Tag: life

When I gave to a beggar

~ Mark ~ 1 Comment

Yesterday on the way back home I came across a rough-looking guy. Sweating, dirty, walking with a cane. When he started talking to me I stopped. He told me he was from Metairie, and then told me he had diabetes and something else wrong that I didn’t really hear because I wasn’t really listening. He asked me for some money to help him out and I said “sorry” and walked away.
Then he said, “F*** you, man.” I kept walking as he continued to rant, but I could still hear it and eventually I was so pissed I turned and said something not very nice, and then went on my way, now fuming to myself about what a jerk he was. Then I went into a store and perused shelves of high-end imported Belgian ales to bring to a dinner party. And now we’re firmly in “Man Struggles With Affluence/Guilt” territory. But it’s more complicated than that, right?

I left the store and started to look for this guy. I spiraled out and did loops around town, trying to track him down. After a while, when I’d pretty much given up and was headed home, I saw him again. I walked up, told him I was sorry about our last exchange and I handed him a bill. He gave me a handshake. He explained his story again in more detail, but I mostly didn’t listen this time, either. I told him I had some family back in Louisiana near him. He told me he understood why it’s so hard to trust someone asking for a handout. We shared a fist bump and we went our separate ways. It was hot and I wanted to go home. I realized walking back that I hoped I didn’t see him again. I’m not sure how to feel about that. And I’m not sure, never been sure, whether I should give or just move on. If I gave to every beggar that asked me, worst case scenario? We’re talking like $100/year, maybe. But still you wonder if it does any good, but then again does it really matter because it doesn’t affect me that much, anyway, and then you start spiraling out again. There’s never an easy answer, which is both depressing and a kind of relief. It’s nice to have something unsettle you every now and then.

~ Mark ~ Leave a comment

This nice appreciation of Susan Boyle reminded me of the hip vs earnest bit from Randy Pausch’s book:

No matter how much we mock those we consider beneath us, it’s much more satisfying to be reminded that everyone has dignity…

Eventually, we’ll all feel like outcasts, and none of us wants to be laughed at. The Susan Boyle Story suggests we won’t be…

Whether or not that moral is true in the real world, it’s alluringly true in the Susan Boyle Story. By participating in the narrative that television has constructed for her, by cheering her on and watching her video over and over, we can not only feel good about graciously welcoming an outsider, but also feel relief for helping create a world that will someday welcome us.

[via marginal revolution]

~ Mark ~ Leave a comment

This past weekend I did the 40-mile hike I’d been pondering for a while. It was hard. It was worth it. I will do it again. I hadn’t done proper hiking since early January, so I was feeling a bit like Dickens:

Restlessness, you will say. Whatever it is, it is always driving me, and I cannot help it. I have rested nine or ten weeks, and sometimes feel as if it had been a year—though I had the strangest nervous miseries before I stopped. If I couldn’t walk fast and far I should just explode and perish.

~ Mark ~ Leave a comment

Of course you can substitute for the word “travel” any number of things you enjoy:

Last week the question arose as to what we would do differently if we were immortal… I answered that I would travel more.

Later the question was asked, what would you do differently if you found out you had only a short time to live. I answered again that I would travel more. Click, buzz, whirr…does not compute, does not compute… Given that I would travel more if I was to live either less or more the probability that I was at just that level of mortality that I should not be traveling now must be vanishingly small.

Some plans for 2009

~ Mark ~ 1 Comment

Things I intend to do:

  1. Travel outside my home state of Georgia at least once every month. This was my official New Year’s Resolution, probably the first year I’ve ever taken the resolution thing seriously. So far I’m 3 for 3 (January February March), and I’ve got #4 lined up for April, and a few other flights under consideration, along with the obligatory driving+hiking trips just over the border.
  2. Run an ultramarathon, i.e. any distance greater than the standard 26.2-mile marathon. I’ve been thinking about this for a good while, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for a decent 50K or 50M this year. I doubt I’ll be in shape to run the whole distance, but walking a bit is normal for these things. Or I might ignore the official races and tie this goal in with…
  3. Hiking from Blood Mountain to Amicalola Falls. I’ve been talking about this one for probably 6-7 years. It’s the southernmost stretch of the Appalachian Trail and the AT Approach Trail, about 40 miles. I’ve done comparable mileage on somewhat more forgiving terrain, so I know it’s doable. I just want to get it out of the way. I gave it a shot with a friend of mine last year (I think? or the year before?), but had to pull up short. Since then, I can’t help thinking, if only I’d done X and Y and Z differently. Failure always brings up a new strategy.
  4. Buy a house. Actually, let’s put this down as a “maybe.” I do want a porch, though.

In which a metaphor is discerned

~ Mark ~ Leave a comment

I’ve just started reading the so-far excellent The Lost City of Z, about exploration in the Amazon jungle. The central character was a member of the Royal Geographic Society, and the author goes to the London headquarters to do some research…

In a corridor of the Royal Geographic Society’s building, I noticed on the wall a gigantic seventeenth-century map of the globe. On the margins were sea monsters and dragons. For ages, cartographers had no means of knowing what existed on most of the earth. And more often than not these gaps were filled in with fantastical kingdoms and beasts, as if the make-believe, no matter how terrifying, were less frightening than the truly unknown.

As in maps, so in life.

