better together

The more of us I talk to, the more convinced I become that the one thing we twentysomethings desperately desire above everything else is to know that we are not alone. Not alone in our ambitions, desires and hopes; our frustrations, disappointments and disillusionment; our confusion, anxiety and uncertainty. We want—we need—to know that we are not alone in our aloneness.

I am not talking about trying to find a date or a partner or a soulmate, though I think we often confuse what we’re looking for with these things.  Companionship in circumstance is more essential than the pursuits of love, liberty or happiness. How can love survive without amity? What good is liberty if there is no one with whom we can celebrate our freedom, no one for whom we can work to preserve it? And while I think that happiness is often entailed with friendship, it’s also true that misery loves company. Knowing there’s someone else in the same leaky boat might not make you any happier (or plug any of the holes), but more likely than not, you’ll feel a little less worse.

When you’re in your twenties, there’s all this talk about finding your purpose. I could play the cynic, to ask if anyone really knows what his or her purpose is and if it’s really worth looking. Sure, I’d like to know what I want to do with my life as much as the next person. But for now, I can be content with knowing that everybody else is trying just as hard to figure it all out—just like me. We need to keep reminding each other that we’re all in this together. Then we can start working on all the rest of it.

i’m going to go back there someday

What is your earliest memory? I don’t mean those fragments of cribs or baby bottles or beloved stuffed animals, but a real, solid, complete mental picture.

I have two, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, both are associated with music. One is a of a warm and brilliantly sunny day: green grass, azure sky, a white gazebo, gleaming brass instruments being played by a few people in dark suits— I have no idea what the tune is. My mother tells me that this is probably my great-grandmother Burgess’s funeral at Arlington Cemetery, which occurred not too long after my second birthday. How morbid is that, for one’s earliest memory to be related to death?

Actually, I’m not sure whether this first recollection should count. The colors are vivid, but it lacks any trace of emotion: the memory is flat, flat as a photograph. By contrast, my other early thought is intensely emotional, in a way which I hardly know how to describe. But before I can relate the memory itself, I have to explain how I stumbled across it. I suspect that we retain many more memories than we realize, and these memories lie dormant for months or even years, until some stray occurrence should happen trigger to them.

When I was in high school, I went through several distinct musical phases, and of these probably the least embarrassing was the classical one. I had recently discovered the joy of buying used CDs off of Amazon.com, and so was able to build up a decent collection of music inexpensively. Without question, my favorite composer was (and still is) Debussy, particularly for his work for solo piano. I liked the Suite Bergamasque so well that for two consecutive years I performed flute arrangements of a couple of the movements for State Solo and Ensemble competition. My quest to find the cheapest recording of the Bergamasque Prelude was fulfilled by a CD bearing a silly title, “The Best of Debussy”—as if Monsieur Claude had penned a string of chart toppers or something.

One evening soon after, while I was doing my homework I put the CD on for background music. Several songs in, one began with a line of arpeggios (that’s lots of short notes which run up and down the scale), gentle as a babbling brook. As I listened, it occurred to me that I head heard this song somewhere before, but I couldn’t place it.. It seemed something from a long time ago, or even a dream. I checked the title, “Arabesque No. 1 in E Major,” but that was no help. The only possible connection I could think of was “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” since that show had often featured that kind of light piano music.

Puzzled, I called my mother in to see if she knew it. She did recognize the piece, and after just a couple of bars. Then Mom disappeared into the closet, but after a couple minutes of hunting around, she returned with another CD with a pale blue cover.

cd cover

original vinyl artwork

This one, called “Snowflakes Are Dancing,” was released in 1974 by a Japanese musician named Isao Tomita. Tomita recorded a number of Debussy’s pieces using an old-school Moog synthesizers. While Tomita wasn’t the first to produce an electronic album of classical music (he was inspired by Wendy Carlos’s “Switched On Bach” from 1969), he was successful nonetheless. “Snowflakes are Dancing” became RCA’s best selling-classical record of the year, and it was nominated for three Grammies. I except that my dad (he’s the one who makes majority of music purchases) liked the album pretty well, since we have it both on vinyl and CD.

But where had I heard the song before? It wasn’t from Mister Rogers, but I’d had the right network. Mom told me that when I was little, PBS used to run a five-minute program on popular astronomy (I think it was called “Star Gazer”), and its theme song was Tomita’s version of “Arabesque No. 1.” Perfrect choice, really– the whole album has a distinctly space age-y sound. (Listen to the song here.)

Mom left the CD with me, and I put it on at once, skipping directly to Track 5, the song in question. Instantly, I was taken back to this scene—maybe it’s more than one scene, I can’t be sure.

I’m standing in the doorway to the living room of our old house, the one the guy drove his car through the front wall of when I was not quite four years old. In this more pleasant memory, I’m about the same age, and it’s nearly time for bed, since I’m in my nightclothes: an oversized T-shirt and a pair of slouchy socks. There’s a man on the TV wearing a tan blazer. As the music plays, he walks across the screen, superimposed upon an image of the night sky. It’s the kind like you see at the Grand Canyon, filled to bursting with stars. I pad across the carpet, which is soft under my feet, right up to the screen, to watch the pictures the man shows and talks about, crystal clear images taken by powerful telescopes of galaxies millions of light years away (though of course I don’t understand about such things at the time).

I do wonder why this particular memory should be the earliest. What is its significance? Now that I think about it, this TV program must have had something to do with my childhood ambition to be an astronomer (not an astronaut). For as long as I can recall, outer space has captivated my imagination with a kind of romantic appeal: something about the vastness, the emptiness, the contrast of the darkness with the light, the desolate beauty of space’s, well, space.  (Is it any wonder I later gravitated toward existentialism?) In elementary school I learned that because stars were so very far away, when we viewed them from earth we were looking at light that had left the stars many years before. There was something immensely attractive about that, knowing that when I went outside to look at the stars, I was looking at the remnants of a former time. And there was also the pull of tradition. As long as humans have inhabited the earth, they have looked up at the stars, and I was the latest to participate in such an ancient and illustrious ritual.

