Perl blog post #24

This week I continue my exploration of Perl as (sort of) literature.  This one is mildly more technical than the last, but still not out of the realm of interest for you non-techno-geeks, so I encourage you to check it out.

Perl blog post #23 + Hoilday Redux

In my ongoing series on my Other Blog, this week I’m talking about the relationship between coding and fiction writing.  It’s probably the least technical of the series, so don’t be afraid to hop on over and check it out, even if tech stuff isn’t your cup o’ tea.

In other news, I can now report from firsthand experience that having the entire family sick for Christmas really sucks donkey balls.  We were actually at urgent care on Boxing Day.  (Nothing serious, as it turns out, but we did get some antibiotics, so that’s nice.)  Still recovering, as various family members go into mini-relapses, sleep for 11 hours and feel better for a while, etc.  Hopefully we’re all better by New Year’s.

Perl blog post #22 + Happy Holidays (again)

Primarily this week I will refer to you my ongoing series on why I program in Perl, over in my Other Blog.

However, it’s also Christmas-time again—my fourth since starting this blog—so I will also take a brief moment to wish you happy holidays and merry christmahannukwanzaakah.^*  You may recall my “happy holidays” rant from two years ago (and, if you don’t, I highly recommend you check it out, for the awesome Christmas mix I provide if for no other reason).  I mentioned then (as I did the year before as well) Fox News’ “War on Christmas” meme that they trot out every year in the hopes it will get some traction.  This year it’s gotten very silly indeed.  Gretchen Carlson bitches about a Festivus pole.  Megyn Kelly informs us that Santa just is white, children.^**

But my favorite clip was Bill O’Reilly pointing out that, since Hannukah came in November this year, saying “happy holidays” didn’t make any sense because Christmas was now the only holiday left.  I suppose if you celebrate Kwanzaa, Yule, or Pancha Ganapati, Bill considers you beneath notice.  Somehow I can’t help but feel that’s contrary to what is generally considered to be the Christmas spirit.

This year we introduced our kids to A Charlie Brown Christmas for the first time.  Aside from having awesome music (interesting side note: I heard “Linus and Lucy” on a radio station playing Christmas music the other day—is that really a Christmas song?), it has a really sweet message.  Here’s a show which has been airing since before I was born,^*** and they were already railing against the commercialization of Christmas.  How would they react to the situation today?  There were several places around where I live that actually trotted out the Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving this year.  But the special makes some cutting remarks about commercialism (we had to explain to our kids that aluminum Christmas trees were a real thing), folds in the religious message with a moving monologue by Linus, and ends with a touching scene of unity, as all the kids who have been verbally abusing Charlie Brown the entire episode now gather together and sing around his little-engine-that-could Christmas tree.  Of all the Charlie Browns in the world, he may be the Charlie Browniest, but he still deserves love and respect and fellowship, especially at this time of the year.  Perhaps Mr. O’Reilly has forgotten that.  Or perhaps he never learned it.

In any event, I wish you all the very best holiday you could possibly have, no matter what it may be, no mater whether it’s come and gone or is yet to come.  And, if you celebrate Christmas as I do, I hope you really enjoy the Mystery Days this year.

__________

* ™ Jon Sime

** If you click on that Daily Show link, be sure and watch the second video that pops up as well, for maximum cognitive dissonance.

*** Okay, not very long before I was born, but a bit.

Perl blog post #21

Continuing my series on why I use Perl (as opposed to some other language), today on my Other Blog I talk about object-oriented programming and what’s nifty about it, with some shout-outs to some of my previous blog posts here along the way.  Wander over and check it out if any of that sounds intriguing.

Perl blog post #20

Today I’ve done another technical blog, although it’s not very technical.  It’s the story of why I’m a Perl programmer (as opposed to a C programmer, or a Java programmer, or any other sort of programmer), and it’s part 1 of a long series I’ve been wanted to do for a while now.  If you’re interested in those sorts of personal history details (or comparative language studies for computer code), hop on over and check it out.

