Wednesday, March 7th - The Problem with Men Nowadays - Part I - How often have I heard it said (for decades now in fact) that increasing numbers of males out there are acquiring the annoying habit of refusing to grow up - much like the "lost boys" of Peter Pan; that many guys have felt the need to delay the onset of adulthood until well into their 40's or 50's when age and infirmity no longer allow them to pass for young, aimless, irresponsible "whipper-snappers." And this trend seems not to be affected by long-term commitments of marriage and family, nor mitigated by the complex web of obligations that arise when these substantial "perks" of maturity (spouses, careers, children, civic duties, personal property, home ownership ) appear on the scene.  And what's somewhat weird about this situation is that in lieu of or should I say in light of (?) vociferous objections to such behavior emanating from other segments of our society (e.g. women, children, grandparents, mature people, aging-men-who-get-the-message)  a goodly portion of these puer aeternei  "specimens" still feel the need to pursue their feckless avocations, to celebrate their "boyish" enthusiasms for the sake of inducing a strange adrenaline rush (?) or preserving a feeling of vitality (?) or expanding the possibilities of purely disposable freedom (!),  by keeping their finger on the pulse of pop culture, by inhabiting the epi-center of the "demi-monde," by remaining a target audience for the latest/greatest ad campaigns. The man-child, or man-children, as it were, thereby reach for signs of identity in the form of ready-made nostalgia: games, movies, sports, hobbies, gadgets, blogs (!), websites, cars, trucks, snowmobiles, ATV's, hats, guns, guns with holsters, fantasy paraphernalia, action hero dolls or invidious science fiction. And so we witness the pathetic phenomenon of grown men indulging in ever-more regressive diversions, becoming addicted to perishable commodities - objects or pursuits that place them in time as members of  the "such-and-such generation." But why is this happening - you say? When did it start? How is it perpetuated? What can we do to stop it? Where have all the good men gone? Where are the role models?  Where are the clinicians and on-call sociologists? There simply must be an explanation for this needless waste of human potential! Are the hippies to blame? Was the 1960s? Or the 1980s? Or that throwaway celebrity crash-and-burn Hollywood publicity machine? Or 40+ years of extended drug use? Or being on the wrong medication? Or High Fructose Corn Syrup? Or the cleaning fluids they use in hotels? Do you think the CIA is involved? Of course, those of you who aren't totally paranoid or traumatized or both - let us not even speak of this most recent topsy-turvy decade of wars and head-wounds and down-turns (that alone might prove too hard to acknowledge) - you survivors may already have some inkling of a diagnosis - yet the numbers of AWOL and MIA keep on growing. We talk and complain and we tell Dr. Phil, but still nothing changes. Bartleby remains in the basement, at his post, frittering his time away, reading his comic books, diddling with his video controls, wearing his ridiculous Star Trek outfit; yet when you scream "Bartleby" - I need a little help out here! - you are supposed do this - now - for me! - you need to get with the program! - Become more involved! - Be more engaged! - Fulfill your responsibilities as a MAN! - to which Bartleby only replies, calmly, non-combatively, sotto voce: "I prefer not to..." - a form of inane protest that makes you SCREAM: "You fool, you cretin, you slug, you clown, you ape, you milque-toast; you dolt - you barren, asinine, effete, squirmy, attenuated, diminutive, toadish disappointment of an after-thought of a prototype of a reject! Get up off that couch now and prove thyself worthy to be with me, to be associated with me, to be in my very presence! Do penance now for thy manifold of sins or else I swear to you I shall #$%@#$%!!!" Okay. Alright. Enough said. If you'll forgive me folks, fellow bloggers and blog-readers, for I seem to be having a bout of "bad faith" about all of these "man problems," and deferring to the higher wisdom of Herman Melville (see his short story "Bartleby the Scrivener"), I must nevertheless attempt to step beyond all the hand-wringing - with which I have aligned myself somewhat hypocritically; it is time, at long last, to identify the source of the malaise as a first clue to finding a solution.  And, as chance would have it, I do actually have some thoughts about why all this is happening (see next blog post), which may at first glance appear grandiose and somewhat spacey and cosmic. But please, hear me out. I only want to START the conversation. For my fear is that we are creating, have created, are living within a society of  "drones" and "also-rans," of "self-appointed losers" and "know-nothings" and "do-nothings," of "want-nots" and "care-nots" - of "walking wounded" masquerading as "enervated rich kids" of "morose depressives" posing as "cheerful nimrods";  yet, in the process, we are losing that sense of real "gravitas" which is the sine qua non of true enjoyment. But as we like to say here in America, situation hopeless, but not desperate.

