Ridiculous

I walked into class yesterday morning and Renzo, one of the (obviously troubled) Scudder veterans, told me that he had seen my picture on one of the screens around campus. Of course, my response was something like, "Why are you causing mischief, miscreant?" Oddly, he was correct, as I went out into the hallway and saw the following. Clearly, this is a product of some sort of Brandenburg/Kelly machinations. Beyond all that is holy, apparently this is going to be on a continual loop for the next couple weeks. Obviously, I have many enemies.

Like a Chinese ghost, apparently I'll be trapped inside the halls of campus at night, haunting any soul foolish enough to be out and about at night.

Saudade

 Saudade - "Longing, melancholy, nostalgia, as a supposed characteristic of the Portuguese or Brazilian temperament." Oxford English Dictionary

"Saudade is a word for a sad state of intense longing for someone or something that is absent. Saudade comes from Portuguese culture, and it is often expressed in its literature and music. Saudade is described as a king of melancholy yearning. . . In Portuguese literature and music, saudade is used as a theme or a motif . . . Saudade is most often discussed in terms of its importance to Portuguese culture and for the supposed difficulty in translating it to English." Dictionary.com

"The famous saudade of the Portuguese is a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness." A.F.G. Bell (from James Cave)

The concept of saudade popped up to me a couple of times yesterday, in the strange interconnected ways that only happens in Dickens novels and reality.  I completed, clumsily and painfully (my legs are not getting any better), a forty minute hike through Jerash on our NordicTrack. Experiencing Jerash made me happy (I've been there many times), but the experience also made me sad, not simply because I may never make it back to a country that I love so dearly, but also because my declining health is increasingly limiting what I can do, even much closer to home. Then, through mere happenstance, YouTube offered me up a Portuguese language series from Sandra Carapinha (which is one of the precious few things of value that YouTube has ever given me; I'm going to start following her videos, and see if she actually has a Portuguese language course). The first video of hers I saw was her description of saudade. I was already familiar with the concept (as all Lusophiles are) but her discussion was lovely (and I shared it with my students). Later I shared the entire story with some of my Jordanian veterans, and my wonderful former student Michael Manfredi sent me this picture:

I'm not certain when this was snapped, but it must be going on ten years ago. Obviously, saudade went into overdrive. 

My Factless Autobiography

 I envy - but I'm not sure that I envy - those for whom a biography could be written, or who could write their own. In these ransom impressions, and with no desire to e other than random, I indifferently narrate my factless autobiography, my lifeless history. These are my Confessions, and if in them I saw nothing, it's because I have nothing to say.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 12

Since I referenced Pessoa's notion of a "factless autobiography" in the previous post I figured I go ahead and include the original passage. I don't read many biographies or autobiographies, but one of the reasons why I think they sometimes fail is that they include way too much information. Recently I read three massive biographies of Marcus Aurelius, Marcel Proust, and Fernando Pessoa. I was not not sold on the first two, whereas I thought the Pessoa one (Richard Zenith's) was extraordinary. One of the reasons why Zenith's was so good was that I think it, while providing outside events and movements as context, it didn't get lost in them, which allowed the reader to truly immerse themselves into Pessoa as a writer and thinker. The others were almost too crowded with events, whereas Pessoa's, partially because while he led a busy life he didn't go far beyond the outskirts of Lisbon itself, we could get more into his inner life. In the same way, one of the reasons why The Book of Disquiet works as an autobiography of a sorts for Pessoa is that it is told through the heteronym (of in the case of Soares a partial heteronym) so the facts, like trees, don't block out the sun.

Oitava visita a Portugal, mesmo?

 I'm in the process of making plans to head back to Portugal for a quick visit in June. I found a conference in Lisbon and I'm in the process of putting together a paper. There is an inherent danger on presenting on Fernando Pessoa in Portugal, clearly, but I obviously don't have the sense that God gave a goose (as we'd say in Indiana). The last heteronym that Pessoa created was Maria Jose, a nineteen year old hunchbacked girl who was dying of tuberculosis. All she produced was a love letter that was never sent, telling of her love for a strong worker who routinely passed beneath her window. It is devastating in its sadness, but it's also very beautiful; my students read it on the first night of class this semester and they really liked it. I want to view the letter in relation to Pessoa's concept of a "factless autobiography," which he tells through the lens of Bernardo Soares in The Book of Disquiet. Doubtless, I'm in over my head, but I love to give myself new challenges.

Obviously, I'll have to head back to the Fernando Pessoa Museum.

This is the astrological chart that Pessoa created for himself. He did ones for his major heteronyms as well (or course, he also identified Fernando Pessoa as a heteronym - this is destroying my students even as we speak); unfortunately, the pictures I snapped on my last visit are pretty blurry, although, happily, not the memory itself.

Happy Birthday Kerry

 As is well-documented, 1960 was the last good and dependable year for the production of excellent human beings (don't blame me, blame science). Yesterday was the truly excellent Kerry Noonan's birthday (she's much, much younger than me). A group of us gathered at the Burlington Beer House to celebrate her general and sustained excellence, and a great time was had by all.

Janet and my Folklore Cards and Namaste Squid gifts were, happily, a big hit.

2025 Readings 9

 OK, so this one is completely silly, but, as a historian I feel the need to provide, as much as possible, a realistic historical portrayal of my readings for 2025. Plus, I should be honest: I don't only read books by/about Fernando Pessoa and Marcel Proust and about religion or death. This morning I finished Rachel Quinney's Cryptids, Creatures & Critters. Beyond my obvious love of cryptids I mainly bought this book as part of creating a storehouse of cryptozoological-related swag to send to Andy Burkhardt. In the Twin Peaks Football League there are  certain matchups which have a theme. My regular season game with Cyndi Brandenburg's Mojo Nixons is the Fried Chicken Bowl, while the game with Katheryn Wright's Colchester Hep Aliens is the Key Lime Pie Bowl. In both instances the loser must provide the winner with either fried chicken or key lime pie. This year we've added the Cryptozoology Bowl between the Springfield Buffalo and Andy Burkhardt's Shackleton Shockers, with the loser providing the winner with some sort of cryptozoological swag (Andy received a t-shirt from the Mothman Museum this year). so, I was in a store the other day and saw Quinney's book, so I purchased with it the intention of setting it aside in my cryptozoology storehouse to send to Andy in future seasons. Of course, I picked it up and read it, and thus I am honor bound to record it here. It was fun and I was introduced to some cryptids that I had never heard of. Plus, it has this promotional quote - "A fantastic book with top-notch information and some of the best cryptid illustrations I have seen!!!" - from Jeff Wamsley, the owner of the Mothman Museum. Seriously, how could I not love it? I will miss it after next year's inevitable loss to the Shockers when it will be in the mail on the way to Michigan.

