A Livelier Post

Things are looking up here in Vancouver. I mean, I was looking up at the moon earlier and that was kind of cool, though it wasn't as cool as you had it back in the Midwest. I thought that maybe I could get a photo of the moon and Mt. Baker in the same shot, but sadly, no. By the time the moon was visible, Baker was invisible, not to mention the two of them being in different parts of the sky—er, horizon (in the case of the mountain). My biggest accomplishment of the evening was not telling the woman standing behind me to leave her negging, braggart of a boyfriend. Maybe that wasn't an accomplishment, maybe that was cowardice. 

Now that my cold has abated I've been able to get out running again. And any running here is a workout. I live at the top of a mountain and, if I want to go anywhere, I have to run down. Then I have to get home somehow, so I run up. Yesterday I did 300 vertical meters (984') and about 12k, today I did 168 vertical meters (550') and about 5k. No long runs just yet.

School is fine and all that, but I am trying hard to keep it in its box. I don't want it to take over my life and make me miserable. Thus the running, and also some reading.

I finished Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle: Book One. It's an astounding book. I wasn't sure exactly how he would pull off a rambling autobiographical non-fiction novel, but he did it. (Hint: it's not actually rambling.) He uses sentences like, “The sky was blue,” and “The grass was green,” and rather than roll my eyes I'm like—YES! The sky is blue and the grass is green! That's exactly how it is. Like any good literature though, meaning is more than literal. If a novel could be summarized in a few sentences then it should have been said in a few sentences. Luckily, for the art lovers among us (and un-luckily for the literalists among us) there is much that can only be said in metaphor. A great novel, I believe, is just as long as it needs to be to get this metaphor across.  A six-volume memoir-novel? I believe that Knausgaard knows what he is doing.

I also picked up Stephen King's On Writing. This is the first book of King's that I've read. Some very good essays, but never a book, and oddly enough, never any fiction. I'm convinced that King is an impressive writer. He knows how to get out of the way of a good story, and maybe that's what's most important. But this is a book about writing and, despite many attempts to become a memoir, it succeeds. He has serviceable advice about writing. I don't agree with him on every point (apostrophes, for instance), but he does give good reasons for why he does what he does. And really, that's what I want and need. I want to know how to make informed decisions on writing. He's best when discussing revision. Every writer repeats Strunk & White's advice (and every writer has repeatedly heard) “Omit needless words.” What King does is show, by example, how to use that advice. Then again, I think that King could take his own advice and lose some of the snarky asides and vaguely sexist remarks that pepper his writing. He needs to get out of his own way, take T. S. Eliot's advice, and extinguish himself in his writing.

Vancouver Rain

Last night I had a headache so bad that it made me wonder whether, were I stuck with that kind of pain, could I go on living? I say this because years ago I remember saying that I thought I could deal with most any hardship so long as I could read and communicate. Such a level of function does presuppose that I'm some way up Maslow's hierarchy, but still, I didn't think it such a high standard. But this sinus headache made me wonder. For the past few days I've had a nagging cold and, while it hadn't stopped me dead, it had slowed me down. I could read, but only fitfully and reading philosophy was out of the question—when I read φ, I ψ-ed.

Since I arrived in Vancouver two and a half weeks ago I've been eating beans & rice and peanut butter & jelly. I'm used to a pretty boring diet, the same veggie sandwich every day for thirteen years, but these particular foods have become disgusting in short order. The peanut butter & jelly is cloyingly sweet and the beans & rice is just a bowl of fiber. However, as my expenses total about 150% of my income—before food and entertainment—I don't feel inclined to splurge. Today I decided I had to splurge. After three days of leaving my room only to go to class, I had to get out. My headache was significantly improved and I was neither coughing nor snuffling constantly, so I went for a walk all the way to the Starbucks on the other end of campus where I bought a coffee for $2.25.

I thought that I would sit and read a sci-fi novel for a while, but that wasn't to be. Every once in a while I would give a snuffle, I'm still recovering from a cold, after all, and when I did the woman two tables over would glance over her shoulder and give me a look that said, “This is a nice coffee shop, you don't belong here.” Maybe so. In Ames, Iowa, my look said, grad student, bike mechanic, or bartender, but here it says, hobo, drunk, guy-who-yells-racial-slurs-on-the-bus. The fact is, I haven't seen a single person with long hair and a beard here except for people sleeping on the streets and, yes, yelling racial slurs on the bus. I've seen more fist-fights and heard more hate speech here in two weeks than I did in Iowa in a lifetime. Perhaps I've just lived a sheltered life.

When I arrived I had a plan. I planned that I would get up each morning, go for a run or a bike ride, write for an hour, then go and do my eight hours at the office. I did pretty well the first week, but I still don't have a bike and since I came up short of breath—the first signs of this cold, I expect—on my run last Saturday I've had to take it easy there too. Writing is sporadic. I have two blog posts 90% done, but that last 10% is proving too much. Some days I've managed 500-600 words—blog, essay, or story—easy, others it's too easy just to go in early and get a start on my day. Hopefully this has just been an off week and I'll settle in to the routine, but today it feels like it's all falling apart. Campus looks more like a damp parking garage than a benevolent futuristic utopia. The rains have just begun here in Vancouver and will likely not abate until next summer.  

Books Read: June

Tim O'Connor, In the Lake of the Woods

If you read last month's books read you might notice a theme, another war story by O'Connor. Here's the thing, these books were recommended to me, not as war stories, but as stories of failure, and honestly I'm not sure how to deal with failure—in literature or life—which, as it turns out, is exactly what I'm interested in. Failure is dear to my heart. It's something I'm good at, experienced at, and so it's what I want to explore philosophically and through creative works. I expect to fail.

O'Connor makes it clear early on: there will be no definite conclusion to his story. We'll never find out what happens. And this isn't so far removed from the idea of failure; uncertainty, skepticism, and doubt figure in as well. There are times, probably most times, when the situation is just too complicated and cloudy to allow us a the satisfaction that we crave. It is no coincidence that I am skeptical of simple answers and distrustful of certain people. I am not sure we ever know the truth. I'm not even sure it's something we should be worried about. Rather, in the face of uncertainty what should we do?

But there's something else about failure in this story: the failure to control one's life and destiny. Perhaps this is the more profound failure, the one that makes this story interesting. The protagonist, Wade, like many of us has a script for how he wants his life to go. One thing will follow another—war hero, perfect wife, political career—but all these turn out to rest on a rotten foundation. All turn out to be illusions that he creates to get others to love him. His failure to deal with reality leads to...what? His downfall, death, escape, love, tragedy, freedom, or more illusion?

Neil Nakadate, Looking After Minidoka

I know Neil as the nice guy who stops by my workplace from time to time. I knew he was an English professor, but really I didn't, still don't, know much about him. What I do know (a little) more about is the Japanese-American experience. Nakadate describes the struggles and paradoxes of a generation both interred in camps and serving on the front lines in World War II, the ways in which they both fought for their rights and lived with injustice. More to the point, he is bringing to the surface those things that have been hidden—for many reasons, by families and governments—and ought to be seen.

The book is part US history, part family history, and poetry. Maybe it's best understood as a new genre (or new to me anyway): the situated poem. Interspersed through the text are poems that bring us around to a more personal wondering about the experiences of that generation. But these poems would be meaningless to us, most of us, without some knowledge of who Hirabayashi, Korematsu, and Yasui were, the differences among issei, nisei and sansei, and what Minidoka was.

Lewis Hyde, The Gift

I've had a passing interest in gift economies for the past decade or so, but the relationship has been troubled. To begin with I'm really bad at giving gifts, even at the expected times. I question what and whether the gift is appropriate and what it will make the recipient think about me. Simply put I'm bad at thinking of other people; it is hard for me to get out of my habitual self-consciousness. And gift giving is, above all, an act of—not other-centeredness—but group-centeredness; it brings the focus of the economy to the whole of the group and the group's needs, not the needs of the individual.

