I have limits. Not many, but I do have limits of what I can do on a daily basis. And I’ve finally reached several of those limits. I am, however, fortunate enough to be surrounded by some really good people that believe in what I am doing in other places to contribute, participate, or otherwise be involved and head toward success.

This is a good thing.

So, I apologize again. I will finish up the rest of my academic postings, but there will be very few new postings until I can finish up these other projects.

The microcosmic view of Asian families was definitely interesting. Through the eyes of the daughter, in relating her childhood, she would represent her mother in the broken English while the fluid English of her own thoughts and words were quite in contrast. Seeing the lack of cultural adaptation on the part of the mother was a stark contrast to the acceptance by the daughter and even her brothers. The familial dinners, the differences (and changes) in priorities in chores based on activities, and the role of pride and honor in the family was all very choice.

I found the scene with the rule book to be amusing. The rules for chess have not changed significantly in over six hundred years, so the mother’s rant about throwing out the rule book and learning for one’s self was the object lesson not only of immigration, which she seemed to be relating out of experience, but of life itself. We don’t have a rule book for life for the very reason that each of us is individual, making our own individual moves with the pieces on the board, and bringing our own unique style to the game of life. Even when we know that pawns will only move a certain way and bishops move a different certain way, our style of play is unique. If we all had the same rule book and played by the example given therein, it would be a boring match indeed. But the daughter took that advice and did go learn her own method of play.

But it was fascinating to see the daughter learn her own style and play her own way only to find herself bound up still by her cultural ties. The mother wanted to show her off. The daughter seemed to be okay with merely winning the games. The daughter wanted to study in peace. The mother wanted to hover over her. Even though she threw out that rule book on her mother’s suggestion, the daughter never really could separate herself from being bound by the rules. No matter how hard we try or hard far we run from our cultural heritage, it still influences us and provides at least some of the rules we follow whether we comprehend that influence or not.

I have a personal view of American culture that it is not actually a culture itself but an ever thickening mess of various cultures that don’t always mix well together: it is a melting pot rather than a plate of delicacies. I quite prefer a certain amount of cultural insulation not for any kind of prejudice but for the ability to see distinctly the beauty and influence of individual cultures and be able to taste test those cultures with a sense of integrity. I don’t believe that a pancultural approach necessarily means that we should have a fusion of cultures as we should have and teach an overwhelming (and humbling) appreciation for the diversity of cultures. The influence of various cultures is going to happen. We cannot—nor, in my opinion, should we desire to—stop this intercultural influence from happening. But what I perceive more often than not, and sadly more often among Caucasians than any other group, is a desire to eliminate cultural diversity through a fusion of disparate cultural nuances and create this bland unculture that levels the playing field and has neither any inherent beauty nor any promise of translating cultural values and mores to anyone at all. It is a neutering of culture for the sake of fitting in and being anonymous, “equal,” and tolerable in a society that doesn’t know how to get along with each other any other way.

[Edited from 01 Sept 2008 and reposted]

In A Thousand Nights and One Night, the two royal brothers are faced with similar situations in which the younger is comforted by the plight of the older and then, later, they are both comforted by finding the great demon in such ignorance as to the shenanigans of his own captured and imprisoned wife (1574). As each event transpires, the misery of the last is replaced by the pity offered—either implicitly or explicitly—to the misery of the next.

When Shahzaman is reduced to a depressed recluse during the beginning of his stay with Shahrayar, nothing can bring him out of the funk until he observes the frolicking of the Queen and her slave-girls in the garden (1570-1571). When he comes to the realization that here his brother’s wife not only participated in this infidelity out in the open of the garden but brought along her slave-girls to engage in a lascivious orgy of flesh and fantasy, he understood that his own plight of walking in on the private affair of his own wife with a kitchen boy (1569) was very minor by comparison.

One of the more interesting things about grief—whether self-inflicted or generated by circumstance—is the near universal and irrational assumption that we are the only one who could ever feel this way. In fact, this is exactly what Shahzaman says: “I used to think that I was the only one who suffered” (1571). He goes on to finish that thought, saying, that he has observed “everyone suffers [and therefore] I am no longer alone my misery” (1571).

