Strangers Like Me

Back at school, I am once again surrounded by people I know, people I recognize, and people I have no idea who they are. If put in a police line up, I couldn't tell you they go to my school. And I'm not sure I care.

Part of the reason for my apathy is that there are so many people. How am I to know and care for all 2,500 undergrads? I doubt that such a feat is even possible, to care deeply for everyone. The quest then becomes whether we want quality or quantity. Whether we want 5 main friends or to 500 acquaintances.

But viewing the dilemma of association in this dichotomous way is exactly the problem.

When viewing other people, one necessarily categorizes them into "the other" as opposed to "the self." In order for them to be categorized at all, there has to be something recognizable in that "other." That is to say, there is some distinguishing quality that you are using to place people as "other" than you.

Let's take this farther. Sometimes people say that one language is "completely different" than another. But this is poor nomenclature. Why? Because there is no such thing as "completely different." If one language were truly "completely different" from another, you would be even unable to recognize it as language. There is a strand of commonality that must persist between unlike things in order for them to even reach comprehension within our minds. This is because we use what Kant calls determinative judgments, by which we place things into categories. These we are taught from a young age, learning that something that is black and white and says "Moo" is a cow. Something with pages and words arranged on the pages as sentences is a book. Something with rational capacities is a human.

When interacting with strangers, people you don't know, one has already acknowledges several similarities. That they are human, that they speak the same language, etc. What I am saying is that to acknowledge one as different, one must first acknowledge similarities. It is only through similarities that we can achieve understanding, because we understand that which we can relate to ourselves.

Thus, the question is not between 5 friends or 500 acquaintances. The dilemma of association involves the question of similarities and differences. As long as there is the similar characteristic of being a human, we can conceive and celebrate the differences in one another. 

As You Wish - The Problem of The Princess Bride

"As you wish" was all he ever said to her. That day, she was amazed to discover that when he was saying "As you wish", what he meant was, "I love you." And even more amazing was the day she realized she truly loved him back.

It's a touching moment. It's the set up to a "kissing book." It's filled with lingering glances, eyes "like the sea after a storm" and hair dancing in the wind. It's also a lie.

"As you wish" translating to "I love you" is a beautiful sentiment. Why would we want our lover to seek anything but our own happiness? If our lover seeks our happiness and we seek theirs, all bases are covered. We have happiness ensured.

That, and who doesn't love to be told that things will be "as you wish"? Try as we might to be otherwise, we're all a little egotistical, a little proud. We like that others should serve us, we like that our will should be the determining factor.

But for our will to be the determining factor is not love. If I willed something that was bad for myself, your condoning of my will would not be love. Love does not permit the person's wishes, but what is best for the person. This doctrine necessitates the advent of tough love, that all too painful treatment that goes against a person's wishes but is what the other perceives to be truly best for them.

Tough love keeps a person from killing themselves when it's what they want. Tough love reprimands a person for doing something damaging to their body or soul. Tough love is not "as you wish," but is "as God wishes."

This is exactly what can be seen in the Garden of Gesthemane, on the night Jesus is arrested. With the foreknowledge due the Son of God, Jesus knows that his death is coming, and not in a pleasant manner. In Luke 22:42, Jesus prays that the cup, the cup that holds his death, will be taken from him. "Yet," he adds, "not my will, but thine be done." This is true love. True love bows to true goodness, and that is God.

In loving people, we cannot want what they wish. This will lead to a subjective standard of goodness, a goodness that changes with each person we try to love. While it is true that different people feel the reception of love in different ways, there must be an objective standard in order for identification to be possible at all. God is this root of objective goodness, a goodness outside of the earth and its influences that cannot be tainted, changed, or worn out.

So the next time you want to say "I love you," don't say "As you wish."

Say "As God wishes."

Forest Magic

 Oh for a thousand breaths of forest air. To sit on a log and wave my feet at the leaves. Dead or alive, they still dance. Oh to live a hundred lives, a thousand years, until eternity and I grow sick of one another. The sunlight speckles the soil, fighting the shadows but never so well as to cease to be special. Scurrying squirrels refuse to pick sides, yet chatter with chipmunks about the benefits and strategies of each.


Magical morning passes to acquiescent afternoon, who allows effervescent evening. But midnight, midnight is mournful. When the earth has fled and the fairies and sprites have reminded me of their existence, then will I breathe deeply. When the trees shake their tired limbs and our foreign world is coated in paint of a different hue. But I don't join my friends when they snag their snouts in the stars to sing, for I know that white globe to be where the earth has gone, and I don't want it back.


I will walk with a silent tread that only the flowers with their tilting ears can hear and forget how to breathe.

Incepted to Discontent

Inception. It's a crazy movie that leaves you guessing at the end... is Cobb in a dream or not? Is that spinning top about to tip, or not? It provides a good night of action, drama, confusion for the brain, and maybe a couple minutes (or hours!) of conversation after the credits roll. But when it comes down to it, inception is just an idea. Or is it?

Our culture has been clever, very clever. Some may say too clever. I would like to suggest that the culture has found a way to perform inception upon us, and while we are awake no less.

Now before you think I've totally lost it, please give me a chance to defend myself. Cobb himself, in the movie, claims that the most resilient parasite is an idea, and thus this is what the culture has sought to shape. Tell me that music, movies, books, TV, even the commercials themselves, do not do this, and I will call you a liar. Music champions everything from love to sexual triumph, from wealth of possessions to pride in oneself, and on down the list. High schoolers in movies are portrayed by flawless twenty year olds, and a failure to have flat abs is the cardinal sin. A party with pumping music and the requisite alcohol is necessarily a good time, and it is a proven fact that whiter teeth make anyone of the opposite gender flock to your door.

We are told what looks good, smells good, tastes good, sounds good, and feels good. All five senses are accounted for, as well as your consequent morality. If partying feels good, it must be right. Gratification of the self becomes the chief virtue, the less delayed the better (because, of course, if you are delaying, you are wasting time that could be spent shoveling money in to the companies).

Then comes the creation of a vicious cycle. We are both the consumers and producers of culture. As we are told what to desire, we desire said object. Our increased demand perpetuates the existence of said object and others of its kind, though each modification is acclaimed better and more satisfying. However, for all the culture seems to promise us flawless skin, thirty pounds off of our current weight, and a life that will never make us cease smiling, we have not found satisfaction. We have not found the end of the race, for then we would lose the need to chase these temporal remedies.

