How's the Weather?

Last Saturday, we gaikokujin here in Mito celebrated Thanksgiving. And we did it right even from the very start. At 10 in the morning we met, assembled, drew up sides for a friendly but competitive game of flag football. It was a lot of fun, and the teams wound up tying. No major injuries occurred, excluding those inflicted upon an ego or two. Almost everyone managed to make a good play or two (I had one and a half), and I even saw about 50 of my kids from school, who were noticeably thrilled to see their crazy English teacher out playing "rubgy" with other white people. But one of the best things about that morning--something that overarched and enveloped it all, something subtle but powerful--was the weather: It was, without being overly dramatic at all, beautiful. Not only were we sweating a decent little bit in shorts and t-shirts, but the crisp, pristine air revealed a perfectly blue sky. It was amazing!

What is also amazing to me is this revelation, something I'd rather not admit: The weather affects me a good deal. The more time I spend with myself (approaching 24 years now), the more I realize how much my own mood is swayed by that pervasive, powerful thing known as weather. When the weather changes, I change with it. When Spring breaks especially, I feel a sort of rejuvenation bordering on euphoria (and I always thought it was because of Spring Break). Anyway, it's very true, and it's time I admitted it and moved on--I am very, very seasonal.
So anyway, the weather now is rapidly getting colder, darker, more bitter--and I feel myself being slowly swallowed up in it (to a point, of course). My ambitions have taken drastic turns from what they were three months ago when I only wanted to pluck away making silly, upbeat music on the guitar, to run around half-naked outside, to somehow quench my unabating thirst to assault the sea or a mountain or a waterfall or anything bigger than me--now, here sits, quite changed, doppleganger I, wanting nothing more than a good friend (female, if you like) to hang out with (minus the talk) in my warm, cozy apartment, reading books or listening to mellow music and absolutely, positively eschewing anything that would lead us to open the front door and take even the smallest of steps away from my heated carpet...
And now having persuaded myself to become a recluse, I must venture out for school supplies! Drat! Oh well, that aside, for tonight I am a caveman, a torpid, slumbering bear. I am Jacob, that peaceful, domestic little man (though father of a nation, strangely enough...) And I hope to speak to no one tonight save a brilliant dead man named Dostoyevsky and the Lord my God.

But call me if it's urgent... grace and peace

Duty and Desire

This is no great epiphany, but maybe I can start with a long-held truism and get something going from there: Sometimes a person is motivated out of duty, sometimes out of desire. I love the latter and in fact only tolerate the former because on some higher plane where exists a better, noble me, I ultimately desire to do the things that duty forces upon me when desire for and at that moment has slunk away into the shadows of my soul (or wherever it is that desire goes when I am feeling like a treacherous, hot-headed, or mopey jerk).

So today, and in fact at this particular juncture in time, I am writing from duty--I write because I think I ought to write.

Now, here's something I'd like to know: Why didn't anyone ever tell me the power of the word "ought." I learned "no," "yes," and "I want it" pretty early on, as I recall, and I even began, long before my schooldays, to call down the enchanted wonders of the sky with those magical "pleases"--but why in the world didn't someone take me aside and tell me about the lunatic, the unsatiable madman, sitting inside my head drawing me painfully, meticulously toward some ever-fixed, ever-oh-so-slightly-obscured mark in the sky--Mr. Ought.

Now let me tell you what I believe about this particular "madman," as I have labeled him. He's a madman only in relation to that part of me that wants to track him down and smite him from ever corner of my mind. He is, in fact, the most sane of all my faculties. He only seems like a lunatic because my desire, at the moment when I am labeling him, is itself so far gone into madness. He's my anchor and my lifeline to the shore. My hatred for him exists in direct proportion to the enmity I hold for my very self--though I'm often blind to this fact.

So the question of origin arises--and that is probably the most important part, so let me say it right out: Where did this insanely sane little mind-guard come from? Why, God put him there. In fact, He didn't merely put that little bloke in my head and then leave me be--He continues to nurture and guide me day by day, slowly, subtly, transforming me from within.