Of course, Shahrayar thinks that he has the perfect marriage, but is quickly reduced to murderous anger and irrational quests for something greater misfortune than his own. I am the first to admit that the solution these two brothers devise is the most ridiculous response to the circumstances that I could possibly imagine. However, it fulfills the plot device here of providing the foundation for the stories of Shahrazard. Likewise, it sets the stage for the story of the demon’s wife. Once they realize they have been hoodwinked into a situation with this woman, they figure out that if a great demon cannot control his own stolen woman, how could they ever have thought to control their own (1574).

The irony of misfortune is the aspect of creating those who pity others from those who just moments before have been pitiable in their own circumstances. It does not take away the misery of the individual to see someone more miserable. But it does place it within a certain perspective that allows us to gain a frame of reference to our own pain. One of the more interesting things to me about myths and legends is the storytelling aspect that assists in the transference of pain and misery from an internal problem to an external antagonist which can be confronted in many different modes of resolution. The fear of the dark is transmuted into the boogieman which, as seen in a dozen horror flicks, can be assailed and defeated not by the light but by facing the darkness itself. By objectifying the fear, we have something with which we can wrestle—much like Jacob wrestling with the angel—in hopes of overcoming our fear and gaining the blessing that comes from that victory.

For me, the loss of the mythmaking is a tragic mistake of our modern and postmodern assumptions of science over religion, fact over fiction, knowledge over wisdom. By losing the ability to explore the healing power of myths and legends, we have opened the Pandora’s Box of pathology that is ever more rapidly drawing us into forms of despair that cannot be overcome through an empathetic approach to other’s misery. Such stories teach us lessons that can be transferred into our everyday lives. Once we dismiss them as merely myths or merely stories in a book, we lose the ability to learn from them in ways that cross the boundaries of rationality and sullen facts.

Someone asked me recently if I believed that anyone takes myths seriously anymore since we have science to explore and explain the unknown, and isn’t it really more about an allegorical approach to the stories and their meaning. I agreed and replied, “that is precisely what myth is: allegory. . . . We are past the myths as explanations for the unknown. But I don’t think we are past myths as vehicles for the transmission of ideas and truths.” These stories, myths, allegories, and legends reach down and touch something much more than the flat expository of facts and figures.

[By way of example, if] I were to provide the sordid and falsely glittering accounts of my years inundated in a haze of wine, women, and song, then it would provide nothing more than a rock star’s orgy of roadies and toadies, of snake oil salesmen and sycophants. But to tell a story of a common man wrestling with an angel to become something greater than himself, or of an boy who would not be discouraged from pulling a sword from a stone to become a king, or a young woman who would not be satisfied until the even the mice became her coachmen and reach for the unassailable prince is to enucleate the very pain that suffocates the life out of a child. It is to tell a tale that reaches into something extremely personal and attaches itself to some sensory moral nerve and creates an understanding. And in that fertile understanding, the seeds of wisdom are planted.

I believe that stories are our lifeline to sanity and a healthy circumambiency of our personal, social, and global pathologies. I believe that by exploring ourselves in the light of the mythical, we understand what it means to be human and then to rise above a mere humanity to something greater.

[Edited from 18 Apr 2008 and reposted]

This is not to suggest that there is no therapeutic value to the tales or that the myths are impotent in meaning. But it is naïve to think that these stories—wives turning mistresses and husbands into animals and then being transformed into animals themselves (1584-1586, 1589-1590) or wives deceiving husbands for the love of beggars (1611-1614)—did anything more than to secure Shahrayar’s conviction that he had dealt with his own wife and slaves in the only appropriate manner: that is, harshly. Granted, there are subplots in several stories of women who performed incredible acts of sorcery to the benefit of the slighted men and there is at least one story of a female who saved a man directly out of love (1588). But it is the evil of women toward men that stands out directly throughout the far majority of the tales. This cannot be healthy for anything more than assuring Shahrayar that his own heinous gynocide was an acceptable course of action.