In a section later in the book (that I also interpret more broadly to relate to bold striking-forth and unknown futures in Life), another explorer describes the typical reactions he got to his plans:

There were the Prudent, who said: “This is an extraordinarily foolish thing to do.” There were the Wise, who said: “This is an extraordinarily foolish thing to do; but at least you will know better next time.” There were the Very Wise, who said: “This is a foolish thing to do, but not nearly so foolish as it sounds.”

~ Mark ~ Leave a comment

The history of the weekend and how it’s changed our culture of leisure:

For many people weekend free time has become not a chance to escape work but a chance to create work that is more meaningful—to work at recreation—in order to realize the personal satisfactions that the workplace no longer offers.

[via link banana]

Noticing… curating… caring

~ Mark ~ 5 Comments

This cool dialogue about noticing made me think of three connections.
The first one came before I read it. The idea of noticing reminded me of a passage in Anne Fadiman’s book, Ex Libris, that I quoted in my review and will quote again because it’s funny:

The proofreading temperament is part of a larger syndrome with several interrelated symptoms, one of which is the spotting mania. When my friend Brian Miller, also a copy editor, was a boy, he used to sit in the woods for long stretches, watching for subtle animal movements in the distance. The young John Bethell was a whiz at figuring out What’s Wrong with This Picture? Proofreaders tend to be good at distinguishing the anomalous figure–the rare butterfly, the precious seashell–from the ordinary ground, but unlike collectors, we wish to discard rather than hoard. Although not all of us are tidy, we savor certain cleaning tasks: removing the lint from the clothes dryer, skimming the drowned bee from the pool. My father’s most treasured possession is an enormous brass wastebasket. He is happiest when his desktop is empty and the basket is full. One of my brother’s first sentences, a psychologically brilliant piece of advice offered from his high chair one morning when my father came downstairs in a grouchy mood, was “Throw everything out, Daddy!”

The second thing it made me think of was Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People. In the book, the first way to make people like you is to “become genuinely interested in other people.” Authentically give a shit. It’s so simple. That’s seconded here in the noticing interview:

Portigal: Super-noticing power really is a strong cultural idea. The enhanced human with awesome noticing and synthesizing powers crops up regularly in science fiction…

Soltzberg: Right, sort of like a super-charged version of William Gibson’s Cayce Pollard character in Pattern Recognition. Noticing definitely draws on a set of skills that these kinds of characters embody and amplify, but at the heart of it you have to genuinely be interested in the world around you and in other people.

The last thing is the idea of curating, just being open and attentive to influence and where it leads you. Curiosity and curating share a common root, which is… CARING.

~ Mark ~ Leave a comment

Sculptor Richard Serra gave the 2008 commencement speech at Williams College. I like his comments about thinking, obsession, and play:

If it’s not broken, break it. One way of coming to terms with the prevailing language of a cultural orthodoxy is to reject it. It may be necessary to invent tools and methods about which you know nothing, to act in ways that allow you to utilize the content of your personal experience, to form an obsession and to cut through the weight of your education. Obsession is what it comes down to. It is difficult to think without obsession, and it is impossible to create something without a foundation that is rigorous, incontrovertible, and, in fact, to some degree repetitive. Repetition is the ritual of obsession. Don’t confuse the obsession of repetition with learning by rote. I am suggesting a form of inquiry, a procedure to jumpstart the indecision of beginning.

The solution to a given problem often occurs through repetition, a continual probing. The accumulation of solutions invariably alters the original problem demanding new solutions to a different set of problems. In effect, as solutions evolve, new problems emerge. To persevere and to begin over and over again is to continue the obsession with work. Work comes out of work.

But solutions need not only be the result of constant repetition. There is another route, not so structured but rather free-floating and more experimental but no less obsessive. It is to be found in the activity of play. I cannot overemphasize the importance of play. The freedom of play and its transitional character encourage the suspension of beliefs whereby a shift in direction is possible; play ought to be part of the working process. Free from skepticism and self-criticism play allows you to relinquish control. Playful activity provides an alternative way to see, to imagine, to do, to make, to think otherwise. In play there are no ends, there are only means, however, means inadvertently can lead to ends. Rules can be made up as you go along or even in hindsight.

[via michael surtees]

~ Mark ~ 2 Comments

A worthy bit from The Disadvantages of an Elite Education:

The opportunity not to be rich is one of the greatest opportunities with which young Americans have been blessed. We live in a society that is itself so wealthy that it can afford to provide a decent living to whole classes of people who in other countries exist (or in earlier times existed) on the brink of poverty or, at least, of indignity. You can live comfortably in the United States as a schoolteacher, or a community organizer, or a civil rights lawyer, or an artist—that is, by any reasonable definition of comfort. You have to live in an ordinary house instead of an apartment in Manhattan or a mansion in L.A.; you have to drive a Honda instead of a BMW or a Hummer; you have to vacation in Florida instead of Barbados or Paris, but what are such losses when set against the opportunity to do work you believe in, work you’re suited for, work you love, every day of your life?

~ Mark ~ Leave a comment

It is upsetting when we have to conclude that someone is “simply a bastard.” Partly, we are upset because of the initial offense that led us to conclude that. But we are also upset because, as tolerant, educated, broad-minded, empathetic people, we want to have a better explanation. We want to be able to attribute people’s behavior to legitimate differences in philosophies, perspectives, cultures, priorities. When we cannot, we feel that we have failed, and we are angry at having been put into such a narrow-minded, thoughtlessly reactive position.

~ Mark ~ 2 Comments

“Baseball is poetic. It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.” [via fjm]