Reading: The Visible Man and Bacon Marmalade

The Visible Man by Chuck Klosterman: I got this book at the library the same day I felt compelled to get a jar of President's Choice bacon marmalade at Loblaws. Both weird, both delicious.

I read Klosterman's collection of essays, Drugs, Sex and Cocoa Puffs, just for the title, and I really liked his first novel, Downtown Owl. The Visible Man is like putting those two books in a blender and adding bacon marmalade. And some hitherto uncatalogued strain of medicinal marijuana. The result is a very funny, very strange, very thoughtful, intensely interesting piece of fiction about a man who invents an invisibility suit (and cream!) and seeks therapy to talk about the lives he has interfered with while invisible. Interfered with like how? Invisible man: "There's nothing like watching a nervous man load a gun." How does the therapy proceed? As the therapist says, "No therapist on earth was trained to help a criminal scientist with the power of invisibility."

I slowed my reading because I didn't want the book to end. But it did end, and now I feel compelled to read it all over again. It's better than bacon marmalade, because honestly, you can only eat about a teaspoon of that stuff at a time. While you're eating, you're thinking, "This is good. But it's so wrong." Reading The Visible Man, I kept thinking, "This is wrong. But it's so good."

Recommended reading:
Klosterman, Chuck. The Visible Man. New York: Scribner, 2011. Print.
Pair it with Chipotle flatbread, cream cheese and President's Choice Black Label bacon marmalade.
So weird, so delicious.

The Zeppa Family Feud Form

The Official Fuck You / Fuck You Too Zeppa Family Feud Form®

In an effort to save time, clarify family history, and ensure proper storage of records for future generations, you are asked to complete the following form and deliver it to the relevant family member.¹  

Please print legibly in black ink or blood.

To ensure accuracy of records, please indicate whether this situation qualifies as:

o  An initiating Fuck You

o  A respondent Fuck You Too

1.       I,    ________________________, do hereby declare that I am :

o  Mildly annoyed

o  Moderately mad

o  Highly pissed off

o  Too drunk to remember

at : ___________________________________

            (write primary Fuckee’s name here)

and: __________________________________

        (list all secondary Fuckees. Attach additional paper if necessary.)

2.      My annoyance / state of high piss-off arose from the following (select all that apply):

o  Promises were not kept

o  Dishes were not washed

o  Worst parent / child ever!

o  Shenanigans surrounding family will / disinheritance

o  Low blood sugar / hangover

o  You lied to me / owe me money / didn’t call

o  I have my reasons

o  Other: _________________________________

3.      This feud officially began:

o  Just now

o  Within the last week

o  Within the last year

o  Monday, May 21, 1978, at 5:35 p.m.

o  You know damn well when it began

4.      I plan not to speak to you for the following period of time:

o  One to two weeks

o  One to two years

o  More than two years but less than ten

o  Until hell freezes over

5.      In light of the aforementioned, you are hereby advised to come and pick up your:

o  Worldly belongings

o  Children

o  Box of unidentified crap in the basement

o  Parole Board of Canada Official Notice of Pardon

o  Other: _________________________________________

6.      Failure to pick up the above-mentioned items will result / has already resulted in a:

o  Garage sale

o  Bonfire

7.      The following action, while in no way lessening your grievous offence or making things right between us, might result in a revocation of this form:

o  An apology

o  Money (Amount: ___________ Preferred Currency: _______________)

o  You admit that you are totally and utterly in the wrong and/or an asshole

o  Fuck you. Nothing would result in a revocation of this form.

8.      In the unlikely event that I find myself no longer pissed off at you, I reserve the right to transfer this feud to the following beneficiary²:

__________________________________________________

Thank you for filling out this form. One copy will be retained for our files³. In the unlikely event that your feud ends early, please contact management so that we may update our records.  

Notes:

¹ Use of this form is free for Zeppa family members only. For usage with non-Zeppa recipients, service fees will apply.

² Please note that if you selected “until hell freezes over” for question 4 and intend to transfer this feud to a beneficiary who is a direct descendant of the original Fuckee, you must complete a separate Fuck You and Your Progeny Form.

