Terry Pratchett's Cohen the Barbarian and You

Every day of my life is kind of a pursuit of a wish: the wish that my students will grab some of the wisdom that the great minds of literature have set down for them. The juicy apples just dangle there above them, but I can't do the picking and hand them out. It only works if the kids climb the ladder themselves. I can hold the ladder so it doesn't fall, but ... well, you get the tired metaphor.

In high school, I saw myself in Hamlet. I looked at him and I saw a guy who thinks too much,  but, more importantly, I saw that the definition of thinking too much includes thinking one's way straight through the time when one should have acted. That revelation made a big difference in my life. Many have survived various act fives as a result.



Cohen the Barbarian by Peter Vidani

In one college class we read a lot of writers like John Cheever (a much underrated American writer, as far as I'm concerned) who dealt with suburban life and marriage in particular. I remember seeing something unsettling in many of the suburban men depicted in his (and Updike's) work: these chaps were boring to their wives, yet had no clue. Typically, the wives cheated on them and the oafs were blindsided. Horrifying. I vowed, at that point, to at least try not to be that guy. I learned that you had to bring something to the table as a husband. Your wife wasn't going to be eternally in awe of your awesomeness. You had to work to make her happy and not expect that your happiness and/or dominance in your own work was going to do the trick. You'd have to ask my wife if I have succeeded... (Oh, wait -- there's a text coming in...oh, bother.)

Anyway, you get the point. Read "The Astronomer's Wife" by Kay Boyle and you will know the kind of story I am talking about. So many self-satisfied dudes walking around feeling sufficiently manly when their wives see it quite another way...

My point is, I took this stuff to heart -- and a lot of other stuff, too.

So, today, in my sci-fi and fantasy class, I was discussing Terry Pratchett's delightful fantasy deconstruction, "Troll Bridge." It just made my heart ache to look at the kids in front of me and to think: It's here. A lesson that could change your life. It's right here. Just grab it.

It really does make my heart ache sometimes.

I tried. I truly did.

Here stands Cohen the Barbarian, along with his horse, shivering in the cold. The horse tells Cohen they should retire. There just are not enough monsters to kill -- trolls have all gone to work in the cities and left the bridges and some have even opened saw mills to make ends meet. The adventuring has dried up and Cohen is too old for it anyway.

     "You must have plenty of treasure stashed away," said the horse. "We could go Rimwards. How about it? Nice and warm. Get a nice warm place by a beach somewhere, what do you say?"
   "No treasure," said Cohen. "Spent it all. Drank it all. Gave it all away. Lost it."
   "You should have saved some for your old age."
   "Never thought I'd have an old age."

This is simple stuff -- the message is clear (with a cool little spin not just on the tendency to avoid thinking about death but on having predicted a glorious warrior's end that never came). But the poetically delightful conclusion, after Cohen decides not to kill Micah the troll (in order to keep at least one old school troll out under a bridge) is so distressingly beautiful, that it could well change a kid's life -- if he only would listen:  

   The air blew off the mountains, filling the air with fine ice crystals. It was too cold to snow. In weather like this wolves came down into villages, trees in the heart of the forest exploded when they froze. Except there were fewer and fewer wolves these days, and less and less forest.
   In weather like this right-thinking people were indoors, in front of the fire.
   Telling stories about heroes.

...telling stories of when we were young; when times were better; when fourth-graders didn't have iPhones; when you could sleep with the door unlocked; when boys were boys and girls were girls; when people feared God; when money grew on trees and you didn't need seatbelts to stay safe...

...when heroes fought monsters and won glory and treasure and the world rang with the clarion tones of steel on steel that said someone was fighting for right.

I'm holding the ladder, kids. Climb on up.

Moon Stone Philosophy

I have two "moon stones" on my desk. We got them in Disneyworld this summer -- they were for sale in "Future World" -- or whatever they call it. For a few dollars, you could stuff a bag with as many of them as you were able. My son got about twenty of them.

They are smooth, ebony-black and flat and they're surprisingly powerful magnets. (They are just magnets, by the way, not objects from the moon, in case you are having "one of those days" and you believed that Disney is selling lunar chunks, now. [Though, I suppose in light of Disney's -- as Gulliver often said -- bigness, it is not beyond the realm of possibility].)

That night, in our hotel room, I was watching my son play with them and I grabbed a few. I found myself instantly comforted by them. First, because they had that smooth rock effect. Did you ever carry a smooth river rock when you were kid? -- to rub with a thumb as you walked? That sort of thing.

But the real comfort is the feeling of a very real and invisible force in the palm of my hand.

In what other realm than magnetics can we, the earthbound, feel an invisible force that is undeniable?

Forgetting to Breathe

Yesterday night, around seven o'clock, I stopped breathing.

Don't worry -- it happens to me quite a bit. It's not a "condition" of any kind and my life is never in danger -- I just stop breathing once in awhile. It only takes a handful of seconds before my reptilian brain kicks in to interrupt the other brain departments and inform them that there is an issue that needs to be addressed. It's at that point that I take a deep breath, like a man emerging from a spear-fishing attempt. Once I'm properly oxygenated, I stop for a second to laugh at my silly self.

As I said, this happened last night. It always has to do with music.

Less Than No Prejudice

“I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls.”

― Martin Luther King Jr., "I Have A Dream"

This quotation from Dr. King's famous speech popped into my head the other day as I was watching my younger son in Karate class. He was doing a partner exercise -- a little white boy was holding hands with a little black girl. They were both smiling and laughing as they tried to meet the challenge their instructor had set for them; something about a "crescent kick."

But there they were: Dr. King's dream in motion. It occurred to me as I watched them that my son actually has less than no prejudice in his head.

Being a Real Man

I need to figure out what it means to be a man so I can teach my boys. I'm neither stupid nor conceited enough to think that their success as men will exclusively be a result of what I teach them; each of my sons is his own individual. But, if I don't have the definition straight in my own head, how can I teach them anything?

I know it isn't fashionable these days, but I respect toughness. I also respect courage, intelligence and honesty. (I know -- these things are corny, too. Alas, in some ways, I have just been scraped off of the cob.)

There are a lot of guys out there with forceful attitudes and loud voices who couldn't stand up for their families if a fight became necessary. There are a lot of thugs out there who pick fights to compensate for their own little-bitty...hearts. There are a lot of guys out there who think making money makes them men and there are plenty of others who make very little and act as if those who make a lot of coin are categorically "soft." I'm reminded of an exchange in Spielberg's Jaws:

Quint:You got city hands, Mr. Hooper. You've been countin' money all your life.

Hooper: Hey, I don't need this. I don't need this working-class-hero crap.

And under no circumstances does being a man depend on the volume of one's sexual conquests. (You'd think this era was as passe' as butterfly collars and velour, but over my years as a musician, I have seen it is not so for some of my fellow males.)

Kwai Chang Caine, from the 70s show, Kung Fu:
The best example
of a man ever on presented on television.
He's the one TV character
I would gladly see my sons imitate.

And "gay" or "straight" does not enter into it, in terms of conduct in the world, by the way. (It may seem strange to some blockheads out there that I think gay men are neither excluded from the responsibilities of toughness, courage, intelligence and honesty nor precluded from being considered men simply because of their sexual orientation. No one gets a break from my exceedingly arrogant evaluations. Everyone has an equal chance to be a spineless loser, in my eyes...)