Archive: May 2006

I do not like it, for several reasons. First of all, I am very susceptible to motion sickness. Basically, I can get seasick in a bathtub so I’m always very careful to make sure I secure a seat facing forwards whenever I travel by train. (I try to avoid travelling by bus, because buses sway and bounce almost as much as boats and for some reason I can’t read on a bus or in a car without becoming ill, but I can read just fine on a train. Planes make me queasy, too.) Anyway, I was waiting for a train at a tiny rural station in Wales, which I reached by bus, unfortunately, because it was a Sunday and normal train services had been suspended. The train pulled in and I climbed aboard, selecting a seat facing in the same direction in which the train had been travelling. I was settling in, disentangling the cord of my iPod, hoping no one would sit next to me. Then the train pulled out and, to my dismay, started travelling in the opposite direction. (This was apparently one of those tiny rural stations in which the trains go out the same way they come in.) So I was now travelling backwards in the train, wondering if I could manage my nausea for the duration of the 35-minute journey. As I watched the rolling fields and flocks of sheep flee from my window, I realized there’s another reason I hate travelling this way: It feels unnatural to see the landscape receding from instead of rushing towards me.

Obviously, when you are travelling you are travelling to some place, and you want and expect that place to come out to meet you. You want to see your destination prefigured along the way. It could be the first glimpse of a city skyline in the distance, or the first glint of sea through the hills. Wherever you’re going, you are looking forward to a proper reception and part of that reception involves sneak previews of your destination, whether it’s your own front door or some strange new town. That’s part of the pleasure of travelling: enjoying where you are and looking forward to where you’ll be. But you are denied all that when travelling backwards in a train. You never really see where you are; you just see where you’ve been receding in the window. And you never see any prefigurements of where you’ll be; all the anticipation is taking place behind you. Travelling backwards in a train just doesn’t feel right.

The B&B where I was staying was on the banks of the River Wye, and my room looked right out onto the thick, swollen river. It had been raining for days and the river was bloated and brown and moving very fast. Periodically tree branches and other debris were swept past, so you could really see how fast the current was moving. Travelling in a train is like being swept up in the current of a river. Heraclitus wrote one of the best aphorisms about rivers, perhaps even one of the best aphorisms about anything:

One cannot step twice into the same river, for the water in which you first stepped has flowed on.

Travelling backwards in a train means not even being able to step into the same river once, because you only see the landscape after it has passed; you don’t feel the water swirling around your toes, you just see it disappearing downriver. I don’t want to have my back to where I’m going. I want to meet my destination head on. I may never pass this way again, so I want to enjoy the moment and I want to see it coming from afar. You get just one chance to dip your toe in the river; might as well make a splash. Floating backwards with the current would just make me sick.

I love to juggle and have been doing it for about the past 15 years now. It’s a very relaxing activity. Juggling is physically reinvigorating; it’s better than a double espresso when you’re feeling fatigued or experiencing a mid-afternoon dip in energy. And juggling is psychologically bracing; it calms the mind while also making you more alert. Plus, juggling is entertaining, both for the juggler and whatever audience happens to be around. Juggling still has a hint of magic about it, a defiance of gravity that elevates everyone who participates in it. And juggling is environmentally-friendly, contains absolutely no artificial ingredients and causes no harmful side-effects.

My ambition has long been to learn how to juggle five balls. At the moment, I can only juggle three. I’ve consulted various jugglers much more proficient than me who all confirm that juggling five balls is very, very difficult—one said it could take five to seven years to learn—and that you must first learn to juggle four balls. This was discouraging news. When I learned to juggle three balls some fifteen years ago, it took about 15 minutes to get the basics. I could keep the three balls going for just a minute or two, but got the hang of it very quickly and in no time was flipping balls behind my back and doing other kinds of simple tricks. But every time I tried to juggle four or five balls, I was always stumped. It’s just not as easy. To master it takes time.