³ All submissions will be held in strict confidentiality by one James Raymond Patrick (Blab) Zeppa. Submissions can be (and have been) used against you in a court of law.

Why I Love Teaching. One of the Reasons.

Difficult, beautiful, thoughtful questions and observations about Buddhism from my mythology students. "Is the desire for enlightenment a desire of the body or the mind?" (This in response to my claim that consciousness is a product of the body.) "Isn't the desire for enlightenment also a desire?" (Luckily I have an answer to that.) And an answer to my question about why the body should be made to suffer in order for the mind to find enlightenment: "We make the body suffer so that the soul will remember, because as soon as physical suffering is over, the body forgets."

As Tobias Wolff wrote in This Boy's Life, teaching makes you accountable for your thoughts.

 

Marking Midterms vs. Writing a Novel

I'm in the middle of Study Week. This means I can stay home and mark, and stay home and work on my novel about the bootlegger. Here's my comparison of these two activities, based on the last four days:

Marking                                                    Writing a Novel


- Comes with some multiple choice                - Long written answers only

- Mostly know what I am looking for               - Don't know what I'm looking for until I find it.
                                                                        (Even then....)

- Rubrics                                                       - Coffee

- Second-guessing? Quite a lot                        - Second-guessing? Don't make me laugh

- Inspires desire to procrastinate                    - Inspires desire to procrastinate

- Can be used as a procrastination                 - Never used as a procrastination tool
   tool to ward off writing                                  to ward off anything. Except maybe death.
                                                                       (And even that...)

- Grueling                                                     - Grueling

- Exhausted when finished                             - Energized when finished

- Feels like it takes forever                            - Takes forever

- I have to do it                                             - I don't know why I have to do it

Marking Blog

9:35 a.m. Well, it's raining. That helps. Today's allotment: 21 midterms, 25 reflections.

Pre-marking ritual: make coffee, put on marking boots (beautiful John Fluevogs that trigger an old injury if I walk too far in them, now only good for sitting in, hence "marking boots"), turn on classical music, arrange flowers on desk, apply lip gloss (a technique I learned from writing the novel: pretend it's a date). Sit in rickety chair. Begin.

10:30 a.m. 10 midterms done. Lowest mark: 20%. Think about the ethics of saying to this student, "You don't have the language skills yet to take this course. Whoever promoted you did you no favours." Think about the ethics of NOT saying this. Heave sigh, go back to midterms.

10:35. Mark one midterm. Stop, get out tool box, fix chair. Wish for Allen key that fixes language problems. Better yet: wish for that chair in The Matrix so we could just upload grammar through a port in the back of the head.

11:24. 11 midterms done. Highest mark: 96%. Time for a snack.

11:39. Count the reflections. Still 25. Change music to swing. Change pens.

1:02. The reflections are actually essays, but I try not to call them that because the word essay elicits waves of despair and protest from my students, followed by the inevitable question about the number of paragraphs required, which elicits a wave of despair in me. The five-paragraph form has been beaten into their heads so thoroughly that they can't think around it. Instead of an engaging in an essai, an attempt to figure something out, they've been taught to manufacture three points, whatever the question, cram them into a thesis, insert them into three body paragraphs, and repeat them in a conclusion.

1:05. Google how to write a five paragraph essay: 1,150,000 results. But what's wrong with the five paragraph essay gets 941,000 results. Hope is a thing with feathers! (16,700,000 results).

1:15. 15 reflections left. Change of locale required. Pack papers, pen. Apply more lip gloss. Aroma Espresso Bar, here I come.

3:20. Effects of coffee and espresso brownie not strong enough to counteract marking lethargy. Four reflections left. Fighting off sleep. Must. Keep. Marking.

4:40. Put down pen. Pour glass of wine. Open The Marriage Plot. Breathe.

Flock of Hawks

Walking home this afternoon, just before the rain lets loose, I stop to watch nine or ten hawks wheeling and circling far above the treetops. What is the term for a flock of hawks? Do hawks even travel in flocks? Note to self: look this up. Also: why do flocks of birds seem so ominous? (Hitchcock aside.)

Research Results

According to the internet, hawks do travel in flocks. A flock of hawks is a cast or a kettle or an aerie.