The therapy of these tales, then, must come from some other source than the specific content itself. Indeed, even Bettelheim seems to agree, in The Uses of Enchantment, when he states that Shahrazad “attains her goal through the telling of many fairy tales; no single story can accomplish it, for our psychological problems are much too complex and difficult of solution. Only a wide variety of fairy tales could provide the impetus for such catharsis” (87-89; emphasis mine). But going one step further than Bettelheim, I believe that it is through the dedication of the Shahrazad herself telling these tales to the king that is the ultimate healing. Yes, the stories form a framework around which he can grasp some kind of good in his situation (in some of the tales, at least) and head toward a specific healing. I do not deny this. But in becoming personally absorbed into the tales, wanting to hear the next night—”By God, I shall postpone her execution for tonight and many more nights” (1615—cf. 1599, 1610)—he begins to feel a longing for satisfaction, for the ending of the story. Likewise, he longs for the satisfaction and ending to his own personal pain involving women. Shahrazad provides him with this means through the tales, of course, but through herself as the impetus for healing by showing her personal dedication to the king as both a woman and a wife.

[Edited from 25 Apr 2008 and reposted]

One of the interesting things about religion and literature is the look into the microcosm of the soul of a culture that stories such as these give us hundreds of year later. Arabic countries are, by their very construction, extremely religious in nature. Even in the pre-Islamic state of the world, the polytheists of early history revolved around the religious nature of society itself. Given that Abraham came up our of Ur (and is the father of both Islam and Judaism), there are huge common threads in both religions that date back to the religious composition of society of the Babylonians. So, should these stories have been written with evil characters making references to god? How could it have been written otherwise? It would have been extremely unusual for it not to have been written this way. This is not to suggest that this is, in any way, some form of religious literature. But the Western notion that there is a separation between religious and non-religious works is something that isn’t found all that often in, specifically, Middle Eastern literature.

Do these overtones fit with the story? Absolutely. In order to have these references to the Jinn, talking animals, and extranatural events, there has to be the postulate of a spiritual hierarchy that ends with something supreme over all of these elements. If there is not a spiritual nature to the universe then such stories make no sense as moral dramas and are merely fantasy. However, even that said, without the ability to fathom a world that is different and apart—even if connected in some way—then fantasy itself becomes meaningless. If we cannot dream of something more, then we cannot create here in our own existence.

[Edited from 27 Apr 2008 and reposted]

But throughout the whole ordeal, Antigone shifts her balance between her rebellion against Creon’s edict to her own her own self-loathing to a martyr’s rant about her own glory at dying for truth, justice, and the Theban way. But it’s much more simple than this. If there is a single thread that runs throughout the whole of Sophocles’ plays it is about people actually talking to people—and then listening rather than reacting.

What we’ve got here, is . . . failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach. So you get what we had here last week. Which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it (Cool Hand Luke, 1967).

Three times Creon is told that his own pride is in the way of justice. Antigone tells him. Haemon tells him. Tiresias tells him. In the end, the Leader recaps all that for Creon as he begins to think that maybe he really had stepped over a line somewhere. He begins to listen but it is too late. He has lost his niece. He has lost his son. He has lost his wife. But probably the one thing that is never really made apparent is that he lost the respect of his people. One cannot help but look at this whole scene and wonder if this is really the way he wanted it all to end. His own pride kept him from the table of reason and common sense. The travesty of war was not enough for him, but he had to draw lines between his nephews and their actions for or against Thebes.

I spent some time today researching resistance movements throughout history, specifically those post-World War II. In nearly every case, a resistance movement was formed around a charismatic individual who felt that standing up to the establishment—whatever that establishment may have been—was the right thing to do. The problem that I have with calling such people heroes is that it depends on which side of the fence one examines the evidence as to whether or not one is a freedom fighter or a terrorist. Not even so-called peaceful movements are so peaceful when one begins to dig beneath the myths that rise up around heroes.