2025 Readings 8

 Last night I finished Yoko Tawada's Scattered All Over the Earth, which I liked a lot but didn't love. It did make me want to read her novel The Emissary. Scattered All Over the Earth felt like one of those novels that is based on an interesting and strange notion, but in the end wasn't fully realized; the end felt a bit like a more intelligent Friends episode where we'll reminded that while you can't choose your family you can choose your friends (that's more critical than I mean it to be). An odd but engaging crew of characters is drawn together by a love of languages, and the mystery surrounding the fact that Japan has seemingly disappeared. No one can really remember Japan or what happened to it, and all the aspects of Japanese culture are all now associated with other cultures.  Hiruko, in an attempt to try and find someone else in the world who speaks her language, is the engine that quietly drives the story forward. It hints at profound issues related to language and culture and cultural diffusion and is well worth the read. I think it was another book that I picked it at Northshire Books down in Manchester.

Your 2024 TPFL Champion

 Yesterday I answered a meeting request from the esteemed Katheryn Wright, and this was the result. In between Katheryn, Cyndi Brandenburg, Mike Lange, Mike Kelly, Jonathan Banfield, and, inexplicably, Kristin Wolf, I was encased in a cocoon of silly string. As Janet opined, "that's what you get for winning?" Obviously, this is much better than having to display the Horrendous Wixon Glass Clown on your desk for a year - or having to wear the Ridiculous Wixon My Little Pony Sweater in public (with photographic evidence) - so I'll happily accept the silly string assault. I suspected that something might have been up, which is why I wore my Toronto Argonauts sweatshirt as an homage to 2024 champions (obviously, none of my Vikings jerseys would have been useful).

It was the fourth title for the Springfield Buffalo, in five trips to the title game, in the last nine years of the Twin Peaks Football League, which all you need to know about how fantasy football is mainly dumb luck. The gesture from dear friends meant more than the title (or at least it's close).

Venetian Shrines

As I've previously mentioned, one of the things that I really liked on the trip to Venice was going out in the morning and roaming around the alleys and getting lost. I ran into so many little shrines, hidden in the corner of quiet, dark alleys, that it strangely felt like India.

2025 Readings 7

 For some reason I don't read a lot of short stories, although I don't know why. I endlessly go on about how important Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio was to me (and I should give it a reread this year), and in many ways that's as much a collection of short stories as it is a novel, or at least a series of short stories that add up to a novel. For that matter, several years ago I read, and loved - and actually used part of in class, Jhumpa Lahiri's brilliant collection, Interpreter of Maladies. Nevertheless, for some reason I don't read much short fiction, and this needs to be addressed this year and moving forward. I'm bringing this all up because I just finished The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake. Even if you take into account that I grew up in Indiana and are thus very poorly educated, it's difficult to reconcile how little I know and how little I've read (let alone how little I've accomplished in my career). Somehow, I had never heard of Breece D'J Pancake, an extraordinary talent whose life was cut short when he committed suicide at age twenty-six in 1979. On some level I'm sure the stories resonated with me because they're all set in rural West Virginia in the 1970s, and thus it reminds me of Indiana during the same time period, all the ugliness and ignorance and poverty and hopelessness. Several of the stories - "A Room Forever," "The Honored Dead," "In the Dry," and "First Day of Winter" - are just a punch in the gut, brutal and beautiful. I told my friend Mike Kelly, who was familiar with the collection, that it read like a bleaker Drive-By Truckers album. I told him that one of the things that is most painful about reading the stories is that you know that almost everyone of the characters would vote for Trump. He replied, completely on point, with the exception of the smart ones who die.

I think my favorite story is "A Room Forever," which is about a young man in a horrible West Virginia river town (probably the WV equivalent of Lawrenceburg, Indiana) on New Year's Day, waiting to get back on the tug Delmar for a month. He's killing time in a horrible $8 a night room, drinking and sleeping with a younger teenage prostitute. Here's the end of the story:

  "I dress and go out again. It is still raining and the cold pavement shines with new ice. Between the buildings the bums are sleeping in the trash they have piled up, and I think about some nut in California who cut winos' throats, but I can't see the percentage. The stumblebums are like Prince Albert, they ran out of luck, hit the skids.

  I turn onto First Avenue, walk slowly by the row of crowded taverns, look in the windows at all the lucky people getting partied up for New Year's. Then I see her sitting at a table near the back door. I go in, take a stool at the bar, order a whiskey, neat. The smoke cloud is heavy, but I see her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. From the way her mouth is hanging limp I see she is pretty drunk. I don't guess she knows she can't drink her way out of this.

  I look around. All these people have come down from their flops because there are no parties for them to go to. The are strangers who play a little pool or pinball, drink a little booze. All year they grit their teeth - they pump gas and wait tables and screw chippies and bait queers, and they don't like any of it, but they know they are lucky to get it.

  I look for her in the mirror but she is gone. I would have seen her going out the front, so I head for the back door to look for her. She is sitting against a building in the rain, passed out cold. When I shake her, I see that she has cut both wrists down to the leaders, but the cold rain has clotted the blood so that only a little oozes out when I move her. I go back inside.

  'There's some girl out back tried to kill herself.'

