Category Archives: Childhood memory

On going home

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What do you consider "home"? The place you grew up? Where you went to school? Or were you a wandering soul that never put down roots? "Home" is a very difficult concept to define with any kind of objectivity or certainty. I would love to idealize this all out of proportion, but that would be too easy. The truth of the matter is highly complex and chaotic. One can spend an inordinate amount of time in a place and never feel at home, but even just a few days might suffice to convince you that a new place is really where your heart is at. I think that home must have something to do with the heart or the soul or some other ephemeral and subjective criteria that is completely irrational and totally inexplicable. We know we are home when we get there, and we also know when we are long way from home. Perhaps the concept of home is forged in our hearts when we are young and impressionable, when we are vulnerable and need protecting, forged by a sturdy roof over our heads and a warm meal on the table where we are always welcome any time of the day or night. Or maybe it's none of that. At some point in our lives we forge an identity, we come to recognize ourselves as proceeding from some place, and when asked where we are from, we name a place. We spend most of our lives leaving home, moving out, living far away, yearning for that comfort and safety that we felt as children when we were being watched over. The nostalgia we feel for home is never felt so keenly as when we most go to some place foreign for work or school or whatever avatars and caprices befall one in the normal course of a life. We spend all of our time trying to get away from home, remake our identifies as adults, take our philosophies new and unknown places, make a living, create a new home for our family in an unfamiliar setting. And we live our lives far away from our homes. I often get the feeling that contemporary society is less and less concerned with a person's hometown, an idea which is being washed away by the increasing mobility of every level of society. Many, many people no longer identify any place as home, which makes me wonder, have we gained a more universal identity or have we lost something very essential, something important. Paradoxically, going home is a risky venture if there ever was one. One is a child at home, and as one moves away, one establishes a new identity, but as we go back, we put on our old clothes and become a child again. Of course, we also run the risk of realizing how small our home town really is, how short the buildings, how narrow the streets, how tiny was the house we grew up in. The nostalgic golden age of our youth probably never existed at all except as an over-idealized dream constructed in our minds in a moment of loneliness and dread when yearning for another time and place was easier than facing the cold, harsh realities of a new place. Going home will always force us to see the realities of our childhoods, for good or for bad, and we must examine who we think we are, which may be different than the constructed personality we present to the world on a daily basis. Going home is about facing our most base fears about our short-comings, our failings, our lost dreams. Yet going home can also be about the people who made us who we are today, who shaped us, who educated us, who raised us and put us the road to adulthood, who made us successful, who forged us in the flames of childhood, once and for all times, making us who we are today. Going home is about looking in a mirror, darkly, and taking a good, long look at the truth about ourselves, and that might not be entirely a bad thing at all.

On going home

Posted on by
What do you consider "home"? The place you grew up? Where you went to school? Or were you a wandering soul that never put down roots? "Home" is a very difficult concept to define with any kind of objectivity or certainty. I would love to idealize this all out of proportion, but that would be too easy. The truth of the matter is highly complex and chaotic. One can spend an inordinate amount of time in a place and never feel at home, but even just a few days might suffice to convince you that a new place is really where your heart is at. I think that home must have something to do with the heart or the soul or some other ephemeral and subjective criteria that is completely irrational and totally inexplicable. We know we are home when we get there, and we also know when we are long way from home. Perhaps the concept of home is forged in our hearts when we are young and impressionable, when we are vulnerable and need protecting, forged by a sturdy roof over our heads and a warm meal on the table where we are always welcome any time of the day or night. Or maybe it's none of that. At some point in our lives we forge an identity, we come to recognize ourselves as proceeding from some place, and when asked where we are from, we name a place. We spend most of our lives leaving home, moving out, living far away, yearning for that comfort and safety that we felt as children when we were being watched over. The nostalgia we feel for home is never felt so keenly as when we most go to some place foreign for work or school or whatever avatars and caprices befall one in the normal course of a life. We spend all of our time trying to get away from home, remake our identifies as adults, take our philosophies new and unknown places, make a living, create a new home for our family in an unfamiliar setting. And we live our lives far away from our homes. I often get the feeling that contemporary society is less and less concerned with a person's hometown, an idea which is being washed away by the increasing mobility of every level of society. Many, many people no longer identify any place as home, which makes me wonder, have we gained a more universal identity or have we lost something very essential, something important. Paradoxically, going home is a risky venture if there ever was one. One is a child at home, and as one moves away, one establishes a new identity, but as we go back, we put on our old clothes and become a child again. Of course, we also run the risk of realizing how small our home town really is, how short the buildings, how narrow the streets, how tiny was the house we grew up in. The nostalgic golden age of our youth probably never existed at all except as an over-idealized dream constructed in our minds in a moment of loneliness and dread when yearning for another time and place was easier than facing the cold, harsh realities of a new place. Going home will always force us to see the realities of our childhoods, for good or for bad, and we must examine who we think we are, which may be different than the constructed personality we present to the world on a daily basis. Going home is about facing our most base fears about our short-comings, our failings, our lost dreams. Yet going home can also be about the people who made us who we are today, who shaped us, who educated us, who raised us and put us the road to adulthood, who made us successful, who forged us in the flames of childhood, once and for all times, making us who we are today. Going home is about looking in a mirror, darkly, and taking a good, long look at the truth about ourselves, and that might not be entirely a bad thing at all.

