Aach...ye speak like a poet, but ye punch like one too...
Saturday, November 29, 2003
Cheap dates
Tonight at Half Price Books I picked up a copy of Douglas Coupland's Girlfriend in a Coma, a book which has been recommended to me by any number of interesting and intelligent people. After browsing through the Metaphysics and Theology sections (scoring an Augustine commentary and a couple of books on Biblical hermeneutics) I made my way to the checkout guy. He looked like he'd been on the clock for awhile--hair just slightly disheveled, facial muscles a little slack. He seemed distracted. But he was able to summon sufficient wit to glance at the title of the Coupland novel and say, "At least you get cheap dates."
I didn't immediately grasp what he was talking about. Was there something about my person that suggested cheap dates? Maybe he mistook me for the under-paid grocer at the exotic Mediterranean fruit store down the street*. But then he gestured briefly at the cover of the novel, and I made the connection. I laughed.
Although, upon reflection, I suspect the medical costs of caring for someone in a coma would far outweigh whatever date-related savings might accompany the situation. If she's merely a girlfriend, I suppose you could play the "just a boyfriend" card and dump the expenses on her parents. But you wouldn't be a very good boyfriend.
Whatever. It doesn't matter. The point is, it was kinda funny. Not unusually funny, but funny in the way that most jokes we tell are funny. Jokes--most jokes, that is--are much more than miniature comic performances. They're little interpersonal bridges. When you tell someone a joke, you're endeavoring to make a connection of significance, and if they laugh then the two of you are better friends than you were before the joke.
This is why I try to laugh, even at stupid jokes. The importance of a joke goes far beyond its effectiveness as a piece of humor. In some strange way, to laugh at someone's joke is to affirm their existence, and I think that's usually a good thing.
I especially like it when people behind counters take the effort to offer up jokes, even if their jokes are stupid or occasionally inappropriate. They see so many people in the course of a day, it must be very draining to offer part of yourself to any significant percentage of them. It always improves my general outlook on life, the universe, and everything when someone makes that effort.
All of which is to say: Thank you, Half Price Books Dude. You probably aren't as funny as you think you are, or would like to be, but the effort is still appreciated. Something else to be thankful for.
* There is in truth no such fruit store down the street, or anywhere in San Marcos. It was, hint hint, a joke. So laugh. Unless you want to deny my existence.
Tonight at Half Price Books I picked up a copy of Douglas Coupland's Girlfriend in a Coma, a book which has been recommended to me by any number of interesting and intelligent people. After browsing through the Metaphysics and Theology sections (scoring an Augustine commentary and a couple of books on Biblical hermeneutics) I made my way to the checkout guy. He looked like he'd been on the clock for awhile--hair just slightly disheveled, facial muscles a little slack. He seemed distracted. But he was able to summon sufficient wit to glance at the title of the Coupland novel and say, "At least you get cheap dates."
I didn't immediately grasp what he was talking about. Was there something about my person that suggested cheap dates? Maybe he mistook me for the under-paid grocer at the exotic Mediterranean fruit store down the street*. But then he gestured briefly at the cover of the novel, and I made the connection. I laughed.
Although, upon reflection, I suspect the medical costs of caring for someone in a coma would far outweigh whatever date-related savings might accompany the situation. If she's merely a girlfriend, I suppose you could play the "just a boyfriend" card and dump the expenses on her parents. But you wouldn't be a very good boyfriend.
Whatever. It doesn't matter. The point is, it was kinda funny. Not unusually funny, but funny in the way that most jokes we tell are funny. Jokes--most jokes, that is--are much more than miniature comic performances. They're little interpersonal bridges. When you tell someone a joke, you're endeavoring to make a connection of significance, and if they laugh then the two of you are better friends than you were before the joke.
This is why I try to laugh, even at stupid jokes. The importance of a joke goes far beyond its effectiveness as a piece of humor. In some strange way, to laugh at someone's joke is to affirm their existence, and I think that's usually a good thing.
I especially like it when people behind counters take the effort to offer up jokes, even if their jokes are stupid or occasionally inappropriate. They see so many people in the course of a day, it must be very draining to offer part of yourself to any significant percentage of them. It always improves my general outlook on life, the universe, and everything when someone makes that effort.
All of which is to say: Thank you, Half Price Books Dude. You probably aren't as funny as you think you are, or would like to be, but the effort is still appreciated. Something else to be thankful for.
* There is in truth no such fruit store down the street, or anywhere in San Marcos. It was, hint hint, a joke. So laugh. Unless you want to deny my existence.
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
Writing for The Man, pt. 2
For those of you who might be interested, I thought I'd post the paper that I wrote this weekend, seeing as how that was what kept me away from this blog. It's not necessarily any great shakes as a piece of scholarship, and it runs to twelve pages in 12 point Times New Roman font. It's about David James Duncan's wonderful novel The Brothers K, and his use of the Hindu epic Mahabharata (thanks to the Walrus for initially turning me onto the book). So, for those of you who might be interested, I give you...
(warning: major plot spoilers ahead)
HINDU MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION IN THE BROTHERS K
Humans have been telling stories for as long as there have been humans. Stories entertain, inform, and enlighten us. They open us to looking at the world in new ways. But some stories do even more than this. They become a way that we organize our thoughts and perceptions of the world. The central stories that organize and inform the life of a given community are sometimes called its mythology. Mythologies are perhaps the most influential and resonant of stories, because they contain the most basic values of a community expressed in compelling narrative forms. And because they communicate the basic values of a community, they often change or take on new meanings as the community's values change. In his novel The Brothers K, David James Duncan makes use of the ancient Hindu epic Mahabharata. Many of the epic's motifs are reflected in the novel, but Duncan uses them in a new way, to reflect the concerns of his book rather than of ancient Hindu society. In this paper I will discuss the plot and major thematic concerns of The Brothers K. I will then briefly address the plot, context, and meaning of the Mahabharata. Finally, I will examine the way one of the central motifs of the epic finds expression in the novel, and how this sheds light on the complex process by which an ancient mythology informs a contemporary novel.
The Brothers K tells the story of the Chance family between the years of 1956 and 1972. The story occurs primarily in Camas, Washington, and is told by the youngest brother of the family, Kincaid, although the text of the novel includes a number of letters, journal entries, and school papers from other family members. The Brothers K covers a remarkable amount of thematic ground, dealing with, among other things, baseball, religion, and America in the sixties. If there is a single unifying idea to the book, however, it is the nature and dynamic of the Chance family as the children move through adolescence into adulthood and deal with the cataclysmic social changes wrought by the sixties.
The father, Hugh, was a rising baseball star who suffered an injury at the wood mill where he worked that flattened his right thumb and ended a promising career. At the beginning of the story, in 1956, this injury is recent, and one of the recurring ideas in the novel is how he deals with his abruptly terminated career. His wife, Laura, is a staunch Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) whose religion is a sort of psychological protection against the memory of her abusive, alcoholic father. Hugh, while sympathetic to his wife's religion, is himself not at all religious. He never goes to church, while Laura drags the children to services every Saturday (the Sabbath of the SDA church). As their children grow up this religious gap between the parents widens to include the children, and threatens to destroy the family. This conflict is the central element of the Chance family dynamic in the story, and the resolution of the novel is in a large sense the resolution of this conflict.
Hugh and Laura have six children. In order of birth, their names are Everett, Peter, Irwin, Kincaid (the narrator), and twin girls named Winifred (Freddy) and Beatrice (Bet). Everett, the oldest, is the iconoclastic "black sheep" of the family who early on rejects his mother's religion. At college he quickly becomes a star of the counter-revolutionary movement, eventually burns his draft card and moves to Canada. Peter, the second oldest, is the star baseball player of the family who grows enamored of Eastern thought and religion. Upon graduation he gives up the possibility of a career in baseball and leaves Camas to attend school on the east coast, before moving to India to pursue his study of Hindu and Buddhist thought. The third son, Irwin, is the only one of the brothers to remain involved in church. He is enthusiastically religious, but in a way far different from the stern fundamentalism of his mother's church, although he remains a member of the church until college. Irwin is a force of nature; his personality is such that he loves everyone, is seemingly incapable of deception, and can't conceive of religion as being something that might divide people. It's worth noting here that Irwin is far from a moral paragon. He is not hypocritical about his sins, however; he confesses them every Sunday, much to the consternation of the church elders. The fourth son, Kincaid, serves in the story mainly as narrator. Similarly, his two younger sisters are less important characters, although Duncan does use them to illustrate the religious tensions in the family: Winifred follows in the mystical Eastern footsteps of her older brother Peter, while Beatrice sides with her mother and Irwin.