However, (also according to the internet), what I saw was probably a flock of turkey vultures. A flock of turkey vultures on the ground is called a venue. In the air, it's a kettle. (If you want to know how to get rid of OR attract vultures, the Turkey Vulture Society webpage has answers for you.)

Also: a bunch of emus is called a mob. Obviously, I did not see a mob of emus on the way home.

On why flocks of birds seem so ominous, Google's first return (of 128,000) was a quote from The Fellowship of the Ring: "in the air, flocks of birds had been circling, black against the pale sky." Not an answer to my question, but yeah, exactly.

Conclusion
Everything is more compelling when I have 150 midterms and essays to mark.

Dopamine, Serotonin and Gilgamesh

Spent the whole of spin class this morning thinking about addiction and Gilgamesh. I just finished Marc Lewis’s gripping Memoir of an Addicted Brain, which goes beyond the usual downward-spiral story to include the latest findings from neuroscience.  Dr. Lewis is a developmental neuroscientist and professor of psychology, and his descriptions of how various substances affect the brain at the level of the neuron are very helpful in explaining why addicts continue to do that one thing that fucks them up and fucks them over, over and over.

Lewis shows how drugs “talk to the brain in its own language” – the language of chemicals.  What struck me as most tragic is the extreme limiting that happens in the brain as more and more neurons are recruited to focus on the one substance charged with providing pleasure, warmth, comfort, satisfaction and meaning.

Lewis writes, “That’s what’s so insidious, so toxic, about addiction. The neural traffic routes get more and more constrained, thanks to the sculpting -- the shaping and pruning – of synapses.... There are fewer routes to take with each replay of the fundamental story line.”

He points out that what happens in the brain then happens in the mind. “The brain doesn’t really parallel the mind,” he writes. “That would be a misnomer, a poetic approximation. It’s the other way around: the mind parallels the brain. The way the brain works – the biological laws of synaptic sculpting and neurochemical enhancement, each reinforcing the other – are what constrict the addict’s mind, his behaviour, his hopes, his dreams.”

So other possible pleasures become hollow, meaningless. All the other things that cause the neurotransmitters of motivation, comfort and joy to be released in a non-addicted brain, all the other things that create meaning and sparkle and connection in daily life, are gutted, drained, rendered inert.

A job well done. A friend well met. Finishing spin class without falling off the bike. A croissant. All the ordinary, unremarkable, untranslatable pleasures of daily life. All useless to the addict’s brain.   

In my myth class, we’re reading Stephen Mitchell’s excellent version of Gilgamesh. In his intense grief over the death of his dearest friend, Gilgamesh embarks on a desperate quest to find eternal life. He meets a tavern-keeper, Shiduri, who tells him his quest will fail and he will die, but she also tells him how to live:

Humans are born, they live, then they die,
that is the order that the gods have decreed.
But until the end comes, enjoy your life,
spend it in happiness, not despair.
Savor your food, make each of your days
a delight, bathe and anoint yourself,
wear bright clothes that are sparkling clean,
let music and dancing fill your house,
love the child who holds you by the hand,
and give your wife pleasure in your embrace.
That is the best way for a man to live.

Gilgamesh cannot hear the wisdom in her words because, like an addict, he is fixated on one (futile) thing. And in truth, the wisdom isn't in the saying or hearing of the words; it can only be felt in the living of them. 

I believe in the intelligence of evolution (not to be confused with Intelligent Design), in the three-billion-year wisdom of the cell, in all its crazy dazzling proliferations, its million billion trillion developments and orchestrations, and in its in-built limits, including senescence. Addiction, it seems, wrecks a life because it abuses the wisdom of the cell, stripping all the thousand potential connections and joys out of daily living, and reducing the possibility of pleasure to one thing that, really, no long provides any.

Works Cited (and highly recommended!)

Lewis, Marc. Memoirs of an Addicted Brain: A Neuroscientist Examines His Former Life on Drugs. Toronto: Random House Canada, 2011. Amazon. Web. 4 Oct. 2011

Mitchell, Stephen. Gilgamesh: A New English Version. New York: Free Press, 2004: 168-169. Print.