Postscript: But what of women and their role in all of this - you ask? What are they busy DOING while all of this is happening? Exactly. Exactly. A tough question for an obtuse male to answer. But stay tuned...or feel free to comment. Even better...

Tuesday, March 6th - A Memorable Excerpt from John Henry Newman : You may perhaps disagree with the following lines, in part or in full, depending on your point of view, while, at the same time, viewing the author  (John Henry Newman) as a man from another century, a strict, severe, other-worldly Victorian, which indeed he was, someone whose ideas about piety and religion may or may not prove viable (for you) in the year 2012. But I believe that if you consider this now famous excerpt from Newman carefully, observing as you go the subtle and sustained description of everything that people bristle at in response to the glaring idiosyncrasies of a particular "revealed religion" beginning with the letter "C", you will notice a powerful mind at work - a form of intelligence fraught with moral probity and gravitas of the sort that one would hope to find present in all ongoing discussions surrounding the meaning and purpose of religion. Behold then, one of the greatest literary passages from any religious tract every written - and my personal favorite.  Such intricate, detailed, mesmerizing, musical, virtuoso paragraphs like this don't come along, but every hundred years or so.

"On the whole then I conclude as follows:—if there is a form of Christianity now in the world which is accused of gross superstition, of borrowing its rites and customs from the heathen, and of ascribing to forms and ceremonies an occult virtue;—a religion which is considered to burden and enslave the mind by its requisitions, to address itself to the weak-minded and ignorant, to be supported by sophistry and imposture, and to contradict reason and exalt mere irrational faith;—a religion which impresses on the serious mind very distressing views of the guilt and consequences of sin, sets upon the minute acts of the day, one by one, their definite value for praise or blame, and thus casts a grave shadow over the future;—a religion which holds up to admiration the surrender of wealth, and disables serious persons from enjoying it if they would;—a religion, the doctrines of which, be they good or bad, are to the generality of men unknown; which is considered to bear on its very surface signs of folly and falsehood so distinct that a glance suffices to judge of it, and that careful examination is preposterous; which is felt to be so simply bad, that it may be calumniated at hazard and at pleasure, it being nothing but absurdity to stand upon the accurate distribution of its guilt among its particular acts, or painfully to determine how far this or that story concerning it is literally true, or what has to be allowed in candour, or what is improbable, or what cuts two ways, or what is not proved, or what may be plausibly defended;—a religion such, that men look at a convert to it with a feeling which no other denomination raises except Judaism, Socialism, or Mormonism, viz. with curiosity, suspicion, fear, disgust, as the case may be, as if something strange had befallen him, as if he had had an initiation into a mystery, and had come into communion with dreadful influences, as if he were now one of a confederacy which claimed him, absorbed him, stripped him of his personality, reduced him to a mere organ or instrument of a whole;—a religion which men hate as proselytizing, anti-social, revolutionary, as dividing families, separating chief friends, corrupting the maxims of government, making a mock at law, dissolving the empire, the enemy of human nature, and a "conspirator against its rights and privileges;" —a religion which they consider the champion and instrument of darkness, and a pollution calling down upon the land the anger of heaven;—a religion which they associate with intrigue and conspiracy, which they speak about in whispers, which they detect by anticipation in whatever goes wrong, and to which they impute whatever is unaccountable;—a religion, the very name of which they cast out as evil, and use simply as a bad epithet, and which from the impulse of self-preservation they would persecute if they could;—if there be such a religion now in the world, it is not unlike Christianity as that same world viewed it, when first it came forth from its Divine Author." - John Henry Newman (Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine) 

