At its core, this is not a new story. As a child of the Pacific Northwest—I in fact grew up within walking distance of the explorers’ eponymous college—I’m steeped in this history, which around here almost has a mythic ring to it. I’ve read the journals (Penguin Classics; ed. Frank Bergon) and the crib-like compressed edition, The Essential Lewis and Clark (ed. Landon Y. Jones). Our close family friend cum former history professor wrote a book on the lasting cultural impact of the duo and the passing of the 200 year mark since they put their white feet on Northwest soil.

Without being able to re-invent history, what Ambrose does here is two-fold. One, though the account he gives is necessarily in line with what’s in the journals, he gives a modern-edited rollicking flick to the narrative, lending it a momentum that landed the book at the #1 spot on the New York Times Bestseller List. Two, he bookends the story with early- and (tragic) late-life vignettes of his hero, aiming to round out what we know about Lewis, thus stretching the story of his life larger than solely the adventurer’s journey.

Ambrose takes time to introduce us to young Lewis, his firebrand mother, his rustic rearing, his capacity for and interest in intellectual self-improvement. We get to watch him establish himself with Jefferson and make Smart Youthful Choices that put him in line to lead the long-shot expedition to the Pacific coast.

It’s the later-life pieces that still feel fragmentary. Lewis, robust and stalwart on the expedition, makes a sudden turn for the melancholy and incompetent. His post as governor of the Louisiana Territory goes sloppy from the get-go, as Lewis falls into debt, likely into heavy opiate and alcohol abuse, and what seems to our modern eyes like some deep mental health grief. We don’t have the luxury of understanding exactly how this happened. Lewis is mum on the situation for the most part—one of the symptoms of his decline is that he stops writing people back, or writing at all. Ambrose puts together the pieces where he can. He looks for hints in fragmentary documentation. But the chips are stacked against him: there just isn’t much existing material to dig through. Colleagues comment on Lewis’ “madness”; government officials refuse to back his spending; he is heaped in shame—this we know. But the end story is far less fleshed out than the early story, and leaves us with a shroud of mystery that is likely eternal.

That Ambrose paints Lewis’ portrait with an occasionally starry-eyed luster is not surprising. It’s almost as if he’s a tiny bit in love with Lewis. One can feel Ambrose’s sadness as Lewis’ behavior becomes more erratic, his confusion and shock at Lewis’ eventual awful suicide. Through the bracing days of the expedition, Ambrose’s admiration is palpable—here is a biographer who maintains a steady commitment to the man he has brought to life.

Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen Ambrose

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A few weeks ago, the cover story of The New York Times Magazine (“Secrets of a Mind Gamer“, February 15, 2011) changed my reality for the better. In the piece (which I encourage you to read), writer Joshua Foer apprentices himself to a master memory coach. Foer, a regular guy who can’t memorize poetry either,  becomes, within a year, a nationally-relevant player in the realm of memory sport.

While the article doesn’t go into great depth about the specifics of Foer’s grueling training sessions, it does shed light on the core technique, so-called “Memory Palaces,” ostensibly invented by Greek poet Simonides of Ceos* in the 5th century BC. Of late, because of a massive project I’m choosing to keep quiet about, I’ve become intrigued by certain cognitive concepts, like “memory hooks” or methods like the Memory Palace concept.

Simonides likely didn’t care about the brain science of his mnemonic invention, he probably just noticed that it worked. The sole survivor of a catastrophic roof collapse during a banquet, he realized that he could clearly recall every attendee of the dinner based on where they were seated. What he’d stumbled onto was the brain’s predilection to recall things that have a visual and a spacial element attached to them. Humans not being designed to remember numbers or strings of words, but instead routes and images—those things that keep them alive in primal mountain-lion- and poison-berry-infested environments.

