Spinning Yarns

Ten years ago today was a Wednesday, and I spent most of the day at Canterbury Cathedral. The sun was shining brightly, the sky was blue and clear — it was a day quite like today, in almost every way. Sometimes, when I think back upon it, I remember the details as if my visit were only yesterday (although I suspect that says as much about the memory of recent events as it does about those longer past). I spent several hours of that long and lazy afternoon walking around inside the Cathedral, reading old Latin inscriptions, and breathing in the cool, dusty stone antiquity of the place. In Chaucer’s time, there were no cages around the important artifacts, nor tour guides to keep you from climbing the tower, but I was still just a poor pilgrim, walking down across the rolling hills of Kent in the morning sunlight, to see her lofty spires standing dark and sharp against the sky. And if you put your face up to the cool iron of the bars, and squinted a little, you could almost imagine how it might have been over six hundred years ago — or at least, so it seems to me.

If, in the failing days of that June, you’d asked me what I thought I’d be doing in ten years, I doubt my answer would have been at all similar to what I’ve actually done. I think it was Alfred Hitchcock who put it best: “It’s impossible to prepare for the unexpected — by definition!” And a great deal of life is just that — purely and quite plainly unexpected. Just when you think you have everything figured out, and you know where things are going, something different happens. Something new, something surprising. Something scary, sometimes — but now and then, something magical and wonderful. It all just goes to show, that you can never really know. The most you can hope to do is to be ready for whatever may arrive, and try not to be so cynical that you miss the good stuff when it happens.

One of my friends in the department defended her Ph.D. thesis today, and passed. In years past, I used to be really intimidated whenever I would go hear somebody defend their thesis, because I could not imagine how I would ever be able to accomplish so much work on a single project, or make it come together so coherently. Lately, however, I’ve found the defenses I’ve attended more and more exciting, now that I have begun to see how I might eventually get to that point myself. Not that I am in any danger of defending right away, but I’m making some progress toward that goal. A year ago, I was not making any progress worthy of note, and I felt pretty awful about that fact. After a very unhappy summer, mostly spent in a funk and a fugue, I left my old advisor, found a new topic, and eventually got things back on track. Now I’m feeling really good about everything. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not blaming anything on my old advisor — I just wasn’t that motivated by the research I was doing. I think a lot of the reason I am doing so well now can be traced back to the aforementioned funk and fugue from last summer. I think, in retrospect, that I had succumbed to a kind of inertia, with respect to my research, and the distress helped break me out of it.

So, sure, things get difficult sometimes, and it’s occasionally hard to see the light of day. We fall into ruts. But so far, it seems like no matter how hard things get, or how crazy life becomes, that there’s always a way to find a positive lesson amid the chaos, or to learn something that will come back to help you out later. Call me a mindless optimist, if you want to — although I can assure you I’m definitely not. I just figured I’d write this all down as a reminder to my future self that, even when the temple is coming down around your ears, and it seems like nothing good could ever rise from the ashes, the seeds of a happy life are planted deep, and through patience and care can always be made to grow and flower again.

Filed by Michael at 19:23 under Personal, Philosophical, Story
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If books were bad for your health, I would probably have to seek serious professional help. Fortunately, research shows that people who read a lot lead long, happy, healthy lives, and also, coincidentally, have very good luck in the lottery, and are spectacular in bed. (Okay, I admit, the one about good luck in the lottery is kind of farfetched — so maybe you shouldn’t believe everything you read). Nevertheless, I have long since filled up all the bookshelves in my house, and this has forced me to take a slightly more liberal viewpoint on the subject of what might be considered a “shelf” in my house. In particular, I am now using almost every horizontal surface of my dwelling as a bookshelf, in some way or other. There are books on the floor, books on the table, books on the chairs, books on the dresser, books on the headboard, books in the bed, books on the stereo, books on the amplifier, and even books stacked on top of other books. And before you ask, no, I have not yet read all of them, but I’m working on it.

I have often asserted that I should get more bookshelves, but for some reason, I’ve resisted buying commercially-made ones. Something in my personality makes me feel as if, being a truly dedicated reader, I should build my own shelves, rather than purchasing them. In principle, there is nothing wrong with this notion — indeed, it’s a fine idea — except of course, that I have not actually done anything about it, so I wind up having these big piles of books around my house, as I mentioned a moment ago. Apart from the fact that it’s hard to find your books when they’re all filed under “P” for “pile,” this also makes it difficult to vacuum the floors, and I occasionally trip over them when I get up for a glass of water late at night. So, that probably isn’t the best policy.

Recently, my friend Mark announced that he is moving away at the end of the summer. Being something of a pack rat, Mark had lots of stuff in his house. But, also being a practical kind of fellow, he doesn’t really feel like moving all that stuff out across the country. The upshot of this confluence of personalities is that Mark recently gave away a whole bunch of miscellaneous furniture and other whatnots, which included a number of bookshelves. While I might have philosophical issues with purchasing commercially-made bookshelves, I have no trouble whatsoever with obtaining them for free. My mother didn’t raise no fools. So, as a result, I am now the proud owner of two new sets of shelves, and the only problem I now face is where the devil I’m going to put the darned things.

