Doubt and the Human Spirit

I realize that, most of the time, when I write things with the purpose of changing people's minds, that I will fail. Those who like what I have to say will praise me; those who don't will generally ignore me. I'm just not very influential.

But, at the same time, if I didn't want to have an effect, I would just keep my writing bound to a journal. Why put it up online? Why publish? Clearly, I want (need?) to affect people in some way.

If my hopes are too high, I am bound for disappointment. (And they are always too high.) In a way, now that I think about it, having really high hopes as a writer pretty much amounts to narcissism. To hope is to assume that I have something worthwhile to say. Who, exactly, do I think I am?

I think, though, that I have found a realistic, non-conceited, practical goal as a writer -- as a teacher, even. I think a worthy goal is to just try to make people less sure of themselves; to make them doubt their hardened concepts...

It seems to me that doubt, to the human spirit, is as water to the plant.

Too many people are too sure of themselves. Only two results can come of two groups of people who are completely sure of themselves: dangerous clashes or turned backs.

But I'm tired. Whatever the reason for having tried so hard to affect people -- vanity or altruism -- it has made me very tired. I feel like like Jem, after having seen the racism in his town. He says this to, Scout, in To Kill a Mockingbird:

"Scout, I'm beginning to understand something. I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time... it's because he wants to stay inside."

I'd better either shut up about things and go all Boo Radley or keep my expectations low. At the very least, "affects" and "effects" aside, maybe I could just introduce a little beauty, from time to time, in a very, very ugly world. The human spirit can be such a light. Just lift away the shade and it can chase off a deed-dark forest full of demons...

But the shade does need to be lifted. Another worthy goal. I hope. 

The Value of Ugly Christmas Trees

Here's an idea for the parents of young kids. I blew my chance. I could do it now, but my boys are a little old to get the full impact.

It's not a new idea, exactly. Charles Schulz presented it to the world in his Charlie Brown Christmas episode, but in the episode, it happened sort of by accident: Charlie Brown messed up and got an ugly little tree (though, he did intentionally choose a real tree in a sea of aluminium ones). The Peanuts characters discovered, as a result of this accident, that they could make the ugly beautiful.

How great an idea would it be, though, for parents of young kids to purposefully pick out the ugliest Christmas tree on the lot and to bring it home to make beautiful?

I wish we had done it. I can see us standing on the lot, the boys' little eyes searching around. I can see myself saying, "So, what about this tree? It has a big hole on one side...it's crooked on top...it's kind of a weak green. No one is going to buy it, but I'll bet we can make it beautiful..."

Imagine the educational value; the creative power it would have given the boys; the visible evidence of what a family can do together; the acceptance of the idea that life is never perfect but that is can be made more perfect; the lesson in the value of optimism; the conveyance of the message that there is beauty in difference and that there is even beauty in ugliness. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," after all.

In my mind, I see, nestled in a branch-less gap turned unashamedly toward the front, a little cluster of Nativity figures, gently lit to a buttery yellow by surrounding string lights and I wish that our tree, this year, had such a deformity in it.

Alas. Maybe you can do it with your kids.

I Know Not "Seems"

For years, I have heard people say that "confidence is sexy."

But, like, confidence, itself, right? Not confidence that one is sexy... 

Like...a professional who trusts in his or her instinct; who enters a room and sort of gets looked to as the leader; who walks upright and who isn't afraid to take responsibility or to speak out. This person can be sexy as a result of his or her sense of personal command or confidence. But, not the person who brags about his or her physical perfection in either words or selfie...

You know? 

To me, anyway, there is nothing less sexy than someone who thinks she is. (Insert your favorite pronoun/s here...ayam what ayam...)

I follow a local radio show on Twitter and they have "selfie Monday" -- which might just make me stop following them. Almost every selfie (that gets retweeted, anyway) is of a girl who makes extra sure to get all the best bits in the shot. Each girl has a manufactured smoulder on her face.

Chasing Dinosaurs: On the Body Image Myth

Girls and body image: another problem caused by the magnifying glass of media. We know this; we talk about this; we post touching videos about it. But it seems to me to be another thing we can fix if we think more about the person and less about "the community."

For our daughters, we need to shut down the idea that TV and magazines are reality. I'm not just talking about telling them about Photoshop magic and the like. I'm talking about really showing them the the old cliche stands up: beauty is, in fact, in the eye of the beholder and it is not dictated by the eye of the photographer or of the fashion designer or of the producer.

John Singer Sargent

Men have a more varied view of feminine beauty than the mainstream media give them credit for. Sure, we all react to the Sports Illustrated models (are we not flesh and blood?) but, unless we are deluded fools (and some of us are, granted) we find beauty in many other forms and even in what others would have us believe is "imperfection."

Presenting . . .

The truth is, for today, I wasn't likely to write anything better than what I am about to share with you. I believe that writing should not be an egotistical exercise. You have to know when someone has said something as well as it can be said and, then, sometimes, it is wise to step aside and open the curtain for that someone.

Here is piece on a blog that I follow: "zmkc". "Z" is one of the best writers I have seen online; she writes about lots of things, from books to print/grammar issues to -- my favorite -- life, in general.

This is a piece about outer beauty and inner ugliness (and vice-versa) written with grace, incisive humor and the sort of keen observation and control I have come to expect from this fine writer. Enjoy "In the Bag," Then, pick up the flashlight and have a look inside for yourself.

(Any of my former writing students out there: study the passage of the girls at the table. That's how you do it.)

"The White Curve of Her Neck"

One passage from James Joyce's story "Araby" has always moved me; it reminds me so much of my perspective on girls when I was a boy and it makes me think how wrong we have gone in terms of the way women can be perceived in our society. Here is the main character's view of his friend Mangan's older sister (with whom he is desperately in love) in "Araby":

While she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist. She could not go [to Araby], she said, because there would be a retreat that week in her convent [school]. Her brother and two other boys were fighting for their caps, and I was alone at the railings. She held one of the spikes, bowing her head towards me. The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing. It fell over one side of her dress and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible as she stood at ease.

Maybe I'm getting sentimental, but this nearly brings a tear to my eye every time I read it. It is as if Joyce reached into my brain and pulled out the innocent, aesthetic aching for female beauty that I felt as a boy; the attraction that had nothing to do with ulterior motives -- nothing to do with lust, yet. It was more like a tree's need for light than anything else. Does every boy go through this for a time? Or was it born out of the concept that had I somehow gathered -- that girls were something special, even magical?