On dreaming of a white Christmas

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So I live in central Texas where it was 81F today on December 3rd. But there is no such thing as global warming. This creepy warm weather is starting to get on my nerves, and it just does not feel like either December or the holiday season no matter how many Christmas carols I hear on the radio. There is no chance that snow will fall in any form within a thousand miles of Waco, Texas between now and Christmas. As a child in Minnesota I was used to all kinds of inclement winter weather--ice, snow, cold, wind, but today I had lunch outside and drank a huge glass of ice-tea and lemonade. The weather is almost surreal. The leaves are finally falling around here, but the heat and dry weather make it seem more like summer than late fall or early winter. The squirrels were frolicking about the quadrangle without a care in the world, fat and sassy, but maybe a little warm in their luxurious fur coats--pecans were a bumper crop for them this year, as were all the different kinds of acorns. I put my coat back in the closet a couple of days ago, and there it hangs, abandoned, forgotten, forlorn. Warm winter weather brings with it a certain melancholy which is hard to describe--cranky, out of sorts, sad, irked. When a person lives outside the influence of the four seasons, one also lives outside the natural cycles of weather. I wouldn't suggest that people need the cold to feel right, but the changing seasons offer a series of variations that bring variety and hope to the daily lives of people who live every year in a cycle of spring-summer-fall-winter. Warm summer mornings give way to crisp fall days which lead to the icy winds of winter, which will eventually surrender to moist warming breezes of spring. The changing seasons each offer something different, and when you are finally ready for a change, a new season brings something different, and you never get tired of the change. It would be very nice to have a white Christmas, a foot of snow dampens the sound of nature, lowers the temperature to levels that bite at the nose and nip at the toes. The season is not living up to expectations almost anywhere in the country this year, except for a few ski resorts of the northern Rockies. Maybe I should go there. I know I'm idealizing this all out of proportion: that high temperatures in winter save the nation millions in heating costs, traffic accidents are down because of no snow and ice, and towns and municipalities are saving oodles of money by not having to do snow removal. Their budgets overfloweth. But then again, what about the people that make their livings because it snows? The snow removal people sit twiddling their thumbs. the snow shovel guys have boxes full of brand new untouched snow shovels, and the fuel trucks sit idly by, full, but no deliveries. .Warm weather in December cuts a couple of ways, but it does not inspire the spirit. The grow shorter, the nostalgia grows deeper, and the soul yearns to feel a nip in the air, some snow on the ground, and the world taking its long winter's nap, so all I can do for now is dream. "White Christmas" you ask? Written by someone who had to spend the holidays in Los Angeles and had no white Christmas.

