Bedlocked

I do not know what this is from.


"As my daughter, Hadley, has grown, I have tried to follow my guiding principals. I give love but also give honest assessments. I help her work through issues without taking control. I give her space. I only kiss her once for every seven impulses. I emphasize her strengths. I travel with her. I have built a career that makes me feel significant and I model for her the importance of doing good in the world. I have built a career that makes me feel significant and I model for her the importance of doing good in the world. I love and include her dad and her brothers in every thing we do. I try never to divide the world into two parts with men on the other side. I ask for help. I take advice. I show Hadley the best of who she is and guide her through trouble spots. But, try as I might, I haven't been able to stay out of bed. I have been to museums and ball games and birthday parties and dance classes but have always dreamed of my king size bed filled with mothers and daughters and laughter and bitchy comments and unconditional love and fashion shows and stupid tv movies and the sometimes easy silence between mothers and daughters. After years of denial, I eventually gave in, and took to bed. Thank god! And over time, I have gathered there with my mother and my daughter and my sister and her daughter and my sister-in-law and her daughter and my friends and their daughters and we have laughed our butts off, eaten way too much junk food, cried over losses and illnesses, post mortem'ed about parties and meetings and dates and celebrated victories over circumstance. And now my teen-age daughter's friends come in too and I hear all about their world in vivid detail. Ends up that despite Hadley's conditioning, she too can spend hours just hanging out, doing absolutely nothing. Who knows about nature versus nurture, but Hadley and I have this one unique ability completely in common. My bed has become our bedrock. Life is busy and things are constantly changing (my grandmother has passed away, my mom has remarried, and my sister has moved across the country) but I am amazed and comforted by how things stay the same on the king-size island where I was raised, and where I have reluctantly raised my daughter, and where she may one day see fit to raise her own."

I never hit 'f' fast enough

I love being reminded how dumb I sound a lot of the time:
http://xkcd.com/667/

Piano

When I play the piano, I have this great uncertainty. Like every time I try to play a note, a wrong one may come out. I'm not sure if the sound I'm going to make is the correct one.

It helps to be out of my depth but still performative. I never memorized or really practiced any scales. I just learned how to play songs rotely. I was never aware of the machinery of music.

I wonder if a lot of autodidacticism is like that. Once you get a feel for a field, this incredible uncertainty and self-doubt about the way you are interacting with that field enters. There is an absolute confidence in one's ability to understand a field--comprehend it--but once you reach a certain level it is incredibly difficult to make the next step.

Maybe the hard part is knowing what that next step is. When you haven't been taught to build up the intuition for your path, there's too much uncertainty. I've started to find small improvsiations to change the way I approach piano. I hope it changes the way I feel about the instrument. I hope it can inform my understanding of how others learn.

The Intuition/Content problem

Thought about education:











Success in education is the rapid development and deployment of strong (and correct intuitions). When we talk about how some kids test well, what we are saying is that some kids are very good at recognizing the types of problems that are on tests and using pre-built intuitions about how to answer these questions.

Why is this what success is? Hrmm.

There were two kinds of tests I had in school. One kind where the questions were multiple choice or short answer and the object was to address the question that was being asked (the answer was usually given in some form: math question, multiple choice, a wording that leads a certain answer, etc.). The other was open answer where you were expected to identify and repeat a certain amount of knowledge. The first group (comprising maybe 90% of classes/work) was mostly Social Studies and Math and some English and Sciences. The second (comprising maybe 10% of classes/work) was some English and some Sciences. And it was in that second group of classes that I struggled the most. The system was rewarding my development in the first so strongly that I expected to be able to convert that capability into the second.

If our multiple choice tests had 10 possible answers and our word problems led answerers astray on purpose, would that push the balance closer. (I don't think the intuition/content problem can be solved in mathematics--maybe with more proof writing).

I'm excited to learn the teaching theories of my day!

Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo

I grabbed Cosmopolis off the library bookshelf for my roommate, Joe, who had considered reading Pynchon but found the task too daunting. I had tried an audiobook of Pynchon, but it came out nonsensical. I knew from reading criticism that DeLillo was the more accessible prolific postmodern writer and maybe a good gateway to Pynchon.

Joe ended up too busy to read a novel, so I read instead (taking another break from IJ). I didn't know it when I started, but I had some strong feelings about DeLillo before I started. I very much liked the film he wrote, Game 6. I very much hate his themes (thanks Wikipedia!).

I thought I had a pretty good idea when Cosmopolis had been published, so I didn't check that. I was off by at least 10 years. This will turn out to be crucial in how I turned on the book.

