Mind Review

By Colum Mccain.  A novel about the guy who tightrope walked in-between the world trade center towers.  And other made-up people who are somehow connected to each other.

“[H]e was going to hang a slogan, he would slide it from the towerledge, leave it there to flutter in the breeze, like some giant piece of sky laundry”.

Sky laundry.  Isn’t that a great phrase?  It captures the absolute essence of what we think of.  It’s like a globe, encompassing a noun, an idea.  Most words in english can only express the longitude or the latitude of one.

“She reached across, lifted Corrigan’s teacup, blew it cool, left a smudge of lipstick on the rim…He drank the tea without cleaning the lipstick off…” (28).

Imagine, could you turn a person in the act of drinking tea, physically drinking it, into an observer?  Because that’s what’s done here.  Corrigan is disconnected with the world; not making his own mark.  He helps from the shadow of others, attends to their needs.  He is unable to help himself. 

This book took too long to read.  It’s a book you have to commit to, weathering the good parts and bad.  

The times when you forget to breathe, exhaling as you turn the page, and inhaling as you flip the next.  And the times when you look at the clock, wondering how much longer before you have to go to your appointment, or lunch, or out.

But the satisfaction I got from little words and phrases were so out of proportion it was almost totally worth it.  This writer has a gift to light up words, and make them mean something-not just giving you an idea, but showing you why it relates to you; how you, too, are affected by it.

Let the Great World Spin Forever Down.  That’s the title of the second part.  The first part is the best.  The writer feels the most deeply connected to those characters.  He takes the most time to make each sentence mean what it said.  It made me see some things in a new light.

That doesn’t happen every day, and when it does, it’s special.

So read the first part of the book.  Enjoy it.  Or don’t.  But read everything written.  It’s a grand piece of art.

What I love most about summer is the free time.  Granted, this year there is substantially less of it, but I plan to make use of it in the best way possible: by reading!

It’s true, I love to read.  I also love the feeling that comes after the finish of a very good book, where you can just pause inwardly for a moment and think.  I find that most of my best thoughts come from books.

My problem is that I tend to forget these brilliant photons of thought, leaving enough trace to be hauntingly familiar but not to remembered.

I have certain things I have to read: Vietnamese books, Candide by Voltaire, but at the end of the days they’re all really good books (i hope) and I hope to read them all.

30 books.  Maybe more.

Starting with ‘Let the Great World Spin’ by Colum Mcann.  It’s supposed to be the writing zenith of our era; Mcann the next F. Scott Fitzgerald.

We’ll see.

Today I learned why our society is so screwed up.  We want to better our society by coming up with a theory which will blow each other’s minds away.  The problem is that, normally, someone else is thinking the same thing.  So it becomes a race to get your solution out there first.

Darwin could have perfected his theory a little more, but he wanted to get his book out.  Not that his theory was wrong, but if he had specified a little more, then maybe the term Social Darwinism (essentially a term for subjecting the masses into deeper poverty, as well as laying the blame on them) would have never been coined.

Isn’t it interesting that not only was Darwin ruining someone else’s chances of promise, but also helped to spur a movement which ruined millions of others chances of leading a more comfortable lifestyle?

So, yes.  We want to help our society.  But I think sometimes there’s too much emphasis on the fact that you have to be the brilliant one.

I disagree.  Be smart, get it right.  Stop corrupting our society with ideas that have a lot of truth in them, but are just screwy enough to make us worse.

Another example: we realized something was wrong in our dietary system.  So we cut out fats.  That didn’t help.  We cut carbs.  That still hasn’t helped.  Now we’re cutting protein.  Each person just wants to be the amazing wonder who proves everyone else wrong and is put on a pedestal.

I don’t think it’s worth it.  It’s nice for you.  I wouldn’t mind that kind of fame.  But first I need to deserve it, and have a motivation outside of selfish gain.

I learned today that if your paper wont be considered a reliable source, there’s no real point in gathering information from “reliable sources”. 

Think about it.  You’re doing a history paper on the progression of 3-D movies throughout the 1900s.  There is a website specifically devoted to this topic, made by a person the same age as you, for a history project.  But your teacher says you can’t use it, because it’s not a reliable source.

And we can understand that maybe this person didn’t research movies because they had to, but because they wanted to, or because they felt like posting something random.  So they didn’t put all of their time into it.

Who’s to say, though, that kid didn’t spend just as much, or more, time than you putting together all of this information.  It says he did this for a school project, you’ve done some research already; don’t you trust him?  Shouldn’t we be able to?

And if you put your carefully researched article on your school’s website, the next person who finds it and use it for a school project will be told no, because “it’s not a reliable source”.  So then, really, what’s the point of this?  Your actions don’t matter to other people.  School does not prepare you for the real world, where you have to look at things besides archives.  Like, your peer’s work.

Teachers are hypocritical.  So is school.

Today I learned that present-giving is a manifestation of American’s manifest destiny.  You could say, our own personal M.D (not like the doctor).

Why do people like getting presents so much?  For someone’s birthday, people don’t get underwear, or food, or a house (well, rarely); things needed for survival (unless you like going commando).  Instead, we get surprises, mostly things that will clutter up our house and make us look rich.

So is present giving a symbol of capitalism?  Maybe.  But we’re always told that giving presents will benefit us because we’ll feel happy.  As in, spending money makes us happy.  That’s not very capitalistic, is it.  It could be though that we expect others to return the favor.