Years later, when I learned that modern astronomers spend most of their time in front of computers rather than outside actually looking at the sky, I abandoned the astronomer goal for good. But I don’t think that I lost anything by not becoming this generation’s Galileo. Actually, I don’t think I ever really wanted to be an astronomer, despite what I may have thought at the time. What did I really want? Now that’s the question.

Back to that night in high school, when I finished listening to that Tomita song, there were tears silently streaming down my face, and I had no explanation why. The memory itself is not an unhappy one, but it is marked by overpowering emotion. Was it the music, the stars, maybe the conjunction of the two? The feeling itself is nebulous—a kind of longing, but a longing which lacks a clear object of desire. It’s almost as though the act of longing itself is the thing desired—or maybe that’s a conclusion that a later me arrived at, and I’m superimposing it onto a previous recollection. Yeah, I think it must be. But that’s a discussion for another time.

What about you? Seriously, I’d like to know. Don’t leave me alone out here in space.

un deux trois, le miroir noir

Several nights ago, I furiously scribbled an impassioned article about the extreme isolation I’ve been experiencing over the past month and a half.  It began like this: “I am suffering from an acute lack of community,” with the letters bolded and everything.

It’s funny, you’d expect a six week holiday form all mandatory activity would be a thing highly desired. With the weight of personal experience, I can now assure you, not so much. The weather has been cold, gray and dark, and my mood proved ready to match.

In some ways, I think this spell of aloneness is the worst I’ve had yet, even worse than what I experienced in Korea. It’s true, I had few friendships, and most of those were surface-level, but at least at that time I was interacting with students, teachers, people on a daily basis. But Aberdeen in midwinter…. It’s hard enough to get out of bed in the morning, let alone out of the house.

Anyway, I wrote this whole long tirade about being lonely, and I fully intended to put it up here for all to see, at the risk of sacrificing personal privacy, a thing I value intensely. (If you didn’t realize that I like my privacy, it just means I’m doing a good job of maintaining it.) However, I’ve since had a change of heart—an epiphany, if you will. My theory is this:

The longer I spend alone engaged in self-reflection and analysis, the more I become absorbed by it, and the more distorted my perceptions of the external world become.

Forgive the tacky analogy, but it’s like an ingrown toenail. When some aberration causes the nail to deviate from its natural course and it begins moving inward, the toe experiences pain. If nothing intervenes and the nail continues to follow its new course, the pain increases, eventually rendering the entire foot unable to perform its essential function (that is, to walk).

As a theistic humanist (and maybe as a woman?), I believe that the primary means by which we grow and develop as people is through relationships: with God, and with other people. (Yes, we also mature by knowing ourselves better, but I believe this third, reflexive relationship grows by means of the other two.) Even if you do not share my religious convictions, surely you agree that humans are by nature social creatures. Put simply, people need other people. Sure, there are misers and hermits, but such individuals who actively shun the company of others are the exception rather than the rule. For our own flattery and comfort—indeed, for our own sanity—we reach out to those around us, seeking to bind ourselves together and to strengthen our fortunes through community.

When I first attempted to define “community” the other night, I came up with this: “association/network of like-minded individuals who regularly engage in communication with one another for the purpose of mutual edification and encouragement.” But now I see that “like-minded” is not necessarily part of it. Sure, in an ideal world we would surround ourselves with people who are like ourselves, who share similar tastes and interests and seek to achieve similar goals. (Or would we? Hmm, need to think about that some more.) But, as I’m sure we are aware, this is not an ideal world, not some utopian vision where relationships are simple or straightforward. What’s more, it does absolutely no good to sit around wishing things were so, because wishful thinking alone doesn’t change a damn thing.

I was wrong to feel sorry for myself, mourning the shattered illusion that by going to the mythical fairly land of “graduate school” (whether in Scotland or anywhere else) would be a place where I would be sure to meet crowds of people who were like me and understood me instinctively and implicitly. Obviously, that didn’t materialize. So, I’m lonely and I feel bad. So what? The question is, what am I going to DO about it? Having a pity party accomplishes nothing.

What I failed to consider is that community is a thing to be built, not dreamed up or ordered out of a catalogue. Wherever you happen to be, you’re going to find yourself surrounded by an odd lot of personalities, and it’s up to everyone to pull together if we hope to form something more meaningful.

And here’s the really difficult truth: most of the time, you are going to have to be the one to make the first move, and the second, and quite possibly the third and fourth as well. Take it from somebody who’s been at this moving business for a decade now. The vast majority of people are looking in one direction, and that’s inward. We live in a c culture which glorifies the Self above everything and everyone else, and I think this encourages us to expect others to meet us where we are, seeing as how we’re so important and everything. The trouble is, when everyone expects everyone else to step up and make the effort to be friendly, what you get is a room full of people waiting for Godot—no one moves.

So who is able to break the cycle of selfishness and self pity and self indulgence? Look at the words there. self, Self, SELF. It has to be me, and it has to be you. If we would shake ourselves out of this wretched, consuming egotism, we would see that we are surrounded by unhappy craving the attention and love of others, who desperately desire to belong. This is not how it was meant to be, surely this is not how we are supposed to live! If all that we could possibly attain is existence marked by alienation and even despair, then really, what would be the point of living at all? No, I am convinced that we are meant to live in fellowship with one another, and this is something which we must actively pursue.

