"It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly"

^Bertrand Russell


There is no predicting the future. And no I never would have imagined that each morning at 8:05, just after the coffee's ready, I would walk into my boss's office and we'd discuss science and philosophy and the failure of our political system. Some tenuous understanding between the two of us that everything we do in life is one further stab at understanding it and one fleeting effort and enjoying it.

We discussed the multiverse theory of existence this morning, complicated by the theories being posited currently that the universe is in a sense biological. That is, it replicates and evolves. That there must be a near infinite quantity of differing universes all competing for fitness as it were. Some dying on the vine because their unique physical laws prohibit expansion. Ours unfolding like a flower, a universe of light and energy and experience. How lucky we are.

The point, though, is that we should be careful of cynicism. I went into this job anticipating a cliched corporate existence. Meetings and cubicles and Microsoft Outlook; and it is that, no doubt. But at the same time I've found a place where value life over profit and at least some of them are good for stimulating conversation.

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Its tough to get people to read my work and give me their opinions. Tiva, fortunately, is a fantastic editor. She doesn't have a strong literature education, but she knows what she likes.


"I don't understand what you're trying to do here.


"You see, here. This is another awkward transition."

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One Laptop Per Child

The One Laptop Per Child program has kicked off.




"The world is like a ride at an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly coloured and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: Is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, "Hey – don't worry, don't be afraid ever, because this is just a ride." And we … kill those people. "Shut him up. We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real." It's just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter, because – it's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace."
-Bill Hicks

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Cloisters, Cannibals, Consilience

Academia has a problem. As the last institution defending humanity from a rising anti-intellectualism, the University is a potential safe haven for those with new ideas or individuals seeking to understand. Nevermind that the whims of corporate America, the pratfalls of a consumer culture, the sweeping increases in enrollment, and the troubling and reinvented penchant our generation seems to have with obtaining "things" have all diluted the academic enterprise. What is more interesting to me is the carry-over of a certain arrogance from daily life to the pursuit of truth.

We all think our fields of study are important. That is why we have selected them or, conversely, these fields must be important because we've selected them. This field, no doubt, is critical to our perspective and is duly important to the community at large. I fear, however, that we become convinced that our department (English, Engineering, Biology, Psychology) is the most important. Taking precedence and preference over all others. This tendency (and straddling both an Engineering degree and the bulk of a Humanities degree, this has become obvious) engenders a certain rivalry and rancor between the disciplines.

How, exactly, does this play out? While at University for an engineering degree (at an, at best, mediocre institution) professors, colleagues and even administration at the level of Dean would openly dismiss Lib'rul Arts as useless, easy and (this just students) for women. My current university and department, a respectable and burgeoning English community, suffers the same problem, but in reverse. Engineering is reviled because our modern iteration of capitalism favors it. Calls to enhance math and science education are met with cold responses. Under everyone's breath is the notion that math and science aren't as important.


Why does this attitude exist? There are likely many reasons but I believe there are three that sort of round out the phenomenon. First, each represents to the other a fundamentally flawed prioritization of understanding (truth be told, they are both flawed because they've elected to become so narrow). The scientist or engineer sees studying literature as being inapplicable to life in the world because it is not seen as being supportable, tested, or rigorous. The liberal arts student sees science and engineering as a willful break from the beauty of life and the meaning of existence.

Additionally, each end of the spectrum is intimidated by the other. The English student bemoans mathematics because it is difficult (both in general, and for one inclined to study English) and thus uses there position as a liberal arts student to virtually condemn the study of mathematics and all of its affiliates. The Engineering student may be confused by the lack of factoids and heavily outlined principles in literary studies. I know for a fact that many of my colleagues in Engineering would not fair well in literary classes. Likewise, many of my current colleagues would miserably fail in an engineering course of equivalent 'difficulty'.

Finally, our current democratic capitalism has carved out a niche for each that is disrespected by the other. The liberal arts student is jealous of the 'easy' money made by the engineering student. The engineering student is livid that the liberal arts student doesn't appear to contribute anything. Neither truly understands the conditions of the other.

Where do the soft sciences play into all of this? Exactly where they seem to, somewhere in the middle. Never quite appreciated by the bookworms, never quite accepted by the pocket-protectors.


