magic in the face of trouble

"St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised By Wolves", Karen Russell, 2006

It's funny, oh me, I'm jealous of this author and it's a bit hard for me to write about it. The term (or movement) magic realism has come up a lot with this collection of short stories, "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised By Wolves", and the combination of the fantastical with the fantastically lonely, ostracized, obscured soul brings together in an unusual and powerful way these full-bodied tales. Imagine that the author was my age when she did it! Karen Russell, still not 30, pretty, published, hmmm. I hate her! And I can't wait for she does next.

The protagonists here, whether they are the pretty/slutty girl's best friend (Big Red in "City of Shells"), the wolf-raised girl struggling to adapt to a harsh new culture (Claudette in the title story), or the old man on his isolated boat post-retirement (Sawtooth in "Out to Sea"), they all have one thing in common: they would never be protagonists in real life. What I mean by that is, they are not the spectacular lead-roles, and even in their own 360 degree reality they are unimportant, but Karen Russell shifts the focus to them. Tells their story.

Then it is that these forgotten-abouts are either engulfed in the fantastical already, or about to be. Set in an island dwelling, Sawtooth is part of a retirement community of refurbished boats and lives out at sea, the isolation and loneliness of aging and being cast away a definite poignant point. The concept of "ZZ's Sleep -Away Camp for Disordered Dreamers" is immaculate in its conception, seemingly well-researched on the sleep disorders of the day, and terrifying as the dreamers investigate an unexpected sheep murderer (and how apt is that!). Then the title story, which is the most powerful statement on the tyranny of conformity, which shows the progressions made at this home for girls raised by wolves, where they turn these girls against even their sister, breaking down their bonds and beating their minds into their image of what it is to be human. As if Karen Russell, or anyone, had to create such establishments, but indeed the creativity in her use of magical elements keeps these from being simple, redundant, disposable commentary, and raise the tension in the process of explaining our combustible spirits.

Over the past few weeks I bought this book, read a bunch of it shortly after buying it, left it locked in school for a week, forgot to bring it home, read it and read it, stopped, forgot about some of the earlier stories, finished it, browsed back, certainly not how I like to do it. But through all that, the writing of Karen Russell and her "Girls Raised By Wolves" has been memorable, as her work is sensitive whilst avoiding gross sentimentality, and instructive on the heart of the outsider without showing them pity. Brilliant! (Guinness guys crack bottles, drink up).

To go beyond your place in society

"Fear and Trembling", Soren Kierkegaard, 1843

Introduction

FEAR AND TREMBLING

Preface
Attunement
Speech in Praise of Abraham


PROBLEMATA

Preamble from the Heart
Problema I
Problema II
Problema III <----I am at the beginning of this as I start writing

Epilogue



OK, that's our map to one of my most difficult philosophical undertakings in a while. What people cull from philosophy, however, is rarely what the professor of philosophy culls, as they have been programmed by countless user guides to convey a philosophical text in its primary purpose (ie whatever popular notion of the time relative to philosophical trends at the time dictate). I suppose this is only the complicated way of me saying that what Kierkegaard puts forth here is understood in my own unique standing as: A) An Atheist and B) An Existentialist, and as he speaks of the paradox of going beyond Hegel's universal ethics to movements of faith toward the absurd, I have my place in the world, 2008, to consider. So consider them I will, before I even go to Problema III because I must start figuring out now where it is I stand with Kierkegaard and his analysis of the Binding of Isaac episode of Genesis 22.