But I haven't quite hit upon the heart of the matter just yet. That man is only the start--the initial spark within that tells me about my Creator and His will, His intentions, for me at any given point in time and any given moment of reflection. I am in fact a participant in something much more profound and considerably more important. You see, I am a player, a participant, and in fact a "victim" in the most hostile kind of takeover the world has ever seen (and there are millions of others going on, right this minute, somewhere right before your very eyes)--I am a man who has been slayed from within. It's not suicide or the kind of flippant self-destruction that has often been romanticized in the history of the world. It's not the free-fling into madness that comes from severing of the anchor, from the final gnash of the teeth upon one's own tattered lifeline. No, it's the laying down of arms, the humble, helpless, yet noble kneeling before something you recognize--finally, at wit's end--as greater, better, and lovelier than yourself, the conquering of the hate-bent rebel within. And this is not a surrender to the imprisonment of nothingness, a surrender to hopeless, a final dash of despair--it's a surrendering to service.
And so duty becomes not an alien parasite scrambling around somewhere in your mind, a fugitive from your own intense probing, but in fact the very cloak you wear. And the fire that consumes corrupt desire, idle thoughts, words without grace and meaning, works slowly within.
And always you're drawn not toward destruction, in hate of self and others, but toward hope, hope in which (you know, though you do not know how you know) duty and desire have finally been joined.

A word about today

Today was a great day, so I want to share it with you.

Today, I got to sleep in a little, but not so much as to derail the entire day. Then I rode my bike to meet up with my good friends Denver and Greg. We're training for a marathon in Okinawa, which is mercifully still a few months away. So we went for a nice 8-9 mile run--and it felt wonderful. I have been slightly sick the past week and a half and haven't had a good run during that whole time, so today was a beautiful, needed ray of light on my marathon aspirations. And the weather was absolutely amazing! (for mid-November or for any time of year) To describe the scenery on the run, I must borrow a word from Coleridge--it was absolutely sublime.

After we had gotten ourselves cleaned up, other friends came by, and we all went to a park together where we ate lunch and played. It was my first time at this park, and I loved it. We played with shameless glee, and the "real" kids there (all Japanese of course) loved it--they thoroughly enjoyed watching us slide down the slides, climbs on the ropes courses, take stupid pictures on, in, and beside the crazy dinosaurs they had there. My favorite feature of the park was its slides. This park has literally the two best slides I've ever seen. One has at least 200 feet of track and descends no less than 80 feet (I used The Force to determine that, Greg). Anyway, I happen to know from personal experience that if you ride down that crazy thing while sitting on a jacket made out of slick material, you will catch some fairly serious air at one point, and you may well over-shoot the sandbags at the bottom intended to "catch" you and wind up doing half a million summersaults before coming to a stop. (Denver is the only one who actually accomplished the latter of those feats, I should note.) The other slide isn't as scary, and I can't really explain what is so amazing about it (partly because that would spoil the fun), but I heartily recommend it for anyone who's not in general to "sensitive" to shocking new experiences.
The chemistry of the group was great. We were all in good humors and were constantly cracking ourselves up (sometimes from pure silliness, though there was a fair amount of genuine wit to it all), and we just really were able, I think, to enjoy each other's company.
Then the park itself was incredible--the ambience, the feel, a certain crispness, an invigorating clarity. The leaves had all changed into brilliant colors, the land there is pleasantly, almost majestically, rolling, and the weather was more than agreeable. It was a great afternoon.

Then we went to the church building, practiced singing for a Christmas concert next month, went to dinner together (11 of us English teachers total), and then we all called it a night. Now I have nothing to do but read another chapter of my Bible and study just enough Japanese to put me out for the night.

Praise God for days like today. Thank you, Lord.

A Little Bit Less Philosophy on Today's Menu

I guess if I want to bolster the readership of this blog beyond Gabe, Blake, and a reticent Ann, I should include something a little more universally appealing than muddled philosophical comments.

Along those lines, I had an interesting day today (my, it's hard for me to write those words!). I eat lunch everyday with students (I'm an English teacher in Japan), and today I ate with an ichinensei class--equivalent in age to American 7th graders. When I go to the classrooms to eat with the kids, I never know what kind of response I will receive--from effusive joy to very deliberate and calculated apathy. Well today I was met with a healthy dose of the former. As soon as I walked into the classroom, the kids competed heartily to win a seat next to me. Then as we ate, the kids sat, Japanese-English dictionary in hand, armed and ready for communication. The highlight of the lunch period came when a popular song came on the intercom. I told the students I liked the song and asked what it meant. After many conferences filled with the standard nervous, energetic laughter, one student told me the singer of this catchy little tune was singing about the sky. "Oh, the sky..." I thought. "That's... a little bizarre." I asked him what about the sky was so interesting. After the requisite huddling, the student emerged from his cabal to inform me that the singer wanted to eat the sky. "He wants to eat the sky?!" I yelled in disbelief. The student assured me that such was the case, so I proceeded to laugh my head off. Later, I was given a reinterpretation of the same song, something about the sky crying, but I reject the latter interpretation as intentionally misleading redaction and hold firmly to the first. He wants to eat the sky... what a weird song...