The culture offers not satisfaction but dissatisfaction, for it is only the dissatisfied person that feels the need for a product. Contentedness brooks no need. Rather than offer us hope, ads point out that we have none and then offer a quick, 100% guaranteed solution that will have us panting before them.

The culture has performed inception upon us, but I suggest that we starve the beast. Let us not buy in to the images that fail to satisfy, that project lies to our consciousness. Let us be critical consumers, ones that recognize the falsity behind the billboard models and swimsuit ads. We may throw off the inception of culture's ideas, not by disclaiming their method, but, ultimately, by claiming contentedness.

How are we to do this though? I suggest that we claim contentedness, not by finding it, but by having it given to us. It is given by none other than Jesus Christ the son of the living God.

Everything on earth is vanity. What wisdom, virtue, or riches will not pass? Build a legacy, and even that will fade and twist with memory and time. The righteous and the unrighteous die; the wise and the fool perish. Death comes to all. Make a change in the world and the next generation undoes your work, or someone else inherits that for which you toiled. Where is the fairness on this earth, where is equality? Nowhere but death.

Contentedness cannot be found on this earth. Mere resignation is the best that can be achieved. However, contentedness can be found in something eternal, something untarished and good. Only if contentedness is rooted in something that does not change can it be called true satisfaction; otherwise it is a mere mountain peak between the rolling hills of dissatisfaction.

Just

At about 1:05pm, I started expecting murder.

Perhaps I ought to explain myself a bit. One typically doesn't say such things, and when they do, they are usually suspected as the perpetrators of said expected murder. Never is it possible that they could be simply hoping for a little excitement... as long as that excitement, happening to someone else of course, provided ample respite from the humdrum routine of daily life. Who invented routines anyway?

But I'm getting off track again. Let me premise the state of my mind: I had been reading murder mysteries all day. Sometimes the pages dripped with blood and other times they lay limp from seemingly harmless causes. Smelling them proved to be no help, as much as I stuck my nose in among the dry leaves, and only my fingerprints covered their seams.

Yet one of the books, Destination Unknown by Agatha Christie, had no murder. To be fair, it had its share of natural accidents and faked deaths, threats and secrets, but no murder. I found myself tense the entire book, only to let out a somewhat shaky breath at the end, both relieved and insulted that I had had no need to harbor worry.

It's odd, if you think about it. I had been expecting murder. You could argue I even wanted it, an accusation I would stoutly deny. Of course, you could take the other line of approach, saying, "It's just a book, just fiction. Who cares?" Indeed, who does? Does the presence of others' care validate or necessitate your own? But to avoid that tangential, though interesting, rabbit trail, I'd like to maintain that fiction imitates life. Fiction is about life, whether in the form of humans or forms otherwise anthropomorphized. It concerns struggles, victories, and defeats, all the normal ingredients of life. Your battle might be conquering that ever-encroaching migraine while juggling your ever-lengthening to-do list, but I say that you are fighting off our time's serpentine beasts as surely as had you been clad in armour and wielding a sword. I won't say anything of your skill or success just yet. The bridge between real life and literary life merits a longer consideration to be sure, but I hope you will take my word, for the moment, that in some way our expectations for fiction, though aggrandized, mimic our expectations for real life. 

So what does my deadly fascination reveal? And let me tell you, I want the answer as much as you. Maybe more.....

I think it shows how we, as a society, as people, as whatever you like, think. We deem the grand as deserving of our attention, whether it's grandly wonderful or grandly morbid. Think about it. If you got up, went to work, came home, and in short had all the components of an average day and none of the extraordinary ones, what do you reply when someone texts you to find out what's up? "Not much," you say. "Just work." Just.

But why "just"? Without the just days, we would never get to the amazing days. Without the ordinary, we would never have the extraordinary. How often do you read a book or watch a show where the character goes about his just day? He or she wakes up, yawns, and pours a bowl of cereal. Or, if you like, grabs a coffee thermos and runs out the door. Works, types at his or her keyboard, checks emails, maybe responds. Feels important, feels shunned, feels overused, feels worthy, feels loved, etc. Then he or she goes home, goes to bed, and gets ready to do it all again. Just like you.

You don't read books like that. There aren't many, except perhaps some more modern pieces pointing out the extreme lack of such pieces. No, the hero is introduced to his quest and goes to complete it. Sure, there may be waiting phases, but if they lasted as long as ours typically last, we'd put the book down, switch off the TV, and get on with it.

Now, I'm not bashing the heroic days. Or the downer days. They are interesting. They are, pardon me the cliche, the stuff stories are made of. But I'd like to put in a word for the little guy, the forgotten day, the in between day. The waiting day. The just day. He's the bridge to your adventure or sorrow, the slope stuck leading to or from the valley or mountain peak.

But it's not just the inevitable necessity of the just days that I'd like to celebrate. You see, it's all about how you act on your just days. If your a class-A act on your just days, there's a better chance that you'll remain so during your highs and lows. If, on the other hand, you're simply a cad all around, well, your situation isn't going to change that much. Your just days are your most usual time, and, as such, they comprise most of the time given to shaping your character. A couple good highs or really tragic lows aren't going to alter what you've already etched into your skin. They might paint you a different color for a while, but all paint chips.

In the end, gilding is a cover for what's just underneath.

A (Poetic) Reflection on Relativism

To be a Liar and Christian in America
One must only pretend that it's right
Everything is misunderstanding
Truth cannot have a bitter bite

Reinterpret the lines with the times, the place, and me
As ocean molds, bowing, to the sand
The past has been wrong before - I was born this way -
A solid heat will melt this land

Control and power dance as twin dragons stealing fire
A deadly dance threatening each turn
Presence implies purpose, and purpose approval
Let's sit back to watch the world burn

Why can't you let me be as I was made to appear?
We're not so different, you and me
You want truth and I want lies, but it's all just talk,
Freedom of speech, equality

To be a Liar and Christian in America
Take the Bible's word as you take mine
Trade your pen for a pencil and make sure it's fast
As we erase that thin fine line.

Vigilante or Villain?