The first thing I read on gift economy, a long decade ago, was The Personalist Manifesto by Emmanuel Mounier. True to self-centered form, I pretended to understand it. Actually, to say that I didn't understand it would be charitable. I read the words, but comprehended nothing. Still, from the little I understand about personalism, it fails to be a group-oriented account, or if it is group-oriented it is a group that includes the entirety of humanity. A group that Hyde dismisses as too diffuse and too heterogeneous for a healthy gift economy.

What is needed for a working gift economy is a small group of people who share some goal. In Hyde's case: artists. Artists become part of a gift economy when they accept the influence of others in their tradition and seek to incorporate, increase, and give back to the community of artists. It's an argument that suggests our current understanding of intellectual property and creativity is misguided. Now, before you get all high and mighty on how artists need to make money note that Hyde does recognize this fact. But he also suggests that simply viewing art as a commodity, part of a market economy, is inadequate to the discussion. The book is an attempt to navigate these waters.

Art, as it turns out, is not simply a sack of grain. Art and other intellectual property gains value by being appreciated, commented on, quoted, and stolen. One reason that Shakespeare is still relevant today is that we are still using his works, still building on them. Similar things happen in all arts, visual, music, literature, film and so on. Some level of fluidity in the art community is necessary to creativity. Now art can certainly become a commodity, but this reduces its value as art either through dilution or, more likely, through excessive restriction. How can we recognize the necessity of homage, quotation, and outright theft, without denying the artist a living? It turns out, to almost no one's surprise, to be a difficult question. What isn't particularly difficult is that to be creative we need to turn to the tradition we inhabit and enter into a reciprocal gift relationship with it.¹

Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King

Bellow has been hovering around the edge of my reading list for a while now. It only took the suggestion that he is an author of failure to kick it to the top. And talk about failure he does. In fact he does it so well that I'm starting to wonder if he meant it, if the whole thing wasn't a failure in itself.² One might think that Bellow, having explored mistakes so intimately in his writing, would be aware of his own potential for making them and thereby gain some humility. But then it wouldn't be a failure would it?

Regardless, it is fascinating to watch Henderson make wrong decision after wrong decision based on his own simple understanding and certainty of the world. He believes himself smarter and wiser than he is. He believes he can help, can give the benefit of himself to the world. He wants to be a doctor, but can't seem to get the “first do no harm” part of the Hippocratic Oath. A man who wants to be a doctor to the world? Who desperately wants something to fix? Where have we seen this hubris before?

Alongside this is Bellow's use of metaphor. I found myself walking down the street, looking up and wondering: how would Bellow describe this? Would he turn the usual metaphor about the freedom and possibility of floating clouds into, “the clouds reached down to claw the earth?” I don't know. That's just what struck me now. It gets me thinking.

Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

I could criticize this book on the basis of genre—I don't like psychological thrillers, they violate my insistence on underdeterminacy in literature—but that isn't the point or why I read it. I read this because of Lewis Hyde and David Foster Wallace. Harris is a master of pacing, readability, and dialogue. Wallace respected that, saw what he was doing, and emulated it (and occasionally stole it. DFW was a fan of Hyde as well).

Most of all, I noticed that Harris' dialogue was always immaculately readable. He never suffers from the problem of confusion over who is speaking, however difficult the exchange. I could simply read a line and know, without any other textual help, who was speaking it. I would know that Jack Crawford was speaking rather than Will Graham just by the tone and attitude of the quote. And this is done without feeling stilted or unnatural. It's an incredible skill.

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

I like literature. One of the reasons I like it is that it offers up multiple interpretations and spurs conversations about, well, anything and everything. The reason I point this out is that it would be really easy to make this novel into a morality tale; most readers do and most criticisms of the novel assume that it is so. But I think there's more going on. There are two things I'd like to keep in mind here. First the story is from the point of view of a young girl, a young girl who adores her father and thinks that he can do no wrong. I think most of us are like that in our childhoods, assuming that our parents are smarter, stronger, and more moral than anyone else. In my opinion this novel is the story of how Scout finds out that her father isn't the divine being she thinks he is. This leads to my second point: this is a story about how Atticus fails.

There are three values that seem to drive Atticus: the rule of law, the innate goodness of people, and non-interference in others' business. But these three values³ are bound to come into conflict and he is bound to fail. Atticus fails in the courtroom (note that Scout does not understand what is going on, in spite of her protests to the contrary). Atticus fails to be the head of his household; he lets his sister dictate what is right for Scout. And perhaps most tellingly, Atticus' values fail in the last scene of the novel; his faith in the rule of law and the goodness of other people is challenged by the events of the night. Ultimately he ends up compromising his values in order to keep the peace.

While I have not read, or read much about, Go Set a Watchman, I don't think we should be surprised by what an adult Jean Louise reveals about Atticus. Remember, the trial and verdict, while important to the story, are not its conclusion, rather it is the reminder that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird. Think about how robust—or more to the point, how weak—Atticus' values are, especially given their time and place. What do they entail? What do they allow?

1 For the most amazing example of this I recommend Jonathan Lethem's “The Ecstasy of Influence,” which I first read on the toilet. http://harpers.org/archive/2007/02/the-ecstasy-of-influence/

2 I know that one of my favorite authors, Ray Bradbury, completely misunderstands himself. Many claim his worst work as his best (Farenheit 451 is awful. Sorry). Bradbury doesn't write about the oppression of totalitarian governments, he writes about the soft oppression of culture, even if he can't see it.

3 You could probably generate an I Robot like series of stores based on these three values, or really any list of values.    

Books Read: May

Have I lost my last shred of humanity? Last month I was unable to read—bored with, really—two science fiction novels, but found myself staying up late and avoiding responsibilities to read Moby Dick. The two sci-fi novels weren't slouches either, Octavia Butler and Vernor Vinge are fine writers.  I simply didn't care. Melville though, wow. Even the spoilers didn't distract (the ship sinks, just like Titanic).

I suppose that sounds like a humblebrag. Maybe it is. As Muhammad Ali said, “It ain't braggin' if it's true.”¹ But then Ali wouldn't be worried about the humble bit.

I do think it's odd that I've (at least temporarily) lost my taste for sci-fi. It's not as though I haven't championed the genre before. I'll continue to do so. There's a lot of good stuff (and a lot of dreck, but that's largely a function of volume) in sci-fi. Here's the thing though, sci-fi is plot driven, moral driven, it has a clear arc of progress and a certainty that, even if we can't tell the good guys from the bad, at least we can know what they did. The facts aren't in dispute. Anytime sci-fi diverges too much from this, say in Delaney's Dhalgren, Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, or Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, it is difficult to peg as sci-fi.

What I appreciate, what got me excited, about the books I did read this past month is that they aren't so easy. They're epistemically impoverished and evidence rich. They ask the reader to construct the character as a real human being, not a caricature. I think it is this demand on the reader that makes literature meaningful. It is this demand that makes me want to write, to emulate (all humility aside) these writers and explore what it might mean to be human and reclaim that humanity that I've lost. Why is this? I believe we're all a bit of a mystery, even to ourselves—then again, I've been told, in the most strenuous way short of physical violence, not to project my own inadequacies and failings onto others. But what can I do?

It is tempting here to delve into specifics, to tell you why Ahab isn't the simple obsessive he's made out to be in popular culture, to go on a tangent about negative capacity, but this isn't lit-crit, this is a blog listing the books I've read since school let out in May. So:

Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried.

This is the only book to read on how to tell, not just a true war story, but that oxymoron, the true story. I don't trust simple stories. I don't trust easy answers. If I could… But when someone tells me that something is true, or right, or obvious, my eyes narrow, I check my wallet, I lock my door.

