Musings on education, techology, and life..
I’ve been thinking about posting something in response to the recent New York Times survey regarding the best work of American fiction in the last 25 years, but now I don’t have to. Instead I can sum it up simply:
“She” is Meghan O’Rourke and in one of those strange confluences of ideas, authors, and reading she seems to be everywhere I look. Minutes ago she was on Charlie Rose discussing the NYT survey. I’ve been reading the ‘restored’ edition of Ariel and Meghan has written about Plath and her most famous work in general and the restored edition in particular. She’s argued in favor of difficult books (which I love) and maintained the importance of “small” works (see below)– she knows there’s no contradictions in literary love. And besides being poetry editor at The Paris Review, O’Rourke’s a fine poet in her own right.
Most relevant here, Meghan’s Slate piece on the NYT list and the question of “small” works revived my interest in what is otherwise yet another piece of arbitrary list making. The irony for me is that– were I to choose the best fiction of the last 25 years– I might well select David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, which is the epitome of large, sprawling, allusive, meandering, ambitious, etc. But the closest competition would all be “small” works– multiple volumes of Carver’s short fiction, Denis Johnson, Tim O’Brien, maybe Sherman Alexie. I adore parts of what Gaddis, Pynchon, DeLillo, and their ilk do, and I admire their ambition. But I love every word of Carver and O’Brien…
Over the weekend I went back on the doctor’s recommended diet regimen. Actually, I’m not supposed to call it a “diet” because it’s meant to be a permanent change in my eating habits. A “way of eating” or, aptly, woe.
It’s essentially a low-carb routine, though unlike Atkins and others I can’t eat as much no-carb foods as I want (no bacon-wrapped butter chunks with cheese :), I’m not supposed to eat any of the low-carb “frankenfoods” like low-carb bars, and there is some provision for high-fiber, complex carbohydrates and– eventually– more whole fruits.
Trying to make this kind of change sucks:
The worst aspect, though, is facing my own lack of control. I count on amazingly high doses of carbohydrates as a kind of self-medication. I’ve become accustomed to having little control of my emotions and eating is– to a large extent– just another form of emotional expression. It’s an admittedly poor coping mechanism, but helpful nonetheless. I know from past experience that cutting the carbs down helps me mentally, and perhaps I will reach that place I used to know way back in the day, where food was fuel and exercise was the psychic salve I needed. Until then I just have to try to avoid the seemingly inevitable failures along the way… or at least not let them derail me completely and for good. That demands control– and remembering why I’m doing it in the first place.
Procrastination is a funny thing. It’s just a label, but people treat it like one of a physical pair of binary options: break down the time you have to accomplish a goal into hourly chunks, examine how you spend them… if they contribute towards the goal they are work hours, if they do not they are procrastination hours.
What about thought and contemplation? The subconscious is powerful and the world is rife with homespun advice about letting things simmer, putting them on the backburner, finding the answer by not looking for it, etc. Writers are taught to end a writing session with an incomplete sentence or scene so that it’ll tick in their subconscious. I try to go to sleep with a few lines or an idea for a poem on my mind, confident that the night will bring a solution to mind.
That being said, there is a lot of real procrastination going on (at least as much in my life as anyone else’s). In my case it’s primarily a function of realizing that I work better (and do better work) under the pressure of imminent deadlines. Everyone has their reasons. That Sage’s post above has a lot of truth to it doesn’t mean it can’t also be used as a rationalization for not getting things done. It’s up to each individual to assess and adjust and– in the end– they alone have to live with themselves, so they should have the most interest in figuring out when they are procrastinating and when they are doing something that just looks like it.
With the two big on-site events at CDE over comes the task of trying to put together some of the sustainability mechanisms needed to keep the communities functioning. It would be nice if these were tasks to be accomplished during a lull of some kind in activities, but there has been no rest this past few years! At this moment I can’t think of a time when things might slow down until next March…
I’ll document here the simple things we are working on to keep the community together. Nothing particularly novel– shared tagging, aggregation, etc– but perhaps useful nonetheless!
What’s with the idea of the “gift of life?” Someone directed me to a brief piece about the appearance of the reader which spurred me to read some long neglected email in which this pair of theories of art were reproduced:
When you look back on a lifetime and think of what has been given to the world by your presence, your fugitive presence, inevitably you have to think of your art, whatever it may be, as the gift you have made to the world in acknowledgement of the gift you have been given, which is the life itself. And I think the world tends to forget that this is the ultimate significance of the body of work each artist produces. It is not an expression of the desire for praise or recognition, or prizes, but the deepest manifestation of your gratitude for the gift of life. –Stanley Kunitz
and
Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It’s what everything else isn’t. –Theodore Roethke
But what if life isn’t a gift? What if the only entity for which life is a gift is the cancer that eats away constantly at our edges? If being forcibly and duplicitously restrained from going where you want; if being forced to constantly be close to seeing something that could complete a small part of your self without ever being close enough to grasp; if the haste that damages us is the result of a headlong propulsion from without… if these are the “gift of life” I can’t conceive of the equivalent of coal in my stocking.
iTeach ended yesterday, but I’m still sleepwalking. Overall it went fantastically well, but despite doing nothing today that involved being vertical, I’m still worn out. Perhaps it was the late-night wine festivities, or the five days of constant coffee and performance, or all the hilarity that ensued…
I’ve been cycling down for a week. At the worst possible time. I guess it always feels like the worst possible time, but why not a month ago or a month from now? Just not NOW. I know the best non-medicated way to deal with this and I can’t possibly retreat this week. Not even for a little bit. Let’s hope it turns out to be less like having a baby (it comes when it comes) than I’ve always described.