The bulk of the novel follows the stories of the three older brothers: Everett, Peter, and Irwin. Each of them leaves the family and Camas in a sort of exile and the resolution of the novel deals with how they all come home again, and with the larger reconciliation of the family. Everett leaves for Canada as a draft-dodger, Peter for India as a spiritual seeker, and Irwin for Vietnam as a draftee. Irwin's experiences in Vietnam ultimately reunite the family.
Despite his irrepressible personality, Irwin struggles with academic work in college and finally fails out, thereby losing his student deferment from the draft. As an SDA he should be eligible for conscientious objector status, but his pastor, the Elder Babcock, refuses to recommend him for this status because of both Irwin's moral failings (he recently learned that his fiance is pregnant) and Babcock's ongoing quarrel with the rest of the rather unorthodox Chance family. As a result, Irwin is drafted and sent to Vietnam, where in a crisis of conscience over the execution of a Vietnamese boy he attacks his commanding officer. The military sends him to an Army mental hospital in San Diego, California, where he receives electroshock treatments that destroy his personality.
This crisis serves as the catalyst that brings the family together. Hugh, Irwin's father, drives to San Diego and essentially takes up residence outside the mental hospital where Irwin is kept. When he finally manages a visit with his son, he finds Irwin under heavy sedation and unable to communicate because of repeated electroshock treatments. He tries to get the military to turn Irwin over to him, but they refuse. When the rest of the family learns of this they concoct a plan to free Irwin. Everett returns from Canada and is promptly arrested, but not before playing a vital part in the plan. Peter returns from India, and the family makes the journey to San Diego along with several members of the SDA church, including two elders, who Laura enlists in the mission to free Irwin. Together they variously persuade, manipulate, and bully the commanding officer of the hospital into returning Irwin to them.
Interestingly enough, the differences which drove them apart as a family turn out to be essential in rescuing Irwin. Everett kicks off the entire rescue mission by barging in on a service at his mother's SDA church and "preaching" at the church about Irwin's situation. His own estrangement from the church makes his "sermon" all the more compelling, and a member of the church such as Laura or Beatrice would never have done something so unorthodox. Peter's calm Buddhist personality proves essential in the negotiations with the commanding officer of the mental hospital, and Laura's own SDA connections turn out to be of equal importance. This is the climax of the novel, and marks the point at which the Chance family regains its solidarity.
This is of necessity a painfully brief treatment of the novel; I've left out a number of major themes, plot lines, and even characters. The Brothers K is quite a complex novel. This might threaten to devolve into chaos, but Duncan holds the story together with a few central motifs. These motifs are elements in the story itself, where they are things that the characters discuss and study, but they are also incorporated through the use of introductory quotations to each chapter. Many of these are quotes from athletes or coaches, reflecting the novel's preoccupations with baseball, many are Bible verses, a number come from Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov (an obvious influence on Duncan's own choice of title, and an important element in the novel's plot), and quite a few are quotations from the epic Hindu poem Mahabharata. While much could be written about all of these, the scope of this paper limits the discussion to only one. My research focused on the Mahabharata and its relationship to Hindu culture and thought, and so I'd like to focus on this single aspect of The Brothers K. First, however, a discussion of the Mahabharata and the Hindu worldview is in order.
At its most basic level the Mahabharata is simply the story of a war, but even a cursory reading reveals influence by and concern for the values of the Hindu culture in which it occurs. Indeed, R. C. Zaehner says of the epic that it, "comprises within itself the whole of Hinduism as no other book can hope to . . ." (11). According to tradition, the original story of the Mahabharata was written by the sage Vasya, who appears in the epic as the narrator. Totaling one hundred thousand couplets in its final version, it is the longest epic in the world (Flood 105). It tells the story of a conflict between two clans for the kingship of Hastinapura. Two brothers, Dhritarashtra and Pandu, were born to the king of Hastinapura. Dhritarashtra, the eldest, was born blind, so the kingship passed to his younger brother Pandu. A god had cursed Pandu so that if he ever had intercourse with a woman he would die in the act; because of this, his five sons (the Pandavas) were fathered by gods rather than himself. Dhritarashtra had one hundred sons (the Kauravas). After Pandu's untimely death, Dhritarashtra ascends the throne. His oldest son, Duryodhana, desires to rule. To avoid conflict Dhritarashtra divides the kingdom in two. He gives the northern half to his sons, and the southern half to the Pandavas. This works well for awhile, until Duryodhana visits his cousins' capital and challenges Yudhistira to a series of dice games. Yudhistira loses, and the terms of the game are such that he and the rest of the Pandavas must submit to thirteen years of exile. When they return after their exile, Duryodhana refuses to return their half of the kingdom to them. This sparks an eighteen day battle, in which all of the Kaurava clan is killed. After the battle, Yudhistira takes the throne, and rules for many years.
To understand the way the Mahabharata exemplifies Hindu culture and belief we must examine the larger context of that mythology and worldview. Hinduism is a notoriously difficult creature to pin down or summarize. Indeed, Gavin Flood asserts that, "If it is possible to define Hinduism, it is certainly not possible to do so in terms of doctrine and theological beliefs. Ritual is prior to theology, both historically and conceptually . . . " (199). Under the rubric of Hinduism there are an astonishing variety of beliefs, gods, and teachings. Flood goes on to point out that the Sanskrit word for "ritual" literally means "constructed" or "put together," which implies that, in the Hindu conception, ritual is literally the process by which one's person-hood is assembled, and in a larger sense, by which society itself is put or held together (201). In Hinduism, "what a Hindu does is more important than what he believes" (12).
However, one of the basic tenets, held to by nearly all practitioners of Hinduism, is the belief in karma (cosmic cause and effect) and the reincarnation and immortality of souls (O'Malley 7). One improves their lot in future lives by acting virtuously in their current incarnation, thereby working off "bad karma." This eventually terminates in a state of union with God or Absolute Reality (not all branches of Hinduism believe the same thing about the number, identity, or even existence of gods). Good and bad, however, do not fit exactly into typical Western conceptions of these terms. One achieves this union not through virtue per se, but by losing one's attachment to the physical, material world (9) and entering into communion with God.
Charles Malamoud translates the Sanskrit word for sacrifice, lokapakti, as "cooking the world," and writes that this idea best exemplifies Hinduism (2). In Hinduism all of life is thought of as sacrificial, as an offering to or a proceeding towards the divine. This is largely the result of the notion of reincarnation, a doctrine which includes inanimate objects, plants, and animals, as well as humans (O'Malley 7). Malamoud offers the following passage from the Veda (the oldest of the Hindu scriptures) to confirm this centrality of sacrifice. The Veda says, "Of all the animals capable of being sacrificial animals, man is the sole creature who is also capable of performing, of doing the sacrificial act" (Malamoud 5). In the Bhagavad-Gita, the most famous section of the Mahabharata, the god Krishna tells the Pandava warrior Arjuna, ". . . see all the universe, / animate and inanimate, / and whatever else you wish to see; / all stands here as one in my body" (Bhagavad-Gita 98).
In this vision, all of reality is seen as part of and as a manifestation of God. Therefore, all human action, rightly understood, becomes sacrifice--all of reality is of the divine and is returning to the divine. The idea of becoming unattached to the world has its root here, too: attachment to particular things is to miss the totality of which they are merely a part. This returns to the earlier idea of ritual in Hinduism. Ritual is the process of sacrifice, either explicitly by sacrificing an animal or object, or implicitly, by performing ritual acts of devotion.
The story of the Mahabharata is driven along by these values and beliefs. One of the central ideas of the epic is that of sacred duty, the idea of performing necessary actions without any sense of attachment. This is best exemplified by the occasion of Krishna's discourse to Arjuna before the great battle between the Pandavis and the Kauravas. Arjuna is the son of the god Indra, and is the mightiest warrior alive. But before the battle, he sees his cousins and friends on the enemy's side, and questions whether or not he should even fight. He says, "Krishna, I see my kinsmen / gathered here, wanting war /. . . I see omens of chaos, / Krishna, I see no good / in killing my kinsmen / in battle / . . . how can we know happiness / if we kill our own kinsmen?" (Bhagavad-Gita 24-25). Krishna's explanation of why Arjuna should fight in the battle against people he loves constitutes the bulk of the Bhagavad-Gita. Krishna tells Arjuna, "One who does what must be done / without concern for the fruits / is a man of renunciation and discipline / . . . He is set apart by his disinterest / toward comrades, allies, enemies, / neutrals, nonpartisans, foes, friends, / good and even evil men" (63-64). This action without attachment constitutes sacred duty. In any pursuit, whether that of knowledge, sacrifice, or personal devotion, one must seek action without attachment. Arjuna, his brothers, and his relatives, are all born as warriors. Their duty, therefore, is to fight, and they achieve true virtue by fighting without attachment, simply because it is what they have been born to do.