I would say that these stories are universal, that they tell us something bigger, that these aren't stories about war. These are stories about life. But then I know better. I've been told. I can't comment—I'm not privileged to comment—on war stories. No, that's not right either. The privilege runs the other way. I'm privileged not to comment.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick.

There is nothing new under the sun. Everything has been done before, footnotes, lengthy asides, doubt, and so on. All those literary techniques and themes you thought were invented in the last half of the twentieth century were already used by Melville. And it's worth reading just for that.

There is an old joke that a classic is a book that people praise but never read. Perhaps. But I have found that classics are most often classics for good reason. I was bored by action and sci-fi. I've been bored by thrillers. I was never bored with Moby Dick. I read it in four days and when I read O'Brien's How to Tell a True War Story and then Chapter 54, 'The Town-Ho's Story,' I couldn't help but note that Melville had written a war story. Why did it happen? What's the moral? Wrong question.

Truman Capote, In Cold Blood.

This book sits next to on my shelf, shares a publisher with, and has a similar cover to The Stranger. That's serendipitous as the two also share themes of crime, purpose, and capital punishment. I think back to reading Camus in high school. I loved the book, but got a test question wrong. The question was, why did Mersault kill the Arab? I don't recall my answer, but I read into the story I couldn't help but speculate on why he did it. What it meant. But the correct answer, the answer indicated, was that the sun was in his eyes. That answer was too literal for me, yet not literary enough. How can you sum up the reason for the book in that phrase, “the sun was in his eyes?” Yes that's it. No it isn't.

Now, why did Dick and Perry kill the Clutters?

I didn't find this book terrifying in the same way that others seem to. I didn't have nightmares. I wasn't made nauseous.² I find it terrifying that Capote makes these killers human. He makes them your brother—you. I don't want to read about inhuman killers, Lecters and Dahmers. Inhuman killers, psychopaths, sociopaths, may as well be accidents, rockslides, lightning. Human killers—killers who are like us—that is scary. But that isn't it either. This book isn't scary at all. It is sad and only sad.

Thom Jones, Pugilist at Rest.

Another book of war stories. Similar to O'Brien, but where O'Brien looks at war as an all too real dream, a nightmare come true that one hides from, Jones finds his message in war as a place of belonging, a place that might be home and brings a perverted form of comfort that peace and civilian life fails to provide. The image of the Pugilist at Rest, the statue and the words, brings together disparate images, violence and peace, readiness and relaxation. The pugilist is never truly at rest. Or, if he is it is a kind of senescence. Here I can't help think of Muhammad Ali. Where do we find our value when our powers are taken from us? What are we good for? Ali has his answer, do we? Does it satisfy?

1 Muhammad Ali never said this.

2No, it was Rich Dad; Poor Dad that made me nauseous and wouldn't let me sleep. Dead serious, that is what my nightmares are made of.

Books Read: July

It seems I can only keep up with the books I'm reading on this blog. I do have more to say, about life, the universe, and everything, but getting it out of my head and onto the page doesn't seem to be happening. I think it's because I've been procrastinating on revising my writing sample (for the 3^rd time). If I turn on the computer and open up a word processor I feel obliged to write a couple of hundred words about the raven paradox and I'm a little sick of the raven paradox right now.

About three weeks ago I realized that in my rush to apply to grad school (an open secret) I had given someone else control of my happiness. Not one particular person, but just handed it over to professors, grades, acceptance into grad programs and so on. I don't do well (and I expect most of us don't) when I'm not in charge of my own happiness. I've been there before. I've handed happiness over to school before, to co-workers, to relationships. It doesn't work and it makes me rebel. I think it's a part of the reason that I didn't do well in school before. One of the things that allowed me to go back to school has been that I am doing it for my own reasons and not to please anyone else (you're welcome to be pleased about it, but I'm not doing it for you).

So upon realizing that I had turned those reasons, responsibility for my happiness, over to someone else I stopped and reevaluated. I had to approach this like an ultra. In the middle of a race you will lose your motivation and not want to continue. It happens to everyone. The trick, for me, is to look around and remind myself that this is where I want to be, I am doing what I want to do, and even if it isn't fun, be in awe of it and what I can do. So that's what I'm doing now. I'm in awe of all the learning I've done and the papers I've written. I know I'm not done and maybe I'll change my mind about grad school, but for right now it's easy enough to act as though I'm going to do it (that includes revising that paper). This is where I want to be and what I want to do right now.

Maybe I lied about not being able to get this stuff typed up. Once again I haven't read as much as I thought I would. I think that's in part for the reasons listed above. But looking back I guess I have read a fair bit, most of it classic sci-fi, the comfort food of books.

Infinite Possibilities, Robert Heinlein.

This is a collection of three of Heinlein's “juvenile fiction” novellas. Tunnel in the Sky was so-so. Although it had a few good psychological elements towards the end it seemed to be a stream of consciousness Boy's Life meets Lord of the Flies. Time For the Stars was much better as it had a good hard sci-fi grounding and explored the twins paradox of special relativity with literal twins. Not his best, but fun. Citizen of the Galaxy was the last and strongest. Not super deep, but it brings up some good points about how blind we are to what goes on in other places and cultures and different sorts of freedom. Besides, any novella that subverts the happily-ever-after trope by means of stifling bureaucracy is okay by me.

Tao Te Ching, Lao-Tzu/Stephen Mitchell.

A good reminder that I don't know as much as I think I do.

The Nine Billion Names of God, Arthur C. Clarke.

A collection of Clarke's favorites of his own short stories. Most of these follow the sci-fi short story formula pretty closely. Find a curious scientific fact/theory, run with it for a while, twist ending. Good stuff anyway. Clarke's dark but goofy sense of humor along with a frontier aesthetic and humanist ethic underpin these stories. It makes me wonder what is really important: here and now, something greater, or nothing at all.

Apology, Plato.

A good reminder that I don't know as much as I think I do.

Books Read: June

Well, I didn't do as much reading in June as I'd have liked to.  Actually that's a bit misleading.  I read a lot, but not many books.  There is just too much on the internet that catches my attention and keeps me from reading all the books I'd like to.  There's a surprising number of good articles out there.  Sturgeon's Revelation may be true, but 10% of the internet is still quite a bit.  I also got a lot read in a book I've been working my way through for a while, but probably won't finish for another month or so.  It's not an easy one.  Here are the books I read in whole in June:

The Limits of Science, Peter Medawar.
Really I wanted to read Memoirs of a Thinking Radish, but since the neither of the two libraries I have easy access to had it on hand I read this instead.  I think I read this one too fast and without enough thought.  He's an easy and accessible writer and a good anthropologist of science, but I think that made it easy to miss what he was saying in some cases.  I kind of stopped reading after he dismissed induction by way of an apparent paradox; a paradox that I think has been reasonably solved.  Not only that, but I don't think that, understood properly, that particular paradox bears on induction one way or the other.  Because of that rather trivial mistake I kind of skimmed the rest of the book so I may have missed what he was getting at.  I read him as saying something like Stephen Jay Gould, that science and religion are separate domains and never the two shall meet.  Of course hardly anyone believes this, not even Medawar or Gould.  Their religious beliefs were heavily influenced by their scientific worldview.  Still, a great scientist who I happen to think got the philosophy wrong is still worth listening to on the topic of what science is and how it works.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts In a World That Can't Stop Talking, Susan Cain.
As a self-identified introvert I object to the hamster ball theory of introversion.  I find it insulting to both the introvert and the extrovert, as though introverts are somehow fragile and special care needs to be taken or that extroverts are boorish and annoying and ought to back off, neither of which is accurate or useful.  I had hoped to find some alternative understanding in Cain's book, but it wasn't to be.  I don't think it's a bad book, and it certainly isn't as narrow-minded as the hamster ball theory, but it doesn't do much to explain introversion/extroversion.  The problem, I think, lies with trying to force the concepts to do more work than they are prepared to do.  For instance, Cain makes the case that introverts have trouble in school because schools encourage speaking up.  On the other hand Cain also makes the case that introverts do well in school because they can focus better than extroverts.  So which is it? Do introverts do better in school or worse?  I think the answer is that the I/E continuum doesn't have much to do with it at all.  There's a lot more in the book trying to reduce I/E to some other function like sensitivity or openness to experience, but these seem to be different traits that are at least partially independent of I/E.  Open/closed, sensitivity/insensitive, introvert/extrovert, liberal/conservative, fox/hedgehog. Once we cram everyone into some sort of simple dichotomy that purports to explain so much we end up losing what explanatory power the concept had to begin with.  Still, the concept does have some usefulness.  By knowing that I'm an introvert you know whether I'd generally prefer to go to a large exciting party with lots of people or talk one-on-one with someone.  Leave it at that and it's fine.  Then again the real case that Cain wants to make is that we ought to value the opinions of those who aren't outspoken or dead certain of their beliefs and that thesis seems entirely reasonable.