It’s not easy, you say? You’re right, it isn’t! Believe me, I know it isn’t easy, know it with every fiber of my being, as much as I can possibly comprehend a fact. To cultivate healthy relationships with other people is effing hard! But if the alternative is to remain in isolated reflection, staring deeper and deeper into the black mirror that is our own personal selfishness, then maybe it’s worth it. It seems to me that the difficulties of learning to see, and maybe even one day to love, my neighbor look a lot less dismal by comparison.

We’re all lonely, we all want to belong, and we’re the only ones who can do anything about it. It doesn’t have to be all at once. Baby steps. Engage the bank teller or supermarket checker in a little small talk. Smile and nod at people as you pass them on the street. Ask your neighbor or coworker how they are today and mean it—“fine” is not an answer to be given or received by any self-respecting member of the human race. I’m serious here. Even the smallest gesture of kindness is worth offering, because you have no idea just how much it may mean to somebody else.

WAKE UP. As one only person to another, I implore you. Look at the people around you. Reach out to them, reach out to them like you wish they would reach out to you. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.

room for a square

(This post is a bit different from my usual format, but hey, it’s a new year, and there’s nothing wrong with branching out a little.)

As embarrassing as it is to admit, when faced with the prospect of spending a holiday like New Year’s Even alone in a flat in a foreign country, I almost find myself missing high school. Don’t get me wrong, that time of my life sucked for me as much as the next person—probably a lot more, actually—but now that I’m a good couple of years removed from all the angst and drama and incredibly pointless homework, I have this warped sense of nostalgia for the social opportunities like dances. Okay, not actually the dances: gymnasiums filled with tacky decorations, crappy music and raging hormones. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, the pilot episode (3:36) of the TV show Freaks and Geeks would be a great, and surprisingly realistic, reference.) Maybe what I miss is the opportunity to dress up.

Let’s be clear on this, for me, high school was strange and largely unpleasant . My father’s company transferred him twice during that time, which meant that I ended up attending three schools in three states. Such mobility would likely put a damper on any teen’s social life, but I was also awkwardly introverted, uncomfortably intelligent, naïvely conservative, and a hopelessly bad dresser—in short, your standard female nerd. Sadly, female nerds are doubly as pitiable as the male ones because they simply don’t stand a snowball’s chance with the opposite sex. Boy nerds can grow up to find lucrative careers in computers or engineering, which enable them to attract a girlfriend with wealth. But, and let’s be honest here, if guys don’t choose girls based solely on appearances, looks nevertheless play a significant role. I loathe those teen rom-coms about the nerdy girl who by getting a makeover—remove glasses; untie and straighten hair; add makeup, tan and plunging neckline—proceeds to wow the crowd and win the heart of the attractive jock who never noticed her before. But I also fear that they make a point about reality. In fact, I know that they do, because I myself lived it.

I find it terribly ironic that the closest I came to having a “normal” high school experience was senior prom, the cheesiest of all high school clichés. It was the only school dance I ever actually attended; I would have gone to the winter dance that year as well, but it had been cancelled due to an ice storm. My date was even my boyfriend (let’s call him John), whom I’d actually managed to procure before said makeover, around the end of first semester. How this came about, I’m not entirely sure. We did get along pretty well, though I suspect that our being the only two in our group of friends who weren’t otherwise attached may have had something to do with our getting together. Anyway, when John asked me to be his prom date I was elated, but also a little nervous, since that meant I would have to tell my mother. In retrospect, I don’t think I actually admitted to either of my parents that he was my boyfriend until after we’d broken up. I’m sure my mother, a perceptive woman, had put the pieces together— I did need permission to go on dates—but I was embarrassed about using the “boyfriend”/“girlfriend” labels, even when talking with friends. Still am, come to think of it, though I haven’t been in a relationship in a long time.

It took me a couple of days to pluck up the courage, but finally I told my mom that John had asked me to prom. Having been expecting the matter to come up, she’d already discussed it with my dad, and they decided it was okay. Next order of business: what did I want to do about a dress? I knew better than to ask my parents to buy me one—we didn’t have the money. Besides, I had looked at the dresses for sale in the mall department stores, and nothing in particular caught my eye. But I had a solution: since my mother was good at sewing, I wanted her to make a dress for me. She was quite pleased with that idea, and so we set about finding the right pattern and material.

That year, long strapless gowns with poofy skirts in pale colors were the trend, but I was never one to follow trends. I wanted slim, spaghetti straps, and black, so that’s what we did. It ended up being a top and skirt, and we found this lovely Japanese silk with a pattern of multicolored moths to use for the top and a matching wrap. (There’s a funny story relating to that fabric; ask me about it sometime.)

Now, I don’t want to hear any male readers complaining about my taking time to describe my toilet, because the truth is that a girl’s prom dress is at least as important as her date, if not more so. Boys, it would benefit you to learn a thing or two about women’s fashion; as Jane Austen points out in Northanger Abbey, a gentleman who possesses an understanding of muslins cannot be wholly disagreeable. Anyway, I was thoroughly pleased with how my dress turned out, and I still think it’s nice. Last time I was at my parents’ house, I found it in the back of a closet and tried it on, just for kicks. Only a little tight, I’m sorry not to have a use for it. I did wear it to CiCi’s that one time.

For my hair, I knew I would need professional help. By the time I was in high school, I did have my hair cut at a proper salon, though I doubt most people would have thought so. My hair is naturally curly, but curly hair hasn’t been cool in high school since the ‘80s. I tried fighting it, but without much effect. I haven’t uploaded any “before” photos, hoping to spare myself potential embarrassment, but take my word for it, my high school style left a few things to be desired. Fortunately, I was in need of a haircut anyway, so I decided I’d have it trimmed and styled the morning of prom. In theory, this was a good idea: hair usually looks nice the day of a cut because the stylist puts about fifteen different products on it; then you shower the next day and it goes back to normal.

