Skipped a Few Seasons

::blows away the dust::

Well, somehow we're right back to Summer again.  

The last nine months have been something special.  It's hard to believe that in that time I've been fortunate enough to snowshoe frozen lakes, dive the depths of Whiskey Town, scale the heights of Shasta, and otherwise hike much of the Northern hinterlands.  

I'm in the middle of a dead zone as far as formal education goes.  I'm still another year out before I can start much of the course work I had planned (I realized much of it has ridiculous work experience requirements).  But, this has been a blessing.  I was able to take some time off in January and completed the Wilderness First Responder (WFR) course--a necessary certification brought on by a close call at Mt. Lassen with a flipped car and several injured people.  

So Summer is starting again, and though I'm sure I'll find myself in some exciting positions, I really am looking forward to those relaxing days where the only thing you need to focus on is the trail right in front of you.  

Summer's End

Funny how after all these years out of formal schooling, it still feels like something is ending come September.  Too many good memories to account for them here.

And so starts another 'semester' of hard-nosed, book grinding, tea-sipping, stress-jogging efficacy.

CLU Designation - Your days are numbered
Algebra I/II - Re-mastery in the making
Masters - Closer to reality
Book - The note taking begins

That should get me to Thanksgiving. 

Stories of the Golden Child (My More Successful Brother)

[Dedicated to Mom: You know I'm just kidding...]

It was an early summer, Sunday morning.  The kind where the flies don't seem such a nuisance with pancakes on the griddle, a pot of syrup bubbling on the stove with berries of red and blue and a healthy dose of butter mixed in for good measure.  Sun pours through kitchen windows, and kids run about, fighting and hollering until plates are set and food is ready.  Silver dollars never had such power but in pancake form.

Fast forward 20 years

It's that same type of early summer, Sunday morning.  But now the griddle is idle and looks a forgotten shrine (though still more sacred than traditional ones), and the only remnants of a shared meal drips off of the counter onto tile floor as the cat laps up spilled milk. 

The kids are still fighting and it seems that the currencies have changed:

"Mom, I can't believe we're taking Conan.  I mean, we're hiking up a mountain, he'll just complaint he whole time and demand to be carried once he gets tired."

"Yeah he always wanders off and gets lost and we have to go find him--it's like he's retarded."

I knew my sister crossed a line with that last remark.  You see, Conan is our 3 year old corgi.  Despite the height, weight and species difference he's still definitely family.  And like family, you don't tell your mom that your younger brother retarded, even if he is sometimes.  I'll admit that he could outwit many of his three-year old peers (and he's quite good at herding, despite mom's protests), however, he's still a three year old boy in the body of a corgi, and he's not getting any older underneath all that fur. 

This fact can lead to some inter-sibling squabbling whenever we want to do physical activities that Conan was just not meant to do (have you ever seen a corgi's legs?). 

The real issue is that Conan is the Golden Child--literally and figuratively.  There was a time ago that sister and I would return from the creek triumphantly, holding bullfrog or crawdad in hand, covered absolutely in mud up to our chest--one foot in the house and our lives would be cut short.  Conan, on the other hand, returns from a fresh creek-mud bath, only to root and toot across carpet and rug like a baby piglet while receiving threats of a bath, and oh-you're-such-a-little-pot-belly-pig harassment.  And if he ever does truly raise the ire of either mom or dad, he'll cock his head at you in that corgi way, bending brows and hearts at the same time.  Sister never had that level of cuteness, and I was always too stubborn.

And so our golden-furred brother jumps into the van before we have time to debate the logistics of elevation, incline and corgi-leg height--he's coming with us, hell or high water (just not too high). 

[...we know that you love all your children equally]

The Start of Summer

And the start of many goals:

#1: Hike all 150 miles of the Lassen National Park trails (and log all the geocaches!)
#2: Finish CLU certification (even if it means bringing textbooks hiking)
#3: Perfect baking skills
#4: Be the board

On Cats and Gophers

Subtitle: Why I Love My Family

"Honey, what's that?"
"I think it's a mouse."

"No Mom, it looks like a mole."

"Come on, have neither of you ever seen a gopher?"

"Oh, yeah, I see it now.  Definitely a gopher."

Dad bends down and pets the cat on the head, and tells him that the gopher-mole-mouse corpse dangling by a canine is a very good thing, and that he's a very special cat.  

The cat, known here simply as Tetos--as Mr. Tetos to his peers, I'm sure--had just interrupted the communal, after-dinner clean-up by lolloping in with the half-dead gophermole only to ensure it's entire death by flinging it into the air, across kitchen floor sending it smack into oak-stained cabinets, shaking the Tupperware inside. 

I have to admit I did feel something when the cat waltzed in there with that fear-ridden-faced mouser, bopping him around like the toys other members of the family spoiled him with as a kitten (I'm afraid we did this to him; I was a horrible parent)--a feeling of, guilt?  Sympathy for the gopher?  No...was it: my-gods-is-this-how-this-is-supposed-to-work-in-a-real-home--? We unleash ruthless killing machines into a backyard of pristine beauty, into an ecosystem that has never known predators of such cunning and appetite, and allow them to historicize the moment by parading through kitchen and bathroom with often beheaded field mice and other soft fuzzy creatures, only to laugh in bemusement at the thought of trying to categorize the most recent trophy laying lifeless at the foot of the dinner table?--Yeah, I think that was more of the feeling. 

