, I’ll take the cases chronologically.


Part I: Hey Pig, Piggy, Pig, Pig, Pig. Yeah, You.

I just finished reading Hemingway’s True at First Light. You can’t even really mention Hemingway anymore without someone screaming sexism. I’m a Hemingway fan and sometime apologist so I’ve always been wary of dismissing what is generally an impressive body of work simply on grounds of sexism. Having said that, True at First Light, though it has some fine moments, is the worst Hemingway I’ve read. The book, a posthumous thing cut to pieces and cobbled together by his son, Patrick, is billed as a fictional memoir that straddles that “ambiguous counterpoint between fiction and truth.” Despite it being a fiction, many of the events of the story have been verified as having happened.

In the faux memoir, Hemingway is on safari in Africa with his fourth wife, Mary (the characters are named for who they represent: Ernest or Papa and Mary). He’s hired a cadre of local guides and gun bearers to help him and Mary mercifully manage the population of the local wildlife. He’s also set himself up as a sort of tribal chief to whom people from the surrounding villages come for protection from escaped drunkards and for help with medical problems and other little dramas. Hemingway mostly demonstrates his typical generosity to all that come to him for help, though at times he treats them in a condescending manner. There are many passages in which Hemingway rails against the inhumanity of the British colonial rule and then glosses over the fact he is working for them as a game ranger and essentially following their model and perpetuating their prejudices.

Papa also takes a young native woman named Debba as a lover. The postcolonial critic in me doesn’t even have to think deep postcolonial thoughts to recognize the connection between colonialism claiming the body of a continent and a mzungu seducing a native woman. Seduction is actually a generous term. Hemingway basically pays off the girl and her father by showering them with gifts. The gift giving is Hemingway’s way of fulfilling the tribal obligations of a man to his fiancée and father-in-law. And he actually uses the titles, fiancée and father-in-law with regards to Debba and her father even though he has no intention of actually marrying Debba. He has a wife, after all.

As for Mary, Papa rationalizes that because he loves her so much—much more than he would ever love Debba—his infidelity is not a breach of the marriage contract. Indeed, at one point Hemingway even says something to the effect that fidelity is only ever implied during a first marriage. Needless to say, the book is steeped in chauvinism.

Until now I’ve always given Hemingway the benefit of the doubt about his attitude towards women. He did grow up in a western world permeated by a proud chauvinistic tradition and it is tough to break away from the times in which one is nurtured. Speaking of nurture, another reason I’ve forgiven Hemingway for some of his attitudes is because his mother clothed him in girl’s dresses until he was five. Can you imagine being a little boy in the Chicago suburbs in the early 1900’s and having to go play with other little boys while wearing a dress? I feel like this explains a big part of his manly overcompensations later in life. On top of this, after his father’s felo de se by firearm, Hemingway’s mother sent him the gun—an act that anyone must admit could only be perpetrated by a cold heart. Men, ask yourself this question; women, ask the nearest man: If your mother dressed you as a girl until you were five and sent you your dad’s suicide gun, would that affect your opinion of women? After all, if you can’t trust your mother, I don’t imagine your attitude towards other women would be much more positive.

So whenever anyone screams chauvinism at the sound of Hemingway’s name, I always share these anecdotes in the interest of a second perspective. But even under the cover of my usual defenses, True at First Light is basically the story of a chauvinist trying to create his own utopia. Towards the end of the book, while Mary is off in Nairobi and Papa is wooing Debba, one of the elder safari guides steps forward and claims that Papa and Debba’s relationship is improper—even though it’s been going on the whole book—and insists Papa take the girl back to her village. This incident enrages Hemingway and, though he complies, he closes the chapter by saying: “This was the beginning of the end of the day in my life which offered the most chances of happiness.”

It is a sad sentence. But it is sad not because Hemingway didn’t get to have his wife and mistress too; it is sad because it reveals the ugly truth that so many men struggle with: despite reason and rationalism, we are wired to equate sexual conquest with general satisfaction.

