"This is the hardest stuff in the world to photograph..."

Finding some wisdom 30 years after the fact: Years ago while at summer camp I tried reading Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I do not know if I was able to finish it or not, but it did not leave much of an impression on my conscious mind. I remember thinking it was not what I had expected it to be, but beyond that my memory fails me. I have picked it up again, nearly 30 years later and am having a different experience with it...

It started with a childhood desire to ride a bike: In December I bought an old motorcycle that is just about as old as me, and which has been sitting still for quite some time. I thought it would make a good metaphorical and practical project for me in my middle years to learn a new skill and bring a beat up—but potentially functional—machine back to a level of coolness that demands to be appreciated for it's ability to keep going with a little attention. And so I thought a book about motorcycle maintenance and the "metaphysics of quality"—as Pirsig calls his philosophy—might be a fun intellectual balance for my piston ring, carburetor valve, drum shoe repairs on my old Honda CB360...

Chapter 4 Excerpt, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: At one point early in the novel, the narrator, his son Chris, and two friends Sylvia and John arrive at the prairie. At a midday stop, Sylvia exclaims "It's so beautiful. It's so empty," while the narrator and his son stretch out on the ground to soak up some sunlight after a cool morning of riding. John gets his camera out:

After a while [John] says, “This is the hardest stuff in the world to photograph. You need a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree lens, or something. You see it, and then you look down in the ground glass and it's just nothing. As soon as you put a border on it, it's gone.”

I say, "That's what you don't see in a car, I suppose."

Sylvia says, "Once when I was about ten we stopped like this by the road and I used half a roll of film taking pictures. And when the pictures came back I cried. There wasn't anything there."

I've been where John and Sylvia were that moment. I spent years (and still do at times) trying to force the fullness of nature into the frame of a camera. I am working on trying to embrace the narrator's mindset: letting the moment be vs. capturing the moment for some unknown future use or share...

The Extra 12 proceeded my Canon AE1: When I was young I had a Kodak 110 camera and began trying to capture the world on film. Little cartridges of 110 film that has to be developed before any real feedback of the image could be assessed. [Such a different pre-digital world I grew up in.] My Uncle was a professional photographer and my father is an incredibly good shot himself. They offered advice on framing and "getting people in the shot." They let me experiment as I would though to learn the lessons myself. I wanted to be as good as they were with my photos, and I kept trying to capture the vastness of nature (and doing a terrible job at it); but I was determined to reject their advice so as to not spoil shots of nature with people. [So naive.] You see, my reluctance of taking pictures of people was in part formed by the frequent times when grown-ups forced us to endure hellaciously long-seeming moments of posing for a photo (before allowing us to get back to whatever was going on before the photo session was initiated); moments where we were assembled, maneuvered, and asked to pose in awkwardly frozen moments. This process was the worst when in the hands of my mother's mother, Alma. [Alma was an amazingly wonderful woman; she was generous and patient, kind and beautiful, loving and interested; but she was one of the worst photographers in the world.] She would pull out her camera, affix her blinding flash cubes to her ancient device, square off both hands on each side (elbows out at 90 degree angles), and spend the next bajillion moments telling us how to get ready for the picture, while accidentally getting her finger in front of the lens, and just plainly punishing us with her need to capture moment after moment after moment, the same as the year before, and the year before that, and on, and on, and on... It was god-awful. And yet what she was seeking was far more important that creating an artistic rendition of a beautiful scene. I have grown to understand her desire to have keepsakes of the people she loved. I wish I had been more tolerant of her process. She was trying to capture images of her loves in order to show others back home who the cast of characters were while she told her stories. She was assembling a collection of memories, not art...

Fail: This shot would be much better with my brothers in it.

The young know so little and are so impatient; the old should try to remember how the young think: But this reflection isn't about capturing moments of the ones we love, it is about that attempt to capture the expansive beauty of nature in it's emptiness. [The realization of the former is a pleasant byproduct of my attempt to understand the latter.] How does one capture an empty prairie? How does one communicate the immensity of a mountain peak or the depth of a chasm on a 4x6 inch piece of photo paper? A professional might be able to do it, and we amateurs might luck into one of these moments, but for the most part we need to experience these moments. The narrator of Pirsig's story knows that even when observed from a car, these views aren't felt the same way. It takes removing the front glass, and the A and B posts of the car; it means stripping away the roof, putting on some goggles, and allowing the panoramic aspect of the world wrap around the viewer. John states just as much (yet still goes for his camera), and Sylvia shares her early failed efforts. (Chris, by the way, is impatient to keep moving as often the young ones are.) It seems that only the narrator understands fully how the moment must be absorbed...

Some times a thousand words is better than a picture: The best way to share these moments is with words, I think. And yet the reader MUST have had a similar experience in order to appreciate the description. Even the best description in a novel of the open prairie shifting to the rising peaks of the Rockies, the hours of fast driving through the monotonous acres of wheat and an occasional crossroads yielding to the purple and white of the two mile high range of mountains that stretches the full length of a continent, cannot do the image justice unless you've been there at least once to see it for yourself...

