Candide by Voltaire (1759)

Recently finished reading Candide by Voltaire, one I happened to read on my commute because it was available free on Kindle. Having a Kindle probably does have an impact on the books you end up reading – what’s free, or recommended based on your purchase history, or maybe those you’re too embarrassed to be seen reading on the Metro.

First things first: Candide is funny. Funnier than I expected, and very short, making it a good read for your commute (unless you drive or bike to work). It’s a satire written in the picaresque style, with Candide wandering from place to place in a sort of episodic fashion. Oh, and it’s violent – misfortunes I can’t imagine befall characters at every turn.

Pangloss*, Candide’s mentor, guides him with the philosophy that they “live in the best of all possible worlds” where all things happen in the best possible way, because nothing better could have been possible. This simplistic optimism is satirized throughout the story as Candide’s adherence to his mentor’s philosophy is tested time and time again, in an exaggerated, whirlwind fashion. The idea that every person regards himself as the unhappiest person to live leads many characters to recount their long and tragic lives. Candide and everyone in his life face death time and time again, and happen to find each other again even across the oceans and years that separate them. At one point there’s a ridiculous scene in which Candide reunites with Pangloss despite having watched him hanged earlier in the story. Life was much more brutish in the 1700s. It’s certain that by the end Candide’s philosophy on life is changed, no longer content to accept that all is for the best.

* Fun side note: “pangloss” is a word listed in the dictionary and defined as “a person who views a situation with unwarranted optimism.”

Poetry’s place in each day

Advice given to me at graduation by one of my English professors, Judith Plotz: “Carry a good anthology of poetry on your travels.”

As a scholar of Romanticism, Professor Plotz introduced me to some of my (now) favorite poets, including the English peasant poet John Clare. She taught me to memorize poetry, believing in its powers to sustain a person. She measured her love for poetry like the cadence of one’s gait, each word dropped like a step upon the earth. I’m thinking back to her advice now, as I do more walking and prepare to spend over 8 hours straight walking in the Sierra Club’s annual One Day Hike.

Recently, another of my former English professors, Margaret Soltan (University Diaries), has begun to record an online poetry lecture series at Udemy, called Modern Poetry. Her focus is on Modernism and Post-Modernism. It’s a free online course, so no risk in poking around and seeing if you enjoy it. Every human being owes themselves this appreciation of language and its power. In particular, Professor Soltan goes through detailed analyses of certain famous poems, such as Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror“. But it’s also just nice to listen to her speak of poetry in general.

Give poetry a chance, especially if you’re only ever been forced to read it. Especially if you find it challenging. Poetry expands your understanding of the breadth and depth of human experience, shaping language to express desire, pain, tedium.

“The present moment is constantly slipping into the past…”

Dr. Cornel West at GWU for “Democracy and Public Argument”

Dr. Cornel West is an incredible speaker. I went to see him speak on Thursday as the keynote presenter for “Democracy and Public Argument”, a series hosted by the George Washington University’s writing program. Having a background in civil rights and democracy struggles along with degrees in Philosophy from Harvard and Princeton, Dr. West is equal parts intellectual and activist.

Courage was a recurring theme throughout his speech. Dr. West poetically emphasized the courage and conviction necessary to uphold a democracy – to never take your rights for granted. At one point he claimed, “I am an anti-imperialist even when America is the empire.” So much of democracy relies on critical public discourse.

Other topics ranged from the Occupy movement (of which Dr. West is a strong supporter, speaking often with Occupy groups across the county), the Obama re-election campaign, the history of democracy in America from the time of our founding fathers, and the necessity to shed one’s ideologies to find the common truth of humanity. You can’t find the truth in a person or a civilization unless you listen to its suffering.

Octavio Paz in India

The Mexican poet Octavio Paz traveled to India on many occasions throughout his time. His poems from India from 1952 to 1995 were collected and bound as A Tale of Two Gardens. It provides a view into India that could only have come from a poised observer, seeker, and deep lover of the land.

Concert in the Garden
(Vina and Mridangam)
for Carmen Figueroa de Meyer

It rained.
The hour is an enormous eye.
Inside it, we come and go like reflections.
The river of music
enters my blood.
If I say body, it answers wind.
If I say earth, it answers where?

The world, a double blossom, opens:
sadness of having come,
joy of being here.

I walk lost in my own center.

And at times you open a book and read a poem, and can never again find it within the same covers. You wonder if all experience of poetry is that: striking, ephemeral, unreal.

DC Smart Growth

Sometimes you have to recognize that others have put it better than you can or will.

