Category Archives: solitude

On instinct

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There was a short piece on the main editorial page of the New York Times (Sept 3, 2013) called “Empty Barn-Rafters” that discussed the recent departure of one man’s barn swallows. I have swallows as well which live on my back porch during the spring and early summer. They work tirelessly to build their nest on top of the large round thermometer which hangs just inside the overhang which shades the back porch. After they have built their nest, they proceed to raise a couple of broods of chicks. By the time the second group fledge towards the end of June, they are tired–pooped out, literally. I would know because I’m the guy who cleans up the poop.They spend the rest of summer eating and playing, swooping across the summer sky, defying the laws of physics, hanging in the air, sitting on the power lines, contemplating the world from their high perches. Yet, as the Times writer so apply described, at some point in the late summer, they just up and leave all at once–no stragglers allowed. Of course, we describe swallow behavior, their nest building, the fledging of their young, their migration habits, as instinct, mostly because we understand so little about the actual mechanisms which drive them to be swallows. Ornithologists have their theories and hypothesis about how the birds do what they do, but I prefer to simply think of them as neighbors, not the subjects of my latest study. People have neighbors, and sometimes those neighbors are not the two-legged variety. The swallows that nest on my porch don’t talk to me, but they do keep me company from about mid-March to about the end of August, but then one afternoon they just simply aren’t there–the editorialist got it exactly right. My back porch is now empty. When this happens, as it must each year, I take down the used nest, wash away the mud and eliminate all traces that the birds have been here, but not because I mind their presence, but because the empty nest reminds me that my bird neighbors are off to their winter roosts in Latin America somewhere. I like to imagine that my counterpart in Costa Rica has just noticed that his swallows have returned to winter in his backyard, happy they are back, delighted to see those sleek, dark forms sliding across the sky. I am sure that there is some absolutely logical and sensible reason which explains how the swallows know when to leave. At some point each summer, they get together, discuss a departure day, agree on a date, and then leave all together, leaving my porch and yard a very empty place. Since I travel a great deal, gone for extended periods, I cannot have my own domestic pets, so I allow my swallows a bit of space to nest and live. I know summer is over when their small, sleek forms are just gone. A quiet falls over the place, the pigeons, the grackles, the cardinals, don’t move on, but they don’t really keep me company either–they never get that close. As fall and winter set in during the next few weeks, the waiting begins. About six months from now, they will be back, and on a cool, windy, rainy day in March, a small, sleek, dark figure will flash past my window to let me know that vacation is over, and their work has just begun.

On instinct

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There was a short piece on the main editorial page of the New York Times (Sept 3, 2013) called “Empty Barn-Rafters” that discussed the recent departure of one man’s barn swallows. I have swallows as well which live on my back porch during the spring and early summer. They work tirelessly to build their nest on top of the large round thermometer which hangs just inside the overhang which shades the back porch. After they have built their nest, they proceed to raise a couple of broods of chicks. By the time the second group fledge towards the end of June, they are tired–pooped out, literally. I would know because I’m the guy who cleans up the poop.They spend the rest of summer eating and playing, swooping across the summer sky, defying the laws of physics, hanging in the air, sitting on the power lines, contemplating the world from their high perches. Yet, as the Times writer so apply described, at some point in the late summer, they just up and leave all at once–no stragglers allowed. Of course, we describe swallow behavior, their nest building, the fledging of their young, their migration habits, as instinct, mostly because we understand so little about the actual mechanisms which drive them to be swallows. Ornithologists have their theories and hypothesis about how the birds do what they do, but I prefer to simply think of them as neighbors, not the subjects of my latest study. People have neighbors, and sometimes those neighbors are not the two-legged variety. The swallows that nest on my porch don’t talk to me, but they do keep me company from about mid-March to about the end of August, but then one afternoon they just simply aren’t there–the editorialist got it exactly right. My back porch is now empty. When this happens, as it must each year, I take down the used nest, wash away the mud and eliminate all traces that the birds have been here, but not because I mind their presence, but because the empty nest reminds me that my bird neighbors are off to their winter roosts in Latin America somewhere. I like to imagine that my counterpart in Costa Rica has just noticed that his swallows have returned to winter in his backyard, happy they are back, delighted to see those sleek, dark forms sliding across the sky. I am sure that there is some absolutely logical and sensible reason which explains how the swallows know when to leave. At some point each summer, they get together, discuss a departure day, agree on a date, and then leave all together, leaving my porch and yard a very empty place. Since I travel a great deal, gone for extended periods, I cannot have my own domestic pets, so I allow my swallows a bit of space to nest and live. I know summer is over when their small, sleek forms are just gone. A quiet falls over the place, the pigeons, the grackles, the cardinals, don’t move on, but they don’t really keep me company either–they never get that close. As fall and winter set in during the next few weeks, the waiting begins. About six months from now, they will be back, and on a cool, windy, rainy day in March, a small, sleek, dark figure will flash past my window to let me know that vacation is over, and their work has just begun.