  Four guys at the bar run out to her, carry her inside. The bartender grabs a phone. He says to me, 'Do you know her?'

  I say, 'No, I just went for some air.' I go on out the door.

  The bartender yells, 'Hey, buddy, the cops'll want to see you; hey, buddy . . .'

  I walk along the avenue thinking how shit always sinks, and how all these towns dump their shit for the river to push it down to the delta. Then I think about that girl sitting in the alley, sitting in her own slough, and I shake my head. I have not gotten that low.

  I stop in front of the bus station, look in on the waiting people, and think about all the places they are going.  But I know they can't run away from it or drink their way out of it or die to get rid of it. It's always there, you just look at somebody and they give you a look like the Wrath of God. I turn toward the docks, walk down to see if the Delmar maybe put in early."

Highly recommended, and I'm definitely looking forward to reading the collection again. That's definitely one of the markers of a truly great work of fiction: as soon as you finish the last page you're already planning your reread.

The Big Chill

 There is something about this picture, which I snapped looking out our kitchen window on a -12 degree morning, which seems to completely capture my mood at the moment. I mentioned in a post the other day that I was essentially at my nadir in response to living in Calais, but which I proposed had much more to do with my larger feelings of unhappiness about living in the US. This week Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term, and immediately set about destroying the few things t he didn't destroy in his first term. He is an ignorant, mean-spirited, racist sociopath, elected by a nation increasingly made up of ignorant, mean-spirited, racist sociopaths. In the past I've tried to cut the people who voted for him for more, as in, they didn't really understand the enormity of the damage they were doing. However, I don't think that's true. They know that he's not actually going to  lower the price of groceries - and even the most clueless has to understand, at least on some level, that decisions such as withdrawing from the Paris climate accord are going to make for a much worse life for their grandchildren - but those things pale in comparison to the ability at this moment to inflict cruelty on people of color and Jews and Muslims and immigrants and members of the LGBTQ community. As was often pointed out in the first Trump administration, the cruelty is the point. Now it's the overriding point, nothing else matters. Trump needs to go fuck himself, and the same goes for everyone who voted for him - and if you sat out the election you're equally as guilty. We have reached a tipping point, and while America may someday be a democracy that stood for something, it won't be in my lifetime.

The sun is rising in the east and that does promise better days, of course, Portugal is in the east. Janet and I spent most of Monday running around and staying as far away from the news as possible. Not surprisingly, we devoted a lot of time to discussing an eventual, sooner than later, to Europe.

2025 Readings 6

 When I started this little project I knew that some of my readings would be rereads, and that is especially true in regards to novels by Charles Dickens. I don't know if I've read everything that Dickens ever wrote, but it's pretty close. Years ago my ex Brenda bought me the entire hardbound Dickens collection (she was famous for her great gifts). Later, sadly, they all disappeared during our divorce; nothing insidious on her part, as she was kind and supportive during the painful process, certainly more than I deserved, but rather the house sold when I was overseas (and if they were that important to me I should have spirited them away earlier). Yesterday I finished a reread of Great Expectations, which, for some reason, I had not read in years. I've probably read Bleak House or David Copperfield four or five times each since the last time I read Great Expectations. It was much better than I remember (which probably explains the delay in rereading it again). It's not that I remember it as a bad novel, because I have never thought that and can't imagine thinking it, but maybe I just thought it was overrated. It often is ranked as the best Dickens novel, and maybe the natural contrarian in was resistant to that rating. Anyway, it is a great novel, although I would not agree that it is his best work. It does have a great ending, although I think it could have had a better ending - and not an imagined better ending that I concocted, but rather the original ending that Dickens himself wrote.

The ending that I was familiar with featured one last meeting (maybe) between Pip and Estella, in the ruined grounds of Miss Havisham's house, where they had met and their lives were shaped (and in some ways ruined) by her. Here is the ending that we have all read:

"I little thought", said Estella, "that I should take leave of you in taking leave of this spot. I am very glad to do so."

"Glad to part again, Estella? To me, parting is a painful thing. To me, the remembrance of our last parting has been ever mournful and painful."

"But you said to me," returned Estella, very earnestly. "God bless you, God forgive you!" And if you could say that to me then, you will not hesitate to say that to me now - now, when suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape. Be as considerate and good to me as you were, and tell me we are friends."

"We are friends," said I, rising and bending over her, as she rose from the bench.

"And will continue friends apart," said Estella.

I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place, and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.

I love this ending, and it may be the best ending of any Dickens novel, with the possible exception of A Tale of Two Cities. The ending in Bleak House and David Copperfield, my two favorite Dickens novels, are certainly happier, and I would argue appropriately happier, although a little forced (which Dickens was guilty of, certainly). This ending leaves a certain degree of uncertainty, which the reader can fill in depending upon her view of the story. Yes, it could be that there is "no shadow of another parting from her" because they got together, but, and this is how I've always read it, they never met each other again (she remarried someone else and Pip went back to Egypt to work with his friend Herbert) so there could not be another parting. The ruins, the mist, the uncertainty, all completely mirror the novel itself, so I don't know how you could read it any other way, unless you really think that Estella has changed and you're a born romantic who wants them to end up together.

However, that is apparently not his actual intended ending. He wrote the following, which was changed very late in the process based on a friend's suggestion. There is no ending in the ruined house of Miss Havisham, but instead on the streets of London, when Pip is interrupted while taking Joe's son Pip on a walk. Pip knew of her history. Like in the published ending, Estella had been married, and treated remarkably poorly, by Bentley Drummle. After his death she married a doctor with a very modest practice, and they lived a very quiet existence (far from her own great expectations of being a very wealthy great lady).

I was in England again - in London, and walking along Piccadilly with little Pip - when a servant came running after me to ask would I step back to a lady in a carriage who wished to speak to me. It was a little pony carriage, which the lady was driving; and the lady and I looked sadly enough on one another.

"I am greatly changed, I know, but I thought you would like to shake hands with Estella too, Pip. Lift up that pretty child and let me kiss it!" (She supposed the child, I think, to be my child.)