We examined the ideas of heroes back under Gilgamesh, Noah, and Jonah. Heroism, I said then, was born from the novelization of events, not from the events directly or even the men or women that are heralded as heroes in those myths. The idea of noble Palestinians fighting for their own State in the Middle East—a story, a fiction told to children who grow up desiring in some twisted way to become martyrs—is overshadowed by the reality that those martyrs are dying for a cause not even begun during their lifetime and for which they have no actual knowledge. The converse idea that somehow the world community is supporting or defending a minority that has a legacy of both historical and fictional persecution against yet another despotic attempt to obliterate a race of people is ridiculous. What we’ve got here, is . . . failure to communicate. It is the same failure as those freedom fighters in Iraq blowing up American soldiers under the cover of darkness and those terrorists who storm houses of women and children killing everything in their way under the orders of an American President who has shredded a Constitution designed to repel a King who did not want to be denied his rights of imperial sovereignty. In every situation, the right and the wrong is a matter of perspective and directive, a sense of someone’s moral right to infringe on the rights of others, the inability to mind their own business.

[Edited from 14 Feb 2008 and reposted]

We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven’t you?
—Norman Bates from Psycho (1960)

I found the story of Don Quixote to be inspiring on many levels. Based only on the reading parameters of this assignment, I see a repetition of a parallel insanity-that-is-not-insanity common to those loosely called mad seers: Merlin, John Dee, Jesus of Nazareth, Simon Magus, Robert Kirk, and others who remained steadfast regardless of the reception of their visions by those around them. In many ways, while quite different from the typical spiritual seer, Don Quixote bears some remarkable similarities to them as well. He does not preach his worthy sense of nobility but yet he lives it despite the ridicule and abuse that he receives. In many ways, he might be seen as the true soul of religion in action rather than merely given lip service and ignorance as so many do today.

It cannot be without an overt sense of irony that Cervantes wrote a book of fantasy in which books of fantasy caused Quixote’s “brain to [dry] up and he went completely out of his mind” (2681). The fact that the far majority of talented and influential people in history have been literate turns no surprise here to find that Cervantes used illiterate and uncouth individuals in the story to mock Quixote during his adventures. For me, at least, this just goes to show that Quixote was capable of far more imagination and enjoyment out of life than those who had resigned themselves as innkeepers and farmers, whores and monks.

That Sancho—despite whatever illusion his own greed may have led him to believe in the literalness of those promises made to him—could actively participate in Quixote’s visions of a time or even merely of a moment in their own present reality when gentlemanly behavior and proper manners was more important than giving into the status quo ensures us we are dealing with powerful forces at work that go beyond a small measure of individual insanity. We are looking at the very movement of personal revolution, that basis on which all revolutions are formed. Without the passion to acknowledge the truth of some madness, change in the individual, like change in the society, is impossible.

Robin Williams as John Keating in Dead Poets Society, one of the most amazing movies ever to grace the modern screen, said, “No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.” This is a world that Quixote understood. It was a world where merely doing the rote minimum of getting by was not enough. Keating’s words are true, but only as much as words and ideas are put into action. Quixote was willing to put his images and words and ideas into action no matter what anyone else said or did to him. That is the essence of the madness of Quixote. Many will focus on the tilting of windmills while missing the creative source of that inspiration that affected everyone with whom Quixote crossed paths.

But what difference is it in turning windmills into giants than looking at the hurdles of life—time, age, money, boredom, dissatisfaction—to see them for the illusions of reality they are, charging them head-on? What difference is there in seeing our beat up and tired old horse as a pristine and proud steed and seeing the good and the worthy in those little things we take for granted? What idealism is ingrained in the choice to return to school, change careers, and face off with a generation you helped spawn? So many people will never take the chance to change their lives, to pursue their dreams, and to realize the goals they had in their youth are not dead, not forgotten, but sitting there waiting to be realized. It takes a little madness to see beyond the immediate grey of everyday life. It takes a vision to move past the mundane disappointments and routines. It takes tapping into a sight that was once thought only reserved for holy men or mad men: an ecstasy of the spirit that is the birthright of every individual.

