#57-59: Aesop, Siddhartha, Two Cities

This goal of mine to read all the books in that 1,001 list of mine is definitely a stretching goal.  I’ve been surprised and pleased at how many of them I’ve genuinely liked.  I was expecting to hate many of them—and that may yet be the case when I start really digging into the Twentieth Century picks.  As it is, though, here are three that I managed to get through over the holidays:

Aesop’s Fables.  Best of the three here.  There are tales that many people would be familiar with, like “The Grasshopper and the Ants,” in which the grasshopper plays music the whole summer long but when winter comes starves, while the ants who worked all summer long survived the winter.

There were over two hundred fables in the book I read, and what struck me was the great pessimism shadowing the animal tales.  It’s common for the protagonists to die, and whether they deserve their fates or not, the ends seem inevitable.

Especially harsh, though, are the maxims.  One of the earliest fables, four beasts agreed to divide their kills equally, but when it comes time to dividing their plunder, the lion takes it all.  The maxim: Might makes right.

The value of Aesop’s Fables is not so much in their moral value, but in its observational use.  “Might makes right” is morally reprehensible, but in the world, it is the strong who tend to make the rules.  If the reader learns from Aesop’s observations, we can understand the nature and behavior of society and the individuals who contribute to it.

Beyond that, these stories are very clever.  My favorite fable is not an animal tale, but one about Aesop when he was a slave.  The slave Aesop requested the lightest basket to carry on a journey.  He was allowed to have first choice, so he picked the breadbasket.  At first, all his fellow-slaves mocked him because the breadbasket was the heaviest of all.  In the middle of the trip, though, all the bread was eaten and Aesop got to carry an empty basket the rest of the journey.

That may be the cleverest thing I’ve read all year.

Siddhartha.  Herman Hesse’s spiritualistic novella is quite enlivening.  It examines the life of the eponymous Siddhartha, a young Brahmin who joins the ascetic Samanas, meets the Buddha, decides to live a wordly life of material and sexual pleasures, renounces his wealth, becomes a ferryman, faces rejection by a son he never knew, and at the end of life has attained enlightenment, a kind of awakening to the universe.

I experienced this book on two levels: the first as a fictional biography, a style of story I’ve quite enjoyed over the years.  The first time I recall running into this sort of story was Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth, and shortly after with Orson Scott Card’s Songmaster.  Each story takes a character and follows them from their entry into the world until their death.  (I say entry instead of birth, because it’s not crucial that we watch them grow up.  The story starts when they embark to achieve a goal.)

I’m fascinated by watching the progress of a person from a young stage in life grow and change over the course of their existence.  I love to see the catalysts and reasons for why they choose a certain path and later discover reasons for their being on the wrong one and so run down another.

Such stories make me contemplate the directions my life has headed in.  They make me see what changes I’ve made and make me wonder about what new directions and views I’ll hold in the future, what revelations I’ll discover.  These fictional biographies give me a taste and make me ponder the beauty, complexity, and grandeur of life.  That Siddhartha is also such a short book only adds to its achievement.

The second level, Siddhartha is also a quest story.  Just as Santiago from Paul Coelho’s The Alchemist goes on a quest and has many adventures on his search for treasure, so too does Siddhartha have many adventures and experiences that are really checkpoints on his long quest for enlightenment.

That story works well and is interesting.  Unfortunately, the quest story fell short for me, if only because I really don’t appreciate the treasure he gains at the end.  Siddhartha’s enlightenment is that he discovered word “Om” bound everything together, all the pain, pleasures, sorrows, and cares, and all the lives were bound together in that sacred word.

It’s a lovely expression, but because I don’t belong in that culture and have a different concept of unity in the universe, this climactic moment didn’t have the same power over me that it had for the story’s hero.

But that’s the trouble with any story of spiritual journey.  If you already belong to that belief system, it’s going to touch your soul and affirm all you’ve accepted before.  If you’re searching for something more, than perhaps this kind of story will lead you to discover a deep truth unknown to you before.  But if you’re in neither camp, you can appreciate the journey for what it is, but you won’t feel a part of it.  There’s a wall between you and what that story is trying to convey.

In the end, I liked it well enough, but it really didn’t mean very much to me.  But that shouldn’t deter you from looking at it and seeing if it won’t sing straight to you heart.

A Tale of Two Cities.  I have two pieces of advice for people who don’t consider themselves readers.  First, find what you love and read that, and keep reading what you love until you consider yourself to be a reader.  Second, once you are a reader, challenge yourself.

