Divinest Sense

I’ve enrolled in a class on Life Stories taught by writer and information designer Thom Haller. I’m thoroughly enjoying myself, and I’m just beginning to write in a way that I’ve wanted to for so long–but didn’t know quite how.

Granted, my “life story” is not nearly as interesting as that of some of the other people in the class. One woman recounted the story of a journey from India to London in a 1964 Chevy, two months on the road traversing such remote locations as the Khyber Pass, all because her father refused to pay the duty for shipping the car. Another woman was a speed-skier like her father (who was also an air traffic controller and a stunt pilot) and now helps negotiate truces in war-torn locales around the world. Another found a world of magic and symbolism in Belize, where she survived a machete attack and went on to forge a close but complicated relationship with the family who came to her rescue.

I loved all of these stories. I think a common thread running through them was the notion of “other”-ness and how unexpected interactions with the unfamiliar change who we are. My story has that theme too, but not on such a grand scale. I’m writing about my experiences quitting school and living with hippies in the Finger Lakes region while working at a police department. Two worlds that were dramatically different on the surface, but fundamentally very similar.
My classmates’ stories generally had optimism at their core, and the exhilarating sense of freedom that comes from broadening one’s horizons. But there exists a darker side of the interaction with the foreign. In our search for life-changing experiences, we tend to forget that our interaction changes the lives of the “others” too, and not always for the better.

When you’re writing a memoir, it’s important to firmly establish the “I” and write her unique perception of the scenes and events. You can’t be omniscient. I think a big writing challenge will be writing from my own memory with the voice of someone who’s flawed and unreliable as a narrator, and somehow conveying the effect that “my” words and actions have on other people in the story, without making assumptions about what they are thinking.

This life story writing is really hard. But also kind of easy. I’m not a compelling nonfiction writer. I’m definitely not a good speaker or verbal storyteller. It’s so hard to get the right words to come out! But in yesterday’s class, Thom gave us ten minutes to write a short scene from our story, and as soon as my pen hit the paper, it just came flying out. Pretty rough, needs some editorial trimming and sharper detail, but a half-decent start - and it was just there, waiting for its cue to come into being.

I haven’t written creatively (and yes, memoir is a form of creative writing) in many years. Blog writing doesn’t count, because it’s like journalism, which is boring and predictable (when I do it) no matter what the subject matter. I’m looking forward to exercising these muscles some more.

DC public media outlet WETA accepted an offer from radio conglomerate Bonneville that they just couldn’t refuse. Now the radio format, which used to be news from the BBC, NPR, and some local issue talk shows, will be replaced by 24-hour classical music. This is apparently the result of an agreement between Bonneville and the public radio station to pick up Bonneville’s WGMS classical radio material and format, which was losing money.

While I’m definitely in favor of classical music and think public radio might be the best place for it, giving up the news programs will mean a critical loss for the DC radio-listening public. It’s pretty sad when the seat of our government and the home of intelligent, diverse people and cultural resources can’t keep alive more than one public news radio station. I guess I’ll be getting my NPR stuff from WAMU now. It’s a decent station but it caters more to the academic crowd, doesn’t do as much local interest programming, and doesn’t carry some of the shows I’ve grown to really like.

The only other radio station I listen to sometimes is WTOP, which is a local independent outlet. Unfortunately, other than providing decent traffic and weather coverage, WTOP is a steaming pile of crap, with stories and features that cater pretty much exclusively to white people living in the Virginia exurbs.

I threw away my candy bar
And I ate the wrapper
And when they told me what I did
I burst into laughter

-Brian Wilson/Van Dyke Parks

I’m trying out a crazy new experiment - eating vegetarian. (No, not eating vegetarians) No particular thought process or game plan, just seeing how little meat I can eat. So far it’s going pretty well - it’s been a little over a week and I’ve eaten mostly vegetable and dairy matter, except for two very tasty pork dumplings and a delicious chunk of a poor doomed mahi-mahi.

I’ve learned that eating veggie is both easy and difficult. Easy if you’re just cooking for yourself, difficult if you’re going out to eat at a restaurant.

I’ve also noticed that we seem to be terrified of beans here in America. Aside from the refried ones that pad our burritos and the french green ones that are basically all pod and no seed, restaurants are not terribly conversant with the legumes. I guess they get a bad rap for being a simple peasant food, and for supposedly causing flatulence. But hey, I don’t know about your intestines (and please don’t tell me), but peas and beans irritate me far less than do meat and dairy.
Beans are a great thing to eat. They’ve got protein *and* fiber, and they cook up so nice and tasty in just about any sauce you can think of. And they’re like 49 cents a pound. So, guess what I’m bringing to your party?

I’m not phoning it in, I swear. I just like to talk about things I’ve read in the paper. Today our topic is “positive psychology”, or “good medicine can’t cure bad art”.

