Fish Tank

A pivotal thing recently happened: I have a running fish tank in my classroom, for the first time ever. It's a rather small and simple tank, 10 gallons, but I have a really nice filter, really nice lights, and I've stuffed it full of plants. In terms of animals, so far I only have four cherry shrimp and three neon tetras (the sole survivors of an initial batch of ten, but these three have hung on for weeks now, so I think they're here to stay). This might not seem like a huge accomplishment, but allow me to provide a bit of context:

Three years ago I was teaching in a rundown middle school classroom in a rundown school building in a rundown section of Queens. My students were quiet twelve year old girls who weighed 120 pounds each and rowdy twelve year old boys who weighed 85 pounds each. They were mostly African American or were immigrants from Ghana or East India. All black, and intensely racist of each other. They treated me, white and unprepared, with vague amusement. I was a part of the structure after awhile, a door frame, a cracked chair. It was fall and my girlfriend was spending the weekend with me.

I was embarrassed to have her there. Embarrassed by my small apartment living above a Bengali family on a street with cars parked one inch away from each other. Embarrassed by the trash bags by the F train which ran inconsistently, rank with the smell of urine and discarded fast food containers. I envisioned her coming to New York, arriving at that holy city, that central point, visible from space, visible on even the simplest maps, and then making a sharp detour, another train, the city slowly fading, disappearing, before finally arriving in a broken pseudo-suburbia where I would meet her and give her a big hug. We were both wrapped in thick coats to ward off the cold fall, the leaves had abandoned the branches early that year. She was so genuinely happy to see me, and that only added to my sense of shame.

I had the great idea to start a fish tank. There were few empty 29 gallon tanks in the science lab upstairs. There was a spot in my classroom that would be perfect. Custodians worked in the school on the weekends, they would let me in. We traveled to Chinatown and found a small fish store owned by an extremely energetic young man who spoke English without an accent and had a much more attractive hair cut than me. His store was full of filters, animals, plants, gravel, chemicals, lights, and old Chinese men. He upsold me and I walked out with three huge plastic bags, two each filled with a large bag of gravel and the third filled with an expensive canister filter and some tiny plastic bottles filled with water treatment chemicals. 

The trip back to my school was exhausting. My school was located on the top of a not-so-small hill, any by the time we finally got inside, my arms felt like they were going to fall off at the shoulders, the handles of the plastic bags were stretched to thin strips of razor line cutting into my fingers. We had just dropped everything off inside of my classroom when I realized my first big mistake: there was no source of water. The nearest place was a water fountain at the end of the hallway, probably two hundred feet away. I had a 2 gallon bucket. 

It took about three hours to fill the tank with gravel, fill the tank with water, and setup the filter, not including a 45 minute delay when, during a materials scavenging expedition, I locked my keys inside of the third floor science lab. The custodians, who I truly believed lived in the walls were hard to find, and would scatter as they heard my footsteps approaching. Finally I tracked one down, a weather beaten 65 year old white man who had a ring dangling from his belt that held maybe a two hundred keys.

The tank was full of metallic smelling Queens public school water fountain water. The pump was running, quietly tucked away under the sturdy metal desk positioned in the corner of the room out of direct sunlight, exactly like I had read online. I added a few drops of the water conditioner, a foul smelling liquid that was chock full of beneficial bacteria to keep my fish healthy. The fish I hadn't bought yet, the fish I was waiting to buy, I told myself that I would buy fish after a few weeks, let the water sit there and become safe and healthy. I had a plan to organize my tank around plants, bright green plants, providing a natural habitat for the fish. I wanted to build an oasis in my chaotic classroom. I wanted to give the students something to look at besides the walls and their worksheets.

It never really panned out. The tank sat there in the corner of my room, full of room temperature water. The filter quietly pulsed away for the next four months, recycling the same water again and again, never having the chance to remove the fish poop it was designed to. Occasionally I would add water to the tank to fill it up.

Students would ask what had happened to the tank. When was I going to get fish? Other teachers would say the same thing. I didn't really have an answer. I would just shrug my shoulders and give the same look that people give when asked, "Why is life so hard?". This is just the way it is folks. The fish tank is full of water and empty of fish.

Of course, in reality the tank wasn't really empty. I was playing host to a whole colony of bacteria and algae, playing out their own microscopic circle of life. Thousands of generations giving birth, dying, fighting, getting sick, falling in and out of positive relations with each other, migrating to new and exciting parts of the fish tank. For them, the tank was the entire known universe, and this notion provided me with some excellent material for daydreaming on many an afternoon when, after the last student had left for the day, I would sit at my desk and feel empty and broken.

Things are very different now. I'm still bone tired at the end of a school day, but this tiredness is not an aimless, pointless-seeming thing anymore. I feel purposeful, some days more than others, but still, the fact remains that I can more clearly see the benefits of my work. I have taken great pleasure in watching myself grow as an educator, and even if I do not feel that this job is what I seek to build my life around, even if I feel like I may get up and leave one year and never come back, I still find myself fascinated at the ways in which it has become easy, almost effortless, to manage a classroom full of students, to convince them of the value of being there, even if momentarily, and to expose them to things that they are not used to seeing or hearing, like a beautiful fish tank, full of fish.


