Gareth the Builder (A Parable)

A young man with wide and deep eyes came out of the forest with only a pack on his back and a long stick as a walking staff. He looked with his wide, deep eyes, upon an expansive plain of grass that moved like green ocean waves. His name was Gareth.

Gareth dropped his pack and sat, looking at the open plain. He made a square with his fingers and looked through it at the plain. Whispering to himself, he took out a small book and began to write things in it. He drew furious pictures of towers and walls rising to the sky where they would, someday, scratch the bellies of the clouds.

For weeks, he thought and wrote and walked around the open plain, imagining and planning. Sometimes, he would lie for hours in the grass, watching the clouds that he dreamed one day to touch with his fingers, standing atop a great tower that he built.

Years passed. Gareth would leave for months and then return with many workers and with great machines criss-crossed by ropes and pulleys and levers. Great wagons pulled by teams of sweaty war horses would bring supplies.

The Forever Pill

You know the old cliche -- the young person asks the old person how he has stayed so strong and vibrant and the old fossil says something like, "Clean  living!" or "I ate oatmeal with cinnamon and a splash of whisky, every morning, for ninety years..."?  It occurred to me, last night, that this is a very desirable fantasy: the notion that we might, possibly, be able to pin health success on one clear-cut thing. In reality, the fact that this is impossible is sometimes the reason why we give up on the things that we know are good for us. I know it's the reason I do.

You know? Like, if I exercise every day, science says it will make me stronger and it will even extend my life. If I exercise every day, I will feel better -- that is for sure. But, before long, I will forget how bad I felt before I started to feel better and the impact of the exercise will now begin to be lost on me. I feel the way I feel; exercise is part of my life. Why not skip a day here or there? Thus begins the downward spiral.

There's no certainty to it, even if this doesn't mean (and it doesn't) that we should ignore the findings of science. Marathon runners drop dead in the middle of races, once in awhile. Sedentary fat people sometimes live to a ripe old age.

One of my relatives once had a heart attack in his fifties. The doctors told him he was lucky he worked-out on a regular basis, or it could have been worse. Do they know this for sure?

Dinner with an Alien

I try to transcend when I exercise. I transcend with television shows. (I hate to exercise.) While I walk on the treadmill, I tap into Netflix and watch episodes of TV shows -- mostly ones that are not on anymore. Lately, it has been Star Trek: Enterprise. 

It's not a bad show, at all. So far, about eleven episodes into season one, it hasn't delivered any of those mind-blowing sci-fi moments that the original series or Star Trek: The Next Generation are famous for. Still, it is not the worthless drek that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was. (I saw a few episodes of that series. They should have called it "Politics in Space." Or "Poop in Space." Or "Deep Poop Nine." -- Do you realize you are reading the blog of a guy who still thinks "poop" is a hilarious word? I'm actually laughing out loud right now.) 

"Deep Poop Nine." That's funny.

She's even bad in the picture.

Anyway, Enterprise is a well-written show, all-in-all. Its only drawback, on a consistent basis, is the awful actress who plays T'Pol, the Vulcan science officer. Most high school actors could do a better job pulling off a Leonard Nimoy impersonation -- which is all she really does. It's pretty clear she got the gig because the producers were happy with the way she looks in a very (very) tight (and decidedly un-Vulcanish) uniform. (They should have called her T-Poop. SORRY. Sorry. I'll stop.)

The strongest part of the show is the portrayal of wonder in the crew of the Enterprise. Chronologically, this series is set before the original series -- this is the story of the first starship Enterprise -- before Kirk, Spock and the gang.

Good Guys and Evil Deeds

I was listening to a radio interview earlier today and the guy being interviewed had travelled with former President Bill Clinton. He said, just in the course of conversation, "Yeah -- Clinton is a good guy."

This got my gears turning with thoughts about human nature versus human behavior. After a few miles of contemplative driving (and then getting snapped out of it by a panicked thought that I was extremely low on gas and had forgotten to stop with no more stations for miles, even though I actually had stopped and filled-up somewhere in the midst [and in the mist] of my little conceptual journey) the question formed itself: Can a guy who does heinous things be a "good guy."

This is one of those occasions on which I am sure someone will swoop in and explain to me that Cerebellus Maximus, in the third century, asked this very question -- but, so it goes. I guy can't have read everything, you know. (Someone once mentioned a book that I hadn't read and I told her I hadn't read it. "Aren't you, like, a literature guy?" she responded, aghast. Apparently, we "literary guys" are supposed to have read everything ever written.)

Anyway, old Bill is famous for lots of things -- like having been a not-so-bad-at-all President. He blew a mean sax, too. Unfortunately, he was also in the habit of keeping company with a certain infamous White House intern who had a similar talent, if you take my meaning. In short, the guy cheated on his wife. Or, more accurately, I think: he cheated on his family. That's the way I see it, anyway.

One Ring, One of a Kind

I started reading The Lord of the Rings to my eight-year-old son last night. We finished the Narnia books a few weeks ago, so, I figured it was time to introduce my boy to the book that changed me forever -- the book that made me want to live among words for the rest of my life.

I've said this before, I think: at some point as a scholar of English literature, I figured out what makes a great novelist great; I figured out why Tolkien is no Steinbeck and why C. S. Lewis is no Thomas Pynchon. But, fortunately, I have never completely snobbed over.


"The Horn of Boromir," Matt Stewart

I still love Tolkien, for all his "weaknesses" as a novelist. In my opinion, he can string together as many adjectives as he wants; he can use "perilous" a dozen times per page. There is something in his work that is just right, as far as I'm concerned. His imagination is the unashamed creative abandon of a child who is living the fantasy every step of the way. His world existed, as he wrote, every bit as much as the pile of papers waiting to be graded at his elbow.