It goes like this. Use a place you know very well, like your house or workplace or route to school (my routes are foot-based; I’m not sure how well this would translate to vehicle-based routes). Take the thing you want to memorize and start unwinding it along a set path through this memory palace. For example, the first line of Shakespeare’s 44th sonnet unravels for me in the lobby of my work building. “If the dull substance of my flesh were thought” translates roughly into:

• a frenetic bunch of “ifs” bounding into the front door.
• The wall to my left holds a mural (in real life). In this case, it has suddenly gone “dull”, matte, and there is a “substance” running down it (rather jelly-like)
• Around the corner, the display case is stuffed to the gills with raw meat (“my flesh”)
• In the large conference room immediately to the left, a whole bunch of strange windmills are whirring (“were”) and Rodin’s “The Thinker” sculpture is in the corner (“thought”)

And so forth for the next 13 lines.

Not only did the sonnet—which I have pushed a bunch of failed efforts in prior years to memorize—stick (it’s been over a week now), but I can leap into any section of it by going to that part of my path through the building. It works, it works well, and it’s quick. Challenges aren’t non-existent: I still am working on coming up with good images for the tiny words. In in my world is a fish, as fish have fins and fin rhymes with in. Of is a dove, which is a witch, or an oar. Deciding how much space to give each visualization, and how much language data to try to fit into one scene-let is also under adjustment.

Encouraged by my sonnet success, I asked the Internet (Twitter and Facebook) what I should memorize next. There was some interest in pi, but I’m not doing numbers right now. My friend Brett suggested Chaucer, in the Middle English. That’s challenging. And today, while cleaning my bathroom, I memorized the elusive (in that I’d tried before and failed) speech by John of Gaunt in Richard II.

My trick for you today is to recount these three items from memory. I take no responsibility for the spelling in the Chaucer bit—I’m going to have to relax my orthographical OCD here—and punctuation is likely going to be creative in the other bits. But, see, I’m working in the oral tradition here. Let’s see how I do.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 44

If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
Injurious distance should not stop my way
For then, despite of space, I would be brought
From limits far remote, where thou dost stay;
No matter then although my foot did stand
Upon the farthest earth removed from thee,
For nimble thought can jump both sea and land
As soon as think the place where he would be.
But—ah! Thought kills me that I am not thought
To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,
But, so much of earth and water wrought,
I must attend time’s leisure with my moan,
Receiving naught by elements so slow,
But heavy tears, badges of either’s woe.

Prologue, Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer, Lines 1-16

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
The drought of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed evry vein with swich liquor
Of which virtu engendered is the flour
Whan Zephirus eeke with his sweete brethe
inspired hath in evry holt and heathe
The tender croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the ram his halfe course yronne
And smalle fowles mayken melodye
That slepen all the night with open eye
So priketh hem nature in her corages
Thanne folk longen to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seeke stronge strondes
To fewrne hawles, kowth in sundry lands
And specially from every shire’s end
Of Engolond, to Canterbury they wende

John of Gaunt, from Act II, Scene I, Richard II

This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise
This fortress built by nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war
This happy breed of men, this little world
This precious stone set in the silver sea
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house
Against the envy of less happier lands
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England

It Works

The crux of “Secrets of a Mind Gamer” is that success lies entirely in technique. There is no innate talent to memory (at least so far as science and brain scans can tell); it’s all a focused application of structured thinking. If anything, creativity—the ability to come up with absurd and, therefore, memorable visualizations of things—might be the strongest talent one can apply toward remembering things.

I’ve had a couple of people near to me say “I’m proud of you for memorizing that,” but I feel like I’m playing a ruse here. I’m not doing anything that anyone else in the world couldn’t do. I challenge you to try this—it’s really satisfying.

* Ceos being an alternate transliteration of Kea, namesake island of my goddaughter.

I Read Five Six Books in January

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

I make a point of reading all of the Pulitzer (fiction) winners. I was nearly a year late on this one, and my goal is arbitrary anyway. Strout’s book hits somewhere between novel and thematically-linked short stories, and some make me want to go out and wail at the cold moon and some make me want to go stare at the ocean off of the coast of Maine and some make me want to stop reading the goddamned things. I think: worth reading. I think: I am sad now.

JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford

Maybe it’s the beginning of the end if I’m starting to count technical reads as reading accomplishments. But Crockford is a demi-god of sorts in my circles, and demi-gods are abstract concepts and abstract concepts lead to good literature. Or something. Plus now, my JavaScript situation isn’t as dire as it was before and I’m slightly less embarrassed around my colleagues.

Henry V (Folger Shakespeare Library) by William Shakespeare

Pish for thee, Iceland dog, thou prick-eared cur of Iceland! It is telling that that is mostly what I remember about this marshal history, in which Falstaff bites it.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

Kind of embarrassed that I read this. Should have gathered from its nearly-unanimous five-star Amazon rating that it might devolve into “and then I found Jesus” after a heartwarming redemption after a whole lot of really horrible things happened to the protagonist, who really existed. I’ll shelve this next to Chicken Soup for the Soul and call it good.

Boy by Roald Dahl

I made David listen to this childhood favorite of mine, an autobiography of the author Roald Dahl (though Dahl claims it’s not an autobiography, but okay, sure). Best part? Possibly near then end, when he refers to himself as a “hot-bottomed fag” in a completely innocent way, which seems five hundred ways impossible. But it really happens. Also, everything about Roald Dahl makes me go awwwwwwwwww and get all dreamy-faced.

King of the Vagabonds: The Baroque Cycle #2 by Neal Stephenson

Wait, there’s seven more books in the “cycle?” Dear Baroque Cycle, Please bring back funny/interesting Neal Stephenson. I hear these get better. I dearly hope they do.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

Henry V (Folger Shakespeare Library) by William Shakespeare

Boy by Roald Dahl

King of the Vagabonds: The Baroque Cycle #2 by Neal Stephenson

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So, in compromise, let’s slide narrower the window of recap to encompass only one subject: two presentations I gave this month. That’s safe enough. Dull as Tuesdays, but allows me to put a checkmark next to blog, for chrissake on my tattered to-do list.

It’s slightly insipid, but I have an aim to perform more public speaking this year. This is a goal that likely shows up on the uninspired New Year’s Resolution worksheets of MBAs and delusional self-starters. But it is something that has its uses. My uses? Objective one: Even one percent less self-deprecation, as allowed for by requisite increase in self-confidence. Objective two: World, meet me—I’m not totaled out by my anachronistic and wordy self over here on my slightly la-di-da Web site, I also do this one thing all day, every day. I helped co-found a company that has been around, not without some marked success, for the past three-and-more years. So, yay. Let’s share some of this stuff we’ve learned at work with others, shall we?

Presentation the First: Totally Technical

I gave a talk last month at the Portland Drupal Users’ Group (PDXDUG) and sort of sheepishly posted this slide deck, expecting it to go darkly into the Internet night. Oddly enough, it seems to have made the rounds, ending up places I would not expect, cheering me. It’s probably really boring to you unless you’re one of the four hundred people or so in the world who spend night and day making Web sites for mobile devices. Using the Drupal Content Management system. Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Presentation the Second: Totally Megalomaniacal*

I also got invited to Research Club, to give a talk on, yeah, whatever seemed interesting to me. I plumbed the depths of my weird hobbies to see if I could come up with a thread or a metaphor or a theme. To see if I could make my life imitate art. Here’s what I came up with. It was better without the text—that is, it’s a slide deck that needs presenting—but ah, well, caution, to the wind, has been thrown. See what you think and be gentle about it; I’m fiercely self-conscious of how many photos of me are in this damned thing.**

* But that is okay…at times? Right?
** I just finished reading Henry V. It was difficult not to type that as damnéd.

B.F. Lloyd & Co Map of Canada and Arctic Regions of North America, c. 1826

This map is a gold mine of pre-Victorian miscellany and invention, construed by a heavily British cartographer. A bold southward sweep of the southwestern edge of Canada puts what is currently Washington state (excuse me, New Georgia) squarely under the Canadian thumb. This was well before Britain conceded Oregon territory to us Yanks, and indeed the map was produced during the run-up of tensions around the Oregon boundary dispute (“fifty-four forty or fight!”, which we didn’t). So repellent was the notion of Oregon, apparently, that on this map the name is eschewed entirely in favor of the wildly original combination of “New Calafornia [sic]” and “New Albion.” Regarding the latter, I guess “New England” was already taken.

