Entries Tagged 'Navel' ↓

Epicurus:

Nothing to fear in God. Nothing to feel in death. Good can be attained. Evil can be endured.

I just found out from my friend Z that his company’s content filters have started banning this blog. I wonder what I did to piss off the cyberprudes — to much cursing? Whining? Bush bashing? Goose slandering?

Whatever it is, it needs to stop. Pariahood is bad for my complexion. So, from now on, I’m going to keep the posts limited to a narrow set of acceptable topics:

1. Kittens. Cute widdle big-eyed cuddly kittens, blanketing the world in a furry carpet of soft mewling adorableness.
2. Sports. Not my area of expertise, admittedly, but I have a whole half year of mortifying, psychologically damaging high school soccer experience to draw from.¹
3. Celebrities. Pretty people. Fallen starlets. Incipient adulterers. Impossibly Attractive Actors Who Have Found Love Against All Odds.
4. Clothing Advice. Again, not something I know anything about, but, seriously, how hard can it be? Don’t wear white socks with black shoes. Don’t wear rainbow suspenders. When your girlfriend tells you that the wardrobe you carefully selected for the evening makes you look like a fucking doofus, then you look like a fucking doofus. Accept it, and move on.
5. Cooking. Another area of life for which I am wholly unprepared. But as my mother once said, there’s no cooking problem that can’t be solved with a microwave and mallet.²
6. Home Repair. I’ve become quite adept at changing lightbulbs over the years, a home repair task I succeed at almost 80% of the time. I am also quite good at boarding up the parts of the house that stop working.
7. Automobiles. Here’s what I know about cars: if you put your key in the slot and turn it, the car makes a big vroomy noise, at which point you can press one of the peddles to make it go. There’s another pedal to make it stop, and a big wheel that you can turn if you don’t want to go straight anymore. If any of these things stop working, you need to call someone.

And that’s about it. I’m expecting huge traffic increases as a result of this new policy, as well as sage nods of approval from all the content nannies. Let the capitulation begin!

I went my dentist the other day with swollen gums and walked out with a murdered tooth. He called it a root canal, but that’s just what passes for euphemism in the dental community. This was an execution.

How could this happen? Well. Apparently, some portion of the inside of one of my molars got sick and began to die — and, in a macabre process of creeping necrotism, infected the rest of the tooth. Until all I had left were thin canals of undead tissue, rotting slowly. My dentist went in with little filaments and scraped it all clean, so now the tooth is just a lifeless husk — robbed of nerves and a blood supply, it’ll get weaker and more brittle over time, until it eventually shatters, or falls apart.

It’s all very sad. Sadder still is the other tooth, in the bottom of my mouth, that has also been quietly, undemonstratively dying for some time now. The doc discovered it in an x-ray: same deal, a shambling zombie tooth, in its death throes, cannibalizing the tissue around it.

There’s nothing especially rare or tragic about a root canal, I suppose. Happens all the time, and — modern dental technology being what it is — I’ll end up with two fake but largely impervious super-teeth. So no big deal. But the thought of two pieces of me dying silently over a period of years, going quietly mad in their enamel tombs, gives me the willies.

One of the reasons I find the Adam and Eve myth so odious is the role to which it implicitly consigns women: second-fiddle organisms made out of the master sex’s cast-off rib parts. That’s one interpretation, anyway — but, given the way that women are treated in the rest of the Bible, it’s almost certainly the intended one.

However, there is another way to look at this. When you study the male form — with its various unsightly protuberances, its poor attention to design, its pitiless sublimation of form to function — it becomes clear that men were basically a little bit of divine throat-clearing before the main event. Which is to say: if you interpret the arrival of womankind as the introduction of Homo sapiens 2.0, with the worst design decisions corrected, and the unsightliest bugs excised — then the myth becomes a little more palatable, and a lot more accurate.

I spent a ridiculous portion of last week trying to write a capsule bio of myself, for a story that’s going to be coming out next year. I say ridiculous because it really shouldn’t take very long to write a hundred words about yourself, should it? And yet I labored over this thing for five days and five nights, and at the end of that tortured process, all I had was this:

Lapsed Cannibal is a computer programmer by day and an aspiring writer by night. He owns a beagle. Under various pseudonyms, he has produced such enduring classics as “Oliver Twist”, “Gone With the Wind”, and “The Bible.” He grew up in the 80’s, though advancing age and nostalgia have recently begun to soften and in some cases eradicate his contempt for that empty, misbegotten era in our cultural history. He subsists entirely on absinthe and the blood of his enemies. For complicated personal reasons that he does not wish to discuss, it is his dream to one day harness the power of bananas to solve Pi. He is 25 years old — or was, at some point, he thinks. Or maybe not. Really, it’s all a blur.

I think this is why I tend naturally to writing fiction. I’ve generally got nothing factual to say.

Sigh.