The Conclusion to My Response to Gabe's Response... ad infinitum

Good friend, my point is this:
Anyone who wants to denigrate reason as a means of knowing and communicating reality cuts off his (or her) own legs the minute s/he puts that idea to pen. When the pen hits the scroll, when the fingers hit the keys--boom, your cover's blown: Your a "modernist."
Now, the appropriate and oft-used retreat at this moment is: Ah, but Pete, I never said Reason was invalid as a means of knowing--only that it is but one among many. About that, let me say: yes, that is what you explicitly claim--that Reason is one among many equal avenues for pursuing truth (though you like to note how dodgy it is "viewed" to be)--but implicitly, you aren't quite as generous, sometimes accusing Blake and me of being modernists anytime we attempt to use reason as a means of arriving at, well, anything at all. But that's not the rabbit I'm chasing currently.

Here's what I was getting at with my earlier post: Reasoning--logical structures, arguments, codified thought--can take on a life of its own outside of human beings. But reason itself dwells within. It's a basic part of our apparatus for interpreting reality--including language itself. You often strike down Reason as an Enlightenment invention. I'll grant you that Abstract Reasoning was a cantankerous little organ that the Enlightenment gorged to grotesque proportions. But Reason, that little part within human beings that processes day-to-day reality, even language itself, is taken for granted by the ancients--it's presupposed. So if I try to unravel the great mystery of how many teeth a horse has through pure abstraction, well, that's me giving far too much hegemony to Reason. But if I determine what the length of a hypotenuse is based on Pythagorean Theorem, or if I decide on the meaning (even approximately) of what you said based on my knowledge of English semantics, or if I hear a general shout "Fire!" and pull the trigger because I think he meant "Fire!" rather than "Put that gun down, you idiot," then I am perfectly within my rights--reason in that sense is as intrinsic as sight. (It may break down largely into deductive and inductive reasoning, but I'm not sure that's quite where the dividing line is--I'm still working out my thoughts as well.)

So what makes me think reason deserves to generally be the king of my epistemology? Because reason is a whole lot harder to juke than, say, experience or emotions. Reason gets feedback from reality in a way that doesn't happen for the other epistemologies. Now at this point, you would be remiss not to accuse me of forgetting that ultimate reality is God. I know, and I agree. But because we are in a limited, finite form currently, we are a step removed from that reality--thus the immediacy of reason. Now, on the level of ultimate truth, of what value is reason beyond its usefulness in this world? I don't know--maybe it will be obliterated when full, glorious Truth is brought to fruition. But until then, it is indispensable. In a sense, then, experience and emotions may well be finally superordinate to reason--they may be much better avenues of coming into full contact with our God. (I'm not convinced that that's case, but I allow that it's possible.) And they may be equally noble and equally useful even here on earth--in certain contexts. ("I will sing/pray with the spirit and with the understanding.") But as epistemology for the day to day unraveling of the ephemeral, for deciphering the happenings of this accursed world, reason is at least indispensable. And I guess the reason I tend to think it's superordinate to the other epistemological means is that it resides over language (in my thinking), which I view to be superior to any other form of human communication in transmitting meaning.

Those are my thoughts as of now. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. And avoid cliches like the plague.

My Response to Gabe's Response to Me (As the Recursion Goes On...)

Brothers and sisters, I have seen the light!!!

Gabe, you did it, you finally did it--I am now postmodern to the umpteenth degree. In fact, I am the embodiment, the bomb-diggity, the mac-suave mojo of Postmodernism itself. I am Postmodern.

But unfortunately, as Postmodern, I'm having this strange difficulty understanding what you say. In fact, I couldn't even sit here and write this (since it comes much more from my "reason" than all those other important means of epistemology) had I not hijacked the Modern mind of my earlier self and kept it hostage inside a cozy but well-ventilated corner of my brain.

So anyway, I keep having to really lean on that part of my brain everytime I want to read your blog (which is really embarrassing, I'm sure you realize). But you know, that whole ball of wax--reason, rational thinking, and whatnot--is actually the primary means I have of deciphering what you say. Sure, I eventually and even sometimes simultaneously process it through my emotions, experience, and all that good stuff--but I mean, the initial hit of it, the translation from you to me via words--well, for that I'm just utterly reliant upon Mr. Modern.

So anyway, what I need you to do for me, dear Gabriel-- and Mr. Modern tells me (rather smugly, I suspect) it "shouldn't be too hard at all"--is to start communicating on your blog primarily, and in fact almost exclusively, through means other than reason. You know, emotions, experience, connotation, communally-derived meaning (whatever that is)--just PLEASE make it happen. (This Modern jerk is really getting on my nerves.) I don't have a clue how you can do it (and you may want to tap your own Mr. Modern to solve that riddle), but I'm sure you can somehow do that for me.

I look forward to your thorough, enlightening, and hopefully largely nonsensical reply.