Cultivating a beautiful, cat-like, nonchalance

"I remember that I would wake up in morning and hear her saying things like, 'You are so beautiful! You are a princess! Look at you!' and as I'd open my eyes I'd realize that she's talking not to me but to the cat."

"You felt like the third wheel."

"Mmm hmm. You know, I know if there'd been another woman, I would have compared myself to her physically. Sort of what does she look like? What kinds of things is my girlfriend attracted to that that I could aspire to? You know, what personality traits? Is she funny? Ah, you know.... But there was just...I didn't know what it was about Sid. I mean I could see that she was a-attractive as a cat. I could see that...she had this nonchalance that was beautiful. She didn't seem to care, really, that she was loved. So those, those were things that I did think about, really--cultivating even."

"You thought about cultivating a nonchalance."

Laughing, "That I was this concerned about it shows you that it would've been a fake, but, yeah, I thought about cultivating -- that."

Since a pet can engage our affection, it also engages all the other feelings that can go with affection: jealousy, and dependence and anger, and all the others. And as soon as any one feeling kicks in, all of the complicated dynamics that happen between any people, any household, any family, inevitably kick in. As with Heather and Sid the cat.

"I felt sort of the same way I felt um you know how when you have a crush on someone and you're friends with their significant other? and all the awkardness as you pretend that, you know, you sort of don't have the feelings you do for this other person? I sort of felt that Sid was the significant other of the person for whom I had feelings. So I felt awkward around Sid. ... I felt like they were together before I was around, and I was an interloper. Y'know all the awkwardness surrounding that."

"And, so, what's it like to be in a love triangle with with, a-another woman and, and a -- cat?"

"Well it was pretty ah diminishing. I mean, it was a beautiful cat."

Excerpt from This American Life Episode #154.
Image from http://luminouslens.baltiblogs.com/whitelight/about.html

The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil

With The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, George Saunders gives us an hilarious, harrowing, and charming fable for these times. Within this small package are biomechanical creatures you will adore in a setting that raises your IQ to envision, facing the major personal and civic trials of our times. Saunders winks at us throughout, boiling the terrifying complexities of character and politics and ethics down to a cartoonish essence and when through winking, delivers an ending that may make you weep the sweetest tears.

Justin Torres writes beautifully

I met Justin Torres earlier this year in New York working at McNally Robinson Booksellers. He is funny and real and quick and well-read and a dear, dear friend.

Though we have been friends for many months now (during which he'd been published, gotten an agent, gone to Bread Loaf, and received public praise from Dorothy Allison), I hadn't had a chance to read any of his work aside from his staff picks. These book reviews stood out in a I'm-reading-staff-picks-right?-Why-do-I-feel-breathless? kind of way, but I still hadn't experienced his talent left to its own devices.

He moved to Austin, Texas recently but was back in town reading two of his stories at Dixon's Place last week, and I got to hear him then. His simple, lush writing flows so easily and, unencumbered by language, we can be fully present to the stories of pain and intimacy and the complexity of redemption.

It is an exalting pleasure indeed to see skill presented so effortlessly. Witnessing such talent evokes the nonchalant magnificence of nature where eagles and leaves, lions and rivers, whales and orchids exist just as they were designed to and inspire you to do the same.

Most Beautiful Thing of the Day

Last night, looking for a midtown theater, I left a cold, wet, Gothamy street for the warmer, but puzzling interior of 314 West 54th Street. I was off to see Dancer for Money: An Evening of 10-Minute Plays one of which was written by a friend of mine. The address on my ticket lead me to a building bearing two banners: "The Midtown Community Court" and "The American Theater of Actors". What?

I ran into a friend outside and left him to go in and get seats for our group. "It's cool in there," I think he said. "You should check it out." Knowing I was going to a play but reading that I was entering a court, maybe I expected the baroque, wooden interior of an ancient courthouse lending itself easily to a home for the arts. I found nothing of the sort. What I found was much better.

The front door opens onto an oppressively civic hallway of cinder block walls painted white, illuminated by too much cold white fluorescent light with an elevator likely leading to administrative offices you hope you'll never know, bearing subway and neighborhood maps from the Metropolitan Transit Authority. At its end, there is an elevator with an awkward hallway to the right and a small area of many doors and another elevator to the left. The signposts at this crucial intersection? Computer paper framed by Scotch tape intending permanence affixed to various surfaces saying little about theater.