You can make it, (only) if you try.

There are a few things about pop-philosophy that really get to me.  What do I meant by pop-phil?  I mean aphorisms, mostly about how to succeed, what we ought to do with our lives, what we should value.  It's not meant to be rigorous, it's meant to provide some guidance; to reassure or inspire us.  Pretty obviously there's some spillover from/to pop-psych.  Mostly, I don't mind it, Epictetus' Enchiridion (hardly new) is probably the best of the bunch, but unfortunately some of the aphorisms in other works or oft cited on social media are just plain wrong.

The big one that bugs me is getting conditionals mixed up.  I suppose it could be affirming the consequent, but I don't even think that it's obvious what the antecedent and consequent are intended to be in many of these cases.  Usually it's something like:  If you work hard you will be successful.  If this is true then what do you know about someone who is not successful?  Well, they must not have tried.  But of course that isn't true.  People work hard and still fail all the time.  And what do you know about someone who succeeds?  Not much.  Maybe they worked hard, maybe not.  But flip it around, take the inverse and you get: If you don't work hard, you won't succeed.  That seems much more true to me.  And what do you know if someone doesn't succeed?  Not much.  Maybe they worked hard and something got in their way.  You don't know.  You can't point fingers.  You can't blame every failure on a lack of trying.  But at least you know what you ought to do if you want to succeed.  You ought to try.  You ought to work hard.

Another one is getting feelings mixed up with facts.  Confidence, fear, and epiphanies are some of the big offenders here.  One might consider these to be semantic disagreements, sometimes yes, but we still ought to be careful not to get too much spillover from one meaning to another.  Being selfish or judgmental is different from having self-interest or being discerning (respectively) even though these terms are sometimes used interchangeably.

I remember back in middle school someone claimed (in the gym locker room) that they weren't afraid of anything.  I answered back that I was afraid of lots of things.  I was justifiably afraid of falling from heights, getting in a car accident, disease, and the like.  Now maybe I'm getting fear and respect mixed up here, but I don't think the other guy was claiming that he had respect for heights, etc., it was a brag.  Of course being afraid here doesn't mean that I stayed in bed all day.  It meant/means that when I briefly worked as a rigger I clipped in, I do my best to drive responsibly, and I wash my hands, among other things.  Of course since we're talking about feelings versus facts here there are plenty of cases where it is unreasonable to have fear and fear is distinct from panic.

Confidence is a similar case.  If you are confident that you know what you are doing it doesn't mean that you do know what you're doing.  If you know what you're doing it doesn't mean that you're confident.  Well placed confidence is great.  It means you can apply your knowledge appropriately, but in many cases misplaced confidence is worse than no confidence.  Well placed confidence comes from long experience; from successes and peer evaluation.  If you think you're a great poet, but no one likes your stuff maybe you ought to take a step back (working hard couldn't hurt though).  Hedging bets and being unsure of oneself is a really great thing when it is called for.

I don't trust epiphanies or “ah-ha” moments either.  Just because I think I understand something doesn't mean that I do.  Just as with confidence, understanding is something that is proven through experience, not emotion.  If I read something and think, “yes, I got it,” I can't really be sure until I've checked my knowledge and believe me, many times I haven't “got it.”

“Do or do not, there is no try,” is still pretty cool however.

Be Careful

In my last post I mentioned that two of my professors had cautioned me to “be careful”. I think it's good advice and something I need to work at, especially in the field I've chosen. It's easy to take shortcuts and wave off mistakes with a, “you know what I mean.” Much of the time of course it's perfectly reasonable to be close enough or approximately right. Much of the time it doesn't matter. But then there are times when it does. Here are a few:

I try to be careful on this blog. I'm not always. Of course it's a personal blog and not a professional blog. The point isn't that I argue convincingly or am precise in all that I say. It's more important that I get across what I'm up to, how I'm feeling, and what I'm thinking. There's a balance to be struck here of course. Too careful and I write too much about too little. Not careful enough and I make unsubstantiated claims that deserve to fall. That said, in two of my posts of this year I have written about someone whom I don't know and been (at least a little) critical of them. In both cases one of the first responses was from the person who I was critical of! Its always a little shocking when someone I don't know reads my blog. I don't think that my criticisms were wrong, but if I had known they were reading I might have chosen my words more carefully and made weaker claims. I guess the internet really is a small place. All the more reason to be civil.

I've been taking an online logic class. Last night I took the first substantial quiz over the material. I missed a few questions. I didn't do poorly, but I really wanted to ace it. My first reaction to those questions that I missed was, “hey, that's a trick question,” or “that's just being pedantic.” True of course, but it's a logic exam: trick questions and pedantism are just exactly what the test is over. The real lesson is: be careful.

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to play a game of Pente. For those who don't know it's a game somewhere between othello and connect four with a little go thrown in. I'm always a little leery of playing strategy games, somehow I think that if I don't do well it reflects poorly on my intelligence and thus my character, but knowing my lack of care, my need to improve, and remembering my “learning attitude” I decided to join in. I didn't win, but I did once force a loss. I'm actually looking forward to playing again.

Over the past couple of days I've seen some pretty heavy Facebook arguments get going. It starts with a post or shared link with some uninformed or ill-formed arguments in it. Then some other party, with a differing opinion comments and gives their own uninformed or ill-formed argument for the other side. In particular these arguments seem to get down questions of what is science, how does explanation work, and how do we know things. These are just the questions that I am most drawn to in philosophy. They're where I want to do work. But I do not feel qualified to butt in, even when the questions are exactly the ones I am working on. Why not? These are difficult issues. I don't know what the answers are much of the time. When I do have an answer or an opinion Facebook is not generally a good forum to discuss it. It's pretty much impossible to be succinct and yet get across an argument for why I believe something. I hardly want to assert that I know the truth because I took a class (one!) in it.  To really get something across I need to sit down, discuss, and think about it.  Thinking clearly isn't something that happens in 140 characters.  Devastating arguments don't happen in a three minute video.  

In sum: The more I learn, the less I know.   

Books Read: May

I'm in a bit of a quandary here. I read a book that wasn't exactly assigned for class, but does relate directly to what I'm studying in school. Actually I'd say that the book has gotten me in a little trouble. It caused me to go off on a tangent in a paper I was writing. In any case since I'm a bit fussy about what I say about what I'm studying I don't think I ought to write much about it here. When I do say something I want to get it right or at least have thought carefully about it. As more than one (two!) of my professors has admonished me, I need to “be careful.” So if you came here for a review of Pursuit of Truth by W. V. Quine you've come to the wrong place.