There’s an obvious reason for this. When you’re juggling three balls, only one ball is in the air at any given time. The other two are in your hands. That means you only have to concentrate on one object in flight. When juggling four balls, two balls are in the air simultaneously; when you’re juggling five balls, three are in flight at the same time. Concentrating on more than one object in flight is very, very difficult. In fact, it’s impossible. If you were to actually follow each ball’s trajectory from the time you released it into the air until the time you caught it again, you would never get anywhere. The reason juggling more than three balls is so difficult is because you have to disperse your attention across a field of possibilities instead of focusing on a single variable.

In his great treatise on military strategy, The Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote:

Opportunities multiply as they are seized.

It’s true. The more assiduously you pursue a possibility, the more possibilities accrue. In juggling, though, as in life, that can be a disconcerting experience. I recently managed to juggle four balls for about 30 seconds. It was exhilarating to keep those four orbs in the air even for that short a period of time. But it was confusing, too. How do you keep track of two things travelling through the air in different directions? And how do you manage to catch them? The truth is, you can’t. Instead, you have to spread your attention out across the space in front of you and let your focus roam like the beam of a searchlight, holding one ball in your sights only long enough to guess where it’s going before moving on to the next. It’s a precarious business. You’re always scrambling to catch up, always adjusting and re-adjusting to new conditions, always afraid you’ll drop a ball. And so much depends on the throw. If you don’t place the ball correctly at the start, you can forget any hope of catching it. You can never rest, either. As soon as one ball is safely landed, you’re throwing another one in the air and trying to anticipate where it will fall. It sounds like the most frantic activity imaginable. But, when you’re inside it, it’s not. That’s one of the paradoxes and joys of juggling: your sense of security ceases as soon as it is seized, but your enjoyment multiplies as your uncertainties increase.

I love to juggle and have been doing it for about the past 15 years now. It’s a very relaxing activity. Juggling is physically reinvigorating; it’s better than a double espresso when you’re feeling fatigued or experiencing a mid-afternoon dip in energy. And juggling is psychologically bracing; it calms the mind while also making you more alert. Plus, juggling is entertaining, both for the juggler and whatever audience happens to be around. Juggling still has a hint of magic about it, a defiance of gravity that elevates everyone who participates in it. And juggling is environmentally-friendly, contains absolutely no artificial ingredients and causes no harmful side-effects.

My ambition has long been to learn how to juggle five balls. At the moment, I can only juggle three. I’ve consulted various jugglers much more proficient than me who all confirm that juggling five balls is very, very difficult—one said it could take five to seven years to learn—and that you must first learn to juggle four balls. This was discouraging news. When I learned to juggle three balls some fifteen years ago, it took about 15 minutes to get the basics. I could keep the three balls going for just a minute or two, but got the hang of it very quickly and in no time was flipping balls behind my back and doing other kinds of simple tricks. But every time I tried to juggle four or five balls, I was always stumped. It’s just not as easy. To master it takes time.There’s an obvious reason for this. When you’re juggling three balls, only one ball is in the air at any given time. The other two are in your hands. That means you only have to concentrate on one object in flight. When juggling four balls, two balls are in the air simultaneously; when you’re juggling five balls, three are in flight at the same time. Concentrating on more than one object in flight is very, very difficult. In fact, it’s impossible. If you were to actually follow each ball’s trajectory from the time you released it into the air until the time you caught it again, you would never get anywhere. The reason juggling more than three balls is so difficult is because you have to disperse your attention across a field of possibilities instead of focusing on a single variable.In his great treatise on military strategy, The Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote:

Opportunities multiply as they are seized.

It’s true. The more assiduously you pursue a possibility, the more possibilities accrue. In juggling, though, as in life, that can be a disconcerting experience. I recently managed to juggle four balls for about 30 seconds. It was exhilarating to keep those four orbs in the air even for that short a period of time. But it was confusing, too. How do you keep track of two things travelling through the air in different directions? And how do you manage to catch them? The truth is, you can’t. Instead, you have to spread your attention out across the space in front of you and let your focus roam like the beam of a searchlight, holding one ball in your sights only long enough to guess where it’s going before moving on to the next. It’s a precarious business. You’re always scrambling to catch up, always adjusting and re-adjusting to new conditions, always afraid you’ll drop a ball. And so much depends on the throw. If you don’t place the ball correctly at the start, you can forget any hope of catching it. You can never rest, either. As soon as one ball is safely landed, you’re throwing another one in the air and trying to anticipate where it will fall. It sounds like the most frantic activity imaginable. But, when you’re inside it, it’s not. That’s one of the paradoxes and joys of juggling: your sense of security ceases as soon as it is seized, but your enjoyment multiplies as your uncertainties increase.