On dreaming of a white Christmas

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So I live in central Texas where it was 81F today on December 3rd. But there is no such thing as global warming. This creepy warm weather is starting to get on my nerves, and it just does not feel like either December or the holiday season no matter how many Christmas carols I hear on the radio. There is no chance that snow will fall in any form within a thousand miles of Waco, Texas between now and Christmas. As a child in Minnesota I was used to all kinds of inclement winter weather--ice, snow, cold, wind, but today I had lunch outside and drank a huge glass of ice-tea and lemonade. The weather is almost surreal. The leaves are finally falling around here, but the heat and dry weather make it seem more like summer than late fall or early winter. The squirrels were frolicking about the quadrangle without a care in the world, fat and sassy, but maybe a little warm in their luxurious fur coats--pecans were a bumper crop for them this year, as were all the different kinds of acorns. I put my coat back in the closet a couple of days ago, and there it hangs, abandoned, forgotten, forlorn. Warm winter weather brings with it a certain melancholy which is hard to describe--cranky, out of sorts, sad, irked. When a person lives outside the influence of the four seasons, one also lives outside the natural cycles of weather. I wouldn't suggest that people need the cold to feel right, but the changing seasons offer a series of variations that bring variety and hope to the daily lives of people who live every year in a cycle of spring-summer-fall-winter. Warm summer mornings give way to crisp fall days which lead to the icy winds of winter, which will eventually surrender to moist warming breezes of spring. The changing seasons each offer something different, and when you are finally ready for a change, a new season brings something different, and you never get tired of the change. It would be very nice to have a white Christmas, a foot of snow dampens the sound of nature, lowers the temperature to levels that bite at the nose and nip at the toes. The season is not living up to expectations almost anywhere in the country this year, except for a few ski resorts of the northern Rockies. Maybe I should go there. I know I'm idealizing this all out of proportion: that high temperatures in winter save the nation millions in heating costs, traffic accidents are down because of no snow and ice, and towns and municipalities are saving oodles of money by not having to do snow removal. Their budgets overfloweth. But then again, what about the people that make their livings because it snows? The snow removal people sit twiddling their thumbs. the snow shovel guys have boxes full of brand new untouched snow shovels, and the fuel trucks sit idly by, full, but no deliveries. .Warm weather in December cuts a couple of ways, but it does not inspire the spirit. The grow shorter, the nostalgia grows deeper, and the soul yearns to feel a nip in the air, some snow on the ground, and the world taking its long winter's nap, so all I can do for now is dream. "White Christmas" you ask? Written by someone who had to spend the holidays in Los Angeles and had no white Christmas.

On Star Trek (original series)

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Some people don't like Star Trek, but I'm not sure why. A highly literary show, dramatic, melodramatic, and at times highly exaggerated, the show was ground breaking in its scope and creative vision for what an advanced society might look like. Funny how we have incorporated so much of its technology from communicators to tablets in our contemporary society forty years after its debut. Star Trek was a social and political commentary of the United States during the turbulent mid-sixties when the violent anti-war upheavals rocked American society, and flower power was a part of the Age of Aquarius--the moon was in the seventh house. Star Trek raised serious questions about peace and violence, empire and colonialism, race and bigotry, free will and society. Many of the episodes were thinly veiled allegories that commented directly on war, apartheid, violence, exploration, government, race, myth, gender, history, life, ecology. If you watch all of the episodes that list could be much, much longer. Some have criticized the series for promoting American imperialism, reading Star Fleet as a reincarnation of American military policy. Though one cannot completely dismiss such an interpretation, I believe that there are other signifiers within the discourse of the show that reject that reading. For me as a young child watching the show as it was broadcast for the first time, I found its innovative and imaginative array of ideas to be surprising and enchanting. There were no ethical dilemmas or personal conflicts which seemed to be taboo within the bounds of the show. Since they were traveling in space, a long way from Earth, they could deal directly with human problems without being heavy-handed or pedantic. More than one episode ended ambiguously or open to interpretation. The hero, Kirk, is a genuine man of action, perhaps a bit of throwback, who was played with great panache by William Shatner, who made Kirk a larger-than-life Star Fleet captain of the Enterprise. In its pre-Star Wars era, the special effects were a bit simple, but they were believable and refreshing. This was a new kind of television that went way beyond the comedies, westerns, and variety shows that were common on broadcast television of the time. The first inter-racial kiss occurred on Star Trek, for example, and the series acknowledged the existence of sex in the lives of the characters in an honest and open way. You weren't going to see any of that on Gunsmoke or Bonanza. The show was so innovative, in fact, that I think many people just did not know what they were looking at, and they thought the show was silly and frivolous, so it was canceled after three seasons, but not before leaving an indelible mark on the television landscape. The show created a paradigm for innovative television and storytelling that is still viable some forty years later after numerous films and three more television series. Part of the original series success was its terrific ensemble, good writing, imaginative art direction, creative casting, and willingness to surprise. Although some of the shows don't hold up very well after all these years, many of the shows are still as solid as they were when they filmed in the sixties. "Take her out, Mr., Sulu, warp factor one."