Then one of the other cats ate a cricket, and the feeling passed. 

And I went back to reading. 

Good Books

Good books stay with us like good friends

pages like voices, so oft repeated phrases

stories like memories and lovers

noted and not yet come

words that speak as only 

between us and bent spine

in moments reflected

upon the history of a body

a life whose story would go untold

save for dogeared edges

and errant marks

that blot facade and good face

betrays more than just prose

that voice, a living novel

reveals to us

more as we go

persists in hidden corners

of mind and troubled mouth

couches and coffee tables

dusty shelves and old bus stops

as eddies in a stream

or deep undertow at sea

rescues us from

broken, shallow homes

buried deep within a tale

weaves and cuts into our

passions, into stories we thought

our own

Summing the Year Up

My contribution to the annual, office newsletter, cross-posted from my financial/work interpretation-of-the-world blog: Ordinary Language Finance.

Even in America, the land of the second chance, and of transcendentalist redeemers, the paradox inevitably arises: you cannot change the world (for example, a state of marriage [or conversely: an economy]) until the people in it change, and the people cannot change until the world changes. - Stanley Cavell

I hadn't seen this passage since the middle-years of college (if you remember those days too, it was a different time back then--long before I personally came to an inkling's understanding of the power of tragedy, and the subsequent flow of change). During those shattering years, I questioned the purpose of many practices and sites of genius. I wondered why so many studied the tragic Greek plays, the tragic writings of Kafka, or the tragic films; I wondered why people didn't focus solely on the works of those who burned brightly with life, those artists and thinkers who reaffirmed this world (and second chances) with zeal. I never gave it much thought until recently.

But then I stumbled upon this one point that I had been missing (or most likely had been unable to internalize), which has only recently taken root in my mind:

What if philosophy is not, as many have supposed, a search for truth, but rather: the avoiding of the void (or avoiding [a] depression), the continual flight from skepticism, the acknowledgment that we are--by our very human nature--isolated: strangers to ourselves, others and the world all at once?

I take this question to mean simply this: philosophy (and education in general) was never about finding a truth, or the Truth (truth can be a wonderful object, but it fails to make us better than we are); rather, it is about recognizing the limits of our humanity (which can be thoroughly depressing for many reasons, not least of which is that these limits correspond to every facet of our economy--a financial extension of our humanity). If this is the case (that philosophy is about avoiding voids), then there has certainly been a lot of philosophizing going on in the last fifteen months. And this, I contend, is a good thing.

But then what does the last fifteen months, and philosophizing, and second chances have to do with anything? I would say that if philosophy is a practice to aid us in recognizing the limits of our humanity, then tragedy is an event that allows us to come close to the void, to reflect on our experience, to begin a practice of philosophy; that tragedy makes us better than we are. Tragedy has the potential to remind us of the extra-ordinariness of our ordinary lives (what some would call the point of philosophy); tragedies arm us to withstand or to appreciate better, the tragic dimensions of a world that those not similarly educated misunderstand (this is why everyone, at some point in life, will be told: "you kids just don't understand," and hopefully the speaker will have had the patience to help us understand). I emphasize potential because there are those who view the tragic as a tragic vision (that this time it's different; that it's all over; I might as well give up). However, tragedy need not be associated with only that unwavering, tragic vision; our desire for an end, a passivity, a will-to-nothingness is a denial of tragic wisdom, a denial of the temporality of tragedy.

This year, in 2009, the markets have been an exclamatory example of both tragedy and its necessary temporality (admittedly, this story is not yet complete, it never can be, but I argue that there is plenty of tragic wisdom to be gleaned from this experience).

Had our story (if I may speak collectively) stopped being written in 2008, it may have read very much like a Greek tragedy (and I most likely would have had no interest in it). Thankfully, our story is a living one, and may never truly stop long enough to occupy only one genre. But I see now that tragedy (and the accompanying politics) can lose its life when consigned to academic disciplines that treat it with such reverence that all profanity and darkness are banished (which is why the stories of war will never recreate fully the experience of it). Without an earthly, painful, lived-through-this-world example of tragedy, the flow of tears stops, and the world flattens.

I feel comfortable saying that the last fifteen months has changed the world, and we too--as individuals--have changed.

I know I've changed. I spent countless hours after work in a cafe with my text books (often with Farren in tow). I completed my CFP studies in May and learned that I passed the CFP exam in September. I took up piano once more after a very long hiatus and even purchased a ukulele (for such a tiny instrument it has a beautiful sound). I started dancing again (and the fox trot is still as difficult as ever). I also lost an important relationship earlier this year (my own, admitting triteness, personal tragedy); I know that many of you have had your own. For 2010 I want to backpack more, and spend a week in Colorado skiing and hiking, and write more.

But let me come back to my original quandary: Why study tragedy?

Tragedy reminds us of the inherent limits--or difficulties--of our humanity (an inability to communicate, to say what we mean, to mean what we say; a lack of patience; a lack of trust--all these are the ingredients of classic tragedy, our current political and economic climate being no exception). It is my hope, that having fulfilled these paradoxical requirements set forth at the beginning of this piece (a seemingly impossible, simultaneous change), that we can take from our experiences, our tragic wisdom, and use that knowledge to change the world and ourselves for the better.

And this year I leave you with one final thought:

The road we have taken is not the only one, but that, for better or worse, it is the one we are on.

Warmest wishes to you and your family during the holidays; and as always, thank you for being a part of my world.