I’ve considered a reader all my life, and I have been pushing myself to improve my talent for years.  I’ve read a great variety over the years: scripture, mystery, science fiction, military history, fantasy, science, biographies, classics, poetry, short fiction, and cereal boxes.  There isn’t a lot in the way of the written word that terrifies me.

Classics least of all.  I was reading Shakespeare in the fourth grade.  Jane Austen, Mark Twain, and Edgar Allen Poe are favorite authors of mine.  I’ve plugged away at the overwritten Moby Dick and Les Miserables without breaking a sweat.  I thought The Brothers Karamazov to be lively.

For reasons that continue to baffle me, Charles Dickens is a challenge.  I’ve started and never finished Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and Bleak House.  I finally got through A Christmas Carol, but only because it’s short and it still took two attempts.

When my book club picked A Tale of Two Cities, I met this with excitement and trepidation.  I knew because it’s a book club book that I’d be able to hunker down and finish this one.  Deep inside, though, I knew it would be a push.

Part of the difficulty with Two Cities is the lack of a central character.  You could say that it’s about Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, the man who is sentenced to be executed during the French Revolution and the man who takes his place, respectively.  Yet Darnay gets fewer pages devoted to him than Lucie, Dr. Manette, Jarvis Lorry, and the Defarges.  And Sydney Carton goes missing for the bulk of the story until he performs his eleventh-hour rescue.

In short, this was an all-star cast story, all of them bound together by the most spectacular of coincidences.  It’s the kind of epic I tend to enjoy the most, but it was difficult this time because with all the events taking place, I barely felt invested with a character before Dickens moved onto somebody else with little hint as to whether this person was going to be a major or minor character.

The benefit to this is that everyone really does get to be the hero of their own story.  The problem is that there is barely time to really connect with anybody.  In fact, I found that the less time spent with a character, the more attached to them.  Sydney Carter has two chapters total that explores his perspective, and yet his personality, pain, and longing for unrequited love stuck with me.

Then there were the endless time spent among reprehensible people and long, historical drafts spent with the ruthless Defarges and an abusive and whiny grave robber.

The only truly moving part of this book, that I feel has made this book last over a century, is the last page when Sydney Carter looks into the future and sees the fruits of his sacrifice.  It’s a great payoff, but it takes a long time to come and I almost dropped off before I got there.

Using Time Wisely

In 2004, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made a significant change in its missionary program.  For decades, missionaries memorized six “discussions” that covered the basic principles and doctrines of our church, and when missionaries were invited into homes, they were expected to repeat these discussions verbatim.

I do believe that this organization was inspired and helped the missionaries greatly during that time, but after many years of relying on the same system, it was time for a change.  So the church published a new missionary manual called Preach My Gospel, and has been the basic handbook for Latter-day Saint missionaries since.

One of the significant changes was how missionaries were expected to teach.  They were no longer required to memorize lessons (of which they’d now brought down to five.) In fact, in my mission we were encouraged not to memorize the lessons.  Instead, we were expected to study the concepts, the scriptures, and how the doctrines were organized, and then teach the lessons in our own words, from our own experience, and as otherwise prompted by the Spirit.

The thing about Preach My Gospel lessons is that they were all combined into one chapter.  The manual has twelve other chapters focused on different subjects; some are for personal use, like how to study scriptures effectively, recognizing the Spirit, and (for foreign speaking missionaries) how best to learn to speak a new language; and others are for working with others, like teaching methods, encouraging people keep commitments (like helping someone recover from addictions) and how to best work and cooperate with local church leaders and other auxiliary organizations.

This is all a long preamble to an experience that changed the way I conduct my life.

I’d been on my mission about eight months when Elder M. Russell Ballard (an apostle) came to visit us.  My companion was asked to play the organ at the meeting he spoke, so I got to sit in the rostrum where I got a lovely view of the back of Elder Ballard’s head.

Elder Ballard was very engaging as a speaker and was more open about the actual work we were involved in than some other leaders I’d listened to before.  Sometime around the Q&A portion of his talk, he mentioned Preach My Gospel, and specifically the one titled “Using Time Well,” which he had had a heavy hand in writing.

Honestly, up to then, “Using Time Well” was the most boring chapter in the world.  The majority of it covers the paperwork, the planners, goals, reporting your progress, and all the other humdrum activities that you do on a weekly, if not daily, basis.

As he talked about it, though, he made an emphatic point that the concepts in that chapter were not meant to end with our missionary service, but if we applied the principles of using time wisely for the rest of our lives, greater productivity and success would follow.