In the Batman movies, clearly Batman is portrayed as a hero. Though sometimes he seems to make the wrong choices, usually as the result of pressures to present a reasonable facade through his life Bruce Wayne as well as to maintain the balance between his egos, he in general is held up as the salvation of Gotham. I would like to discuss whether or not Bruce Wayne as Batman made the proper choice in becoming a vigilante patrol for the crime-ridden streets of Gotham.

Now the advent of Batman was demanded by the corruption coursing through Gotham. Both the police quarters and the government had their share of people in the pay of the drug lords, and then some. As such, the law no longer functioned as an objective standard against which everyone stood for judgment. It had become a subjective standard against which only those without connections or money stood for judgment, while those with such benefits went scot-free. Since the system was failing, the introduction of the Batman sought to amend those failings. Batman was to enforce the law as an objective standard, because whereas the drug lords could bribe the judges, witnesses, and etc, they could not bribe Batman. From him, they would receive their payment of justice.

In this way, it is true that Batman is the idea he seeks to become. An idea cannot be killed, just as justice cannot be destroyed, only momentarily thwarted. Thus, Batman patches up the holes in the corrupt justice system of Gotham.

However, the problem arises in that Batman is not merely an idea. As he says, "An idea can be anyone." The important point that I want to focus on here is the stress that the embodiment of an idea must be someone. True, that it can be anyone, but nor can it be no one. As a result, the idea of justice, or the patch of the idea of justice, that Batman is also feels the weigh of a real person. A vigilante must necessarily be a person.

As such, I would like to argue that a vigilante cannot help become a villain at some point, if they continue down the same path without tapering or stopping. A vigilante takes justice into their own hands, whether partially or wholly. By so doing, they threaten to remove justice from its objective standard and subjectify it through their own conceptions of justice. By preserving some part of justice, they may only preserve that which they conceive to be justice, an idea which may or may not hold true to the objective standard.

The more they continue to do so, the more they may realize that justice relies on their actions rather than vice versa. The potential then arises for a vigilante to see any of their actions as the actions of justice, thus making the idea bow to their treatment. Instead of judging their actions based on ideals of justice, their actions have become the ideals of justice, regardless of what they are. This then carries the potential for justification, a state that will let the vigilante excuse any of their actions as the necessary call of justice. Thus it seems that the vigilante could descend on a path quite opposite the cries of justice but yet justify themselves and their actions based on the ideal, as they have made it defined by themselves.

There is no assurance that Batman, the previous defender of true justice, would not become its greatest antagonist. An objective standard in the hands of one person can be no better than a subjective standard, a standard subject to the flux of human emotion and thought. 

Thus, while Gotham can praise Batman as its hero who maintained justice's objective standard in a time of crime and corruption, it can likewise praise Batman for hanging up the cape.

Routine (part 5)

Those of you that have stuck with Maximilian, Sarah, and I, I must thank you. Thank you for your attention; I hope I have earned it. I hope too that you enjoy this final installment of Routine.


Maximilian, now transfixed, followed her without a complaint even in his mind. Curiosity, wonder, and fear tinged his thoughts now, and he even failed to consider whether the shards of wood might give him a splinter as Sarah led him on through its shattered remains.
Past the blockade, Maximilian was able to see what he never could have glimpsed from his house – a car sat hugging its headlights around a telephone pole, attempting, unsuccessfully, to become one with it. Its hood had become ruffled, allowing a steady thin line of smoke to escape. The rest of the car imitated the jagged crumple of the hood, crunching in on itself. Two white airbags filled the space in the front.
Suddenly, Maximilian gagged. He hung on to Sarah as he bent over, relieving his stomach of its daily allowance of biscotti. He knew the scent now, though he was right that he had never smelled it before. He had smelled it in animals of course, in mice stuck in the walls of his childhood house, but never in humans. Death. Death mixed with smoke and burnt rubber. Sweat and fear and inevitability. Panic.
But his feet refused to move, for all that his brain shouted at him to run away. Then, inexplicably, he felt himself drawing nearer. Perhaps it was sick curiosity that moved him, or a simple desire to find proof for the denial he begged to be allowed to make. Maximilian knew cars didn’t drive themselves – despite his inclination to reduce his interaction with the machines as much as possible – and the release of the second airbag confirmed at least one passenger. Sarah had led him here, and he wondered at what gruesome scene the child was running from, glad at least that she had been able to run.
Maximilian looked down to query her, but, doing so, found no one by his side. The street was empty but for himself, the car, and his fears, and though he swung his head about, he saw her nowhere.
His captor and leader gone, he could go home. He could walk away, shut his door, and forget what he had seen. It wouldn’t be hard. As long as he never looked outside his kitchen corner window, as long as he never found the shattered “Road Is Closed” sign with his eyes. A simple pulled shade would be enough to solve that.
A quiver shot through his nose at the thought, but it changed quickly to a wrinkle of disgust at himself. He was already out, wasn’t he? He was already here. And, he told himself, if he didn’t find Sarah’s parents for her, wherever she was hiding, she was likely to come back to his house with another knock and ten more annoyances.
Edging forward, Maximilian gasped at the scent that struck his nose, the scent emanating from the car. It was too late to turn around, for he could be sure that the putrescence had wrapped itself around him, clinging to him as surely as the fetid air he walked through. He might as well continue, so he did, stretching forward a hand and opening the driver’s side door.
Never before had he so reviled being proved right. His eyes jumped over the poor man, the driver, to find what could only be his poor wife, the passenger. Mercy found him where it had departed from these people, and he didn’t have to open the other side door to so discover the pair. It was no wonder that Sarah had come to find him, he decided, and he began to regret the voracity with which he had tried to bar her from his sanctuary. She was only a scared little girl after all, and he applauded the tears she had shed, a small number he now judged.
Then he gasped.
As he had withdrawn his eyes from the car, they had traipsed over the back seat. Laying there, neck slumped at an uncomfortable looking angle, was Sarah, one of her pigtails thrown off kilter by the tilt of her head. There could be no mistaking the blood on her shirt.
Maximilian stared at the body of the little girl, expecting her to open her eyes any second, cry and beg him to take her back to his house, a Herculean challenge he would readily undergo. But she didn’t twitch anywhere, not even her chest, which denied any ascension through the air, steady or otherwise.
Maximilian bowed his eyes, and found the teddy bear yet in his hands. Pulling it up to his eyes, he inspected it for the previous tear and snot stains that had streaked its fur but found nothing save the pristine condition he insisted that all his animals maintain. It wasn’t even damp.
He would go back and call the police from his seldom-used phone, inform them of the situation. Maximilian became very grateful that his job was that of a mere messenger, not that of the person sworn to attend the message he would bring. He did not envy them their task, particularly the dragging out of that tiny, broken body in the back seat. Maximilian turned to go back to his house.