On Star Trek (original series)

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Some people don't like Star Trek, but I'm not sure why. A highly literary show, dramatic, melodramatic, and at times highly exaggerated, the show was ground breaking in its scope and creative vision for what an advanced society might look like. Funny how we have incorporated so much of its technology from communicators to tablets in our contemporary society forty years after its debut. Star Trek was a social and political commentary of the United States during the turbulent mid-sixties when the violent anti-war upheavals rocked American society, and flower power was a part of the Age of Aquarius--the moon was in the seventh house. Star Trek raised serious questions about peace and violence, empire and colonialism, race and bigotry, free will and society. Many of the episodes were thinly veiled allegories that commented directly on war, apartheid, violence, exploration, government, race, myth, gender, history, life, ecology. If you watch all of the episodes that list could be much, much longer. Some have criticized the series for promoting American imperialism, reading Star Fleet as a reincarnation of American military policy. Though one cannot completely dismiss such an interpretation, I believe that there are other signifiers within the discourse of the show that reject that reading. For me as a young child watching the show as it was broadcast for the first time, I found its innovative and imaginative array of ideas to be surprising and enchanting. There were no ethical dilemmas or personal conflicts which seemed to be taboo within the bounds of the show. Since they were traveling in space, a long way from Earth, they could deal directly with human problems without being heavy-handed or pedantic. More than one episode ended ambiguously or open to interpretation. The hero, Kirk, is a genuine man of action, perhaps a bit of throwback, who was played with great panache by William Shatner, who made Kirk a larger-than-life Star Fleet captain of the Enterprise. In its pre-Star Wars era, the special effects were a bit simple, but they were believable and refreshing. This was a new kind of television that went way beyond the comedies, westerns, and variety shows that were common on broadcast television of the time. The first inter-racial kiss occurred on Star Trek, for example, and the series acknowledged the existence of sex in the lives of the characters in an honest and open way. You weren't going to see any of that on Gunsmoke or Bonanza. The show was so innovative, in fact, that I think many people just did not know what they were looking at, and they thought the show was silly and frivolous, so it was canceled after three seasons, but not before leaving an indelible mark on the television landscape. The show created a paradigm for innovative television and storytelling that is still viable some forty years later after numerous films and three more television series. Part of the original series success was its terrific ensemble, good writing, imaginative art direction, creative casting, and willingness to surprise. Although some of the shows don't hold up very well after all these years, many of the shows are still as solid as they were when they filmed in the sixties. "Take her out, Mr., Sulu, warp factor one."