Monday, March 5th - Reading Shakespeare's Julius Caesar - Just started reading Julius Caesar again (for the fourth year in a row) with my ninth graders here at BHS. After so many times wading through this political drama, having first been exposed to the play myself in ninth grade in Mrs. D. Bishop's class, and, unfortunately not having understood a word of it the first time around, nor cared to, one might think that I'd be sick of it by now - but I'm actually starting to appreciate it more.  First there's the basic outline of the play, that of the envious, resentful, upper-crusty peer group cutting one of its wayward members down to size.  One man, J.C., having completed a series of macho conquests in western Europe, Gaul in particular, then having vanquished his great rival, Pompey, at the battle of Pharsalus, gets a little "too big for his britches"  or  "a little too powerful too fast" as we say - and wants to be crowned de facto Emperor and undisputed ruler of Rome, not just for a day, but for ever and ever. In response to this bold power grab, the thin and hungry Cassius instigates a conspiracy with the help of the ever-cautious, reluctant Brutus, and the gossip-mongering Casca, and other erstwhile "defenders" of the Roman republic (Decius, Trebonius, Metellus Cimber, et al). Caesar himself is quite a study in messiness of character, someone who has no hesitation, lying, cheating, bribing, flattering, philandering, blaspheming and clamoring his way up the greasy pole, while killing countless numbers of foreigners/barbarians; yet this same Caesar, despite his vanity and egomania, (I know how that sounds) remains oddly cultured, refined,  generous, courteous, accessible - someone who goes out of his way to seek public validation for his dictatorship, having paid more deference to the lower ranks of society than any of his predecessors. It is Mark Antony, however, who emerges as the absolute "wild man" of the play: a conniver with excessive energy who makes himself Caesar's heir apparent with one brilliant funeral oration, then forms a ruthless alliance with two supposed underlings whom he hopes to control, then allows himself to fall madly, insanely, inescapably in love with the equally wild and ambitious Cleopatra (while still-married, of course, to Caesar's nephew's long-suffering sister) which love-affair, over time, eventually causes the Empire to slip out of his unstable hands. Meanwhile, the young, nineteen-year-old Octavius - later known as Augustus Caesar - shocks us with his ruthlessly cool-headed, under-the-radar maneuvering; he prevails over his elder statesmen rivals, but only by way of selling his soul to the Second Triumvirate and signing off on "letters of proscription" (callous death warrants) for all of Caesar's enemies. Brutus, meanwhile, seems to get lost in the shuffle, and appears politically "in over his head," having totally botched his funeral speech - thereby making the assassination seem like a needless hit job. Cassius becomes superstitious while Cicero is whacked for being on the wrong side of Caesar one too many times. All of the so-called champions of the Republic are either on the run or dead by the end of the play. Unless, you count the initial 40-year rule of Augustus as the major exception, Rome will endure a long series of bad emperors until its eventual descent into anarchy. If that's not a political tragedy (authoritarian rule vs. barbarian entropy) then I don't know what is. See - not as much of snooze-fest as you may have thought. Hello? Is anyone awake out there?

Sunday, March 4th - Snark Attack! Incoming! All over America!

Who Let the Snarks Out?  - Anyone who reads articles online these days, and then scrolls down to peruse the "comments" section at the bottom of the screen, cannot help but notice a disturbing trend which has been creeping into our public discourse for some time now. I refer of course to that sub-set of disgruntled humanity known as the "snarks" - a shadowy group of anonymous, embittered, unhappy people who make it their purpose in life, among other things, to provide - oh what shall we call it - "negative feedback" concerning whatever it is they happen to have just finished reading online. This is a quite fascinating sub-group among our population. I wish I knew more about them, their daily habits, their general appearance, their level of education, their stable or unstable relationship history, their criminal record. Wherever I go, whether it be to CNN, Time, Newsweek, MSNBC, The New York Times, BBC, The Week, New Yorker, etc. etc. - all reputable sites last time I checked - I see the same hostile, crude, vicious remarks - but with a level of personal animus and "go-for-the-jugular" intensity not even found in back-alley brawls. This new form of "invisible power" or "anonymous freedom,"  I guess, allows a person that once-in-a-lifetime chance to mercilessly mock, scorn, ridicule, degrade, belittle, punch, slam, rip, pan, attack, disparage, tear down, smear, slander, spit upon, deride, malign, traduce, vilify, question, undercut, eviscerate, dismiss, drag down, pummel, condemn, "go nuclear on" anyone who may happen to enjoy a more elevated station in life or a somewhat different point of view. In the old days, we had "letters-to-the-editor" and punching bags (literally) and not a whole lot else, but now just about anyone can attach their literary graffiti to someone else's work. The everyday examples of this are still quite shocking (see below) even after they have chilled and numbed my senses to the bone. Is this what happens when everyone's medication wears off? What is happening to civility in this country? The rhetoric is all about tolerance and acceptance, but on the mean streets and the web-pages, it's a different story. The jets and the sharks have teamed up to attack the girl scouts. Above ground we see palm trees and white sand while underneath some kind of molten lava is bubbling up that threatens to overtake our village. Or, to use yet another strained metaphor, I see a group of rabid, chanting, cubicle-dwellers, poised with spears and knives making their way towards me, poking and prodding with all their might, their eyes bulging, their mouths covered in white foam. They want blood, you see, blood. But why? How will that help? All right you snarks, guess what? I'm just going to keep singing my folk songs, chanting my love mantra (okay faking that part), sounding corny and goofy and idealistic until I find your inner Pillsbury Doughboy...