Before he departed the gruesome scene though, he ducked into the car once more and left a large black bear sitting on the seat next to a tiny little girl named Sarah.

Routine (part 4)

And the story continues.....


Maximilian, having otherwise paid religion of any and every sort no attention throughout his life, began begging any and every god he could think of for help. He even attended any supernatural presence that might be up, or around, or out, there, just in case. He wouldn’t have himself lose help on account of names and semantics.
Maybe the girl, Sarah, needed a little ushering. He nudged forwards his hand, but she only used that to take a couple steps forward then stopped, still locked to his hand. Another nudge merited the same, and gradually it seemed less and less like he was encouraging her outside and more and more like she was leading him into the not-so-great outdoors. When his foot scraped the lip of the threshold that typically held his door in place, he arrested the progress. He was an adult, damn it, and he would not be forced into action by a child.
Had he merely released his fingers, Maximilian would not have been able to struggle free from Sarah’s grip. As it was though, he took her hand so tightly in his that the pressure on the back of her hand forced her fingers loose before he flung the entire offense away. In practically the same motion, he snatched his bear back, though he was careful not to hug it to himself. It would require several baths in disinfectant before that would be even a possibility to be entertained. Two big steps placed him properly within his house, and he closed his door as much as possible, its frame creaking in complaint.
Maximilian acted so fast and so fearfully that Sarah only had time to gasp before Maximilian was hiding behind his door once more, head peeking around the wood. When she realized where he was though, she didn’t cry. She didn’t restart her symphony of sobs, nor did a sniffle run anywhere near her nose. She only stared at him, her blue eyes deep lakes that threatened to drown him if he were not careful.
“Don’t look at me like that!” he demanded, voice whining. “You’ve had your sob; now go find your parents.” He stared right back at her as if she would rush back into his house if he blinked.
“I need you to find my parents.”
“No, you don’t. You got lost on your own, and you can get found on your own.”
But she only stared at him.
And elicited another sigh from Maximilian. Apparently, all the gods in the universe had conspired against him to leave him in this plight – or they had simply ignored him, he couldn’t be sure. Last time he ever tried their phone line though.
“Look, I’m not going to walk miles or anything,” he said.
She said nothing.
“And I’m not giving you the bear.”
The door began to creep open.
“I’m just with you until we find another sap to turn you over to. I have things to do, after all.”
And the door shut behind Maximilian Culbern as he took his first step outside in twenty-seven years and tried not to breath. Breathing required inhalation, a clever path all the terrible scents of the world had found to weasel their way into his system and torment him. He handed over both the bear and his hand, resigning to a march of misery. Soon, the scents would come.
They weren’t as bad as he had remembered though, when he finally took a breath. Maybe his memory had failed him, but more likely, twenty-seven years had been time enough for the world to solve some of its problems. He was just glad it had finally clued in to the proper priorities.
Still, it wasn’t all roses and rainbows walking outside. For one, he hadn’t slipped on shoes, for they had become a near obsolete commodity to him, save for one pair of cushy slippers. He remained convinced that each pebble was a thorn placed judiciously in his path, even when the many stops he demanded of Sarah revealed nothing of the kind of malicious weapons he imagined. Even the ground, where it hadn’t been peppered with mines to be avoided, was rough enough on his poor, sensitive feet.
That, and he was starting to smell something. Without realizing it, he took another sniff, anxious to solve the mystery. He might say he had never smelled anything like it before, but he wouldn’t rush into such a claim without better testimony. It got stronger as Sarah led him on. Almost as if she knew where to go, her feet fell confidently on the ground. It must have been because she had shoes on and didn’t have to dodge the vicious rocks scattered overtop.
Then Maximilian noticed it.
A distance from his house, yet still visible were he to look out the window he never utilized, there was a “Road Is Closed” sign. An orange blockade decorated the road with its garish presence too, reinforcing the message conveyed by the black letters painted across its broad surface.
That was all how it should have looked, how it had looked for longer than Maximilian knew. One day the blockade wasn’t there, and one day it was. He didn’t make a habit of looking out of the window in the corner of his kitchen though, so he wouldn’t know when it had decided to take up lodging on his street. Not that it was a problem for him; he didn’t drive.
But now, its surface was ragged and slit, the wood popping out from the middle, intruding its plain grain on the painted outside. Pieces of the blockade had been flung from it, splinters of wood littering the surrounding road and coating it with orange snow. The blockade had been simple, one board held up by triangle props on either side, triangles that leaned in to the ground now that the center had robbed their neighborly support from one another. They tilted towards one another, trying to regain what had once been so present, so assumed. From their mangled bodies, Maximilian could make out “Ro … sed.” The rest of the words joined the pieces on the ground.
Sarah led on.


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

Routine (part 3)

Maximilian Culbern is still the same quirky, idiosyncratic individual he was when the story ended last. Let's see what he does with this shaking, sobbing girl....