Unfortunately, what I had neglected to consider was the possibility of a bad haircut. Apparently two months’ advance notice was insufficient for scheduling a prom appointment; my usual stylist was already booked solid for the day, so I agreed to take an opening with someone else. I don’t know if the miscommunication was on my end or the beautician’s, but when she spun my chair around to look in the mirror, the face staring back at me had the coiffure of an eighty-year-old poodle: puffy, fluffy, and very, very short. (Note to aspiring hairstylists: when you have a client with already curly hair, it’s not terribly effective to blow dry the hair straight and then use a curling iron.)

As I made for the door, trying desperately to contain my tears (remember, this is trauma for a teenager), my usual stylist happened to walk past. One look at me, and she was ushering me over to her chair with assurances that she could fix it. She was as good as her word. With a rinse, some fresh product, and half a million bobby pins, she made my hair look the best it ever has, before or since. And if that wasn’t enough, she asked the girl at the makeup counter—a sweet girl who was actually in the same year as me at school, though we ran in very different circles—if she might test a couple of their new products on my complexion. Needless to say, someone got a very nice tip.

Fast forward about six hours. It was time to put all the pieces together: dress, hair, makeup; no tan, but I’ve got skin to make Bella Swan and Twilight fangirls everywhere brown with envy. The doorbell rang as I was adding jewelry; I only had time for a cursory glance in the mirror before hurrying down the stairs. Someone had opened the door for John, but he hadn’t yet stepped inside when he saw me. He stopped, and gave me an full up-down look. Not ogling, he would’ve been too polite, and my family was standing there, but it was certainly enough to be noticeable. We exchanged pleasantries and flowers, and then John and I and my parents all departed for the house of a friend where our group was to assemble and take photos.

“You look amazing,” he told me three or four times on the way over.

“Thanks, you look great yourself,” I replied, both pleased and embarrassed by the attention.

That was only the beginning. As we approached the house, I could see some of our friends already congregated on the lawn, a fashionable-looking crowd of pastels and tuxedo black, along with some of the parents. John parked, we got out of the car, and began walking up the long driveway toward them. It took a couple of moments for people to notice we had arrived, and then everyone just kind of stopped. (That’s how it’s supposed to go, right, the big entrance, all drawn-out and dramatic? It might as well have been in slow-mo.) After an eternity that was probably only three or four seconds, my good friend Lezlie broke the awkward silence by rushing forward to give me a hug: “Aleithia-a-a! I love your dress!” Excitedly, we all complimented one another, but I’d be lying if I said that my date and I weren’t the center of attention. The one I distinctly remember: “Aleithia, you clean up good!”

Nerd that I was, I couldn’t help comparing myself to Hermione Granger in the fourth Harry Potter book, when she shows up to the Yule Ball and Harry and Ron don’t immediately recognize her because she’s dressed up. But that’s exactly how it happened to me. When we assembled to take pictures, it was still daylight, and so there was no trouble in distinguishing one person from another. Once we actually made it to the prom, which I’m happy to say was held not in the school gym but at the convention center in downtown OKC, it was a different story. Maybe it was the expensive food everyone had eaten for dinner, or maybe it was the general party atmosphere, but people didn’t seem to know who I was. I don’t think John and I danced more than two dances; we were having far too much fun walking up to people and watching their surprised expressions when they realized who I was.

Of all the people I met that night, two stand out most clearly in my mind. The first was Ms. Cloy, my AP Lit teacher. Ms. Cloy was, without a doubt, one of the most interesting, and ultimately endearing, teachers that year. She had a strong personality and a colorful past—just how many she’d been divorced and remarried was a subject of great speculation amongst the senior class. We were all looking forward to her being at prom, because she had told us that she would be bringing her trucker boyfriend, Mr. Blake. With his Stetson and handlebar moustache, Mr. Blake did not disappoint, but I think Ms. Cloy got an even bigger kick out of seeing all of us. John and I caught up to her near the punch table. Ms. Cloy greeted John, glanced at me, and did the double take that by now I’d become accustomed to. We chatted for a minute or two, and then as we were about to move on, she pulled me aside for just a moment. Smiling broadly, Ms. Cloy patted my shoulder and whispered, “Good for you. You’re knockin’ ‘em dead, girl!” Coming from her, that was about the biggest compliment I had ever received.

Well, it was the biggest compliment until the other memorable encounter, with the one L.J. McCoolster: good looking, class president, valedictorian, and captain of the swim team. (I hear he’s in med school and engaged now, neither of which surprises me.) He knew who I was because we had several classes together, and in truth he was a nice enough guy, but because we were in very different circles, the only reason we would’ve had a conversation was if we had been put in the same chem lab group or debate side in government. So, when I made my way over to say hi that night, I had done so intending to speaking to his date., Lara Actually, she was one of a few people who recognized me instantly, and she greeted me quite casually and cheerfully. Clearly, she didn’t seem to think it out of the realm of possibility that I might ‘clean up good.’

“Aleithia, John, it’s great to see you guys!” Lara shouted above the noise of the band and the crowd. “L.J., say hi to John and Aleithia!” She tugged at his sleeve, as he was turned the other way, talking to somebody else.

“Hey John, hey Aleithia—Aleithia?!” When we made eye contact, L.J.’s jaw visibly dropped. He stood there, staring at me, genuinely struck speechless. After a moment, L.J. finally managed a long, drawn out, and (I believe) sincerely intended, “Da-a-ang!” Shooting me a knowing smile, Lara led him away, as John and myself laughed hysterically right there in the middle of the dance floor.

