The Painful Nowning Process

JMNR reminds us that the sciences need the humanities:

Knowing what a thing is made of, after all, does not tell us what it is.

. . .

Literature, the fine arts, theater, and music teach humans what it is to be good, true, and beautiful. They point to meaning. What does it profit a man to learn all mysteries of matter and energy if he does not have love? Science can only simulate or stimulate the feelings of love, but . . . cannot create one real passion.

That first sentence, as Reynolds very well knows, is a paraphrase from a conversation in C.S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader:

“In our world,” said Eustace, “A star is a huge ball of flaming gas.”

“Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of….”

How I hope that the makers of the movie don’t lose or obscure that particular bit of wisdom!

ABC News story about the rising generation of India’s bright young things:

At age 21, [Nisha] Mehta has five people — all older than she is — working under her. And her boss says the sky’s the limit.

This is a seismic change in a country where women have, until recently, been restricted to traditional family roles. And it’s a change that has transpired within one generation in one household.

…

The changes going on in India right now — the breaking down of old barriers of gender, religion and caste — are incredibly exciting. But it’s important to realize that these changes — as of right now, at least — are only affecting a minority.

…

Mehta says she’s concerned about these inequities, but still believes there’s no place on Earth she’d rather live. In fact, she was — to my mind, at least — shockingly ambivalent about the United States…. She has no desire to live [in the US] and only lukewarm desire to even visit.

This story pins an awful lot on one young woman as a representative example. Nevertheless, it should give  overly self-satisfied US readers food for thought.

Who’s your hero? Of course, the “right” answer is “my mother!” or “my father!” or some historical figure, or a saint. But if you grew up reading books and/or watching movies and television, fictional heroes may have inspired you as much or more. And why not? Sir Philip Sidney famously argued in The Defense of Poesy that imaginative literature could be superior to both philosophy and history at teaching virtue:

Now therein of all sciences—I speak still of human, and according to the human conceit—is our poet the monarch. For he doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way as will entice any man to enter into it. Nay, he doth, as if your journey should lie through a fair vineyard, at the very first give you a cluster of grapes, that full of that taste you may long to pass further. He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margent with interpretations, and load the memory with doubtfulness. But he cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the well-enchanting skill of music; and with a tale, forsooth, he cometh unto you, with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney-corner, and, pretending no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue

Put that in 21st century language by checking out NPR’s In Character series and its

profiles of some influential but imaginary characters — fictional figures who have had a deep and lasting impact on Americans’ lives.

Among the characters: The Lone Ranger, Charlie Brown, Holden Caulfield, Nancy Drew, Virgil Tibbs (the detective played by Sidney Poitier in In the Heat of the Night), and today, my own fictional hero, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who helped a journalist keep things together while she was reporting from Iraq.

More stories of how BtVS influenced various people–some more than others–are archived here.

That is, write stuff people might actually want to read, as opposed to that highfalutin lit’rary stuff and po’try that nobody can understand, not even you. Okay, I’m sort of kidding about that, but you can make a living writing. Unfortunately, the days when Alexander Pope could live very comfortably off the proceeds of his best-selling translations of the Iliad and Odyssey are long gone. Instead, you might have to try writing without inspiration.

Does this mean you’ll never be inspired? No. Inspiration will still come, but the problem with inspiration is … none of us can predict when it will hit. So cherish inspiration, but instead of waiting for it to produce writing, strive to produce without being inspired.

I’m not negating inspiration; I’m simply trying to guide you around it. You’ll still need inspiration to complete good writing. And it can come from a variety of places.

This is good advice for anyone who has to write, whether you hope to earn a living at it or simply produce a paper for a grade.

You can also write popular fiction. English majors galore have taken this road-more-traveled and proven that popular doesn’t have to mean trashy or poorly-written. English majors seem to enjoy reading mystery novels, and some have become very well-known as mystery novelists, including: Dorothy L. Sayers, Thomas Perry. Robert B. Parker. Amanda Cross (Carolyn G. Heilbrun), and James Lee Burke. Charles Ardai writes neo-noir “hardboiled” mysteries under the pen-name Richard Aleas, drawing on his background as a literature major. Then he and a partner launched a publishing enterprise devoted to “pulp fiction,” Hard Case Crime. Oh, and before that, Ardai was the founder and CEO of Juno.