“Where are your parents?” Maximilian tried, hoping, without too much assurance, that perhaps the distraction of the biscotti would be enough to let her little mind focus on the true problem. She was where she didn’t belong, his house, away from where she did belong, with her parents.
That and, if he didn’t get her out soon, he was bound to end up misinterpreted on the news as one of those perverted men that kidnapped little girls, all for trying to do something nice. Not that Maximilian watched the news. It was a terrible program full of cynicism and despair, and, while usually true, he didn’t need any more of that in his life. He could never be sure what order the stories would come in, and sometimes the sections got all mixed up depending on the available stories. No, it was too unpredictable. But other people watched the news, and he didn’t want his neighbors getting any other ideas. They already judged him; he could practically feel their stares through the walls. They were nothing, of course, but their whispers could get around to the postal worker, or the grocery man. He needed them and would not be compromised by the whimpering of one little girl.
No answer rescued him from his plight.
“Where did you run from?” he tried. Silence.
“Are you hurt?” This elicited a series of short quick shakes of the head, flinging several tears haphazardly around the room, but no more. The little girl returned her gaze, steadily, to the bear in the corner.
Maximilian knew what he had to do. It was a conclusion that he had reached a long time ago but had been trying to avoid. Apparently unsuccessfully.
Bending in close, his face with wrinkles slowly working themselves into his yet malleable skin coming close to hers, he asked one more question. “What your name?”
She mumbled something, but it was as unintelligible to him as his decision to proceed.
“What?”
“Sarah.”
“Okay, Sarah. Well, I’m Maximilian, but I think there’s someone you’d rather be acquainted with, isn’t there?” Her questioning face stared at his, but she didn’t know to nod or refuse.
Once more, Maximilian removed himself from her height to the air he usually inhabited. He crouched, grabbed something in his hands, then turned back to her. With extended hands, but a mind still hoping Sarah would dash out of the door, he presented the big black stuffed bear to her, its arms stiffly reaching forward.
Immediately the biscotti was forgotten, and the plate might have broken in its fall had not the bulbous stomach of the bear slowed its descent and had Sarah’s hands not been so close to the ground already. As it was, it slid down the black fur and clattered to the ground, all three pieces of biscotti following it. Their rectangular surfaces splayed out on the tile, connecting parted corners and making yet another mess for Maximilian to clean.
Sarah, meanwhile, had dissolved into an oblivion of both sorrow and ecstasy mixed into one confusing mess so that she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was hard to cry when a giant teddy bear engulfed you in a hug you didn’t even have to pretend to be there, but she still dampened his fur with previous tears. The bear cleaned both them and the drips of her nose from her face better than her hand ever had.
Maximilian couldn’t decide between emotions either. He knew he ought to be having conniptions at anyone touching the bear, let alone the mess of a girl that Sarah sought to imitate. Her soggy scent would take hours of cleaning to get out of the thick black fur, and even then, he might have to get rid of the bear. Either way, it would be irrevocably damaged. Yet he had welcomed such a fate; that meant he couldn’t be mad at her, didn’t it? And she had stopped sobbing, which was a good thing, a good thing that he had caused.
But he wasn’t about to scare her back into crying, so he remained caught between opposite sides, one begging him to toss her outside the house, bear and all – such collateral damage would have to be born – and the other side demanding that he keep silent and let the little girl have her fill of the bear. Perhaps the bear liked it better that way too; Maximilian hadn’t pressed into its squishy surface for a long while, as such an action was liable to ruin the bear’s integrity, whether it gained cognizance of its plight or not.
Suddenly, with the alacrity of a falcon catching its prey and refusing to relinquish until one of the two contestants lay dead, a hand darted away from the fuzzy back of the bear and snatched up one of Maximilian’s. The girl had a vicegrip entirely unexpected and irreconcilable with her image. Maximilian felt his fingers pushed together until the index and ring fingers came to meet each other, old friends, below the jealous middle finger. The pinky tagged along as a third wheel.
He returned her grip, if only to relieve the pressure on his own hand, which was slowly making the pass from tan coloration to white. When she led him back to the door, Maximilian’s breath caught in his own hope-filled lungs.
Maximilian readily obliged when they reached the knob that was too tall for her. Unfortunately, she hung onto the hand closest to the door, forcing him to employ gymnastics, for use of the other hand, that he had been previously unaware of possessing. He finally got the door open, with a fair degree of grunting and stretching, throwing it wide and not even caring what foreign, invasive scents entered. Sarah had already carried in a whole host, and he was well stocked with Febreze air freshener in all twelve scents.
Having prepared her exit for her though, the girl refused to leave. Her feet seemed as if they had suddenly found quick sand amongst his otherwise immaculate house, save for the stain seeping into the carpet and the discarded biscotti on his floor. Hadn’t he already done enough?



Has Maximilian done enough? What more will be asked, and why has Sarah yet to leave? Why did she come in the first place? Read on, ye good and faithful, read on.

Routine (part 2)

To recap: We left Maximilian Culbern, a strange man who believes himself to be normal and everyone else strange for thinking himself otherwise, in the middle of a crisis. Having just spilled his tea on account of an unscheduled knock on his door, he must decide his next course of action.