What to do what to do? Having just passed through that blinding cinder block tunnel, the awkward hallway was unappealing, so I headed to the left wondering when this place would start to make sense.

Moments later, the sour aesthetic of modern, public-sector architecture parted, and through a boring doorframe, this exquisite staircase beckoned me to it with silent ballads of public neglect and hymns of private love. My steps and breath slowed. My heart and mind raced. Where did this come from? Who built it? Where are they? Wish I could meet them. Who knows about this? I love this secretive city! Woah, it goes all the way up! Look at that part. And what's down there? Thank you. Thank you Thank you.

I floated in this underwater reverie of confusion, discovery and quiet for many minutes until others came my way, also looking for theater. I called them to me, and once they got there shared this vision with them. Coming up for air, and back in the ordinary world of men, I realized I'd forgotten long ago about finding the theater and made a note to tell you about all this.

Live Action Role Playing

Listening to this week's podcast of On the Media just now, I heard a segment about a LARP documentary called Darkon in which beauty was noted twice. Daniel McArthur, one of the game's participants mentioned, "I've actually got a relationship trying to go on in character with a certain nomad, and I've been following and helping this person more than anybody else, and it's cost me several things -- like my life on several occasions -- but it's beautiful." A few minutes later, Andrew Neel, the documentary's co-director with Luke Meyer said, "I think television, and online role-playing games, and video games, they're kind of the opposite of Darkon because they feed you the fantasy. They remove you from the process of creation and destruction, and that's one of the things that I think makes Darkon so warty and idiosyncratic and in that way beautiful. And so, while Darkon seems so weird, it's actually very human and makes perfect sense to me." It was such a pleasure to come across these words because, while I'm doing this work in part to open more people to the experiences of beauty possible in life, it is unnerving at this point to encounter and consider those that are closed off, and while they both used the word "beauty" to refer to different embodiments of it, these two men had an encouraging ease and familiarity with the concept.

Heart-warmed, and faith in humanity stable, I am left only with the intriguing work of sorting out what each man meant precisely. Neel's comment is easiest to tag as the beauty of imperfection and challenge and agency while McArthur's might be the beauty of giving oneself over to something greater.

Honor your interests, read the news and live beautifully. This is important work.

"What am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing? Beauty?? Am I kidding?!"

Horrified and violently ashamed, these thoughts raced through my heart, and mind, and gut as I watched The Kite Runner at a preview screening in Maryland Monday night. Khaled Hosseini's novel of loyalty, shame, and hard-won redemption has been made into a powerfully emotional film by director Marc Forster. Immaturity and weakness of character have life-and-death-consequences in this story, and the protagonist confronts internal and external demons at its climax set in the Taliban's fear-and-violence-ridden Afghanistan.

Stunned and weeping, I sat in the theater wondering how I could possibly have chosen to devote my life to beauty when the world is so ugly and violent. "Beauty?" I thought. "Really, Adjua? Beauty? What an irrelevant luxury. Grow up, and do your part. Fix this!" I shouted at the cacophonous volume of thoughts held in the mind.

As I write this, I am riding the train home from Baltimore and am calmer now – assured anew by a few thoughts:

One: Not everyone has to fight on the front lines. The most courageous generals need solace and peace and art and beauty to come home to after the most important battles. The reality of war need not mean the irrelevance of beauty.

Two: There is no sense in dishonoring your strengths straining to fill positions for which you are unfit but which you hold in higher esteem.

Three: With each of us in the role we are best suited to play our team is stronger as a whole.

Four: I have been born in a time and place that do not demand I struggle and fight for every aspect of my existence. This good fortune has allowed me to enjoy a good life including the intellectual awareness and emotional energy to address the problems I encounter and learn of in the world. Guilt at my good fortune is a form of ungratefulness. My day-to-day life is not hard. It is delightful. My responsibility is to enjoy this gift, remain aware of is rarity – its fragility – and fight for a better world for all of us through the work I love and am fortunate to do.

Five: The Indigo Girls sang "Shine my life like a light" and hearing those words at sixteen, I was inspired to live as I wished others did. This deeply challenging directive requires so much to take on but seems the most likely way to change the world.