I have attempted to put aside my atheism for the sake of understanding the philosophy underpinning the theology of Kierkegaard's writing. He is, after all, talking about what so many secularlists have talked about, the going beyond the universal, or that which is good for the whole. He uses Abraham as an example to show that, through his immediate action, that of sacrificing his son outside the bound of duty (duty to the State it sounds), would be considered ethically reprehensible, it is justified only by his faith, which answers the first Problema which is "Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical?" To me, this points out to a higher calling beyond that of the society, to the origin of mankind, and since I don't believe in God, I find the origin to be within us, or that we are all God, and no doubt omnipotent. Problema II is, "Is there an absolute duty to God?" Kierkegaard says yes, and so do I, for the same and different reasons. Our common ground can be boiled in this sentence: "The paradox of faith is this, that there is an interiority that is incommensurable with the exterior, an interior which, it should be stressed is...a new interiority", meaning, as opposed to the ethical view of life that demands minimizing the interior and giving it an expression only in the exterior, the interior takes new precedence,"the single individual is higher than the universal", "the individual relates himself absolutely, as the single individual, to the absolute." With all the noise of the world, the temptations, the deadliest of sins, it's impossible for me to fathom this type of existence as it is Kierkegaard who can only describe his observances through his narrator Johannes de silentio, and never use himself as an example. Nevertheless, it is a sort of pure being uncovered in meditation, and he is correct in saying it cannot be mediated (I only tell you he is correct because I have experienced self-discovery at isolated times in as close to perfect form as I can fathom through journals and aloneness and readings). I find the absolute duty to God to mean the absolute duty to the Unabated Self inside us, to go beyond the ethical infinite resignation (being resolved to the inevitability of self) and subscribe to the absurd (the full realization, then perfection, of self). The former to me is a group of downtrodden, depressed pedestrians in need of serious in-patient attention. But we all belong to them at some point if we are to accept the inevitable horrors of ourselves. Still, it is then to act with faith toward the absurd--that we can be who we are and be perfect in this lifetime--that can make us dramatically wonderful. This is the most meaningful analogy I can draw to Abraham's movement toward the absurd--that he can sacrifice his son (We can be attuned to the horrors we are and meditate on that level...) and still enjoy his presence again in his lifetime (...And still be perfect in our lifetime). When I say perfect, I mean maximally healthful in all circumstances, Emotionally and Physically, living as perfect individuals and perfect members of society. We can either resolve to the impossibility and shiver for the forever silence and non-being of death (Knight of Infinite Resignation), or we can resolve ourselves to the impossibility and go beyond and move toward the absurd, to the notion that we can be perfect in all senses (Knight of Faith). And like Kierkegaard, I believe I have just said the same thing in three different ways.

I will continue my ramble after I finish the third Problema and the Epilogue.

Or is it like the Buddhist seeking Nirvana, though meditating on the harsh desolation of being. Through this meditation of the harsh desolation of being (the infinite resignation), he goes through another movement toward the attainment of Nirvana. Is this what we're getting at? Or am I hatching a new egg, or, at least, an egg hatched elsewhere in another Atheistic place?

Anyhow, Problem Tres, the last, "Was it ethically defensible of Abraham to conceal his purpose from Sarah, from Eleazar, from Isaac?" It was defensible in his faith, yes. Had he pronounced his purpose to them, they would not have understood anyhow, he would have been speaking gibberish. To say, I am now going to sacrifice Isaac as a trial to God, would have proven incomprehensible to the others. His undertaking would be to express faith, and that, as opposed to expressing the universal (as Socrates did at his death, which made his death all the more profound as an ultimate tragic hero), and Kierkegaard's whole purpose is to show how verbally expressing faith is not possible because it is beyond the universal (which is compelling when meditated upon through silence, or as I'm doing, through writing).

In short, we cannot speak to others what is only comprehensible within ourselves (faith, in this case). We will never come across as we would like.

As a sidenote, the parallel I drew from my own philosophy to Kierkegaard's could be fallible in some way. I wrote it in a stream, as I always do, because I find it typically futile to express one's deep reaction to life in form of a well-conceived, contrived essay. It's an incompatible format. Usually it's not verbally expressible. But I can stick by the premise: That it is one level of self-realization to reconcile ourselves to the horrors that lie deep inside each of us, but to go beyond self-realization to the absurd, that we know our nature is horrible but that we will be perfect in life is the absurd faith worthy of our being.

So what have we learned children?

Kierkegaard's philosophy asserts that faith is the highest of human passion.

Kierkegaard also asserts that faith is the go-beyond of ethical, therefore universal, behavior.

Kierkegaard sees that faith turns ethics inside-out in that ethics requires the giving up of the internal for an expression external, whereas faith shows the internal is immeasurably more important than the external (and is thus, as we see in Problema III not expressed intelligibly by the one who possesses the most impassioned of faith).