Cosmopolis is the story of a hedge fund manager, Eric Packer, who falls absolutely over the course of a day. DeLillo has Eric ostensibly wanting to get a haircut all day long. The general plot could be read as a criticism of LTCM and I wouldn't be surprised it if had been inspired by it. As I started the book, assuming it had been written in the late 80s or early 90s, I thought it was a brilliant prediction of things to come. Its 2003 publishing date showed it to be a blechish derivative of events past.

The first thirty or so pages held my interest pretty strongly. It was exactly what I had imagined the writing would be like: jazzy, abstruse, maybe even timelessly hip. But then the characters that inhabited the book coalesced into portraits of actual people. And this is where DeLillo is weak. The ideas behind his characters are interesting in the abstract. His characters in toto are feckless and mundane. The idea of a rich man with different elevators for different purposes caught me, surprised me. The hyper-rich, hyper-successful man having thoughts in the car left me bored.

If I read any more DeLillo, it will be White Noise, but it will probably be with reluctance.

They will come

I'm so glad that music has become fun to listen to and discover again.

I have this site to thank.

Netflix

My mom has been sick recently and got Netflix (because, why not?). Her first two picks were the ones that would be obvious and stereotype driven. Nights in Rodanthe and The Notebook. But those were the only two movies that she could think of. She started browsing the recommendations from Netflix. I couldn't be more proud.

This is what is in her queue:
Feast of Love (ehh, mediocre)
Atonement (awesome)
Knocked Up (great, although she will dislike it)
The Lake House (I didn't make it through this movie, but it came in with a lot of baggage--I give it a pass for Mom)
Rachel Getting Married (OMGRUSRS?)
I've Loved You So Long (WHAT THE HELL?)
Away From Her (This cannot be my mother...)

And it turns out Wandafuru Raifu (After Life) is streamable. The world is Grrrr-eat!

On being trapped

For people who have been served by fear in their pasts, it's very difficult for them to understand how that fear is not helpful to everybody. They will unintentionally and subtly try to pass that fear on to others so that they might be served by it as well. This can be a pernicious influence and is very difficult not to do. Openness and reflection on personal motivations can help.

Why can't I remember more?

2 summers ago I did a week long road trip with a couple of friends. This trip was very different than trips I had taken in the past. I have vivid memories of the books and music and transports I experienced that are tied to each place.

Eau Claire is the Twilight Singers.

Pine trees in south-central Canada are Harry Potter 7.

Parc Lafontaine in Montreal is Richard Rodriguez.

Parc Montreal itself is bikes.

New York and Pennsylvania and loss are dominated by the Arcade Fire's Neon Bible.

The New Jersey beach is Annie Dillard.

I want more. I want to remember more.

What is the matter.

In all of the self reflection I've done, I've never been able to figure this out:

"Probably most people enter relationships because they want sex, security, love, avoid loneliness or boredom etc. And I’m not saying that I don’t want those things, but it’s not my primary focus. What I want is being able to relate to another person - getting to know them, negotiating terms, building the relationship, co-creating a relationship with someone who is interested in doing that with me."
-snowqueen


It's more complicated than this, but I think that it really gets to my problem. What I seek is not the same as what my peers are seeking. I need to better figure out how to articulate what I'm looking for.

Elevation

The most important emotion in my life for the past year or so lacked a strong descriptive word. Yay for Roger Ebert.

Seriously, read it. You'll understand why sometimes I don't talk to you.

The Rise and

I'm still mad that I only saw this movie on my laptop.

My only hope is that its estimation will rise enough in time that there will be a special showing and I will be aware of it.

Or that I'll have enough discretionary income that I can rent out a theater and the reel (yeah, right).

A plea

There's a paragraph in one of Annie Dillard's books that I remember often. In my version of it, British pilots are flying bombing missions over France in World War II. They get hit by an AA gun or an enemy aircraft and as they know they are going down they call out to any able and friendly Frenchman, m'aidez, m'aidez, m'aidez, as they are jumping out of their planes to near certain death.

Eventually, after the war, this gets adopted internationally and vulgarized into Mayday. I can imagine a generation of pilots learning that you have to yell the international distress call into their radios if something terrible happens so that someone knows to try to help you. "Mayday, mayday, mayday." But they don't realize the simple poetry of it.

"Help me, help me, help me."

But where does the syrup go?

This sounds like Japancakes with more aggressive percussion to me.

I've been bingeing on pop music recently.

Conclusions:
-fullalbumwise, katy perry sucks less than beyonce
-the best of french pop (the style, not genre) is so much better than american
-lily allen does not have complete musical ideas
-kate nash hasn't put out new music for too long
-i need a nice little gremlin to tell me about new good music videos
-people have trouble distinguishing good from bad in popular culture

I am not (Amy)Tan

I was listening to this Bloggingheads last night. I've liked Richard Rodriguez ever since I saw him on Bill Moyers. He is fantastically articulate, very reflective, and a little morose. The important insight about him is that he is a conservative (one who wishes the future to look like our ideal vision of the past). This may mean he doesn't catch on to new trends right away (likely he's one of the last). But his skill is in studying humans' pasts. He's very good at looking at us as we are and as we were and identifying a few keys to help us comprehend each other and ourselves.