While I am somewhat soothed by all this, I am not wholly convinced. Afghanistan's recent troubles were made real for me tonight in Forster's film, and I had to reevaluate how I'm choosing to live. Only a fraction of the world's problems will be given such a presentation. As I continue my research on beauty, I must remain aware of battles that need fighting at home and abroad. I don't want to be caught painting pictures of war when it is finally time to get in there and fight.

Darjeeling Limited

Off to see this movie with a bunch of friends from college and work tonight. I read recently that the problem with Wes Anderson's films is that "...they're all good, even when they're not."

Visually, they're so satisfying and emotionally so rich, yet understated, that I always feel I am hypnotized into loving them. Rushmore though, never resonated for me. Maybe because the kid's angst is so familiar in its tragedy - too close to home somehow. Or maybe cause that movie isn't gorgeous in the lush way that The Royal Tennenbaums or The Life Aquatic are.

I'm still wrestling with Life Aquatic. I own it now and watch it sometimes wondering, "Is it because this is good? or just visually (deeply) pleasing? or now familiar?"

I'm going to see Darjeeling Limited for wholly aesthetic reasons. Anderson's cinematographic palette and Adrian Brody's amazing face.

Neuroscience, Bio Class, Day Dreams, Imagination

At times, it is hard to know where to begin.

Should I tell you first that there is, in this exceptional city, a place called The Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of the Imagination? How long should I wait before adding that I recently attended an event there called "Daydreaming, Night-Dreaming, and Stimulus-Independent Thought." And how about that is was a roundtable discussion among five men and women whose work in neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry brought them there? Also, it was free. And open to the public. And simulcast on the web. Christ.

I have a crush on this place. If you are not already with me on this, take a look at their events calendar and events archive, and see if you don't fall in love.

Exactly.

Sasha told me about this place and attended the roundtable with me. About fifty of us made up the audience. We surrounded the participants, listening for the first hour and asking questions for the second. Many in attendence were psychologists, and psychiatrists or students on their way to becoming such. Others were like Sasha and I -- credential-free and curious -- there to absorb this heavenly city-as-school experience.

As I sat there listening to scientists talk about the mind, and behavior and day-dreaming, I was taken back to the lecture halls of my early college career as a biology student. I'd attend lectures dutifully, and for a while took notes with the best of them. Some aspect of this did not agree with me though, and my notebooks became festooned with more and more elaborate drawings and less and less information about the biological sciences.

At the time, I thought, "I absorb this information better when I am not distracted by the task of note-taking." This may have been true, but to secure the grades I'd need to continue in the sciences, this plan needed a level of support on the bent-over-a-textbook-in-your-dorm-room end of things that I was unwilling to provide. I like listening to scientists, but do not care to do what it takes to be one. No matter. This frees me up to be a fan of the sciences, a role I happily found myself in last Saturday at the Philoctetes Center.

Oy - another surprisingly confessional post.

All I meant to say was that, hearing neuroscientists talk about what they do, and do not, know about the mind is exciting and humbling and beautiful because they don't know much. Just like the universe is right out there, and we know so little about it, the mind is right in here and just as alien.

During the Q&A, John Antrobus mentioned that there are 100,000,000,000 neurons in a human brain and 100,000,000,000,000 synapses amongst them. Here is a video showing how they work together -- a video which says, but does not show, that this neural collaboration is what creates new ideas.

Stalin was gorgeous. Discuss.

There's a new book out called Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore. The first photo you see here, of Stalin at 24 years old, graces the cover and caused an uproar of blushing and deep ambivalence among my fellow booksellers when we saw it last week. Even now, as fountain-haired young Joseph stares back at me, I search the nobly un-smitten crevices of my mind for words to tell you what I am feeling. Words don't come, but this image does.

The 20th century has morphed into a lush, primeval jungle swamp, and I stare, enchanted, at this face which is now the massive siren bloom of some bewitchingly decorative, flesh-fueled monster plant. My life-and-death encounter is scored by the chirping, whirring creature sounds of fellow swamp-dwellers. Their disinterested emissions become a horror film's tension-inflating string section and within me, the signal "Threat! Threat! Threat!" struggles to overpower my urge to gaze on with abandon. Beneath me, my froggy legs shudder and twitch as I summon the survival-loving restraint of my raw amphibian brain to keep from springing forth into the smug and gaping mouth of this gorgeous carnivore.

Back here, in the 21st century, I crave information about this man for the first time ever. Well-done Montefiore.