Here's a picture of my fish tank taken by one of my illustrative students Casey:

Never Ending

Okay guys, time for a throwback post. When I reflect on the history of my blog, and really my writing in general, it's clear to me that it all started off very political and motivated. I was young and energized and I communicated my thoughts, ideas, and opinions with a forceful, sometimes offensive vigor. This was mostly conversations with my immediate family and, as I grew older, friends. I remember, as a young boy, being told many times that things would make more sense when I was older. I remember being told, always with a soft chuckle, "I used to be like you." I made a promise to myself that I would never say something like that to a child, something so thoughtlessly damaging, so quietly dehumanizing. So far I've kept that promise, but I try to remain aware and vigilant, for in my current role as a teacher I stand at the precipice of a chasm of influence, toeing stones into the void, and its very deep and the consequences will rattle through the years long after I've died.

The advent of online writing represented a sea change for me. It gave me a platform, bathed in the comforting glow of anonymity. I could say anything I wanted to, and there was the exciting, almost promiscuous promise of anonymous readership. Anyone could be reading what I wrote, at any time, from any place on earth.

Now, in reality, very few people read what I wrote, whether in the form of my earliest website or in the current incarnation of this blog. And truth be told, I'm okay with that. I've grown comfortable in this routine, the simulacrum of conversation, the empty walls echoing. The closest I've had to real interaction from this and other blogs have been the dappled-eyed awestruck chords of an occasional lover who, upon researching my name and online presence, has stumbled upon my writing and then proceeded to bring it up in conversation. Many times this has resulted in a conversation, perhaps the defining conversation of any romance I've ever had that has failed, the conversation of writing as occupation. It presents a seemingly irresistible allure to so many of the people that I have met. Almost all of my relationships, platonic and otherwise, without exception, and sometimes ever so briefly, at one point or another, have stumbled through the mire of that conversation, complete with the awkward period at the end where I struggle to explain why I write, why I have failed to follow that course in my career or my study. Why does it exist at the fringes of my life. Why not make it a central part. It is my journal, my diary, my sacred cathedral of personal reflection, pointless if full of people. Why write online at all? I guess it all comes back to that perverse sense of reverse voyeurism.

So, here's the throwback post, a post about issues of politics, of global economies, of human suffering and aspiration: Let's talk about childbirth.

This sacred ritual is enthroned in our society, the pregnant mother held up against the sunlight, child held in arms at stomach level, cast in bronze, left to glow in a leaf-dappled square somewhere out in the half-civilized wilderness of our collective national conscious. She is sacred because she enables a continuation, a generation to succeed. The baby is corrupt, we have seen it a thousand times. Humans become horrible as they grow older, but until they are born, they are shrouded in promise and secrecy. Literally pregnant with potential. In spite of my decidedly liberal leanings regarding women's health and other topics, my Catholic upbringing always rears it head, ever briefly, during these moments of introspection.

It is birth that has, for millions of years, represented the saving grace of our species, of really any species. It's genetic, the urge to reproduce. And while I've learned enough about evolutionary biology (and certainly spent enough in tuition and textbooks) to understand that only a certain percentage of a population will feel a desire to reproduce, high in some species, low in others, and always changing, it still represents a shared social goal. We are too altruistic of a species to be capable of instinctively casting a disparaging eye on this process.

But it is childbirth that is sinking us. Population increase will be the catalyst that forces our hand on this planet. It is unquestionable. The rolling tide of humanity, increasing every year, very slowly in the developed world, but astonishingly rapidly in the developing world, will eventually break over the seawall of this fine place and leave everything in ruins. Now, obviously, it is the poorest countries that are the locus of this problem. When you have eight or ten children, and 75% of them survive to adulthood....well you can paint the rest of that picture. And also, perhaps even more obvious, it is clear that only by empowering these poor people economically can we ever hope to reduce their birth rates. Much of this economic empowerment, maybe all of it, must come from a reduction and restructuring of the global wealth system, starting with us, the people who have everything. Most people who have witnessed crippling poverty first hand can never quite shake the feeling that our economic system is unsustainable in the long run. Something will have to change. But with a rapidly globalized economy, and the ever increasing effectiveness and, can I say this, near-miraculous nature of new technologies, I believe that the sacrifices will neither be as deep-reaching nor as widespread as some may say.

No, it is not the developing countries who are the focus of this post. Why would they be? Not only do I feel removed from them in a practical sense but also in a moral sense. I cannot cast judgement or aspersions on a society that I don't live. Neither can I beatify or pile up platitudes. I simply don't possess the appropriate volume of empathy required for that. Instead, I will focus on the world and society that I do live in. The United States of America, home of the free et cetera.

Here's my thesis: If you live in America, and if you graduated from high school and (lets winnow the excuses as much as we can) you attended college for at least two years, and demonstrated at least a rudimentary appreciation of basic concepts of social science and life science, and you proceed to have more than two biological children in your lifetime, you should be considered a criminal and locked up because you have failed to treat this planet with the respect that it deserves. That's it. Have more than two kids (knowing of the consequences), boom, locked up, key thrown away. I don't want to share my country with people like that. I just don't! And it's not intolerance, no more than someone who grimaces when observing someone throw trash out of the window of a moving car. It is wrong, objectively wrong, to have more than two children in this day. Not when the stakes are as high as they are. It is selfish and short sighted. It represents the slimiest of human characteristics and also represents a disturbing lack of awareness and altruism. And unlike verifying the origin of every purchase you make at the grocery store, this singular act of humanistic responsibility is rather easy to make. If you can't sit down with a clear head, after having two children, and say "Whelp, that's it. No more for me or for this planet" then you are a person of the most foolish and self-entitled category. And you're taking advantage of an institution that puts childbirth on a pedestal in order to continue to contribute to the process of environmental destruction through over population. And, also, if you even begin to articulate an argument that starts off, "If we don't have enough kids, America might lose to other countries..." then please clear a path because I've already stopped listening to you and I need to go home and take a shower and try to scrub my brain clean of the memory of our conversation.

