Misinterpreting Others, or What Can Lead Sherlock Astray

In a conversation with a car salesman, he says, referring to both of us, "We're just a couple of golfers here." I have no idea what he's talking about. I dislike golf.  I have only played a few times, and the last time, years ago, was a disastrous outing with my brother and father.  The salesman has meant his comment to bind us together, but instead it annoys me. Later I realize what happened. I was wearing a hat that said Strata.  I had “borrowed" it from my father because I liked the colors and because I like to wear things of my dad's.  I hadn't known that Strata was a golf brand.

We make all kinds of assumptions about one another based, not only on race, gender, age, geography, the usual suspects, but on what people wear, eat, listen to, etc. We believe peoples’ tastes say something about them.  (Nick Hornby's Hi Fidelity is a great novel about this.)  Much of the time it might, yet often we probably mistake the results of relationships for displays of taste.

As I walk down the street, someone yells "Go Chicago!" and, again, I don't know why until I realize that I'm wearing a shirt that says “White Sox” on it. I put it on because it was clean.  I don't care about baseball; one Christmas my brother gave me a bag of t-shirts and sweatshirts he bought at the Goodwill.  It may say something about his frugalness or my slovenliness or my indifference to what I wear, but these cannot be known by looking.

My music collection has been stolen a couple times and not replaced, my favorite books I give to others to read, and the DVDs on the shelf are a haphazard assortment of things that others have given me.  In short, many of my possessions reveal little about what I like and have liked.

            It’s not, as Reagan said, “facts are silly things.”  It’s that facts are almost impossible to correctly interpret without context.  A student of mine estimates that she has seen “Little Mermaid” over a hundred times.  Does this tell you something about her?  Perhaps, but probably not the right thing if you don’t know that she did so while working at a daycare.

People are hard, if not impossible to know and understand from the surface -- as almost every fairy tale says -- yet we persist and insist.  We live in a world of signs that we not only misunderstand, but usually don't realize we have.  I didn’t explain to the salesman or the guy on the street why I was wearing certain clothes; they moved on unruffled by their misinterpretations. 

We all do this.  We confidently navigate a world that is nothing like what we think it is. 

We’re just a bunch of golfers here.

Winston-Salem Poetry in Plain Sight Project

The first “public poetry” I ever read was on a bus in Chicago.  It was a poem by Charles Bukowski, and it made me fall in love both with his work and the idea of poetry circling our heads instead of advertisements.  On those bus rides, I read pieces from Langston Hughes, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, and many others, and I responded to them more deeply than when I encountered them in a classroom.

So, I’m delighted to be a part of the Winston-Salem Poetry in Plain Sight project.  Last year, it featured my poem “Baking with My Daughter.”  This month, people around town might see the following, which will also be in my next book, This Miraculous Turning.

We Were Only Going to Stay a Year or Two

The way my children speak sounds strange

to me.  They put more syllables in words

than I think they need, and watching football,

my son says, “Daddy, that’s just a big ole mess.”

And it’s odd that I can name other children

around the block and where they go to school,

and that I know the jobs their parents have

or desire or have lost.  I give directions now

according to where places used to be,

and I no longer think anything about taking

the neighbor’s garbage can to the curb. 

This is how it happens.   Roots simply grow. 

In the spring, no one should bother asking

the dogwood if it intended to flower.

The Best Institution Ever Invented, or Thank You Benjamin Franklin

I take my son to the library to get his first card.  As we pull a bunch of books, movies, and cds from the shelves, he becomes increasingly concerned and finally says, “Daddy, we can’t afford all of these.”  I explain, “They’ll let us take them.  For free.”  His expression turns to amazement as if he can’t believe this is true.  When I explain, “But we have to take care of them, and we have to bring them back,” he nods and says, “That’s fair.”

I know how my son feels.  Forty years after getting my own first card (at the Shawnee Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana), I still feel a sense of amazement at having access to so many materials.  It is almost, as Vizzini says in Princess Bride, “inconceivable.”  Wait, you’re going to let me take home anything in here?  For free?  What’s the catch?

Lending libraries are beautiful in their basic ideals.  In enabling people to educate themselves, they are the most empowering and humanistic of institutions.

