Category Archives: reflection

On beauty

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It’s all been said before, but maybe this term means more or less than you think it does. Philosophers have driven themselves (and their readers) mad in labyrinthine rhetorical treatises on the subject without ever (re)solving anything. One man’s pleasure is another’s pain. Most essays on beauty are fruitless, thornless, roses that neither praise nor defend any particular position, or perhaps not. The rose has been over-utilized as a metaphor for beauty, but dissolving the concept of beauty in an ironic metaphorical rose soup does nothing to define what makes something or someone beautiful. Some roses are ugly, too. A lot of beauty is about what looks good now–a fad, a passing moment, an ephemeral moment in time, a wisp of smoke, a shadow, nothing. People have fought over what is beauty, but in the long term their explanations are hollow, vacuous, superficial, focusing on the physical, which may be beautiful or may be ugly. Who knows? Some would have you think that they know. I would suspect that they are worried about being found out as fakes and phonies. An idea might be beautiful, or it may deserve to be on the hash-heap of history. We fill museums with beautiful things–paintings, sculptures, and the like, and then we charge admission to see them. Are they more beautiful because one must pay to see them? One might acquiesce to the idea that certain aesthetic structures are more pleasing to look at than others, that colors may go together, that this painting is more pleasing to look at than that sculpture, but again, is beauty a learned concept or are some things innately beautiful? As is the case with all human constructions, beauty is a contrivance, a convention based on what the hierarchy says is beautiful. Beauty is constructed, but I often wonder to what end. Nothing, it seems, is more inherently beautiful than anything else. I suppose that it boils down to what we have learned to love, and that is what we find beautiful.

On leaving Amarillo

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This story is about a miracle–you may decide for yourself, rational empiricist, if it actually was. So after the Texas Medieval Association conference, which was held in Canyon, Texas, this year (2013), was over, I had to head back home to Waco. I had arrived on the high plains of west Texas to give my paper on miracles (interesting coincidence, no?) via the Amarillo airport, so once the last paper was over on Saturday, I hopped in my rental car, and I headed north. After stopping for gas, I dropped the car off at the rental office and headed to the terminal. Once there, I found out that there was bad weather in Dallas, that the 3:30 flight was still waiting to leave (it was 4:30 pm by now), and that the agent did not want me to check in for my flight yet because she didn’t know if it would ever leave at all. The prospects of getting out of Amarillo on this particular Saturday night were somewhere between zero and none. I headed to the airport bar to drown my travel sorrows in a cold beverage. Minutes later, my phone dinged to let me know that my 6:30 pm flight was now leaving at a little past seven–an old story. I ordered another beverage, but decided that since dinner time was looming, I would also buy a burger. I made the order. About five minutes later, my phoned dinged again, and my heart sank–now I would be delayed until tomorrow. Yet, to my great astonishment, I was now bumped up to the ill-fated 3:30 pm flight which was still sitting at the gate like a beached whale. I rushed over to check-in, and the clerk wanted my bag, and she had my ticket in her hand–“Run,” she said, “the flight is leaving in less than ten minutes.” I had inquired as to the availability of seats on that flight earlier, and there were none. Shaking my head at my good fortune, I headed to the bar to pay for my drinks and burger. The burger wasn’t ready yet, so told the waitress to give it away. She shrugged, and I left. There was no one at security except the bored security guards, so I put everything in the bins, the bins on the belt, and stepped into the security scanner machine. No waiting. As I was putting my shoes on, the security guard told me to wait–my food was coming through. A little dumb-struck, I took my food and backpack and headed for the gate. Ginger handed me a new baggage tag receipt, and I got on the plane, which promptly pulled away from the gate and headed for Dallas with me and my burger and fries. How I ever got on that flight with my food can only be termed a miracle. I left before I was even required to be at the airport. I have never been “moved up” without asking for it. Call me crazy, claim that it was just coincidence, but I honestly think God put my return together. I was at the airport early, a seat on a full flight was given to me without asking for it, the server at the bar had the kind foresight and generosity to carry my food to security, and the security agent gave it to me. Well-rested, and well-fed, I arrived in Dallas where my car was waiting for me–I didn’t miss my connection because on this odd trip, I had driven the two hours to the airport. If it were just one thing, I would dismiss it as random, but too many things had to coalesce at once to bring me home safely on Saturday night. Leaving Amarillo was a wonderful lesson in God’s power to give us what we need and perhaps less of what we want.