I was very glad afterwards to have had the interview; for, in her face and in her voice, and in her touch, she gave me the assurance that suffering had been stronger than Miss Havisham's teaching, and had given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be.

This one definitely ties it up even more clearly than the one that made it into book form. There is no dream of another parting because there is no dream of them being together. She is married, and neither of them seems to be moping over the other one (although we don't get much information on that front because their meeting was very quick, or at least is reported as fleeting). Apparently some literary critics are appalled by the published ending because they think that the definitively darker nature of the original ending fits the overall ending of the novel better, and that the altered ending is a bit of a sellout. I'm going to respectively disagree. I love the ending that made its way into the novel. The novel began in mist and uncertainty in a rural setting and the published ending does the same. A chance meeting on a street in London, at least to me, doesn't feel natural, unless you tie it to the bigger issue of Pip's great expectations, and their eventual failure, being tied to London. Maybe it just comes back to whether you think the ending in the novel is a happy or sad ending, and, as I've said, I view it as appropriately sad or appropriately mysterious and bittersweet, and thus it is tied together brilliantly.

Prisons and Shackles

 To submit to nothing, whether to a man or a love or an idea, and to have the aloof independence of not believing in the truth or even (if it existed) in the usefulness of knowing it - this seems to me the right attitude for the intellectual inner life of those who can't live without thinking. To belong is synonymous with banality. Creeds, ideals, a woman, a profession - all are prisons and shackles. To be is to be free. Even ambition, if we take pride in it, is a hindrance; we wouldn't be proud of it if we realized it's a string by which we're pulled. No: no ties even to ourselves! Free from ourselves as well as from others, contemplatives with ecstasy, thinkers without conclusions, and liberated from God, we will live the few moments of bliss allowed us in the prison yard by the distraction of our executioners.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 336

"To belong is synonymous with banality." I've talked about how when I first picked up The Book of Disquiet I simply didn't understand it, and I needed a little context to gain a foothold - and then I fell in love with it. What I began to realize about Pessoa is that it's not simply that he was a contrarian or a Goth before they had been recreated as an American cultural niche or just a very conscious weirdo, but rather that he was a person with a very tender soul, who was hoping to live a life that didn't cause pain; it was, I would argue, less about accomplishing something, but rather trying to limit emotional bruising. It's the literary equivalent of Neil Young's A Man Needs a Maid, a song that I think is also equally misunderstood. 

Mothman Museum

 Several years ago, as is detailed somewhere here on this blog, I was asked to drive to the wilds of Maine to speak at my friend Richard's funeral. I was honored to do so, but it was also more than a bit depressing. Consequently, I decided to drive through Portland, Maine so that I could visit the International Cryptozoological Museum, which I'd heard about for years but had never visited. Mainly I was just looking for some slight ray of happiness in the midst of an exhausting and depressing trip. I thought of this recently when I was back home in Indiana, having made a wild drive through a near blizzard to not actually arrive in time to be there for his passing - and then was frustrated and angered by my family, per usual, collapsing in upon itself. In need of a little joy in the face of family misery and idiocy, I left Cincinnati and headed due east, partially to try and drive south of another storm, but mainly to head to Port Pleasant, West Virginia to visit the Mothman Museum. While I didn't end up missing the storm, at least not entirely, I was successful in significantly boosting my morale. I've known about the legend of the Mothman for a long time, and had also heard about the Museum, but on all my my odd little journeys I had never been even remotely close to Point Pleasant (although, come to think of it, I wonder if it would have been an option on my Trip of Excellence with my friend Sanford on our drive to Oklahoma before I left for a year in Abu Dhabi?). Technically, I shouldn't have been close to Point Pleasant on this trip, but I bent time and space to my needs (sort of like the Mothman did). Actually, the Museum was great and it was a cool way to break up a long drive and to spend an hour or so. It also housed an appropriately rich souvenir store. After spending over $180 on souvenirs - many of my friends received Mothman swag for Christmas this year - the nice girl at the front desk packed everything away in a sweet Mothman bag, which was comped (which is all you needed to know about how much money I spent).

To be fair, I don't know who else would have a Mothman Museum.

One of the many representations of the Mothman in the Museum, and my favorite - although it pales in comparison to the statue in the street (featured below).

Can you have an American urban legend with a Man In Black?

I loved all the copies of newspaper reports from the time.

We're all afraid of the UFO-Bird!

A wonderful Korean movie poster, although feel free to pass on seeing The Mothman Prophecy, although Laura Linney was, as always, very good in a pretty hopeless role.

As I was checking out with my Mothman swag I asked the nice young lady where the famous statue was. She told me to head out the door and take a left, and there it was, in all it's glory!

Next time I'm definitely going to checkout the Mothman 66 Except Room adventure. There were several stores and restaurants (not to mention the annual Mothman festival) there, so clearly I will have to return.

I guess I should add that, sadly, I have a better chance of actually seeing the Mothman than my family all in one place at one time: Scudder Family Happiness, a fitting subject for cryptozoology.

A Chateaubriand Dreams the Impossible?

 I tremble when someone speaks well. Certain pages from Fialho and from Chateaubriand make my whole being tingle in all of its pores, makes me rave in a still shiver with impossible pleasure.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 259

The world is a prison. A Chateaubriand dreams the impossible? Human life is tedious.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 278

We apply the name 'Romantics' both to the great men who failed and to the little men who showed themselves for what they were. But the only similarity between the two is in their overt sentimentality, which in the former denotes an inability to make active use of intelligence, while in the latter it denotes that lack of intelligence itself. A Chateaubriand and a Hugo, a Vigny and a Michelet, are products of the same age. but Chateaubriand is a great soul that was diminished, Hugo a little soul that was inflated by the winds of the day. Virny is a genius that had to flee, Michelet a woman that was forced to be a man of genius. In the father of them all, Jean Jacques Rousseau, the two tendencies coincide.  He possessed, in equal measure, the intelligence of a creator and the sensibility of a slave.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 249

It's curious that what little capacity I have for enthusiasm is aroused by hose most unlike me in temperament. I admire no one in literature more than the classical writers, who are the ones I least resembled. Forced to choose between reading only Chateaubriand or Vieira, I would choose Vieira without a moment's hesitation.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 71

By comments on the previous post on Chateaubriand made me think about his relationship to Pessoa, or maybe it would be better to think about Pessoa's relationship to Chateaubriand. So, I made a quick run through The Book of Disquiet and culled out all the references to Chateaubriand (I may have missed a couple, so I'll take another look later). It might make an interesting paper at a smaller, quieter conference, to discuss what it is about Chateaubriand's writing that so appealed to both Pessoa and Proust. So, this is the first step, or maybe it's not.