I went home that day and for months afterward I looked over and thought about that chapter until I realized that using time well is distilled into three basic points: set goals, make plans, and be accountable.

Considering this is a new year, resolutions are being made, kept for a month, and given up on by citizens all around.  This starts an endless cycle of frustration and depression, and it really doesn’t have to be like that.  I’m hoping a brief examination of these three points can help your resolve, not just for your New Year’s dreams, but in whatever big or small things you wish to accomplish at any time.

Set Goals

This is the easiest step, and yet a lot of us do it wrong.  The most common New Year’s resolution is to exercise more and live healthier.  Thus the sudden rise of gym memberships each January.

Trouble is, exercising more and living healthier are good things to want, but as a goal, it’s too vague.  Effective goals shouldn’t just be specific, they ought to be measureable.  A common example would be a weight goal, like in my case, maybe lose 30 pounds (I’m not setting this goal, by the way, despite how much it needs to happen.)

Or if not weight, maybe you want to be fit for an upcoming marathon, hike a particular mountain, lift so many pounds, or perform an activity for an increased amount of time without fatigue.  Whatever it be, be specific, manageable, and make it stretch.

The second part to setting goals, though, is the breaking it down to smaller goals.  Say you have your overall goal for the year.  Next step, create a monthly goal.  Ask yourself, What can I accomplish this month that will help me reach my goal for the year?  Once you have your monthly goal, then set a weekly goal, with the thought in mind, What goal this week can I accomplish that will make me reach my goal for this month?  Then do a daily goal to accomplish the weekly goal.  I’ve known a couple people who then make hourly goals.  I think they’re fanatics, but they feel a sense of accomplishment.

The thing is, each small goal builds on each other to help you reach the overall dream.

Important thing to keep in mind: if you don’t accomplish your goal, at least not in the time you set for yourself, you are not a failure.  When you don’t reach your goal and start to feel bad about it, take a step and look at what you achieved just by trying.  Would you have done as much as you did if you had never set the goal and worked for it?

Successful goal setting isn’t always about achieving the goal (however awesome that would have been.)  Goal setting is a success if you really worked at it and really did improve yourself between the time you set it and the end date.

Make Plans

I’m good at setting goals.  I am terrible at making plans to achieve them, because they involve planners, which involves scheduling, which involves dedication to keep scheduling, which takes up time and... and... and I’m lazy.

Making plans to achieve your goals is about maximizing optimal use of all your available resources, and of all your resources, your most precious is time.  Thus, when making plans, your first priority is figuring out how you’re going to make the best use of the time you have.

Planners are a great tool for organizing your time, especially in achieving your daily goals.  They put things in perspective and are a great reality check.

I like planners and I feel at my most productive when I use one.  I’m not diligent enough to use them for more than two months at a time, though, and there are two reasons for that.

First, in order to schedule time, you need to schedule a planning time.  Once a week, you ought to take 15 to 30 minutes to plan out the next week in order to set your goals and figure out how you want to accomplish them.  And then every day, take at least five minutes to go over your plans for what’s coming up.

The daily and weekly planning times are crucial, but they are not exciting.  My mind constantly wanders while I’m doing it, so it takes even more time than it should, and there’s this really cool thing on YouTube that I have got to check out right now.  I can get to the planning later.  That’s when the $20 I spent on the new planner pages goes to waste.

The second trouble with planning is that, at least twice a week, something comes up and throws my plans completely out of whack.  A smart thing to do is to have backup plans on hand (if Plan A doesn’t work out, Plan B is a good option, and if you’re that farsighted, you’ll have a Plan C as well), but that takes up more time, and honestly, there are days when all your backups fly out the window.

On days when none of your plans work out, you ask yourself, What was it all for?  This is stupid.

It is stupid, but the thing is, when these crises and emergencies come up, I’ve found that in planning my days, I was still more productive and achieved more than if I hadn’t planned it out and see where it led.

Making plans are crucial and I will attest to it.  Even though I’m not diligent about it, I do recognize the difference in how I behave and how I feel when I have made plans and the times when I haven’t.

Be Accountable

Most.  Important.  Step.

Fact: You are lazy.  Somewhere out there is a person who is accountable only to themselves and they can and do keep themselves on track.  You are not that person.  How do I know?  Because you’re reading this blog instead of accomplishing something real.

By yourself, you will not achieve anything.  Your goals will turn into wishes and your plans will lie forgotten by the wayside.

The cure to your laziness is to have somebody hold you accountable to your goals.