On leaving Amarillo

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This story is about a miracle–you may decide for yourself, rational empiricist, if it actually was. So after the Texas Medieval Association conference, which was held in Canyon, Texas, this year (2013), was over, I had to head back home to Waco. I had arrived on the high plains of west Texas to give my paper on miracles (interesting coincidence, no?) via the Amarillo airport, so once the last paper was over on Saturday, I hopped in my rental car, and I headed north. After stopping for gas, I dropped the car off at the rental office and headed to the terminal. Once there, I found out that there was bad weather in Dallas, that the 3:30 flight was still waiting to leave (it was 4:30 pm by now), and that the agent did not want me to check in for my flight yet because she didn’t know if it would ever leave at all. The prospects of getting out of Amarillo on this particular Saturday night were somewhere between zero and none. I headed to the airport bar to drown my travel sorrows in a cold beverage. Minutes later, my phone dinged to let me know that my 6:30 pm flight was now leaving at a little past seven–an old story. I ordered another beverage, but decided that since dinner time was looming, I would also buy a burger. I made the order. About five minutes later, my phoned dinged again, and my heart sank–now I would be delayed until tomorrow. Yet, to my great astonishment, I was now bumped up to the ill-fated 3:30 pm flight which was still sitting at the gate like a beached whale. I rushed over to check-in, and the clerk wanted my bag, and she had my ticket in her hand–“Run,” she said, “the flight is leaving in less than ten minutes.” I had inquired as to the availability of seats on that flight earlier, and there were none. Shaking my head at my good fortune, I headed to the bar to pay for my drinks and burger. The burger wasn’t ready yet, so told the waitress to give it away. She shrugged, and I left. There was no one at security except the bored security guards, so I put everything in the bins, the bins on the belt, and stepped into the security scanner machine. No waiting. As I was putting my shoes on, the security guard told me to wait–my food was coming through. A little dumb-struck, I took my food and backpack and headed for the gate. Ginger handed me a new baggage tag receipt, and I got on the plane, which promptly pulled away from the gate and headed for Dallas with me and my burger and fries. How I ever got on that flight with my food can only be termed a miracle. I left before I was even required to be at the airport. I have never been “moved up” without asking for it. Call me crazy, claim that it was just coincidence, but I honestly think God put my return together. I was at the airport early, a seat on a full flight was given to me without asking for it, the server at the bar had the kind foresight and generosity to carry my food to security, and the security agent gave it to me. Well-rested, and well-fed, I arrived in Dallas where my car was waiting for me–I didn’t miss my connection because on this odd trip, I had driven the two hours to the airport. If it were just one thing, I would dismiss it as random, but too many things had to coalesce at once to bring me home safely on Saturday night. Leaving Amarillo was a wonderful lesson in God’s power to give us what we need and perhaps less of what we want.

On detours

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Are you where you always thought you would be? As a child I always dreaded those big orange “detour” signs which were always synonymous with “getting lost.” In the pre-digital age of gps devices, getting lost along your way was a pretty common phenomenon. The most common reason for detours is to allow road crews to do road work and for drivers to make it around the mess. Some detours are cut and dried simple, but others can really carry you out of your way, taking you into neighborhoods you’ve never seen before, giving you a chance to visit previously unknown scenes. Unexpected detours wreck your schedule, add miles to your trip, and raise nervous emotions of uncertainty. My childhood dread of detours usually meant the trip would be longer, and we would arrive later. No one ever tells you how much longer the detour is going to be, if there will unexpected waiting while other cars pass. At the same time, however, the detour might show you a new way to get where you are going. We are all creatures of habit, and we don’t like to have our habits disturbed, even if the old normal way was never that good in the first place. Detours always test the validity of what we hold to be true. Whether that detour puts you on a new road or it makes you second guess the route you have always taken, it makes you re-examine all of those old values that you hold so dear. If we could only stick to familiar scenes, avoid the unknown, stay in our cocoon, life would be so much easier, but then come the detours, those orange signs with black arrows sending us off into the great unknown, making us wonder if we are going to get lost after all. We think that we can plan everything out, that we can control every situation, that we know how the world works, what the future holds. The uncertain chaotic nature of detours dashes every plan, destabilizes futures, destroys the illusion that we are in charge. Detours delay our arrival at a final destination–home, the cabin, the farm, the office, a restaurant, church–giving us time to think about things, give us a chance to examine what we are doing. How many times have I sat behind the wheel of my car and slowly turned onto a detour, all the time wondering what was in store for me now, giving me a chance to think about things, giving me a moment to contemplate my journey, the automatic pilot won’t serve anymore. Perhaps there is nothing like a detour to put most everything in its relative place. What scares us most about a detour is the idea that we might not ever arrive at all, but will instead end up somewhere else, a new place where nobody knows our name. Maybe detours are less a detriment to our lives and more of an opportunity to do something new–learn a language, eat something new, climb a mountain, visit Dr. Johnson’s house, follow a dark trail, read an old book, have a drink with a stranger. Detours challenge our inherent fear of the unknown because we are so deathly afraid of change. Life is so uncertain that even a good detour cannot be planned. So we check our maps, look at time schedules, program the global positioning device, consult the internet for delays, construction, detours, and jams, but where the rubber meets the road, we still run into detours, which derail all our plans.

