Sabbatical

Sorry fellow bloggers, I'll be out of town until early January, in a place with no internet. So no new posts until then. In the meantime though, try solving the first 12 levels of the Infinity Riddle at my website www.nosmalltalk.org!

Rich

On Strange Occurrences

One of the more peculiar things I’ve run into in my time begins with an Asian man showing up for one of my dinghy sailing lessons wearing complete formal attire. He arrived at the lesson in full yet awkward strides, speaking almost no English whatsoever, vocally out of focus in the city. Now, a well-dressed Asian man fits in almost anyplace in the world (in the aesthetic sense, if nothing more) yet here in my sailing lesson was where I had least expected one to show up. One certainly has no need for dress shoes and black socks in a boat that is more likely than not to tip over when you step inside. Furthermore, I know he wasn’t going for the aesthetic sense of his being there because the lighting wasn’t right, something any aesthete would have recognized immediately. I never did figure out exactly why he wore that suit to my sailing lesson. It could have been culture clash, I suppose, or maybe just downright silliness. In retrospect, though, I see that he probably just wanted to be treated with a little bit more respect. Maybe people were rude to him when he wore his flower shorts and baseball cap, maybe he could only command attention while wearing a tie.

The next person to show up was Spanish, or Guatemalan perhaps. A sailing instructor’s worst nightmare is when none of his students speak English, and so far I was two for two. Not only could they not understand me, however, they couldn’t understand each other either! Therefore, they impressed me when they decided to share a quarter-operated locker in which to store their things. (I doubt anyone at the big UN gatherings is this nice. I can’t imagine Russia ever sharing a locker with France, for instance.) This brings us to that peculiar occurrence I hinted at previously. I proceeded to observe two grown men who didn’t speak any of the same languages spending fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to work an American quarter-operated locker with very poorly written English instructions. Peculiar is really the only word for it.

Watching the two communicate with each other fascinated me. Two human creatures, brimming with unsurmountable intelligence, yet so linguistically isolated from one another, attempting to unlock this simple metal door. They first tried speaking in their native languages, which failed horribly, Spanish not remotely resembling Chinese. They then resorted to a combination of crippled English and lots of pointing for a little while, which helped somewhat, but the locker ended up eating a few of their quarters in the process. After that each of them in turn looked up at me for assistance, but I was left speechless. Here struggled two adults who probably could have educated me thoroughly on microscopic computational processing systems or gauge theory, and they were looking to me, an eighteen-year-old, for advice on how to open a quarter-operated locker.

Although I could argue much for the importance of always being aware of the present moment and exactly what is happening, it’s sometimes best to not completely analyze what’s going on just so that you don’t start laughing at exactly the wrong moment. And somehow watching two adults ten years my elder puzzle over a quarter-operated locker seemed exactly the wrong moment to laugh, especially when they were both staring at me and one of them was wearing a suit. When something like that occurs, it becomes necessary to take all the facts and store them away in your memory for later comic relief, and then try to only see the situation of the moment from a serious point of view. Of course, no matter how much I attempted to retain my poker face, I could not provide much help to two people who didn’t speak my language without at least giggling, and so I let them be and let the nature of human creativity run its course.

In my opinion, the one creepy thing that is alright to do is to look deep into someone’s eyes for a couple seconds and then try to imagine exactly what that person is thinking. I bet that the characters in my story, when trying to communicate with each other, experienced a feeling immensely similar to that which the earliest of humankind experienced when developing the first spoken languages. How frustrating to have an idea and be unable to express it! These two foreigners were reenacting the initial motions of humankind towards solving complex problems, and there I was witnessing it. How peculiar indeed!

People tend to understand one another best when in close proximity. Two foreigners to each other have at least half a chance of solving a problem when in the same room and given the opportunity to interact; however, they would have almost null chance were they solely able to communicate over the telephone, for example. It also helps when neither of the parties involved in the problem-solving situation will admit defeat; it forces them to think of some possible solution, no matter how long it takes, for who would give up so easily upon the task of opening the door to a coin-operated locker? And so after much trial and error; much isolation of variables such as when to insert the quarter, when to open the door, when to turn the key; many futile hand gestures and signals to each other; yet effectively after having not spoken a word to each other, the pair eventually opened the locker door, and a wave of relief and triumph passed over the three of us.

What I’ve noted from this situation is how remarkably the scenario seemed to represent every human conquest towards progress, every success, every giant step, every breath of satisfaction. The journey of two complete strangers unlocking the secrets that differentiated them and the secrets that made them similar, the agreement upon a goal, the blatant yet irrational first attempts to open the locker door, the analysis of the situation, the regard for the barriers of understanding and perception, the careful experimentation, the methodology of the techniques employed, it seems so eerily brilliant how such a simple and peculiar situation can represent in a matter of minutes the complete evolution of human creativity and logical problem-solving in our world. And so, I’ve realized that as soon as you start looking in just the right way, everything in the world suddenly becomes symbolic and aesthetic, and often the most peculiar occurrences take on the most oddly profound meanings.