I want to make it clear here, at the end of this long ramble, that I'm not talking specifically about women, although, upon re-reading this post, it certainly may seem that way, and so I apologize in advance. My guess is that, if you assumed that I was talking specifically about women, you probably stopped reading a while back, so I'll just say goodbye to you and then finish up this post. Men share a responsibility, absolutely they do. In many relationships (most relationships?) the man certainly holds more control over the reproductive process than the women. Only recently has attention been called to the issue of redefining sexual abuse to give a more accurate representation of the kinds of lopsided power struggles that occur behind countless closed bedroom doors in America. Women and men are both entangled in this mess, and I also acknowledge that the choice to have children or not have children is never as easy as it may seem from an outside perspective. But it is obviously worth thinking about. It will be the greatest struggle of this century, and I am certain that childbirth will be the issue that determines the trajectory of our species past that point.

Of course, as someone without children, who I am to make these claims? "You'll understand when you're older." That's something else that they used to say to me.




Here's a photograph I took near my campsite in the Keibab National Forest.

Older Chests

Hello blog! I totally forgot to update in July, a truly remarkable failure on my part, especially since I had been so diligent over the last two years. Well, I'm updating now!

The summer of 2015 has been a busy and productive summer. I started off by attending an AP Chemistry workshop right after the last day of the school year. I met a bunch of other chemistry teachers from across the country. We spent our days practicing experiments and calculations and after two weeks I walked away with a certificate of completion and eight free textbooks.

After that, I left for a motorcycle trip to California. This was my first cross-country motorcycle trip and I was very pleased with how it went. There were a few minor hiccups, as there always are, but I cannot complain in the slightest. I took a bunch of pictures, some of which will show up here periodically, over the next decade or so.

I'm committed to taking on more trips like this in the future. But here are two things that I will be changing:

• I would like to find a motorcycle that is more fuel efficient. Riding a sport bike for 7,000 miles is uncomfortable and expensive and I can only tolerate one of those at a time.

• My film camera takes up too much room in my pack, so unless I can find a motorcycle with greater storage, it won't be making the cut on the next trip.

On the way back to CT, I camped and hiked in Nevada, Arizona, and Utah. Famous national parks, the ones I could clearly see in my earliest memories of deserts and back seats. I also found several new spots, roads and state parks, that were winding and lonely and made me feel very small. 

After fifteen days I came home, but I sometimes worry that I cut my trip too short. What did I miss? When will I be back?

Here's a picture I took just outside of Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada.

Cold Outside

Recently the weather has turned much warmer. The air heats up and gets thicker, the humidity building. The sky turns from blue to gray and the clouds rolls in, diffuse, spread and gather just beyond the horizon. Suddenly you wake up and the sky is just bursting with the promise of rain. Nothing moves outside, not even the birds. The grass lies thick, browning slightly (a foreshadowing of summer), until late evening when the drops fall heavily, dark splotches on sidewalks, windshields, and clothing. The rain is cool and it falls heavier now. As the sun sinks, the heat that was holding everything together takes a vacation. Everything falls apart and the sky bleeds. These early summer rainstorms are critical. They bring water to the ground where it is immediately taken back up by plants, still shooting and growing, still recovering from winter. They also bring relief. When you wake up, the air is thin, you can see through it for miles, or at least until a distant hill or stand of trees gets in the way. More than anything else, you can feel the difference in the temperature. The morning after is always cold. 

I rode my motorcycle to work this morning, regretting it about halfway through. I wasn't uncomfortable, but I had grown used to the warm weather, the sweat, the tight fitting heat of my helmet, my jacket, my gloves. Riding my motorcycle often takes on a womb like experience, dry heating bouncing crazily from the muffler off my right leg. I can feel the heat from the pavement through my boots. I can feel it in the tank pressed against my thighs. These cold mornings take me by surprise. For a moment, I forget who I am. There is some thrill in it. Cold weather riding comes with its own special type of adrenaline rush. 20 mph feels faster, and I need to open my visor at stop lights to ward off the condensation. 

I feel like an outsider. On days that begin with these types of mornings, I feel like all of the things that I thought I knew have shifted slightly. Like a burglar broke into my home and moved everything a couple inches. The world continues to turn, and I feel left alone, trying to understand the movements.

Here's a photograph I recently took of my brother blowing out the candles on his birthday cake:

Haunted House

After Crow Fair, I read "And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie. This is the second book I have read this year by Christie, and I have to say, I'm thoroughly impressed. This one was more narrative than Murder on the Orient Express, and I'm not afraid to admit that the ending took me by surprise. I felt like a little kid as I was reading this book, and it was nice to be reminded that an effective story demands nothing more from the reader than total transportation. To cause your reader to forget where they are, even for a short while, is as noble a literary goal as any other. This book didn't cause me to question my faith or to reconsider my childhood. It didn't force me to reconcile my ambitions with my fears or challenge me with fundamental questions about the meaning of life. It just posed a riddle which was hard to solve, built up the tension, and then revealed everything in  a dramatic climax. Reading it was therapeutic and satisfying. "A good beach book" seems like such a dismissive or patronizing characterization. I'll settle for saying that it was an immersive book, well written with excellent pacing and dialogue. I'm excited to read another book by Christie very soon!