On reading for pleasure

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I bought a book the other day, and it is no great work of art, but it will be fun to read--action, mystery, good tough guys, hot sexy women, suspense, chases, gun fights, love scenes, evil rotten bad guys, breathless landscapes, strange religious manias, mistaken identities, stunning denouement, victory lap for the hero and his girl. There are times when you just cannot read another serious book for your research, another book on literary theory, another article of literary criticism before you start to question your own sanity. Reading for pleasure, for many of us academic ivory tower sorts, is a lost art, or at least we have forgotten that reading can be fun, a vicarious thrill, an intriguing mystery, a heart-breaking romance, an existential journey on blue roads, a search for meaning in a nihilistic culture of rampaging consumerism, a coming-of-age epiphany. Reading is fun, but when it is also your job you might lose track of the fun. If reading ceases to be fun, then it can only be work, and too much work makes Jack a dull boy. When I started out reading as a small child, all of reading was fun. I read about adventures, dinosaurs, soldiers and battles, inventors, magicians, wizards, flying. The world of fun reading is almost boundless. Later I discovered Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, Daniel Dafoe and Bram Stoker, Stephen King and Peter Straub, and reading was still fun. Somewhere along the way, however, I went to college and starting reading things that were more informational and less fun and reading became a burden. Don't get me wrong, I still loved reading, but when reading is a chore, you start to hate doing it, and even the books you loved in the past become a part of that burden and those chores. Nevertheless, even during college I learned to love Hemingway and Faulkner, Shakespeare and Wilde, Eco and Borges. They made me read Cervantes, and I found out he was a genius. Then I read García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Rulfo, Castellanos, Allende, and Carpentier, and I was hooked on reading forever. Reading for pleasure is an escape for the imagination, a letting the monsters go, a moment to forget about the pressures of the day and let the mind wander into other places and times, to walk in the footsteps of heroes looking for the Grail, of detectives trying to return social stability to an unstable world, of explorers headed to the center of the earth, of a scientist traveling into time. So I have no problem with buying a nice, fat potboiler for reading on the plane, or before going to bed, or for a lazy Sunday afternoon. No, I can't pull a don Quijote and lose myself in endless narratives of fantasy and adventure, but from time to time, it cannot really hurt. A giant here and there, an evil villain, a frantic chase across an urban landscape, climbing mountain, riding a griffin, skulking through an underground passage, a dead body or two, a tragic love affair (although all love affairs are tragic), impending doom. You know you love it too, a guilty pleasure that lurks within your library that you pull out and read from time to time. You feel nostalgic, you know every word, you remember entire descriptions, but it is a pleasure, and you will return time and time again, and you love it.

On reading for pleasure

Posted on by
I bought a book the other day, and it is no great work of art, but it will be fun to read--action, mystery, good tough guys, hot sexy women, suspense, chases, gun fights, love scenes, evil rotten bad guys, breathless landscapes, strange religious manias, mistaken identities, stunning denouement, victory lap for the hero and his girl. There are times when you just cannot read another serious book for your research, another book on literary theory, another article of literary criticism before you start to question your own sanity. Reading for pleasure, for many of us academic ivory tower sorts, is a lost art, or at least we have forgotten that reading can be fun, a vicarious thrill, an intriguing mystery, a heart-breaking romance, an existential journey on blue roads, a search for meaning in a nihilistic culture of rampaging consumerism, a coming-of-age epiphany. Reading is fun, but when it is also your job you might lose track of the fun. If reading ceases to be fun, then it can only be work, and too much work makes Jack a dull boy. When I started out reading as a small child, all of reading was fun. I read about adventures, dinosaurs, soldiers and battles, inventors, magicians, wizards, flying. The world of fun reading is almost boundless. Later I discovered Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, Daniel Dafoe and Bram Stoker, Stephen King and Peter Straub, and reading was still fun. Somewhere along the way, however, I went to college and starting reading things that were more informational and less fun and reading became a burden. Don't get me wrong, I still loved reading, but when reading is a chore, you start to hate doing it, and even the books you loved in the past become a part of that burden and those chores. Nevertheless, even during college I learned to love Hemingway and Faulkner, Shakespeare and Wilde, Eco and Borges. They made me read Cervantes, and I found out he was a genius. Then I read García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Rulfo, Castellanos, Allende, and Carpentier, and I was hooked on reading forever. Reading for pleasure is an escape for the imagination, a letting the monsters go, a moment to forget about the pressures of the day and let the mind wander into other places and times, to walk in the footsteps of heroes looking for the Grail, of detectives trying to return social stability to an unstable world, of explorers headed to the center of the earth, of a scientist traveling into time. So I have no problem with buying a nice, fat potboiler for reading on the plane, or before going to bed, or for a lazy Sunday afternoon. No, I can't pull a don Quijote and lose myself in endless narratives of fantasy and adventure, but from time to time, it cannot really hurt. A giant here and there, an evil villain, a frantic chase across an urban landscape, climbing mountain, riding a griffin, skulking through an underground passage, a dead body or two, a tragic love affair (although all love affairs are tragic), impending doom. You know you love it too, a guilty pleasure that lurks within your library that you pull out and read from time to time. You feel nostalgic, you know every word, you remember entire descriptions, but it is a pleasure, and you will return time and time again, and you love it.