In athletics, you have coaches and trainers holding you accountable to your improvement.  In education, teachers and professors are holding their students accountable in their knowledge and comprehension.  In the workplace, bosses hold their employees accountable for the work that they do.

Without someone to keep you in check, you’re not going to do the work.  That’s why in goal setting, you should know who is keeping you accountable for the work.

And here’s the secret of accountability: everybody you tell your goals to holds you accountable to them.  The more people you tell your goals to, the more pressure you’ll feel to achieve them, and thus, the more likely you’ll be to work at it.

Sometimes it’s not the quantity of people you share your goals with that makes the difference.  Sometimes it’s the quality.  Your spouse is more likely to hold you accountable to your goals than coworker you only see five days a week.

Accountability makes all the difference though.  This blog is proof for me.

See, I like to write.  I really do.  I’m not the greatest in the world; I’m not even half as good as I think I am, but I like it.  I’ve always wanted to write a novel (and I’ve made three noteworthy efforts to achieve that) but none of my attempts ever paid off, mostly because I never had enough people holding me accountable to produce a novel at a certain date.  No matter how I talk about writing it or setting goals for it, it never happens because of my lack of accountability.

When I started this blog, though, I made darn sure that every reader would hold me accountable to updating this on a regular basis.  I’ve changed my schedule multiple times.  A few months back, I said that I would update four days a week for six weeks straight.  Because I have regular readers (and know several of them, even the ones who don’t comment) I feel compelled/accountable to be sure that I published when I said I would.  Not only did I publish four days a week for that six-week period, I over-achieved and was publishing five days a week.

Even though that’s now done, I’m still being held accountable to publish these obscenely long posts once a week, It’s not a lot of readers that keep me in check, but it’s enough so that I’ve felt obligated to keep going.  You, the readers of this paltry blog, have kept me doing this almost two years and 201 posts later.

Thank you.

Once Upon a Time

I have nothing against fan fiction.  I grew up on the Star Wars movies and when I realized that there were several different authors writing in the Star Wars universe, I was snapping up as many novels as I could make time for.  Han and Leia’s three kids are just as much a part of the story in my mind as any other character, and Mara Jade remains the perfect girl for Luke.  (I am going to be heartbroken if in the next trilogy, they decide to leave the kids out.)

The thing about fan fiction, though, is that it’s a pretty exclusive club.  If you’re not a fan of the original works, you will find yourself very lost, very quickly.  It’s why I never read more than a couple Star Trek novels.  I was vaguely familiar with the characters, but they were all having adventures that I barely understood or related to.  Eventually, I left most fan fiction alone, including Star Wars.  See, the other thing about fan fiction is that there is little cohesion or connectedness between each author’s take on that universe.  They have their tale to tell about each character with little relation to another author’s story.  Each author can be telling an equally cool tale, but any character development one author gives can be completely forgotten by the next author’s story that takes place one year later.  It’s like having a permanent reset button for each tale.  Not ideal.

So I left it all alone: Star Wars, Star Trek, Forgotten Realms, Warhammer, StarCraft, Dungeons & Dragons, the whole shebang.  I’m only aware of these titles because of my work at Barnes & Noble; after shelving that many books daily, they start to stick in your mind.

I do make one exception: fairy tales.

Everybody grows up with fairy tales, and all these retellings of our favorite childhood stories are fan fiction, pure and simple.  And since there’s no copyright (as far as I’m aware) we’re allowed to enjoy these favorite characters and plots in as many varieties as we care to.

I haven’t just read or seen different fairy tales, one of my first short stories was a reboot of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”  (It’s still one I’m quite proud of, despite the warts in it.)

Cinderalla has hundreds of incarnations, and a couple of them start to reach towards my list of greats.  Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted and the movie Ever After feature prominently in my mind.

But perhaps the true creativity is explored in stories that bring the fairy tales into the modern world.  The TV miniseries The 10^th Kingdom was pretty cheesy but still a lot of fun, and despite the meandering through the middle, the plot was well-planned out and earned its climax.  I’ve written a couple times about how much I love the gritty and epic Fables comics.

With my penchant for the fairy re-tales, you’d think that I would have been one of the first to watch Once Upon a Time.  Instead, I waited until this Christmas; then I was on Netflix and for the next three days, I did nothing but watch that show until the second season’s finale.

I’m kicking myself for waiting this long because Once Upon a Time is making a bid to be the best of the fairy re-tales, if not ever, then definitely for the small screen.  The idea is simple: Regina (the evil queen who poisoned Snow White) placed a curse on all our traditional fairy tales.  The curse wiped out all of their memories and brought them to our world.  The now live in a town called Storybrooke that nobody can leave and time is frozen so that they don’t age and remain Regina’s blissfully unaware prisoners.

