Every time I catch a glimpse of a thought or idea worth following I start looking too hard for other bits of life to package together with it. I know this is what essayists and people who write letters do--assemble the random just so, but sometimes I’m more or less willing to go through with it. Sometimes it just feels dishonest, I guess. And then other times, connecting the dots, those random bits of life, is an act that sends my thoughts in new directions and I couldn't image moving through my life in any other way.
My dad sent me a book of essays by E.B. White that he found in his father’s bookshelves, The Points of My Compass. I’ve thumbed through a couple of the essays on the metro and as I fall asleep. White puts together such nice packages, with bits from his day to day life that artfully converge on a single point. That is what I’ve tried to do in this blog with much less success. White grew up in New York State and split his time between Maine and New York City as an adult. Like me, he’s attached to the idea of Maine.
My favorite lines are the ones in which he recalls drives down the lonely state highway in an essay called, “Home-Coming.” Reading it reminded me of the long drive I took a dozen times in college, bright days ending alone in the car with strung out thoughts, a dozen or so tired songs, garbage bags full of clothes, the dirty taste of another cup of coffee. In “Home-Coming,” White considers how we perceive the familiar. “A farmer pauses in the doorway of his barn and he is wearing the right boots. A sheep stands under an apple tree and it wears the right look, and the tree is hung with puckered frozen fruit of the right color.” As we grow up we adopt (and later amend) ideas about what looks “right” and take comfort in those ideas. White suggests that we defend the things that comfort us against negative criticism, but I don’t wholly agree with this assertion.
Sometimes I feel pressure to point negative criticism at the things I am most familiar with. I resented my hometown growing up and complained about campus life when I couldn’t escape it. After years away I realize what was good about growing up and returning home to Bemus Point and now pine a little for that special combination of freedom and paternalism that defines the college experience. I suppose dissatisfaction and restlessness are symptoms of youth White is no longer afflicted with. As for me, I’m currently in Taiwan and giving this place a hard time.
I’ve met many foreigners in Taipei who have lived here for years and plan to continue living here and yet still go on and on about all the things that aren’t “right” with it, and about the oddities of “these” people. Though I’ve eradicated words like “right” and phrases like “these people” from my speech, I find myself criticizing more and more. Perhaps I speak less offensively than some of the foreigners I’ve met, but sometimes I cleave to negativity in the same way.
I’ve had such a tumultuous relationship with criticism over the past five years. Sometimes criticism is enlightening. Other times it hols me in check. I’ve heard people say that life is more fulfilling when you go out of your way to ponder its complications, and most of me defends that thesis. It's the judging something as good or bad so as to act well, speak well, live “correctly” that I don't like. We all judge--it is undoubtedly part of the human experience. But so often it feels bad when I’m doing it.
I’m thinking about graduate school. Critical approaches to language help me express specific ideas. But too often my feelings get so tangled up in the careful formation of words that they no longer resemble my actual feelings. Instead, I communicate the feelings I think I should have. In the end, my words might communicate something specific and safe (which helps me feel good about myself and somehow justified in giving weight to other people’s words), but they don’t communicate me honestly. Take the word “honest,” for example. Some might encourage me to avoid this word because of all the semantic baggage it carries. But I say it’s a good word because anyone reading this knows what I mean when I use it, loaded as it is.
Lately I’ve been so appreciative of people who speak and (more importantly) live as honestly as they can, who personalize the angles of critique they use and respect other people enough to step far away from words to hear meanings. I think we’re probably all confused and maybe a little scared about our complicity in hurt. We seek exoneration from that hurt but actually we’re too stuck in the web of it to ever completely escape it. I think that I want to believe I am better because I use “better” language and access “better” angles of critique (there--I said it). But that’s such bullshit, isn't it? Skipping straight to a conversation about what’s wrong with the way other people think/feel/act and avoiding honest conversations about the way I think/feel/act? All it does is add another layer of deceit. Everyone hurts people with the things they say and do and think--no one is better than that. I'm certainly not better off trying to fight my complicity with negative criticism. We all think and feel and do bad things. We all evolve out of and into different habits of mind. We’re all human. Pondering life’s complications is not a fulfilling exercise because it allows us to feel better or worse, but because it rides on hope and puts us in touch with people.
Shared contemplation puts Max and I in touch with each other. In conversation we each respect the words the other chooses but we’re always listening for the greater meaning or feeling our partner expresses. That’s the beauty of really knowing someone I guess. We have trust in the goodness of the other person. There’s no fear.
Outside the fearless space of our little world is the larger world in which I respond to fear, with stipulations and expectations, on my tip-toes, without faith that people will forgive me my offenses, with some messed up idea that I am above offending. And Max watches me exist in that world and loves me despite the ridiculous dance I do. He knows my heart and my mind and he puts what I say and do in the context of Sophie.
When I speak about people I appreciate I’m mostly speak about Max, who lives as honestly as he can. Every day he plays music and writes these fearless/fragile/strong poem-songs not to establish that he is better or worse than anyone, but because he hopes and loves and thinks.
I’ve been searching through the events of the past few weeks for some Taiwanese anecdotes to include here. This is S(w/ Max)ie in Taipei, afterall; it’s expected. I climbed a steep mountain near Linkou last weekend but that doesn’t fit in nicely anywhere. Because H1N1 took out most of my class last week I have to wear a face mask in school until December, which is a hot and sweaty annoyance but little else. I spent four hours looking for a pie pan and baking soda on Wednesday with no luck. Bah-hum-bug, no homemade pumpkin pie on turkey day. When Mr. E.B. White needs help connecting a big picture to some little ones he falls back on the quirky personalities of his dead dauschunds. Then the father of Stuart Little and Charlotte, in all his element and style, proceeds to connect his dogs to the U.S. election process.
The truth is that I have nothing very foreign to share with you. I might have had these thoughts anywhere. Wandering around a bookstore, getting a kick out of the Taiwanese-English spoken by little cartoon animals on cutesy Asian notebooks, I came across this saying: Strive to be what you want to appear. This is probably just a mistranslation, but it’s more fun to think there’s a Taiwanese writer of inspirational phrases who philosophizes from the mouths of little cartoon animals about the gap language puts between what we think and what we say, between who we are and who we think we should be.
I think I will accompany this post with very Taiwanese pictures to fool you into traveling through my thoughts for a while. I probably miss talking to you about these things anyway. Thanks for listening.
pictures! -- http://www.flickr.com/photos/42182903@N02/
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