Some of these same ideas make their way into The Brothers K, albeit in a subtle and altered manner. I will now trace the central way in which the themes of the Mahabharata help to shape Duncan's novel. This involves the motif of the group of brothers found in both the novel and the epic. This thread draws on the Hindu idea of dispassionate action, of "disinterest / toward comrades, allies, enemies, / neutrals, nonpartisans, foes, friends, / good and even evil men" (Bhagavad-Gita 64). I will examine how this Hindu cultural value finds a distinctly different expression in The Brothers K despite the common motif, and will demonstrate the complex dynamic involved in Duncan's application of Hindu mythology.
The clearest hint as to the role of the Mahabharata in The Brothers K comes in chapter three of the second book of the novel (The Brothers K is divided into six books, which are subdivided into chapters by book). This passage illustrates the first of the two threads, the idea of dispassionate action. In a conversation between the four brothers Peter, who has begun his fascination with all things Eastern, tells his brothers a story from the Mahabharata. The story comes from the early section of the epic and relates an incident during the military training of the five Pandava brothers (the heroes of the epic). Drona, the brothers' instructor in the art of warfare, tests the brothers' archery skills. He finds Arjuna, the youngest, to be preternaturally gifted, and promises to make him the greatest archer to ever live. The only condition is that Arjuna must promise that if he ever meets Drona, his beloved teacher, in battle, he must fight to win, in keeping with the Hindu ideal of performing duty without attachment. He must be willing to kill his own teacher for the sake of sacred duty.
As Peter tells the story, his brothers keep breaking in to compare the Pandavas to the Chance family. As Peter introduces the characters Irwin breaks in and says, "Jeezle peezle, Pete! It's like they're us! It's like this story is about Everett and me and Freddy and . . . " (Duncan 165). Later he asks,
Peter refuses to draw the connection between the Pandavas and his own family because he knows that in the final battle of the Mahabharata the Pandava brothers meet and kill Drona, who has become a general for their rivals, the Kauravas. The implication, if the parallel between the two groups of brothers is an accurate one, is that the Chance brothers will be led into conflict with a loved one, and that there's nothing they can do to prevent it. Despite Peter's denial, this is of course the case. The Pandava brothers are clearly a pattern for the Chance family. The episode where Peter tells this story occurs not only occurs in the same chapter as, but is actually interspliced with an episode at the dinner table where the brothers' religious differences with their mother lead to an explosive confrontation that introduces the rift in the family that persists until the climax and resolution of the novel. In the Mahabharata both Drona and the Pandavas act with honor and in accordance with duty, and this leads them directly to the situation wherein the Pandavas kill Drona. In the Chance family, the only way to avoid explosive confrontation is for either Laura or her sons to be dishonest about what they believe. They prefer to be honest, and this leads to the rift in the family.
It would be easy to overstate the similarities at this point. Despite the obvious parallels between the two groups of brothers there are a number of important differences as well. Although Irwin tries to assign exact roles to each of the Chance brothers there is no one-to-one correspondence between them and the Pandavas. No one of the brothers is a "type" of Arjuna or Bhima or Drona or any of the other characters in the Mahabharata. Even more significantly, the conflict into which their natures lead them is drastically different in the novel as compared to the epic. The brothers do not kill Laura or any of the other religious figures in their lives, despite the fact that the conflict in the Mahabharata leads to Drona's death.
Furthermore, the role of the conflict in The Brothers K is much different than in the epic. In the latter, the conflict and death of Drona are ultimately acceptable because they are the working out of karma and the exercise of duty that leads to detachment and eternal bliss for all the parties involved. In slightly more Judeo-Christian terms, it's acceptable that Drona and the Pandavas fight with each other, because they fight with each other in the right way, and therefore go to heaven regardless of whose side they were on. In The Brothers K the conflict with Laura is ultimately acceptable because it leads to the circumstances which enable the rescue of Irwin and restore harmony to the family. The ultimate goal for characters in the epic is attaining nirvana, reflecting traditional Hindu concerns. For characters in the novel, the goal is the restoration of the family, a much more contemporary American concern.
We have examined the way David James Duncan uses elements of the Mahabharata in his novel The Brothers K. His novel, of course, draws ideas and themes from a wide variety of sources; the Mahabharata is just one. We've seen the basic plot and theme of his novel, an epic in its own way about the conflict in and restoration of an American family. We've also discussed the Hindu epic he draws from in his story, and seen the way this epic characterizes the values of the society from which it originated. Finally, we've examined the way the Mahabharata is used in Duncan's novel, and the way he changes it to reflect his own thematic concerns. The Brothers K, a story about modern family life and the radical changes brought about by the sixties, draws on the ancient story of the Mahabharata in achieving its goals, and in the process changes that story to relate to the concerns of contemporary existence.
WORKS CITED
Bhagavad-Gita, The. Trans. Barbara Stoler Miller, trans. New York: Bantam. 1986.
Duncan, James David. The Brothers K. New York: Bantam. 1992.
Flood, Gavin. An Introduction to Hinduism. New York: Cambridge UP. 1996.
Malamoud, Charles. Cooking the World: Ritual and Thought in Ancient India. Trans. David White. New York: Oxford UP. 1996.
Narayan, R. K. The Mahabharata: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic. Chicago: Chicago UP. 1978.
O'Malley, L.S.S. Popular Hinduism. New York: Cambridge UP. 1935.
Zaehner, R. C. Hinduism. New York: Oxford UP. 1966.
For those of you who might be interested, I thought I'd post the paper that I wrote this weekend, seeing as how that was what kept me away from this blog. It's not necessarily any great shakes as a piece of scholarship, and it runs to twelve pages in 12 point Times New Roman font. It's about David James Duncan's wonderful novel The Brothers K, and his use of the Hindu epic Mahabharata (thanks to the Walrus for initially turning me onto the book). So, for those of you who might be interested, I give you...
(warning: major plot spoilers ahead)
HINDU MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION IN THE BROTHERS K
Humans have been telling stories for as long as there have been humans. Stories entertain, inform, and enlighten us. They open us to looking at the world in new ways. But some stories do even more than this. They become a way that we organize our thoughts and perceptions of the world. The central stories that organize and inform the life of a given community are sometimes called its mythology. Mythologies are perhaps the most influential and resonant of stories, because they contain the most basic values of a community expressed in compelling narrative forms. And because they communicate the basic values of a community, they often change or take on new meanings as the community's values change. In his novel The Brothers K, David James Duncan makes use of the ancient Hindu epic Mahabharata. Many of the epic's motifs are reflected in the novel, but Duncan uses them in a new way, to reflect the concerns of his book rather than of ancient Hindu society. In this paper I will discuss the plot and major thematic concerns of The Brothers K. I will then briefly address the plot, context, and meaning of the Mahabharata. Finally, I will examine the way one of the central motifs of the epic finds expression in the novel, and how this sheds light on the complex process by which an ancient mythology informs a contemporary novel.
The Brothers K tells the story of the Chance family between the years of 1956 and 1972. The story occurs primarily in Camas, Washington, and is told by the youngest brother of the family, Kincaid, although the text of the novel includes a number of letters, journal entries, and school papers from other family members. The Brothers K covers a remarkable amount of thematic ground, dealing with, among other things, baseball, religion, and America in the sixties. If there is a single unifying idea to the book, however, it is the nature and dynamic of the Chance family as the children move through adolescence into adulthood and deal with the cataclysmic social changes wrought by the sixties.
The father, Hugh, was a rising baseball star who suffered an injury at the wood mill where he worked that flattened his right thumb and ended a promising career. At the beginning of the story, in 1956, this injury is recent, and one of the recurring ideas in the novel is how he deals with his abruptly terminated career. His wife, Laura, is a staunch Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) whose religion is a sort of psychological protection against the memory of her abusive, alcoholic father. Hugh, while sympathetic to his wife's religion, is himself not at all religious. He never goes to church, while Laura drags the children to services every Saturday (the Sabbath of the SDA church). As their children grow up this religious gap between the parents widens to include the children, and threatens to destroy the family. This conflict is the central element of the Chance family dynamic in the story, and the resolution of the novel is in a large sense the resolution of this conflict.