It’s the perfect except for one catch: Snow White and Prince Charming’s daughter, Emma, escaped the curse as an infant and she’s been brought to Storybrooke to break the spell and free everybody in town.

What shocked me is how horribly addicting this program is.  And perhaps I should amend this being a fairy re-tale; because ABC is this show’s station, Once Upon a Time is a Disney fairy re-tale.  The dwarfs are named Doc, Grumpy, etc., and Mulan shows up in season two.

I am a huge fan of the casting decisions: Lana Parilla as Regina is sheer perfection as the queen who has a concept of what good is but constantly lies to herself that her crimes are justified; Jennifer Morrison, Ginnifer Goodwin, and Josh Dallas convinced me as the family and individuals of Emma, Snow White, and Charming. 

But the true gem is Robert Carlyle as Rumplestiltskin.  Creepy and loveable do not belong in the same sentence, and yet that is how I feel about his character.  Unbeknownst to everyone, including Regina, he has pulled all the strings for his own selfish ends, ruined countless lives, and yet, as the series goes on, you find that all the double-dealing, crimes, and plots has all been to correct one mistake he made as a young father.  And thanks to Belle (played gorgeously by Emilie de Ravin) he starts on the path of redemption, and the shock for me is that I really believe that he might change to the good side.

(And when I say Belle loves him, you are to understand that Rumplestiltskin is the Beast of that fairy tale—and also, it turns out, the Crocodile who took Captain Hook’s hand.  That’s a fun story there.)

I can’t wait to start on the third season.  The heroes go to Neverland and have to deal the villainous Peter Pan; I am excited.

For all the praise, though, I have one serious complaint and it still may keep me from watching the rest.  Lana Parilla has done an amazing job with the character of Regina, but the writers have ruined her.  Regina is evil and manipulative, and despite her few attempts to change her nature, she never learns her lesson and plots to harm or kill everyone around her.  Despite all that, the good guys keep giving her another chance.  A chance she never asks for and spurns every time it’s offered.

This is completely influenced by Star Wars.  Darth Vader lives a life of murder and mayhem, but because in the end, he saves his son, that somehow redeems his soul to where he is on the same level as Yoda, Obi-Wan, and all the little children he sliced up in Revenge of the Sith.  I call bullsh—.  Regina is just the same as Vader, and she might be even worse.  She places curses, rips out hearts, falsely imprisons, wages war, and gives orders to kill entire towns in her own kingdom; yet when she’s finally caught and put on trial, Snow White lets her go because she believes Regina “still has good in her.”

I have a hard time believing that that’s true; actions are the fruit of what’s in our hearts.  Bad people can become good, but only when they replace what’s inside.  But assume Snow White is correct, so what?  At the end of the day, setting an unrepentant mass murderer free in your own country is so negligent in your responsibilities as a ruler that any crimes the murderer commits are now also on your hands.

This is such a black mark that if the writers don’t learn from their mistake and realize that Regina has worn out her welcome on this show, I may yet stop watching this show.  And that would be a shame because there is brilliance in this show that could make it one of the best stories of our decade.

Train Trip and the Wedding

So I went to Utah this past week for my brother’s wedding, and I took a train.  Now, except for the fact that a plane would have gotten me there in just over an hour while the train took 15, I enjoyed the trip far more than I ever had with flying.

First off are the seats.  The last couple times I’ve flown, I’ve felt as cramped as a sardine in a tin can.  I always plan on taking a nap but forget it.  The seats were so close together even in first-class, and when I was in coach, the engine was so loud I couldn’t hear myself think, This sucks.  On the train, though, the seats are so far apart that you can recline, pull up a footrest, and the only sound is that of the wheels going over the tracks.  And from my second floor seat, that wasn’t loud at all had a rather hypnotic effect.  I slept over half the ride.

That, and you can get up and move around whenever you want to stretch your legs, visit the lounge car, or get a bite to eat.

Oh, that’s the other thing.  You can bring as much food as you want on the train.  The folks sitting in front of me were coming home from working on a farm and another had made a major grocery run before getting aboard.  There was constant trading of food, from bagels to wheat berries, and it just fascinated me.  I felt under-prepared, for I’d only brought snacks.  But then, I’d planned on just paying for at least one meal on the train.

The prices were exorbitant, especially for this poor student.  I’d hoped to do a sit-down dinner, but the cheapest dish was $16.50 and I can’t justify a single meal for that much at this point in my life.  So I went to the snack bar and got a burger and chips.  The price for those might have seemed outrageous, but frankly, it wasn’t any worse than what I’ve paid for food at a carnival or state fair.