Snatching the door open, Maximilian Culbern found himself staring in the face of a little girl, wet tears kissing her cheeks and snot from her nose threatening to do the same. She gasped at the sudden change of scenery, the plain front of the door having been replaced with the none too smiley face of Maximilian. Hair in pigtails flopped off of her head, though one bundle leaned off the usual symmetrical position that would place both on opposing sides of the head. Her pink dress, sporting an obtrusively large daisy on the front, had splotches of dirt pressed into it that would never come out, not even with scrubbing. The dirt had worked itself inbetween the threads and would stubbornly remain there, not to be persuaded out of its new abode.
“Yes?” Maximilian said.
“My mama and dada…” She tried again. “My mama and dadaaaaa,” a cry once more pushed itself from her lips, bringing the company of more tears with it. A shaking hand raised to wipe away the damp stains on her face, but ended up merely smearing around the moisture so that no space remained free.
Maximilian sighed. This child had gotten lost, separated from her parents, at her own fault no doubt, and somehow that made her his responsibility. If parents could keep a closer eye upon their children, people who didn’t want children and made every attempt to avoid contact with them wouldn’t be so plagued. Maximilian was entirely in support of the leashes and harnesses that could be clipped onto children.
Still, the black haired girl cried upon his doorstep, and she wouldn’t be any help in getting herself un-lost until she had calmed down. It just figured. Children, when they were most in need, were most unable to help themselves.
Stepping aside and opening the door slightly wide enough to allow the child to pass, he ventured, “Do you want to come in?” all the while praying that she would say no, shake her head, or somehow deny his entreaty.
She wasn’t so kind.
At the slightest opening, the slightest hope that it might be meant for her, the girl darted in, almost before Maximilian had ceased speaking. Her mouth immediately opened in wondered, her mind momentarily distracted from her worries by the plethora of stuffed animals surrounding her.
Everywhere, every corner and every space that would have been open in another house, there were stuffed animals. With thousands of eyes and black and pink noses searching out this newcomer, it was as if the house took one collective sniff, the air shifting around the little, quivering, scared girl. Frozen, she stared right back at the eyes staring at her while she rooted into the ground and made it impossible for Maximilian to close the door.
Another sigh passed through his lips. He would have to coax her into motion and peace, and clearly the stuffed animals weren’t helping. Not that they were for that. He kept a careful watch on her hands – her dirty, wet, snot-covered hands – that they didn’t stray to his collection. No, the best thing he could figure to help her, or distract her, was sweet, sugary food. All kids liked that, didn’t they?
Trouble was, the best supplement he had for that sort of thing was his biscotti. She would have to have three, otherwise there wouldn’t be the requisite three left in the box at the last rotation and he would have to open another box even sooner, throwing off the cycles for that box. There was a reason there were thirty-nine in the box, and that was because it divided into three, nice and neat. She’d eat three, and he’d just have to open his next box one day earlier, which meant he would have to call in for replacement groceries sooner than usual.
The girl couldn’t know what distress she was already causing, but why couldn’t she have picked another house to knock on? It was true that there weren’t many around – one of the chief reasons Maximilian had liked it – but she could have made an effort to walk a little farther or find her parents on her own. Maximilian didn’t see why he had to be involved. She was nothing to him and he was nothing to her. They were just strangers brought together by circumstance, strangers that would ignore one another in any other context, strangers doing hardly better than that as it was.
She wouldn’t get any of his tea, that was sure. She had already made him spill it, and the rest in the cup was long past the ideal temperature at which to be drunk. It was as good as ruined. Getting a plate, Maximilian arranged the proper number of biscotti and shoved the plate before the girl. “Here,” he said. “Take it.”
She obeyed, clutching at the plate as if it were life itself. But she kept her eyes focused on one big bear he had in the corner, a bear bigger than she was. He didn’t like the way she looked at it.
“Eat,” he commanded. What was wrong with this kid?
Obediently, she began gnawing on one piece, dropping to the floor as she did so. Her feet tucked underneath her body, cushioning her fall and her seat, and she rested the plate in between them. Then she held the staff of biscotti with hands that seemed to have forgotten they contained opposable thumbs, merely squeezing the fingers together and bending them around the treat like paws. Her steady munching barely snatched pieces of the biscotti; rather she seemed more prone to rubbing her teeth against the hard surface.
Maximilian willed her an appetite. If she didn’t eat all three, he was going to have to throw the others out, and that was just wasteful. He couldn’t touch them though, not after they had come so close to her. He could smell her bad breath, so rancid it practically emanated from her very pores, no matter where he was in relation to her.
“So,” he started, then thought better of it when those wavering glowing eyes found his. Quiet was better, much better he decided.
He maintained the silence that the little girl seemed bent on keeping, mimicking her cues. Her eyes were red and puffy, as was her nose and the skin around her lips. Plenteous sobbing could do a lot to ruin any image one entertained one’s self as having, especially the cute appeal of a tiny girl that might convince her grandparents to grant any request with a smile and a flutter of her immature eyelashes, provided they weren’t laced with tears.
The biscotti wasn’t performing its job well. Sobs eased themselves over, around, and any other way they could force themselves to pass the biscotti trying to barricade them in. Ragged breathing, from both parties, was the only sound.


You and I both will have to read/write on to find out what happens next......

Routine (part 1)

I am assuming I have readers. However, I don't know for sure. That said, my readers could all be figments of my imagination, which further means that I have a captive audience. If you are real, I can only beg you to stay and offer you enticement on account of my writing. So, captive audience or no, I thought I'd take some time to write a short story. I hope you stay as captivated as the readers in my head.