2025 Readings 5

 This morning I finished Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand's Memoirs from Beyond the Tomb. It's sort of amazing that I had never tackled Chateaubriand's memoir, not only because of its beauty and historical importance (he knew everybody, including Napoleon and Washington, the latter of which he just essentially cold-called by knocking on the door at Mount Vernon) but also because both Proust and Pessoa loved his work. There's an overriding melancholy in Chateaubriand's work that I can definitely see appealing to both Proust and Pessoa. Some of the writing serves as an invaluable insider's view of the age of both the French Revolution (and many of his family members lost their lives to the guillotine) and the Napoleonic era, but there are also beautiful observations on life and love. There are way too many examples to cite here, but here's one that I came across this morning. Chateaubriand was living in Rome, and finishing up his memoirs, which he had worked on fitfully for around thirty years. 

He wrote: "Death seems to have been born in Rome. . . . There are more tombs than dead in this city. I imagine that the deceased, when they feel too warm in their marble resting-place, slip into another which has remained empty, just as a sick man is moved from one bed to another. One can almost hear the skeletons passing during the night from coffin to coffin." 

Recently I agreed to give one of Champlain's Blue Stool talks, which are fifteen minute informal presentations designed to be given publicly on campus as students are moving from class to class. I gave one years ago (I think it might have been something related to my time in the UAE, but truthfully I can't remember). Since a couple of my friends run it I thought I should be a more supportive colleague (although, truthfully, I think I've been more supporting of many of their efforts than they have of mine - the Debs Symposium being a great example, which precious few of my colleagues have attended or presented at over the years). I also agreed to give another Blue Stool because of a line that I came across in Chateaubriand. On his trip to America he stopped at a plantation for supplies. He wrote, "A Negress of thirteen or fourteen, practically naked and singularly beautiful, opened the gates to use like a young Night. We bought some cakes of Indian corn, chickens, eggs, and milk, and returned to the ship with our demijohns and baskets." The next line was the one that grabbed me: "I gave my silk handkerchief to the little African girl: it was a slave who welcomed me to the soil of liberty." The irony of that line, hardly accidental, is profound and brutal. I'm going to use it as an introduction to a brief talk on the lie of American exceptionalism, which is, as any poor soul who followed me on Twitter could verify, is one of my core beliefs.

There are also lines in Chateaubriand that are already finding their way into my Epics and Ramadan in Winter manuscripts. This is definitely a work that I can see reading again, and also inspiring me to track down some of his other writings, such as The Genius of Christianity. As usual, Proust and Pessoa knew what they were talking about.

Highly recommended.

Without Knowing Why

 I was born in a time when the majority of young people had lost faith in God, for the same reason their elders had had it - without knowing why. And since the human spirit naturally tends to make judgements based on feeling instead of reason, most of these young people chose Humanity to replace God. I, however, am the sort of person who is always on the fringe of what he belongs to , seeing not only the multitude he's a part of but also the wide-open space around it. That's why I didn't give up God as completely as they did, and I never accepted Humanity. I reasoned that God, while improbable, might exist, in which case he should be worshipped, whereas Humanity, being a mere biological idea and signifying nothing more than the animal species we belong to, was no more deserving of worship than any other animal species. The cult of Humanity, with its cries of Freedom and Equality, always struck me as a revival of those ancient cults in which gods were like animals or had animal heads.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 1

And so, The Book of Disquiet begins. A couple of days ago, on Monday, I introduced my reworked COR 204 students to Fernando Pessoa. It's early days yet, but the response was what I expected, a pretty dramatic split. One of the students got up early and walked out, I assumed for a bathroom break but he never returned. On the other hand, a few of the brighter kids were clearly blown away. One of the students, clearly one of the brighter more perceptive ones, was amazed that he had never heard of Fernando Pessoa before. I told him not to fret about it since I had never read any Pessoa until I was in my 60s. I told them that there was often a work that dominated my intellectual life by decade: discovering Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio when I was fourteen or making my way through Proust's Remembrance of Things Past in my fifties, and that Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet was the literary work of my sixties (which is, alarmingly, a decade half over already). As I've gotten older I've come to believe that my job is mainly to make my students think, and that I often need to shock their sensibilities to make that happen. As Pessoa, opening this work, proposes, "I was born in a time when the majority of young people had lost faith in Gd, for the same reason their elders had had it - without knowing why." 

Proprieta Provita

 If Janet and I ever lived in Venice it would clearly be here, mainly because we would both like a private bridge. Venice is one of those towns which feels like the film Inception, wherein you're walking around and suddenly the entire city moves itself and reconstitutes in an odd fashion.

I snapped this on one of my morning walks when Janet was starting her day in her more evolutionary fashion. It was a beautiful, quiet little square, which really deserves its own post so I need to unload some more pictures from my camera.

Venetian Fog

 For some reason I thought that our trip to Venice in November would be mysterious and fog-shrouded. Doubtless, some of this was related to the time of year and actual typical weather reports of the season, but it may also be the mythology of the city itself. Actually, we had as many foggy days as we did funny days: one apiece. It was overcast most of the time, which made it a nice environment for taking pictures. However, I was hoping for a couple days where the city was blanketed by a dense fog that would provide even greater opportunities for ethereal shots.