That said, I have done some less than academic reading this month. I won't try to justify it too much, but I do believe there is such a thing as 'marginal time'; time that isn't worth as much in terms of getting stuff done, but is well spent in entertainment or napping. Sometimes watching TV, reading celebrity autobiographies, or schlock fantasy really is the best use of your time. So with no further ado, here are the books I read in May:

Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

A well written fantasy novel. No dragons, but a few dungeons. It's pretty classic low fantasy fare, but Lynch does a good job of fleshing out the characters and giving some plausibility to their hi-jinks. I also appreciate that while this book is a part of a series it is also stand-alone. I like series, TV, movie, book, etc., that are either episodic (this book, Star Trek) or have a complete arc (LOTR, Babylon 5), but I can't stand those that are soap operas, that aren't going anywhere, but like to trick you into thinking they are (Game of Thrones, Lost, anything by Orson Scott Card). Lies hints at deeper back story, but doesn't make it essential to understanding and appreciating the story.

Singled Out by Bella DePaulo

I picked this one up while I was 'researching' my last blog post. I was looking for a single people's support group online, but there doesn't seem to be one. Or at least not of the sort I was looking for. The cursory search that I did pointed me to DePaulo's work and website. Apparently she's the big name in research on single people qua single people. That is, not single people who want to become coupled as their primary life goal.

The first few chapters are occupied with taking marriage researchers to task for sloppy and misleading studies and headlines. I think she does a pretty good job of demonstrating the problems that plague the field: conflating single with divorced, widowed, or coupled-but-unmarried, cross-sectional versus longitudinal studies, leading survey questions, biased funding sources. None of these problems are fatal, but they must be carefully parsed. What do the studies really say? DePaulo's own studies, however, seem to run into some of the same problems. She sometimes conflates categories when it suits her and her website sports a blatantly leading survey.

The second part of the book is more about the stigma and discrimination that single people are subject to. In large part I agree with her. Coupled people and even more so married people are given privileges that single people are not. Tax breaks and health care discounts on the more tangible side and a perception that they are less responsible and more selfish on the less tangible. Unfortunately she sometimes goes too far by suggesting that coupled people are in fact the less responsible and more selfish ones.  We'd best settle on what it means to be responsible and unselfish before we try and point fingers on those topics.

As I read it DePaulo is trying to make two different points in the book. First that single people are happy, healthy, and productive. Second, that they are but ought not be discriminated against. She uses the first point to bolster the second. I don't see the need for the first point though. It seems clear enough to me that even if single people were less productive, happy, or healthy in general that they ought not be discriminated against just for their 'alternative lifestyle.'

Test of Metal by Matthew Woodring Stover

Yes that's really the title. Sorry. It's a Magic: The Gathering novel. I've only played the game a few times (okay, only twice) and I had no idea that there was actually some sort of back story for the game. Apparently there is, or at least there is money to be made in selling novels with the name slapped on them. In fact this is a very well written fantasy novel. I've read a few of Stover's books in the past and true to form he elevates what can be a very painful genre to thoughtful and introspective heights. It might be that early on he lampshades a Gettier problem or that he talks in some detail about the consequences of the existence of many worlds (I'm a sucker for that stuff), but I really thought it had something going on. Stover is also well aware that he isn't writing a literary novel. He has no problem throwing in anachronistic phrases and acknowledging that he's writing for an editor and a shared world. It seems like he has fun messing with other people's characters. Also there are dragons in this one.

Being Single

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to reflect on being single. I needed someone to drive me to and from a surgical appointment and I didn't know where to turn. For a moment I was envious of those people who have someone special in their lives. Who know exactly who they are supposed to turn to in times of need. I don't have anyone like that; anyone who is my everything and who will do anything for me.

I have never really felt the need to be in a relationship. I've tried dating. I've had one relatively serious relationship that didn't work out. Other than that I've been single my entire life.  But I am perfectly happy on my own. In fact I was much less happy, much more uncomfortable, in a relationship. I felt as though I was always performing for my S.O. and never quite like I was myself. I told myself that it was just because I wasn't used to it, I would get used to including someone in all of my plans, and that eventually I would be able to be myself again. I would become comfortable. That didn't happen. I should have realized, I did realize, just two months in that the relationship was not going to work out. Still I continued, sure that I simply had to get over my misgivings.

Eight months later I finally called it quits. It was one of the best decisions I've made in my life. I was upset about it of course. It probably took me two years to get over the disappointment. No one likes failing at something, especially something that everyone is told they ought to do. Something we are told that we need to be truly happy. More than that though I was relieved. I was able to do what I wanted for the reasons that I wanted. (What I wanted was to race ultras, but I've already told that story.)

Still, there I was: low wage job, no car, no house, no kids, over thirty, and single. It looked like a recipe for no life.

Then a few years ago I was talking with a good friend who was also single. She asked, when are we going to get to real life? When do we start? I hadn't really thought about it, but the answer just came out of my mouth: Life is what happens to you while you're making other plans. We already had lives and our lives had meaning. I was a bike mechanic who liked his job and loved to race ultras. Who cares what other people, or even I, thought I needed to be happy? I was happy!

Since then I've tried dating a few times, but it hasn't worked out. Usually when I felt that someone else was interested in me.  I haven't been on a second date though and, largely, that's my choice. For me the costs simply don't outweigh the benefits. There is nothing special that a romantic relationship offers me that I need or particularly want. I am perfectly satisfied being single and the longer I stay single the more I think it suits me.

The realization I have come to is that I was being too narrow minded when I thought that I needed an S.O. to help me. I have relationships that work for me. Marriage or a coupled relationship is no guarantee that someone will be there for you and neither does being single guarantee that there is no one there for you. I had two great offers from good friends, people whom I trust, to drive me to and from my appointment. It was humbling to realize that I needed someone and more humbling to realize that someone really was there for me. My view of relationships was too narrow. I have friends to have intellectual discussions with. I have friends to bike or run with. I have friends to have deep personal discussions with. I don't need someone to be my everything when I have so many someones who are something.   

Some thoughts on going back to school

I'm two semesters into my return to school. I've managed to achieve my GPA goal (even if those weren't the grades I deserved). I'm off academic probation for the first time since I don't know when. So what have I learned?

I had to start out in community college because I had been kicked out of ISU back in 2000. I honestly didn't know whether or not I could hack it. I kind of figured I was an irresponsible know-it-all who was really not cut out for anything remotely academic. While I can't say for sure that I'm not an irresponsible know-it-all (I can think of one or two people who might describe me that way) I do know that I managed to pull off a 4.0 at DMACC. Honestly it's a little bit disappointing when you want to work on improving your writing and you get a paper back with a perfect score and a “Great job! Loved the Wittgenstein quote.” If anything makes you look like a know-it-all it's a Wittgenstein quote. Worse than perfect scores with banal comments though are A- scores with no comments at all. It's tough to improve if I don't know what to improve upon.

So anyway, I got back into ISU with the help of a few recommendation letters (thank you!). I still wasn't sure I could handle it. After all were my grades at DMACC just a reflection of my peers? It wasn't too hard to set the curve in those classes. Add to that jumping straight into 400 level philosophy classes after taking 100 level survey classes. Whatever one may say it is not true that philosophy is just bullshit. If it is bullshit it is very specific bullshit. You can be wrong, very wrong. I hadn't really bounced serious ideas off of someone else in a very long time and I know how bad it is to work in an echo chamber. What if my ideas were way off, stoner philosophy, or just plain crazy?

It didn't take long to figure out that school is not that hard. It is embarrassingly easy. Do the work, show up for class, ask questions. That's it. Occasionally I felt like I was cheating when I saw more talented students skipping class and turning in assignments late or not at all. Why should I get a better grade than someone who understands the material better just because I followed instructions? What is a grade supposed to reflect anyway?

