I have a fascination with those things we all fear. I’ve written a bit about zombies and my suspicion that their place in the current zietgiest describes a kind of existential dread somehow related to our discomfort with our transhuman, technologically-drenched future. I’m not alone.
There are other people interested in these same ideas. They are more eloquent and more studied on the topic. One such person is Dan Engber, who became fascinated by the fear inspired by quicksand in the 1960s. He noticed that kids today aren’t really worried about quicksand the way they were a few years ago. It doesn’t show up in their games the way it did when he was a kid. He wondered where that fear went. Why did people stop being afraid?
Engber did a study of twentieth century films and discovered a sharp rise in the depiction of quicksand during the 1950s and 1960s. Radiolab does a great podcast with Engber, in which he speculates that rampant fear of quicksand corresponds to a distrust of exotic cultures and terrain in an age of extreme exploration and globalization. This fear became a metaphor for how people thought about the war in Vietnam. In short, the fear of quicksand represented a distrust about involvement in far away places and then became a controlling metaphor that shaped thought about that very involvement. If this interests you at all, you should give the podcast a listen. It is worth the 16 minutes.
I admire Engber and the way he conducted his exploration of the quicksand trope through twentieth century culture. This kind of study is fascinating and really, really useful. I’m interested in finding other studies that work along these lines. Links or citations are appreciated.
Fear is both an intensely personal experience and a culturally-defined expression. Fear is primal. It is also communal. The literatures of dread — horror films and stories — may not be meaningless drivel after all. A thoughtful mining of the nightmares we share with one another may give us our best look at ourselves, what we value, what we abhor and where we are headed as a species.
I know the zombie genre could keep researchers busy for a long time. What other cultural fears could we explore to find clues about ourselves?
Just two more days until I’m on holiday. I get two weeks off for Christmas. This is my favorite time of the year. I’ll get to spend time with my family. I will eat too much. I will ruin my sleep schedule and completely lose track of time. I will read books in the middle of the morning, when my mind is fresh and eager for new thoughts and ideas.
I read best in the mid-to-late morning, but I don’t often get to read then. My reading time is usually pushed to the far edges of the day, when my mind is numb with sleep. When I read at the wrong times, I read slowly, gradually pressing my way through the pages one centimeter at a time. When I read this way, I get lost and confused. I lose the narrative thread and often find myself sidetracked. I don’t remember things as well and have to reread or just start anew in the middle of things.
When I read in the morning, my day has a kind of warmth. The words find me and follow me through the day. The story percolates in my head and I find it is my companion. The things I read are alive and vital and essential. Reading becomes an active thing. Reading becomes creative. When I read in the morning, I am making something, and the creative act sustains me.
I’m pretty tired right now and looking forward to some downtime. My head is a bit of a mess. Mentally exhausted. Funny, perhaps, that reading is the battery I crave when my mental reserves run so low. I’ve got the stack ready (virtual, for the most part). Just a few more days and I can dig in and destroy my time-sense. I can get a little bit lost. I’m ready to binge myself on books.
If you haven’t met me, there is something you need to know. I am a relentless optimist. I expect the best of everyone and every situation. I carry a fundamental belief in the rightness of things and trust that the entire universe and everything in it will work in harmony for the ultimate benefit of all. I get frustrated when things don’t travel along the path of my expectations, though they do tend to more or less work themselves out well in the end.
I am an idealist. I get excited and enthusiastic about ideas. I champion change. I welcome things that feel like the future. I’m just made this way. Its how I’m wired. My idealism presses on people’s nerves sometimes. I get on my own nerves sometimes.
I am a technophile. It is a condition that warrants careful observation. I keep friends around me to balance my enthusiasm for New Things. I trust my closest friends to help leaven my enthusiasm with a measured dose of skepticism. This relationship keeps me safe.
I like technology. Technology represents an expression of faith that problems can be solved. That things don’t have to be the way they are. In fact, the change of technology is an humbling reminder that human experience is always changing. We grow as individuals, and we grow as a species. There is, I realize, an element of blind trust that comes with technophilia.
Technophilia assumes that change is always for the best. I sometimes forget that this isn’t necessarily true. I often forget that many people, maybe most people, don’t see things this way.