You are Who You Choose to Be

I started out this post by looking for a good quote to expand on, but what I found was that many of the quotes I’ve collected through the years seem to be interrelated.  This makes sense, if you think about it, since I am of course attracted to quotes which reflect my own outlook on life; thus, many of the quotes touch on various aspects of that.  In fact, insofar as we do trust quotes to illuminate Truth for us (and I’ve also talked about why we shouldn’t), we must be cautious in trusting overmuch the quotes of any one individual, for there’s a certain amount of editorial censorship going on.

But when several quotes from disparate sources start to form a pattern, supporting each other and giving credence to the idea that a deeper Truth is here embedded, you may want to take notice.

Let’s start simply.  Here’s my favorite line from Men in Black—this is from the scene where K first explains to the soon-to-be J about aliens, and J wants to know why all the secrecy:

J: People are smart.  They can handle it.
K: A person is smart.  People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it.

Here K (played by Tommy Lee Jones) makes a crucial distinction between a person as an individual, and people as herd animals, prone to mob mentality.  J (played by Will Smith) is a New York City cop: he does know it, and has no answer to this.

I like this quote because it’s a bit of a meditation on individuality.  As primates, we’re not exactly herd animals, and we’re not exactly pack animals, but we’re definitely not loners.  If you have cats (or have ever interacted with them in more than superficial ways), you know that cats are, by nature, solitary.  They tolerate other cats, sometimes, like they tolerate you ... sometimes.  I am one of those rare people who is perfectly balanced between loving dogs and cats, so I’ve had my share of both, and had the opportunity to observe them in domestic situations.  Every cat is different, as every dog is different, as every human is different, but there are fundamental natures of each.  My favorite Just So Story is “The Cat That Walked by Himself”, and whenever I interact with cats I hear my grandfather intoning that excellent Kipling line: “I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.  I will not come.”

But humans are not like this.  Humans have an instinctive need to belong, to cluster together against the dangers of the big, bad world.  Sometimes this goes too far, and we develop an us-against-them mindset that becomes toxic.  But, in measured doses, this instinct of ours can produce loyalty, self-sacrifice, and a fierce protectiveness of our friends and family—of our tribe.  So this is something that’s neither good nor bad.  It just is.

Of course, there are exceptions.  One of the great things of being a firm believer in balance and paradox is that I can tell you in all seriousness that people are all the same and that all of us are different.  Depeche Mode tells us that people are people, and they’re not wrong.  And Ray Stevens tells us that everyone is beautiful in their own way, and he’s not wrong either.  Indeed, it is the very paradoxical nature of humans that makes them simultaneously capable of such togetherness and such individuality.

Or I could say that it makes them simultaneously capable of conformity and disruptiveness.

There’s no doubt that some value conventionality and orthodoxy, while others value individualism and originality.  Actually, it’s probabaly more accurate to say that most of us value both, just in differing proportions.  I of course favor a position somewhere between the two, and also I value both at once.  But I doubt anyone who’s met me would fail to agree that I come down more on the side of individuality.  If I were a role-playing geek (which, you know, I am), I would tell you that my alignment is Chaotic Good (with leanings towards Chaotic Neutral).

If you find it too difficult to draw deep philosophical meaning from a science fiction movie which was (let’s face it) a bit silly (even though it was lots of fun), how about we look to something Steve Jobs said (this is from a Wired article in 1996):

I’m an optimist in the sense that I believe humans are noble and honorable, and some of them are really smart.  I have a very optimistic view of individuals.  As individuals, people are inherently good.  I have a somewhat more pessimistic view of people in groups.

Notice that while this is slightly more learned-sounding, it’s exactly the same sentiment.  Now, I’m cheating a bit here, because I’m reusing both these quotes: I used them in my explanation of Cynical Romanticism.  But there I was concentrating on the downside of people.  Here I want to take the opposite approach: the upside of person.