Well, actually, that’s not entirely true. You see, I put up one of the two sets of shelves in my spare bedroom, and filled it up with books. By the time it was completely full, I had almost, but not quite, shelved all the books that were stacked up on the floor of my spare room. You may note, cf. above, that this does not account for the books stacked in the living room, the dining area, the bedroom, or the basement. What’s more, the other shelving unit I obtained is not nearly as big as the first one. You astute readers will already have come to the conclusion I myself rapidly reached, namely, that these two shelves are not nearly going to solve the stacking problem. Furthermore, this completely leaves aside a point I failed to mention earlier, that my CD shelves have also been mostly filled with books, relegating a fairly large subset of my CD’s to additional horizontal stacks divided haphazardly between the living room, my office at Dartmouth, and the car (to say nothing of the three shelf-loads of computer-related books I am currently storing in my office).

The most obvious conclusion any rationally thinking person can draw from this discussion is that I have too damned many books, and that I should probably get rid of some of them. Fortunately, I am not quite so rational that I would even dream of listening to such foolishness. Instead, I will simply have to rely upon time-honoured techniques of organization and stacking (e.g., slipping small books horizontally into the spaces atop rows of larger books, and using bookends on top of the shelving units) to address the issue until further shelves can be procured, or until I cave in and build floor to ceiling shelf-units for every bare wall in the house. It doesn’t help that the Dartmouth Bookstore is going out of business, and so has everything on sale at deep discounts; or that I have a coupon for 15% off on my next trip to Border’s. But we all have to cope with our addictions in my own way. Starve a cold, feed a fever. Or was it the other way around?

I once found a quotation, reputedly from an ancient Assyrian tablet, written approximately 2800 years before the common era, which was translated as follows:

There are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end: Bribery and corruption are common. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

Well, hell, maybe that’s the problem I’m having.

Filed by Michael at 14:43 under Personal, Story
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This time of year at Dartmouth is usually referred to as C&R, which is short for “Commencement and Reunions.” Commencement, of course, is nothing more than academic jargon for “Graduation,” and is largely self-contained. There are several days of last-minute indoctrination intended to transform the graduates from cynical students, who have just been force-fed four years of mindless paperwork and condescension by the Administration, into loyal giving machines for the Alumni Fund. Then, of course, there is the ceremony itself, which as far as I can tell, is the single most boring rite of passage that has ever been invented by modern humans, and I’m including things like Catholic Mass in my list of comparisons.

Despite how it might feel to the graduates themselves, as they sit outside in black robes and goofy hats, the Commencement ceremony is over relatively quickly. After that, when we make the transition from Commencement to Reunions, that’s when things start get really weird. You see, since graduating, the alumni who come back for their class reunions have gone off into the world, obtained jobs, gotten married, raised families, and had lots of other interesting experiences. There is no limit to the things they’ve become. Tinkers, tailors, soldiers, spies. The captains of Industry. Astronauts. Environmental advocates. Advertising executives. Beach bums. Clerics. There are probably even a few crooks among the lot, although my guess is they don’t list that as their profession when responding to the IRS. The point is, when they come back to Hanover for their reunions, it’s as if they’re in college all over again. Through some miracle of operant conditioning, it seems the mere sight of the green light atop the clock tower is enough to strip away five, ten, twenty, even fifty years of experience that have shaped these individuals’ lives, leaving them once again at age twenty-one, with the ink still drying on their diplomas.

If you walk around campus during Reunions, especially after dark, you can see the signs of this regression. First sign, a little knot of excited alumni talking about old times, while their spouses, clearly not privy to the siren call of the Big Green Money Light, shift their weight from foot to foot uncomfortably. trying to figure out if any of this is going to start making sense. Second sign, the little mobs of expectant faces walking up and down campus, just like freshmen during the first few weeks of Fall term, looking for a party, but with clothes that fit and Rolexes on their arms. By the time it gets to be midnight, you’ll see dejected looking spouses wandering aimlessly across campus, trying to find their room, while their husbands and wives whoop it up in the basement of some fraternity or sorority, trying to relive days of yore. Dear Old Dartmouth, give a rouse.

This all probably sounds a lot more cynical than I really mean for it to be, because despite what I’ve said here, I really do like my school. Furthermore, I think it’s completely reasonable that folks would want to come back and meet up with their old classmates, their old comrades in arms (or books). But I really do not understand what makes so many alumni completely regress to the point of alienating their post-college friends and families. Sure — college is a fun time, and we got away with all kinds of crazy stuff nobody would ever admit to in front of a Senate confirmation hearing. But was that really the most important part of the college years? I certainly hope not, although the evidence seems to stand against my hopes.

The most expedient thing to do during Reunions, if you are not inclined to relive your glory days, is to find someplace comfortable to sit, off to the side, and derive as much amusement as you can from watching the spectacle. If that isn’t your cup of tea, you should probably just avoid the whole business altogether. But, if you are going to stick around for it, be a good citizen — and help those cast-off spouses you may encounter wandering aimlessly late at night find their way back from Webster Avenue to their rooms in the Gold Coast. It’s the least we can do.

Filed by Michael at 18:03 under Diatribe, Social
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