So, what is the problem with this? Isn't each of these fields for people inclined to them? Why should the liberal arts student appreciate software design? Why should the engineer give a whit about postmodernism? The short answer, of course, is that you are a human being. All of these things are a component of the human condition and life in 2007. This isn't a requirement that you master every possible subject, running from one to the next the moment some understanding has been reached and yet never applying anything. Rather, we must appreciate each as its own aspect of understanding the universe, truth, and ourselves. Not only that, but these disciplines (and I mean ALL disciplines here) are not capsules. They all have some insight to provide further understanding in progress in every other one.

So, I just said that. Where's my evidence?


What are some serious improvements in science/engineering?

The theories of gravity, relativity, and the discovery of the structure of DNA. All of these incidents required creative leaps in logic. None ever left the realm of rationality, and yet all required some bit of innovation and imagination that had been lacking up until then.

Some of our greatest achievements in large engineering projects have been ones of functional aesthetics. Beautiful bridges or cathedrals or skyscrapers carefully designed by both the artist and the engineer and capable of changing what it means to be a modern human.

Additionally, advances in technology (think peer-to-peer software and the iPod) have occurred strictly in the interest of elevating our access to art.

And art?
Art itself has been continuously advanced by technology. The paintbrush, the printing press, the camera, the digital camera, electronic devices that generate, store, and play music, software. Denying the importance of math and science in one's understanding downplays the significant impact that these things have on our ability to use, create and experience art.

The social sciences, too, are not exempt from this equation. Psychological advances have had significant impact on art and have also used art as a tool to enhance understanding (Freud's the Oedipal complex, likewise the influence of Lacan on our understanding of postmodernism). Anthropology frequently relies on the product of anonymous artists and artisans from the past, and art can gain insight to the human condition by understanding the vast expanse of its history.

My point is, please stop separating yourself from the world by claiming to be "an engineer" or "an artist" or "an anthropologist" and realize that you are in fact a human being. Our cultural evolution requires that we at some point all understand the unity of knowledge, and appreciate the fact that every discipline is merely the study of some other facet to this vast, intimidating thing we call the universe. No pursuit of knowledge is devoid of value. And no pursuit of knowledge is worth a damn if it stands alone.

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Intruder in the Dust

Spent a sizeable portion of this weekend reading Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner. Faulkner is one of the "greats" that I have come onto quite late in my academic career. I must admit that I am now absolutely enamored with him. The aforementioned book is both a lesson in what can be done with language (and implausibly follows none of the rules a professor will tell you are critical to good fiction) and an existential crisis of intense emotions, staring long into the abyss, the moral certitude and conflict of being a modern man. Likewise, it is one of the better "formative" novels I have read (in which a boy becomes a man) and avoids sentimentality at all costs. I had never read a prison door close or a spade dig into the earth until I read this book. In light of this, I'm not sure why Hemingway gets the title of Best American Writer, though I suppose it has something to do with his work being more accessible. Faulkner dares you to try and read it, he takes no prisoners and requires a dedication in reading that he must have devoted in writing.

Anyway, incredibly productive weekend. Booze, reading, writing, dizzying introspection as I try to conjure metaphors for the stench of humanity. Illumination as every little gear of this story or that falls into place. The realization that function is its own aesthetic system.

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Twitching

I didn't write this. It was written by Mark Twight, the guy that trained the Spartans in the movie 300. I stumbled upon his website and have since taken on a training regime similar to his (though scaled down). He makes references to outdoor sports because that is his realm, but the truth of the essay is living with emotional commitment. It doesn't matter if it is skiing or writing or studying. Anyway, this had a profound affect on me.

His website can be found at:
www.gymjones.com

Additionally, you can find work-out resources similar to the ones he employs at
www.crossfit.com . If you have been turned off by gyms and exercise because you disdain a bunch of muscleheads staring at themselves in the mirror, this is for you. If you subscribe to it, it will be the most physically challenging thing you have ever experienced. And perhaps the only thing I've been involved in that is so effective at developing mental strength as well. A half hour of suffering each day, and I for once feel human.