My prom was six years ago. Not such a long time, really, though it feels like an eternity. You might think me silly or sentimental, but I still think about that incident when I’m in need of a confidence boost. Seriously, if I could impress L.J. McCoolster, then I think it’s safe to say that I have the potential to make an impact people at least as important as senior class president. So many of us are our own harshest critic, and I think we all need a “Da-a-ang!” or two to help put ourselves into perspective.

And (you knew this was coming eventually) “I just can’t wait for my ten year reunion.”

(ok, I give. this is more typical high school me.)

most of the group, but there were more than this at dinner

a few of the lovely ladies

three of our senior lunch group

surprise!

la cathédrale engloutie

Goodness, it’s been a long time. I would’ve done a lot more posting these past six weeks if I’d had my way. Nothing like being required to write 10,000 words on various subjects to stimulate the imagination on extracurricular projects. Now that I am at the start of six glorious weeks of freedom from classes, I’m working on one particular post—which is quickly turning into a significant essay—that I’ve been wanting to write for a few months. However, it’s occurred to me that for this thing to make sense, I ought to preface it with a word about my own religious convictions. That’s a lot easier said than done, not only because the issue itself is complicated, but also because I’m generally uncomfortable being so forthright. Nevertheless, this seems like something that needs to be done.

In simplest terms, I’m someone who’s had at least one significant crisis of faith, and survived, albeit in altered form. I suspect that if I sat down and tried to compose a detailed account of my own understanding of key theological issues, I would likely offend just about everyone I know, including myself. Even on a general level, I hesitate to discuss matters of faith with other people because I seem to reside in this ambiguous middle realm where I am neither one thing nor the other. Those who are unwavering in the security of their faith cannot or do not understand why I am prone to doubt, and those who do not adhere to religious convictions cannot or do not understand why I am compelled to believe. Truthfully, I don’t understand it myself. There was a time when I was quite ready to turn away from religion and God altogether, dismissing faith as something for the weak and/or unthinking. But I could not.

There’s an old hymn that begins, “O Love that will not let me go”; that’s the closest I can come to an explanation for what happened. Believe me, I have a whole host of reasons why I should not believe in God, at least not a God who is good. However, I came to be in circumstances where I witnessed a group of people showing love to others—showing love to me—in a way that I had never before experienced. This love was of a depth and purity that runs contrary to everything I understand to be true about human nature. I clearly remember thinking, “There simply is no possible way that this Love could have originated from within these people themselves. It must be a part of Something Greater.” I wasn’t exactly sure what this Something Greater was, but to me this was too powerful to ignore.

And so, I believe. I’d like to think that I’ve come a long way since then, but it depends on the day as to how much progress it feels like I’ve made. Without question, I remain a damaged person, and, at least in some ways, will likely remain so for the rest of my life. I am aware that some may dismiss my inclination to faith as a coping mechanism, as an emotional security blanket that allows me to make some sense of the painful experiences I’ve had to endure. Sure, I know that. The idea that I’m self-deluded may not cross my mind every single day, but it comes around a lot more often than you might think. But I’ve come to a place where the logical credibility of my motivations for belief is no longer top priority. I could spend my entire life trying to rationalize and intellectualize the issue of faith in God, and still never come to any definite conclusions. But so far as I can understand it (which, I am sure, is not very far at all), to live thusly is to miss the point of what faith is, and what faith is supposed to do within me.

Don’t misunderstand me here, I am absolutely not advocating a blind following of whatever doctrine one has been spoon-fed. But my brain analyzes and re-analyzes and overanalyzes things to the point of paralysis. The best analogy I can make here is to standing between two parallel mirrors. Your reflection bounces from one to the other and back again, echoing in an infinite regress. For someone whose mind works like those mirrors, one must forcibly halt the reflecting, or else one will quite literally be driven mad. Once again, I offer that quotation from Kierkegaard, which I’ve used a thousand times before but continue to recall because it is still as powerful to me as when I first read it.

What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except insofar as a certain understanding must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. What would be the use of discovering so-called objective truth… of working through all the systems of philosophy… what good would it do me to be able to explain the meaning of Christianity if it had no deeper significance for me and my life; what good would it do me if truth stood before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I recognized her or not, and producing in me a shudder of fear rather than a trusting devotion? I certainly do not deny that I still recognize an imperative of understanding and that through it one can work upon men, but it must be taken up into my life, and that is what I now recognize as the most important thing. That is what my soul longs after as the African desert thirsts for water… That is what I lack and that is what I am striving after.

(The Journals, August 1, 1835; emphasis K’s)

What becomes increasingly clear to me is that I must believe—or, at the very least, I cannot not believe. I can offer no better explanation than that. I do not claim to speak for anyone myself. To those of greater assuredness than I, I admire you, even envy you, for the confidence which has been granted to you. To those who do not believe, I do not judge you for your non-belief. It is not my place to judge, and, like I said, I was very nearly in the same place as you.

Right, so that’s that. Tune in next time for “The Chorister in Converse.”

right back to where we started from

It’s hard to believe I’m already into week 6, which is halfway through the first term here at Aberdeen. The next six weeks are going to be jam-packed with reading and ‘riting (but no ‘rithmatic), by I’m doing my best to remember the sage advice of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “DON’T PANIC.” For me, this involves taking it one day and one assignment at a time, and knowing when to say, “That’s enough thinking for today, it’s time to stop for a couple of biscuits [cookies] and an episode of The IT Crowd, Arrested Development, or similar offering of comic relief.”

