"In the dark of the dungeon his chains weighed on him like his unfinished story."

Thank you Salman Rushdie.

Sam: I want to know why you were so interested.
Lee: Well, it seemed to me that the man who could conceive this great story would know exactly what he wanted to say and there would be no confusion in his statement.
Sam: You say ‘the man.’ Do you then not think this is a divine book written by the inky finger of God?
Lee: I think the mind that could think this story was a curiously divine mind. We have had a few such minds in China too.

Thank you, again, East of Eden.

Timshel (Live On Wxpn) by Mumford And Sons

(download)

Click here to download:

Timshel (Live on WXPN).mp3 (4 MB)

Just in case you were wondering.

Thank you, Pekka Pekkala.

A mule kicked Uncle Bob once. Broke his ribs. He punched it in the face. My point? You have an ingrown fucking toenail. Stop bitching.

Thanks again, @shitmydadsays. You're one of two Twitter users whose every post I read.

If something is an adventure, isn't it by nature worth sharing?

And aren't we all involved in little adventures every day?

So shouldn't we be telling more stories?

I think Tolkien's work is immensely impressive in its imaginative scale and as a demonstration of accessible but ambitious storytelling, and I think it's educationally valuable in that it turns people into readers, writers, and explorers of the originally weird thoughts we all have.  In my opinion, however, Tolkien's orcs are a very big worry.  I think it's fundamentally unethical to tell war stories in which the bad guys don't have families.

So.

How do we teach Tolkien?  (If we teach Tolkien.  Which I'm pretty sure we do and I'm pretty sure we should.  Because of the imagination, the fact that his work can be a gateway to literature and learning and love of stories, words, and communication.)

Maybe we teach the man with the work? Explain his personal weirdness and how it contributed to his (in my opinion problematically simplified) vision of good and evil and the virtue in violence? 

Worth some thought I think.

And then there's Pullman.  I'm halfway through the second book of the His Dark Materials trilogy, and, so far, I love it.  So far, it feels questioning and complicated and real. 

So.

So far, I say teach it.  For imagination.  For storytelling.  And for truth.

Yikes.  Bold statement from someone that still has 500 pages to read.

What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant.

David Foster Wallace wrote that.

I agree.

And sometimes I'm afraid that lots of people forget it.  Not that what goes on inside is more than words can handle.  Easy to remember that.  But that it's fast and huge and interconnected.  And unique.  And awesome.  So awesome, in fact, that even our most inadequate sketches are probably worth sharing. 

Thank you D.T. Max and The New Yorker for the quote.

I love the way Bob Dylan packs big stories into little spaces.  Verses like chapters.  Songs like novels.

Like Hemingway?  Hmmm.

Visions of Johanna is track 3 on Blonde on Blonde.

08 Visions of Johanna.mp3

(download)

Click here to download:

08 Visions of Johanna.mp3 (6.95 MB)

A few of Amory's friends slept over after a late night early last week.

Just after arriving (a little after 11pm), one asked Amory what was up with the dude lying on the couch.

"That's Hesh," said Amory, "Jake's friend."

"What happened?" asked the friend.

"You know that brownie you just ate?"

"Yeah." 

"Hesh had three."

The next morning, the friend had to be somewhere early.  Amory woke him up, and the friend sat up in bed.  No good morning.  No thanks for waking me up. 

Just a bewildered: "Dude.  Hesh.  Three brownies.  What a savage."

Amory laughed and went back to sleep.

Hesh hadn't eaten any brownies.  I don't even think he'd had a beer.  He's just a little out of late night shape.  He's married.  He lives in rural New Hampshire.  He teaches high school.  And he fell asleep early.

And we forgive him.  This one time. 

Next night he hangs out he's staying up.  And eating brownies.