E. E. Cummings once said (in his Advice to Students, 1958):

To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

and I think this sums up my attitude towards conformity in as concise and complete a manner as possible.  Being different is hard ... this is why we end up with cultures like goths or punks, with gangs of people trying so hard to look different that they all end up looking alike.  Being different requires figuring out what “different” means: for you, in your family, in your town, in your society.  “Different” is different for everybody.

In fact, probably the biggest obstacle to people being themselves is not knowing who “themselves” is.  Before you can shine as a unique individual, you’re going to have to figure out who you actually are.  “Know thyself” advises the inscription at Delphi, but it’s a terribly difficult task.  We humans have a tendency to think we understand our own minds, but it turns out we’re pretty terrible at it, in general.  We lie to ourselves, we exaggerate our strengths and downplay our weaknesses, we avoid the darker corners of our psyches because we’re afraid to find out what’s in them.  But if you’re willing to put in the time and effort, you can come to understand yourself reasonably well, and then you can start truly becoming who you were all along.

And then it gets really hard.

Because, no matter how much we claim to celebrate individuality, we do a damn fine job of ostracizing anyone who doesn’t fit our definition of “normal.”  And “normal” is boring.  In fact, it’s a bit scary.  Jodie Foster once said:

Normal is not something to aspire to, it’s something to get away from.

But of course the farther you get away from it, the more dirty looks and eye rolls and disapproving sniffs you get.  This is why Cummings describes it as a battle.  And all he did was throw the rules of grammar out the window and decapitalize his name every now and again.

So I’ve fought the good fight for much of my life.  I’ve stood out even when it meant sticking out, and I’ve gone my own way when going along would have been much easier (and safer).  Mostly I haven’t done this out of any particular moral imperative, or pride, or anything of that sort.  Mostly I was just too stubborn to conform when I probably should have.  But I’m not unhappy with how it’s all turned out.  I don’t have too many regrets, at least not on that score.

Being yourself is a worthwhile endeavor.  You will stand out in people’s minds, and make an impact on them even when you can’t remember ever having met them.  You will occasionally annoy, and occasionally frustrate, but you will also occasionally delight, and occasionally inspire.  That makes it all worthwhile, in the end.  At least it has to me.

Another quote I’ve always found thought-provoking, even though it’s somewhat trite, is often attributed to Confucius (which, like most things attributed to Confucius, is beyond unlikely and into ludicrous), and sometimes attributed to someone named Patrick Bryson (whoever that is).  But I’ve often thought its pithy simplicity held the promise of something more.

Always be yourself.  Otherwise, who are you?

Good advice indeed.  Along with the advice in the title of today’s post, which comes from The Iron Giant, which is an excellent film about being yourself.  If you haven’t seen it yet, you should seek it out.  Some things are worth the effort.

Everything Old is New Again

I was looking for a poem today.

It was the first poem that I ever wrote, or at least the first I can now remember having written.  It was nearly fully-formed in my head when I woke up one morning, and I remember the experience very clearly.  It was after I dropped out of college and after I moved out of my parents’ house, in that first non-familial dwelling where I lived with countless roommates whose faces were constantly changing.  The quality of light in my bedroom was strained: the sun had no doubt lightened the sky as best it could before actually emerging above the horizon, but there were also curtains to mute the brightness even further.  Everything in my room seemed to have a grainy quality, like a badly filmed movie.  I got up and grabbed one of my college notebooks, which I had not thrown away because there were still blank pages in them, and I wrote it all down.  I believe I had to make up part of it, so the last few verses aren’t nearly as good as the intial ones, which were a gift from my subconscious.  I can still recite the first two stanzas nearly perfectly, after all these years ...

But now I can’t find it.  I know I still have a copy; probably more than one.  I transcribed it several times, in different media.  (No doubt it exists on a few dead hard drives as well.)  At the very least, I should have the copy that I submitted for my poetry class, during my second tour of college, since I saved nearly everything I ever wrote for any of my writing classes: two semesters of fiction, two of non-fiction, one of poetry, and one of advanced writing.  My poetry professor said it reminded him of Poe’s poetry.  I said, thank you.  He said, that wasn’t a compliment.