Hugh and Laura have six children. In order of birth, their names are Everett, Peter, Irwin, Kincaid (the narrator), and twin girls named Winifred (Freddy) and Beatrice (Bet). Everett, the oldest, is the iconoclastic "black sheep" of the family who early on rejects his mother's religion. At college he quickly becomes a star of the counter-revolutionary movement, eventually burns his draft card and moves to Canada. Peter, the second oldest, is the star baseball player of the family who grows enamored of Eastern thought and religion. Upon graduation he gives up the possibility of a career in baseball and leaves Camas to attend school on the east coast, before moving to India to pursue his study of Hindu and Buddhist thought. The third son, Irwin, is the only one of the brothers to remain involved in church. He is enthusiastically religious, but in a way far different from the stern fundamentalism of his mother's church, although he remains a member of the church until college. Irwin is a force of nature; his personality is such that he loves everyone, is seemingly incapable of deception, and can't conceive of religion as being something that might divide people. It's worth noting here that Irwin is far from a moral paragon. He is not hypocritical about his sins, however; he confesses them every Sunday, much to the consternation of the church elders. The fourth son, Kincaid, serves in the story mainly as narrator. Similarly, his two younger sisters are less important characters, although Duncan does use them to illustrate the religious tensions in the family: Winifred follows in the mystical Eastern footsteps of her older brother Peter, while Beatrice sides with her mother and Irwin.
The bulk of the novel follows the stories of the three older brothers: Everett, Peter, and Irwin. Each of them leaves the family and Camas in a sort of exile and the resolution of the novel deals with how they all come home again, and with the larger reconciliation of the family. Everett leaves for Canada as a draft-dodger, Peter for India as a spiritual seeker, and Irwin for Vietnam as a draftee. Irwin's experiences in Vietnam ultimately reunite the family.
Despite his irrepressible personality, Irwin struggles with academic work in college and finally fails out, thereby losing his student deferment from the draft. As an SDA he should be eligible for conscientious objector status, but his pastor, the Elder Babcock, refuses to recommend him for this status because of both Irwin's moral failings (he recently learned that his fiance is pregnant) and Babcock's ongoing quarrel with the rest of the rather unorthodox Chance family. As a result, Irwin is drafted and sent to Vietnam, where in a crisis of conscience over the execution of a Vietnamese boy he attacks his commanding officer. The military sends him to an Army mental hospital in San Diego, California, where he receives electroshock treatments that destroy his personality.
This crisis serves as the catalyst that brings the family together. Hugh, Irwin's father, drives to San Diego and essentially takes up residence outside the mental hospital where Irwin is kept. When he finally manages a visit with his son, he finds Irwin under heavy sedation and unable to communicate because of repeated electroshock treatments. He tries to get the military to turn Irwin over to him, but they refuse. When the rest of the family learns of this they concoct a plan to free Irwin. Everett returns from Canada and is promptly arrested, but not before playing a vital part in the plan. Peter returns from India, and the family makes the journey to San Diego along with several members of the SDA church, including two elders, who Laura enlists in the mission to free Irwin. Together they variously persuade, manipulate, and bully the commanding officer of the hospital into returning Irwin to them.
Interestingly enough, the differences which drove them apart as a family turn out to be essential in rescuing Irwin. Everett kicks off the entire rescue mission by barging in on a service at his mother's SDA church and "preaching" at the church about Irwin's situation. His own estrangement from the church makes his "sermon" all the more compelling, and a member of the church such as Laura or Beatrice would never have done something so unorthodox. Peter's calm Buddhist personality proves essential in the negotiations with the commanding officer of the mental hospital, and Laura's own SDA connections turn out to be of equal importance. This is the climax of the novel, and marks the point at which the Chance family regains its solidarity.
This is of necessity a painfully brief treatment of the novel; I've left out a number of major themes, plot lines, and even characters. The Brothers K is quite a complex novel. This might threaten to devolve into chaos, but Duncan holds the story together with a few central motifs. These motifs are elements in the story itself, where they are things that the characters discuss and study, but they are also incorporated through the use of introductory quotations to each chapter. Many of these are quotes from athletes or coaches, reflecting the novel's preoccupations with baseball, many are Bible verses, a number come from Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov (an obvious influence on Duncan's own choice of title, and an important element in the novel's plot), and quite a few are quotations from the epic Hindu poem Mahabharata. While much could be written about all of these, the scope of this paper limits the discussion to only one. My research focused on the Mahabharata and its relationship to Hindu culture and thought, and so I'd like to focus on this single aspect of The Brothers K. First, however, a discussion of the Mahabharata and the Hindu worldview is in order.
At its most basic level the Mahabharata is simply the story of a war, but even a cursory reading reveals influence by and concern for the values of the Hindu culture in which it occurs. Indeed, R. C. Zaehner says of the epic that it, "comprises within itself the whole of Hinduism as no other book can hope to . . ." (11). According to tradition, the original story of the Mahabharata was written by the sage Vasya, who appears in the epic as the narrator. Totaling one hundred thousand couplets in its final version, it is the longest epic in the world (Flood 105). It tells the story of a conflict between two clans for the kingship of Hastinapura. Two brothers, Dhritarashtra and Pandu, were born to the king of Hastinapura. Dhritarashtra, the eldest, was born blind, so the kingship passed to his younger brother Pandu. A god had cursed Pandu so that if he ever had intercourse with a woman he would die in the act; because of this, his five sons (the Pandavas) were fathered by gods rather than himself. Dhritarashtra had one hundred sons (the Kauravas). After Pandu's untimely death, Dhritarashtra ascends the throne. His oldest son, Duryodhana, desires to rule. To avoid conflict Dhritarashtra divides the kingdom in two. He gives the northern half to his sons, and the southern half to the Pandavas. This works well for awhile, until Duryodhana visits his cousins' capital and challenges Yudhistira to a series of dice games. Yudhistira loses, and the terms of the game are such that he and the rest of the Pandavas must submit to thirteen years of exile. When they return after their exile, Duryodhana refuses to return their half of the kingdom to them. This sparks an eighteen day battle, in which all of the Kaurava clan is killed. After the battle, Yudhistira takes the throne, and rules for many years.
To understand the way the Mahabharata exemplifies Hindu culture and belief we must examine the larger context of that mythology and worldview. Hinduism is a notoriously difficult creature to pin down or summarize. Indeed, Gavin Flood asserts that, "If it is possible to define Hinduism, it is certainly not possible to do so in terms of doctrine and theological beliefs. Ritual is prior to theology, both historically and conceptually . . . " (199). Under the rubric of Hinduism there are an astonishing variety of beliefs, gods, and teachings. Flood goes on to point out that the Sanskrit word for "ritual" literally means "constructed" or "put together," which implies that, in the Hindu conception, ritual is literally the process by which one's person-hood is assembled, and in a larger sense, by which society itself is put or held together (201). In Hinduism, "what a Hindu does is more important than what he believes" (12).
However, one of the basic tenets, held to by nearly all practitioners of Hinduism, is the belief in karma (cosmic cause and effect) and the reincarnation and immortality of souls (O'Malley 7). One improves their lot in future lives by acting virtuously in their current incarnation, thereby working off "bad karma." This eventually terminates in a state of union with God or Absolute Reality (not all branches of Hinduism believe the same thing about the number, identity, or even existence of gods). Good and bad, however, do not fit exactly into typical Western conceptions of these terms. One achieves this union not through virtue per se, but by losing one's attachment to the physical, material world (9) and entering into communion with God.
Charles Malamoud translates the Sanskrit word for sacrifice, lokapakti, as "cooking the world," and writes that this idea best exemplifies Hinduism (2). In Hinduism all of life is thought of as sacrificial, as an offering to or a proceeding towards the divine. This is largely the result of the notion of reincarnation, a doctrine which includes inanimate objects, plants, and animals, as well as humans (O'Malley 7). Malamoud offers the following passage from the Veda (the oldest of the Hindu scriptures) to confirm this centrality of sacrifice. The Veda says, "Of all the animals capable of being sacrificial animals, man is the sole creature who is also capable of performing, of doing the sacrificial act" (Malamoud 5). In the Bhagavad-Gita, the most famous section of the Mahabharata, the god Krishna tells the Pandava warrior Arjuna, ". . . see all the universe, / animate and inanimate, / and whatever else you wish to see; / all stands here as one in my body" (Bhagavad-Gita 98).