Kierkegaard is attacking Hegel's form of ethics. You can infer that he finds Hegel's ethics and their insistence of Society before Individual as oppressive, and as his legacy runs, and with the example of Abraham who is the father of faith, that we as individuals can have an extraordinary mission in life.

Kierkegaard uses Abraham as the ultimate figure of faith, but cannot understand him, and is modest in this approach. Instead he chooses admiration, shows him as someone much more worthy of admiration than an Agamemnon or some other tragic hero who gets to exult his pain in the drama of his actions and words, whereas Abraham's relationship to pain and anxiety are transcended by his belief in the absurd, that he will have his son back.

Kierkegaard's prose fly by more quickly and assertively than he receives credit for. His examples fly, he gets to the heart of his point through his examples, and whilst this is a tricky read worthy of revisits, he does not attempt to obscure his point by showy verbal tricks and is, indeed, and with no remorse or hesitation, passionate about his subject matter, and even if I went through some of his book not comprehending (and trust me, I did, though I assert that, through the preceding summary that I understand his main purpose and points), it was a joy to read someone so concerned with the essence of being human and what dictates human action, and the hierarchy in such actions.

Kierkegaard warrants further reading.

And that's where I'll end. I end now.

"The genuine tragic hero sacrifices himself and everything he has for the universal; his action, every emotion in him belongs to the universal, he is revealed, and in this disclosure he is the beloved son of ethics. This does not apply to Abraham. He does nothing for the universal and he is concealed."

in the world of nothingness

"The Dharma Bums", Jack Kerouac, 1958

You truly need to quiet your mind for this one, to piece together the wonders of Japhy Ryder (poet Gary Snyder) through the eyes of Raymond Smith (Jack Kerouac himself), to understand in a bit of a Buddhist nothingness not silence not noise not anything. At times, with all swirling in my brain these days--moving, staying in Phoenix, balancing finances, the hard-hit realization of being a full-fledged adult with credit and economy--I had times I felt shamefully noisy. But that's why it's good I hit a more romantic Kerouac with his "Dharma Bums" at this time, to remember the quiet and the joy and the OKness of many things. (Even if he was drunk and trying to get laid a lot of the time--).

Japhy Ryder is to "The Dharma Bums" what Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady) is to "On the Road": the Chosen One Kerouac follows pseudonymed-up for another segment of his life--journey--adventure--learning. This time we go fewer places than "On the Road" before, but the visions of life are more wide-eyed. You can literally taste the coldness of the stream Kerouac sips from as they make their way up Matterhorn Mt., feel the exhilaration as Kerouac realizes you can't fall off of a mountain(!), and then, later, see the clouds swirling below you as the lookout on great Desolation Peak (a place not quite as romanticized in the more devastating "Desolation Angels"). Japhy takes Kerouac through all of this, showing him the purity in the quiet outdoors, steering clear of tourists and haggles, noise and human-inflicted pain. Even in the city they live in shacks and sit on haysacks meditating, doing nothing and everything. We even run into Allen Ginsberg who Kerouac portrays more crabby then ever due to his conflict with Kerouac's insane passion toward his BhuddiChristian beliefs (not hard to see why this was the Kerouac book he was the harshest towards, though honestly, I take him for a more objective intellectual then that). In turn for Japhy's guidance, Kerouac immortalizes him in his familiar rollicking prose, edited I'm sure with more tight punctuation, let loose enough to let the rhythm and spontaneity breathe through and sound authentically Kerouac. He is far warmer and more idolizing of him than the, at time caricature-like, Neal Cassady.