I did pick up a few other lessons along the way: Don't worry about not understanding something or not doing as well as you'd hoped. This is what I have come to call a "learning attitude”. Why are you in school? To learn. If you already knew it you wouldn't be in school so don't be surprised when you get something wrong. Rather take that as an opportunity to improve. If you do think that you already understand then check your knowledge. I made sure to ask questions and try to restate my understanding of what we were learning. My motto became: Dare to be Stupid. If I said something in class and got it wrong I counted that as a victory. I had learned that I didn't understand. I knew where I stood and could move from there.

I can't say that I've learned these lessons perfectly. There is a (large) part of me that thinks I ought to get everything right and if I don't it's simply because I am not smart enough. I have to constantly remind myself how to succeed. Even though I have now managed a 4.0 at ISU I am still afraid of the echo chamber. Even though a (deeply flawed) first draft won me a scholarship for best paper I know I have a long way to go.   

Summer Break: Semester's Reading

Sorry it's been so long, but if you're a follower you know that I've been busy. Specifically I've been back in school. Now that I'm free for the summer I can go back to blogging in full force. Actually right now I'm feeling a little eager to blog, but that might just be because for the last semester I've been writing 2+ short essays per week. As I noted on my very first blog post though I started the blog (in part) to work on my writing in the hopes of going back to school. So that happened.

Anyway, hopefully I'll be back at it for the summer. 2-4 posts per month is the plan. I'll start with an easy one: Books read Fall and Spring semesters.

I'm not going to recount the books I read for class, though since I did take a sci-fi lit class in the Fall I certainly could. I'm just going to talk about the books I read for “fun”. (It has been a while though so I may have missed a few.)

-A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

(Almost) Exactly the same as the movie. Extremely well written and a quick read. I had been intimidated by it as it is one of those “classics”. I ought to know better by now. Books do not generally become classics if they are poorly written and unengaging. It isn't as shocking as the movie, I don't see how it could be, but it is worth the read. It's not for everyone and if it's not for you you probably know it. Still, if you read it or watch the movie you must commit. Watch the whole thing and don't dismiss it until you've thought about it a little.

-The first 200 or so pages of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Some books you just feel obliged to read (ironic, no?). I have been trying to read something, anything, by Rand for about 15 years now. This is the most I've managed. Some of you will ask, “Why do you even bother.” Others will ask, “What is wrong with you that you did't get it?” To the first question: I want to take it seriously and get beyond the caricature. Some people whom I really respect cite her as a major positive influence. One thing I don't like doing is simply dismissing someone's opinion without understanding why they hold it. I don't like saying, “You like/believe this because you're stupid.” It is condescending and stifles any meaningful conversation that could have been had. To the second I can only say, I don't get it. I have a basic understanding of the philosophy and I can see ways in which it makes sense. I can also see some problems with it. But really that isn't why I stopped reading it. Her prose is awful. It's like getting hit with a sledgehammer and not in a good way. She could have written a book on any of my favorite things and I still would have hated it.

-A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

A pretty darn good sci-fi novel. There's a lot to think about in this novel, mostly on the subject of what a mind is and how information moves. There is some fun sci-fi alienness, but that doesn't excite me much unless it's tied to an idea. Here just about every alien has a different form of mind and asks the question of what it means to have/be a mind. How does technology form a part of our mind? Is a community a mind? Is a mind a community? How do we get a detailed picture of the world with only the very little information that our senses give us? Good stuff.

-The Theory That Would Not Die by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

I thought I needed a little introduction to Bayes' theorem and this looked like a good way of getting a taste without getting too technical. It's a good story of how, where, and why the theorem works. I would have liked to see a little more discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the competing frequentist view however. One thing that I was grateful for was the appendix that shows (with actual numbers!) what is going on with Bayes. Working (struggling mightily) through the problems made me understand much better than I would have if it had just said: Bayes=Good (the text comes close to being a hagiography). Still, I'm not a committed Bayesian yet. I don't think it solves all the world's problems, but I do think it is a useful tool.

-The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris

Have you heard of utilitarianism? Yes. Then you don't need to read this book. A cogent defense of utilitarianism, but nothing new and fails to solve the old problems (if you consider them problems).  

Unacceptable Consequences

Question: After I frostbit my toes at Arrowhead in 2007 how long did it take me to recover completely?

It seems that some interesting stuff happened at Arrowhead this year. It was a tough year and that brings out the best and worst in people. Actually, it's one of the reasons I go. I want to see myself at my best and at my worst. I want to learn what I am capable of and where my limits are. Sometimes those limits are physical, but more often they are mental. Failure to make good decisions is a case of pushing yourself beyond your mental limits.

First off I should point out that I don't know all of the parties involved in the issues at Arrowhead this year. I know a few of them. Nor was I there.  I believe that some people made mistakes and that they were just that, mistakes. It doesn't mean that they are bad people. I don't think that they are “lacking in character” or anything like that. At least they haven't given me any reason to think so. If they are like anyone else at Arrowhead then I am pretty sure that I like them. I have made some big mistakes at Arrowhead myself.  Those mistakes were my fault and I think that I have owned up to them. I hope that others can do the same. Maybe not today, but after some thought.

When we enter races like the Arrowhead, TransIowa, or Superior 100 we expect a little adventure. We expect to come out of them with some crazy stories to tell. That's one of the reasons we do it. In a sense we want to get ourselves in a pickle and then get ourselves out again. We love to hear stories about breaking a bone and still finishing a race. The thing is that there are acceptable consequences and unacceptable ones.

Some acceptable consequences are:

• exhaustion
• soreness
• mild hallucinations
• using snow as toilet paper
• blisters
• a few days of limping around
• eating lots of junk food
• wear & tear on equipment
• bruises and scrapes
• accidents

We think that these things are okay and we accept that they will happen. None of them (except accidents) are particularly dangerous and we happily indulge in them.

Some unacceptable consequences are:

• frostbite
• dehydration
• bonking
• sunburn
• drinking your own (or someone else's) urine
• heat exhaustion
• giardia

These things are unacceptable, dangerous, and there is no good reason that anyone entering into any of these races should have to deal with them. As one friend of a friend put it: “De-hy-dration. You did that to yourself.”

In a shorter race, even a 100 mile gravel ride or 50k run, many of these worries simply don't come up. You can push yourself to the limit and vomit from the exertion. That's okay. It's acceptable in those races. You can cut corners (so to speak), skip aid stations, dump your water before the final sprint, all that good stuff. You take a calculated risk.

Endurance races, races that take more than say 8 hours or take place in extreme conditions are different. You don't know what will happen. You must know yourself well, know the conditions well, and know the course well. Corners simply can not safely be cut. You are taking a calculated risk just by entering the race.

Arrowhead is billed as one of the coldest races in the world. Some say it is one of the toughest. I can't speak to that. I haven't been to all the races in the world. What I do know is that -30f is no joke. Things happen fast at those temperatures. They go from bad to worse without much warning. The first thing to be is prepared. Have plenty of food. Plenty of water. Know that you can use all of your required gear, including your sleeping bag and stove.

Some people have said, “if you stop at those temperatures you will die.” That is simply not true. If you went through gear check you have all the tools necessary to survive at those temperatures. When I got too tired to see straight at Arrowhead in 2011 I pulled out my sleeping bag and pad and took a nap at -40f. I was comfortable and it felt great. The same thing goes for your stove. I have never had to melt water from snow during Arrowhead, but I have done it in practice down to about -10f. It takes a long time, it's true, and you should be in your sleeping bag if it is especially cold out, but it can be done. Being prepared means having the equipment, knowing how to use it, and just as importantly being willing to use it. I said earlier on that making mistakes is a case of beyond your mental limits. Being unwilling to use your gear is being beyond your mental limits too.