However, if you really want to make money in the pop-fiction world, romance is the game.

The ancients had it right after all—the planets do “sing” in their orbits—well, sort of:

Earth gives off a relentless hum of countless notes completely imperceptible to the human ear, like a giant, exceptionally quiet symphony, but the origin of this sound remains a mystery.

. . .

In the past, the oscillations that researchers found made up this hum were “spheroidal” — they basically involved patches of rock moving up and down, albeit near undetectably.

Now oscillations have been discovered making up the hum that, oddly, are shaped roughly like rings

As Joseph Addison put it (paraphrasing Ps. 19):

The spacious firmament on high,
with all the blue ethereal sky,
and spangled heavens, a shining frame,
their great Original proclaim.
The unwearied sun from day to day
does his Creator’s power display;
and publishes to every land
the work of an almighty hand.

Soon as the evening shades prevail,
the moon takes up the wondrous tale,
and nightly to the listening earth
repeats the story of her birth:
whilst all the stars that round her burn,
and all the planets in their turn,
confirm the tidings, as they roll
and spread the truth from pole to pole.

What though in solemn silence all
move round the dark terrestrial ball?
What though no real voice nor sound
amid their radiant orbs be found?
In reason’s ear they all rejoice,
and utter forth a glorious voice;
for ever singing as they shine,
“The hand that made us is divine.”

I love that.

We’re wrapping up our semester and the seniors will be commencing out into the dreaded Real World. I turned my calendar over to May and found these words of advice for those entering new cultures (such as high school, college, or full-time employment) from Buffy’s sister Dawn:

People may say something to you you don’t understand. Just don’t be afraid to keep your mouth shut and pretend like you know what they’re saying. . . . People may say something like “My protein window closes in an hour.” Just smile and nod. Mm-hmm. (”Selfless” BtVS 7.5)

As a Third Culture Kid, I must say that this approach has brought me success in many, many situations. Sometimes, of course, you do have to ask questions.

Although this poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins is called “Spring and Fall,” it is really more about Fall. Nevertheless, it is among my favorites and, for a variety of reasons which are better not explained, seems peculiarly appropriate today, even if it is April 30:

To a Young Child

Margaret are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
Now no matter, child, the name;
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

I regret that I am unable to reproduce Hopkins’ original “sprung rhythm” stress-marks.

After a quiet day at home grading papers, with only two cats for company, I needed an entertainment break and found this:

It’s brilliant!

Author Mark Chadbourn explains the enduring appeal of fantasy fiction:

I don’t write fantasy fiction simply to provide a trap-door from reality. For me, the genre is as much about the world around us as EastEnders [or CSI, Desperate Housewives, or The West Wing, for those who don't watch UK TV].

But instead of coming slap-bang up against it, fantasy charts the unconscious hopes and aspirations of our modern society through symbolism and allegory in story-forms as old as humanity.

It’s about turning off the mobile phone and the computer and remembering who we are in the deepest, darkest parts of ourselves.

Of course, he’s not the first to talk about this. Tolkein said some of the same things in “On Fairy-Stories,” and C.S. Lewis’s explored the territory in “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s To Be Said.” The two essays, and the two writers’ fantasy writings, are compared and contrasted effectively by David C. Downing in “Sub-Creation or Smuggled Theology: Tolkien contra Lewis on Christian Fantasy.”

Time to re-read The Lord of the Rings or Till We Have Faces?

Fun fact: if you have to fly to Toledo, Ohio, the closest airport is Detroit, Michigan. Fortunately, a significant number of my Rambo relatives actually live in Ohio or states within driving distance, so only a few of us had to fly in to join what rapidly grew into a family reunion when the Medical Mission Hall of Fame, affiliated with the University of Toledo College of Medicine, announced that my grandfather, Victor C. Rambo, M.D. (d. 1987), would be one of the four 2008 inductees.

My uncle Thomas Rambo gave a talk about Grandfather’s work, one of several speakers at a symposium on Saturday. In addition, my father and his younger sister were there, and all their children. The Mobile Eye Service clinics my grandfather started are still operating in India.