The Monastery

I'm in the process of planning our spring trip to Zanzibar (along with the excellent Steve Wehmeyer) and I came across this picture of the crew that we took to Jordan last year.  Who knew I'd be so ready, willing and (somewhat) able to do it again.  Here we are, with the exception of Cyndi Brandenburg who was on the other side of the camera, standing in front of the Monastery at Petra.

Left to right: Lian, Andy, Taylor, Mike, me, Keebee, Devin, Libby, Emma, David

Jack and Julie

I just wanted to post this picture of two of my oldest friend, Jack and Julie Schultz.  I shamelessly swiped this off Facebook.  It's a picture of them at their 30th anniversary (I think).  Amazingly, Brenda and I got them together when we all lived in Cincinnati.  Truthfully, we didn't think they would have anything in common, and we weren't trying to hook them up.  They had gone to IU at the same time but, not surprisingly, had never met. We were just looking for someone to play Trivial Pursuit.  And here they are all these years later, still happy and with two beautiful, successful daughters.  Jack is also my oldest friend, stretching back over forty years.  He was the first person I met my age who I thought was both really smart and also possessed a wicked sense of humor.  Along with Dave Kelley and Mike Kelly, Jack and I are supposed to embark on a Lucinda Williams-themed tour of the South.  We can't put it off too much longer or we'll (well, I'll) be too old.

Still together, and to think, I had to explain to her what the term "brown the meat" meant in a recipe I gave her.

My Year With Proust - Day 3

"My sole consolation when I went upstairs for the night was that Mamma would come in and kiss me after I was in bed.  But this good night lasted for so short a time: she went down again so soon that the moment in which I heard her climb the stairs, and then caught the sound of her garden dress of blue muslin, from which hung little tassels of plaited straw, rustling along the double-doored corridor, was for me a moment of the keenest sorrow.  So much did I love that good night that I reached the stage of hoping that it would come as late as possible, so as to prolong the time of respite during which Mamma would not yet have appeared.  Sometimes when, after kissing me, she opened the door to go, I longed to call her back, to say to her 'Kiss me just once again,' but I knew that then she would at once look displeased, for the concession which she made to my wretchedness and agitation in coming up to me with this kiss of peace always annoyed my father, who thought such ceremonies absurd, and she would have liked to try and induce me to outgrow the need, the custom of having her there at all, which was a very different thing from letting the custom grow up of my asking her for an additional kiss when she was already crossing the threshold.  And to see her look displeased destroyed all the sense of tranquility she had brought me a moment before, when she bent her loving face down over my bed, and held it out to me like a Host, for an act of Communion in which my lips might drink deeply the sense of her real presence, and with it the power to sleep."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 13

I've included this section for a couple reasons.  First off, it is beautifully written, and I think the image of his mother's face hovering above him as a Host in an act of Communion is the first line, at least to me, that promises more beautiful passages to follow. Several people, including writers I really respect, view Remembrance of Things Past as the greatest novel of all time, and this particular image is the first that hints at transcendence to come.

The second reason is more personal, which I guess is the point of this entire experiment. When I separated from my first wife I went through the traditional six free sessions of therapy, which took a lot for me to do - and was about the best proof you'd ever need to what a fragile state that I was in at the time.  It's not that I don't see any value in psychology or therapy, but rather that I was raised in a very traditional way, and asking for help of any kind was branded into me as a true sign of weakness. And, truthfully, it's something I haven't gotten over yet.  Even today it's very difficult for me to ask for any help doing anything.  I don't know if I got too much out of my six sessions, although they did make me feel better.  Often I would say something and the therapist would lighten up and say something like, "wow, that's really perceptive."  Of course, that may be the best evidence that she was doing her job.  The one thing that she told me that did blow me away was that I was "starved for affection."  I had never thought of myself in that way, but it did make a lot of sense - and has always been in my mind, even if I didn't probably make much effective use of the fact.  I think I've struggle with some of my relationships with women because I both desperately needed affection and attention, but yet somehow remained pretty certain that I didn't deserve it.  And to receive that level of affection and attention I had to be "there" in a way that I probably wasn't (see the first two installments on Proust).

Now, why am I starved for affection?  Still working on that one.  It's way too easy to blame your personal shortcomings on your parents.  I think the attention. and in some sense affection, from my parents was very accomplishment-based, but I think their approach to parenting was very representative of their generation.  I've never considered them cold people.  Plus, if you've been fortunate to have traveled as much of the world as I have it's hard to take your own problems as having much merit.  This is why the hashtag #firstworldproblems was created.  I never missed any meals and I had the opportunity to pursue my Ph.D. I don't have any complaints.  So, then the reason for feeling that I was starved for affection is probably internal.  Like I said, I'm still working on that one.

