An Adventure a Week, or "Deeper Traveling," or Something I Always Wanted to Do But Thought I had Enough Time to Wait

I realized recently, mostly because of a series of personal failures (for lack of something more poetic), that life passed me on the right somewhere between Mt. Katahdin and the puddle outside my front door. Like many of my ilk, I've been spending too much time huddled on my oddly shaped couch, chucking comically heavy weights at the phantoms of self-lust (or whatever), or reading--with near obsession--student journals, papers, and posts. Therefore, I've decided to tailgate life, if I can catch her, and see where she might lead.

Once a week I will try something new or something I haven't done in a long time and report on it here (brevity will replace wit). It might be something as small as eating mountain oysters or as blissful as riding the beach in far-off Roatan with my nearest and dearest. Think of it as an instance of "deep travel" in its frantic, manic, and ecstatic forms. Something like a lunch break in Schenectady. Nothing all that preconceived, just go and see and once there pay more attention or less. I'll begin with two things and then go from there.
1. I will start with a trip to Starbucks this afternoon to finish something I've been working on (yes, school stuff, but then I've just started this thing). This is a place I've visited, but maybe one that I haven't really seen (or maybe I have, but this time I actually try to care).
2. On February 16, I will go listen to an opera singer at the Grace in Bangor, Maine (I know, but who knows, right?).

After these, I'll see what else there is to climb into, over, or around (I'll take suggestions, even stupid or dangerous ones, but nothing that will get me fired).

Adventure #1, Starbucks: Jogging Pants and the Dynamics of Dating

Week of February 5

After maneuvering through Sunday traffic and the shenanigans of retirees and twenty-somethings trying to park, I wiggled my way into the cafe, a freezing breeze dogging my heels.

People occupy every seat, with a few insipid undergraduates taking up four-seaters with their laptops, IPhones, and IPads arrayed before them like defensive ramparts. No, the gadgets signal, I won't be leaving even if my ass fuses the pillowy lint of my jogging pants with the lacquered particulate-board of this chair. But, if you're lucky, I might managed to saunter back to my IKEA-furnished apartment once I've worked out my thesis on the mating habits of the middle class; however, at this point, I've only included two of the five required sources.

Littered elsewhere, even on the ledge of the propane fireplace, are couples who seem, from the molten atmosphere and wrinkled foreheads, to be on either their first or last dates. The uncertainty of a word's worth, poised as one so earnestly is between licked or lipsticked lips, creates a feeling of suspense as one idea catches, another misleads, and a third enrages. With the slightest blip in tone, lives crumble or rise, left in a half-and-half slick of sadness or exalted in the amber crust of raw sugar. I just feel sad, wondering how "I love you" becomes "I hate you" overnight. Given the tortured faces of those cranked into these tiny seats and bloated with caffeine and chocolate mix, I'm almost certain the feeling turns on the timing of a fart, and a few (it seems) haven't timed theirs quite right.

So my "skinny" something comes whizzing up to the counter followed by the barista's inane joy, "have a super scrumptious day" (she doesn't even look at me, and I don't blame her), and I'm off into the apocalyptic and cold Maine air, wondering at the physics that allow one foot to follow the other.

A Convocation Speech: The Idea of Difficulty

The Idea of Difficulty

On behalf of the faculty, I have been asked to say a few words to you about your educations. No doubt you have heard and will hear much about what an education can do for you, all of which are more or less true. No doubt an education will help you get a job by providing you with a marketable set of skills. Yet, this afternoon, I would like to focus on a comment I often hear from students: “School is hard.”  Perhaps we have all said this at one time or another, and indeed it is true that finishing a degree of study is as hard as anything you will do. Yet, when understood, we see difficulty as a sign of opportunity, a means of inspiring and, in some ways, measuring achievement.