In this vision, all of reality is seen as part of and as a manifestation of God. Therefore, all human action, rightly understood, becomes sacrifice--all of reality is of the divine and is returning to the divine. The idea of becoming unattached to the world has its root here, too: attachment to particular things is to miss the totality of which they are merely a part. This returns to the earlier idea of ritual in Hinduism. Ritual is the process of sacrifice, either explicitly by sacrificing an animal or object, or implicitly, by performing ritual acts of devotion.
The story of the Mahabharata is driven along by these values and beliefs. One of the central ideas of the epic is that of sacred duty, the idea of performing necessary actions without any sense of attachment. This is best exemplified by the occasion of Krishna's discourse to Arjuna before the great battle between the Pandavis and the Kauravas. Arjuna is the son of the god Indra, and is the mightiest warrior alive. But before the battle, he sees his cousins and friends on the enemy's side, and questions whether or not he should even fight. He says, "Krishna, I see my kinsmen / gathered here, wanting war /. . . I see omens of chaos, / Krishna, I see no good / in killing my kinsmen / in battle / . . . how can we know happiness / if we kill our own kinsmen?" (Bhagavad-Gita 24-25). Krishna's explanation of why Arjuna should fight in the battle against people he loves constitutes the bulk of the Bhagavad-Gita. Krishna tells Arjuna, "One who does what must be done / without concern for the fruits / is a man of renunciation and discipline / . . . He is set apart by his disinterest / toward comrades, allies, enemies, / neutrals, nonpartisans, foes, friends, / good and even evil men" (63-64). This action without attachment constitutes sacred duty. In any pursuit, whether that of knowledge, sacrifice, or personal devotion, one must seek action without attachment. Arjuna, his brothers, and his relatives, are all born as warriors. Their duty, therefore, is to fight, and they achieve true virtue by fighting without attachment, simply because it is what they have been born to do.
Some of these same ideas make their way into The Brothers K, albeit in a subtle and altered manner. I will now trace the central way in which the themes of the Mahabharata help to shape Duncan's novel. This involves the motif of the group of brothers found in both the novel and the epic. This thread draws on the Hindu idea of dispassionate action, of "disinterest / toward comrades, allies, enemies, / neutrals, nonpartisans, foes, friends, / good and even evil men" (Bhagavad-Gita 64). I will examine how this Hindu cultural value finds a distinctly different expression in The Brothers K despite the common motif, and will demonstrate the complex dynamic involved in Duncan's application of Hindu mythology.
The clearest hint as to the role of the Mahabharata in The Brothers K comes in chapter three of the second book of the novel (The Brothers K is divided into six books, which are subdivided into chapters by book). This passage illustrates the first of the two threads, the idea of dispassionate action. In a conversation between the four brothers Peter, who has begun his fascination with all things Eastern, tells his brothers a story from the Mahabharata. The story comes from the early section of the epic and relates an incident during the military training of the five Pandava brothers (the heroes of the epic). Drona, the brothers' instructor in the art of warfare, tests the brothers' archery skills. He finds Arjuna, the youngest, to be preternaturally gifted, and promises to make him the greatest archer to ever live. The only condition is that Arjuna must promise that if he ever meets Drona, his beloved teacher, in battle, he must fight to win, in keeping with the Hindu ideal of performing duty without attachment. He must be willing to kill his own teacher for the sake of sacred duty.
As Peter tells the story, his brothers keep breaking in to compare the Pandavas to the Chance family. As Peter introduces the characters Irwin breaks in and says, "Jeezle peezle, Pete! It's like they're us! It's like this story is about Everett and me and Freddy and . . . " (Duncan 165). Later he asks,
"What I don't get . . . is if Everett's the crown prince, an' I'm the Son of the Wind, an' the twins are the twins, who the heck's Arjuna? Is it you, Pete? Or Kade? And by the way, who's Drona?"
"This story is about the Pandavas," Peter said quietly. "Not the Chances."
. . . Irwin grinned and said, "Yeah. Sure" (166).
Peter refuses to draw the connection between the Pandavas and his own family because he knows that in the final battle of the Mahabharata the Pandava brothers meet and kill Drona, who has become a general for their rivals, the Kauravas. The implication, if the parallel between the two groups of brothers is an accurate one, is that the Chance brothers will be led into conflict with a loved one, and that there's nothing they can do to prevent it. Despite Peter's denial, this is of course the case. The Pandava brothers are clearly a pattern for the Chance family. The episode where Peter tells this story occurs not only occurs in the same chapter as, but is actually interspliced with an episode at the dinner table where the brothers' religious differences with their mother lead to an explosive confrontation that introduces the rift in the family that persists until the climax and resolution of the novel. In the Mahabharata both Drona and the Pandavas act with honor and in accordance with duty, and this leads them directly to the situation wherein the Pandavas kill Drona. In the Chance family, the only way to avoid explosive confrontation is for either Laura or her sons to be dishonest about what they believe. They prefer to be honest, and this leads to the rift in the family.
It would be easy to overstate the similarities at this point. Despite the obvious parallels between the two groups of brothers there are a number of important differences as well. Although Irwin tries to assign exact roles to each of the Chance brothers there is no one-to-one correspondence between them and the Pandavas. No one of the brothers is a "type" of Arjuna or Bhima or Drona or any of the other characters in the Mahabharata. Even more significantly, the conflict into which their natures lead them is drastically different in the novel as compared to the epic. The brothers do not kill Laura or any of the other religious figures in their lives, despite the fact that the conflict in the Mahabharata leads to Drona's death.
Furthermore, the role of the conflict in The Brothers K is much different than in the epic. In the latter, the conflict and death of Drona are ultimately acceptable because they are the working out of karma and the exercise of duty that leads to detachment and eternal bliss for all the parties involved. In slightly more Judeo-Christian terms, it's acceptable that Drona and the Pandavas fight with each other, because they fight with each other in the right way, and therefore go to heaven regardless of whose side they were on. In The Brothers K the conflict with Laura is ultimately acceptable because it leads to the circumstances which enable the rescue of Irwin and restore harmony to the family. The ultimate goal for characters in the epic is attaining nirvana, reflecting traditional Hindu concerns. For characters in the novel, the goal is the restoration of the family, a much more contemporary American concern.
We have examined the way David James Duncan uses elements of the Mahabharata in his novel The Brothers K. His novel, of course, draws ideas and themes from a wide variety of sources; the Mahabharata is just one. We've seen the basic plot and theme of his novel, an epic in its own way about the conflict in and restoration of an American family. We've also discussed the Hindu epic he draws from in his story, and seen the way this epic characterizes the values of the society from which it originated. Finally, we've examined the way the Mahabharata is used in Duncan's novel, and the way he changes it to reflect his own thematic concerns. The Brothers K, a story about modern family life and the radical changes brought about by the sixties, draws on the ancient story of the Mahabharata in achieving its goals, and in the process changes that story to relate to the concerns of contemporary existence.
WORKS CITED
Bhagavad-Gita, The. Trans. Barbara Stoler Miller, trans. New York: Bantam. 1986.
Duncan, James David. The Brothers K. New York: Bantam. 1992.
Flood, Gavin. An Introduction to Hinduism. New York: Cambridge UP. 1996.
Malamoud, Charles. Cooking the World: Ritual and Thought in Ancient India. Trans. David White. New York: Oxford UP. 1996.
Narayan, R. K. The Mahabharata: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic. Chicago: Chicago UP. 1978.
O'Malley, L.S.S. Popular Hinduism. New York: Cambridge UP. 1935.
Zaehner, R. C. Hinduism. New York: Oxford UP. 1966.
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
Writing for The Man every night and day
Funny story.
I've spent the last four days or so writing the term paper for my Mythology class. It was due today. Key word: was.
I didn't go to class all last week, and at some point my professor changed the due date to after Thanksgiving break. I busted my nether regions all weekend trying to finish it, came into class late, and turns out it was all in vain. Well, not really. If I hadn't done it this weekend I would have waited until the last minute a week from now, and had exactly the same amount of stress in my life. So all is good.
What makes this funny is the fact that the exact same thing happened the last time I turned in a paper in this class. Work myself to death the last couple of days before the deadline, show up to turn it in and find out its been moved back a week, and all because I didn't go to class the week before. So yeah. I'm a moron.
Funny story.
I've spent the last four days or so writing the term paper for my Mythology class. It was due today. Key word: was.
I didn't go to class all last week, and at some point my professor changed the due date to after Thanksgiving break. I busted my nether regions all weekend trying to finish it, came into class late, and turns out it was all in vain. Well, not really. If I hadn't done it this weekend I would have waited until the last minute a week from now, and had exactly the same amount of stress in my life. So all is good.