I think this why I am so fascinated by my own interest in Jeff Bezos’ recent revelation that Amazon is working on a way to deliver products to doorsteps using flying drones. You may have seen the video already. Its all over Twitter and the technology blogs. If not, here it is:
This isn’t a post about the merits of using flying drones to deliver commercial goods. It is about my immediate, unquestioning reaction to that video. Of course, there will be delivery drones dropping off boxes and packages and pizzas in the future. I’m just caught by surprised by the real possibility that it might happen in my lifetime.
These are robots, people. The Star Wars kid in me is completely freaking out.
So, here’s the really funny part. I watch the video and think, “Of course. How wonderful.” I immediately start thinking about the practical uses for my college, which has 9 teaching sites and 3 physical libraries. I start mapping out the possible applications for interlibrary loan, direct to door document delivery. I could send books directly to a faculty member”s office on request with very little wait.
I am thinking these things. I am taking these thoughts very seriously. A part of my brain is actually working out what my library will need to do to be ready for that possibility. This is all happening quickly, immediately, without warning. It is occupying an inordinate amount of my mind on a pretty busy day when there are things that need doing right now. I do those things, but always with a part of me feeling pulled forward toward the idea I can sense but can’t quite glimpse.
I spend a lot of time this way. It is a kind of wakeful dreaming.
The technophile sees the new tool and immediately believes it will be a tool of great value.
I post to Facebook and immediately start reading comments about how dangerous, obnoxious and silly this kind of future might be. People might die. Decapitation is a real concern. Children might get hurt. Birds and power lines and aircraft and on and on. And the comments aren’t wrong. They aren’t mean or spoiling. They are truthful. They are correct. And they come from the dead center of my technophiliac blind spot.
Trusting the idea of technology to improve lives is an expression of faith. It is a kind of blind trust akin to religious dogma. It is a belief that there is an expression of intelligence that wants to make things work better and that everything will be better if we simply trust that intelligence and let it do its job. This is not to equate a fondness for technology with religious faith or create a false opposition between them. It is simply an observation that the technophile (ie, “me”), brings a lot of assumptions and unexamined baggage to the table when faced with something new. It is a reminder that the best response after that initial wash of enthusiasm might be, “Not necessarily so.”
“Not necessarily so” is an excellent mantra for technophiles to embrace. “Not necessarily so” keeps us honest. “Not necessarily so” keeps us vigilant and skeptical and open to the possibility that sometimes things don’t work out for the best and sometimes, often even, there are unintended consequences. One of my best friends often reminds me that the study of human history is pretty much a catalog of unintended consequences.
And so, I take a deep breath and wait a little longer to see how the future plays out. I listen to the friends who see clearly by standing in the middle of my blindspot. And I am grateful.
I am fascinated by the Amazon drone story because it portends a leap toward a vision of the far future I had glimpsed when I was a child. I didn’t expect to see such a leap in my life. And yet, I write this to friends and readers scattered all over the world. I will read your comments on my smartphone, which is a marvel all its own. As William Gibson puts it, “The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed.”
And yet another layer of fascination. There is no date by which Bezos expects to have this project ready. It may take years. Why announce it in such dramatic style on the 60 Minutes TV show during the busiest shopping weekend of the year? I think Om Malik has it figured out: to get free advertising, to change the subject away from labor issues and sales tax problems, to force policy decisions. Read “So Why Did Jeff Bezos pre-announce plans for drone-based delivery now?”
Which leads me back to my main point. Technophiles should always take a deep breath and recite, “Not necessarily so.” Technology is a tool. Tools work for the good of the people who have them in their hands. Always. Full stop. No exceptions.
I had a good Thanksgiving. One of the major pleasures of the long holiday weekend was the opportunity to read for several hours at one sitting on Saturday morning. That doesn’t happen too often. Between work, house and family, I usually read in short gasps these days. When I do read, I often find myself reaching for the kinds of things you read when your attention is frayed — blog posts, Twitter links, short articles. Nothing too taxing. The hard, long-form stuff gets pushed into my Instapaper account for later. Later never comes.
I am reading Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, a 900+ page wrist-bender of a book. This is the kind of book the Kindle was made for – light weight, easy page turning, no book mark to misplace.
Still, as I was reading, a part of my mind was busy wondering what my daughter thinks I am doing when I read the Kindle. I grew up loving books because my parents love reading. My dad read books and newspaper. My mom read magazines. I saw them reading. I saw the book in my dad”s hands. I watched him work his way through the pages. When he finished, the book changed. I could keep track of how fast he read, how quickly he moved through the pages.