Tales of a Scorched Earth

Have you ever had one of those days that starts off with the general condemnation of humanity and all civilization and ends with poetry? I have had many of these days, but the only one that matters is the one I just had—and even then, it will only matter until I wake up tomorrow.

Harvest

I am not an agriculturalist, but, having lived in Indiana and Illinois for twenty of my thirty-two years, I have spent much of my life surrounded by crops—corn and soybeans mostly.

By merely being sentient in America’s breadbasket, I have come to know the cycles of agri-life. In spring the land is so freshly churned that Homer might have reserved his wine-dark praise had he experienced the sight of a mechanically tilled field. Over the course of weeks, the burgundy fades to a dustier brown just in time for little leaves to surface. Now we have our first hint of what’s planted. Corn inches up for all of May and early June, its long leaves fluttering in wind that has ruffled hundreds of miles of maize.

Other fields stand seemingly fallow until the day the beans appear. Boom, like that. Maybe it is their lack of verticality, but it always strikes me that soybeans somehow materialize as shin-high bushes without ever having sprouted. One day: empty field; next day: beans everywhere. At the same moment, the corn ceases to be sad and wind weary, instead adopting a resolute Nietzschean will. Suddenly it is no longer possible to gaze across a field for the corn is shoulder-high and more stalk than leaf. Though we humans have planted it, the corn makes it clear that we have planted ourselves in, trapped ourselves to pass only by potholed roads. For all of July and August the corn and bean fields are robust. They grow and grow to the extent that their vitality begins to make me nervous. Everyday there are wagons everywhere selling fresh sweet corn but the stalk-filled fields still stand and close us in.

And then just as suddenly as their vitality springs upon us, the crops begin to wither. It is early September and though the leaves of trees have yet to hint at changing, golden leaves crown the formerly emerald fields. Corn stalks are already brown and the tips of the long leaves fray in the late summer breeze. The fields are full of dying food.

This last thought struck me the other day as I drove home along a potholed road. But not only are the fields full of dying food, if experience is any precedent, they will remain this way for about another month. Of course we must kill all our food before it can be consumed, and there may be myriad uses for long-dead corn and beans, but I find it counter-intuitive in some intellectual way that we leave crops to wither in the field.

Food is the original sacrifice. It is what we have always killed out of necessity for the purpose of keeping our lives in order. We kill it out of love. But we generally kill our food at the height of its life. We absorb its vitality and make it our own. In this way we honor it. The summer sweet corn frenzy is a perfect example. Most of the crop, though, is left to languish. We don’t kill this food; we allow it to die. There is no empathy in our neglect. Again, I’m not a farmer and don’t know the practical reasons for postponing the harvest, but I wonder if it is any wonder that the processed foods that are inevitably made from long-dead crops—as opposed to freshly hewn produce—provide us with less vitality, and, in some cases, are not healthful at all. It’s just a thought—one I’ll surely continue to consider long after the combines come to mercifully mow down the rows.

He Was a Good Man and Now He’s Gone

There has been much praise in recent days of Ted Kennedy. In the wake of his death, talk of his family’s tumultuous history and their legacy has dominated the news. Vice President Joe Biden spoke two lengthy, tear-filled odes, one at a press conference the day after Teddy’s death and the other at the memorial service. Senators from both sides of the aisle lined up to voice their sorrow at his loss and their gratitude for the opportunity to work alongside him. At the funeral, Patrick and Teddy, Jr. offered intimate insight into the private life of their father, resolving his public persona into a portrait of a dedicated family man—the sort of avuncular figure that many us have known in the form of a charismatic father, grandfather, or uncle. President Obama capped off the funeral ceremony with his typical eloquence and reminded us that the Senator would not have wanted to be elevated in death beyond what he was in life.