One great comfort is that I think my dissertation [thesis] has found a sense of direction. I don’t actually have to start writing ’til next summer, but if the last two months are any indication of time’s relativity, it’ll be here before I know it. After literally months of considering and debating and feeling lost a hell of a lot of the time, I’m finally got something. In a classic plot twist, I’m brought back to the thing that got me interested in historical research in the first place: utopian thought in the Western world. Broadly speaking, this is about comparing idealized societies with real ones. Utopias reveal much about how we perceive ourselves and others, what we value, and how our own humanity limits on what we can actually achieve. Essentially, they’re an exercise in humility.

Analyzing abstract ideas, trying to make them accessible and relate them to reality… yeah, sounds like something I could get into. (Either that, or I could quit school and open a Mexican bistro.) Really, I’m wondering why I didn’t think of this sooner.

There are still many particulars to be worked out, and they’ll have to wait until after the holidays at least, but even having that much figured out does a lot to put my mind at ease. At least for me, when faced with a momentous task like this research paper, I really want to make sure that it’s concerning something I genuinely care about. There’s an incredible amount of time and effort required, and though I know the process won’t always be enjoyable, I at least want to feel like it’s worthwhile.

Really, I guess that has been the dominant motif of my life these past few years– would it be too much to call it a summation of the young adult experience? So far as our experience tells us, we only get one go at life, and, at least to me, it seems imperative that we exploit it to its fullest. (I mean “exploit” here in a positive sense– can’t think of a more appropriate word.) If we’ve discussed this issue together before, then I’ve probably evoked that famous quote by Kierkegaard,

The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.

As I’m always quick to point out, this is not an approbation of simplified relativism, but rather a call to action involving whole-hearted commitment. Questing and questioning and reflecting certainly have their place, but when it comes to knowing what course to pursue– whether it’s a matter of faith, occupation, relationship, or whatever– there has to come a point where one says enough is enough! Abstract reasoning apart from experience gives us fragments at best.

It often takes actually doing something before one can really figure out whether the resulting motion was “forward” or “backward.” Anyway, given our own limited perspective, these directional terms are pretty relative. What seems to be a “push forward” may return us to something from the past, and likewise taking a few steps backward may in fact be the only way to move ahead.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Time for the “important” (i.e. graded) writing.

reflections on historical methodology; or, trying to figure out what it is I’m supposed to be doing

When you’re in grade school, the history you learn is primarily names and dates. Many kids and teenagers complain of boredom, and understandably so. Believe it or not, even though history is my primary subject, I’m not terribly good at route memorization of factoids.

For the few who try a history class beyond the freshman “Survey of America to 1865,” most are pleasantly surprised to find that the subject has progressed from reciting the “what” to considering the “why” things happened. Yes, particulars of time and space are important, but they are important because they provide a framework within which ideas of all different sorts—social, political, economic, religious, technological, and so on—can be meaningfully discussed. Suddenly, the American Civil War becomes a much weightier and more interesting issue than a conflict between people in the south who had slaves and people in the north who thought it was bad.

This discussion of ideas is the kind of history I fell in love with, so much so that I decided I wanted to dedicate my life to it, to sharing it with others. So, now I am in graduate school, doing what all would-be historians must do in order to earn that title. However, I am finding out very quickly that the study dynamic has shifted once again. Before, I read a lot of books about a subject and wrote detailed summaries of what the author said, to prove that I had understood their points. Now, I am expected to start writing the kind of books I used to read.

For my taught courses, I must write 20- to 30-page essays related to the broad seminar topics. Next summer, I will compose a 50- to 60-page thesis (c. 20,000 words) on a topic (hopefully) related in some way to those essays. And then, should I choose to continue in this line of work, there’s the PhD thesis, a history student’s magnum opus, around 100,000 words in length, usually an expansion of the thesis, hopefully coherent and accessible enough to be reformatted and published as an academic text.

To do all of this writing, one must spend an inordinate amount of time immersed in both primary and secondary sources. Secondary sources are those books I read as an undergrad, works written by historians about the past. The difference in my reading of them now is I’m supposed to pay more attention to how these authors construct their arguments than to all of what they actually say. Primary sources, by contrast, are the documents actually created by the people of the past, and are what historians consult and interpret to create the secondary sources.

There are numerous problems inherent in primary sources: the linguistic style may be antiquated and so unfamiliar, the handwriting may be hard to decipher, the manuscripts may have been damaged/altered, etc. But, as far as I can tell, the greatest obstacle is not technical but interpretative, and lies in the limitations of the texts themselves. What I mean is that the author of any given document only provides us with a choice amount of detail, and it’s up to us to employ educated guesswork to find place their words within a larger, societal context. This involves more than a mere consideration of the author’s probable biases. Every author of every written source—secondary as well as primary—has a specific purpose behind the words he or she chooses to combine to create that document. When being trained how to analyze writing, whether as history, literature, philosophy, or whatever, one learns how to look for clues pertaining to both the author’s perception and plan. Sometimes this task is easier than others; a lot of it depends on how much info there is to begin with. Sheer length isn’t everything, but it isn’t nothing, either. If I want to ascertain the political leanings of a certain newspaper, my assessment will probably be more accurate if I’m given an entire paper rather than a clipping with a single article. But a good analyst can usually extract something useful even out of snippets.

My problem with all this is, I think what I am most interested in is a thing that is impossible to be known in its entirety; namely, what was going through his or her head while putting pen to paper. When speaking in relation to an author’s thought process, the actual words we now possess are fragments at best. To illustrate my point, I need look no further than this blog. For every post that appears here, there are half a dozen, usually unfinished entries that I never transfer from my notebook (I always hand-write first), and at least half a dozen more topics that I never get around to writing down at all. Heaven forbid that some stranger should read this blog and then, based solely on its contents, try to reconstruct an image of my own mind, of what and how I think! Yes, obviously what I write is an extension of myself—here I firmly reject the deconstructionists, who say it is possible to divorce a text from its author— but I strongly believe that the essence of my self goes beyond what I write on a silly little blog. What that essence is… well, that’s the great mystery, isn’t it….