The Thoreau paraphrase from Dead Poets Society is one of the best excerpts I have heard and I hope that one day, when my time has passed, someone will read that as a eulogy: I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life . . . to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Don Quixote, for all his eccentricity, lived deliberately, lived deep, and sucked out all the marrow of life. People thought him a mad man—and he certainly was that—but his life was lived on his own terms, through his own dreams, and within his own madness. He could not have asked for much more.

Yes, Mr. Bates, we all do go a little mad sometimes . . . and rightfully we should.

[Edited from 01 May 2008 and reposted]

Interestingly enough, I find this topic to be extremely relevant and poignant to not merely Don Quixote but to the perceptual changes that occur over time in multiple cultures. In my journal entry this past week I focused on the madness of Quixote and how this was something of a positive rather than negative character trait. Keep in mind that in our current times Jesus of Nazareth would more likely be given Lithium and sent on his way than given any serious credence—and he certainly would not have been given the time of day to found a new religion. But yet his followers make up the second largest religion in the world today.

We may prefer to call it insanity to ease the uncomfortable feelings that occur in watching Quixote’s story unfold, but this same “insanity” has launched some of the greatest transformations of human society and thought throughout history. We have reached a state of cultural bankruptcy in our world that does not recognize the cognitive similarities between inspiration and insanity, not accepting these may very well spring from the same internal fountain. We have become transfixed on modernity and so sterile in our worldview that we have lost the ability to connect to the mysterious and mythic. Did Quixote tap into such a place? Was his worldview of adventure as real or more real than those stories which influenced his madness? He was capable of putting into action those convictions which he held to be his own. Whether out of some form of madness or as merely a literary conceit, the adventures of Don Quixote go beyond merely the stereotypical insanity and move into examining the differences between just sitting back to accept life as it comes or life as we create it to be.

[Edited from 08 May 2008 and reposted]

Yeah. I know they exist. But everyone talks about them so much that it overshadows something else. What it’s like to grow up without a son.

There are years of lectures, talks, walks in the park, and conversations about .. well .. everything under the sun that is missed when a father grows up without a son. It’s no fault of his own that the mother is the biggest fruit cake on the planet. Doesn’t really matter that he has no say in what happens to his son. He’s just the sperm donor.

Any idea what it’s like to hide from your son, to have to keep aspects of your life so buried behind filters and innuendos and misdirection of words? Any idea what it feels like to never be able to be there for that bruised knee after a fall or the bruised ego after a prom?

You don’t get the “make up for it” by some other child. You don’t get a second chance to really make a difference. You just have to live with the knowledge that you didn’t get to grow up with that son. You get to live with the regret that you didn’t do everything you could have done to keep him safe from harm. And, of course, there are a thousand programs sitting around just waiting and willing to take a father’s place in a child’s life. Not one of them can replace a father though no matter how well intentioned.

I sometimes wonder why society looks at fathers without sons as if they did something wrong. Not to suggest there aren’t some who have. But so many stories, so many lives are destroyed not by the father’s choice, but by the choice of another who reduced a man to a petri dish and then decided he wasn’t worth keeping around. Or worse. And who suffers? The child, of course. Yes. We know. How many fathers though? No one cares.

Growing up without a son has been tough. But I certainly don’t apologize for the selfishness I feel toward my loss. It is, after all, my loss. I have a lot to offer a child. I’ve proved that now and I’m glad that I do. But there will always be a hole where I have lost a son for no fault of my own and I don’t get to impart my mind, my heart, and my soul to him.

But no matter my bitterness and pain, I will always love that child I lost. It’s part of being a dad. It just doesn’t make it any easier.

That’s my dad. I don’t know what your father is like, but I doubt truly that yours can measure up. In fact, I know it. They just don’t make fathers like mine.