In 1962, when attempting to inspire a nation to support the space program, JFK famously said, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." To some this might sound masochistic or merely macho posturing. Who would really choose to do something hard instead of something easy? On its face, the idea seems counter-intuitive. We are conditioned to seek the simple, feeling entitled to simple explanations, obvious tasks, and static ideas that only reaffirm our provincial preconceptions. Anything else is seen as some kind of special pleading or brainwashing. However, out of this uncritical affirmation nothing meaningful emerges, no knowledge and certainly no intellectual growth. All we get is cynical resignation. Becoming educated, as JFK’s simple idea reveals, is achieved not only by accepting that doing so will be hard, because it will be, but seeking out, by choosing, those tasks that are in and of themselves difficult. In confronting difficult tasks you will grow, you will move beyond expectations of simplicity and begin asking and seeking answers to questions that matter and lead to something good.

When JFK delivered this phrase, he was asking scientists to seize the profligate technologies that had been developed to kill, to deliver hatred across seas and continents, and transform them into tools that might could use to achieve something good, something hard. Violence and hatred are easy, peace and empathy are hard. JFK realized, as did his speech writer and many others, that important achievements were enmeshed within difficulty problems, answers to which would require imagination, critical thinking, thoughtful analysis, and sincere commitment to the truth. The values implicit in seeking these answers define an education, the very kind that the Husson faculty have committed to providing you. Only in confronting difficult tasks will you grow, moving beyond your preconceived, and often misinformed, notions to a deeper understanding of how knowledge is related. How knowledge can be used to solve problems that motivate positive change rather than promote cynicism and encourage fear.

Look around you. When your parents go off to work to determine why an engine isn’t working and how it might be fixed; or diagnose a patient and then explaining how she might be healed; or plan how to pay for your education, your sibling’s food, and their retirement, they are doing something that is hard. When your professors stand before you to explain a difficult principle or sit to evaluate your performance, they are doing something that is hard. When you seek solutions to equations, stand before your classmates to deliver a speech, write a research paper, or develop a business plan, you are doing something that is hard. And you should celebrate these difficulties, seeking them out, because it is through them that you will grow, that you will, as have your parents and your professors, become educated.

  And the person you will be when you emerge from Husson University will be able to work, will no longer fear the world and its challenges, will be able to differentiate between truth and lies, and will have empathy for his neighbors, for her community, for those living in other parts of the world. In short, you will be an educated person, who will understand, without hesitation or gloss, the importance of JFK’s ideas, and of facing difficulty with resolve. 

It isn't the Truth; It's Just a Memoir

Recently, I let a few friends read the first chapter of a memoir I have been struggling with for a number of years. After getting through the first chapter, a little muddy eyed, some expressed a mixture of confusion, which I understand, and offense, which I don't. I soon discovered that they were not so much offended by the episodic narrative--which I described to them as a story written by a hamster on methamphetamine--but rather by the nature of my recollections, the very existence of the memories themselves. As I gulped my beer and listened to the grinding of their partially whispered partially pursed-lipped derision, I realized that at the core of it was a fundamental disagreement about the nature of a memoir. This became clear when I explained that my wretched book was a memoir and not non-fiction. They glowered back and one said, "But after your title you say it is a memoir." True, I thought, but "that doesn't mean," I said, "that the story relates the events exactly as they happened."  My friends' interpretation of my work moved me to attempt an explanation.

Since Opera Winfrey's public disgust with the false claims James Frey made in his 2005 memoir A Million Little Pieces, readers have come to believe (perhaps more than before) that a memoir must be an insipidly truthful account of one's experiences. A review of Frey’s book on Amazon.com illustrates this general misunderstanding: "A very basic premise of a memoir . . . is always that one is recalling true events. Things that really happened. That is the point of a memoir. Much has been founded to the contrary here in Frey's book and plausibly so. (the data is extensive and real)" (Laney, Amazon.com). As Laney claims, one convention of a memoir is that its author is attempting to recall events in his life, but the act of recalling is composed of at least two elements that lead to factual inaccuracies. First, the author is assessing events in retrospect, which encourages him to edit his past so that it informs and supports his present. In other words, the retrospective nature of a recollection encourages the author to draw causal relationships between present and past experiences, which give the events the trajectory of a narrative. That is, a conflict in the author’s life initiates a series of actions that lead to some significant self-discovery, one that, in the words of Robert Frost, “has made all the difference”. The urge to fit the slop of one’s life into such a trajectory simplifies its complexities and makes any memoir suspicious.