In the end, you see Kerouac as the mountain lookout, following in the shoes of this young man, Japhy, trying to understand his world, see how it fits him. In later books, we'd find out it didn't quite go as dreamily as he had wished or even chronicled in the last 30 or so pages of this book, but here, for the sake of this work of fiction, it was a blessing and a soothing peace gathering around this Raymond Smith, this man searching for something beyond the booze and women that plagued his life so, past the insane drama his so often inflicted upon himself and immediately returned to after his trip down the mountain. In many ways, perhaps, this was the silent climax in the hectic life of the fictional Sal Paradise, Raymond Smith, Jack Duluoz, as the one lurking in the shadows of the Duluoz Legend wanted us to see. Maybe. Or maybe that's my romantic interpretation of it all. Either way, I leave with a quote to fall with the popular interpretation of Kerouac as a brilliant chronicler of post-World War Americans searching for a place to be, with

"I recalled with a twinge of sadness how Japhy was always so dead serious about food, and I wished the whole world was dead serious about food instead of silly rockets and machines and explosives using everybody's food money to blow their heads off anyway."




PS: I've now read three of the 17 (as I count'um right now) "Graphic Classics" from penguin. This, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Candide, and Fairy Tales. I love the feel and the covers and all of the contextual intros and notes!

upside-down sadness imagery

"Fairy Tales", Hans Christian Andersen, stories between 1845 and 1872

I've had a hard time getting to writing this, primarily due to the fact I rarely wrote about Andersen's book while I was reading. Usually I'll take down a reaction, write something to keep my mind active and enhance the reading experience, but for these, I just read and laid back and enjoyed. These are dark, imaginative tales full of the most blessedly amazingly visual imagery you can come across, which respect children and provide intrigue for adults. And they are truly to be taken in, pondered, and enjoyed, and my own personal writing about them comes very secondary to digesting and feeling them.

In the Penguin Deluxe Classic, or the Graphic Classic, there is an extensive introduction plus a bevy of notes in the back which put these fairy tales into perfect context. Even if you're familiar with "The Ugly Duckling" or "Thumbelina" via other interpretations, movies, etc., this is the ultimate way to experience them -- from the author who perfected them with commentary that lets you understand why he went through the trouble. From his closeted homosexuality to his intense longing and self-mocking ways, you can feel the humanbeing in Andersen whereas before he's always been some mystical character full of magic and decidedly unreal.

The overriding themes of the collection tend to be alienation, the power of love (or art), and the appreciation for what one has. The imagery that accompanies these things, such as the mermaid of "The Little Mermaid" turning into suds on the water when she dies without her love the prince, or the tine soldier and ballerina being cooked and killed in the over of "The Steadfast Tin Soldier" (he melting into a heart, her going to ash), show the true anguish Andersen wished to express and drove his themes home and, at the same time, capture any reader of the past 150 years. Still, nothing beats the image of the ugly duckling alone, in wintertime, swimming circles in a pond that's slowly freezing around him, the hole he's swimming in getting smaller and smaller until he is frozen in it. That vision of loneliness and alienation in the face of unruly hate in the world is a timeless picture of the forever state of humanity.

So here are my five favorites of the collection with a quick word why I liked it so much:

"The Ice Maiden": The best of the longer writings, the wintry images along with the concept of death coming from under and grabbing you with no regard to your current life situation even vaguely hints at the absurdity of life through all the romantic visions and distinct chivalry.

"The Ugly Duckling": Who'd want to be a regular duck and have it that easy, when one can find out (s)he's a swan? Dumb mainstream society doesn't know what it has in us.

"The Little Mermaid": The mute girls can't express her love to the only one she wants, the power in the anguish here is unparalleled throughout the story and easily relateable to a sucker like me.

"The Fir Tree": Because we all get chopped up and burnt-up before we know it. Better enjoy our forest while we can!

"The Travelling Companion": For the love of Karma, treat people well! Shows Andersen's anguish toward the royal man he loved so but could not truly have, but that's not exactly why I love it. It's the queen getting beaten, the princess getting trounced! Wenches, pretentious wenches, take that! And all the death imagery is harrowing wonderful. The men who failed to win the princess hanging from trees all around.

And if I can have a bonus sixth, "The Match Girl" pays homage to the lonely world of the child, with the most sublime passing over after a life of poverty and abuse, into the arms of the only one who genuinely cared for her, her grandmother.

It was a delight to read all of these stories, and it will be a delight to revisit them over and over as we have been doing for over a century.

"It doesn't matter if you're born in a duck yard when you've been lying inside a swan's egg."