I never cared much for poetry.  It’s dense, and difficult to parse.  Fiction has a flow to it; once you get properly cranking, you can just write it forever.  Or at least I can.  Poetry is more about agonizing over every word.  It’s spare, and exacting, and needs to communicate one thing while saying another.  If you’ve ever wondered if poetry is as difficult to write as it is to read, the answer is yes.

Oscar Wilde once said, “All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.”  My poetry professor certainly believed that.  His attitude was, if you want to pour all your personal feelings out on paper and call it poetry, that’s fine.  But, as soon as you bring it into my classroom, you give me permission to tell you it’s crap.  He made at least one person in the class cry, that I recall.  I made sure that any emotions I tried to capture in my poetry weren’t my own.  Much safer that way.

While I couldn’t find my first poem, I did find the first poem I submitted for that class.  Rereading it, I suppose it isn’t terrible, though it certainly isn’t great either.  It was based on someone I’d met my first year back in school, and it was an attempt to capture a more complex emotion than just the simple one-word things we typically use in our everyday speech.  I don’t know how successful it was at that, but at least it recaptures that emotion for me, as I reread it.  But then I knew what I was trying to say in the first place, so it may not work as well for you.  But judge for yourself:

I am not in love.
I mean, he’s a sweet guy and all, but
it’s just a fling.
A brief encounter.
A few weeks of passion.
It’s just shallow.
You know?

I met him
where I work.
He comes in a lot.
The stale, smoky air,
the cool green felt,
the constant clack of the balls—
it has an undeniable attraction for some.
Like him.
I remember noticing him.
I liked the easy way he moved,
his long, blonde hair tucked under a hat
or a bandana.
His intense concentration,
his confident style:
he was like an artist at work.
He has good hands.

We never really spoke, he and I,
until that night.
I was drunk and he was drunk
and we were together
and he was intelligent
and witty
and charming.

And I was surprised.
I mean, a lot of guys wear their leather
and their long hair
and play their boyish games,
and they think they’re cool.
But they have no substance.
But he ...
he was different.
He is different.

What?  Yes, I know.
He has a girlfriend.
But she’s far away,
and it doesn’t really matter because
it’s just shallow.
You know?
Am I wrong?
Don’t sit there so quietly,
tell me what you think.
You won’t hurt my feelings.
It’s not like I love him.

The other night I was alone.
It was the first night I’ve spent along since
that first night.
But I didn’t miss him or anything.
I sat around, I did some homework,
different stuff.
And I dreamed ...
I dreamed I was a little girl
and I was standing in a field
and the field was full of beautiful flowers
and the sun was shining—
I remember how warm it felt on my skin—
and birds were singing ...
it was really pretty.
And off in the distance,
way far away,
was a tree.
It was the most perfect tree—
it was a maple,
with perfectly shaped green leaves
and strong, straight branches
that started close to the ground and went up
almost like a ladder.
It looked so cool and inviting,
and I wanted to climb it so badly,
so I started running
and I ran and I ran
and the tall grass whipped my legs
and the wind tugged at my hair
and I was going faster and faster
until everything around me was a blur of sound and motion
but that tree never moved.
It never came any closer.
It was exactly as far away
as it was before.
And when I woke up,
very suddenly,
I felt out of breath
and my legs ached.
Isn’t that odd?

He’ll be over again tonight.
I’ll be glad to see him,
even though I wonder
sometimes.
He’s going away for the summer.
He’s going to saty with his girlfriend.
And by the time he gets back,
I’ll be gone.
Didn’t I tell you?
I’m moving.
To Vermont.
It doesn’t really matter anyway—
it’s just shallow.
I hear him on the stairs now,
so you’ll excuse me.
The time we spend together won’t last long,
so it’s very special.
I treasure each moment.
But, in a way,
I’ll be glad when summer comes.
One can only take so much intimacy.
After all,
I am not in love.