Many people often argue that smart growth proponents (like me) are trying to force people of their cars in favor of biking, walking and transit. But, to me, growing smarter really is just providing more legitimate options.

– Greater Greater Washington, “In sprawling suburb, car drive you”

Hear the “Social Animal” roar… or purr with contentedness

New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote an excellent piece for the January 17, 2011 issue of The New Yorker. In “Social Animal,” he speaks of life in “the middle of a revolution in consciousness.” Characterizing this specific body of people as the Composure Class, he describes the conditioned need of these individuals to achieve (achieve is indeed the rallying call) in the areas of career and intelligence – a result, Brooks writes, of living in “a society that prizes the development of career skills but is inarticulate when it comes to the things that matter most.” I feel it’s pretty spot-on, even though I approached this article cautiously – as probably too generalizing. But by the end of reading it, I was convinced he was writing from somewhere beyond logic and so his assessment is something more than merely assessment.

A neuroscientist and a realization:

“I believe we inherit a great river of knowledge, a flow of patterns coming from many sources. The information that comes from deep in the evolutionary phase we call genetics. The information passed along from hundreds of years ago we call culture. The information passed along from decades ago we call family, and the information offered months ago we call education. But it is all information that flows through us. The brain is adapted to the river of knowledge and exists only as a creature in that river. Our thoughts are profoundly molded by this long historic flow, and none of us exist, self-made, in isolation from it.

“And though history has made us self-conscious in order to enhance our survival prospects, we still have deep impulses to erase the skull lines in our head and become immersed directly in the river. I’ve come to think that flourishing consists of putting yourself in situations in which you lose self-consciousness and become fused with other people, experiences, or tasks… And it happens most when we connect with other people. I’ve come to think that happiness isn’t really produced by conscious accomplishments. Happiness is a measure of how thickly the unconscious parts of our minds are intertwined with other people and with activities. Happiness is determined by how much information and affection flows through us covertly every day and year.”

It’s a reminder, in itself, to select those paths we don’t in fact select consciously. It’s in the deep pulses, the not quite tangible parts of… daily living. Can happiness be overwrought?

At times to get away

Here’s the poem “I Am” by John Clare, a poet of the rural self amidst nature. This one he composed while in Northampton County Asylum.

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows
My friends forsake me like a memory lost,
I am the self-consumer of my woes —
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied, stifled throes —
And yet I am, and live — like vapors tossed
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest, that I love the best,
Are strange — nay, rather stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes, where man hath never trod,
A place where woman never smiled or wept —
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling, and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below — above the vaulted sky.

Amis on London traffic, from London Fields

Literature reflects the world by giving the reader another’s perspective on it. Once in awhile, you’ll come across passages that give you a familiar idea cast in a new light. The landscape at a different time of day. Here, Amis on traffic.

“We know that traffic reflects the temperaments of the great capitals (and here in a farewell flourish I invoke my world citizenship): the unsmiling triumphalism of Paris, the fury and despair of old New York, the cat-and-mouse audacity of Rome, the ragged murder of Cairo, the showboat longevity of Los Angeles, the industrial durance of Bombay or Delhi, where, four times a day, the cars lash the city in immovable chains. But here, in London – I just don’t get it.

They adore doubleparking. They do. … You hit a red at the crossroads but you inch forward anyway, into the lock, into the headlock. You may even decide the time is ripe to get out and run an errand. Why? Why not? Everybody else does it. It seems clear to me, after five seconds’ thought, that if everybody does it then nobody gets around, nobody gets anywhere. … And, just recently, something has gone wrong with traffic. Something has gone wrong with human desire.

I don’t get it. No – I do! Suddenly I do, though there’s no real reason (is there?) why anybody else should. In traffic, now, we are using up each other’s time, each other’s lives. We are using up each other’s lives.”

The passage comes quite late in Amis’s London Fields, but the entire novel is worth reading. To call it a ‘murder mystery’ is an understatement. It’s more mysterious and murderous than that.

Bokononism Now

From Cat’s Cradle (1963) by Kurt Vonnegut, teachings from the fictional religion known as Bokononism:

“If you find your life tangled up with somebody else’s life for no very logical reasons,” writes Bokonon, “that person may be a member of your karass.” At another point in The Books of Bokonon he tells us, “Man created the checkerboard; God created the karass.” By that he means that a karass ignores national, institutional, occupational, familial, and class boundaries. It is as free form as an amoeba.