The last thing I wrote in the waning days of Clarion came out in a sort of fever dream, and it shows: it’s a tumbling wordy over-the-top story about an amorphous living city’s relationship with its children.

That’s what I thought it was about, anyway. But a couple of really perceptive people in my writing group just finished pointing out to me that it is, in fact, a giant unadulterated Christ allegory.

This kind of disturbs me, because I kind of thought I was an atheist. I was, in fact, under the impression that I’ve been an atheist for years. What am I doing writing a largely approving story about god’s love for his children?

But it’s worse than that, really: I apparently have no idea what my subconscious is up to. I’ve always known that it’s down there quietly doing its own thing, keeping to itself, occasionally popping inscrutable images into my head or forcing me to engage in annoying bits of introspection or untapping undiscovered wells of feeling for no apparent reason. Mostly I hear from it when I’m writing. A lot of writers call this thing a muse. Stephen King calls it the boys in the basement. At Clarion, we called it Fred.

So, yeah. I don’t know much about Fred. Fred keeps to himself. But I always assumed that he was more or less on board with the rest of me, towing the line, and that all of his odd behavior was nothing more than idiosyncratic elaborations on the theme of me.

Now I don’t know. Is Fred Christian? Is he devout? Is he quietly steering me toward a lifetime of Sunday church and prostration to an invisible deity? Is there a communion in my future? A baptism?

Or is he just fucking with me?

I’m generally not a big fan of novels about book clubs, for a couple of reasons:

1. Things hardly ever explode, and, when they do, it tends to be meaningful.
2. No steely-eyed bounty hunters navigating the wilds of a post-apocalyptic society.
3. No fart jokes.

However — I just finished The Jane Austen Book Club, by Karen Joy Fowler, and I think I pretty clearly need to revise my standards. This book has some of the most beautifully-drawn characters I’ve ever encountered, and it lavishes an amazing amount attention on them without ever becoming florid or dull. In fact, you don’t even really notice how involved you are in their lives until suddenly, about halfway through, you realize that you know these people, inside and out. And more than that — you really care about them.

The real clincher, though, for me, came at the very end of the book. There I was, rolling along the downslope of a pleasant denouement, minding my own business, not bothering anybody, when suddenly I arrived at this sentence that just blew me off my feet — absolutely drilled me with an unexpected, inscrutable upwelling of emotion. And I didn’t know why.

I’ve talked about this phenomenon before — it happens to me every so often. I come across some innocuous phrase or snatch of music that has an effect all out of proportion to the thing itself — a short, sharp punch that leaves me gasping for air.

For a long time, this really mystified me. I couldn’t understand why it was happening. But I think I’m maybe starting to figure it out, sort of. My theory: it’s not the moment itself — it’s everything leading up to it. It’s the unveiling of a secret subconscious framework that the story is building, piece by piece, out of the subtleties of a character, the quiet implications of a conversation, the emotional ramifications of some small plot twist. All of it growing quietly below the surface, burgeoning tectonically, until — quite suddenly — it breaks through. And when it does, all of that stored potential energy blasts out at your dumb-ass insensitive clueless conscious mind with the force of a bullet leaving a gun, and just blows it — and you — away.

I think this is what The Jane Austen Book Club does, in its own gentle way: slowly builds an emotional framework beneath the surface of your understanding, and then, with one line, unleashes it all at once. And maybe this is what all good art does: ferries the bulk of its power down the dark avenues of your subconscious. The best writers know how to navigate these shadowy underroads. They know how to get to you in ways that matter.

Which is why I’m not going to mention the line that got me — because, robbed of its context, it’s just sort of cool. And just sort of cool doesn’t really do it justice. So you’ll have to go read the book. And then, when you’re done, you can go watch Bruce Willis blow something up, if you must. I’ll understand.

So I’ve been blogging for over five years now, and I’m still not entirely sure why. Is this thing an extroverted version of the diary I never managed to keep? Is it an attempt to scratch the writing itch without doing any actual writing? A hopeful shout out into the void? A reason to spend even more time sitting in front of a computer?

The short answer is “I don’t know”. The long answer is “I lack the epistemological basis for any sort of definitive assertions on the subject.” The surrealist answer is “The cheese rises splatterwise in the eye of the molting cow!”

But the good news is I’ve discovered an actual use for this thing: it turns out to be a really good life barometer. Which is to say, I’ve found that the quality and frequency of my posts correlate pretty much exactly with the quality of my mind — when the mind is engaged, stimulated, exposed to new things, the blog is happy. When the mind is plodding, sluggish, or looping through the same basic patterns over and over again, the blog is unhappy. It’s a sort of canary in my mental coal mine.

The canary’s been ailing recently. Not quite dead, but sort of hanging upsidedown on its perch, squawking plaintively, pining for the fjords.