On Sherlock Holmes

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There are few characters in the fictional world of literary creations that are as pure as Sherlock Holmes. He is driven to solve the crime, not because he necessarily wants to see justice administered, but because the puzzle must be solved at almost any cost. I wouldn’t suggest that Holmes is obsessive or compulsive, but in a way, he certainly is. He doesn’t care about moral philosophy or the structure of the universe unless either of those topics would help him solve a crime. His ideas about crime and punishment are black and white, so his objective of putting the criminal away is clear and obvious. At the same time, he hasn’t the least bit for popular news, discussions of the weather, or sports, beyond his own training in boxing and stick fighting. Like most people, he loves to eat, listen to music, talk when the talk interests him, but the one thing he cannot escape in this life is solitude–no man is an island and Sherlock Holmes is no different. His ability to discern the important from the mundane and casual stems in large part from his willingness to narrate the facts of a case, but he needs an audience, and most of the time his sounding board is Watson. Watson is the sieve through which his reasoning passes. If he can tell Watson the story, he can figure it out. Holmes functions because of the power of narrative. He can work through the logic of the clues by building a narrative that makes sense, discarding incidental clues that may be red-herrings, and see through the smoke screen left by the criminals. In the end, the stories are all very similar about shame and hate, vengeance and envy, greed and stupidity, or love and jealousy, and Sherlock must sort out the facts without getting personally involved in any of it. Emotion is all too often the downfall of many a criminal, and Holmes works constantly to see through the intentions, let the clues speak to him, and resolve the problem at hand. Yet, I would also suggest that Holmes cannot do all of this work, wade through so much human flotsam and jetsam, and still be the least bit normal as a person. He’s interested in bee-keeping; this is his only outside interest that doesn’t appear to have anything to do with crime solving. Bees can’t really talk back, they have a collective conscience, they have no crime, their objectives are orderly and pure, free from envy, sloth, and ire. He admires them. If Watson were not there to act as chronicler and psychologist/therapist, Holmes would go crazy listening to the irrational world which surrounds him explode. Watson is the perfect foil for Holmes because he is a walking case to be constantly narrated and resolved, but Watson is also the perfect uninformed audience who needs the explanations to make the world return to proper working order again. After all, isn’t that what the detective does? Return things back to their proper place, pass out punishment, get the world to spin on its axis again, make sure the bad guys are put away, give a solution to the problem. Holmes wouldn’t be Holmes, really, without Watson, and Watson would just be retired, boring, military surgeon with a bad shoulder without Holmes. A more interesting symbiosis in the literary world would be hard to find.