And another great Bokononistic maxim, selected by the Couchsurfer who gave me a copy of the novel:

“Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.”

GW Graduation Commencement, Class of 2010!

For our 160,000+ hours of community service logged by GW students and faculty in this academic year, Michelle Obama delivered an inspiring commencement address to our 2010 graduating class on the National Mall this morning. I’m a university graduate now, and nothing like a grand ceremony to drive that fact home. Congrats fellow grads!

First Lady Michelle Obama, our commencement speaker, on serving the global community:

You have joined a generation of activists and doers. …
But the truth is, and you know this: creating anything meaningful takes time. And sometimes the only thing that happens in a moment is destruction. I say this because during our trip to Haiti, Jill Biden and I got to visit the people there, and they’re amidst so much misery and destruction, all of which occurred in a matter of minutes. It is so easy to ask, “After so much ruin, how can anything rise again? After so much loss, how can anyone still have hope?” But let me tell you that everyone I met during that visit – doctors, relief workers, Haitians, Americans, citizens of the world – they were focused on the task of answering those questions. Yeah, they were exhausted. And they were heartbroken, but they were equally unyielding in their determination to help that country heal – fully aware of how many years that would take. …
Everyone I met during my trip embodied a Haitian proverb that I learned which says that, “Little by little, the bird builds its nest.” And your generation is doing its best to live by this idea. As impatient as you may be to get out there and change the world (and that’s a good thing), you’re equally patient for that change to come. As idealistic as all of you may be, what your generation has lived through has also tempered you with a deep realism.

You understand things that perhaps your parents and I even don’t always have to consider when our world was still separated by walls of concrete and communication: that we are no longer isolated from what happens on the other side of the world. That it’s in our interest to look beyond our immediate self-interest and look out for one another, globally. That so many of today’s challenges are borderless, from the economy to terrorism to climate change, and that solving those problems demands cooperation with others. And more than any other generation, yours is fully convinced that you are uniquely equipped to solve those challenges. You believe that you can change your communities and change the world, and you know what? I think you’re right. Yes, you can.
So today, graduates, I have one more request to make of you. One more challenge. And that is, keep going. Keep giving. Keep engaging. I’m asking you to take what you’ve learned here and embrace the full responsibilities that a degree from an institution like GW gives you. I’m asking your generation to be America’s face to the world. It will make the world safer, it will make America stronger, and it will make you more competitive. Now you didn’t think I’d show up here without another challenge, did you? …
It can mean continuing your own personal and professional growth by traveling far and wide, or it can mean reaching back to convince the students behind you to try study abroad programs, especially students from communities and backgrounds who might not normally consider it. It can mean seizing that overseas opportunity with a company or it can mean staying here and fixing the world by doing business with the world, and at the same time creating opportunity in your own community. This class of graduates in particular has a leg-up, because at GW you’ve already been trained to think this way. …

I grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood on the south side of Chicago where the idea of spending some time abroad just didn’t register. My brother and I were the first in our family to go to college, so we were way more focused on just getting in, getting through and getting on with our lives. After law school, my priority was paying off my student debt. I never considered that I needed to take an additional journey or expand the boundaries of my own life. And then I met my husband whose life was somewhat different than mine. His had been more informed by experiences abroad. Watching him helped me to expand the way I looked at things, to consider my life as connected not just to my country, but to the world.

‘Traveling far and wide,” that’s me. 🙂

She encouraged continued service, touched on President Barack Obama’s plan to expand opportunities volunteering in the Peace Corps, and supported expansion of study abroad and exchange programs in schools and universities.

When we just make that effort to engage with one another, when we share our stories, we begin to build familiarity that often ultimately softens mistrust. We begin to see ourselves in one another. We begin to realize that the forces that bind us are so much more powerful than the forces that blind us.
When you serve others abroad, you’re serving our country too… And yes, serving abroad will make you stronger… just talk to any of your colleagues who have spent some time abroad and one of the first things they’ll tell you, for example, is you’ll never learn a language or develop self-reliance as quickly as you will when you’re on your own in a foreign country. But they may also tell you that making a difference abroad might just be the thing that inspires you to come back and make a difference here at home. They may tell you that engaging with the world doesn’t just change the course of other peoples’ lives, it may change the course of yours too. You may just find that pivot point that you’ve been looking for. Or maybe one that you didn’t even expect at all.

You can watch the ceremony – minus the silly pre-ceremony Jumbotron glee – online. On our way to lunch with family and friends afterwards, we joked that the video was probably already on YouTube, and lo and behold, here it is.