Anyway, when I get to thinking along these lines, then I start to wonder how much point there is in this history writing. I don’t pretend to seek knowledge based on a Cartesian model of objective certainty, but then again, neither do I think the postmodernists are right in arguing that everything is subjective. Just because I can’t get inside the head of Sir Thomas More or Abraham Lincoln doesn’t mean that I can never say anything truly meaningful about the past, based on what I’ve read by them. I suppose this—like pretty much everything else that is meaningful in life— must involve coming to terms with one’s own limitations. I want to study utopias, but I don’t need to live according to one. If I want to write history, and write it well, I’ll have to learn adjust my idealistic expectations to match the realities of an imperfect and unclear world. Otherwise, I’ll spend the rest of my life spouting nonsense on a blog.

pas si simple

When you’re an America living somewhere like Korea, the culture shock is relatively straightforward. Well, the culture part is actually very complicated, but the shock part is simple enough because it hits you square in the face. Everything is different, different in such a way that you feel isolated, alienated, singularly set apart from the environment in which you find yourself. Sometimes it’s as simple as being the only with in the crowd with a hair color other than black. The start contrast between this new society and your native is inescapable: wherever you go, whatever you do, you are a stranger in a strange land, things are lost in translation, [insert your favorite traveler's cliché here].

But see, at least on some level, you expect this of East Asia. Britain is another story.

People tend to imagine a kinship with other places that speak the same language as themselves. To some extent, I think this is real. It’d be impossible to deny there exist significant historical, political, and economic between the UK and ourselves, not to mention the fact that a good number of us have British ancestors of at least one variety. But the truth is, the modern US and modern UK are distinct cultures. The trouble is, many of these differences are subtle, and they manifest themselves in such understated ways that you almost miss them, experiencing only vague feelings of confusion, frustration, and anxiety, the source of which you can’t quite seem to place.

For example, take my first trip to Morrisons, the grocery store across the street from our flat. Having spent the last year in small-town Korea, I still find myself a little bit in awe every time I enter a supermarket here in the West. Not to say that Korea grocery stores are inferior– I was actually surprised at how comprehensive they were– but occidental supermarkets are generally larger and have a wider variety of available products, products that I am familiar with and can actually understand the labels.

Anyway, the first time I walked into Morrisons, I thought, “Oh, this is a nice store. I’ll have a look around and get a feel for where everything is.” It didn’t take long, though, before I realized that something was off. It was like one of those realistic dreams, where everything appears normal except for some trivial element, which actually alters the overall vibe of the environment. Well, in this case, I realized that although I was reading the information of all the products on the shelves, only a few of the brand names were familiar to me. It hit me in especially hard in the laundry soap aisle: rows and rows of containers of Fairy, Persil, Clear Spring and other things I’d never heard of. Then, trying to decide what pack of yogurts to buy, I had to read the nutrition facts for every one, which by the way are laid out slightly different than in the States. And when I got to the produce, there were all the familiar vegetables with unfamiliar labels: aubergine, courgette, haricot, mangetout. Not that it was difficult to work out that aubergine means eggplant, but it wasn’t something I had expected to have to do. (The others, by the way, are zucchini, beans and snow peas.)

On the other hand, when I reached the aisle with the [tiny] Mexican selection of Mexican food, the bright yellow packaging of Old El Paso was perfectly recognizable. I had to laugh– of all the Latino products available, that’s really the best we could do?

(Oh, one thing I can confirm as being the same as America is the self-checkout machines. They hate me here, too. Don’t know why I keep trying to use them.)

I spent an hour and half at Morrisons that day, and I don’t remember if I actually bought anything. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a negative experience; just unexpected.

On a related note, yesterday I made my first trip to the Asian supermarket. I felt perfectly at ease browsing amongst the stacks of noodles, gim, mirin, and hoisin sauce. Ironic, eh?

the curious community-building power of the pigskin

In centuries past, the church (or equivalent religious establishment) played a pivotal role in nurturing social cohesion within a community. The rites and rituals, feasts and festivals marked the passage of time in an orderly, predictable fashion. Everyone knew his or her role; everyone participated; everyone belonged.

Recently, I was thinking about this, and wondering what is the church’s contemporary equivalent. This is not to say that the church has lost its power to create structure within the lives of individuals, but its general sphere of influence has grown limited in an increasingly secularized society. But if the church no longer leads in this role, where, then, does the local community turn to find sustenance of personality?

If I had to guess, I would say, “to sports.”

Most people like sports. many are devoted, and some are devoted to the point of obsession. Myself, I’m not a tremendous sports enthusiast, probably due to a lack of both personal athletic ability and time to devote to the subject. After all, there’s so many books, music, and movies I’ve yet to discover. Nevertheless, I have fun watching a good game, especially when that game is American football. (And when I say football, I really mean high school or especially college football. The NFL, in all its bloated, hyper-commercial glory, just doesn’t do it for me.)

Baseball may claim the title of America’s national pastime, but in my experience, few events have such curious power to draw people together (or drive them apart) as student football. The size of the school and the ability of the team are largely irrelevant; the spirit of football thrives in all kinds of environments. To get a sense of this enthusiasm, one need only to visit any of the thousands of campus football fields on a weekend in autumn.  Football is a uniquely American game, and Americans love it.

Passion for football is plainly evident in my current part of the country. There’s an old saying that in the South, football is a religion, and Satuday is its holy day. While it’s debatable whether Oklahoma is genuinely part of the South, no one can question the intense loyalty of Oklahoman fans to of the state’s two NCAA Division I teams: the University of Oklahoma Sooners; and their bitter rival (and my alma mater), the Oklahoma State Cowboys. Being a Sooner or Cowboy fan is not just a hobby; for many, it’s a way of life.