On Sherlock Holmes

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There are few characters in the fictional world of literary creations that are as pure as Sherlock Holmes. He is driven to solve the crime, not because he necessarily wants to see justice administered, but because the puzzle must be solved at almost any cost. I wouldn’t suggest that Holmes is obsessive or compulsive, but in a way, he certainly is. He doesn’t care about moral philosophy or the structure of the universe unless either of those topics would help him solve a crime. His ideas about crime and punishment are black and white, so his objective of putting the criminal away is clear and obvious. At the same time, he hasn’t the least bit for popular news, discussions of the weather, or sports, beyond his own training in boxing and stick fighting. Like most people, he loves to eat, listen to music, talk when the talk interests him, but the one thing he cannot escape in this life is solitude–no man is an island and Sherlock Holmes is no different. His ability to discern the important from the mundane and casual stems in large part from his willingness to narrate the facts of a case, but he needs an audience, and most of the time his sounding board is Watson. Watson is the sieve through which his reasoning passes. If he can tell Watson the story, he can figure it out. Holmes functions because of the power of narrative. He can work through the logic of the clues by building a narrative that makes sense, discarding incidental clues that may be red-herrings, and see through the smoke screen left by the criminals. In the end, the stories are all very similar about shame and hate, vengeance and envy, greed and stupidity, or love and jealousy, and Sherlock must sort out the facts without getting personally involved in any of it. Emotion is all too often the downfall of many a criminal, and Holmes works constantly to see through the intentions, let the clues speak to him, and resolve the problem at hand. Yet, I would also suggest that Holmes cannot do all of this work, wade through so much human flotsam and jetsam, and still be the least bit normal as a person. He’s interested in bee-keeping; this is his only outside interest that doesn’t appear to have anything to do with crime solving. Bees can’t really talk back, they have a collective conscience, they have no crime, their objectives are orderly and pure, free from envy, sloth, and ire. He admires them. If Watson were not there to act as chronicler and psychologist/therapist, Holmes would go crazy listening to the irrational world which surrounds him explode. Watson is the perfect foil for Holmes because he is a walking case to be constantly narrated and resolved, but Watson is also the perfect uninformed audience who needs the explanations to make the world return to proper working order again. After all, isn’t that what the detective does? Return things back to their proper place, pass out punishment, get the world to spin on its axis again, make sure the bad guys are put away, give a solution to the problem. Holmes wouldn’t be Holmes, really, without Watson, and Watson would just be retired, boring, military surgeon with a bad shoulder without Holmes. A more interesting symbiosis in the literary world would be hard to find.

On a hot summer night

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There are times when the inspiration doesn’t come, but you still feel like you need to say something. Maybe it’s a little existentialist angst brought on by high July temperatures, but maybe it’s not. You would like to write about something profound such as the meaning of life, but this evening you get the distinct feeling that life is just so much chaos with no real point at all. You feel tired, but don’t want to sleep, you feel isolated with people around you. Your spirit is unquiet, cranky, out of place, demanding, uncaring. You can’t find anything on television which interests you, and none of the books you are reading seem the least bit appealing. There are nights in this life which make you question everything, but not of the answers satisfy you either, as if you don’t want to hear any of the answers, everything rings hollow and superficial. Is the heat that makes me feel this way? Is it a hot, sweaty night that which makes everything seem fragmented, discontinuous, and chaotic? Or do we live with a constant illusion of order and objectives within which we create meaning for lives which really have no meaning? Or am I only dreaming? Nothing that I’ve tried to write this evening has sounded either truthful or meaningful, so much clanging of bells and the banging of fireworks–nothing, in other words. Perhaps the existential crisis of waiting for Godot is a little worse in the heat when the sweat runs down your neck, the sun beats down on your skull, and the temperatures rise all around you. You feel that your crisis of identify, your reason for being, your objectives in life, seem hollow and empty like the foam on a beach or an empty fountain pen. What does it all mean, you ask, but nothing echoes off of the empty halls of the night. You look everywhere for answers, but the best you can master is a bunch of meaningless graffiti. On a hot summer night, the wolves howl in the distance as if they knew what they were doing, but their solitude only reconfirms your idea that man (and woman) spends their entire life pursuing objectives so that they won’t end up alone, listening to their own lies. Perhaps what is magnified on a night like this is the true and profound loneliness of all human beings. The story of Robinson Crusoe is frightening not because he is shipwrecked, but because he is shipwrecked alone. So the soul ambles by itself on a hot night like this, looking for a place where it won’t be alone. I have no idea if life has a meaning or not. It may be something as mundane as the number “46” or as complex as non-linear equations. I don’t think it is either of those things, but it may be something as simple as “other people.” There is no way to know. In the end, life has got to be a question of faith–no question about it. There is no chance that rational empiricism or cold cruel logic will ever answer any question that is really worth asking. And I often wonder if we are capable of even formulating the correct questions for understanding our world or if we just think we do. The night settles in, sweaty and warm, solitary and dark, answers are hard to come by, and just perhaps the thing that saves us from ourselves, our doubt, or failure, is sleep, which puts a stop to our nervous thoughts of infinity out on the edge of the universe.