He and his interlocutor get onto the subject of happiness. In surveying peoples' happiness, he confines himself to cultures present in America. This leads him to think a lot about 'white' people and 'brown' people.

'White' people tend to place a strong emphasis on their job in determining their identity. 'Brown' people tend to place a stronger emphasis on family (anecdotes!) when choosing their identity. I don't really like the overall thrust of his argument. I think it undervalues the transformation he and lots of immigrants go through in America. But there was one point that I found very appealing. He talks about the people whose identity is strongly tied to family and weakly tied to occupation. He says that these people, relieved of the burden of forming their identity at work can throw themselves into their jobs with enthusiasm absent the self-consciousness the conventional American would have.

This got me to thinking about how hard it is to fit such a spirit towards ones occupation in the mainstream workforce. I can imagine telling my boss that this job doesn't really mean much to me, that there is another slightly separated world to which I bring the fruits of my labor. It is important that I bring those fruits, so I will work very hard while I am here, but I won't be here much more than I need to. This is a highly threatening way to think. As soon as you claim to value your job below one or more things (other than emergencies), your value as an American employee drops drastically. I think that this has made America an intensely wealthy and wealth-conscious nation.

I was raised Catholic, so my preference is for my identity being derived more from the people I spend time with than my occupation. This is not a good place for me to be in.

I don't know what this means for me. I think I need more time to reflect on it.

My key?

So I've missed my past two aikido practices. I was tired on Wednesday and I was sick on Sunday. Both reasons should have been valid, but I don't accept them.

I want very much to have a hobby/skill/art/craft activities that I can be good at that I practice, but the ones I try don't suit my personality. The people at aikido are very.. good. They are kind, giving people. But they are a tad dull. The dance classes I've been to have had a bit more joy, but again, dull! Magic players are less dull, but less good and much less joyful. Socrates Cafe people are often good and joyful and clever, but I don't connect with them personally.

Hrmph.

I love Tea Leoni

Why isn't she in more good films? (MORE BETTER!)

She is soooo much more charismatic than Ricky Gervais.

I think I still like Ghost Town, despite Gervais, though.

At least it makes lots of shit jokes.

Richard Nixon's Atonement

I just watched Frost/Nixon and was underwhelmed by it as is the tendency. The material was there, but either the editing or the structure left something to be desired.

F/N did get the most important thing right, though. And that right thing was the same right thing that was in Atonement (that movie had a better story/script to work with, though).

At the end of Atonement, an aged Briony (Vanessa Redgrave) is doing an interview for a book she has completed. At the end of the interview as we see it, she admits that her writing has been to give a past to the people she cared about that she had denied them. Her books had been enjoyed but misunderstood. But in that TV interview, the most powerful moment of the movie, she admits that she has done something unforgivably wrong, that she had worked the rest of her life to somehow make up for it, and that she had utterly failed. Powerful stuff.

Frank Langella manages to bring Nixon a very similar moment, and we wish it could be called redemption, but it's more of an avowal, a confession.

The interview being in a TV format is important, as Ron Howard feels he needs to tell us. There was nothing short of a TV close-up that could give us that very Nixon.

Langella's revelation won't haunt me like Redgrave's did, but I still think it is important. McEwan's novel couldn't utilize the affect of the TV interview, and I'm glad Wright's Atonement did. After Frost/Nixon I expect to see this powerful TV interview construction used well in the future.

On not fretting

Sherry advises

And here's what I've noticed. Facebook is really becoming
ubiquitous. I feel like I need to understand it and watch it because I
want to understand its role in professional networking as that emerges, so I can
advise students with relevance. But every day people from high school or
college connect to me, and I am experiencing some strange sensations as I
revisit my relationship with these people from my past. Not all of my time
in college was fantastic. I was depressed, irresponsible, and
self-destructive my senior year. By the time I left college I was
convinced I was dumb, because I wasn't studying anything I cared about, and my
strengths didn't seem to be recognized or admired by anyone. I was unkind
and self-absorbed in law school. There were some great moments, some
strong and true connections, some deep memories, some life lessons, but there
was also very little confidence, a lot of doubt and envy and shame, a sense that
who I really was inside was uncool and unambitious and unworthy according to the
rules of the world. I think that's part of why I feel so driven here, to
connect to college students and support and encourage them as they explore what
they want out of life.

Toast

This is the kind of writing I love.

It moves from a simple story (about a Dad buying something for his daughter) into a melancholy analysis of the way lives change.

<3.