On Scrabble

This one's a little off topic, I suppose, but what isn't these days?

Life is a lot like Scrabble. Or, if you like, Scrabble is a lot like life. I like the second one better, actually, because it's more practical, kind of like a guide to Scrabble.

In Scrabble, you have no choice over what letters you draw, only over what you do with them. Sometimes you get a bad rack, and it's tempting to just skip your turn and exchange all your letters. Every once in a while, this is the best choice, as all Scrabble masters might tell you. But usually, you just have to make the most of which letters you have. Having all vowels can seem like the worst, but in order to come out ahead in the end, you just have to look at the board a little differently. You might have to change your "playing high-scoring words" strategy to a "play vowel-dumping words" strategy, as frustratingly difficult as this may be. On the other hand, you may be stuck with a Q and no U. In this case, the idea is to realize that "quiz," "quizzical," and "quizzes," are not the only Q words in the dictionary. If you instead look at every possible word you can make with that horrible Q, you'll realize that "qi," "qat," "qaid," and "suq," among others, all somehow exist as well, and that sometimes you may have that special opportunity of playing "qi" on a triple-letter-score, perhaps even on a triple-word, and that furthermore, "qi" in the right spot may score much better than would have "quiz" anywhere else on the board.

This brings us to our next point. The tiles that are in your rack, the assets that you have, don't mean a thing unless you match them up with tiles on the board, the culmination of turn after turn of complex, intertwined human creation. A good word is only good if it fits in with the rest of the game. Sometimes it fits perfectly, sometimes it never fits, but most of the time, you just have to wait for the right time to play it! But be aware, if your heart is set on one word, one idea, one brilliant thought, and the opportunity for its wonderful debut never arises, you may have wasted your time. The antidote to this curse is to let that one word, one idea, one brilliant thought change as the board changes. It doesn't have to be much, and it usually just involves something as simple as changing the tense of a verb. But you've got to be flexible.

Our third point is about brute force. You can only make up so many words in Scrabble before you get challenged. You've got to spend some time reading the Scrabble dictionary. There is no alternative. You've got to be creative in Scrabble, but you've also got to accept that not everything you create is going to up and harmonize with the rest of the board. Neither Scrabble nor life allows every individual possible combination of the letters you have, but there are still a hell of a lot of the words in the dictionary. This doesn't amount to solely memorizing first-glance impressive words either, like "epizeuxis" and "zeugma." These are great words to know, and if the occasion ever arises, can yield mountains of points, but frankly, the chances that you will get an opportunity to play one of these words in a game are incredibly minimal. The most important words to learn are the short ones, the two-letter ones, the little quirks and mannerisms and everyday happenings in life. There are 101 two-letter words allowable in Scrabble, as of the 4th edition Scrabble Dictionary, and these are by far the most valuable to take the time to learn. Knowing these words, these simple solutions, and knowing how to use them in combination with each other during each play most importantly opens up new directions in which to play every one of your oh so precious words. Instead of playing each word perpendicularly to the rest of the board, you can begin to play them parallel to, alongside other words, and make them even more valuable. Unfortunately, when people look at life or at a game of Scrabble, they tend to see only the big words, the impressive ones, the bingos. And, as impressive and wonderful and useful as these golden words may be, without an underlying understanding of how to use the two-letter words, how to make use of the little things in life, how to tie the big words together; the eight-letter and nine-letter words, the golden philosophies and deepest truths, simply aren't even worth it.

Those are the most important tenets of Scrabble that relate to life, although there are many more, and with proper time and dedication, one could really investigate and find meaning in every single letter, every vowel combination, and every bonus square. However, that could take pages, volumes in fact, and I'd rather not waste paper on this blog. If you really want a happy note to end on, I suppose you could even say, "in the end, it's not your score that matters, it's the fact that you're having fun," but I think that might just be a little too optimistic.

On Art

I remember a day when paintings served the sole purpose of portraying beauty, when art was purely aesthetic, when novels were pages of nice sounding words strung together. Rhyming picture books lined my shelves; they encapsulated everything, appealing to both the eye and the ear. A drawing of Edward the Emu fascinated me much more than Van Gogh’s Starry Night. In television, Bugs Bunny’s wit and goofy animated portrayal kept me much happier than would have a movie like Citizen Kane. The simplicity of children’s art exuded an especially appreciable elegance.

When I was younger, my wee friends and I did not fight over the meaning of Edward the Emu’s expression and we did not joust over the possible societal ramifications of his words. We enjoyed them, they made us smile, they made us feel “warm and fuzzy” at times. Even when I would happen upon a big-people book and make it all the way through, I either enjoyed the story or I didn’t; I never thought twice about the symbolism within and the author’s interpretation of the work. However, as time passed and my superiors squeezed knowledge into my brain, I learned that some people considered literature and art to have deeper, subtler, hidden messages embedded within their texts, not immediately visible to the naked eye. In order to illuminate these hidden messages, they developed the art of analysis, a method of attempting to articulately interpret what is “hidden” within a work of art. Apparently, great works of fiction held secrets that could only be unlocked through careful nitpicking and a keen eye, secrets that, once understood, imbued the work with a much more grandiose existence. In my experience, it seemed that these secrets were supposed to be inherent, that with enough examination, anyone could glean the “true meaning” of nearly any artistic piece. Of course, when studying something like poetry, for example, I also came to understand that as long as I wrote an analysis well enough, most of my teachers would not dock points for an unusual interpretation. I learned in class to state what I thought a poem meant under the pretext of stating what it actually meant.