On a hot summer night

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There are times when the inspiration doesn’t come, but you still feel like you need to say something. Maybe it’s a little existentialist angst brought on by high July temperatures, but maybe it’s not. You would like to write about something profound such as the meaning of life, but this evening you get the distinct feeling that life is just so much chaos with no real point at all. You feel tired, but don’t want to sleep, you feel isolated with people around you. Your spirit is unquiet, cranky, out of place, demanding, uncaring. You can’t find anything on television which interests you, and none of the books you are reading seem the least bit appealing. There are nights in this life which make you question everything, but not of the answers satisfy you either, as if you don’t want to hear any of the answers, everything rings hollow and superficial. Is the heat that makes me feel this way? Is it a hot, sweaty night that which makes everything seem fragmented, discontinuous, and chaotic? Or do we live with a constant illusion of order and objectives within which we create meaning for lives which really have no meaning? Or am I only dreaming? Nothing that I’ve tried to write this evening has sounded either truthful or meaningful, so much clanging of bells and the banging of fireworks–nothing, in other words. Perhaps the existential crisis of waiting for Godot is a little worse in the heat when the sweat runs down your neck, the sun beats down on your skull, and the temperatures rise all around you. You feel that your crisis of identify, your reason for being, your objectives in life, seem hollow and empty like the foam on a beach or an empty fountain pen. What does it all mean, you ask, but nothing echoes off of the empty halls of the night. You look everywhere for answers, but the best you can master is a bunch of meaningless graffiti. On a hot summer night, the wolves howl in the distance as if they knew what they were doing, but their solitude only reconfirms your idea that man (and woman) spends their entire life pursuing objectives so that they won’t end up alone, listening to their own lies. Perhaps what is magnified on a night like this is the true and profound loneliness of all human beings. The story of Robinson Crusoe is frightening not because he is shipwrecked, but because he is shipwrecked alone. So the soul ambles by itself on a hot night like this, looking for a place where it won’t be alone. I have no idea if life has a meaning or not. It may be something as mundane as the number “46” or as complex as non-linear equations. I don’t think it is either of those things, but it may be something as simple as “other people.” There is no way to know. In the end, life has got to be a question of faith–no question about it. There is no chance that rational empiricism or cold cruel logic will ever answer any question that is really worth asking. And I often wonder if we are capable of even formulating the correct questions for understanding our world or if we just think we do. The night settles in, sweaty and warm, solitary and dark, answers are hard to come by, and just perhaps the thing that saves us from ourselves, our doubt, or failure, is sleep, which puts a stop to our nervous thoughts of infinity out on the edge of the universe.

On "Lost in Translation"