According to seller notes, this map was “COMPILED UNDER THE SUPERINTENDENCE OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE DIFFUSION OF USEFUL KNOWLEDGE, ET CETERA,” which is charming. Charming enough, that, according to Wikipedia:

References to the Society are rare in the modern era, but within Steampunk culture, it is not entirely uncommon to refer to the Society itself and/or its better-known publications in an attempt to lend Victorian verisimilitude.

Of course.

The Quarellers of the MacKenzie

The depiction of the northern lands is long on flair. A 19th-century traveler, heading north, would pass through New Cornwall and New Norfolk (we rather lamely call these places British Columbia these days), and, heading east over PART OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS might cross the Daha Dinnee River, “half the size of the Mackenzie, cuts through several ranges of the Moun^ts; The Indians descend it in three days.” Continuing beyond the Arctic Circle, one descends toward the Arctic Ocean, past “The Quarrellers of the MacKenzie, or, Leucheux of the Traders.” I would love to meet those quarrellers. If one went west instead, one might arrive at the RUSSIANS SETTLEMENTS, i.e., Alaska.

I set several reading goals for 2010.

2010 in Reading

I read 40 books in 2010, still a slightly down number, though one more than 2009. 2008′s 75 books still hangs above me, but I don’t anticipate that kind of downtime or insomnia again any time soon.

I’m starting to put a dent in Shakespeare’s histories, getting both parts of Henry IV under my belt. I read a couple of full-on tomes, which should really count as three or four books each: Lonesome Dove (Larry McMurty; over 900 pages), The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (David Mitchell), Last Night in Twisted River (John Irving), The Lonely Polygamist (Brady Udall), and Mating (Norman Rush).

There were a few real awful experiences. Adam and Eve by Sena Jeter Naslund stands out in its own league in that regard. Tom McCarthy’s much-regaled C confused the hell out of me.

My favorites?

In no particular order, I enjoyed these:

• A Reliable Wife, Robert Goolrick: This story went by in a flash of grim, spare prose. I remember it more as a series of carefully-crafted snippets. Plot implausible, but evocative in the extreme.
• The Piano Teacher, Janice Lee: This one loudly announces its place in the genre of books bought in airports, but I found that it was even more absorbing than books-designed-to-be-read-on-vacation normally are. The setting (WWII Hong Kong) was absorbing, as were the characters. A page-turner through and through, but a rather better-than-average one.
• The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins: In which I eat crow and admit that some YA titles can be really, really great. If you haven’t read it yet, read it.
• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell: Mitchell continues his hyperbolic arc toward becoming my favorite author. This weird confabulation of Dutch-Japanese-forbidden-empire history is long, dense and crazy-making, but wonderful.
• Let the Great World Spin, Column McCann: It won the National Book Award for a reason.
• Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurty: Potboiler chintzy meets Pulitzer-class plotting and character building. Slow and yearning in its first couple of hundred pages, but then it stampedes all the way to the far-off end. A long and harrowing adventure.

What about 2011?

What about it? I’ve set definitive reading goals for the past four years, starting with quantity (50) in 2007 and moving more toward specific authors and genres. I am at the point where I feel like I don’t need any shaping or prodding. I have a pile of books waiting for me, and I am waiting for them. I am going to do something extreme and not set any reading goals for 2011.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, A Novel by David Mitchell

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

The Piano Teacher: A Novel by Janice Y. K. Lee

Let the Great World Spin: A Novel by Colum McCann

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• Work
• Eat
• Drink
• Work
• Sleep
• Work
• Abscond to an Island

This leaves very little time for extraneous activities such as blogging, anachronistic hobbies, the reading of Shakespeare histories (hey, I did read Henry IV, Part II).