What makes this funny is the fact that the exact same thing happened the last time I turned in a paper in this class. Work myself to death the last couple of days before the deadline, show up to turn it in and find out its been moved back a week, and all because I didn't go to class the week before. So yeah. I'm a moron.
Friday, November 21, 2003
Some poems, Vol. 1
A couple of poems for your enjoyment, edification, and amusement. For the record, any time I post poems on this site I actively solicit your input--positive, negative, or otherwise. On "Trinity" I mostly want to know what you think it's about, and if the form (decreasing stanza length) adds to or detracts from the poem (and why). It's pretty far along in the revision process, so I'm mostly interested in fine tuning. This is, however, the first time out of the front yard for "Isaac Newton". Let me know if it feels incomplete, if there's stuff relavant to the poem that isn't part of the poem, as well as anything else that strikes you.
Without further ado...
TRINITY
Six years old, I knew it was the name of a book
on one of my grandmother's shelves. On overnight visits
I fell asleep with that singular title peering down through the darkness,
safe and mysterious as any grownup, and by the glow
that spread beneath the door I mouthed the word
a hundred times in a night, like some medieval prayer.
Later it was the name of a river, and when our car rattled over
the Trinity, going home, I would read the name
to myself from the sign on the bridge, picture it flashing
like a coin through the claustrophobic forests of east Texas,
losing itself in the ocean without regrets.
Now it's more a coupon of doctrine, something clipped
from the pages of Augustine and hung
on the refrigerator with a magnet, metaphysical
three-for-the-price-of-one, best deal in town.
But still when the Sunday morning sun lances the windows
and plays over us like a flock of angels, and we sing Holy, holy, holy,
God in three persons, blessed Trinity, I pour myself
into the misunderstood vessel of the song, into Thee,
chirping trinity, trinity, peace like a river, light dripping
from my elementary wings.
--Daniel Priest
ISAAC NEWTON
The moon is in love with the earth.
She fills his sky with her shifting veils,
her marble brightness.
He looks to himself,
sees only yellow rock.
So he doesn't come running,
fall from the sky in embrace, but turns
his ancient back to the clarity of space. He circles
the room of his orbit; opens his mouth
but doesn't know any songs.
--Daniel Priest
[EDIT: A big thanks to my grammatical friend Sean, who alerted me to the fact that I had committed a glaring malapropism in my original post here, saying "without further adeiu," when it should have been "without further ado." And I'm supposedly teaching this man's daughter how to write. Oh, the irony.]
A couple of poems for your enjoyment, edification, and amusement. For the record, any time I post poems on this site I actively solicit your input--positive, negative, or otherwise. On "Trinity" I mostly want to know what you think it's about, and if the form (decreasing stanza length) adds to or detracts from the poem (and why). It's pretty far along in the revision process, so I'm mostly interested in fine tuning. This is, however, the first time out of the front yard for "Isaac Newton". Let me know if it feels incomplete, if there's stuff relavant to the poem that isn't part of the poem, as well as anything else that strikes you.
Without further ado...
TRINITY
Six years old, I knew it was the name of a book
on one of my grandmother's shelves. On overnight visits
I fell asleep with that singular title peering down through the darkness,
safe and mysterious as any grownup, and by the glow
that spread beneath the door I mouthed the word
a hundred times in a night, like some medieval prayer.
Later it was the name of a river, and when our car rattled over
the Trinity, going home, I would read the name
to myself from the sign on the bridge, picture it flashing
like a coin through the claustrophobic forests of east Texas,
losing itself in the ocean without regrets.
Now it's more a coupon of doctrine, something clipped
from the pages of Augustine and hung
on the refrigerator with a magnet, metaphysical
three-for-the-price-of-one, best deal in town.
But still when the Sunday morning sun lances the windows
and plays over us like a flock of angels, and we sing Holy, holy, holy,
God in three persons, blessed Trinity, I pour myself
into the misunderstood vessel of the song, into Thee,
chirping trinity, trinity, peace like a river, light dripping
from my elementary wings.
--Daniel Priest
ISAAC NEWTON
The moon is in love with the earth.
She fills his sky with her shifting veils,
her marble brightness.
He looks to himself,
sees only yellow rock.
So he doesn't come running,
fall from the sky in embrace, but turns
his ancient back to the clarity of space. He circles
the room of his orbit; opens his mouth
but doesn't know any songs.
--Daniel Priest
[EDIT: A big thanks to my grammatical friend Sean, who alerted me to the fact that I had committed a glaring malapropism in my original post here, saying "without further adeiu," when it should have been "without further ado." And I'm supposedly teaching this man's daughter how to write. Oh, the irony.]
Thursday, November 20, 2003
Remember Caesar, thou art mortal
My neighbor across the street is keeping a dog for a friend. It's a big grayhound-looking animal, just out of puppy-hood. The dog is called "Caesar." I know this because several times a day my neighbor lets him out of the trailer, then stands on the porch yelling "Caesar! Go the bathroom!" Caesar, however, doesn't want to do anything of the sort. He'd much rather smell trees and chase cars, which puts my neighbor in one of the most undignified places an American can be: trying to force your pet to cop a squat. He'll chase Caesar around the yard, then yell into his face, "CAESAR! GO TO THE BATHROOM!" Trying to, well, scare the crap out of him, I suppose.
Tonight my neighbor came home tired. I was outside when he pulled up, and I watched him climb out of the car and check the mail. He moved like a man moves after a long day of work. He climbed the stairs to his porch, unlocked the door, and slipped inside. Not five seconds later I heard him scream, from inside his house and across the street:
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuckin come here! Fuck!"
He doesn't have any curtains up in his living room, and I watched him run across the trailer, chasing the dog. And I knew. In my heart of hearts I knew, without knowing.
That dog just took a crap on that poor man's carpet.
My family has owned any number of animals for as long as I've been alive. Mostly cats, although there's been dogs, fish, gerbils, turtles, and guinea pigs scattered in there as well. I've scooped poop in the backyard and stepped in cat vomit in the middle of the night while stumbling through a dark hall towards the bathroom.
I don't know why we keep pets. I have no idea. Some famous writer whose name I can't recall once observed that if aliens were observing our planet, they would think that the dogs are the masters. Seriously. We feed them, love them, take them for walks, and pick up their feces and carry it home in little plastic bags. And in return they grace us with their affection. Now, who's in charge?
So I can certainly sympathize with my neighbor. I wouldn't want to be in his shoes, although for his sake I hope he was wearing them. But even less would I want to be his dog.
Remember Caesar, thou art mortal. So don't diddle on your master's floor.
My neighbor across the street is keeping a dog for a friend. It's a big grayhound-looking animal, just out of puppy-hood. The dog is called "Caesar." I know this because several times a day my neighbor lets him out of the trailer, then stands on the porch yelling "Caesar! Go the bathroom!" Caesar, however, doesn't want to do anything of the sort. He'd much rather smell trees and chase cars, which puts my neighbor in one of the most undignified places an American can be: trying to force your pet to cop a squat. He'll chase Caesar around the yard, then yell into his face, "CAESAR! GO TO THE BATHROOM!" Trying to, well, scare the crap out of him, I suppose.
Tonight my neighbor came home tired. I was outside when he pulled up, and I watched him climb out of the car and check the mail. He moved like a man moves after a long day of work. He climbed the stairs to his porch, unlocked the door, and slipped inside. Not five seconds later I heard him scream, from inside his house and across the street:
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuckin come here! Fuck!"
He doesn't have any curtains up in his living room, and I watched him run across the trailer, chasing the dog. And I knew. In my heart of hearts I knew, without knowing.
That dog just took a crap on that poor man's carpet.
My family has owned any number of animals for as long as I've been alive. Mostly cats, although there's been dogs, fish, gerbils, turtles, and guinea pigs scattered in there as well. I've scooped poop in the backyard and stepped in cat vomit in the middle of the night while stumbling through a dark hall towards the bathroom.
I don't know why we keep pets. I have no idea. Some famous writer whose name I can't recall once observed that if aliens were observing our planet, they would think that the dogs are the masters. Seriously. We feed them, love them, take them for walks, and pick up their feces and carry it home in little plastic bags. And in return they grace us with their affection. Now, who's in charge?
So I can certainly sympathize with my neighbor. I wouldn't want to be in his shoes, although for his sake I hope he was wearing them. But even less would I want to be his dog.
Remember Caesar, thou art mortal. So don't diddle on your master's floor.