This NYT feature on the emerging discipline of Positive Psychology is pretty interesting. The idea is that lots more study needs to be done on how positive thinking affects physical health as well as mental health. After thinking about this for a while, I don’t believe this should be its own intellectual discipline, but it sure wouldn’t hurt to teach such things in med school. If you’ve ever had surgery or some other serious medical concern (or know someone who has), you know very well the effect that a doctor’s attitude can have on your own attitude, and therefore your stress level, and therefore your general well-being. Injecting a little positive thinking into medical procedures couldn’t hurt.

This topic caught my eye because of my recent prolonged exposure to some very negative-thinking friends of mine. If anyone needs a positive-thinking intervention, it’s these folks. After only 16 waking hours of listening to this couple’s bemoaning and criticism of friends, relatives, neighbors, complete strangers, shopkeepers, various objectionable ethnic groups, the town, the state, the country, the world… I wanted to kill myself. My mood was in the toilet. I was seriously starting to believe that life was just not worth living, and that there was nothing out there to stem the tide of ill will raging unchecked through our universe. After a quick trip to a coffee shop and some venting, I was able to stop the dark whooshing noises in my head.

But the experience got me thinking. Mr. and Mrs. Complainalot have nice lives, live in a cute town, have a nice house, a decent income, family members close by, friends, hobbies, and various things that make life engaging and interesting. They keep busy but not too busy. To the outside observer, life’s not exactly perfect, but it’s pretty good. But they have health problems, and seem older and more tired than other people in their same demographic. It’s hard to believe that their attitude toward life has nothing to do with this. After all, why try to stay healthy and active when everything’s all just going to hell, nobody cares about you, and you’re just going to die eventually anyway?

In a situation like this, positive psychology could potentially save lives. I like the idea of an intervention. It would be really refreshing to shake my finger at these folks and yell YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BED UNTIL YOU TELL ME ONE NICE THING THAT HAPPENED TODAY! NOW SPILL IT!

Another interesting aspect of positive psychology is that instead of being essentially narcissistic, like all those positive-thinking self-help books out there, there is evidence that you can attain more personal contentment by doing something nice for someone else than you can by doing something nice for yourself. I can buy this. In fact, I think the thing that’s lacking in the Complainalots’ worldview is the frequent exercise of altruism, whether in thought or in action. Taken to extremes, the lack of altruism is a personality disorder. But I suspect that in today’s American culture, altruism simply is not valued as a laudable trait, and a lot of us fall into a pattern of thinking that pits us against the horde of miscreants who are constantly trying to take our stuff or elbow ahead of us in the cosmic line.

So, the study of positive psychology has some potential application in medicine and social policy, and let’s not forget religion. As a matter of fact, as the Times article points out, the proposed area of study has some uncomfortable religious trappings. Spread goodwill in the world? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you? Be kind to people whether you think they deserve your kindness or not? Sounds a bit like Christianity to me. Admittedly, these are the good parts of Christianity, so hey, let’s not strike it down as unworthy of our philosophical consideration.

However, like any religion, positive psychology’s relative benefit is in its practical application. My support of the idea comes to a screeching halt when the article starts to talk about schools incorporating positive psychology’s lessons into literature classes. To wit:

This endeavor outstrips the ongoing Strath Haven experiment. The effort there, financed by a $2.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, is limited to the ninth-grade language-arts program. At the school last year, the positive psychologists interwove their teachings with the literature classes. The idea was to buffer the lessons from bleak books like “Lord of the Flies” and “Romeo and Juliet” with some reassuring thoughts — or at least a more positive framework for understanding human behavior than the classics offer. Thus, according to Mark Linkins, now coordinator of the Swarthmore school district’s curriculum, who helped teach the classes, the animalistic and murderous Jack in “Lord of the Flies” shows “what happens when someone is lacking in signature strengths.” And when reading “The Odyssey,” students were asked: “What are the signature strengths that Odysseus lived and breathed? What are the things he might have improved on to make things go better?”

Now, this is taking things too far. It is not OK to fuck with literature by infusing it with contemporary psychology. What are the things that Odysseus could have improved on? Gimme a break. This is basically saying to your teenage students: “Dear students, you have been placed in the special ed class because of your violent tendencies and your inability to understand the complexities of classical thought. Your dignity will be returned to you at the close of school hours.” The very idea of putting Odysseus on the guidance counselor’s couch is just… unfathomable. For those of you who were educated in a dignity-free school system, let’s sum up: Characters in ancient Greek literature were considered to be playthings of capricious gods, and their fates were determined by outside forces, such as whom their grandaddy ate for dinner. Odysseus was never, ahem, in any position to make healthy life decisions.

And, as I can tell you from my experiences in art school, healthy life decisions and positive thinking have no place in art. Rather than attempting to teach teenagers to drop the sulkiness and act more helpful and chipper, we should be teaching them to understand literature and art on a deep level, so that their minds can stay active and engaged. Studying art and literature requires the development of a healthy understanding that sometimes life just has no meaning, and horrible things happen - but that even in tragedy and meaninglessness, there can be beauty. Now there is a positive thought.