Here's a shot from the Metropole's private dock, looking out towards the Lagoon.

 

CFL Diva

 I suppose all of us have peculiarities that we throw money at, but how many of us can say that it's the CFL? Even my exes who ended up hating me said that at the very least I was very easy to shop for because I had so many things that I was passionate about. With that in mind, maybe the CFL is just the latest in a long line of odd fascinations on my part. That said, I've never really been interested in spending money on them. I've always been happy to spend money on the folks in my life, but more than hesitant to spend money on myself. Maybe I'm just getting old and hence more willing to give into my desires (the less happiness we have on a daily basis may make us more willing to madly chase short term adventures - and I guess I owe the blog a post on my recent trip to the Mothman Museum in Point Pleasant, West Virginia).Having said all that, it's hard to not love the CFL. They're the absolute underdog on the North American football landscape, and I'd simply quite happy to throw money their way as compared to those assholes in the NFL. Plus, unlike the Minnesota Vikings, no CFL team has ever broken my heart.

My Christmas present from Janet. Inshallah, after visiting all of the Eastern Division teams (three of the four more than once) I'm hoping to head the the Western Division this summer. The goal is a Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Saskatchewan Roughriders doubleheader. I'm just waiting for the CFL schedule to drop so that I can begin planning.

According to the esteem Mike Kelly, this is the sweetest jersey so far. Sadly, I suspect that my friends' love for the CFL and for me will not extend beyond the Eastern Division and that I'll be making these future trips on my own.

Nothing More Simultaneously False and Telling

 To understand, I destroyed myself. To understand is to forget about loving. I know nothing more simultaneously false and telling the statement by Leonardo da Vinci that we cannot love or hate something until we've understood it.

Solitude devastates me; company oppresses me. The presence of another person details my thoughts; I dream of the other's presence with a strange absent-mindedness that no amount of my analytical scrutiny can define.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 48

I've always proposed that I'm an introvert, while others firmly believe that I'm an extrovert. Maybe the best way to think about it is that I get filled up with others very quickly. Every one of my friends has a story about me simply disappearing. I never meant to be rude, but I simply couldn't take being around them anymore. In the end it means that I've chosen the appropriate profession: I can throw everything but the kitchen sink at my students for a couple hours, but then I need to go into my office and close the door for a couple hours. But does this strange balancing act between introvert and extrovert translate as well in regards to the success of relationships?  I think that I do not have a long, or even short-term, history of success with the relationships I've had with the loves of my life, and maybe this is because I need to be with them but I also can't stand to be with them. Paraphrasing da Vinci, I suppose I had to understand them, but then after understanding them I grew to hate them, or at least hated to be with them (I'm not a person who hates much of anything, mainly because I'm very aware of my own failings, which are legendary; in class the other day one of my students asked if I round up grades, and I said that I routinely do just because I recognize my own limitations). I think one of the strengths of my relationship with Janet is our being willing and happy to both be together and apart all day long. Since she works from home and I only go up to BTV to teach a couple days a week it would be very easy for us to a feel claustrophobic, but she has her corner of the cabin and I have mine, and so we can pretty effortlessly pass like contented ghosts back and forth during the course of a day. 

Some 2024 Readings

 Every year about this time I get an email from Audible giving me a summary of my previous year's listening. I don't know if it's completely correct - for instance, how did I listen to 50 titles when I only have around 100 total in my Audible library (maybe I just started a book I'd already read for a few minutes to check on something?) - but I suspect it's fairly close. Here are some of the stats:

Total hours: 503

Titles: 50

Longest streak: 23 days

Literature & Fiction: 341 hours

Religion & Spirituality: 107 hours and 26 minutes

Politics & Social Sciences: 40 hours and 38 minutes

Most active month: August (72 hours), followed by December (71) and May (45)

Breakdown by author: Marcel Proust (128 hours), Charles Dickens (46), Thomas Wolfe (26)

Mainly I just fine this interesting, and it relates to this year's decision to record the number of books I've read this year. I suppose 503 hours seems like an ungodly amount, but I do have an hour commute each way to work - and I made two drives to Indiana - and I listen to Audible when I'm working out at the gym - so I guess it adds up. Of course, this list doesn't include all the books that I actually read old school, that is, in actual physical form (which is still the form that makes me the happiest).

Like a Caress

 Where is God, even if he doesn't exist? I want to pray and to weep, to repent of crimes I didn't commit, to enjoy the feeling of forgiveness like a caress that's more than maternal.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 88

In my imagined book "Ramadan in Winter" I hope to include a chapter that's speculatively entitled "The Wrong Metaphor." The notion being all religions are products of metaphor, because how could they not be? How can we be told that God, no matter how you perceive her/him/it/they are beyond our understanding, but then insist that you know exactly what that God wants, especially when it comes to  imposing penalties on the disenfranchised in society (and thus giving lie to the words and desires of the founders of religions, most of whom were revolutionaries concerned with the suffering of the underclasses and the helpless). Not only do we forget that we've made use of metaphor, but we also don't think of the fact that the metaphor that we, at least with monotheistic religions, settled on - the angry king - is a terrible metaphor. Maybe if we went back to our earliest days and returned to the female divine, we might actually be a lot better behaved, more tolerant and kind and compassionate, and less intent on taking the cruelty that we learned from the angry male god and imposing it on others. This reminds me of Thycydides's Melian Dialogue from his Peloponnesian War. The Melians try and reason with the invading Athenians but to no avail. The Athenians make one of the great might makes right arguments in history. When the Melians propose that the gods might be angry about the Athenians using their power to punish the weak simply because they are powerful, the Athenians simply respond that it's from the gods that they learned that power itself justifies its application. Sadly, maybe we are all Melians.

2025 Readings 4

 This morning I finished Daniel Mason's North Woods, which I blew through in just a few days, so, obviously, I must have really loved it, which I definitely did. While I'm always suspicious of catchy book reviews, especially ones that seem designed to be catchy enough to make their way onto the book itself, I would have to agree with this line from The Guardian: "To read it is to travel to the limits of what the novel can do." I think they're definitely on to something with that observation. The novel is essentially the story of a cabin and a parcel of land, and the entities (people, catamounts, insects, ghosts) who pass through it and continue to haunt it over several centuries. It's beautifully rendered, and it comes together in the way that Dickens's novels illogically/logically come together. Highly recommended.