Hear O Israel
All SMCISD* buses have the same list of rules posted at the front of the bus. There's ten rules on each list. I can't remember exactly what they consist of, but it's pretty basic stuff--listen to the driver, don't eat or drink, don't swear, don't use tobacco, don't commit adultery or covet your neighbor's CD player. I don't know why there's ten; I assume it's the whole Decalogue (Ten Commandments) thing.
Of course, my sister informed me tonight that educational research indicates that kids, especially young kids, can't keep track of more than five rules, so any list of rules needs to be five or shorter. Which, maybe, is why we as a species have such a hard time keeping the Ten Commandments. There's just too many rules to the damn thing. Maybe not...if tomorrow this blog is nothing but a smoking hole in the floor of the internet, you'll know that I shouldn't have said "damn" in connection with the Big Ten (although, according to the Apostle formerly known as Saul, that's exactly what they, and the rest of the Law, are there for).
Ahem. Anyway, we've got this list of rules on the bus. And today a couple of my fifth graders who sit in the front seat, right next to me, are reading over them. One of them looks over at me and says, "Bus driver, which of those rules is the most important?"
I couldn't help it.
I looked back at him and said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and mind, and soul, and strength."
He looked at me as though one of the two of us were crazy, then looked back at the list. Read over it again.
"But that isn't on the list!"
"I know, Anthony. It was sort of a joke."
"I don't get it."
So I tried to explain the context, about Jesus and the Pharisees and the Law and everything, but I don't think he understood much of it. In fact, I'm pretty sure he now thinks I'm a member of a cult. Such is life. I thought it was funny, at any rate.
*San Marcos Consolidated Independent School District
28 One of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, "What commandment is the foremost of all?"
29 Jesus answered, "The foremost is, 'HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD;
30 AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.'
31 "The second is this, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' There is no other commandment greater than these."
32 The scribe said to Him, "Right, Teacher; You have truly stated that HE IS ONE, AND THERE IS NO ONE ELSE BESIDES HIM;
33 AND TO LOVE HIM WITH ALL THE HEART AND WITH ALL THE UNDERSTANDING AND WITH ALL THE STRENGTH, AND TO LOVE ONE'S NEIGHBOR AS HIMSELF, is much more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."
34 When Jesus saw that he had answered intelligently, He said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." After that, no one would venture to ask Him any more questions.
--Mark 12:28-24 (NASB)
All SMCISD* buses have the same list of rules posted at the front of the bus. There's ten rules on each list. I can't remember exactly what they consist of, but it's pretty basic stuff--listen to the driver, don't eat or drink, don't swear, don't use tobacco, don't commit adultery or covet your neighbor's CD player. I don't know why there's ten; I assume it's the whole Decalogue (Ten Commandments) thing.
Of course, my sister informed me tonight that educational research indicates that kids, especially young kids, can't keep track of more than five rules, so any list of rules needs to be five or shorter. Which, maybe, is why we as a species have such a hard time keeping the Ten Commandments. There's just too many rules to the damn thing. Maybe not...if tomorrow this blog is nothing but a smoking hole in the floor of the internet, you'll know that I shouldn't have said "damn" in connection with the Big Ten (although, according to the Apostle formerly known as Saul, that's exactly what they, and the rest of the Law, are there for).
Ahem. Anyway, we've got this list of rules on the bus. And today a couple of my fifth graders who sit in the front seat, right next to me, are reading over them. One of them looks over at me and says, "Bus driver, which of those rules is the most important?"
I couldn't help it.
I looked back at him and said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and mind, and soul, and strength."
He looked at me as though one of the two of us were crazy, then looked back at the list. Read over it again.
"But that isn't on the list!"
"I know, Anthony. It was sort of a joke."
"I don't get it."
So I tried to explain the context, about Jesus and the Pharisees and the Law and everything, but I don't think he understood much of it. In fact, I'm pretty sure he now thinks I'm a member of a cult. Such is life. I thought it was funny, at any rate.
*San Marcos Consolidated Independent School District
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
Doing twicks
I collect scraps of paper like a madman. You know, grocery lists, scraps of poems, pretty much anything. Whenever I clean out my room it takes two days to sort through all the paper and make sure I'm not throwing something important away.
I also drive a school bus. Today I was cleaning out my bus, and came across a scrap of paper from a few weeks ago. It was something I jotted down about a great little incident that I had forgotten about until today.
My elementary kids load in the afternoon over a period of about twenty minutes, so I usually have awhile to talk to the Kindergarten and First Graders, since they load first. One of the kids said something about someone being cool, and, on a whim, I asked him what "cool" meant. He didn't know. I tried several other kids, and no one had an answer.
I ask this one girl, a little first grader who doesn't pronounce her R's. "Sabrina," I say, "What does it mean if I say someone is cool?"
She tilts her head to the side and thinks very hard for a couple of seconds with her tongue sticking out of one side of her mouth. Finally she says, as though it were the last word on the subject, "They do twicks."
A cool person is one who does tricks. If only I had known.
I love my job.
I collect scraps of paper like a madman. You know, grocery lists, scraps of poems, pretty much anything. Whenever I clean out my room it takes two days to sort through all the paper and make sure I'm not throwing something important away.
I also drive a school bus. Today I was cleaning out my bus, and came across a scrap of paper from a few weeks ago. It was something I jotted down about a great little incident that I had forgotten about until today.
My elementary kids load in the afternoon over a period of about twenty minutes, so I usually have awhile to talk to the Kindergarten and First Graders, since they load first. One of the kids said something about someone being cool, and, on a whim, I asked him what "cool" meant. He didn't know. I tried several other kids, and no one had an answer.
I ask this one girl, a little first grader who doesn't pronounce her R's. "Sabrina," I say, "What does it mean if I say someone is cool?"
She tilts her head to the side and thinks very hard for a couple of seconds with her tongue sticking out of one side of her mouth. Finally she says, as though it were the last word on the subject, "They do twicks."
A cool person is one who does tricks. If only I had known.
I love my job.
For the record, Punch Like a Poet does not recommend, advise, or otherwise endorse the chain smoking of Marlboro Reds, the driving of neolithic automobiles, or the consumption of burritos that have been alchemized by a gas station clerk into deep-fried, toxic gold.
Blue Lights and Kirby Lake
I grew up in Abilene. West Texas, if the name of the city doesn't ring any particular bells.
There's not a lot to do in Abilene, especially for someone in high school. Especially if you don't dig so much on either underage drinking or cheesy church youth group functions. But on Saturday nights anyplace is better than home, and I had a car. A '78 cast iron Buick LeSabre known as "The Juicer." Not just any first car, but one of those mythic, embedded-in-the-collective-unconscious first cars. A bowheeemeth, as someone once said. And the Juicer and I spent a lot of time at Blue Lights and Kirby Lake.
For most teenaged Abilenians, Blue Lights and Kirby Lake are two of the primo make-out spots in town. Blue Lights is the name of a stretch of the gravel maintenance road that circles the airport runway. When you park there, the blue lights of the runway, maybe fifty feet away, stretch off to either side for as far as you can see like something out of a science-fiction movie. And Kirby Lake is an oversized mudpuddle on the south side of town with a lot of trails and docks and roads all around it (which just goes to show you--in Texas, even the mudpuddles have boat ramps).
I was usually out there alone, though, if you don't count the cassette I made with Tom Petty's Greatest Hits on one side and R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People on the other. I'd grab a pack of Marlboro Reds and maybe a deep-fried gut-bomb burrito at Allsups and drive out to one or the other, depending on my mood. I'd stretch out across the green vinyl-turned-Astroturf roof of my car, chain smoke the Reds, and listen to my stereo tell me that, yes, everybody hurts, but even the losers get lucky sometimes.
This is all just introduction, though. Because there's a specific memory I have of this time, a memory that's been plucking at my sleeve today.
One night I had been out at Kirby Lake, parked on the east shore for about an hour or so. I finally ran out of either cigarettes or lung tissue, can't remember which, and climbed down off the roof and into my car. I pulled on my headlights (the Juicer had one of those old headlight switches that you pull out to activate), but then pushed them back in, thinking for some reason that I would wait a bit to turn them on. Didn't want some random cop to see my car climbing back up to the road and wonder what I'd been doing down by the shore.
A moment after I pushed them back in, a pair of headlights flashed from the opposite shore of the lake, directly across from me. After a second's hesitation, I repeated the motion--pull the switch out, push it back in. Did it a second time. Across the lake, some anonymous person behind the wheel of the other car flashed theirs back, twice.