TWITCHING


BY MARK TWIGHT

What's your problem? I think I know. You see it in the mirror every morning: temptation and doubt hip to hip inside your head. You know it's not supposed to be like this. But you drank the Kool-Aid and dressed yourself up in someone else's life.

You're haunted because you remember having something more. With each drag of the razor you ask yourself why you piss your blood into another man's cup. Working at the job he offered, your future is between his thumb and forefinger. And the necessary accessories, the proclamations of success you thought gave you stability provide your boss security. Your debt encourages acquiescence, the heavy mortgage makes you polite.

Aren't you sick of being tempted by an alternative lifestyle, but bound by chains of your own choosing? Of the gnawing doubt that the college graduate, path of least resistance is the right way for you - for ever? Each weekend you prepare for the two weeks each summer when you wake up each day and really ride, or climb; the only imperative being to go to bed tired. When booming thermals shoot you full of juice and your Vario shrieks 7m/sec, you wonder if the lines will pop. The risk pares away life’s trivia. Up there, sucking down the thin cumulus, the earth looks small, the boss even smaller, and you wish it could go on forever. But a wish is all it will ever be.

Because the ground is hard. Monday morning is harsh. You wear the hangover of your weekend rush under a strict and proper suit and tie. You listen to NPR because it's inoffensive, PFC: Politically Fucking Correct. Where's the counter-cultural righteousness that had you flirting with Bad Religion and the vintage Pistols tape over the weekend? On Monday you eat frozen food and live the homogenized city experience. But Sunday you thought about cutting your hair very short. You wanted a little more volume and wondered how out of place you looked in the Sub Pop Music Store. Flipping through the import section, you didn't recognize any of the bands. KMFDM? It stands for Kill Mother Fucking Depeche Mode. Didn't you know? How could you not?

Tuesday you look at the face in the mirror again. It stares back, accusing. How can you get by on that one weekly dose? How can you be satisfied by the artifice of these experiences? Why should your words mean anything? They aren't learned by heart and written in blood. If you cannot grasp the consciousness-altering experience that real mastery of these disciplines proposes, of what value is your participation? The truth is pointless when it is shallow. Do you have the courage to live with the integrity that stabs deep?

Use the mirror to cut to the heart of things and uncover your true self. Use the razor to cut away what you don't need. The life you want to live has no recipe. Following the recipe got you here in the first place:

Mix one high school diploma with an undergrad degree and a college sweetheart. With a whisk (or a whip) blend two cars, a poorly built house in a cul de sac, and fifty hours a week working for a board that doesn't give a shit about you. Reproduce once. Then again. Place all ingredients in a rut, or a grave. One is a bit longer than the other. Bake thoroughly until the resulting life is set. Rigid. With no way out. Serve and enjoy.



But there is a way out. Live the lifestyle instead of paying lip service to the lifestyle. Live with commitment. With emotional content. Live whatever life you choose honestly. Give up this renaissance man, dilettante bullshit of doing a lot of different things (and none of them very well by real standards). Get to the guts of one thing; accept, without casuistry, the responsibility of making a choice. When you live honestly, you can not separate your mind from your body, or your thoughts from your actions.



Tell the truth. First, to yourself. Say it until it hurts. Learn the reality of your own selfishness. Quit living for other people at the expense of your own self, you're not really alive. You live in the land of denial - and they say the view is pretty a long as you remain asleep.

Well it's time to WAKE THE FUCK UP!

So do it. Wake up. When you drink the coffee tomorrow, take it black and notice it. Feel the caffeine surge through you. Don't take it for granted. Use it for something. Burn the Grisham books. Sell the bad CDs. Mariah Carey, Dave Mathews and N Sync aren’t part of the soundtrack where you're going.

Cut your hair. Don't worry about the gray. If you're good at what you do, no one cares what you look like. Go to the weight room. Learn the difference between actually working out and what you've been doing. Live for the Iron and the fresh air. Punish your body to perfect your soul. Kick the habit of being nice to everyone you meet. Do they deserve it? Say "no" more often.

Quit posturing at the weekly parties. Your high pulse rate, your 5.12s and quick time on the Slickrock Trail don't mean shit to anybody else. These numbers are the measuring sticks of your own progress; show, don't tell. Don’t react to the itch with a scratch. Instead, learn it. Honor the necessity of both the itch and the scratch. But a haircut and a new soundtrack do not a modern man make. As long as you have a safety net you act without commitment. You'll go back to your old habits once you meet a little resistance. You need the samurai's desperateness and his insanity.