I Must Be Someone

 I live aesthetically as someone else. I've sculpted my life like a statue made of matter that's foreign to my being. Having employed my self-awareness in such a purely artistic way, and having become so completely external to myself, I sometimes no longer recognize myself. Who am I behind this unreality? I don't know. I must be someone. and if I avoid living, acting and feeling, then believe me, it's so as not to tamper with the contours of my invented personality. I want to be exactly like what I wanted to be and am not. If I were to give in to life, I'd be destroyed. I want to be a work of of art, at least in my soul, since I can't be one in my body. That's why I've sculpted myself in quiet isolation and have placed myself in a hothouse, cut off from fresh air and direct light - where the absurd flower of my artificiality can blossom in secluded beauty.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 114

Tomorrow, as I think I mentioned a couple days ago, I'm going to keep a promise to myself and include Pessoa's the Book of Disquiet in a course. I reworked my Marxism and the Movies class, to focus instead on self and identity and film - and a fair bit of Fernando Pessoa. OK, so it makes sense to me, and in the end that's all that matters. I always give my students, especially my juniors, a crazy amount of options on their final assignments, because, as I tell them quite frequently, if they are excited about a paper they're simply much more likely to write a good one. Similarly, one of the reasons why I. even at this late date in my teaching career keep creating new courses, is because if I'm excited and learning new things then the class is simply going to probably end up being a lot better. With that in mind, Pessoa, and especially this particular passage, speak to this moment in time. One life is ending, and I'm not the time to putter around the house leading some dim echo of my last life. Rather, I hope to create myself, because, well, "I must be someone." Once again, teaching serves as therapy (although, sadly not for my long-suffering students).

2025 Readings 3

 Previously I said that I was going to include any Great Courses that I made my way through in 2025, because, well, they're often lengthy, but more importantly they're usually dense and very thought-provoking. Since I have an hour commute each way from Calais into Burlington I listen to a lot of books of tape, and also Great Courses. The first of the latter that I listened this year was Robert Garland's "God Against the Gods," which was an overview of the relationship between monotheism and polytheism. I liked it, although I didn't love it. In some ways that is an unfair critique simply because after teaching classes on world civilization and religion for decades the strengths of the series, and there were many, were artificially limited while the weaknesses, and there were some, were artificially exaggerated. I thought his discussion of Islam was pretty simplistic and one-sided, and at times simply incorrect. Plus, he had that casual and elegant racism/Islamophobia that the British effortlessly slip into. Still, I still learned some things, mainly in regards to the similarities between monotheism and polytheism that I hadn't considered before, so I don't think it was a waste of time. That said, while I sometimes repeat Great Courses, this is not one that I would consider giving a second listen.

Exiled From All Hearts

 Time! The past! Something - a voice, a song, a chance fragrance - lifts the curtain of my soul's memories . . . That which I was an will never again be! That which I had and will never again have! The dead! The dead who loved me in my childhood. Whenever I remember them, my whole soul shivers and I feel exiled from all hearts, alone in the night of myself, weeping like a beggar before the closed silence of all doors.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 197

Now here's an appropriate Pessoa passage that speaks to a monumental birthday, the turning the year, and the aftermath of the passing of my father. Truthfully, I shouldn't be blogging, as class starts on Monday and I'm in the midst of a massive (and ill-timed, if not ill-considered) redesign of my COR 204 class. If I had just left things alone, I would have had a semester wherein I only had two class preps, and they would have been classes I had taught previously - and that never, ever happens in the Core division. In the last couple years I've typically had four classes tied to three different preps, or four classes tied to four different preps, or five classes tied to three different preps, keeping in mind that none of them are actually in my own discipline. So, of course, after receiving this bounty, what do I do? Simple, change one of the courses. That said, I get bored, and I live for challenges, so while my COR 204 will still be a film-based class, it will not "simply" be Marxism and the Movies, but more a class on, as I as spell it out at the top of (yet uncompleted) syllabus: Self, Identify, Film - and a Little Fernando Pessoa. Why do I do these things? Well, again, I get bored if I don't challenge myself, and the more energized I am the more I have to give to the students. Plus, I'd made a promise to myself to use Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet in a class before i retired -  and, as Barbara Stanwyck reminds us in Christmas in Connecticut, "You know, Felix, it's important to keep promises, especially to yourself." This is all by way to saying that I was not goofing off (at least not completely) because I was working my way through The Book of Disquiet (a happily endless process) as I try to put the finishing touches on this mad class, which I described to my friend Erik as either "award-winning or career ending."

OK, so why is this the perfect passage for this particular period in time? Mainly, I suppose, he's talking about the past, and what season is more steeped in the past than the holiday seasons and the end of the year? There's a reason why there are always spirits in all of Dickens's Christmas stories. On the surface, this passage reads almost Proustian, with the exception, I would argue, of one pretty huge difference. Proust is delving into the past to make a connection, to, as I proposed in a talk last year, to bring himself back to that moment at the beginning of the book where he was hoping that his mother would leave her party to kiss him goodnight - and she did come back to read him stories and spent the night sleeping in his room - that moment of perfect union and innocence and bliss, for which he then devotes 3700 pages in trying to recover. I think Pessoa's view of the past is exactly the opposite here. The past simply reminds him of what he will never have again: "Whenever I remember them, my whole soul shivers and I feel exiled from all hearts, alone in the night of myself, weeping like a beggar before the closed silence of all doors." While Pessoa bemoans, "That which I had and will never again have!," I think I, personally, would take it a step further. For Pessoa those doors are now closed, but when I remember my childhood I think that they were always closed. As I've pointed out before, I remember a very different childhood and home than my brother and sisters do, while also fully accepting that a goodly portion of that disconnect, of that closing of the doors, was my own doing.