Outside the Senate, for much of his life, Ted Kennedy was just as flawed as any of us. He came from one of the most privileged families in America, but also one of the most tragic. It is the demons of dealing with the ongoing Kennedy family tragedy that Teddy so struggled to exorcise. Some people may dwell on the Teddy’s flaws and dismiss his record as tarnished by his drinking and womanizing, by the accident at Chappaquiddick, by a long string of misfortunes and mistakes, and write his successes off as a product of wealth and privilege. But I don’t think that would be fair in the face of so much testimony to the contrary.

In addition to being a devoted father, and later in life, a devoted husband, Teddy Kennedy was perhaps one of America’s finest senators. Period. He was a fierce liberal who could reach out and compromise with staunch conservatives. His avid work in helping to pass landmark legislation on some of the most important social issues of the past half century cannot be disputed. He put a personal stamp on ensuring voting rights for minorities, equal rights for women, and education and health care for children. He was a champion of the underprivileged and helped speak for those whose voices typically get ignored in Washington. As VP Biden said, the causes he supported and the legislation he wrote improved literally millions of American lives.

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote that the rich are different. I think what the Kennedy family demonstrates, and Teddy Kennedy in particular, is that while the rich may be different, they don’t necessarily have to be indifferent to the plight of ordinary people.

Danger in Voice

I’ve been browsing Nietzsche again. If you’ve ever indulged, you know that the endeavor of reading Nietzsche is as confounding as it is enlightening; as labyrinthine as it is lucid. He isn’t easy reading, but his work always promises to be engaging. The impulse to rise off the couch and approach my bookcase and promptly pluck The Gay Science from the philosophy shelf the other day was a direct response to the Republican Party. To explain, please allow me a bit of digression.

Back in college I lived in a rooming house. On my floor were eight people’s bedrooms, two communal bathrooms, and a combined kitchen and living room. Above the kitchen sink, for whatever reason, someone at sometime had hung a decorative cardboard tropical fish. Beneath the fish was a perpetual pile of dirty dishes. Dirty dishes drive me batty. Since the fish above the sink had roughly the same bright colors (orange, yellow, red, black, and white) as the cover of my copy of Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, I decided to name the fish Friedrich. I then crafted a dialogue bubble and hung it above Friedrich so he could introduce himself to my housemates and assert a tactful reminder to always wash your dishes when you had finished eating. Since the dish reminder generally went unheeded, I needed an outlet for my frustrations with my housemates' laziness. Friedrich provided this outlet. Every few days a new dialogue bubble would appear alongside the dish reminder with some subversive aphorism right out of one of my Nietzsche books that was meant to reflect my prevailing mood towards my housemates. This went on for most of a school year and I am proud to say that no one ever suspected me as responsible for Friedrich’s imprudent outbursts. Indeed, I took deep pleasure in eavesdropping on and, at times, inflaming conversations about who was posting these vaguely insulting/infuriating/confounding notes. Even my best friend and roommate of three years, who should have known better, swore after we had moved out of the rooming house that he did not know that I was responsible for Friedrich’s impertinent outbursts. I had a lot of fun with Friedrich.

One of my housemates that year was a mostly nice and sweet young woman who was not a beacon of intellectual light, but who did have an aptitude for getting wildly intoxicated and barging into the house late at night and raising a veritable ruckus. She would stumble in and scream and make sleeping very difficult indeed. My way of transcending my frustration with this seemingly eternal recurrence was to post the following aphorism from Nietzsche, for Friedrich the Fish to declare: “Danger in the voice.—Anyone with a very loud voice is almost incapable of thinking subtleties.” Sure it was petty and passive aggressive, but it made me feel better.

So it was this aphorism that I was after the other day. I wanted to remember its exact phrasing for I have been reading a lot of news lately about the Republican Party’s opposition to just about everything—even ideas that have historically been right up their political alley. The whole GOP furor began earlier this year with the so-called tea parties and increasingly and recently the GOP tirades have risen to fever pitch. Everywhere you turn the conservative crazies are denouncing our president for: not being an American; for being both a socialist and a Nazi; for making America weak and prone to terrorist attacks; for having the government take over everything. And so forth. Their latest outcry is the hullaballoo over healthcare. Mini-riots—reminiscent of the ones that ended the Bush vs. Gore Florida recount in 2000—have popped up at what were supposed to be civil and informational town hall meetings all across America. The consensus is that these surly crowds are being organized by special interests who will either profit handsomely from ensuring the healthcare status quo is maintained or profit politically from having an Obama initiative get derailed.