It was the oddest, most wonderful sensation. Middle of the dark night, no one around, and a big black stretch of muddy water between us. Me and this complete stranger speaking to each other with our headlights. What did we say? The only thing that any of us, in the end, can say to someone else: I'm here, and I know that you are too.
There's a poem in here somewhere. But then, there's poems everywhere. The world is made of poems. I don't know if you knew that. And I'm not a poet, I'm a physicist.
We went back and forth with the lights a couple more times. I suppose it'd be nice if I could tell you that we kept up our correspondence, that we learned Morse Code and wrote each other letters in light on the surface of Kirby Lake. That we arranged to meet, and it turned out to be a beautiful girl in the other car, and we drove off into the credits of your favorite movie, flashing our headlights all the way.
But that's just silly. Four, maybe five sets of flashes, and I keyed the ignition and drove away. It was enough, though. Enough for what? I'm not entirely sure. I don't even know what the memory means. But we've been talking about metaphor in my writing class.
Maybe this is a metaphor for friendship?
I grew up in Abilene. West Texas, if the name of the city doesn't ring any particular bells.
There's not a lot to do in Abilene, especially for someone in high school. Especially if you don't dig so much on either underage drinking or cheesy church youth group functions. But on Saturday nights anyplace is better than home, and I had a car. A '78 cast iron Buick LeSabre known as "The Juicer." Not just any first car, but one of those mythic, embedded-in-the-collective-unconscious first cars. A bowheeemeth, as someone once said. And the Juicer and I spent a lot of time at Blue Lights and Kirby Lake.
For most teenaged Abilenians, Blue Lights and Kirby Lake are two of the primo make-out spots in town. Blue Lights is the name of a stretch of the gravel maintenance road that circles the airport runway. When you park there, the blue lights of the runway, maybe fifty feet away, stretch off to either side for as far as you can see like something out of a science-fiction movie. And Kirby Lake is an oversized mudpuddle on the south side of town with a lot of trails and docks and roads all around it (which just goes to show you--in Texas, even the mudpuddles have boat ramps).
I was usually out there alone, though, if you don't count the cassette I made with Tom Petty's Greatest Hits on one side and R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People on the other. I'd grab a pack of Marlboro Reds and maybe a deep-fried gut-bomb burrito at Allsups and drive out to one or the other, depending on my mood. I'd stretch out across the green vinyl-turned-Astroturf roof of my car, chain smoke the Reds, and listen to my stereo tell me that, yes, everybody hurts, but even the losers get lucky sometimes.
This is all just introduction, though. Because there's a specific memory I have of this time, a memory that's been plucking at my sleeve today.
One night I had been out at Kirby Lake, parked on the east shore for about an hour or so. I finally ran out of either cigarettes or lung tissue, can't remember which, and climbed down off the roof and into my car. I pulled on my headlights (the Juicer had one of those old headlight switches that you pull out to activate), but then pushed them back in, thinking for some reason that I would wait a bit to turn them on. Didn't want some random cop to see my car climbing back up to the road and wonder what I'd been doing down by the shore.
A moment after I pushed them back in, a pair of headlights flashed from the opposite shore of the lake, directly across from me. After a second's hesitation, I repeated the motion--pull the switch out, push it back in. Did it a second time. Across the lake, some anonymous person behind the wheel of the other car flashed theirs back, twice.
It was the oddest, most wonderful sensation. Middle of the dark night, no one around, and a big black stretch of muddy water between us. Me and this complete stranger speaking to each other with our headlights. What did we say? The only thing that any of us, in the end, can say to someone else: I'm here, and I know that you are too.
There's a poem in here somewhere. But then, there's poems everywhere. The world is made of poems. I don't know if you knew that. And I'm not a poet, I'm a physicist.
We went back and forth with the lights a couple more times. I suppose it'd be nice if I could tell you that we kept up our correspondence, that we learned Morse Code and wrote each other letters in light on the surface of Kirby Lake. That we arranged to meet, and it turned out to be a beautiful girl in the other car, and we drove off into the credits of your favorite movie, flashing our headlights all the way.
But that's just silly. Four, maybe five sets of flashes, and I keyed the ignition and drove away. It was enough, though. Enough for what? I'm not entirely sure. I don't even know what the memory means. But we've been talking about metaphor in my writing class.
Maybe this is a metaphor for friendship?
Sunday, November 16, 2003
"It was the time of the preacher..."
If you're reading this, you have found your way to Punch Like a Poet, my just-inaugurated blog. Welcome. I'm not entirely sure what I want to do with this little niche of the internet, but I'll try to keep it interesting. Not much political/social/philosophical commentary; when I feel the need to scratch that particular itch I post over at Socrates Front Porch. I anticipate this to be more an outlet for the artistic/creative/pensive part of myself...you know, the part that writes with its finger on windows dripping with condensation, that appreciates a nice floral print and snorts beer out its nose if the joke is timed just right, the part that takes walks to the very tops of hills and writes down what it sees in its journal without speaking and has to close its eyes when Michael Stipe twists his voice around the high note of a song...the soul, in other words.
Fair warning: I'm a poet, if by that word you mean that I write poetry and probably take the writing of poetry too seriously, and I'm a Christian, although I don't always know what that means and probably don't take it seriously enough. I'm also a Creative Writing/Philosophy double-major at Texas State University, and hope to shake off the chains that bind me and graduate in about a year. This should give you an idea of the direction this blog is most likely headed.
I can't promise reliable updates, but I'll try to stay relatively current. If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, bookmark it and stop by once in a while.
And in case you were wondering, the title is taken from Groundskeeper Willie, courtesy of The Simpsons.
If you're reading this, you have found your way to Punch Like a Poet, my just-inaugurated blog. Welcome. I'm not entirely sure what I want to do with this little niche of the internet, but I'll try to keep it interesting. Not much political/social/philosophical commentary; when I feel the need to scratch that particular itch I post over at Socrates Front Porch. I anticipate this to be more an outlet for the artistic/creative/pensive part of myself...you know, the part that writes with its finger on windows dripping with condensation, that appreciates a nice floral print and snorts beer out its nose if the joke is timed just right, the part that takes walks to the very tops of hills and writes down what it sees in its journal without speaking and has to close its eyes when Michael Stipe twists his voice around the high note of a song...the soul, in other words.
Fair warning: I'm a poet, if by that word you mean that I write poetry and probably take the writing of poetry too seriously, and I'm a Christian, although I don't always know what that means and probably don't take it seriously enough. I'm also a Creative Writing/Philosophy double-major at Texas State University, and hope to shake off the chains that bind me and graduate in about a year. This should give you an idea of the direction this blog is most likely headed.
I can't promise reliable updates, but I'll try to stay relatively current. If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, bookmark it and stop by once in a while.
And in case you were wondering, the title is taken from Groundskeeper Willie, courtesy of The Simpsons.
Order Dead Man, Daniel's new chapbook, for $6 (plus S&H). Read more about it here.
Archives
11/03
12/03
01/04
02/04
03/04
04/04
05/04
06/04
07/04
08/04
09/04
10/04
11/04
12/04
01/05
02/05
03/05
04/05
05/05
06/05
07/05
08/05
09/05
11/05
12/05
01/06
02/06
03/06
04/06
05/06
06/06
12/06
Blogs
/Batwing3
/Begins of a Writer
/Billy Blogs
/Bing Dynasty
/cLabs Blogki
/Floor Pie
/Futility of Futilities
/Great American Pinup
/James Kingsley
/Jim Putnam
/Mockingbird Knits
/Po'et'ship
/Poasis
/PoBiz
/Real Live Preacher
/Sean's Ruminations
/Socrates Front Porch
/Something Katy
/Theoloblog
/This Beautiful Mess
/Way of the Tiger
/Weeds of Contemplation
Poetry
/Plagiarist
/Poetry Machine
/Poetry Resource Page
/Poetry 180
/Borderlands
/Common Saints
/Drunken Boat
/Image
/Red River Reveiw
Tunes
/Doug Burr
/Guy Clark
/Bob Dylan
/JamisonPriest
/Robert Earl Keen
/Bill Mallonee & VOL
/Over the Rhine
/Paste Music
/Pedro the Lion
/Todd Snider
/Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodriguez
/Townes Van Zandt
/The Violet Burning
Miscellaneous
/Lark News
/Longhorn Football
/New Belgium
/San Marcos Daily Record
/Texas State University
/University of Victoria
/The Bible
/The Onion
/The Place
/Wikipedia
Contact
danielpriest [at] gmail.com
AIM: dannydpriest
myspace.com/
punchlikeapoet