Maximilian Culbern petered about his kitchen as the water boiled for his daily tea. At precisely two hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit, he would remove the kettle, pour the water into his white cup, and let his tea steep for five minutes, during which he would arrange three ovals of biscotti upon a tiny plate. Then, he would sit and wait to sit and drink.
Currently, Maximilian was washing dishes, an unlikely and unscheduled occurrence. The culprits had been created after last night’s dinner, a delicious vegetable lasagna made of three year old noodles that would remain his staple of choice for the next few days, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The only exception would be his tea and his biscotti, at four o’clock, every afternoon.
With a sigh, Maximilian replaced the dishes in their designated spots. Just then, the whistle of the kettle called him to attention, and he twisted the knob on his stove to shut off the gas and consequent flame. A puff was the only complaint the dying fire gave, used to the routine.
The water slurped into the cup, settling at the ring around the white cup that had refused to vacate despite many scrubbings. Maximilian liked his black tea, and his cups liked to retain a mark of their being used, even if it was by the same person in the same manner.
His tea and his snack ready, Maximillian proceeded to his small living room, adjacent to his kitchen. There, he plopped down to the floor with practiced ease that failed to free even a drop of the precious liquid in his cup. He had a couch, of course, but it was occupied and he always took the floor. In his stead, sat stuffed animals, dogs and crocodiles with black noses and felt teeth sticking out, defending their territory.
The couch was not the only roost either. Bunnies grouped together under a chair set in the corner, and birds perched on every shelf available. Snakes curled around the table’s legs, and though gravity would have kept them down, their great number amassed to let them ascend on the coils of one another all the way up. Possums and jaguars and elephants and marsupials all stared out from their respective habitats.
No corner of fur threatened to pull upwards and reveal the cottony white fluff underneath, and any loose threads were immediately doctored by a swift and steady hand. Black noses and eyes of every color lay under careful organization in several drawers, as did replacement tails and ears. A animal impaired by the loss of one of its senses wouldn’t last long in the wild; it wouldn’t be fair to deprive them of an equal chance.
Maximilian sat contentedly as he sipped his tea, staring as unblinkingly as his stuffed animals save for a flicker every so often. No television set decorated any wall, and his book shelves were already packed full with a commodity he found far more valuable than printed words. Instead, he took a deep breath through his nose, his great nose, the nose that had exiled him indoors.
He didn’t know why – he hadn’t asked for such a curse surely – but Maximilian had found himself designated with an abnormally sensitive nose. From an early age he had been able to pick up on scents others couldn’t even describe, let alone sense the presence of, and he had learned to keep quiet every time some unusual sensation tickled his nostrils. It wasn’t much fun to ask what a smell was when no one else smelled it, much less when they began giving you strange looks because you asked it so often.
He quickly learned, too, that there were a good deal many unpleasant smells, much more than pleasant ones. Rotten mice first found his nose to prey upon, and the out of doors was a veritable battleground. From weeds to feces, the moment he stepped outside the combination of odors hit him as surely as a smack in the face, making every excursion out an avoidable trip at best. However, as a child, no one had understood this. They claimed he made too big of a fuss, never suspecting that he sensed things they had not the capacity for. He was written off by countless psychologists as an attention-seeker, a boy trying to find originality and the ever-illusive uniqueness that all so desperately craved. He had stopped correcting them after a while, because they never started listening. He’d take a little less uniqueness if it were all up to him.
But as his explanations were ignored, so too were his complaints. Every wrinkle of his nose went unnoticed, until it became an offense to his parents, punishable by the strictest of measures. It just helped that when they sent him to stand in a corner, more often than not something was dead, dying, or stuck there. And so the agony continued as fetid scents impressed themselves upon his olfactory memory.
Yet once he turned eighteen, Maximilian fled his house with all the stuffed animals he had ever been gifted with. Though they provided vesicles for mold and mildew and other plagues, he had found the keys to cleaning them so that they were no worse to him than the smell of his own skin. And they didn’t think he was crazy, not them. They sympathized with him, all the elephants and dogs and rhinos. A nose was a terrible thing, they all agreed.
He had moved into the house he lived in on a gift from his grandmother, who most of his family agreed was an old coot, though they would give Maximilian a run for the title once he reached the requisite age. Old coot though she was, his grandmother bought him a house and sent him a weekly allowance. Whether she believed his plight or merely sympathized that he had belief in it, he didn’t know. He tried to tell himself he didn’t care.
So it was that for the last twenty-seven years Maximilian Culbern had never set foot outside. Outside was the realm of torture, and he saw no reason to seek it out now that he was not forced to walk to school or play with the other, filthy boys of the neighborhood. With his allowance he had subscribed to a grocery delivery system, though he didn’t frequent their services any more often than he had to. Even opening the door to receive their packages could be risky.
He had arranged with the postal service, too, to have his letters delivered to a slot in his door rather than the mailbox he had called and paid a neighbor to cut down. He paid them electronically, and kept up the requisite Christmas emails to his family by the same medium. And he was happy.
Then there was a knock at his door.
Maximilian jumped, spilling his tea. The hot liquid traced down onto his leg that had twitched, pooling to create a stain matching the one filling out the white carpet.
“Oh no,” he groaned. Both stains would be near impossible to get out, and even then neither article would ever be the same. He would have to throw both out.
Having so decided, he wiped his hands on his pants lest they drip on anything and cause him even more work. He was just unbuckling his belt – on which there was a spot of tea; it would have to go too – when he remembered the cause of the great unsettling. The knock.
It wasn’t Thursday, the time for his grocery deliveries, and it was after the hours when the mail was delivered. He had already stooped to the ground once today to retrieve it, always a little flummoxed by the random piles forced by the postal worker. With two taps on either side, the piles came together, from whence he sorted them from smallest to largest. Only then did he begin to look at the labels.
No one ought to have been at his door, but he had heard a knock sure as he had smelled all those smells that people told him he made up. He sighed, casting a furrowed brow at the stains. And he had just gotten new carpet too. This was what happened when one broke routine, he realized, and decided that he would have a gate set up around his house. Those on deliveries could request his admittance, which he would all too readily give at the appropriate time, but all these annoyances could be avoided. Who would knock at such an hour anyway?



Come back soon for part 2!

It's all about YOU!

At least, that's what the brand was called on a series of necklaces that had every popular guy and girl name branded onto the jewelery. Why wouldn't you want to listen to that?

Well, there seem to be two problems at least initially - if we entertain the claim. First, if it's all about me, then why is the company trying to impose its products upon me? If it's all about me, then I must be the measure of myself, not some necklace I can hang as a tag about myself. If it's all about me, why do I need a necklace to prove that to myself? It's all already about me, so I seem to have no need for a necklace, having already been fulfilled by the overwhelming significance of myself.

Second though, it may be all about you, but you are not unique. Your name is about as unique as a list stuck onto a turnstile of identical necklaces but for the changing name. How many Mary's are there? Tom's, Joe's, Jane's? So, it's all about you, but it's also all about him and her and that person staring at the ground as they walk through the park. The company is appealing to everyone whose name merited being stuck on a necklace, by so doing reducing their claim. It can't be all about me if it's also all about someone else. We can each have importance, or one of us can have it all, but we can't share the importance without changing the mantra to "It's all about US!" And let's face it, how successful an advertisement is that?

We're stuck in a culture trying to find uniqueness. For example, the unique name is coming into vogue. Let's name our kid Tree, that way no one else is sure to have the same name. A good solution, I'm convinced. All you have to do is find the least attractive name, and you have a higher bet at least than all the names striking the popularity lists.

The name necklace lets one feel special, lets one feel a sense of belonging, at least until someone comes up and grabs the same necklace. Then you both are special, and you experience a feeling of that specialness diminishing. The Incredibles might have said it best: If everyone's super, that's the same as saying no one is.

And to some degree the movie is right. There must be a distinguishing factor. In order to understand cold, we must have hot. If we were cold all the time, with no difference, we would have no reason to qualify it. Cold would merely be the state of being that strikes all human beings. Here also is where we get our answer. If everyone were unique in the same way, we would cease to call anyone unique. However, people are unique in different ways, with different manifestations. While someone may take the same name necklace as I do, I feel no diminishing significance because I am not the same type of Emily as they are. Perhaps we could change our view as see these name necklaces, not as a source of identity - which we already have, hopefully - but as a means to recognize common humanity.

Talking Nonsense

In Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky, one character, Ruzumikhin, comments that: "Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth!"

Naturally, the first thing I thought upon reading this was to wonder if it is true. Is talking nonsense really what differentiates me from a worm, a flower, or a dolphin?

Let's start with the bare fact of talking. Talking is a form of communication via the medium of sounds formed with our mouths, sounds which, when strung together, we often call words. However, myriad languages color the globe, and so we cannot restrict a language to merely one we understand. Yet something in it, despite that we do not recognize the words, glistens with enough familiarity to allow us to call it a language. This is the idea that nothing is ever completely different from something else. If something were to be so, you would not even have the capabilities of recognizing it. Saying that a language is completely different from another is improper labeling because if that were so, you would be unable to even identify it as a language. Some similarities must persist in order for differences to be comprehended and maintained. But I digress.