I am not even going to dignify the bilge that GOP voices have been shouting about with point-by-point refutations, for their assertions and positions are divisive, absurd, and often malicious. Their rhetoric is rooted not in the spirit of constructive, issue-specific dialogue in order to work towards a compromise, but in political gain. What is so sad is that all of the GOP’s shouting, no matter how absurd, is taking a lot of attention away from the actual debates about issues that are vitally important to America.

And so I sought out Nietzsche: “Danger in the voice.—Anyone with a very loud voice is almost incapable of thinking subtleties.” Which in concise language pretty much sums up the GOP and all the conservative pundits making such a ruckus these days. To me they are reminiscent of a certain obnoxious drunk I once knew with the significant difference that my old roommate was a mere annoyance—harmless, really—while the GOP could do real harm to real people.

My hope is that Congress sees through the GOP cacophony and is able to pass strong legislation on many issues that is capable of ushering in the progress that is so desperately needed in America. If this happens, then maybe some of the GOP crazies will see the light and will start to resemble another Nietzsche aphorism: “Cause and effect.—Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does afterward.”

Have Mercy on the Man Who Sings to be Adored

I’ve seen musicians smile. I’ve even been a smiling musician. This was something different. What I saw last night from Josh Ritter at the Metro in Chicago was mystical. He beamed gratitude. After a solid opening set by Cory Chisel and the Wandering Sons, Josh literally floated onto the stage with clear-eyed enthusiasm. He seemed genuinely humbled that the theatre was roiling with folks there for the express purpose of seeing him play music.

He got right to it, opening with a smoldering rendition of “Wildfires” rife with the tension of an encroaching prairie blaze. Then Ritter, along with his fabulous band, ratcheted up the energy with rollicking versions of “Mind’s Eye” and “Right Moves.” From there the show ran headlong through a cross section of Ritter’s catalog from The Golden Age of Radio to The Historical Conquests. He also dropped in some great new songs. At a couple of interludes, the band retreated from the stage and left Josh to sing solo. Especially poignant was “The Temptation of Adam” before which he set the mood by requesting that all the lights in the theatre be turned out. Coming out for an encore, he also did a magnificent solo cover of Springsteen’s “The River.”

What carried the evening along, besides the great music, was Ritter’s infectious enthusiasm. At times he was even giddy with excitement. Several times he became so overwhelmed with the ambient energy being created between him, his band, and the crowd that his smile erupted into a beatific happiness that kept him from being able to sing the next verse. In those rapturous moments, there was little to do but play again through the pre-verse chords until he could contain his gratitude enough to begin singing.

I have no better description for his demeanor than: gratitude. And it is this gratitude that I am most interested in. I have seen performers enjoy themselves while putting on great shows, but among those performers, Josh Ritter was by far the most immersed in the performing present. And when I say present, I mean it both as a temporal term and as an indication of the act of giving, for Ritter’s rousing performance was a gift. His gratitude was a sustained act of sincerity and lacked any hint of vanity, as gratitude ought. Towards the end of the show, Ritter kept thanking the crowd profusely for the great night, then wrapped the show in the only way I can imagine he possibly could. He closed with “Snow is Gone” from his album, Hello Starling, in which he sings: “I sang in exultation, pulled the stops—you always looked a little bored. / But I’m singing for the love of it—have mercy on the man who sings to be adored.” Not a soul seemed bored to me last night as Josh Ritter exultingly sang. He sang for the love of it and that’s the best that any good man can do.