Today was the season opener for both teams. Both teams are ranked in the national top 25 (OU at No. 3, OSU at No. 9), as are several others in the Big XII (regional conference of teams), which means that their games tend to be more high powered, and they get extra attention from the media. For example, because today OSU played against another ranked team, No. 13 Georgia, the game was broadcast on network television. Tonight, I can gleefully report that the Cowboys won, while the Sooners lost to No. 20 BYU (14-13).

As I’m not currently in Stillwater, I had to be content with watching the game on TV. After spending the past year in Korea, watching television sports was quite the novelty. Truthfully, though, I don’t get very excited about watching a game unless I’m actually there. (On the other hand, when I am at a game, I tend to get a little too excited.) Thanks to many years in marching band, I have a basic grasp of the rules– good enough to impress other casual fans (usually female) in my company– but I would still be enthusiastic even if I had no idea what was going on.

For me, the big draw of going to a game is not the game in and of itself, but the whole experience of attending a sporting function. There’s something singular about gathering in the bleachers with a crowd of compatriots, all decked out in school colors (even better, marching band uniforms), shouting yourself hoarse while cheering your team to victory. The crowd’s avidity is infectious, and even an introvert like myself can’t help but get caught up in it. Attending a school football game is intensely communal: people with a common identity come together for a few hours to participate in a shared emotional experience. Whether the game ends in “the thrill of victory… or the agony of defeat,” everyone feels it as one. And at the very end, as the band plays the alma mater and everyone sings along, the unity among team, students, alumni, faculty, and fans is boldly reaffirmed.

I love it.

wanted: a sense of ontological security

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.
–G.K. Chesterton

I’m going to do something that college profs detest as much as nails on a blackboard, a thing that I myself decry under normal circumstances, but it’s late and I’m too tired to come up with something more adequate. Wikipedia, in its infinite wisdom, defines ontological security as “ a stable mental state derived from a sense of continuity in regard to the events in one’s life.”

For most people, a significant part of their ontological security is derived from familiar surroundings. While any given place is subject to the usual alterations caused by time’s forward march, when a person identifies a place as “home,” it becomes fixed relative to the changes experienced in his or her life. There’s a whole metaphysical debate about whether the Stillwater of 1989 is actually the same place as the Stillwater of 2009 (i.e. if they are logically identical, as in x=y), but I’ll ignore this. What I’m trying to articulate is this: normal people divide the events in their lives into two basic categories, things that happen “at home,” and things that happen away from home, and then they interpret them accordingly.

I am not a normal person.

Oh, there are lots of reasons why I’m strange, but the point of interest for today is that I am homeless. I don’t mean that I’m a bum– I still sleep indoors and shower regularly and all. “Home” is a tricky word with multiple definitions, so maybe I should say instead that I’m “house-less.” At present, I lack a domestic dwelling that I can refer to as my own.

Next month I will make my seventh major move in ten years. (This is not counting the seven places where I lived during my, um, three years in Stillwater. I don’t want to think about what this says about me….) I’ve been in six cities in five US states, plus a year on a little South Korean island, and now I’m about to go to another island in another ocean in a different hemisphere.

How to move house: find a new place, pack your stuff, put it in the van and go. In town, you can usually transport your stuff in a day or two; cross-country or international might take a couple of days, depending on the distance. The mental and emotional adjustments take a lot longer, not to mention unpacking all the boxes, but the physical mechanics of the move itself are pretty straightforward.

The last place where I lived was an apartment in Jugong Sa Danji in Seogwipo-si. The next place will be a flat above a flower shop in Aberdeen City, Scotland. I left Korea on 2 August; I’m supposed arrive in Scotland on 23 September.

But where do I say I live during the six-week interim? I’m spending a lot of the time with my parents in Edmond, but their house isn’t mine. Yeah, my stuff is in boxes sitting in their garage, but it’s been five years since I’ve lived there on a permanent basis. I feel more comfortable (“at home,” if you will) when I spend time with friends in Stillwater, but again, my visits there are temporary, lasting a few days at most.

Currently, I’m on vacation in Ohio, visiting relatives. I arrived middle of last week and will be here until Wednesday. Today I realized that I can’t really refer to my trip as a “vacation,” because “vacation” as commonly understood is a recreational trip away from one’s house, or (more generally) a break in one’s normal routine. As I’ve already said, I am house-less, and this isn’t a break from my routine because right now I have no routine from which to break. I haven’t been “on vacation” for four days, but for 21 days (since I left my Korean apartment). But this doesn’t exactly work, either, because “vacation” as we understand it usually implies eventual return to the point of origin, and I can say with a high degree of confidence that I will never return to that apartment.

So, here I am, in the middle of a long, strange interim that I don’t know how to define. Since existence as I experience it appears to involve physical location, I can point to where I “am” on a geographical map right now, but I think this house-less state is contributing to a mild existential crisis. I feel like I’m “neither here nor there,” and frankly, I’m tired of it. I’m tired of everything shifting and changing and having to readjust my focus. After this next year, I want to find someplace where I can settle down for awhile.

The worry is, though, I’ve been doing this moving thing for so long now, I wonder if “settling down” is something I’m even capable of. Would having a house or apartment or trailer to call my own be of any help in breaking an established behavioral pattern? I know that the meaning of “home” isn’t necessarily contingent upon a house, but having a permanent dwelling as a fixed point of reference would seem to simplify things.

All I’m after is a little peace of mind!

(Side note: one of my classes this fall is in the field of diaspora and migration studies. How incredibly appropriate.)