My daughter can’t do that. She loves to read, but I wonder if, somehow, the experience of seeing me read on a Kindle or an iPad or an iPhone deprives her of some essential element that seals that love for reading. The outside of the book never changes.
Worse, when reading on the iPad, how does she know I am reading a book and not watching a video or playing a game or surfing the web?
It comes down to gestures and demeanor, I suppose. The act of reading is essentially a meditative act. The outward signs of the internal activity are steady, intent focus. I’m sure she can tell the difference from when I am reading and when I am doing something else. I wonder if seeing me read on a multipurpose device, like the iPad, diminishes for her that sacred sense I picked up watching my dad read. Or, if there is a sacred sense, if the positive feelings around that act will transfer to the device in general more than to the hidden object of my actual attention.
It is a bit maddening to consider.
I don’t worry so much about my daughter. She already loves books, both paper and virtual. I read in both formats often, so she knows books as objects are important to me. Still, I wonder in how many households will the love of reading become confused or conflated with the love of a specific device. In other words, will the tablet or eReader become fetishized in the same way that books are fetishized?
I had a terrific morning reading last Saturday. I read for a few hours, then played with my daughter, then read some more. Back and forth. Several times, she asked if I was ready to play.
“Not now. Daddy’s reading.” These aren’t words I say very often. Maybe I should say them more often. They are significant words which I think she will remember.
No worries. She didn’t feel neglected. “Okay,” she told me. “I’ll just grab a book and we can read together in our minds.” This was her way of saying we could each read our own books together in silence. I do believe this remains one of the main joys of human experience — the feeling that comes from sitting together in silence, enjoying one another’s company while swallowed up in the delicious isolation of your own books. It is a part of what makes libraries so comforting.
We spent the best part of our Saturday morning this way, she and I. I was reading my Kindle. She was reading a print book. We were reading together in our minds. I’m pretty sure everything is going to be okay.
There is, I think, a better version of me, standing somewhere slightly out of sight. He is a little more creative, a little more active and a little more focused than I am. He wakes up 30 minutes earlier than I do so he can have time to read and reflect before he starts his day. He runs at least three times each week. He meditates. He writes everyday and always finishes what he starts, even if it isn’t always satisfying in the way he has expected.
He prioritizes well and focuses intently on the matter at hand so he can get things done.
He is 20 pounds lighter but he is isn’t vain and never gloats.
I glimpse this person from time to time. You may have seen him yourself on occasion. He is hard to pin down. He enjoys the attention that comes from standing just behind the corner. He craves the adoration that comes from not being in the room.
He is elusive. He is skittish. I have never reached him directly. I have never meet his immediate gaze.
Still, I have a plan for catching him. I will keep myself moving. I will keep him distracted by practicing those things he does so well.
I am creative. I will practice being a little more creative.
I am active. I will practice being a little more active.
I am focused. I will practice on directing my focus more quickly where it belongs.
He isn’t so special. The ingredients of his genius are within my reach. I just need to continue working with the pieces. I need to keep moving. He will, at some point, make a mistake. He will hesitate or stumble the wrong way around a corner. At that moment, he and I will be standing in the very same room. We will see each other as we are – directly with no concealment.
I will introduce myself though he already knows me so well.
I will seem different to him. Better. Stronger. More focused.
He will seem different to me. Specific. Attainable. Nothing special.
I finally understand. The most beautiful, brilliant stories are not made from words. They are made from hours and hours of someone sitting in a chair, not yielding to the hundred different distractions that come along. These stories are a choice made over and over and over again. Sit in the chair. Put words together. Fasten them with hours and hours of patient attention.
Do this every day. Every chance you get. When you consider that you might not do this today, do it anyway.
I get it. I finally understand. I’ve been giving the words. I haven’t been giving the hours.
The urge to write arrives at the most inconvenient times. The urge to write often settles on me when there is too much to do at work. When there are already too many unfinished projects and too many dishes to wash and too many clothes to fold. The urge comes when family members are sick, when the child needs my attention, when things are already impossibly complex and there are too many things competing for my focus.
My wife used to write her best poems in math class. She took math three times. She wrote great poems.
Right now, I am stretched too thin. I am pulled in too many directions. I don’t have enough time. I am always tired and feeling exhausted.