Sixty-Five and Beyond

 I don't know why I like this picture, because I don't think that any part of it is actually in focus. On last year's spring break trip to Portugal (now nearly a year removed, sadly) I was roaming around the church will still exists in the heart of the convent in Evora, even though it is now a hotel. I was snapping pictures with my camera, experimenting, largely unsuccessfully. However, today I came across this picture and for some reason it really speaks to me at this moment in time. Yesterday was my 65th birthday, and, obviously, while we say that a number is just a number, there are some numbers which just carry a greater weight. As I proposed to someone the other day, at 65 I'm just taking it semester by semester. There are still so many things I need to accomplish (finish a couple books) and things I want to accomplish (moving us to Evora or Coimbra in Portugal, and devoting my time to reading, working on Portuguese, and fulfilling my long-standing dream of being that mysterious ex-pat sitting at the corner of the cafe). However, there are so many obstacles, mainly health-related, both my own personal health and the financial health of Champlain, which make the future as blurry as the candle's flame in this picture. Still, I have so much to be thankful for. I stopped counting the endless birthday greetings yesterday (via email, text, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Facebook, and the rare face to face greeting) around 200, although I did answer them are. The messages poured in from Australia, India, Russia, Zanzibar, the UAE, Jordan, Portugal, and even the very edge of civilization, Indiana - and they came from Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Atheists - essentially, an embarrassment of riches. As my friend Marcelle proposed, "Clearly, you are loved." I don't know if that's completely true, although I certainly have more friends than my meagre virtues can justify.

And this just makes me want to go back to the Convento do Espinheiro. Janet and I have sworn off foreign travel (at least non-CFL related travel) until the summer of 2026 as part of what we refer to as The Plan, but I have trouble believing that she would be too angry if two tickets to Portugal magically showed up in her email inbox.

2025 Readings 2

 There are some works of culture, books or films or whatever, that seem to exist on your intellectual frontier, sometimes for years. You've heard or them or sometimes you even own them, but you never, for myriad reasons, never get around to reading or watching them. A good example of that is Sadegh Hedayat's The Blind Owl, which is my second book of this year. Hell, for that matter, I think I actually, somewhere, own or at least owned a copy of The Blind Owl, which now means that I have two copies of it floating around. It's a classic of contemporary Iranian fiction, although it was written in exile, either completed in France or at least started in France and later finished in India. It was published in 1937, with it's most popular English translation being D.P. Costello's 1957 edition, although I read Naveed Noori's 2011 translation, which Noori argues is a translation that is truer to the original (and less "domesticated," a new cultural translation term to me, at least the term, although not the concept). I enjoyed it a lot, but I could also see others groaning and giving up in frustration. I described it to my friend Sheila as sort of mad, laudanum-induced fever dream that Fernando Pessoa might have if he fell asleep reading Poe. 

Just Another Canal

 I should have made a more concerted effort to figure out the names and locations of the different canals that cut across Venice, connecting the Grand Canal to the open ocean, but at the time it was probably enough that I didn't fall into the water.

I snapped this on one of those mornings where I went for my traditional walkabout while Janet slowly warmed to the day.

2025 Readings 1

 As is well-documented, I like to assign myself challenges or tasks, such as writing on faith for an entire year or reading/commenting on Remembrance of Things Past every day. I guess this falls into that category. Recently Janet and I were on a drive down to see her mom and we were talking about books (hardly a surprise). We had stopped by Northshire Books in Manchester, which is by far the best bookstore in Vermont (and, thus, we spend way too much money there). We were discussing how much we love reading and how sad it is that my students simply don't like to read at all, which led to a discussion about how little Americans actually read. A quick internet search showed that it was much worse than Janet imagined (although not worse than I imagined - she teaches graduate students in creative writing and I teach undergraduate game design students, so you could have seen that coming). Anyway, as of 2023, 46% of Americans didn't manage to finish reading or listening to even one book in the course of a year. At the far end of the spectrum a little more than ten percent of Americans read twenty of more books in a year. Both figures are, in a sense, shocking, but it made me wonder how many books I actually read in the course of a year. So, I decided to count this year. I'm actually hesitant to do this, mainly because I don't want to quantify or commodify something that I truly love, but it sounded like an interesting experiment. A couple codicils: I'm not going to include books that I'm currently rereading/studying for class (such as when I looked over Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment for my Nature of Evil class in the fall semester, unless it's an entirely new book that I'm using for class (I can't think of what would fall into that category right now). I am going to include any Great Courses that I'm listening to on Audible, which may be cheating but some of them are quite lengthy and the vast majority of them are fascinating, difficult, and thought-provoking. I made a point to my friend Debi the other day that I'd have a much bigger list if I didn't read/reread so many books that are eight-hundred pages. This earned me the appropriate eye roll emoticon, although I think it's still a good point. I just finished a reread of Dickens's David Copperfield in December, which seemed like the appropriate experience for my unsuccessful drive to see my Dad before he passed. Plus, I read a massive biography of Proust in the fall. My hypothesis is that I'd crawl into that category of twenty of more books, but probably not by a mile.

With that in mind, the first book that I've read in 2025 is Stephanie LaCava's I Fear My Pain Interests You. It's one of the books that I picked up at our last stop by Northshire Books. I started it on New Year's Day and finished it yesterday, which speaks to how engaging it was.  It may be worth is just for this line: "He wouldn't know where to find me when he didn't come back." That may sum up the entire novel. Highly recommended.

Finally, one of my goals for this year (and I have many) is to read a lot more. As I've pointed out previously, years ago, when I first made my way through Remembrance of Things Past, I was hoping to rewire my brain, to slow everything down, and I think it definitely helped. It's one of the reasons why I eventually dropped off of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram (even before they became right wing hellscapes). Maybe this decision to read a lot more is part of the same vision, although it also has a very Fernando Pessoa-esque desire to separate out myself from the horrible, callous, hate-filled world that we are forced to suffer through.