A question that often arose during an analysis session regarded the importance of an author’s own interpretation of his work. It seemed that the goal during analysis was to try to follow the author’s train of thought and see exactly which symbols and hidden messages the author had hidden for the reader to find. Success in analysis somehow amounted to agreeing with the author’s perspective on the world and understanding the intended message. After all, why would someone writing a book go to all the trouble of hiding a message within its pages if he did not intend his readers to find it. Somehow, it appeared, the author’s own interpretation carried much value. He provided us with a mess of jigsaw pieces and it was simply our task of putting them together to form a picture. But still, was the message actually present in the work, or was it just constructed by interpretation? Was there only one way to put the puzzle pieces together? After all, the author only gave us pieces, never a box to look at.

Because any novel, essay, or poem is just a series of letters and punctuation thrown together in an organized way, a computer can express it as a sequence of ones and zeros, just a long list of binary code, millions upon millions of puzzle pieces. Of course, though a computer can easily translate that code into letters and words again, it is impossible for a computer to detect the “hidden message” within its code; it can put the picture together, but never see it. We can never create any kind of scientific instrument or algorithm able to objectively measure the purpose of a literary or artistic work. Sure, a machine can measure its complexity, the level of vocabulary it used, but no constructed machine could ever “understand” it. Therefore, a specific interpretation cannot possibly be inherent to a piece of art; its meaning cannot possibly be objective. Meaning, symbolism, and the like must be subjective.

I think the idea of meaning being subjective is certainly more romantic than the contrary, and I am rather glad for that. If meaning were objective, we would find ourselves with a finite end to any literary discussion, and though the discussion itself might be of interest, once finished, we’d have nothing left to speak about. In fact, if our goal were to find an objective meaning, we’d be doing no more than simulating the work of a computer, and creativity would lose its purpose. Fortunately, meaning is not objective; it is determined by the interpreter. An interpretation of Slaughterhouse Five completely opposite to Vonnegut’s does not carry any less value than the Vonnegut’s own. The interpretations are simply two different ways to put the jigsaw pieces together, each yielding an equally lovely picture. Though the two pictures may differ in almost every aspect, we do not derive understanding solely from the book’s puzzle pieces. Some of this understanding must come from within us as well, from our own perspective, from our own mind-set. We must determine how to morph a pile of jigsaw pieces into an image. Everyone, of course, looks at the world through at least slightly different lenses, so everyone wields a unique interpretation, a unique image, and none is the superior. Even if the author intends a certain message within his work, that does not at all imply that that is the only message we can identify.

Nothing possesses an objective interpretation or meaning, so it is up to us to supply one. Typically we apply “meaning” to “art,” that is, to paintings, novels, poems, sketches, sculpture, anything created creatively by humankind. However, because it is subjective, artistic understanding can be no more inherent in a human-made work than it in a work of art created naturally. Because the value comes from within our mind-set and perception, no more meaning exists in a Hemingway short story than in a leaf falling from a tree, for example. In fact, one could write equally charming analyses of both.

Natural works of art constantly surround us, from sunrises to snowflakes, from lush valleys to barren mountains. Unfortunately, we often forget that even though nature did not consciously create sunrises or snowflakes, we can still elicit meaning from any object, any occurrence in life. Symbolism and significance are not any more present in works of fiction than in our own lives; we simply tend to spend all of our time looking for meaning in the former, and forget that we can glean just as much meaning from within the latter. Real life is also made up of jigsaw pieces, it just happens that a lot of them are upside down or under the couch.

Because they exist within our own minds, symbolism, connections, subtle relationships, static and dynamic characters, and hidden messages are all right around us all of the time. We just have to start looking for them. The people who realize this most, I think, are non-fiction writers. How non-fiction short stories or autobiographies yielded so much symbolic imagery always bewildered me. I believed that I could not write anything non-fiction remotely as deep as these works simply because my life was not nearly as symbolic, because things didn’t work out so perfectly fittingly all of the time as they did in the famous stories. However, the lives of good non-fiction writers are often not any more organized or planned-out or symbolic than my own life or that of anyone else. Good non-fiction writers just have a knack for knowing where in their lives to look for art.

Hidden messages, significance, and value are all subjective. We can and should supply them to each and every object and occurrence in our lives, for meaning is by no means explicitly confined to art crafted by humans. Deep understandings and interpretations surround us perpetually, and all we have to do is realize that. Of course, we should also realize that sometimes the deepest message of all is to not forget to recognize that most straight-forward loveliness in art and in life, the simple beauty that first makes us smile.