Back to talking. If talking is a communication with vocal sounds, couldn't animals be characterized by such speech? Dogs bark, dolphins click, and horses bray. It seems that talking, on its own, cannot be our differentiating factor, and thus Ruzumikhin qualifies his statement. It is in the talking of nonsense that humans maintain a different link of the chain of being.

Here is where we diverge from the philosophers of years past. Plato, Aristotle, Augustine... the list goes on, have differentiated human beings on account of their rational capacities. Ruzumikhin is doing the exact opposite. Or is he?

First I must ask: what is it we call nonsense? Quite simply, perhaps too simply, anything that doesn't make sense. Square circles and God making a stone so big He can't lift it. These are the things that the definition of one contradicts the definition of the other, things that can never meaningfully be joined.

But isn't nonsense also what we call things that have yet to make sense? For example, the Copernican system of the universe. Heliocentricity was regarded as pure nonsense, but as we know now, it is true. The calling of nonsense in this case, then, delegates the subject to something as semantically ridiculous as a square circle. It may be a rejection of the effort it takes to understand the subject, or merely that given one's cultural, intellectual, and other constructs, one simply cannot fathom such a subject as a possibility, as anything but nonsense.

Yet if there were not some people with less constructs or who broke out of the ones constraining them, we, as the human race, would not progress. Electricity would be deemed a nonsensical idea if posited to people of the first century. Even in the time it was birthed, growing first as an idea, it was certainly scoffed at. Why? Because we don't know what to do with the different. Instead, we term it the unattainable and, with such a definition, call any attempt to change pure nonsense.

In order to think something new, within a culture or within your own mind, you must think something different. Since the previous conception had been accepted as fact, this new and different conception naturally seems to be nonsensical. Only if we can engage in intellectually honest considerations by getting past our pre-judgements will we further our learning. The new conception doesn't even have to be right in order for us to so further ourselves. If it is untrue, we have still arrived at the truth of finding that which is false. If it is true, we have so discovered what is true.

So it seems that Ruzumukhin is right. Talking nonsense is the human ability to think new and different thoughts, as well as to categorize those thoughts as nonsense or otherwise. In order to so categorize, we must be rational, and thus it seems that Ruzumikhin is in line with the general consensus of philosophy. Furthermore, in talking nonsense, one can get at truth in two ways, whether the establishment of truth or falsehood.

In light of these conclusions, I must demand that we all risk talking a little more nonsense.

Just a Game ........?

No, I'm not advocating the song by Birdy, though I do think it's a great song. That's just not what I'm trying to talk about here. I want to bring you, my reader, to a consideration of Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

The premise of the book is simple enough: the world needs saving; the hero is going to do it. Just like every other book, right? Not so fast. In Ender's Game, the main character, Ender Wiggin, is a boy both younger and smarter than you. And I'm not talking book smart, I'm talking everything smart. This is the kid who makes Tom Sawyer look like a drooling baboon. But he's not alone. He has an older brother, who is every bit as smart and twice as vicious, and a older sister, who is equally smart and twice as nice. Ender is the delicious hybrid that the government officials are hoping will prove the best balance of dangerous determination and humane consideration that will save the world. So what do they do? They whisk him off to space school.

Warning: space school is not everything you dreamed of when you wanted to be an astronaut. Not for Ender. Ender gets the rule broken, but not for him. Against him. It's as if you've done all your chores and your parents are about to hand you your allowance. Just when you think it's all done, they snatch the money back from your palm and add ten more tasks to your list. When you finally complete them, panting from exhaustion, they give you your money back. Halved. This is the atmosphere Ender is tossed into, but nothing save the most grueling of situations will prepare Ender for the more grueling task of saving the world.

At the risk of losing your readership, I'm not going to tell you what happens. Does Ender succeed? Is the world saved? You'll have to read the book. I would rather irk you (sorry!) than spoil the book. I will say this, though: there is a twist. A good twist. A twist that made me scream out loud and turn back a couple pages, frantically re-reading to make sure I had gotten it right.

But it's a kids book, surely that should excuse me, you may say. If that's your cry, let me ask you a question: Do you classify a book by its content or by the size of its text and the words it uses? Because sure, Ender's Game is a kids book. Fifth graders can read it. But I must say that it is also an adult book, because of the questions and considerations it deals with. If you give it a fair treatment, I guarantee that your mind will be whirling when you're done. Ask yourself: Would you have done as Ender did? Why? Did he do right or wrong, and does a question of morality even matter when the fate of the entire human race is at stake? Is the human race even worth preserving?

The questions are endless.

Revive

It's time to start blogging again.

Of course, that raises the question of whether I have enough time to be blogging. Can I really give this my all? And should I? Should my entire personality be wrapped up in a couple lines of text, some minor graphics surrounding it, and a URL? While I'm certain that question deserves a more sophisticated answer, my gut response is no. However, I have that answer for a couple of reasons. First, I'd like to think I'm more complicated than a computer program can capture, but there are some days I'm not entirely sure. Second, I can be very anti-technology sometimes. Sure, I can full well acknowledge, logically, all the many values and benefits of it. Yet something in me rebels against a Kindle, or the way kids less than three times my age are playing games on an iPad rather than exercising their imaginations. But that's a rant for another time. Third and finally, I think part of me just likes to remain mysterious. Even if I could put my entire personality into a blog, I don't think I would. I'd be too accessible that way, and as much as I love giving myself challenges, I'd like to give myself as a challenge to others.

So there it is. The challenge is before you. Will you understand my writing? Will you take the time to try?

And why should you, anyway? What makes my blog special, unique, or different than the hundreds (thousands?) of others floating around in cyberspace? Why should you read me?

Well, here's where I may get annoying to some (potential) readers, but I'm not going to tell you. I could tell you that I'm a crazy chick that rock climbs and does martial arts, but also pursues chill activities like reading and writing, but I'm not going to. I could give you a list of all the classes I have taken and bask in the glory of my credentials, but I'm not going to. Rather, read me if you like how (or what) I write. I want my writing to stand (or fall) on its own merit. So I'm not going to tell you to read me, in the same way that a book in Barnes and Noble can't cry out from the shelves. You have to go, pick it up, and try it.

Only then will you know what you'll find.