On libraries

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Libraries, collections of books, magazines, and newspapers, have always given me a home away from home. I keep my own library both in my office and at home. Having books has always been important to me, but mega-collections of volumes offer a silent monument to imagination, creativity, research, personal effort, and perseverance. Somebody cared enough to write those books, to share their vision of their field, to offer up to humanity their grain of knowledge, to struggle to publish their work, making it, more or less, permanent. Even as a small child, once I figured out what books and libraries did, I was hooked, spending hours reading all kinds of works--novels, short stories, true life adventures, history, biography, science, philosophy, and poetry. I couldn't buy all the books I wanted, and even if I could, where would I put them all? Above all, though, libraries are about sharing the books, communing with others in the study carrels and stacks. The quiet of libraries has often been a peaceful island where I could write papers, read long novels, study the plays of William Shakespeare, compose poetry, nap, contemplate the world, explore the existential angst implicit in the very fact of a huge library. There is nothing quite like finding a book of which you have only heard, but never seen, to take it off of the shelf and begin paging through it. Perhaps it is the orderliness of libraries with their complex numbering systems that break books into categories, subjects, genres, themes, epochs, and authors. The orderliness is comforting and predictable, and if you know one library, you can navigate almost any library with a similar system. Checking out books is, of course, an enormous privilege that most libraries in the USA allow, a reality which is not as readily available elsewhere. So you sit with your books at your study carrel in the library, half of them are open to important pages as you take notes, write a thesis paragraph, scratch your head. Time stops while you are in the library, and even though you think it's 2012, it's really 1955, or even 1845. Libraries are a liminal space out of time and out of space, a repository for knowledge and art, a place where librarians process books, people read, write, create, sleep, dream. The stacks are a labyrinth, consisting of books, people, librarians, chairs, desks, staircases, windows, offices. Yet I wonder for how much longer. The digital age is making serious inroads in the physical diffusion of books, and just this year more digital books that paper books were sold. I fear that my oasis of learning and intellectual pursuit may soon fit into a tablet, and that the libraries will close because no one will need them anymore. If you can get every book in the library without ever leaving your house, why go in the first place?

On libraries

Posted on by
Libraries, collections of books, magazines, and newspapers, have always given me a home away from home. I keep my own library both in my office and at home. Having books has always been important to me, but mega-collections of volumes offer a silent monument to imagination, creativity, research, personal effort, and perseverance. Somebody cared enough to write those books, to share their vision of their field, to offer up to humanity their grain of knowledge, to struggle to publish their work, making it, more or less, permanent. Even as a small child, once I figured out what books and libraries did, I was hooked, spending hours reading all kinds of works--novels, short stories, true life adventures, history, biography, science, philosophy, and poetry. I couldn't buy all the books I wanted, and even if I could, where would I put them all? Above all, though, libraries are about sharing the books, communing with others in the study carrels and stacks. The quiet of libraries has often been a peaceful island where I could write papers, read long novels, study the plays of William Shakespeare, compose poetry, nap, contemplate the world, explore the existential angst implicit in the very fact of a huge library. There is nothing quite like finding a book of which you have only heard, but never seen, to take it off of the shelf and begin paging through it. Perhaps it is the orderliness of libraries with their complex numbering systems that break books into categories, subjects, genres, themes, epochs, and authors. The orderliness is comforting and predictable, and if you know one library, you can navigate almost any library with a similar system. Checking out books is, of course, an enormous privilege that most libraries in the USA allow, a reality which is not as readily available elsewhere. So you sit with your books at your study carrel in the library, half of them are open to important pages as you take notes, write a thesis paragraph, scratch your head. Time stops while you are in the library, and even though you think it's 2012, it's really 1955, or even 1845. Libraries are a liminal space out of time and out of space, a repository for knowledge and art, a place where librarians process books, people read, write, create, sleep, dream. The stacks are a labyrinth, consisting of books, people, librarians, chairs, desks, staircases, windows, offices. Yet I wonder for how much longer. The digital age is making serious inroads in the physical diffusion of books, and just this year more digital books that paper books were sold. I fear that my oasis of learning and intellectual pursuit may soon fit into a tablet, and that the libraries will close because no one will need them anymore. If you can get every book in the library without ever leaving your house, why go in the first place?