Hesitating Beauty

I took a walk last night, past the bank and the Laundromat, past the bar and the abandoned business. At a vacant lot I stopped stone still. Tree. Big tree. I stared and stared, eyed it from trunk to towering top. I walked around its base, looked up through its prodigious ribs. I couldn’t identify the species, but was sure it is among the biggest trees I’ve seen east of the Mississippi—and even worthy to compete with the western giants I have had the pleasure of experiencing.

I have a thing for trees. I rarely actually hug them, but I do embrace eagerly the beauty of trees. On Isle Royale last month I was astounded by the biggest aspens and birches I’ve ever seen. On my western trip a few summers ago I fell in love with the forests of Washington State, from the conifers of the North Cascades to the rain-soaked Hoh on the Pacific Coast. On other trips I’ve seen redwoods and sequoias. But size isn’t all that matters. I’ve also fallen for 5,000 year old piñon pines, stunted and tangled and twisted by sweeping mountain mistrals.

My fascination for trees must have begun when I was young. I grew up in the woods. Down the hill from my house, down near the Wea Creek, there was a big sycamore. Its white bark was like cumulous: a clean coat that sometimes curled to reveal underlying grey. Its canopy filtered sunlight into little circles. A few feet above the ground, a huge knot caused the trunk to cant at an odd angle. The knot had hollowed and developed a hole big enough for a boy to fall into. The hole spiraled down and disappeared into the earth. I must have know what Alice felt like before she went down the rabbit hole because I always wanted to climb inside. My mom was so worried that I’d actually do it that she had my dad nail two two-by-fours over the hole. But still I loved to go down and see the sycamore and look into the hole and wonder at the possibilities.

Today I went back to see the big tree down the street. I intended inquire about it at what looks to be a small engine repair shop next to the vacant lot, but it was closed. I stared at the tree some more, took stock, and wished I had a tape to measure its girth. Instead I sidled up and circled the tree, counting my steps along the way. It took just a shade more than twelve strides to circumnavigate. These were regular walking strides, mind you. Then I spread my arms and, with my back to the tree (it was daylight and I didn’t want to appear to passersby to be literally hugging the tree), I took rough measure of its diameter. The trunk was wider than my armspan, which meant it was also wider than I am tall.

I decided to walk across the street and make an inquiry at the liquor store. The woman at the counter told me it was a “cotton tree.” “It makes a real mess for about two weeks every year and then the rest of the year it just sits there quietly,” she said. I guess she should know; she’s lived in Hinckley for 25 years.

Sure enough, when I later returned home with a leaf sample, I found that the giant is indeed a cottonwood, likely an eastern cottonwood. I also found out how to measure a tree and that an organization called American Forests (http://www.americanforests.org/) keeps a “National Registry of Big Trees.” That kept me busy for a bit. There are also state registries and anybody can measure and nominate a tree to be in the registries. Based on the size of the cottonwoods in the registries and my very rough estimations, my new cottonwood friend could at least compete to be the Illinois cottonwood champion.

After the liquor store and before I went home, I spent time at the park reading from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard. In “Intricacy,” Dillard writes about chlorophyll and hemoglobin. Chlorophyll, of course, is the substance that pulses through plants and trees. It makes leaves green and transforms solar energy into “usable energy” (my quotes). Hemoglobin is what makes red blood cells red and helps distribute oxygen in the bloodstream. The fascinating connection here is that molecules of chlorophyll and hemoglobin differ chemically only in that chlorophyll has a magnesium atom at its core and hemoglobin has an iron atom. Other than that, their structures are similar and they provide equally vital functions to the organisms in which they occur. It has even been shown that consuming more chlorophyll-rich plants or treating certain illnesses with small concentrations of chlorophyll can increase the production of hemoglobin in the body. All of this isn’t in Dillard; I looked some of it up after being intrigued.

One can’t help but think about our connection to plants and trees in a different way after knowing that the substances that give us life have such a close affinity. Maybe that explains my preoccupation with trees. In an older post I talked about how biology may have more to do with our character than we like to admit. Perhaps my hemoglobin starts to run hot when it senses a strong presence of chlorophyll from a nearby tree. I wouldn’t put it past Mother Nature to pull such a stunt. As Thoreau says: “Nature is mythical and mystical always, and spends her whole genius on the least work.”