On detours

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Are you where you always thought you would be? As a child I always dreaded those big orange “detour” signs which were always synonymous with “getting lost.” In the pre-digital age of gps devices, getting lost along your way was a pretty common phenomenon. The most common reason for detours is to allow road crews to do road work and for drivers to make it around the mess. Some detours are cut and dried simple, but others can really carry you out of your way, taking you into neighborhoods you’ve never seen before, giving you a chance to visit previously unknown scenes. Unexpected detours wreck your schedule, add miles to your trip, and raise nervous emotions of uncertainty. My childhood dread of detours usually meant the trip would be longer, and we would arrive later. No one ever tells you how much longer the detour is going to be, if there will unexpected waiting while other cars pass. At the same time, however, the detour might show you a new way to get where you are going. We are all creatures of habit, and we don’t like to have our habits disturbed, even if the old normal way was never that good in the first place. Detours always test the validity of what we hold to be true. Whether that detour puts you on a new road or it makes you second guess the route you have always taken, it makes you re-examine all of those old values that you hold so dear. If we could only stick to familiar scenes, avoid the unknown, stay in our cocoon, life would be so much easier, but then come the detours, those orange signs with black arrows sending us off into the great unknown, making us wonder if we are going to get lost after all. We think that we can plan everything out, that we can control every situation, that we know how the world works, what the future holds. The uncertain chaotic nature of detours dashes every plan, destabilizes futures, destroys the illusion that we are in charge. Detours delay our arrival at a final destination–home, the cabin, the farm, the office, a restaurant, church–giving us time to think about things, give us a chance to examine what we are doing. How many times have I sat behind the wheel of my car and slowly turned onto a detour, all the time wondering what was in store for me now, giving me a chance to think about things, giving me a moment to contemplate my journey, the automatic pilot won’t serve anymore. Perhaps there is nothing like a detour to put most everything in its relative place. What scares us most about a detour is the idea that we might not ever arrive at all, but will instead end up somewhere else, a new place where nobody knows our name. Maybe detours are less a detriment to our lives and more of an opportunity to do something new–learn a language, eat something new, climb a mountain, visit Dr. Johnson’s house, follow a dark trail, read an old book, have a drink with a stranger. Detours challenge our inherent fear of the unknown because we are so deathly afraid of change. Life is so uncertain that even a good detour cannot be planned. So we check our maps, look at time schedules, program the global positioning device, consult the internet for delays, construction, detours, and jams, but where the rubber meets the road, we still run into detours, which derail all our plans.

On Walden Pond

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How often do I ask myself, “Why do you participate so willingly in the noisy rat race of humanity?” This is a difficult question when contemplated from the shores of Walden Pond, but my first response is easy–I don’t like being alone all the time and solitude is not all that it’s cracked up to be. At first the idea of being an independent being, completely removed from the frothing mass of humanity seems appealing, far from the maddening crowd. I mean, why should we put up with all the mediatic noise that contaminates our daily routine, the “circuses and bread” thrown to us by idiotic politicians and unthinking news sources that are only interested in defending their own interests and the truth be damned. On Walden Pond I can isolate myself from all of this noise, forget about the savage capitalistic consumerism of my neighbors, shut out the news media, turn a blind eye to the “entertainment” offered on the six hundred channels of cable, and listen to the birds chirp and the wind blow across the pond and through the trees who are my only neighbors. It is easier to live on Walden Pond than it is to tolerate the nonsense that invades my day via newspapers, radio, television, and the internet, but I can’t help but think that something is missing. Granted the noise of the daily grind is infuriating if not irritating, but is perpetual silence preferable? Am I shirking a moral responsibility to participate in the goings on that bother me, irk me, infuriate me? There have been others who have removed themselves from participation in daily life–hermits, anchorites, saints, castaways, the shipwrecked, and in all of those cases there seems to be a sacrifice which is made–the company of other human beings. After re-reading Robinson Crusoe again recently, I came to the conclusion that although Crusoe lived in isolation, he did everything he could to reproduce European society around himself, re-inventing the wheel, so to speak, so that he would feel less alone, and that is what I feel here–alone. Nevertheless, “aloneness” is not entirely a bad thing unless it also looks like a prison sentence that has no end. Perhaps this is why Cain and Abel were brothers, that one alone would have been a tragedy, but paradoxically, the two together was also a tragedy. So one must consider carefully the entire question of human existence in terms of this metaphor, the pair of brothers in which love turned to hate and finally to murder because they could not co-exist without the questions of greed, jealousy, and envy destroying their relationship. Yet, one alone would have also died of eternal melancholy brought on by the loneliness of one voice speaking in a vacuum with no one to hear of either his successes or failures. Is this the central metaphor of human existence? The water laps gently on the shore, the birds twitter and caw overhead, the gentle wind blows through the trees, and if I were to fall, no one would here my cries, no one would be there to help me. The central paradox of Walden Pond seems to be my inability to rid myself of my own humanity, my desire to speak with others, to interact even with those with whom I disagree. My own ideas are interesting but I cannot exist in a vacuum either. Perhaps we are all doomed by our own noise and our inability to separate ourselves from it. In the meantime, I look forward to examining this conundrum a bit further.