Crow Fair

April has been a hectic and enlightening month. The days are getting longer and the air is warming. Flowers are beginning to bloom outside, gently, as if they still remember the winter, which stayed longer than usual. It's nice to see the familiar patterns, but I can't shake the feeling that the long and tragic season of winter was just one of several disturbances yet to come. Global warming, etc.

Anyway, I finished a book recently called Crow Fair. I got this book as a present. It is named after a Native American ceremony which I know nothing about. The book didn't have anything to do with Native Americans either, except in perhaps a tangential sense. This book was set in Montana, which is built, I suppose, on the bones of Native Americans. What a sensational notion! Every state in America is built on the bones of Native Americans, but for some reason or another it was the people of the northern plains who have stuck around in our public memory. Maybe it was because they fought for the longest, maybe it's because those were the places where white America was stretched the thinnest, only a fragile veneer tearing in the wind that blows across the water color steppes and gray mountains. It is the center point of our continent and it is large and flat and mostly devoid of the modernity of the coastal civilizations. I have only lived on the coasts. I know nothing about the middle. After reading this book, I feel like I know a little bit more, but its just a feeling.

Thomas McGuane has a style which is unlike any author I've read, although I can see the influences of many writers reflected in his work. Perhaps that is the mark of a post-post-modernist; a 21st century writer is fated to recycle old things into new things. To pick up the broken trail left by Brautigan, Kerouac, and Vonnegut and try to make it lead somewhere. I know that somewhere out there an expert in feminist literature just died as a result of me writing that sentence. I'm sorry. I would read more 21st century women writers if I knew about them. I'll make it a sub-goal for this year, I promise.

Thomas McGuane writes in a way that seems easy and effortless, and that's what I like about it. The stories were very nice to read, but they hit you hard in the last moments and also immediately afterwards. A couple of the stories really stood out above the rest, but overall it was a really solid collection. No wasted words. That would be my three word review, but its not completely accurate. "No wasted words" sounds like Hemingway. It's not minimalism in a tortured sense, just simple and truthful. One adjective per noun type of writing. I loved it. I was inspired by it. Most importantly, I enjoyed reading it. The fact that I received it as a gift, and it had such a profound impact on me makes it even better. I have a bad habit of saving my appreciation for the purchases I make for myself, believing, on some deeper level, that no one could understand me well enough to hit the mark with a gift or surprise. It's nice to be proven wrong.

Head Space

Recently I read the book "To the Lighthouse" by Virginia Woolf. My initial impression of it was positive. The immediate experience of reading it and reflecting upon it was similar to...well now that I am thinking about it, I cannot easily pin point a book that I have read in the last couple of years that is similar. Perhaps Faulkner, but only in the cadence and the style, the mood is completely different, and I have also found that one Faulkner book is completely unlike another, a pattern which I am incapable of establishing with Woolf (having only read one of her novels).

I suppose a better question then would be, would I read another story by Woolf? The answer is probably yes, but only after I take a break from the heady and atmospheric, the philosophical and imaginary. To the Lighthouse was a fine book, but a little too intangible for my tastes. Or at least, too intangible for me to endure in extended dosages. For my next read, I am aiming for something more rooted in traditional narrative plot advancement. I want characters that couple their thoughts with actions. I want dramatic twists and turns that have ramifications outside of a character's head. I want fist fights and long kisses and maybe some explosions. I want to read a good old fashioned story. I'm tired of the kinky stuff. Give me missionary.

Fresh Paint

The paint was always mixed on Thursdays, because that was the only day of the week that Mr. Nunez, the mix technician, was free to show up in his battered Ford van. He would drive up from the run-down section of town, the area previously known as Cross Bridge, with its towering factory houses hidden under crippling decay, a testament to the power of the now defunct brick oven industry. Ten years ago, a developer had purchased a block of buildings by the Turpentine River, and renovated them into upscale apartments for the newly rich leaving the city. Nick wasn't sure if the plan had worked. He had not heard of any magical social economic transformation, and he was hesitant to apply his dubious endorsement because he feared that gentrification would spell the end of the faded plastic cart parked next to the hospital off ramp filled with clementines and pushed by someone who looked very much like Mr. Nunez, only older and with far less teeth.

Nick tried to calculate how much money he had spent on clementines while waiting for green lights, but he quickly lost track of the numbers. The hazy fog which enveloped everything was not a new phenomenon, but he had recently begun to question its origin after several voicemails left by the "Offices of John D. Mintzhauser on the retainer of the American Society of Justice in Chemical Industries". Instead, Nick shifted his focus from the quantitative to the qualitative, and as he sat in the scuffed linoleum lobby with the breathtaking painting of the Hudson river, still waiting for Mr. Nunez to show up, he attempted to summon the image of Maria Sotomayor.

She had shown up last week to deliver the mail, and seven days later, Nick could still remember the moment he saw her. He could even remember the feeling of the mail in his hand and imagined that he could feel the warm imprint that her hand had left on it. She was not traditionally pretty, Nick could not help but notice her narrow eyes and wide mouth with thin lips. She was tall and skinny, but her arms with taller and skinnier still. Her legs, by comparison were wide and brutish, and when she walked, Nick failed to suppress the urge to draw comparisons of the equine variety.

In spite of all of this, Nick was captivated. It wasn't because of their conversations. As far as he could tell, she spoke very little English. No, it was the way her features changed and danced under the sparkling moonlight of her laughter. The narrow eyes took on a deep and mysterious aspect and the wide mouth parted to reveal milk-white teeth. There was a dance in her step or, perhaps more accurately, the echo of a dance, not ghostly, but warm and recent, as if she had just walked in from the set of some Broadway musical.