On a personal level, though, there’s a certain magic about trains and I fell under its charm.  I loved trains when I was a kid, and one of my favorite memories is the one train ride I took with my grandma when I was five.  Being on the train was simply invigorating because of the personal connection and this may probably only work its way in me.  And that’s okay since I’m the one that bought the ticket.  I got exactly what I wanted.

                        ***

The wedding went well.  The ceremony was performed in the Mt. Timpanogos temple, which really excited me.  I went to that temple once when I was 10; it was the first time I ever went inside a temple and that only because it hadn’t been dedicated yet.  Before dedication, temples have open houses where anybody in the world can take a tour through the temples, see all the rooms, and listen to some explanations about the work and worship that’s performed there.  After dedication, the work begins and only members with temple recommends are allowed in for the ceremonies performed there.

It’s been over 17 years since I’ve been to the Mt. Timpanogos temple and I was really pleased with the experience.  As architecture goes, this is one of my favorite designs.  It feels like a palace, and the exterior designs are simple but gorgeous.  I especially loved the moon stones placed around the walls.  Each moon stone is etched to show the moon at its different phases: full moon, half-moon, gibbous, etc.  It was fun to look at.

Can’t say much for the grounds, but it’s snowing in Utah right now so all the flowers are dead.  I imagine that come when spring arrives, the place will look gorgeous.

Temple weddings are typically quiet affairs.  Very few get to see the actual ceremony take place, partly because the sealing rooms aren’t that big so seating is limited (if you try to fit too many in, you’re in danger of breaking fire code, and nobody wants that.)  The other reason is also that not every Latter-day Saint has a temple recommend, so even many family members never get to see the wedding ceremony take place.  I didn’t get my temple recommend until the week before I turned 22.  I don’t recall seeing a marriage ceremony of any sort until around that time of life.

Being in the temple’s sealing room is quite an experience.  There’s an altar in the middle of the room, and the couple sit on either side facing each other.  There are two mirrors on opposite walls facing each other.  This creates an interesting effect where the images are reflected forever.  The couple can look into the mirrors and see infinite images of themselves kneeling at the altar while the temple sealer (the man performing the ceremony) pronounces the marriage covenant.  There’s a lot of symbology behind this, but one that I particularly like is that it represents that starting from that day on, they will be together for all eternity.

The ceremony itself is short.  Most of the time taken up is from the sealer giving advice and a sermon before performing the ceremony.  I don’t think we were in the room for more than 20 minutes.  After that, it was outside for another half-hour of wedding pictures.  Given that I am unused to the snow and every photo was outside, I couldn’t help but feel this took too long.

But I’m also a grouch.

                        ***

I may not have been to many weddings in my life, but I have been to a lot of wedding receptions.  This is where the party happens and where the brides invest the most planning.  Flower arrangements, wedding colors, the music, the dancing, more photo shoots, presents, cutting the wedding cake, tossing the bouquet, decorating the honeymooners car (they don’t plan that, but we all know it’s going to happen), table decorations, and the food.  Guess which part I’m most interested in.

My brother’s reception was rather nice.  They held it in a sort of third-story ballroom, and it was prepared beautifully.  It felt classy.

As for the food, my sister-in-law decided on doing just desserts, which was fine.  I didn’t plan ahead very well; I didn’t eat dinner until after I got home from the reception, at which point I discovered I couldn’t eat very much because I’d put in two much sugary goodness in my stomach.  I had to wait until breakfast the next day before I felt somewhat healthier.

And that’s been some of the highlights of my week.  Otherwise, Christmas is coming!  Merry Christmas everyone!  Hope it’s a good one!  Eat lots of food!  Enjoy your families!  I’ve never put in so many exclamation points in a single paragraph before!

Older Movies I Never Got Around To

This is completely meant to brag: I passed both my 140 WPM tests in one day.  I feel incredibly accomplished and filled with trepidation, because I won’t be getting any practice done on my machine over the Christmas break.  The 160s class is going to feel miserable by January.

                        ***

It should come as no surprise to anyone who reads this blog that I am so very often behind on pop culture.  This should not have been the case with the Terminator series.  I watched them repeatedly throughout college and still own the trilogy.  Much as I love it that particular universe, I never got around to the latest movie, Terminator Salvation, or The Sarah Connor Chronicles TV show.