In a very real way, libraries have shaped who I am, so perhaps it’s not surprising that when I gave my wife a tour of places where I grew up, it turned out to be, in part, a tour of libraries.  Some of these were run down.  Some no longer existed.  None of them were architectural wonders.  Yet I loved each one because when I walked in I felt a sense of possibility.

I still feel it.

This is a part of a fuller post for The Library As Incubator project.  The entire piece can be seen here.

Kilgore Trout, Rudolph, and the Grinch

            This time of year I sometimes find myself thinking about "The Gospel from Outer Space" by Kilgore Trout, a character who appears in a number of works by Kurt Vonnegut.  In Slaughterhouse-Five, a fan of Trout's, Eliot Rosewater, describes the story which is about an alien who comes to earth and studies why Christians can be so cruel. He concludes:   

... at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low. But the Gospels actually taught this:
  Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn’t well connected. 

      So it goes. 

      The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn’t look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being of the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought, and Rosewater read out loud again:  
Oh, boy — they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time!
 And then that thought had a brother: “There are right people to lynch." Who? People not well connected.

      So it goes.

      The visitor from outer space made a gift to Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels.
 So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn’t possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was. 
And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections!

             Slipshod story-telling and unintended lessons. 

             That’s what there is in a lot of our classic holiday films as well.  Consider two.

             In the claymation Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer, the story is a mess.  First, Santa, the supposed representative of human generosity and kindness, is a jerk.  He has no patience with the elves.  He can't be bothered to even pretend to listen to the new elf song.  

            Second, although the film's intentions are good -- Celebrate diversity.  We should be free to be you and me even if we're wage slaves trapped at the North Pole – it’s odd that one of the poster boys for non-conformity and difference is a blue-eyed, blond, wannabe dentist.  .

             Third, and most importantly, Rudolph is scorned until it turns out that he’s useful. He’s not accepted simply for who he is, but because who he is can be put to work at a key moment.  (This is a common dynamic in kid’s movies.  Mumbles in Happy Feet is an outcast until he saves the community.  Stuart Little keeps being given tasks to do for the family.)  To be fair, the wonderful line "Let's be independent together!" mocks the very ideal it's espousing, so perhaps the film knows what it's doing.  Perhaps the whole thing is a satire.

            Then there’s The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.  

            As with so many works of literature, it deals with the seductiveness of evil.  The villain is the reason for the story and the only appealing part.  The Grinch has ingenuity, verve, style, and a plan.  He also has a terrific theme song and a likable sidekick, Max, (whose presence probably suggests from the beginning he’s not really bad.  After all, if Max likes him…).  As often happens, when the Grinch changes, and his heart grows three sizes too big, he becomes boring.  No villain, no story.

            The Grinch wants to be about embracing the messy loudness of life.  The Whoville’s celebration of Christmas is portrayed as a chaotic cacophony of play.  When the Grinch talks about what he hates, he concentrates on the sounds.  What gets to him is the noise.  The noise, Noise, NOISE, NOISE!   He takes the Whos' toys, presents, food, trappings and trimmings, because he wants them to shut-up.  What does he do on Christmas morning?  He listens, and when he hears the Whos sing, he is shocked.  One way to read the story is that it’s about becoming a parent, or at least an uncle, and embracing the community of loud messy children.  No matter what you do, you won’t be able to get them to be quiet.  So, join them.  The Grinch goes from silently slinking around to literally blowing a horn and making a joyful noise himself.  But, frankly, I don't buy it.  Ernest Hemingway once said about Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that it was a great book, but you had to ignore the ending which was cheating.  I feel the same way about The Grinch.

            But, to me, the fundamental issue is that the chaotic joy is tied too tightly to possessions.  The Grinch wants to say that Christmas isn't about the stuff, but everyone still gets to have the stuff.  While his motives may have been wrong, the Grinch was on the right track.  Take all the crap away.  I don't care who you are; why do you need a three story high sled full of toys?  What are you going to do with all that stuff?  Similar to the “The Gospel from Outer Space,” it would have been more moving to see the Grinch pitch all the Whosville presents off the mountain, then have them sing and and then still welcome him.  Just as he was.  Unchanged.  Gnarled heart and useless.