Burn the bridge. Nuke the foundation. Back yourself up against a wall. Have an opinion one way or the other, get off the fence and rip it up. Cut yourself off so there is no going back. Once you're committed the truth will come out. You ask about security? What you need is uncertainty. What you need is confusion; something that forces you to reinvent yourself, a whip to drive you harder.



In Dune, Frank Herbert called it "the attitude of the knife,” cut off what’s incomplete and say “now it has finished, for it has ended there.” So finish it, and walk away, forward. Only acts undertaken with commitment have meaning. Only your best effort matters. Life is a Meritocracy, with death as the auditor. Inconsistency, incompetence and lies are all cut short by that final word. Death will change you if you can't change yourself.

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There are so many decisions to make. Every day it seems I am confronted with not the false binary choice of Frost's two paths diverging but rather a multifarious and intimidating array of options. Even the debate over free will is almost always posed as all-or-nothing dichotomy, rather than the complex that it is. As Americans we often have more choices than some people, or less. As a strong-willed individual, one has more options than another. No doubt much of our life is determined by simply the way we've been laid on the tracks, however it is our choice whether to follow our instincts or swallow them.


Corporate 'merikuh has begun to wrap me in its leathern tentacles. The lure of ever-increasing wages intended to pay for a lifestyle I am not interested in. The promise of a life of intellectual and physical slack while "things" (cars, homes, wives, children, plasma TVs) pile up around me. The spectre of comfort in a world that starves or flays its children many miles from here. All under the arrogant assumption that this evanescent condition is fixed; that the earth will not swallow us at its whim.

Perhaps in the grand scheme of things, my passions are irrelevant. I'm willing to accept that. But that suggests that everything is irrelevant to the larger system, and that the only important metric of this epic life (and maybe that's the point, to make our life an epic, no matter the specifics) is what I think of it. When the time comes, I know I will be ready to choose freedom and difficulty over subservience and ease. Or at least I hope that I will.

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Finally, something happened

I've returned from the National Undergraduate Literature Conference (the "Nulk' as we call it) with something along those same lines of irreality, exhaustion, revelation and self-affirmation that once accompanied most weekends.

On Thursday morning I met with 12 people that I had never met and crammed myself into a van to make the five hour journey to the armpit of SLC and hang-out for three days. The gentlemen I sat next to drew The Portable Nietzche from his bag and made an offhand comment about the need to drink a great deal this weekend. I was armed with a fifth of Whiskey, he with a 12 pack of PBR. The group of strangers (and most of them proved to not know each other as well) ended up working very well together. For a few days at least sharing the same sense of witty cynicism, desire for strong drink and the willingness to both make sacrifices for academics and criticize the weak in our field. My room-mate and another kid from the group hung out in our suite drinking until the wee hours. Agreeing on 90% of everything, carefully listening on the remaining 10%.

The following evening we all went out to eat and drank 3.2% beer. Made jokes at each other,increasingly as though we had known each other a long time. My introversion peeled off as I began to really understand these others. The entire situation affirming that I am now studying what I should . Interacting with people that represent the only people I've met that have a # of books read-to-age ratio as myself. Occasionally railing on the stupidity of modern politics and religion together.



My readings went well. The poetry reading accompanied by a fair amount of conversation and questions. Me briefly defending hip-hop. My fiction reading, in my opinion and that of a few others in attendance, was the best of my session (so, as compared to 4 other stories) and came as a refreshing surprise. I felt much more natural than I have ever reading in front of a group. With the support of new friends.


I'm proud of Boise State as well. We were the second best-represented school at the conference. Likewise, in each session with a BSU student I found we (if not making the single best presentation) were often irreverent, thought-provoking and bracingly honest. We attended without professors and began to develop a reputation by the time we left. Students from other schools gathered around to see us off.

The entire thing was incredibly satisfying. I got to present work, and listen to the work of contemporaries. I feel much more established within the English department at BSU, and I have made friends that I will be hanging out with from time to time. A seminal moment in the Boise experience up until now.

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