Most Egregiously Snarky Feedback of Late (I'm still recovering):

"U r a turd. Mahn. A turd-man that's what u r."

"Your blog is going nowhere. Give up. Jump off a cliff and land hard. Loser!!!!!!!"

"I hate everything about you and I don't even know you. You are obviously a talentless fool  - get it - FOOL! Your tiresome rant against people like me is ridiculous. I guess you want to shut down freedom of speech in this country. Is that it Mr. Him-Her? Mr. She-It?"

"U are the biggest hypocrite i have ever seen. Look at u complaining and getting angry u-r-self. You are an idiot. I don't like u. You don't sound lik a reel man. R u 1? i didn't think so."

"I stumbled upon this blog by accident and I won't be reading it again. Sorry. You just kinda bored me to tears with your random pon-ti-fi-li-cating. Get a life dude!"

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte - A mysterious woman arrives in a provincial village (somewhere in spooky, foggy Yorkshire, England) under a pseudonym (Helen Graham) along with her young son, but is reluctant to disclose anything about her torrid past - despite persistent attempts made by the other villagers, until she finally, somewhat surprisingly (?) decides to confide in one trustworthy male. There's more of a plot in that one sentence, perhaps, than in many dense pages of contemporary fiction.  So goes the final novel of Anne Bronte. But can someone explain this to me: how does it happen that a family made up in part of three devoted sisters and a wayward brother, can endure the death of their mother at an early age, along with the loss of two other siblings to tuberculosis, and then continue on, despite a haphazard smattering of "formal education," to produce three of the most amazing novels in all of English literature penned by amazing prose stylists who will all die of tuberculosis or other ailments before reaching the age of 40? That sort of windfall just doesn't happen everyday. How did it happen in the case of the Bronte sisters??? I want to know!

Saturday, March 3rd. Outside rainy. Grey. Cloudy. Sitting on a cold couch. Indoors. Hoping for melt. Hoping for sun. Hoping for warmth. Hoping. For kindness. For sanity. Hoping for. Renewal. Yes. These are monotonous sentence fragments and I am an English teacher. Off duty. Just trying to. Oh I don't know. Experimenting.  With "bad, choppy prose."  To just sort of. Try to. Keep it short. Keep it. Simple. Keep it real. And by the way. Don't try this. At home. Kids. Birds. Trees. Very small rocks. Driveway. Neighbors. Dogs. Walking. Cheerful. Breathe. Exude. Tenacious. Outside energy. Grasshopper-like. Ambidextrous. Lollipops. Are not! My favorite: dessert. Understand? Me write/type. Fast. One day. You will study. For long hours. At a time. Are you ready? For this prediction. A simple, ill-considered, disorganized, rambling, pointless, discursive, sleepy, soporific, blog post. For meaning, insight. Something. S'gotta be there. For fortune. If at all. Cookie. Oh - my aching back! Wisdom. Yawn. Boredom. Boredom. Today there were: tornadoes throughout the South. Concern for. And Primaries. A Levi-jeans controversy. The return of a re-habbed celebrity. In this essay I shall explore. The theme of: Chance. Apples. Closing doors. Lima bean. Broken gadgets. Have you seen my? Cellphone?  Piano? World War I poems? Guitar? Riff of the. Real. 237. Virtual. 238. Abbreviate. This our common language. Boil it down. To one word, two. 47 at most. As if that were really necessary. As if Americans don't already. Speak. In broken, fragmented English.  Leaving out. Important. Stuff. Sorry. End of lecture. Just. Testing. Only two people. Have even seen this blog. After all. Wow. That's. Kind of. Depressing. Or. Inspiring. Depending on. How. You look. But with all this unlimited space. I shall. Continue typing in the. Nighttime. With purring cat and silent rug. The mellow air humming. My Barking. Yawping. Opining.  To no effect. Without. You all. I will be. Will you? Behold. The shock and awe. Of randomness. That fits. Today's date: "Ineluctable modality of the visible. Thought through my eyes."  - Ulysses, Chapter 3. Epilogue: I need a beach to walk upon.