The Best Going Away Present Ever

As I'll probably recount in way too many posts, my great friends Andy Burkhardt and his wife Heidi have left us to move to Michigan.  Heidi started working at the University of Michigan and moved earlier in the fall, and Andy finally followed her a couple days ago.  As a beloved friend - and generally loony character - Andy inspired several going away parties. One of the soirees was hosted by Sandy and Debbie Zale (more on that later) and I was considering what going away gift to get him.  Now, to be fair, I had already purchased them a copy of Basho's The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which, despite being a wonderful collection of haiku poetry that also serves as a travelogue, it seemed to fit the move to the Great Northern Mitten that is Michigan.  And, yes, clearly this speaks to how cool I am.  In this case I decided to head up across the border into Canada and bring back some TimBits, which are the Tim Horton's equivalent of donut holes.  TimBits are filled with Canadian goodness, and are clearly much better than anything one could get at Dunkin' Donuts. I drafted Mike Lange for the journey, and he was only too willing.  On our journeys up to Montreal Alouettes games we made it a tradition to stop at Tim Horton's, usually on the way up and after the game.

Considering the number of tragic terrorist attacks lately we were somewhat concerned with the prospect of getting back into the US, especially since the "we just drove up here to get donuts for a friend's going away party" sounds suspicious, even to me.  We weren't really concerned with crossing into Canada.  As I imagine filming the scene it would go something like this:

Canadian border guard: [friendly, as they always are] "What's the purpose of your trip?"

Me: [pausing, then laughing] "Driving up to the closest Tim Horton's to get some TimBits for a going away party for our friend."

Canadian border guard: [friendly, as they always are] "So, your friend really likes Tim Horton's?"

Me: [relieved] "Who doesn't?"

Canadian border guard:  [friendly, initially, as they always are - until he starts flipping through my passport, and then suddenly his smile fades as he gets to all the Arab stamps in my passport, and the kiss of death Yemen visa] "Are bringing anything into the country . . ."

Which, of course, led to many questions and the car being pulled over and searched, albeit quickly - and the guard was always friendly.  It did make us even more concerned about getting back across the border.

We tracked down what we are pretty certain is the southern most Tim Horton's, which is in Saint Jean Sur Richelieu off the first exit once you get onto the new section of 35. We bought a box of 50 TimBits for Andy and a box of 10 to give to my son - and, of course, we each had a box of 10, because this was exhausting work.

Fast forward to the border, this time heading south.

American border guard: [friendly, although not as friendly as the Canadian border guards, and certainly less routinely friendly] "What was the purpose of your trip into Canada?"

Me: [with due sense of dread] "To bring back some Tim Horton's Tim Bits for a going away present for a friend." [preparing for the inevitable cavity search]

American border guard: "How many did you bring back?"

Me: [clearly not completely understanding the question, either because I was nervous or simply because I'm hard of hearing] 60.

American border guard: [raising his voice, although more from surprise/amazement than anger] "You brought back 60 dozen donuts?"

Me: [laughing, despite the inevitability of the cavity search] "Oh, god, no.  A box of 50 TimBits and another box of 10 TimBits.  Even I couldn't eat 60 dozen donuts."

American border guard: [friendly, as is their wont] "I would hope not.  Have a great day."

It left Mike and I feeling like we had clearly gotten away with something, until about a mile south of the border when it occurred to us that he must have thought that we clearly looked like two very large Americans who would drive across the border solely to eat donuts.  I think he was being sizist, and we both felt oppressed and calorically profiled.

In the end Andy loved his gift and it was well worth the trouble, and we'll be back.

Mike has determined that the southern most Tim Horton's is only fifteen minutes away (which sounds like my logic) and thus we plan on driving up there around once a month for coffee and Tim Bits. I suspect it's actually something like 20 minutes once you get past the border, but I'm not going to argue against going to Tim Horton's.

My Year With Proust - Day 2

"But I cannot express the discomfort I felt at such an intrusion of mystery and beauty into a room which I had succeeded in filling with my own personality until I thought no more of the room than of myself.  The anaesthetic effect of custom being destroyed, I would begin to think and to feel very melancholy things."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 10

I wonder if I've ever had a room that I filled so clearly with my own personality that I thought no more of it than I did of myself.  Or, for that matter, have I ever had a relationship that I filled so clearly with my own personality that I thought no more of it than I did of myself.  My father has often opined that growing up I was never quite there.  On the one hand the combination of that, and the fact that I always did well in school, made me a pretty easy child to raise.  I remember when Brenda, Gary and I lived in Atlanta my Mom and Dad (obviously before they split) came to visit us in our apartment.  My Dad, and I'll give him credit for this, told me that it was only after the other kids that he realized what an easy kid I was to raise.  At the same time, however, I'm sure it made me a very frustrating child to raise because I was always someplace else intellectually and emotionally.

Maybe this was why I wasn't such a great husband.  Maybe I was never truly there for Brenda, just as I wasn't there for my Mom and Dad and siblings.  Why wasn't I there?  I don't think I was ever cruel, just not there as I should have been.  I've often told my son that if I had to do it over again I would have fought with his mother instead of just withdrawing and trying to make it work.  Did I not fight because I cared too much or because I cared too little - or simply because I wasn't truly there.  It could well be that answering that question is the most important thing I need to figure out over the next year.  Laura had this habit (90% cute and 10% annoying) of shaking her hand in front of my face when I was reading. Doubtless, there's a metaphor there somewhere.