From the condition of the copy I found, I suspect this was a first draft, so it might have gotten better; I can’t recall.  But it still has a certain quality that I like, despite the fact that it was written when I was young and foolish, and (to plagiarize They Might Be Giants) I feel old and foolish now.  It could have almost been a prose piece, but I think the linebreaks actually add something to the flow (or non-flow) of it that makes it more interesting than it would be if it were just written in paragraphs.  But of course I’m biased.

I’ll keep on looking for the original poem that I actually wanted to share with you.  Or maybe the rest of it will come back to me.  In the meantime, I revisited my cento from a few months ago and produced a key for the original references.  I was starting to feel bad about not crediting the original authors.  Plus it’ll save you some Googling, if you really wanted to know the sources.

---

• Title, first half: original
• Title, second half: A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
• Stanza 1, Line 1: traditional (recycled by Peter Straub, Shadowland)
• Stanza 1, Line 2: Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (recycled by Charles Schulz, Peanuts, and Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time)
• Stanza 1, Line 3: Jane’s Addiction, “Of Course,” Ritual de lo Habitual
• Stanza 1, Line 4: English nursery rhyme (recycled by Neil Gaiman, Stardust, and Stratus, “The Fear,” Fear of Magnetism)
• Stanza 2, Line 1: Guadalcanal Diary, ”... Vista,” Flip-Flop
• Stanza 2, Line 2: The The, “This is the Day,” Soul Mining
• Stanza 2, Line 3: Shakespeare, Macbeth, (recycled by Agatha Christie, book of the same name)
• Stanza 2, Line 4: Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, “Canto the second”
• Stanza 2, Line 5: John Irving, A Widow for One Year, (recycled by himself, book of the same name)
• Stanza 2, Line 6: V.S. Pritchett, At Home and Abroad
• Stanza 3, Line 1: Dead Can Dance, “Black Sun,” Aion
• Stanza 3, Line 2: “The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens”, traditional Scottish poem
• Stanza 3, Line 3, first half: Frank Herbert, Dune
• Stanza 3, Line 3, second half: Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
• Stanza 3, Line 4: Emily Brown, “Enemy of Time,” This Goes With Us
• Stanza 4, Line 1, first half: A.S.J. Tessimond, “Cats”
• Stanza 4, Line 1, second half: Po Chu-i, “The Red Cockatoo” (translation by Arthur Waley)
• Stanza 4, Line 2, first half: Tool, “Disgustipated,” Undertow
• Stanza 4, Line 2, second half: Tori Amos, “Happy Phantom,” Little Earthquakes
• Stanza 4, Line 3: R.E.M., “Swan Swan H,” Life’s Rich Pageant
• Stanza 4, Line 4: Incubus, “Pardon Me,” Make Yourself
• Stanza 4, Line 5, first half: Lewis Carroll, “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There
• Stanza 4, Line 5, second half: The Beautiful South, “From Under the Covers,” Welcome to the Beautiful South
• Stanza 5, Line 1: John Mayer, “No Such Thing,” Room for Squares
• Stanza 5, Line 2: e.e. cummings
• Stanza 5, Line 3: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
• Stanza 5, Line 4, first half: Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”
• Stanza 5, Line 4, second half: Shakespeare, Hamlet
• Stanza 6, Line 1: Saiyuki, “Where the Gods Are”
• Stanza 6, Line 2: Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle
• Stanza 6, Line 3: Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale”
• Stanza 6, Line 4: Blind Melon, “No Rain,” Blind Melon
• Stanza 7, Line 1, first half: Harvey
• Stanza 7, Line 1, second half: Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
• Stanza 7, Line 2: traditional (recycled by Peter Straub, Shadowland)
• Stanza 7, Line 3: Satchel Paige (but also attributed to many others)
• Stanza 7, Line 4: Will Smith, “Just the Two of Us,” Big Willie Style
• Stanza 7, Line 5: the Kaiser Chiefs, “Time Honoured Tradition,” Employment