What Gives This Mess Some Grace…Unless It’s Kicks, Man?

The past two months have streaked by the way time tends to, when it streaks. It has included camping excursions across the glorious UP; at least two trips between Marquette and Chicagoland; another trip downstate Michigan; six days of backpacking Isle Royale National Park; a marathon week of hauling two lives from Marquette to Hinckley, Illinois to Stillwater, Oklahoma and back; and, most recently, a trip to Cincinnati for a good friend’s pre-nuptial stag weekend. I’ve traveled by car, bus, and truck; ferry boat, bicycle, and elevated train. I’ve said “farewell for now” to good friends and re-connected with old friends and family. I’ve interviewed for jobs and accepted and rejected jobs and begun preparing for the challenge of molding minds. And I’ve ignored this blog, launched in May with the earnest expectation to begin writing again. Now that the dust has settled—now that for the first time thirteen months I am not living out of a duffle—I can sit here in my rocking chair beside my beloved shelves of books, stare out the picture window, and try to find the grace in this mess we call life.

What I’m reminded, in sorting through the loose ends of the past few months—the frayed strands of family and friends and self and travel and work and leisure and…—is that the ends aren’t ends and that they will always remain loose, no matter how tidily we try to knot them. The grace comes in the moments when we locate ourselves in a circumstance where we can forget the streaking tangles of time and just be there.

Sanity and Staying Out of the Suburbs

Living in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for the past three years has spoiled me. The wealth of natural treasures here coupled with the quiet hominess of Marquette has made me want to find a way to stay and make a life in this special peninsula that is so often ignored by most everyone who has never been here. I don’t think I can express in concise terms just how fucking magnificent the UP really is. Despite the desire to stay, there is simply very little opportunity to make a decent living here (materially speaking; I’m not a material person, but I do labor under the burden of around $50,000 in education debt which makes making money something of a necessity). So now I am off to make a career of teaching and perhaps one day return with the means and experience to make a living here.

I recently landed two adjunct teaching positions in the far west suburbs of Chicago—Aurora and Sugar Grove. A few days ago I went down to apartment hunt. Driving around the suburbs, I saw nothing but canned commerce and almost identical housing developments with names like Orchard View and Wheatland—the kinds of names that go further in describing what the housing developments destroyed than in describing what they actually resemble. It all made me more than a bit nauseous. I lived in Chicago a number of years ago (in Lincoln Park) and while I prefer to live in smaller communities surrounded by nature and outdoor recreational opportunities, at least the city had a feeling of vitality: people walking around; interesting things to see and do; a wide variety of dining and shopping options; and always the mini-escape of the park and the lakefront. As I drove through the suburbs, all I found was other drivers, national chains, and nothing that aroused much of my interest—the typical complaints lodged against suburbs everywhere. I neither wanted nor could imagine myself living in such a place, especially after having experienced the splendor of the UP.

I decided to drive out west of Aurora into a little town called Hinckley that I saw on a map and imagined might have cheaper rents and less depression-inducing environs than the suburbs. The town was small—mostly just the state highway/main street that passed through and a small grid of residential streets. Hinckley has a couple well-kept bars, an Italian and a Mexican restaurant, a breakfast and lunch café, some storefronts, a market, a laundromat, a post office, and an ice cream stand—pretty much all the necessities and a bit more. I parked and starting walking into businesses and talking to people on the street and asking about apartments. Everyone was more than eager to help and within an hour I had made a number of calls and had more than a few avenues to pursue—though most turned out to not be a good fit. But already I knew that this little outpost with lots of friendly folks, among farmland and within short distance of a few state parks and natural areas (and within 20-25 minutes of work; I looked at another apartment in Aurora that was 5, not 15, miles from work and google maps said that the commute time would be almost identical—though the scenery would differ considerably) was just the kind of place that I would like to live if I couldn’t live in the UP. After another hour I had looked at the apartment that I would eventually secure. For the amount that I would pay for a studio/efficiency in the suburbs, I got a roomy one-bedroom apartment with lots of windows and view over the main street of my new town. I’ll feel a part of a community instead of a end up as a shut-in in a dire apartment development. It may not be the UP, but it will be a good place to live. Most of all, I’m glad that I don’t have to completely trade a satisfying lifestyle for pursuing a “good” living. Too often we trade happiness and existential comfort for convenience and material gain. I feel like I’ve found a happy medium between these often antagonistic scapes. Come and see me in Hinckley and see for yourself.