I had an excuse for the movie: it came out near the beginning of my mission.  Missionaries are not allowed to watch movies (it has something to do with avoid distraction and focusing on service.)  When I came home, I had two years of movies left unseen and Terminator Salvation just wasn’t priority.

Which is too bad for me because that film is a pretty good installment for the franchise.  The earlier films were about preventing a disaster, and learning that even though the choices you make do change the future, calamities still come to pass and it’s your duty to carry on despite the opposition.

Terminator Salvation leaves these themes behind and gives us a straight-out war movie.  It does try to go deeper into other themes, such as the relationship between man and machine, but these are well-explored ideas in the sci-fi genre.  This movie really doesn’t bring anything new to the table, even in its own series.

And yet, I had a great time watching it.  The action was awesome, Christian Bale and Sam Worthington chewed a lot of great scenery, and it was really cool to see this post-apocalyptic world that has been hinted at but never shown.  I thought it was completely worth it.

                        ***

Much as I love a good action flick, though, I have to admit I get a little tired of what passes for jeopardy in today’s film culture.  We only have two modes: life-death situations or relationships falling apart.  Now, I’m not knocking it entirely, but I’m kind of bummed that we never seem to be reaching for more.

It’s why I like going to the older movies, the black-and-white dramas, and I’ve finally gotten around to seeing Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.  This may be the best movie I’ve seen all year.

James Stewart plays Jefferson Smith, a kind of a Boy Scout leader (although they call the organization something else) who is appointed a senator out of the blue.  It’s not long before this humble man gets embroiled in the political intrigues and finds that by being honest and standing up to the powers-that-be, his reputation is smeared and integrity is called into question.

This is the kind of story that inspires me.  Not once is Mr. Smith’s life ever threatened.  Nobody’s coming to put a bullet in his head.  What’s at stake is character and his willingness to hold true to his ideals.  It’s a magnificent story that everyone should make time to see it at least once in their lives.

Before I leave it alone, though, I also have to mention Jean Arthur’s role as Clarissa Saunders, Mr. Smith’s cynical secretary who turns into his biggest advocate.  I was as invested in her journey, where she begins jaded with the culture she’s lived in so long and ready to quit to becoming a firm believer and fighter for the world both Mr. Smith and she wants to live in.

I want more stories like this filling my life.

#56--Mr. Ripley, Poltergeist, and Rothfuss

I usually have a lot to say about the books that are on the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list, but in the case of The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith, I really don’t have much.

Tom Ripley is a rather unique antihero (a story’s leading character that doesn’t have certain or all of the heroic virtues.)  Ripley is a moocher, liar, whiner, and coward, and an incredible opportunist.  During a vacation in Italy, he murders the friend he’s been staying with and assumes the man’s identity, living off the fortune, reputation, and possibilities.

I am glad I read it.  I was fascinated with this from a moral standpoint; by the end of the book, Ripley gets away with it all, but I can’t help but think of the cost.  The fact is, when he was “living the dream” of going to all these European cities and living in the high hotels, getting the reputation he felt he earned, he never once seemed fully able to truly enjoy any of it.  In his mind, he was just worried that he’d get caught.  But it becomes clear that it’s not capture that sickens him the most, it’s the guilt he feels for his crimes.  The irony is that he won’t admit the guilty feeling and lies to himself more than he lies to anybody else that he had no choice in the matter.  So even by the end when it all works out well for him, I just know this character will be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life.

This is what I like about crime fiction: the audience is going to have to spend a lot of time in the heads of truly horrible, awful monsters, but crime stories tend to be some of the most honest tales told.  After all the criminal goes through and suffers in order to come out on top, the question I ask myself is, Was it worth the cost?  I can answer for myself that it never is.

In that way, it was worth reading before I died.

                        ***

There are a lot of movies I haven’t seen, even ones that are considered classics.  I’ve been trying to remedy that situation, which is why when I saw Poltergeist in the library, I borrowed it immediately and watched it that night.

Wow.  Can’t believe I never saw it before now.  This is probably the coolest ghost story I’ve ever watched (although I’d have to re-watch The Sixth Sense before I make final that decision.)  I’m not one who looks away from a movie over horror.  I will leave the room during moments of shame; embarrassment is a much stronger emotion, and it’s why I have a hard time with certain comedies.  I get to a point where I’m so embarrassed for the characters on screen that I don’t want to be around them anymore.  But leaving the room out of fear?  No.  Very little bothers me.  I usually won’t even turn my head once.