Milan Kundera, in one of my favorite novels, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, wrote "The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.  Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.  What then shall we choose?  Weight or lightness?"

I remember talking to Jen about my apartment in Abu Dhabi, pointing out that I owned almost nothing; in fact, I had so little there that I could have walked away at any time and not given it a second thought. It was almost Graham Dalton's (the James Spader character from Sex, Lies and Videotape) one key philosophy - the notion that you should live your life in such a way that you only needed one key.  If you had to have a car then you could not have anything in your apartment that was so valuable that you had to lock the door, and if you did have something in your apartment valuable enough to warrant locking the door then you couldn't have a car.  She thought it sounded terrible, but to me at the time it sounded like perfection (to be fair, my close friend Cyndi Brandenburg also thought it sounded great). That said, in the end I didn't choose that life, and instead came back to Vermont to a life full of burdens.  So, in the end, I guess I chose weight over lightness. Now, in the end I have to figure out if weight equals presence.

And Another Semester Gone

Yes, the papers are graded and the grades are submitted and another semester is fading into the mists.  I can't believe that I've been doing this for over thirty years.  I gave my first lecture in the fall of 1982 when I was twenty-two, and then taught my first self-contained class in the summer of 1984 at the tender age of twenty-four. The end of every semester is a bit of a melancholy time for me.  I don't know whether it's the realization that I'm another semester closer to death, or maybe I do actually like these little knuckleheads and might theoretically miss them.

My friend and colleague John Stroup snapped this picture of me from his office window.  I'm stopping to give a couple of my students a hard time about something.  I don't normally dress so shabbily; it was the chili cook-off and since I was cooking Cincinnati chili I had to wear my ancient Reds sweatshirt.

The other day one of my colleagues was making a point about me stopping one of my students on campus and, in a good natured way, abusing them (the point being that my students know I care about them if I take time out of my busy schedule to heap foul scorn on them).  She paused and said, smiling, I guess I need to be more specific.

My Year With Proust - Day 1

"For a long time I used to go to bed early.  Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say 'I'm going to sleep.' And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between Francois I and Charles V.  This impression would persist for some moments after I was awake; it did not disturb my mind, but it lay like scales upon my eyes and prevented them from registering the fact that the candle was no longer burning. Then it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must be to a reincarnate spirit; the subject of my book would separate itself from me, leaving me free to choose whether I would form part of it or no; and at the same time my sight would return and I would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and restful for the eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which it appeared incomprehensible, without a cause, a matter dark indeed."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 1

For some time now it seems that I've been in a state of darkness; not darkness as in a state of despair, but rather in a crepuscular world between waking and dreaming. Essentially, I think I've been floating, and not necessarily in a bad way, but definitely floating.  Maybe it's the realization that it's the close of another year, and this time of the season makes everyone reflective.  I also have another birthday closing in hard upon me, and at 56 it's the beginning of the close of my 50s. Certainly, it's indicative of one of my traditional problems, the inability to just be and to enjoy life. In a previous life a crazy British girl made it her quest to try and get me to just relax and live in the moment, and she was at least partially successful because I'm much better than I used to be (which was sort of like the Woody Allen character from Annie Hall who opined that if someone somewhere was having a bad time it ruined the whole thing for him [I'm paraphrasing, obviously]).  

Nevertheless, I'm definitely going through one of those Henderson the Rain King stretches where all I hear my heart saying is "I want I want I want."  Now, what do I want? Well, to start off with, I guess I need to start completing some of my goals.  I've been talking about my book on the epics for a few years now, and I'm devoting a lot more time to research and writing than ever before.  Still, I need to be more structured in my approach.  I'm never going to get it finished if I continue to approach it so haphazardly.  Similarly, although in a less specific but more profound way, I'm trying to sort out my feeling about Islam.  For a couple years now I've been brooding over the notion of converting.  Certainly the 50s seem like high time to get your relationship with the divine sorted out. I'll have more to say about this soon, doubtless. Faith has always come hard to me, although I'm a spiritual person in many ways.  This is probably another one of those instances where my authority issues have held me back.  I guess it's been a long quest to find the religion that works for me.  Once again, more on this later.

OK, so those are two pretty big topics, which transcend my professional and personal lives.  And here's another one, although it doesn't begin to measure up in seriousness.  For around a decade I've been talking about reading all of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, and I'm finally going to tackle it.   I tried to interest several of my friends with the idea of reading it together and meeting once a week for coffee and discussion - and that went nowhere.  It may be the biggest factor that pushed Heidi Steiner-Burkhardt out of the state.  So, in the absence of a reading/discussion partner, I guess I'll use the blog to serve that purpose.  My goal is to finish all seven volumes that comprise the work and include daily or weekly commentary.  I thought about calling it My Summer With Proust, but realized that with my other projects I'd never get it all finished in a summer, so then it became a yearly project. I envision it as part reflection on Proust, but also part personal reflection. A matter dark indeed.  I have no idea where it is going, but I guess I'll just follow along - and maybe, just maybe, I might learn something about myself.