So it’s probably a good thing that I got accepted into Clarion this year. Clarion is a sort of intensive six-week scifi/fantasy writing workshop, taught by established writers in the field, held every year. I’ve been reading about Clarion for a while, and almost-but-not-quite-applying for nearly as long. It’s a big commitment — you basically have to drop the rest of your life and focus on nothing but writing for a month and a half.

But I finally pulled the trigger and applied, at the urging of my wife, who pointed out (nicely) that I’m getting too damn old for the luxury of this kind of feckless vacillation. You either want to be a writer or you don’t. Choose. (It also helps that Cory Doctorow, one of my heroes, will be teaching this year).

So it’s finally happening, and it’ll probably be the most radically different thing I’ve done in a long, long time. If my blog barometer theory is correct, this should jolt the canary upright, maybe even send it spinning crazily around its perch.

I guess we’ll see.

Holy crap, this is about the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read. It’s from a post about Elizabeth Edwards:

If I found out today that I had a year to live, and that meant I would change the way I spend my days, then I need to change the way I spend my days now.

I watched the 60 minutes interview with her and her husband last night. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such quiet courage — she wasn’t ostentatious about it, or steadfast, or defiant, or any of the cliches we normally use for people who’ve decided not to let their illness define them. The only difference between me and everyone else, she said, is that I know how I’m going to die. I don’t see why that should change the way I live.

Amen.

Some vile microscopic organism managed to penetrate my immunilogical fortress this week. I spent thursday flat on my back, staring at the ceiling, plumbing my vocabulary for the right words to describe the particular kind of awful that I was feeling. I couldn’t summon the will to log into work, or mess around on the web, or read, or watch TV, or anything at all.

I’m not used to that kind of sloth. I don’t, generally speaking, get much done on any given day, but I’m usually actively not getting anything done: rushing around, reading blogs, puzzling over the latest bug at work, flipping through magazines. I diligently avoid doing nothing, and now I know why: in the absence of distractions, one has no choice but to think, ponder, navel-gaze, take stock. Which is always a mistake. What’s the use of hurtling thoughtlessly through life if you’re forced to pause every so often and confront everything you’re trying to avoid? That’s the whole point of hurtling, isn’t it? Not allowing yourself to acknowledge what you’re missing?

Anyway, one of the silly topics that my disease-addled mind decided to fixate on was the nature of contentment. Are you content? it asked. If no, why not? If yes, then why do you even need to ask the question? And what is contentment, anyway? What does it buy you? Is it something worth striving for? And why the hell is there a purple antelope in the kitchen? Oh gross! It just barfed up Jean Paul Sartre! Ug — and there’s Camus. Why do antelopes always eat existentialists? They know they can’t digest existentialists!

After the hallucinations settled down, I thought about the question for a while. I’m not unhappy, certainly. In fact, I’m extraordinarily fortunate in just about every way you can be fortunate: I’m married to the perfect woman. I have a job that allows me to mess around with computers all day — essentially getting paid for something I’d be doing anyway. My family is close by, and every day I find reason to love them more than I did the day before. Against all odds, well into my thirties, I still mange to get in a game of D&D every so often.

But there is something missing, and its absence nibbles at me. I think I’m in the same boat now as so many people whose dreams are incompatible with their livelihoods: trying to fit my passions into the shrinking margins of my career. When the job was just 50 hours a week, it seemed at least possible. But now it’s not even that. Not anymore.

So the question is: what next?

Which brings us back to contentment.

There are two kinds of contentment, I think: the kind where everything is on an even keel, where there are no surprises, no unscheduled striving. The kind where you’ve set your course and established the rules, and the maintenance of your happiness consists entirely of following those rules as best you can. Contentment on rails, where the chief virtue, the only prerequisite, is constancy, non-deviance.

And then there’s the other kind: the kind where you have to earn it every day. You follow your desires wherever they lead you, so that every day is a battle you win or lose, and your happiness depends entirely on the outcome. A dangerous course to follow, because it can wear you down, and quickly. What’s the price of banishing the demons? Opening the door to them. Stepping off the rail and wrestling them to the ground. Some days you win, and on those days you go to bed with a clear head, satisfied that you’ve done what you were supposed to have done. But some days you lose, and crawl under the covers bruised and bloody, dreading tomorrow’s battle.

There’s no value judgement here: either kind works, one is just as valid as the other. There’s only the question of what kind of contentment you want. Our culture gives a lot of lip-service to following your dreams, at any cost. You could bury your typical suburban neighborhood under the mountain of books published every year on the subject. But that same culture will absolutely kick you in the ass if the risk doesn’t pan out. You’re not a noble striver, you’re not a defeated visionary: you’re a loser. That’s the risk you take.

It’s a tough call. But one thing is clear: if you’re lucky enough to be in a position where you get to choose your brand of contentment, you must choose. The worst place to be is in the purgatory between the two. There’s nothing for you there.