Poltergeist made me look away from the screen twice.  I think it’s a The Turn of the Screw-effect.  Fear is always magnified when one child is in danger, and in this movie, there are two children in danger.  Everybody else connected with the house is in danger, but what the ghosts really want are the kids, and both times I looked away was when the children were at the center of the screen.

Hard to watch, but so worth it, mostly for the family.  The majority of the horror genre deals with flawed people, and I don’t mean in the “nobody’s perfect” sort of way.  I mean that there is a major sin the victims’ are committing that almost makes them deserve their fate when the monster comes out.  That is not the case in this movie.  Somebody sinned, but it was not the family.  The parents love each other and their children, and the kids are being raised right.  They aren’t being punished for anything they did, but they take those hard times and actually grow closer together.

                        ***

I’ve been aware of Patrick Rothfuss for a while.  He’s only published two novels and the third one is nowhere near completion as far as I’m aware, and yet he’s become one of the most talked about names in the fantasy genre.  I finally took the time to read The Name of the Wind and I’m happy to say that it is worth the praise.

There’s plenty to make the fantasy audience happy; rich worlds, original mythologies, magic, demons, dragons, poetry, and the rise of a hero.

At its heart, though, this is a love story.  I’m tempted to add a doomed love story.  The hero Qvothe chases the wandering Denna and never seems quite able to catch her.  Now, I’ll admit that I don’t care for the girl at all.  I’ve met her type before, and yes, girls like her a beautiful and exciting, and there’s plenty that has happened in their past that you can only sympathize with them, but for all that, they are utterly selfish.  Denna goes through men like they’re toilet paper and treats them about the same.  The main reason no guy stays with her is because they know it’s not worth putting up with her s—.

Yet the romance still works for me because of Qvothe.  In a lot of ways, his experiences with women, love, feelings, and utter regard for chastity mirror my own.  Rothfuss has captured this aspect of my personality—except for the fact that I am not nearly as suave.

This might only be true for this book.  For all I know, Qvothe turns into a sex-pot by the next book, The Wise Man’s Fear (which I think is likely.)  But for this one, I am very much entranced and completely captured by this sweet moment of young love.

My Stroke of Insight

I have pushed, prodded, and persuaded my mom to read a lot of books I like.  Once in a while, I feel compelled to do the same for her.

For half a year, she’s been telling me to read My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D.  Since I don’t live at home, it’s pretty easy to ignore her.  However, I came back for Thanksgiving and while things were quiet and she didn’t have me help brine the turkey yet, somehow the book fell into my hands and it was implied I had no excuse to not read it now.  (It ended up being the fourth book I read that week.)

I went into it with some trepidation.  Dr. Taylor is a brain scientist and I have studiously avoided anything to do with that subject since college.  I took one psychology class and dropped out two months later.  Not because I wasn’t doing good—on the contrary, I was getting an A and it undoubtedly would not have hurt my GPA.  It was at least filling my GE credits to get my degree.

However, I was only doing well because I actually did the homework.  And if the tests weren’t open book, I would have failed.  After realizing I couldn’t remember anything since the class began and I had no desire to go back and review anything for comprehension, I walked out and never looked back.  I might need my brain to think, but I don’t need to think about how it thinks.

My mom thinks that’s stupid, and since I’m obviously wrong, I needed this book in my life.

My Stroke of Insight is Dr. Taylor’s story about her stroke at age 37 and her eight years of recovery that followed.  It’s a short book, but it’s valuable for three different reasons.

The one that mattered most to me were Chapters 2 and 3, which is a basic look at the brain.  I’ve seen the pictures and come across the terms dozens of times over my life, but this is the first time I can honestly say I understand the difference between the amygdala and the hippocampus, or what the limbic and cortical systems are for.

That in no way means that the rest is not worth your time.  They very much are.  The majority of the book is focused on her experience having a stroke and all that occurred as she tried to make herself well.  This portion of the story is not really for the stroke victims but for those who care for them.

One tip that stuck with me is that when you talk to stroke victims, you don’t need to shout.  They aren’t deaf; their hearing is just fine.  What can be problematic is comprehension.  What’s more effective is to talk s-l-o-w and be willing to repeat yourself as often as needed until they understand.

The last important point about this book is her unique (and rather spiritual) perspective on the roles and functions of the right and left hemispheres of our brains.  Her point is that these two sides of our brains tend to control us and how we feel.  Many seem to live so that we seemingly have no control over what we think or how we feel.  Dr. Taylor disagrees with this view, and shares her opinions based on her current understanding of how the brain and chemicals in our body work, and from her own personal experiences.

It’s certainly given members of my family hours of things to talk about and still never getting tired of it.