In addition, the author will interpret the meaning of the events he recalls, interpretations supported primarily by present realities. In this way, a memoir resembles bad science. For example, if a researcher designed experiments to justify current presumptions about the truth, then no real testing would take place and little would be achieved. On the other hand, if a researcher analyzed the data for patterns and subtle relationships, then drew conclusions based on those careful observations, compelling generalizations could be drawn. For the latter reason, a memoir told as a series of episodes would deemphasize the causal assumptions inherent in a linear narrative, allowing the reader to make connections as he analyzes the events described in the memoir. This narrative structure enacts the type of identity formation Walter Benjamin suggests when he observes that our identities are composed of “chips of messianic time.” Who we are is defined by the memories we select to support the idea we have of ourselves. Once selected, these experiential and emotional moments resemble a constellation rather than a linear narrative arc. In this way, a memoir, if told sincerely, has the foggy, sloppy, mysterious feel of memory rather than the concrete, pleasing feel of a carefully plotted story or factual newspaper article. This tension between reality and fiction is often what makes a memoir so fascinating. Therefore, Laney’s other point, that the inaccuracy of Frey’s account of his life discredits it, rests on a faulty premise.

Yet in Frey’s case the central concern really isn’t the factual inaccuracies, but the argument he makes about how to survive addiction. A reviewer on Amazon.com makes his derision clear enough: "To find out the author LIED for money, makes a mockery of what we went through. There is nothing glamorous about blacking out or throwing up. But to make it more than it is, well, that is down right wrong" (Kevin W. Loomis, Amazon.com). As Loomis’s discontent suggests, the book supports Frey’s idea that addiction can be overcome by a supreme force of will, an extreme example of Emerson’s self-reliance. One problem with memoirs that attempt to construct linear narratives is that these narratives are often put in service of reductive arguments. The formula goes something like this: “I became a great writer/person/athlete/politician because of this or that event in my childhood, adolescence, or adulthood.” However, the formula might more accurately be described as follows: “I’m a great writer, etc., [so some influential people have said] and this is how I feel I became such a great writer [even though I’m not exactly sure how “great” or “writer” is being defined].” The feeling most have, as the readers’ quotes indicate, is that a memoir should be a good faith account of the author’s life, and that that account should support a rather simplistic interpretation of what a life means. I can understand this thinking, but it undermines the potential emotional power of a memoir when it is expected to be a mere repository of fact. One way to illustrate my thinking is to consider the mimetic qualities of Claude Monet’s soleil levant. How might we describe the accuracy of this painting? The pleasure of offering such an explanation is the same pleasure we should get from interpreting a well-written memoir.

Similar in spirit to Monet’s painting, Jim Harrison’s Wolf is a better example of the memoir genre. Harrison’s account of his maturation is sparse on interpretation in terms of explicit explanations of how a past experience lead to some present reality and the implicit causal relationships required by a linear plot. Rather, his account is episodic and moves within the fogginess of a lived life. Of course, feeling the pressure to placate those who equate memoir with simplistic fact, Harrison refers to his book as a “false memoir,” which in a collection of interviews he describes as being 95% true. His cheeky nod to empirical measures indicates how silly assumptions of truthiness can be. As in Monet’s painting, truth lies in the impression made by those scenes that compose the constellation of our lives. The interpretation of their meaning should be left up to the reader, whose understanding of the relationship between experience and truth might be further nuanced for the better of all involved.