I wish I’d learned more from my dad over the years. But I do think that even if I haven’t been the greatest example of his virtues by emulation, I have learned to at least strive to find those qualities in my life. He makes it all look so easy too whereas I just seem to scrape my shins in the attempt.

Patience. My dad makes Job look like an agitated neurotic with a penchant for heavy drugs just to get through the day. While I realize the downside of this quality makes it easy to be walked all over by those around him (and especially my mother when she was alive), I’ve discovered that it’s so much better in life to continue to keep a sense of patience toward all people around me. In the end, patience is a virtue. I might jokingly say that patience is a virtue best left to monks, but I find that there is a sense of forbearance that rises to the surface in understanding that stepping back from someone else’s drama is really the only way to walk through this life. The ‘me’ that wants to get upset about things I cannot control isn’t a happy ‘me.’ The ‘me’ that follows the footsteps of my dad into that happy place with the circumstances around me is certainly much happier even if it does bite me on the ass here and there.

Charity (Generosity). Charity starts at home, right? My dad is the most giving man I’ve ever met. But he gives as much to family—without expecting anything in return—as he does to others around him. His heart is a giving heart. I want my heart to reflect that same sense of charity and generosity. It comes from having a servant’s heart toward the world around him. I want that heart too. I strive for that in everything that I do on a daily basis from my ministry to my family to my interactions with the check-out ladies in Wal-Mart. It is said that “you can’t take it with you” and I agree. As much as I would love to live in the ideals of my beliefs, bromides and books, my ivory tower is not so high and not so isolated as to keep me from seeing those around who just need a smile if that’s the best I can do for the day.

Honor. My dad always taught me that my word was the best it gets. If I have to sign a contract, then I’m the loser. If I have to make security, then I’m the poorer for it. If my word isn’t good enough, then I have nothing of worth even if I have the world at my fingertips. I live by this. I fail daily by this. I strive every day to be more honorable than the day before. If there is a single quality that my dad exemplifies that shames me every time I look in the mirror, it is his sense of honor. If there is a single quality that I want to teach my children, it is—above all else—this sense of honor. There is absolutely nothing more precious. If my father says something, you can bet your lot of cows on the fact that he’s going to follow through. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out that God himself runs things past my dad to ensure that He’s not getting in over His head. You know: rainbows, apocalypses, second comings, things like that.

Sincerity. I’m a consummate liar. Or I was. I claim to be a bad liar now and go out of my way to exaggerate a lie for the sake of the drama of ensuring that I always tell the truth. (While I realize that’s a conflicted statement, anyone that’s been around me for any length of time will know what I’m talking about here.) I want to be a bad liar. I want every word that comes out of my mouth to be directed at the truth somehow, some way, always, without fail. This doesn’t mean ‘never wrong.’ My father has taught me that being wrong is sometimes just as important as being right. But even more than that, I want my actions to reflect a sense of sincerity, a sense of truthfulness in those actions directed at others. I don’t want people to question my motives or be concerned that I might have some malignant motive that eats away at trust between us. My dad is exactly this kind of person. There is no question as to why he acts and talks (even if I don’t agree all the time with his beliefs) and walks a certain way. He is exactly what you see.

Love. There is nothing but love in the heart of my dad. Oh. Sure. There’s frustration and anger and loss and desire and all kinds of things like any other human being. But ultimately my dad’s core is love. It just pours out of him all the time. And it’s not even some kind of mushy thing. It just ‘is.’ It is just a quality of his existence that I wish I could catch up just the little drops before they evaporate and wash them all over me if only to gain this quality by osmosis. To have this kind of caring and concern and .. well .. love for the world around him and the people .. you just can’t buy this kind of love from people. Relationships are built on this kind of love. Societies crumble for lack of this kind of love. My dad is the epitome of everything that is right and what should be right in everything in this world.

My dad is my hero. I have been a shitty son over the last four decades. He forgives me when he probably should just throw me under the bus and move on. But that’s who he is. It’s who I wish I could be every day.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I love you. I hope that my sons will understand that you are everything they need to be in life if they are to be successful, honorable, amazing young men.