If you read the reasons that I didn't go to Arrowhead this year you know that one reason, perhaps the key reason, was that I didn't want to be in a hurry. It sounds silly: I didn't want to go to a race because I didn't want to be in a hurry. Isn't racing about being in a hurry? No. Endurance racing is the tortoise and the hare. It is festina lente.  It is making the right decisions. If you are in too much of a hurry to do things right then you have failed.

One of the things you must be willing to do is re-evaluate your situation. If you are too focused on winning, on beating someone else, or even on finishing then you will not be willing to re-evaluate. If I had gone this year I would have had a 48 hour time limit that I set for myself. That might have been very realistic for me to accomplish on skis in a good year, but cold snow makes for slow skis. I had to rethink what was likely.  The only skier to finish this year finished in 54 hours and change. I have no doubt that he is a good skier. I also have no doubt that he had to re-evaluate his expectations. In the end 60 hours probably felt like a realistic goal and anything faster was gravy.

Well, I've gone on for too long here. In brief what I want to say is: someone made a mistake and that mistake led to unacceptable consequences. Once he put himself in that position he had to get himself out and perhaps he did the right thing then, in the short run, but the situation was totally avoidable and should not be celebrated.

Oh, and the answer to the question I posed: I still haven't completely recovered, even after 7 years.   

Why I won't be at Arrowhead this year.

I have been going to Arrowhead every year since 2006. Since then I have finished four times, twice on bike, once on skis, and once on foot; DNF'd 4 times, 3 times on skis, and once on bike requiring a snowmachine rescue. Temperatures have ranged from +35f to -40f and trail conditions from a virtual highway to unbroken to bare earth or gravel in spots. I've seen pretty much everything and have nothing to prove.

This race has been a big deal to me and shaped my life entirely for the better (minus a couple of toenails). I am much more mature, capable, and happier than I was at the age of 27. I can't say that Arrowhead was solely responsible, but it taught me that I could do what I set out to do. It was the first thing I had started, struggled with, and completed. Prior to that I was easily discouraged and gave up at the first sign of trouble. I really didn't try very hard at anything. Nothing really seemed worth it or really mattered to me.

It's silly that a race without any tangible value could be the one thing that really mattered to me. Perhaps it is because it was my own goal; no one else had any interest in seeing me finish. One person actually told me that they would support me in anything I did except stupid things like the Arrowhead.

Biking the race told me that I could do it. I went in without any real training and finished. An accomplishment, but without meaning. Skiing though was what became my white whale. My first attempt in 2008 earned me the Myrtle the Turtle award for the last person to the halfway checkpoint. I dropped out there, but that award, just making it halfway was a real victory. The next year I resolved to actually train for the first time in my life. I made it halfway without trouble, but didn't have another 75 miles in me. 2009 with smarter training actually saw me at the finish on skis. It wasn't fast, but it was and is the greatest, most meaningful, accomplishment of my life. It sounds crazy, but it is; maybe my life is empty like that.

I say this because the Arrowhead is the reason that I am back in school. It is what showed me what work really is. It convinced me that I have what it takes to graduate. Of course plenty of people graduate without having to go through what I have. I don't know if it is simply easier for them or if they understood something that I didn't. Sometimes I think that the Arrowhead is a remedial perseverance class. Some of us just need to learn the hard way.

School is something that I failed at. I don't need to go back to get a job. I have one that I'm happy with. I'm not going for anyone else, even though my graduation will make some people very happy. Heck, I'm getting my degree in Philosophy, what more useless degree could I be getting. I am going back because it is something that I failed at and going back is a victory. Every day that I go to class, every assignment that I turn in is a victory. When I graduate it will be a victory. It will mean as much as the Arrowhead. It already does.

Aside from the personal victories everyone I know through the race is an inspiration to me. Everyone who toes the line and gives it their all, no matter how far they go, is someone I like and want to be around. Many of those people I only see once a year and I won't see them this year.

That is why my decision not to go this year is so tough. It is one of the three toughest decisions I have ever made. I feel sick making this decision, but I know that either way it went I would have felt sick. There just wasn't any perfect way out. Sometimes there isn't.

When I signed up for the Arrowhead last year I knew that it was going to be a stretch to do both it and school. I thought I would be able to miss three or four days of class without a problem. It turns out though that I have a lot of work to do. School is hard. I spend hours reading and writing every night in addition to going to class and working 30 hours per week. In particular, next week I have three short papers due, and an exam on Thursday. I was going to have to hurry the race along in order to get back in time for that exam. I know from hard experience that hurrying is not something you should do at -30f. That is the time for slow deliberate action. The race is 60 hours long and you have to be willing to take 60 hours. Hurrying is why I dropped out last year when I had a good shot at finishing. Hurrying is how I got serious frostbite and had to be rescued.

Skipping three days of class and doing a slap-dash job on a few papers and an exam won't cause me to fail classes. That isn't the point. The point is that I can either do both poorly or one well. If I could have done one well and one poorly I would have chosen that.

Well, that's a lot to try and say in one blog post, especially a long overdue blog post. I will miss all of you up in International Falls, at Melgeorges, SkiPulk, and Fortune Bay. Some of you I will see at Trans Iowa, some in Duluth later this year, some maybe not until next January, or not at all. I will miss the trees, hills, flat swamps, and the cold. The Arrowhead chapter of my life is not closed, but will have to wait another year.

Swim the Bridge 5k

A couple of weeks ago I swam my first 5k race. The race was Swim the Bridge at Saylorville lake near Granger. If you're familiar with that area you probably know the “mile long” bridge. We swam under that. It's very dirty and sort of smelly, but it's the biggest lake for 100 miles. It's what we've got.

People seem pretty impressed by a 5k swim, but it didn't seem like that big of a deal to me. In high school we used to swim 1200 yard warm-ups then do our workout then another 1200 yard cool-down. I'm pretty sure we did well over 5k every day. Sometimes more than once per day. I suppose all that experience swimming came in handy. I'm very comfortable in the water and know I can swim all day so there's no anxiety, even when I'm (sort of) far from land.

I haven't done much open water swimming though so that was new. In a pool you can stare at the black line at the bottom and not have to look up and see where you are. It's very easy. In open water, especially Iowa water, you can't even see your hand in front of your face. In order to see where you are and where you're going (and you have to, it's pretty much impossible to swim in a straight line without constant correction) you have to break stride (stroke?) and look up. It's even harder for me since, without my glasses, I can't see very well. Several times I couldn't see the next buoy and had to look for other swimmers in my vicinity to guess what direction to go. It gets doubly hard when you're told to turn at the first orange buoy and you're colorblind. Yeah, I couldn't tell the difference between the orange, red, and green buoys. For the most part it didn't matter, but once I did have to ask a saftey boater which way to go.

Several races (1.2 mile, 2.4 mile and 5k) all started at once so there was a bit of a scrum from the beginning. Lots of groping and getting groped going on. I didn't mind much as, again, I'm comfortable in the water, but I can see how it could be annoying. After the first 1.2 mile lap, when about half the racers finished their race, things got settled out and I was pretty much alone after that.

The first lap I did front crawl, but the second and third I did breaststroke. Breaststroke is much easier for me both because I can see where I'm going and it was what I raced from the ages of 8 to 16. I can swim breaststroke faster than a lot of people can swim front crawl and very efficiently too.

Afterwards I talked to a few people I knew and a few I didn't. A common sentiment was, “How could you get back in and go out for that last lap?” That was a little mystifying to me. Why wouldn't I? I signed up for 5k, I'm going to swim 5k. I never thought I wouldn't be able to do it.

Anyway, it was pretty fun and I think I'll do it again next year.   