Beyond Here Lies Nothing—Or, Oblivion

I just read a pretty good New Yorker article about David Foster Wallace, who is one of my favorite writers (link: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/09/090309fa_fact_max). While reading, I got to thinking about freedom, which is a recurring theme in Wallace’s work. As a culture, we generally equate freedom with choice. The more choices we have, the freer we think we are. Available options are the avenue to some blissful existence. For a number of years I’ve been cultivating an antithetical idea—an idea that can probably be traced in some way to DFW. In my mind, the definition of crisis is the availability of more options than can possibly be acted upon. All that choice does—especially the abundance of choice—is cause confusion, which itself brings on lethargy and apathy and a sense of dread with regards to the supposedly free atmosphere that provided all of the available choices. What I’m getting at is that freedom has nothing to do with choice. Choices are a breeding ground for chaos—e.g. the devil and his temptations. And in fact, like a deal with the devil (or the rejection of his temptations, for that matter), every choice is an act of servitude, limiting us to the conditions of the worldview we have chosen.

This limitation is not necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, it is limitations that set us free. Once we have agreed to the terms of a worldview, we become free to act within that world and free to act against, or at least disagree with, other available worldviews. This is why games are so fun. Games have strict rules that all players must abide by and so long as everyone is abiding, the game remains amusing and fun and free-feeling. Once people start to break the rules or make up new ones it is no longer quite so fun (which goes a long way towards explaining why our democracy is in the shape it is in). In this way, freedom is always conditional; it is always contingent upon the conditions that we have (consciously or not) agreed to.

So but if the availability of choices is crisis and limitation is actually freedom, then why do I and so many others choose to basically not choose a particular worldview, to not limit ourselves to one way of freedom-inducing life and instead live in a chaotic world of doubt? The DFW article provides a clue. Don DeLillo, another of my favorite contemporary novelists, once wrote in a letter to DFW the words of Henry James: “Doubt is our passion.” There is some truth to this. I and so many others are passionate about doubt. While we know that it would be easy to accept a more rigid, and thus free, mode of life, we prefer to live in uncertainty and even take some measure of pleasure from the inevitable suffering that accompanies it. And while I don’t claim to have all of the answers, the reason that I, at least, prefer to persist in this mode of indeterminacy is that I’m not altogether comfortable with the terms and conditions that I would have to accept if I were to make a more rigid choice about how to live. I may become freer, but I would lose the sense of doubt that I sometimes find so satisfying.

Or maybe it just boils down to what DFW once wrote to Jonathan Franzen. He was talking about the book he never finished, but he could just have easily been talking about life. Here’s what he said:

“The whole thing is a tornado that won’t hold still long enough for me to see what’s useful and what isn’t. I’ve brooded and brooded about all this till my brooder is sore. Maybe the answer is simply that to do what I want to do would take more effort than I am willing to put in. Which would be a bleak reality indeed, if that’s all it is.”

I may agree with everything but that last sentence. I doubt that this reality would necessarily have to be bleak. For it to be bleak would mean not only that no effort was taken to do what one wants to do, but that no effort was made at all towards doing anything. There are plenty of activities in life that require less work and which are much more rewarding than those which require a massive sacrifice of time and energy. An old philosophy professor of mine used to repeat and old proverb: “Least action, maximum effect.” I doubt it is true, but putting it into practice can be very satisfying.