But most of all it was her hair. Her dark hair, which kept him up nights haunted by the image of the nape of her neck flashing, the pale skin shimmering under the cascade of an oil-spill pile of curtains cut loose from a tall window. Her dark and wet hair, so immediate and so honest that he could not help but imagine her washing it, working the immense lather of it with her hands. He could feel it on his hands, and he could scarcely think of anything else.

He realized he wasn't breathing, and inhaled a deep portion of recycled air, colored by the acerbic bite of latex so faint that if you so much as thought of something else, you wouldn't taste it.

"Nick, como esta?" Mr. Nunez walked in, balancing a milk carton full of paper towels. Nick had no understanding of the origin or role of these paper towels, but they remained a steadfast feature of Mr. Nunez's tenure with the company. Every Thursday, a carton of paper towels would enter the building and an empty carton would leave. Surely there was a magical chest located in some forgotten closet, a reverse Pandora's box, leading intrepid explorers to an alternate dimension filled with discarded paper towels. Nick shook his head to clear the fumes, "Hello Mr. Nunez!"

"Paint getting you down? You spend too much time in here."

"Well it is my company. If I'm not here, who else?"

"Ah, I forgot that the American dream works both ways. The man makes the company, but at the end of the day the company makes the man."

Nick laughed.

"You have a good laugh Mr. Nick. You should laugh more."

"I laugh." Nick tasted the lie, tried it out for size, and decided it was agreeable.

"You laughed today. That's a start. What's on the docket?"

"About fifty gallons of enamel, another ten of latex. Phil sorted them before he left."

Phil, the teenaged night guard with the face of a forty year old man, was the third and final employee of the Twin Rivers Paint Recycling Company. He had been working there for only six months, but had already proven himself to be as reliable as a mechanical pencil. Again, Nick had no definitive proof that he spoke English. His last name was Malinowski, and the wax paper that he would wrap his meals in often carried the strong scent of Polish surprise bread. Nick had assumed that all of the Eastern Europeans had moved away from the river when the Honda factory closed down. Now that he thought about it, Phil did have the eyes of someone who was the last of his kind. Beautiful, self-righteous eyes.

Of course Nick only saw him once every two weeks, when Phil would walk into his office, grab his check from the wooden mail sorter with the ancient U.S. Navy recruitment poster on the side, sit down and sign the check carefully. Nick wasn't sure why Phil sat down to sign the check, but he had decided that the extra two minutes they spent together every other week was a formative period of time, a relationship building period of time, that would ultimately result in a strong cross-cultural and cross-generational friendship.

"I just hope he didn't leave any of them upside down, some people don't put the lids on so tight." Mr. Nunez gestured erratically with the carton of paper towels and disappeared down the hallway.

Nick sighed and settled back in the chair in the lobby with the breathtaking painting of the Hudson river hanging directly behind him.

*******

What happens to the paint that is recycled? Is it re-used, is it re-mixed? Is it broken down into component pieces and put back together again in new and different forms? There is paint beneath the paint that drys and hardens on the walls, and that paint, when chipped, when broken laterally and shattered and examined in brilliant cross section can show layers and the dust and sediment trapped in those layers tells a story of the days and nights that have passed and the cosmic rays penetrate the lacquer and the top coat and atoms which have floated, isolated, alone, for countless eons, finally come to rest, to congeal and to exist. The earth was lifeless before, barren rock. There are barren worlds out there, barren worlds where nothing happens, nothing save the endless cycles of volcanic geysers erupting and hardening their molten stomachs, the soul of the planet onto the surface, the rock ground back into the core by waves and waves of liquid ammonia, or methane, or, in some spectacular cases, water.

And on these planets with liquid water, what are the chances that randomized components could be laid down next to each other in just the right way, ionized by just the right energy, that they form a membrane, a balloon. Self-contained. Life is nothing but shelter, reproduced. Ah, but that is the trick of it; this balloon is protected and is true to itself, but it is not life yet. It may draw some molecules in and expel certain others. But it is not life yet. Life exists past the teetering edge of death when those components, not all but some, which once laid down in a pattern to create a self-protecting, self-feeding, self-enduring organism, some of those components break away and rearrange to create something else. Something entirely similar and yet fundamentally different. Life comes and death follows, like a child dragging a cart in the sand.

Snow Melt

Well spring is finally around the corner, and boy am I relieved. This winter, which started off so mild and pleasant, really took a turn for the worst in late January. I may be suffering from seasonal affective disorder. I may be suffering from malnutrition. My classroom vegetables have plateued in their growth, probably as a limitation of their containers. I transferred three of the tomato plants into much larger containers on Friday. Only time will tell if this plan is successful. Tiny tomatoes are beginning to appear, which is good, but the pepper plants are still far too small. I was hoping to eat tomatoes and peppers together. I was not prepared emotionally for a world in which I would be eating them separately. I also think I let my arugula grow too long. It tastes rather bitter, and besides, I only have enough for like one solid salad. Or two smaller salads. I've realized that in order to make your own salads from scratch, you need to grow A LOT of greens. And maybe stagger the planting to avoid half the plants going bad while you harvest the other half? Oh well, notes for the future.

Also, for the future: My next motorcycle trip is tentatively planned for the second week of April. I am debating ordering new plastic fairings for my bike. I am thinking of selling it, in which case new fairings should probably be bought after the trip and note before in order to keep them looking good.