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I first saw this very strange movie by Sofia Coppola (2003) in a movie theater in Madrid. Like any really good film, it could just as easily be called a comedy as a tragedy. The entire script is played in a very low-key manner by the stars, Scarlet Johansson and Bill Murray, who form an extremely unlikely duo separated in age by twenty-five years, but this movie is about much more than just a May-December romance, or maybe that is exactly what it’s about. Yet there is nothing tawdry or maudlin about their relationship which develops within the environs of a five-star hotel in downtown Tokyo. Both are married, their spouses are absent, and they both find themselves adrift in a culture they don’t understand, unable to understand the people around them or the language they speak, adrift in their lives which seem to have no meaning–she doesn’t know what she wants in life, and he is an action hero at the end of his career, endorsing a Japanese whiskey which is paying him a lot of money. She’s beautiful, but lonely; he famous, but for all the wrong reasons. They share a piercing loneliness, a solitude which speaks to the outer limits of the human soul, leaving them both with a painful melancholy spirit. They meet in this hotel, a cold mausoleum full of marble, chrome, and glass. He’s drinking whiskey, she’s trying to participate in a banal conversation between her husband and a client. If this were a normal, slapstick, seen-it-already comedy, they would just hop into bed and get crazy, but that never happens. They talk, the eat together, they try to participate in Tokyo culture, but this just adds to their isolation, and they must turn to each other for answers. What is lost in translation is human communication, and these to will spend a few days in Tokyo trying to get back their humanity. The movie speaks to the great tragedy of the human being: being left alone (even in the middle of 15 million people, especially when you don’t speak their language and they really don’t speak yours in spite of their imitation of it. The movie is filled with images of video games and karaoke, Japanese people singing English language songs without understanding a word they are singing. The movie riffs on Japanese imitations of American culture, the most ironic being the whiskey which Murray is there to endorse. Charlotte (Johansson) is a twenty-something college graduate philosophy major who has yet to grow up; Murray’s worn-out movie star has banal and pointless phone calls with his wife, none of which is funny–pathetic would be a better word. Both are products of a consumer society which has little use for a philosopher or an old actor, neither of which has any value in a hyper-capitalistic society. They neither produce nor consume, so they drift, untethered to either meaning or value. If they have come to love each other by the end of the movie, it is because they are kindred spirits, damaged, alone, crying out to be understood or loved. A sexual relationship is not what either of them needs or wants, but they do need to be together in an uncomplicated way–just be together. For a lot of the movie-going public, this movie will be slow and unintelligible. The silences and quiet conversations pass equally between these two lonely people, but they do grow to appreciate and maybe love each other. They part in the end, and there is no happy ending, perhaps there is no ending at all.

On "Lost in Translation"

Posted on by

I first saw this very strange movie by Sofia Coppola (2003) in a movie theater in Madrid. Like any really good film, it could just as easily be called a comedy as a tragedy. The entire script is played in a very low-key manner by the stars, Scarlet Johansson and Bill Murray, who form an extremely unlikely duo separated in age by twenty-five years, but this movie is about much more than just a May-December romance, or maybe that is exactly what it’s about. Yet there is nothing tawdry or maudlin about their relationship which develops within the environs of a five-star hotel in downtown Tokyo. Both are married, their spouses are absent, and they both find themselves adrift in a culture they don’t understand, unable to understand the people around them or the language they speak, adrift in their lives which seem to have no meaning–she doesn’t know what she wants in life, and he is an action hero at the end of his career, endorsing a Japanese whiskey which is paying him a lot of money. She’s beautiful, but lonely; he famous, but for all the wrong reasons. They share a piercing loneliness, a solitude which speaks to the outer limits of the human soul, leaving them both with a painful melancholy spirit. They meet in this hotel, a cold mausoleum full of marble, chrome, and glass. He’s drinking whiskey, she’s trying to participate in a banal conversation between her husband and a client. If this were a normal, slapstick, seen-it-already comedy, they would just hop into bed and get crazy, but that never happens. They talk, the eat together, they try to participate in Tokyo culture, but this just adds to their isolation, and they must turn to each other for answers. What is lost in translation is human communication, and these to will spend a few days in Tokyo trying to get back their humanity. The movie speaks to the great tragedy of the human being: being left alone (even in the middle of 15 million people, especially when you don’t speak their language and they really don’t speak yours in spite of their imitation of it. The movie is filled with images of video games and karaoke, Japanese people singing English language songs without understanding a word they are singing. The movie riffs on Japanese imitations of American culture, the most ironic being the whiskey which Murray is there to endorse. Charlotte (Johansson) is a twenty-something college graduate philosophy major who has yet to grow up; Murray’s worn-out movie star has banal and pointless phone calls with his wife, none of which is funny–pathetic would be a better word. Both are products of a consumer society which has little use for a philosopher or an old actor, neither of which has any value in a hyper-capitalistic society. They neither produce nor consume, so they drift, untethered to either meaning or value. If they have come to love each other by the end of the movie, it is because they are kindred spirits, damaged, alone, crying out to be understood or loved. A sexual relationship is not what either of them needs or wants, but they do need to be together in an uncomplicated way–just be together. For a lot of the movie-going public, this movie will be slow and unintelligible. The silences and quiet conversations pass equally between these two lonely people, but they do grow to appreciate and maybe love each other. They part in the end, and there is no happy ending, perhaps there is no ending at all.