“Can I say ‘annoying’?” That’s the question my daughter has been asking me of late, as she explores the boundaries of the new vocabulary she is learning. “Yes, you can say ‘annoying,'” I reply. “Can I say ‘shut up’?” she asks. “No, you can’t say ‘shut up.'” “And I can’t say ‘shit’,” she states matter-of-factly. That’s right, she already knows she can’t say ‘shit’ but she still gets a tremendous kick from just quickly confirming that fact with me because to do so, of course, means getting to say ‘shit’ all over again without fear of punishment. It’s like the joke my son told me the other day, warning me ahead of time that it contained a curse: A 6-year-old boy was scolded by his parents for still talking like a baby. ‘Why don’t you use more grown-up words,’ they said. So the next day, when he got home from school, his parents asked him what he had done in class and he said: ‘We read a book called Winnie the Shit.’

Words have an awesome power, and there’s no clearer example of that than when children deploy new vocabulary to see what effect their words have on the world. My daughter, for example, wields the word ‘annoying’ all the time now, using it to describe anything and everything that elicits her displeasure. My son, who’s eight, enjoys using mild curse words in safe contexts, like in a joke. He hears other kids using them for real in the schoolyard and can see the mixture of shock and admiration their use evokes in other children. My kids are learning that words are not just airy nothings; they have a very real and dramatic impact on the world—they can make other people laugh or cry, they can help get you what you want, they can get you into or out of a lot of trouble, too.

Adults are usually unconscious of the latent power of language, but you can feel it in full force again when learning a foreign tongue. One of Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s best aphorisms is:

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

I felt my linguistic limits extended when I learned Dutch about 17 years ago. Each language has words in it that don’t exist in any other tongue, and one of the greatest joys of speaking another language is stretching your mind to encompass this new vocabulary. Gezellig is a word like that in Dutch. It has so many nuanced meanings that it’s impossible to find a simple English equivalent. Indeed, there is no single English equivalent since gezellig is a word that expresses a distinctly Dutch state of mind. It means different things in different circumstances. An evening with friends can be gezellig, meaning friendly and intimate and fun. But inanimate objects can also be gezellig, like a room with a roaring fire in the fireplace, meaning cozy and inviting. But an individual can also be gezellig, meaning that he or she is warm and welcoming. It was not until I learned Dutch, and came to understand the meaning of this word, that I was able to recognize the quality of gezelligheid when I saw it. This not only added a new word to my vocabulary; it added a new experience to my world.

And so it is with my daughter. At almost four years old, she is intrepidly exploring the world of words, experimenting with language to see which words cause happiness, which words cause pain, which words make people laugh, which words make them cry. By trying out words like ‘annoying’, ‘shut up’ and ‘shit’ on me, she’s testing to see if they cause the desired effect. This is something we never stop doing. What American poet John Hall Wheelock wrote is just as true of adults as it is for children:

A child, when it begins to speak, learns what it is that it knows.

I can see why President Bush likes it. Although, technically speaking, he’s into “clearing brush”. And he uses power tools, which disqualifies him. Chopping wood is one of those primal activities that directly meets a basic need, and consequently provides a primal kind of satisfaction. These days we usually meet our basic needs at one or two removes. Few of us grow or kill our own food anymore, for example, even fewer make our own clothes, and fewer still build our own houses. But almost anyone can chop wood, thereby providing fuel to keep yourself and your family warm. It’s an ancient chore, provided you use and ax and not a chain saw, and is very conducive to contemplating the bare necessities of life.