On Walden Pond

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How often do I ask myself, “Why do you participate so willingly in the noisy rat race of humanity?” This is a difficult question when contemplated from the shores of Walden Pond, but my first response is easy–I don’t like being alone all the time and solitude is not all that it’s cracked up to be. At first the idea of being an independent being, completely removed from the frothing mass of humanity seems appealing, far from the maddening crowd. I mean, why should we put up with all the mediatic noise that contaminates our daily routine, the “circuses and bread” thrown to us by idiotic politicians and unthinking news sources that are only interested in defending their own interests and the truth be damned. On Walden Pond I can isolate myself from all of this noise, forget about the savage capitalistic consumerism of my neighbors, shut out the news media, turn a blind eye to the “entertainment” offered on the six hundred channels of cable, and listen to the birds chirp and the wind blow across the pond and through the trees who are my only neighbors. It is easier to live on Walden Pond than it is to tolerate the nonsense that invades my day via newspapers, radio, television, and the internet, but I can’t help but think that something is missing. Granted the noise of the daily grind is infuriating if not irritating, but is perpetual silence preferable? Am I shirking a moral responsibility to participate in the goings on that bother me, irk me, infuriate me? There have been others who have removed themselves from participation in daily life–hermits, anchorites, saints, castaways, the shipwrecked, and in all of those cases there seems to be a sacrifice which is made–the company of other human beings. After re-reading Robinson Crusoe again recently, I came to the conclusion that although Crusoe lived in isolation, he did everything he could to reproduce European society around himself, re-inventing the wheel, so to speak, so that he would feel less alone, and that is what I feel here–alone. Nevertheless, “aloneness” is not entirely a bad thing unless it also looks like a prison sentence that has no end. Perhaps this is why Cain and Abel were brothers, that one alone would have been a tragedy, but paradoxically, the two together was also a tragedy. So one must consider carefully the entire question of human existence in terms of this metaphor, the pair of brothers in which love turned to hate and finally to murder because they could not co-exist without the questions of greed, jealousy, and envy destroying their relationship. Yet, one alone would have also died of eternal melancholy brought on by the loneliness of one voice speaking in a vacuum with no one to hear of either his successes or failures. Is this the central metaphor of human existence? The water laps gently on the shore, the birds twitter and caw overhead, the gentle wind blows through the trees, and if I were to fall, no one would here my cries, no one would be there to help me. The central paradox of Walden Pond seems to be my inability to rid myself of my own humanity, my desire to speak with others, to interact even with those with whom I disagree. My own ideas are interesting but I cannot exist in a vacuum either. Perhaps we are all doomed by our own noise and our inability to separate ourselves from it. In the meantime, I look forward to examining this conundrum a bit further.

