Frozen Toothpaste

I mentioned recently that The Great Gatsby has the best first and last lines of any book I know. So on today’s Other People’s Words, those lines.

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this wold haven’t had the advantages you’ve had.”

He didn’t say any more but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved was and understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me…

…

And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I though of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green lights at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And then one fine morning — 

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

MousyBoyWithGlasses (CC-ASA)

I think that every person at every time has only so many words they can spend on an idea before they end up repeating themselves.

A quick example: consider the stereotypical young male bachelor. When he’s single, the number of words he can or will spend on the topic of romantic love probably doesn’t go above 15. When newly smitten, he’ll spend hours to the topic and for any ear willing to hear. Of course that’s an exaggeration, but I think you can infer the point from it.

And this has implications far beyond the amount of love poetry that exists in the world. This relation between ideas (which we could also call topics) and word counts regularly affects what I do here. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve started writing something only to find that I had only a few paragraphs of stuff worth writing on it.

Sometimes, I can’t even write more than a sentence. And I’d like to say that this means that those topic go on some shelf to wait for me to have more to say about them. Usually they do. Sometimes they don’t.

Sometimes, for lack of a better idea, I feel the need to pad an idea I don’t have much to say about. To pull and prod it and hope that suddenly I’ll find something new to say. I rarely do. But somehow I find my way to rather imaginary line of “long enough” — I’d estimate that for this space it’s about seven paragraphs, though it really depends.

Given how much poking and prodding I have to do to my ideas to get them to that relatively short length, I can’t imagine what anyone ever manages to write a whole book about. I’d estimate that a days writing here is less than a page in an average book, and I’m sure that a year of this somewhat-random writing wouldn’t make a very coherent book.

One of the things I’ve always liked about poetry is that it’s the purest distillation of ideas you find almost anywhere. The word count of most poems is even less than my average word count here, but done well it easily eclipses what I do in terms of depth and thoughtfulness.

Poetry and books feel like the opposite ends of the spectrum to me. A poem — at least the kind I like — is as succinct as it possibly can be. A good book, on the other hand, is extremely verbose. Exhaustion of it’s topic is, generally, the goal.

For now, I’ll probably stay where I am. In the middle of these two more common forms. Not sure which, if either, would better fit my style than what I’m doing right now.

Irotzabal

If there are four big pieces of international news this week, it would be hard to make them anything but these. And if there were for big pieces of good international news this week, it would be hard to make them anything but these:

1. The Kofi Annan-led mediation team seems to be getting close to a real resolution to the months-long violence in Kenya that has left over one thousand dead.
2. Kosovo, a former province of Serbia under United Nations control for nearly a decade, declared independence. Little — though sadly not none — violence or meaningful disruption followed this long-feared move.
3. In a largely symbolic but long anticipated move, Fidel Castro has announced that he will officially resign his posts of president and commander-in-chief of Cuba.
4. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf appear willing and able to accept the results of Monday’s election, preventing the type of chaos that was unleashed in Kenya when Mr. Mbeki refused to accept the legitimate results of the election in his country.

Surely this list isn’t all sunshine and daisies. There’s still a long road toward peace and stability that Kenya must travel before it regains some of the stability and sheen it had less than a year ago. Kosovo still has a large Serbian population in it which will likely continue to cause disruption. That will also be exacerbated by Serbia’s unwilling to accept the legality of the fracture. While Fidel’s Castro role in Cuba’s day-to-day activities has clearly diminished, it’s hard to see Cuba becoming a free and open country while he’s still alive and his brother retains power. Though Pakistan’s begun the transition back to civilian governance, it’s still a mess of country with large ungovernable portions. The legislative future is still far from smooth while the newly-elected parliment is to be checked by a president it doesn’t like but can’t impeach.

Indeed, too, there are large problems in many other places around the world. Civil wars still rage, the rule of law is still a dream in far too many countries, totalitarian leaders still have meaningful influence in far too much of the world.

But seen from a distance — the only way I know how to see international affairs — this has been a good week. Certainly we’d need many good weeks like this to see a meaningful trend toward openness, democracy, and prosperity sweeping over the world. Probably we’d really need something closer to many years like this week for us to reach something like satisfaction about the way the world is now.