For Thanksgiving we went to Hawaii

For Thanksgiving we went to Hawai’i. This was my first time in the state, which requires boarding an aircraft to visit (well, within reason). As such, you can see why it took me so long to cross state #49 off the list (#49 on my list, that is. I’ve been to all of the continental states).

When we left, it was icy in Portland. The trip fulfilled all of the requisite travel brochure steps of leaving the wintry mid latitudes behind for a balmy blast of Mai Tais, overpriced appetizers and a whole lot of other people doing same.

Flying to another Island

View from Diamond Head

The best part was most certainly the Jeep. We were able to rock our Barbie/Ken lifestyle and be at one with the fresh air. One time it rained real hard with no warning, which was exciting. We had to learn how to put the Jeep back together with great haste.

IMG_7884

Our Vacation, in a nutsthell

O’ahu is, for the most part, overcrowded. There are over a million people and I kept seeing them all over the place. What a perfect, coconut-palm-shaded beach, with crystalline water and several hundred people. What a magical rainy jungle kingdom with ferns taller than people and vivid-hued flowers and several hundred people. What a wonderful drive around the North Shore and the windward edge of the island with the other several thousand people.

Ala Moana Park and Waikiki

David Bouldering at Waimea Bay

The Best Parking Spot I Ever Parked in

Autumn, a giant fern-thing, the jungle

Ilikai Marina

The fish were pretty neat, and colorful.

Following Hawaii was a shocking stint of about 10 days during which I never left the office. Typing and freaking out, mostly.

Then we went to Iceland

You know, like you do, for a long weekend.

December at Þingvellir

Iceland in mid-December is, as you might imagine, primarily dark. We landed at Keflavík around 7 in the morning, and by the time we’d rented a car, shuffled our bits and belongings, made the 50-km. drive into Reykjavík, checked into our apartment and had breakfast, I was sort of expecting to see some sort of hint of dawn. It was 9:30. Not at all. The crack of dawn is around 10:30 and the sun doesn’t come up until 11. Compared to that, the darkness at 4:30 didn’t seem that odd.

December Midday

Iceland is on GMT; a considerable skew when one recalls how far west the island is. 21ºW at Reykjavík. That’s like us sharing a time zone with Dallas, Texas. This late morning pitch darkness was the element I could not feel natural about. Even on our last morning there, I went a for a long walk in downtown Reykjavík at about 9AM. The city always has a hushed feel, and in the winter even more, and in pitch-dark winter morning even more. Every window has a softly-glowing light of some sort: stair-stepped candles are traditional (electric now, of course), but also stars and fairy lights and other creative options.

Kes and Aileen, Downtown REK

Likely because the electricity is cheap and green—geothermal and hydro—fluorescent lighting seems to be shunned in homes. I like that a lot. Also of negligible cost: heating. Geothermally heated water is piped in from a couple of plants outside of town and is used for steam heat and hot water. It smells terrible, intensely sulfuric, but makes for a gentle and ubiquitous heat source. The temperature of dwellings is as often as not controlled by opening windows as adjusting the radiators.

A few other observations. Icelanders use studded tires. The only beer you can buy in regular stores is 2.25% ABV, but anyone can buy it. People in Reykjavík drink very hard, and it seems even harder in the winter. People don’t tend to get up or get on the streets before it’s light; the schedule is very shifted. Icelanders take Christmas Very Seriously, but it has a different appearance than here: very white, delicate, a celebration of light. There is a flavor of Doritos called “Cool American” because apparently “Cool Ranch” doesn’t translate. For whatever reason, the mid-range American corporate restaurant chain Ruby Tuesday’s has a foothold. Booze is expensive overall, but wine is cripplingly so, and almost entirely plonk. There are a baffling number of street cleaning vehicles in Reykjavík and they will drive past your apartment window over and over and over and over again around 3AM. There is a canvas-walled semi-truck that drives around on weekends with a full band (one night) or DJs (another night) in the back. They have a lot of Internet in Iceland. Some of this is not news.

Tired.

David and I bought a painting, but that is subject for another post.