The first thing you need, of course, is an ax. I had only an old one, the wooden shaft worn smooth with age and the head flecked with rust. This ax clearly hadn’t been cleaving any timber recently. I ran my thumb along the edge and it felt about as sharp as a butter knife. This just wouldn’t cut it, I thought. I don’t chop wood every day, so initially thought I should have the ax sharpened first. But a friend, with more experience than I, took a few whacks to show me that it would do just fine. With a few fell swoops, the logs split open with a crack. Often the best preparation for a task is just doing it. Use sharpens a dull ax. So I launched into the logs with gusto, letting the chips fall where they may.After a while, chopping wood becomes a meditation. You’re still paying attention to what you’re doing (you’d better be anyway), but your mind also wanders into a placid place where all kinds of thoughts bob up, bounce around on the surface for a bit and then vanish. It’s satisfying on both a physical and psychological level. I enjoyed inflicting violence on those logs, hoisting the ax above my head and bringing it down with as much force as I could muster. And it was very rewarding to hear the logs burst open with a sound like a gunshot. My enjoyment was enhanced by knowing it was all for a good cause (i.e. building a fire that night). I also enjoyed following where my mind roamed. It’s sort of like walking a dog: you keep the dog on the leash, restricting its movements, until you get to the park, where you let him loose to run wherever he wants to. It was a pleasure to let my mind off the leash while chopping, and to follow it at a leisurely place. I thought of the aphorisms of Jesus, the ones found in the gnostic gospels rather than the New Testament, and one aphorism in particular that has always haunted me:

I am the light that is over all things. I am all: From me all has come forth, and to me all has reached. Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.

When I was finished, I was sweaty, tired and satisfied. Then I started neatly piling the logs up in a stack. You’re not finished anything until you’ve cleaned up the mess you’ve made. Seeing the logs all stacked up against the wall gave me the same kind of satisfaction as contemplating a well-stocked wine cellar: the bottles look very attractive in their tidy rows, but you know you’re going to have even more fun drinking them. We now had more than enough logs to keep us warm for a good long while. It’s probably the only time I was really happy to see all my hard work go up in smoke.

There must have been about a dozen of them, each making its own slow, stately progress across the sidewalk, antennae probing the air in slow motion, pinwheeling like the limbs of a cartoon character that’s just walked off the edge of a cliff, waving around like the tentacles of a sea anemone. They formed an elegant regatta; instead of sails, each hoisted its own carapace, navigating this dangerous crossing by touch. They were difficult to see, though, their shells blending so completely into the color of the concrete. I thought of the Allied convoys that ferried supplies across the Atlantic during World War II. Of the scores of ships that set out, up to half were routinely picked off by German U-boats. How many snails would make it to their destination: the brick wall on the other side of the sidewalk, behind which lay a neighbor’s front garden and safety?

The sidewalks are thick with snails this time of year, but I had never before seen so many travelling in a pack or a herd or a bevvy, or whatever the technical term is for a group of snails. Everything about them reminded me of ships. They bobbed up and down slightly as they sailed along, their bodies moving in a wave-like motion, the slimy foot on which they glide rippling like the surface of the ocean. And they even left a wake, thin strips of mucous just like the ones I see glistening in our garden every morning, tracing the paths where the snails have been. They were so calm, so determined, so oblivious to the danger they were in from pedestrians. I thought of putting up a road sign, CAUTION: SNAIL CROSSING. By the way, May 24 is National Escargot Day.About 45 minutes later, I was coming back the same way and stopped to see how the snails had fared. Of the 12 that originally set out, eight made it to the garden. I saw one still making the final ascent of the brick wall on the other side of the sidewalk. I counted four oily, snot-like clumps and four crushed shells. Not a bad success rate, I thought, for such a perilous trek.

I don’t know any aphorisms about snails, but I do know a few aphorisms about persistence, and that’s what impressed me most about these snails. They risked everything to get to the other side. To me, their progress looked plodding. But for the snails it was a race against death. And they took their time, taking the perils and the possibilities in stride. Like Baltasar Gracián, a 17th century Spanish Jesuit monk, said:

Be slow and sure. Things are done quickly enough if done well. If just quickly done they can be quickly undone. To last an eternity requires an eternity of preparation.