Here's what I read this week:

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. I liked this book because the dialogue was very convincing; something that I feel I need to continue to work on in my own writing. Hercule Poirot became increasingly insufferable as the story wore on. I am tempted to read another of her books to see if this patterns holds up across the series. 

Linear Lines

Recently, I was struck by the way in which love grows and fades. It seems to me not to be a gradual process, but rather happens in bursts of sudden movement and typically only when no one is looking. You'll be minding your own business, living your life, and the next thing you know, BAM, you've either fallen in love or fallen out of love with someone and the process is over practically before it began.

I've also noticed, and been troubled, by the way in which we make space for people in our lives at the expense of others. It is as if we have a finite amount of emotional energy (probably true) or a finite amount of time (certainly true) and we make subconscious decision about who we spend it with and, sometimes more importantly, who we spend it thinking about. 

I've realized that to say that you have fallen out of love with someone is not an entirely accurate phrasing. Instead, what I think happens, is you just make less time in your life for that person. It doesn't have to happen at once, just a little bit everyday. And within the moments that you think about that person, you still love them and care for them as much as you ever did. 

But the time for caring grows shorter, more fragmented, more periodic. Love becomes a disenfranchised and isolated thing, still strong, but disconnected from the roots of your life. Love, like a low-lying stretch of land encroached by rising sea levels, turns into islands, which break into smaller islands, which eventually disappear entirely. The love is still there, but you have to look for it beneath the surface of the dirty, shallow water.

Here's a picture of the book I'm currently reading. Believe it or not, this is the best pic I could find on the internet. Maybe I'll take a picture of my book, but its from the library and is lacking a cover:

Darker Dreams

At night he dreamed of unceasing discovery and of a flowing and continuous existence that embraced everything and allowed him to study and appreciate but also to build. For it is in building that we transcend, he believed, and it must be true. There is nothing worse than emerging from the long and grotesque embrace of consumption.The eating up of things and places and ideas and the sick realization grows deep in your stomach and eventually takes over your head, and you cannot deny the truth anymore: the universe is not an infinite space. Or, maybe it is, but our bodies and our consciousness are limited in such a way that space becomes finite. If we seek to understand objective truths, we cannot hope to begin to do so without first understanding and mastering the instruments of our own sensory aggregations. We cannot explore, we cannot build with these weights attached to the ends of our arms, to the ends of our memories. So, in this journey to understand everything, and in an effort to fight back the feelings of distrust and disinterest, however temporary, we must practice periodic self-annihilation. An annihilation of thought, of emotion. An annihilation of memory, of bias, and of belief.

Here is a photograph I took a year ago of a day very much like today:

True Love

Book 4/50: The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

This book has been the hardest for me to read so far. There was something frustratingly inaccessible about it, something which made it hard for me to enjoy. Perhaps it was the lack of traditional dialogue formatting. There was no indenting or quotations marks, for example, just words. This made it difficult because I would, on occasion, have to reread a passage to understand if what was written was being spoken or being thought. I will say that the first half of the book was much more challenging than the second half. Maybe I got used to the style. 

The more I think about the style, the more I realize that the distinction between spoken words and thought was made intentionally blurry, in order to reinforce or emphasize one of the themes of the novel (perhaps the only theme), which is the ceaseless continuity that connects seemingly opposing concepts: life/death and love/hate being the two most frequently considered. I suppose that good/evil is as well, but in more of an ancillary role. Much of the book is spent looking through the eyes of various characters as they struggle to recognize, and subsequently live with, the profound falsity of these dichotomies. 

The main character, in my opinion, is only the main character because the author chose to spend the most amount of time exploring his story. His mental and emotional journey is not unique but only a single aspect of a shared experience. This makes the book very wide-feeling, very inclusive, with all of the characters dipping into a thematic pool that is communal. I suppose this is not clear at first, and the exploration of these shared themes does not really carry any weight until you get to know the characters better. These are two reasons why I think I might have enjoyed the second half so much more.

At its core, this book is an exploration of human suffering, and the discovery of traits and virtues that inevitably accompanies such discovery. It's a love story, but unlike Submergence, which was a novel about two characters finding love for each other in a large, horrific, and fantastically complex world, this story is about love providing a portal into that larger and more complex world. So, I guess it sort of operates in reverse. And make no mistake, the world of this novel has more than its fair share of horror. 

As I finished the book, I was struck by one thing in particular. The tone of the writing as the character ages changes and becomes more melodramatic, more reflective, and adopts more of a stream of consciousness aspect. The character remains lucid in his old age and infirmities, but the memories of his life flicker back and play across his mind, and indeed across the mind of the reading audience. in broken fragments, mostly. So the audience is keyed into the character as they both work together to search for truths in the mish-mash of images, memories, and experiences. 

This is, perhaps, what I liked best about this book. I enjoy a story in which an old dying man looks back at his life for meaning. I appreciated it also in one of my favorite books of all time: The Untouchable by John Banville. I think I appreciate this in both books because I realize that one day I will be occupying a similar role. One day I will by dying, and searching for meaning in my life. I can only hope that I live a long enough and rich enough life to draw on such a wildly diverse and stimulating arrangement of memories, as the one painted here, in this book, in such beautiful and terribly stimulating detail.

Blank Page

A new semester. New students with easily forgettable names. Why do I remember some of them? What makes someone stand out in the mind of someone else? What makes me stand out in the minds of the people I meet? Do I stand out at all?