Oh and we saw the Northern Lights. This is not an aside: it’s central. I jumped up and down in the harbor upon sighting them. I was beside myself. Sadly, we were right in the middle of the city, so the best photo I was able to get was:

Aurora Borealis; Reykjavík

It wasn’t until we were on our way back to the airport on Monday that Kes and Aileen and Kea got a real glimpse of the utter wonderful weird that is the Icelandic landscape; we drove the long way around the Reykjanes Peninsula, over moon-like lavascapes carpeted by plump lime-colored moss, past a wind-whipped lake in a stark bowl of dark sand, no vegetation. The North Atlantic flung itself ragged in gale-force winds. In a strange small town, a baby in a covered pram wailed unattended in a gas station.

Kleifarvatn

Right before Kea demanded her shovel

Iceland is becoming my favorite place.

Amazing clouds

See some more photos.

That is, can we ever know ourselves—can we ever exist?—as, really, all we are all, as Luzhin contemplates in The Defense: “…as in two mirrors reflecting a candle…only a vista of converging lights…” Luzhin here, too, realizes to some degree that we may all just be the incomplete sum of all of our own reflections off of others’ beliefs of us.

Oh, there is also a story here, nominally a metaphysical detective plot. Heady stuff for a mere 100 pages. I’m starting to doubt I exist.

In The Eye we continue our acquaintance with the generally jovial, mostly borgeois and slightly boorish collection of Russian emigrés. We feel how Nabokov was once part of this motley culture, at once an echo of the Motherland and an aspiring intelligentsia with (sometimes silly) cosmopolitan goals. We first get introduced to this community in Mary. Its importance was less central in King, Queen, Knave (a more German feel) and The Luzhin Defense (slightly more Russian). But it’s back perforce in The Eye and will continue on into his next novel chronologically: Glory (at least, based on what I’ve read of the back flap).

Our narrator is a peevish young man in Berlin, a recent Russian immigrant who is serving as the tutor to some snotnosed young boys. He hates it. Despite the lack of anything morally substantial in his life, he seems a preening, over-confident dandy. He takes up with a slightly sloppy mistress, whose husband wises to the liaison and gives the protagonist a summary beating—in front of his pupils. Mortified, he shoots himself.

Now ostensibly dead, he spends the following three-quarters of the story living a dream-like extension of the same life. He becomes obsessed with the identity of a young man named Smurov. We’re told that Smurov is a fair, wonderful, temperature man who is impeccably well-spoken and generally sensitive. Almost immediately, Smurov’s actions belie this and we’re left with the duty of deciding what is really happening, or what it means for something to really happen, or, anyway, to peel through the conceit of the narrator’s own life and identity.

In the narrator’s opinion, Smurov only exists as others see him to exist, through their own keyhole perspective into his existence. Each person has their own Smurov-image: pompous fool, liar, latent homosexual, weird, would-be suitor.

The narrator explains: We think of ourselves as a knowable collection of things, but, really, we’re unbounded, there is no snapshot of knowing that anyone can bundle up. We’re all fragmentary refractions of others’ glimpses of us (or even unglimpsed shards we will never know about?), unknowable, reduced to the anecdotes and opinions of our observers, which disperse like steam after our corporeal existence ends.

As the narrator unfolds Smurov from different angles, he wrangles with other human conditions, stumbling through the agony and ecstasy of unrequited love along the way. We don’t care, alas, because his character is so repellant as to make him laughable, not pitiable. Or is it just that we think we understand the narrator’s smug shallowness because we’ve seen 100 pages of its description? Maybe the reader, just like any of the individual watchers of Smurov (or the watcher of the watchers of Smurov) think we know the entirety of him, but merely know one fragment in time, from one specific perch.

Nabokov progress is now 7 of 18 novels!

The Eye by Vladimir Nabokov

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The Moon

I’m totally blown away by this photograph that David took through his 6-inch 8-inch Newtonian telescope the other night during an icy, full November moon. The air was quite clear and the shutter speed fast (1/180), well-exposed such that I was able to pull out lovely detail during post-processing. Well done, Mr. Pencil!