On the blank page

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Many people fear writing as if it were some arcane art in which only especially initiated adepts were allowed to work. Still others doubt that they have any talent at all, and they don’t want to make a fool of themselves, or that they don’t really have anything to say. They see the blank page as a challenge, not as an opportunity. The blank page stands before all of humanity as a monument to immobility. The difference between writers and non-writers is simple: writers don’t think about the shame of failure or that others will think their words boring or superficial. I have read things that I consider boring and superficial, but I have seldom come across anything that should never have been written at all. Some people will stare at the blank page and feel defeated before they even start because they fear failure, yet they have given themselves over to failure without even having tried. Writing is just words, one right after another, forming sentences, ideas, arguments, but if you never try to write, the blank page is a barrier, a wall you will never climb or pull down. Some people cannot even get past the first word, much less the first sentence. When I have thought my work trite or vacuous, there have been times when I have thrown things away, but for the most part, if I just keep writing, letting the words march across the paper by themselves, I can always go back and edit, throw away the crap, polish the good stuff. The blank page is filled with so much opportunity, so many possibilities, so much creative energy that you must yearn to fill it with discourse, poems, essays, conversations, descriptions, arguments, explanations. Bad writing is always a possibility, but if you never write at all, you are wearing cement shoes and won’t go much of anywhere. I see the blank page as a page already filled with ideas, metaphors, similes and a host of other poetic tropes which are all willing to clarify an to confuse perhaps both at the same time. Words are dark, no question, but we are all playing with the dictionary, so why not split open the dictionary and let the words run wild? The blank page stands up to the creative energy of the literary arts. All the best writers that have ever lived have always lamented the fact that there is nothing new to write about, so if we accept that premiss as a given, then we can stop worrying about whether Seneca or Ovid or Horace wrote about it two thousand years ago. I know I was born late, but there is nothing I, as a writer, can do about that. I accept the blank page as my traveling companion, and I am willing to work hard to fill up that page, sometimes with greater or lesser success. Thinking about the blank page just makes me want to write all that much more, and it also makes me care less about whether anyone likes what I write or not. I have no control over how anyone reads my writing–whether it moves them to cry, or moves them to snicker. I can’t even be sure if they understand what I write, but then again, do I understand what I am writing either? Or if I read this little ramble in two or three years, will I still think the same? Or will that ever matter? Once this is written, it is its piece of art over which I have no control, and that is really what the blank page is really all about, whether we have any control over our work, our ideas, or our lives. The answer is “no”, but then again, this page is no longer blank.

On the blank page

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Many people fear writing as if it were some arcane art in which only especially initiated adepts were allowed to work. Still others doubt that they have any talent at all, and they don’t want to make a fool of themselves, or that they don’t really have anything to say. They see the blank page as a challenge, not as an opportunity. The blank page stands before all of humanity as a monument to immobility. The difference between writers and non-writers is simple: writers don’t think about the shame of failure or that others will think their words boring or superficial. I have read things that I consider boring and superficial, but I have seldom come across anything that should never have been written at all. Some people will stare at the blank page and feel defeated before they even start because they fear failure, yet they have given themselves over to failure without even having tried. Writing is just words, one right after another, forming sentences, ideas, arguments, but if you never try to write, the blank page is a barrier, a wall you will never climb or pull down. Some people cannot even get past the first word, much less the first sentence. When I have thought my work trite or vacuous, there have been times when I have thrown things away, but for the most part, if I just keep writing, letting the words march across the paper by themselves, I can always go back and edit, throw away the crap, polish the good stuff. The blank page is filled with so much opportunity, so many possibilities, so much creative energy that you must yearn to fill it with discourse, poems, essays, conversations, descriptions, arguments, explanations. Bad writing is always a possibility, but if you never write at all, you are wearing cement shoes and won’t go much of anywhere. I see the blank page as a page already filled with ideas, metaphors, similes and a host of other poetic tropes which are all willing to clarify an to confuse perhaps both at the same time. Words are dark, no question, but we are all playing with the dictionary, so why not split open the dictionary and let the words run wild? The blank page stands up to the creative energy of the literary arts. All the best writers that have ever lived have always lamented the fact that there is nothing new to write about, so if we accept that premiss as a given, then we can stop worrying about whether Seneca or Ovid or Horace wrote about it two thousand years ago. I know I was born late, but there is nothing I, as a writer, can do about that. I accept the blank page as my traveling companion, and I am willing to work hard to fill up that page, sometimes with greater or lesser success. Thinking about the blank page just makes me want to write all that much more, and it also makes me care less about whether anyone likes what I write or not. I have no control over how anyone reads my writing–whether it moves them to cry, or moves them to snicker. I can’t even be sure if they understand what I write, but then again, do I understand what I am writing either? Or if I read this little ramble in two or three years, will I still think the same? Or will that ever matter? Once this is written, it is its piece of art over which I have no control, and that is really what the blank page is really all about, whether we have any control over our work, our ideas, or our lives. The answer is “no”, but then again, this page is no longer blank.