A Buddhist Still Life... parenting

A Parenting Meditation...

Fashion your life as a garland of beautiful deeds.



When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky. 

Quotes by Siddhārtha Gautama

A Knife Story...

I have spent years trying to clear my mind: Years ago when I married, scores of kind, loving, older people (read friends of my and my finance's parents) gifted us a new material start for our life together. Our parents threw a dramatic party (hers bearing the lion-share of that traditional cultural contract) with fancy clothes, heart-felt spechifying, excellent food, some live jazz, and a little dancing... In exchange—so goes the tradition—our guests offered expensive gifts, many of which have lasted a lifetime so far.

Through the lens of a cultural anthropologist, it is a transfer of wealth from the older generation to the younger through intermediary participants which carries with it both blessing from the community and emotional indebtedness of the newly-weds to their supportive elders. Through the lens of a young man madly in love and feeling gratitude for all the blessings that were abundant, it is a show of support, love, and care that made for one of the best days of my entire and most fortuitous life. The smiles and care were so heartfelt; these people weren't there just because they were invited, but more so to celebrate a couple's new life together because they genuinely cared. I expected the day to feel hectic and stressful. It was the opposite; it was amazing!...

A clear mind is like a sharp knife: So on that day I (we) received a set of Wüsthof knives. They are good German knives from Solingen where they have been made since 1814. I like to cook. I've been trying to cook since 1988. I love watching food be prepared. I love movies about food. A documentary about a chef making sushi is almost as exciting as a new pixar movie. [Is it strange that I want to start writing reviews of The Hundred Foot Journey and Ratatouille right now?] "Anyone can cook!"

When I first moved from my parent's home to the Boston area, I just used what knives were available in the drawer; I had not really processed the role my tools played as I was just beginning to learn the craft of preparing food. A few years later, with my new life and my new knives, and my continued appreciation for all the blessings around me, I quickly moved forward in all things, and with my cooking as well; it wasn't long before I forgotten my old knives' inadequacy...

A dulled mind is a dangerous thing: And then not too long ago a tragedy befell my chef's knife, and it is now gone from its place on my chopping block. This blog entry is not the story of that knife; that is a story for another day... and know this, it is a story of accident and eventual loss that is worth telling some day. But my Wüsthof Chef knife's story is about what happened to it, not a story of its very nature as is the case of the best knives. The best stories may use "what happened" to move a plot along, but the heart of the story is in the "very nature" of subject. What happened is not as important as what "just is". Finding our way to that "is-ness" is like sharpening a well crafted piece of steel.

The best knives have a story to tell that goes back to their very elemental components and their former lives. A knife made properly is forged, profiled, stamped, heat-treated, tested, ground, handled, finished, and sharpened. A knife made properly can split hairs if desired and shaves skin cleanly. A knife made well feels balanced in the hand and extends the function of the chef's intentions right down the arm, through the food, and on to the cutting board. The best knives are works or art, and more important than anything else, sharp...

Finding clarity again...Needs and Wants: I am trying to resist the impulse to just spend money on the things I want in life; I am trying to plan and save for my wants while identifying and addressing my needs. So I thought to buy a cheap temporary knife (need) until I can prioritize a new piece of quality American, German, or Japanese steel for my chopping block (want). I was happy to find a simple chef knife on sale at Wal-Mart, less than ten dollars and I would be back in action prepping scallions for the ramen, or dicing peppers for my favorite way to serve up tilapia. I would not be ripping my spinach by hand, but slicing it into thin ribbons to hit the tongue in a delicate way.

I broke in my knife on some green peppers for a homemade pizza. I hoped to have paper thin slices completely coating the pie, rather than opting for diced chunks. All I could manage was forcefully hacked thick cuts. What a tragedy! I had forgotten what a knife like this felt like. I felt foolish for having forgotten. A dull knife is barely better than no knife at all! With regards to preparing food to stay alive, my $5 special is sufficient, but if I wish to cook, to make the distinction between mere sustenance and food pleasure, this new knife is abomination. Iron Chef, Masaharu Morimoto, writes "A kitchen without a knife is not a kitchen." My kitchen has thus been relegated to a food-preparation-for-sustenance-only zone. A dull knife made well can be sharpened again and again (hope), but a poorly made knife cannot be sharpened properly and will not hold an edge for more than a minute (despair). I think it is time to start shopping for a new knife...

No clever title; just "Sledgehammer's" journey to hell and back...