And still, in the midst of this, I start writing. I am tired of the usual formula for my unfinished short stories, one character reflecting on a conflict with another character who is somewhere offstage. And so, I turn to face the maelstrom. I do the thing that seems most inconvenient. I begin telling a story that has dozens of characters, two entire worlds and layers upon layers of conflict. My goal is to put as many characters into as many conflicts as quickly as possible and see where this goes.
This isn’t the best time for me to be starting something so ambitious. I have enough work to do already. I can’t seem to help myself. Perhaps it is a perverse flaw in my nature. Maybe it is justhuman nature. Either way, the urge to write comes when it will. Be grateful. Be ready. It is always inconvenient.
Doris Lessing died earlier this week. I can’t offer a proper obituary. I have never read her work. The Golden Notebook is on my list of things to read. And still, I am grateful to her for the gift of this quote, which has been following me around all week:
“Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.”
Her words are finding me at every turn. I find them in my tweets, my blogs and now, endlessly, in my own head. It is that song playing softly in the background, which I cannot get out of my head. It is that familiar, unnamed face I see in the hallways and on the elevators as I go about my day. It is the message inside a hundred thousand fortune cookies. It is, I think, the voice of the universe telling me something subtle and simple and true.
There is something you are meant to do. Do that thing right now. Keep doing that thing until you’ve got it figured out. It won’t get easier. Your life is never going to be simpler or more ideal. You will never feel more inspired. You have everything you need to get started. Anything else you will find along the way.
Another piece of flash fiction. A fragment of something I’ve been working over in my head recently. I am listening to Robert Plant’s “Funny in My Mind (I Believe I’m Fixin’ to Die)”.
***
There are things I want to tell you. Things I need you to know.
I haven’t always been this way. I used to be happy. I used to walk around in the daylight. I used to be around people. I used to smile and laugh and tell jokes. I kissed boys. I drank lemonades. I went to school and church and the grocery store. I listened to music. I watched TV. I read books. I slept in the nighttime and woke, fresh and frisky, in the morning ready to meet the world and answer whatever the day required of me.
That was before the dreaming captured me. That was before I drowned in the tumult of my own feverish imaginings. Before the Long Sleep, I was a girl just like you. I was impetuous, impatient and eager. I was awake and alive and filled with enthusiasm.
And now I am something altogether different. I am caught in perpetual sleep, left to boil in the hot, bitter stew of my dreams.
You will not believe the things I have seen in my dreaming. The places I have been. There is so much I want to tell you. So much possibility just beneath the surface of things.
I can hear stumbling around the house, trying to keep things going – the bills, the dishes, the laundry. I hear you out there taking care of daily business, making sure I eat and drink. The hundred thousand phone calls to doctors. The knocks at the door from concerned neighbors, which are already much less frequent than they used to be.
I can hear you out there, taking care of me. You are a good daughter. Doing the things that need doing because there is no other choice. I hear you stumbling, knocking into things. I hear the cursing, the frustrated sighs. I hear the sharp pinch of anger when you speak to my body. I hear the resignation, the unfairness.
Sometimes, I wonder which of us is trapped in the dreaming. I am lying here and traveling, constantly traveling, but a part of me is always with you, listening to the shuffling sound of your steps. The color has gone out of your life. You are a somnambulist, a sleepwalker, shuffling through your day and I realize you are captured too. You are caught inside a life that is not your own. And you are frantic and frightened and afraid you might never escape.
You are a good daughter. There is so much I want to tell you. I wish you could see the things I see. Such beauty. Exquisite. Sometimes painful. The terrible beauty inside this perpetual dream.
I just want to take a quick moment to say thank you. Last week, Ubiquitous Quotidian had more visits and more new followers than any week since I started this blog in December 2010. I appreciate the visits, the comments and the likes. Each is a kind of affirmation. I am grateful.
I write because I need to. There are so many words trapped inside me, they would spill out over everything else if I didn’t release them somewhere. There are stories in there, entire lives that do not belong to me. I am a poor custodian of these lives and stories. I cannot do them justice. I cannot get them into the light fast enough.
The work of writing is solitary. I fear the isolation of putting words down, setting them aside, letting them slowly accumulate like snowfall over night. I want to get these things born, drag them into the world where they can be seen and can belong to someone besides me.
For me, the blog is an intermediate space. A place to work with ideas in public and hear my own thoughts spoken aloud. There is much about writing that needs to be private, that should not be shared before it is time. I appreciate having a space that we can share, you and I, where can put those other things until it is time.
Ubiquitous. Quotidian. 