Midnight Madness 5k & 10k

A couple of weeks ago I did the Midnight Madness 5k and 10k races. For those of you who don't know about them these road runs are a big deal here in Ames. I had never done it for a number of reasons: I run that far several times a week so why pay $30 to do it? I prefer to run alone most of the time and this race has hundreds, if not thousands of people in it. The big deal seems to be the party afterwards. I am not much of a partier.

Well, this year a few things came together to convince me to do it. First off, a friend contacted me asking me to do it, offered me a new pair of racing flats, and guaranteed me a PR (I hadn't run a 5k race since high school and had never run a 10k race). Then just a few minutes later I ran into the race director (Captain Midnight) at a coffee shop (though his persuasive speech focused more on the party and less on the run).

So on the day of I laced up my new shoes for the first time, just minutes before the start. The race started and for the first half I wasn't sure whether it was the 5k or 10k race (I had signed up for both). I really hoped it was the 5k because I was going way too fast for a 10k. It was surprising just how many people I knew both running and among the spectators. It seemed like every 10 meters I was saying “hi” to someone. I guess when you've been in town for 17 years and a visible part of the athletic scene for 11 it shouldn't be a surprise. There were more than a few “what are you doing here” moments. Luckily it was the 5k and I finished with a time of 20:47. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it seemed okay. Faster than many, slower than some. It's all relative.

I had about half an hour to wait for the start of the 10k so I walked around a bit and ran into yet more folks I knew. One happened to tell me about the 5k Swim the Bridge which I'll be racing tomorrow and others asked about the Arrowhead (I was wearing the shirt). I knew I'd have to back off and run my own pace in the 10k. In a 5k it seems like I can pretty much go all out, but in a 10k you really have to let go of your ego and let people you know are slower get ahead of you if that's what they want to do. So I reined it in for the first 5k. In the second half I pushed to keep the pace steady. A lot of those people who had passed me in the first half started dropping back and walking. I was glad of my easy first half. I thought I might end up with a negative split, but that didn't happen, though it was close (I don't have my splits). My finishing time was 47:43 which I thought was pretty good. The shoes were great and didn't give me any problems though in such a short race they really shouldn't.

Afterwards I got together with one of my cousins who happened to spot me when I was running. We ended up getting cake and ice cream with his girlfriend's family and missing the after-party. That's more my speed anyway. Will I do it again next year? I don't know. I had a good time and it is interesting to try and run fast rather than try and run far. I can see how someone could get into that. Maybe I'll see how fast I can do a marathon next year. Still I'm more of an ultra-runner at heart.

Books Read: June

Railsea, China Mieville

More good stuff from Mieville. Again I can see some folks not liking his stuff because of the suspension of disbelief required and breaking of convention that he loves to use. To me that makes it all better. Much of the time when a book builds suspense and it looks like there's going to be a big reveal at the end it just doesn't pan out. I as myself quite often with television and book series, can they end this well? What sort of ending would be satisfactory? More often than not I can't see any ending being up to the task. Some authors embrace this, think of the ending to Sopranos (which I haven't seen, but I know how it ends) some just fail, think of any series by Orson Scott Card. Mieville actually pulls it off. The end is sufficient to satisfy the buildup. That's a rare book.

Teachings on Love, Thich Nhat Hanh

I saw this at the library and picked it up. Then I put it down. Then I picked it up again. I think you can guess why: the title. It is not a very masculine title. It would be easy to feel self-conscious about carrying this one around. Not only am I reading a book about religion, but it has love in the title. I can't speak for everyone, but I think that in the culture I was raised in it is usually frowned upon for men to talk about love. I remember after going to a funeral for a good friend's father my friend told me, “When you get home tell your father that you love him.” She was very serious and sincere, but I didn't do it. Why? Because I was self-conscious about it. Well, the fact is I do love my father and I shouldn't be afraid to say so. I love you dad! There, I finally said it (well if writing counts) more than ten years later.

So, on to the book. This book is about love and love is about communication and understanding. Communication is the difficult part, at least for me (see above paragraph). Actually the understanding part probably comes down to communication too. After all how can we understand anything or anyone if we aren't willing to talk about it. I've had a few problems with this. With being self-conscious and unsure of myself. Afraid that people won't like me if they don't know me. Of course this is self defeating. If people don't know me they won't like me. Or at least they won't like me for who I am. Hold on. Here I am talking about love and using the word like. Is that fair? Man there's a lot of social baggage on that word 'love'.

Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz

This was the 'It' book a few years ago. All nerdly and literary. It got great reviews and I can see why, but I didn't like it. Much of the praise for the book revolved around it's use of nerd/geek references. Unfortunately, as I read it, those references serve only to highlight the main character's (Oscar's) immaturity and naiveté. Imagine that, geek references used to put someone down. Oscar is described as a fat nerd and is constantly trying to "get some" with awkward Star Trek inspired pick-up lines.  It's embarrassing and disappointing. If you want magical realism read Marquez. If you want a Carribean story read Gaiman's Anansi Boys. If you want geek culture read Ready Player One.  Maybe I didn't get this book.  I'd be happy to be wrong about it.  Feel free to tell me why this book is better than I thought.  

Knuckler, Tim Wakefield

I can't say why exactly I picked this one up. I had it written down as a book I was interested in, but I can't for the life of me figure out why. It's a pretty strange book, the first autobiography written in the third person that I've read. I suppose that's a nod to the fact that Wakefield didn't write it. A sportswriter did and it shows. It reads like a list of games scores and statistics. We never get to know Wakefield. He gets married has kids and devotes his free time to charities all with the vaguest of references. It's not at all like Andre Agassi's autobiography Open. That is a great book. Wakefield seems like a nice guy, a peacemaker, a team player, but unless you are a rabid Red Sox fan don't bother with this one.

Back to School

I announced a couple of months ago that I was going back to school. It was actually pretty hard to say. I've been thinking about it ever since I was kicked out 13 years ago. Honestly I don't blame them I was pretty worthless and not making much of my time there. Some semesters I hardly attended classes, much less did the assignments.

The incredible thing though. The thing that separates this time from every other time in the past 13 years is that I actually went ahead and did something about it. I talked to the Philosophy Department secretary and got the ball rolling. At first it looked like it was going to be an easy ride, now, after getting some bad news from the LAS College, it looks like I'm actually going to have to work for it. I suppose that's only fair. So ISU won't let me back yet. They don't trust me and who could blame them? I have to take some classes elsewhere first. Here again, I actually did something. I applied, and have been accepted at DMACC.

Now it may not seem like a big deal to be accepted to DMACC. You might say, “it's a community college, they accept anybody,” but that's not true. They only accept people who apply. I did that. The first time around I didn't. I don't know if I even filled out any forms to get into ISU in 1996. I know I had a chance to be in the honors program and I let it slip because I had to write a 300 word essay. Yeah, I had a pretty acute case of Entitlitis. Of course I also felt like I was going to college because I had to, because what else would I do?

Several times in the past few years I've said something like “College is harder than running a 100 mile race.” I believed that. It certainly looked like it on the surface. A race like that seemed like a sprint. Less than 48 hours. College will be maybe two years of work. But if I look more deeply I see that I run (or bike or ski) at least an hour every day to prepare for a race. If I put even that much work into school I expect it will be easier than I am worried it will be. I see that my old views on this are something like thinking that finals are all there is to college. Finals are certainly a big deal, but if you didn't prepare all semester how could you expect to do well? Or even finish?

Actually, I was a little surprised how few people commented on my goal of going back to school.  But if I think about it I think I've let enough people down in this arena that they didn't want to get their hopes up.  Thank you to those people who did encourage me though.  Who told me that I could do it. 

This time I'll be working for it. I don't know if I have a better idea of why I'm going to school, at least career wise, but I do have a better idea of what I want from it. I want to prove that I can do it. I want to put it behind me. 

 I'm actually quite anxious (and by that I mean eager) to begin.