Gaiman's Endless, Including Despair

During April last year I wrote three entries anchored in T.S. Eliot's poems, Preludes, The Wasteland, and The Hollow Men. Eliot's pre-conversion work, soaked in post WWI disillusionment, offered a filter for the sadness that I was experiencing over the loss of a student and of my wife's longest held friend (non-biological sibling). I was looking for moments of light in those days of sadness; I was trying to live in spite of a sneaky sorrow; I charged ahead living in an exercise of "be the change you want to see"; I kept that sorrow in an intellectual place, and had little clue as to how dark things would become as the year progressed. Despair comes unexpectedly and from places unanticipated. Desperation pushes us against the ropes of our own limitations, as we get pounded by emotions that feel like stabbing shadows of acrid smoke jabbing out of the darkness. There is always light, though; there is always the living...

So another April has come and I have been traveling through a lot of dark places for a while now. I have been watching HBO's The Pacific this Spring while I have been teaching 20th century conflict to my sophomores. The miniseries weaves several stories taken from memoirs about the South Pacific theater of World War II. One of the two primary texts used was written by Eugene Sledge:

With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa is a World War II memoir by Eugene Sledge, a United States Marine. Since its first publication in 1981, With the Old Breed has been recognized as one of the best first-hand accounts of combat in the Pacific during World War II. The memoir is based on notes Sledge kept tucked away in a pocket-sized Bible he carried with him during battles. (Wikipedia)

Eugene Sledge

Joe Mazello

Eugene Sledge's character in the miniseries—played by Joe Mazello—struggles with a steady slip from a space of firm, nonjudgmental, principal to one of survival and, at times, near animal behavior.

Eliot's story-through-poetry is an assent from his demon spaces to a more well lit place of faith. Sledge's story told through HBO's lens is a descent to hell and a journey through the most terrible places soldiers can travel. (It does end well despite the terrible places Eugene had to go before returning to his core character.)

I wish to reproduce the synopsis from Wikipedia for context as it suscintly illuminates some of what I have been thinking about:

Sledge's memoir gives a firsthand and unapologetically honest perspective on the Pacific Theater of World War II. His memoir is a front-line account of infantry combat in the Pacific War. It brings the reader into the island hopping, the jungle heat and rain, the filth and malaise, the fear of potential "banzai attacks", and the hopelessness and loss of humanity that so uniquely characterized the campaign in the Pacific. Sledge wrote starkly of the brutality displayed by Japanese (and to a much lesser extent, American) soldiers during the battles, and of the hatred that both sides harbored for each other. In Sledge's words, "This was a brutish, primitive hatred, as characteristic of the horror of war in the Pacific as the palm trees and the islands."

Sledge describes one instance in which he and a comrade came across the mutilated bodies of three Marines, butchered and with severed genitals stuffed into their mouths. He also describes the behavior of some Marines towards dead Japanese, including the removal of gold teeth from Japanese corpses (and, in one case, a severely wounded but still living Japanese soldier), as well as other macabre trophy-taking. He details the process and mechanisms that slowly strip away a soldier's humanity and compassion, making the thought process accessible to those who have never served in combat.

Sledge describes in detail the sheer physical struggle of living in a combat zone and the debilitating effects of constant fear, fatigue, and filth. "Fear and filth went hand-in-hand," he wrote. "It has always puzzled me that this important factor in our daily lives has received so little attention from historians and is often omitted from otherwise excellent personal memoirs by infantrymen." Marines had trouble staying dry, finding time to eat their rations, practicing basic field sanitation (it was impossible to dig latrines or catholes in the coral rock on Peleliu), and simply moving around on the pulverized coral of Peleliu and in the mud of Okinawa.

Eugene Sledge "Sledgehammer" is depicted as a quiet, thoughtful, faithful, moral, kind, young man eager to be involved in the war. He reads his bible, doesn't smoke, offers no criticism of those around him and strives hard to learn his difficult job as a mortar man. As the miniseries progresses with depictions of island hopping, brutal fighting, and hellish conditions, we see our marines pushed to the limits of barbaric behavior and near insanity. Sledge is not spared. We watch a sweet innocent young man try to retain his humanity despite baby step after baby step toward the shell-shocked, haunted, soldier-type that surrounded him. It is quite depressing to watch. It is hard to see these men, clinging to humanity, as heroes; they seem more like victims; the combat they are engaged in feels purposeless, despite what I know as a history teacher of the import of their sacrifice and work. Their sacrifice overwhelms me; their suffering devastates me...

And the war ends. I have not yet finished the miniseries for the second time, but I have seen it once. I know the story. The war ends. The "good guys" win... with terrible cost. And the Greatest Generation is immortalized and memorialized and they go back to life... back to life! That's the message here. There is life after tragedy for those who live. There is Spring for those who endure the Winter. There is a "next"...

Eugene returned from the war scarred. He was unable to hunt birds and deer, as he had before serving. He had flashbacks of the slaughter in the coral islands of the south pacific; he wrote how hard it was to return to civilian life.

He got married. His wife urged him to put his ideas on paper... and he studied science. He earned his doctorate, became a professor and was loved by his students. He lived to see the 21st century. He lived and set an example so that those of us who know sadness can see that there is a way back, even from hell...

Forty-four...