Frederick Jackson Turner had a ‘Frontier Thesis’.  It said that as Americans we have a natural curiosity that gives us an eternal need to expand.   West, South, whatever.

That could be a reason people in America are so fat—they took things literally.

As far as we know, we’ve discovered every land mass there is on Earth.  We can’t expand more.  So, we’re working on expanding within our own plot of space.  That’s where presents come it.

In my experience, having an unopened present is the best part.  There can be anything you want inside.  

This is similar to Schrodinger’s theory: we cannot tell what is inside a sealed container until it is open.  The present can be whatever you want it to be.  Keeping the container sealed is more exciting.

But we want to open that box.  Some of us can’t even wait until when we’re supposed to.  Because of anticipation and curiosity; two traits, claims Frederick Jackson Turner, which are core parts of American culture.  Basically, making us unable to resist the unknown.

By getting a present, you now own a little more in the world.   Your life, measured in stuff, just got brighter, richer.

Our curiosity makes us great for receiving presents.  It plays to our basic desire of wanting more.  Kids.

Yeah.  Today I learned that the waiting is a lot more fun than the event.  Example: I waited for 15 minutes to talk to someone who couldn’t stop to chat.  But it was totally awesome.  We basically stood around calling eachother fat cow/tall cow.  

Some things are not good to wait for.  Some things you need to happen so you don’t go absolutely insane like you ask someone to stop singing because it drives you absolutely-for-no-reason-insane and you’re waiting for them to stop and they refuse.  So in that case waiting is not so wonderful.  Or awesome.

Tearing apart floof is fun.  Fun floof.  Do you know what floof is?  No, I didn’t think you would.  But tearing it apart is the funnest thing in the world.  Second up there is making up words (e.g. floof, funnest).

Define floof.  Make up your own word.  Have someone else define it.  It’s a game.  Play it!  Games are fun.  I like games.  Then try to be comfortable using it.  Pretend to be snotty and look down your nose at people when they don’t know your word.  Give it a meaning.  Cause as soon as you create it, it exists.

As I was saying: tear the floof!

Having a life is fun.

A life can be defined in two ways: breathing, and having excitement transpire in one’s life.  In most cases, I define life by the second.  So, drama can be good.  It ends up sucking, but really, would you rather go through your life bored, or at least be a little interested?  And interesting.  Just try and fix whoever you hurt.  Cause if you don’t, then you’re cold and heartless, just like the fact I learned today was.

I learned today that arguing only sometimes can get you somewhere.

Fight for something you believe in.  Go for it.  fight. win.  etc.

What if you had to lose for something you believed in?  Like you were more committed than everyone else, but you just weren’t smart enough, or fast enough, so you had to give your spot to someone else?  Taking the hit.  Is that right?

If you were amazing at the piano, talented beyond belief, but your passion, though less adept at it, was architecture.  Which do you choose?

Help society advance?  Be happy?

But then like honestly what is the point of society?  To develop.  But to what end?  What is the point of a cell phone?  Of talking to people?  Of learning?  This isn’t an emo idea; I’m not a nihilist.  I do believe that our actions count.  I just don’t understand what we’re trying to achieve here.  Or why.

Which is why I’d go with being the architect.  But I don’t necessarily think I’m right: I just haven’t heard anything yet to prove me wrong.

Do what you love.  Try to do it well, but just make sure you love it.

I learned today that some people don’t believe in voting.

Someone’s just made a speech and you think you should clap, but you’re afraid to start the clap.  And no one else claps, so then that’s wonderful.  And awkward.  And silent.

We expect others to take initiative, we trust in others to make the right choice.  Well that just means we’re lazy.  

One time, there was a woman.  And she got raped in an alleyway, where 10 people lived.  They were all at home.  No one helped, no one called the police.

That doesn’t mean they were bad people: they just thought the other person would take control.

                                                    ***     

Same thing goes for voting.  There are four types of people when it comes to voting: Type 1: those who don’t care about the issues and don’t vote

Type 2: those who care about the issues and don’t vote

Type 3: those who don’t care about the issues and vote

Type 4: those who care about the issues and vote

                                                     ***

Type 1

Q: I never vote.  Politics doesn’t affect me, right?

A: It does actually: Taxes affect you!

Q: Noot really actually..mine stay pretty much the same.  And like what difference does it make?  

A: But if everyone like that voted, it would make a difference.

Q: Except that’s never going to happen.  Like, ever.

(True story.  This actually happened)

                                                     ***

Type 2

“I really disagree with Obama’s stance on healthcare (Welcome to the republican party, honey).  It sucks.  And yet, it doesn’t really matter what I think, does it?  Cause I don’t matter.”

                                                     ***

Type 3

                                                    *** 

Type 4

*takes a day to read CNN about the issues, and then goes around asking their friends and respected others what they think.*

                                                     ***

Votes aren’t unbiased.  Ever.  They come from biased opinions, from the news or from friends.  Sorry, it’s true.

What if each person trusted eachother for just one day?  

For the ten minutes it takes to go to a voting booth?  Trust that other people would vote too, and that it wouldn’t just be the white people, or the rich people, or the old people, but that it would be everyone, and what everyone thought?

Trust me, it could work!