But we should be glad for what we’ve gotten this week. Too rarely does so much good news come without a break of the bad, the terrible, or the catastrophic. Though I have no idea what tomorrow will bring these countries and all the others in desperate need of change, I’m thankful for what progress we’ve had so far.

jquiz

I was walking past a bus stop about a year ago, and there in front of the bench (which was all this bus stop consisted of) was a blue graffito. I saw that it was blue, that it was clearly made with a stencil, and I kept walking.

When I actually realized what I’d seen, I doubled back. Indeed, there on the ground in royal blue spray-paint was a robot — think Optimus Prime, who is pictured at right — with these four words underneath:

Be Your Own Protagonist

I took a picture with my cellphone. And for the last year that picture has been the background on my phone, a little reminder whenever I flip the phone open to place a call or use the calculator.

Others have seen it, but they don’t seem to understand. Or perhaps they do. But “Be your own protagonist” strikes me still as among the most profound graffiti ever to have been sprayed onto the sidewalk.

There are so many messages conveyed in those four words. It could mean that you should turn of the television, get off the couch and go about living a life worthy of the dramas you would otherwise be watching.

It could mean that you should recognize that you — like most protagonists — are far more powerful and important than you realize. That you really are bound for great things even while it may not look that way at the time.

It could mean that you should begin to root for yourself, as you root for your favorite superhero. After all, your self doubt serves no one but the evil antagonists of your world.

It could mean that while you may be going through seemingly impossible trials today, it’s only because you — like the classical hero — have a brighter and more important future ahead. And that you’ll be better able to meet that future because of these trials.

I wonder sometimes how the artist — yes I’m comfortable calling this act of vandalism art — intended for it to be read. Maybe they meant it one of the ways I’ve thought of. Maybe they meant in the more absurd ways I sometimes want to interpret it. Like that we should all realize that we’re robots and embrace that fact. Or maybe that we should all set out to live out our most absurd dreams of — benevolent of course — world domination.

However they meant it. I’m glad to have found it. And I want you to know, Ms. Artist, that I try every single day, to do as you recommend. And I’m certainly thankful that you were bold enough to recommend it.

Helder da Rocha (CC)

I’ve alway fancied philosophy, but never was able to find the time to appreciate it’s affinity for semantics and over-thought fictional scenarios. And though I don’t mind reading philosophy, but I’m not exactly able to find the time to do it often.

It is there that I see the excellent Philosophy Bites filling the gap. The podcast, by David Edmunds and Nigel Warburton, is a weekly conversation with a philosopher that are between 10 and 20 minutes long. They run the gamut from classic to contemporary, from analytical to highly practical. Some episodes will tackle the likes of Socrates or Plato, Emmanuel Kant or David Hume, while others deftly handle topics like philosophy in a film like Blade Runner.

All of this is probably be interesting to those with doctorates in philosophy, but it’s also surprisingly accessible to people, like myself, who don’t have such credentials.

The most recent episode that seemed a little esoteric was a discussion of free riding. But though the idea’s not well known, it is very easy to grasp. Free riding is, as the name so ably suggests, taking advantage of the positive actions of others while not participating yourself. The example of being environmentally careless while others conserve is the obvious example that Mr. Edmunds quickly explains within the first 90 seconds of the podcast.

And this problem, like most tackled by Philosophy Bites, are incredibly interesting and very rarely discussed in daily life (at least my daily life). To it’s discredit, one could rightly argue that this podcast, like all philosophy, is more concerned with idle discussion of impractical ideas.

And indeed, the recent discussion of the concepts of past, present, and future could feel to some like a purely academic endeavor. Surely it’s an interesting point, you could argue, that events are the same regardless of whether or not they’ve happened yet. But that’s not exactly something that can or should change the way I live my life.

It’s a completely reasonable argument, but the problems with philosophy itself aren’t problems peculiar to this podcast. And though I might offer one, I’ll leave a full-throated defense of philosophy to other people or times.

I certainly enjoy philosophy for itself, but never find the time to tackle complex texts by authors I probably haven’t heard of. But I can — and gladly do — spend 15 minutes per week listening to a friendly and accessible discussion of those books and ideas that I don’t read. If such a thing seems remotely interesting to you I’d strongly recommend that you give Philosophy Bites a try.