My life has become an orchestra of well polished compartments loosely fitted together. I'm good at teaching, reading, and writing. I make an effort to eat healthy and exercise, I keep my life clean, neat, orderly. I make time to draw and take photographs and play and listen to music. I try to be a good son, brother, boyfriend. I try to do some of these things each day. I cannot do all of these things each day. I have trouble connecting them together. I cannot seem to find the underlying tone, the rhythm, the pattern that will glue together everything else. Maybe there isn't such a thing. Maybe the problem is assuming that there is glue in the first place. I have tried my best to search for and collect objective truths, but maybe there is strength in recognizing the futility of such efforts.

I need to find my framework, my principals, my glue. Or, in the case that I have already found them, I need to figure out how they work, break them apart and rebuild them and learn to take care of them and check on them periodically. I take good care of myself, but in spite of this, I cannot stop searching for ways to take better care of myself. To stop searching is to stagnate and die.

Ultimate Questions

The days are slowly getting longer and even though the change in the lengthening of the day is not yet noticeable, the fact that it is happening is enough to cheer me up. Maybe that is the true triumph of Galileo and Copernicus and Isaac Newton. Maybe those ancient truths, those ancient strivings to understand came from a desire to breed joy in even the darkest seasons of our lives. Maybe the people of the past felt the wearing, tearing, icy hardening effect of the winter. Surely they did. 

The issue of the orbital patterns of moons and planets and suns is quite apropos  considering the book that I've been reading this past week. Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut is the third book I've read in 2015. It was a fantastic book and I know this because as soon as I read the last page I closed my eyes and wished that I could travel back in time and kill Kurt Vonnegut and write this book myself instead. I don't react this way after most books. I don't fantasize about the time-warp homicide of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I don't daydream about the temporal-rift murder of John Steinbeck. These are great authors and there books are among my favorites. Sirens of Titan is not my favorite book of all time, but I wish that I had written it. What does that say about me?

I think it says that we can find greatness in the mirror image of ourselves, but we can also find greatness outside of this mirror image as well. In other words, I believe that our dreams and hopes and aspirations are only a single avenue towards the true and the beautiful, and that it is possible to be inspired and to find greatness and wonder in the pathways that were previously unimagined and unexplored. It's just striking when you stumble upon someone who has so accurately captured the beauty in your own mind, who so expertly captures your thoughts, fears, fantasies, and dreams. It's striking when you find that you are not alone in your pathway through life, that people have traveled there before you and, likely, people will travel there again.

Kurt Vonnegut writes in what is often described as the "style of black humor". I don't see anything black about the humor, except for the occasional moment where something tragic happens and Vonnegut perhaps doesn't donate the socially prescribed amount words or time to reflection and mourning. But for the most part, his humor is light-hearted and vibrant, jumping, like a child. Surely this book is less "black" than Slaughterhouse Five. I thought it was fun, but not without gravity. It doesn't take itself too seriously, which allows it to ask questions which are perhaps more serious than what you find in other books. 

At the end of the day, this book is a story of a man who finds meaning in his life. And this story is about the fact that finding meaning is not always meaningful in and of itself. It is a story about the ultimate questions in life, and how the answers to those questions are not always the answers that we expect, or the answers that we feel we need. I think, at its core, this book is about the irreverence of life, and human life in particular. Human life is rare in the universe, exceedingly rare. And celebrating life, even life without meaning, will perhaps grant us a clearer view of the universe, at the end of the day, than sacrificing everything for the sake of meaning.

Additionally, this story is rather circular, and ends very much where it started, which satisfies a part of my reading conscience that is still child-like, full of wonder, and which appreciates a good fairy tale with a neat and organized ending. There is still a part of me, I suppose, which prefers a story that sweeps me off my feet, carries me to places far and wide, before returning me to the safety of my home. Like a good bed time story. Like returning home from a long and exhausting trip. Like pushing outwards against the cool expanse of your sheets, before retracting, withdrawing, and falling asleep. 

Deadly Force

I have been contemplating the value of (often unintentional) extrapolation of personal values on other people. On the one hand, it seems like a tremendous overstep of personal boundaries. It pushes the envelope of politeness. On the other hand, what kind of person would I be if I kept my values to myself? Certainly not the type of person that I have been for most of my life, and I do not know if I am willing or capable of change.

But change comes nevertheless. It often comes from situations where I am forced to deal with people whose values are very different from my own. I tend to respond to these types of people in two ways; I either despise them or fall in love with them.

The second book I read this year was Giraffe by J.M. Ledgard.

Ledgard wrote this before Submergence, and I have to say that his earlier work lacked the refinement and focus that attracted me to that book. It is not a bad book, in fact it is a very good book. I would rate it 3 out of 4 thumbs. If I had 4 thumbs.

Giraffe is very sensory. Everything is described with regard to color, odor, and taste. This would normally be great, but because it is set in Czechoslovakia in the mid 1970s, these colors, odors, and tastes are grim and bland; very Soviet (if I can use that as an adjective without imploding from self-hate). The ending is nightmarish and bloody and I quickly forgot the tiny things which brought warmth and joy during the early chapters. Nothing is solved at the end, which was troubling to me.

The result is an oppressive book. Sometimes, I dreaded reading it and I was relieved to finish it. Make no mistake, it is beautiful. But it is less beautiful than Submergence. I feel bad, holding both books up to the same light, but it really is an inevitable by-product of reading both books so quickly in succession.

Long Journey

It is the day after the first day of the new year. I have spent it mostly in bed, which is great, but growing tiresome. As far as resolutions go, I have few. When designing resolutions, I think it is important to keep them simple and measureable. Quantities are celebrated, in the realm of resolutions. They allow for progress to be easily discerned. Or lack of progress. Last year I made two resolutions. The first was to visit a state that I had never been to before, which I accomplished when I rode my motorcycle to Tennessee in July. The second was to read one book a week, which I did not accomplish. I did not accomplish this goal because I became distracted. I was on track to complete this challenge well into the month of July, but after that point things fell apart. I would read in bursts and fits. I would forget to return books to my local library. I will say that I spent almost no money on books in 2014. I came close to reading one book a week, but I failed. And I think coming close and failing is a bitter pill to swallow, certainly more bitter in the short term than failing by a wide margin.

Here are some of the books I read in 2014. I believe I may have missed a few.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Pastoralia by George Saunders

CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

A Raisin in the Sun  by Lorraine Hansberry

An Unfinished Season by Ward Just

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Lillies of the Field by William Edmund Barret

Rage is Back by Adam Mansbach

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Red Pony by John Steinbeck

White Fang by Jack London

Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon

Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

God Bless You Dr. Kevorkian by Kurt Vonnegut

Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut

Ghosts of Onyx by Eric Nylund

Two years ago I fell in love with a beautiful woman in New York City. I think I fell in love mostly with her brain, which was like the one I would have had if I was a woman and bought too many cooking books. The relationship failed rather dramatically, and I felt very alive during the failure, and even now, although that may be due to the situations I had surrounded myself in both before and after. I certainly hope that my zeal for life stems from the frameworks I have built for myself and not from the morbid fascination of watching something beautiful collapse. In actuality, my role was more the arsonist dumping gasoline on a haunted house. The house is gone, but the ghosts remain. How many of them live inside of me?

She also had a reading challenge for 2014, although hers was more ambitious. One hundred books in one year. I remember scoffing in a sun soaked Books-a-Million deep in the Florida winter. I remember scoffing in a frozen Vermont cross-walk. I have no idea if she finished it, or even if she liked all the books she read. I hope she finished it, I hope she read one hundred and one books in 2014, and thought about each one afterwards, and felt that she was better for it. 

I read so many great books last year. And I know I am better for it. So what is to stop me from doing the same thing this year? Simple. Measureable. Will I let the ghosts of failed relationships and failed resolutions prevent me from trying the same trick twice? My second goal for 2015 is to read fifty books. I am going to document them here because, in the spirit of haunted houses, often recognizing the existence of the phantasmal menace is enough to dispel it.

I eat and breathe and read and teach and occasionally I remember to go to the gym. I drive up the state routes 8 and 25, north bound tendrils bringing me to the houses of friends to watch movies and to play paintball and video games. A student discovered my Youtube account one year ago and I set all of my videos to private. There was nothing incriminating there. But a wall fell down and the openness between the spaces felt strange to me. 

I consume but rarely produce. Failed vegetable gardens. The muffler on my car fell off and I got used to the noise. The life I am living is beautiful, but I am bloated by all that I have seen and felt. I am adapting, with small changes. I am critically thinking of my life. The life that I had and the life that I want to have. Creation lies behind me and before me. So, my third resolution for 2015 is to write more. Try to keep the vomit inside your mouth. Simple. Measurable. I want to write five short stories this year. Sub-resolution: limiting the number of contractions I use. So, if you are counting, that's a total of three point five resolutions. 

Here's a book review to start:

Submergence was a story about love. I guess that is not exactly accurate. It is a story built from love. This is true in two ways. Firstly, the book is lovingly written. It is easy to tell this because of the way the sentences and paragraphs are designed and the way that the author uses quotes and excerpts from other novels and often cites historical events, art, literature, and the natural sciences. It is clear that the author believes in the story and loves the story, and maybe loves himself a little bit, but its forgivable because the love is contagious and you find yourself rooting not only for the characters but for the author. You feel swept up in the book. You don't, I do, but you probably would if you read it. You feel swept up in the book, but not in a fantasy or science fiction sort of way, where, at the end, you remember who you are and feel a little let down. In this case, you get swept up and the force of the sweeping breaks you into parts and the book allows you to see each of those parts with increased clarity. 

I suppose another way of saying this is that the book makes you feel small, but I've said that about a lot of my favorite books and it really fails to capture what sets this book apart. Secondly, the two main characters fall in love. They fall deeply in love, and I found myself celebrating their love and cheering for them, and hoping that they would both survive and succeed. To be honest, the actual falling in love part is unclear and happens rather quickly, and most of the book is spent describing the effect of this love on each person's separate lives. I felt like I was watching the ripples left on a lake by a jumping fish I could not quite catch a glimpse of. This is alright with me however, because I feel that this is an accurate representation of the real world, and I admire the author for depicting it as such.

The sentences are often short and descriptive, kind of like Hemingway, but the characters use big words and the author uses big words to remind you that the story is set in the modern age with modern technologies and understanding of science. It is a book about science and discovery, but also about human truths and so if you are not a scientist or interested in science, this book might still hold real value for you. Honestly, the book feels very old fashioned, but is is beautifully written and very appealing on a sensory level, and I put on headphones and listen to recordings of a thunderstorm while I read it. If you can, I highly recommend the use of headphones and thunderstorm soundtracks while reading this book. Definitely one of the best books I have ever read. I have already downloaded another of his novels to my Kindle and I cannot wait to start it.

Until next time blog!