Mr. Sawyer's Food Review

(A gift from a student, with a review in return. 

The cupcake had the word "loser" on it in rainbow colors. That's all.)

The Loser Cupcake

Wrapped at the bottom and free at the top, fluffy, frosting-covered, good for a snack, most cupcakes act as ephemeral delegates of nonchalance and careless enjoyment. Rolling with all the punches, cupcakes are to the body what surfer bums are to modern society: though they may not be active contributors to the well-being of the whole, they require little thought and remind you that there is, in fact, happiness in the small things. This is true of most cupcakes, even if they have been a little burnt around the edges, even if the frosting has been smushed slightly out of place.

But this cupcake was in a class of its own. If most cupcakes are surfer bums, then this cupcake was their surfer-slacking king. It had never held a real job for any period of time, it always hit perfect waves, and upon eating it, I could honestly believe that the weather would never change from 75 degrees and slightly cloudy – with a perfect southerly breeze. It shouted in blue and red and orange and yellow that the rainbow could be incarnate; it sang Bob Marley to my taste buds; it dreamt of a life without worries, and it had no inhibitions. To say it was a reminder of happiness in the small things is an insult: it was a reminder of utter euphoria, in taste and in appearance.

Ah, or it would have been, but for one small thing. You see, this cupcake apparently thought it was a loser – or that I was – and so my enjoyment did not reach its absolute apex. If this cupcake, this manna of the sugary heavens, is a loser, then how must the many inferior cupcakes of the world feel in comparison? And if I was a loser, then how did the cupcake not bespeak this in its taste? Am I such a loser that even a loser cupcake seemed delicious to me? And so against this single (delicious) loser cupcake, I hold forth the single complaint that it is self-contradictory and entirely unfair.

Maybe the next one will send a better message. I should hope it will taste as good.

Dreams on Dreams on Dreams

Powerful Wet Stuff

For Casey, I think, since I think she thinks the same as me sometimes

(and will remind me that this is quite incomplete)

[A note: this is not about C.S. Lewis. Story and author are not one.]

                Possibly, my favorite Chronicle of Narnia is The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: it is somehow far easier to believe in a tale so fantastical simply because the entire story, as in every good fantasy, is aware of the fact that it is not really about the apparent subject matter at all. Standing in sharp contrast to, say The Magician’s Nephew and even more than The Last Battle, this tale has an active and absurd consciousness, and that consciousness is self-aware of its absurdity. Stranger still, even the characters within the tale appear to know that their every move is symbol, that they are participants not in allegory or analogy, but mysticism – of something by definition other than itself. At every moment, whether it be concerned with Dufflepuds and mer-people or Reepicheep and Rhoop, the story thrusts itself into a heightened realm of the preposterous.  

How dare Eustace reflect upon his dragon-hood, bemoan his misperceptions, interpret his transformation? Must he a second time? Must Lucy really consider all the implications of opening the magicians book? Must she do so out loud, in that very moment of choosing? Is it necessary – truly necessary – for Ramandu’s daughter to explain her nature and the nature of the stars?

                Of course, and the reason is simple: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is not just an adventure and it is not just a fantasy, it is a dream-vision in disguise. As Dante midway upon the journey of his life, as the Pearl-dreamer, as if Joseph were not simply to interpret Pharoah’s dreams but live in them and effect their ends and their meanings – as Peter takes and eats, unconcerned with the flesh itself – so the Dawn Treader can only see itself through itself, can only read its action through the perpetuation of that action. You notice that no one in the book is an enemy, per say: even the slavers are brought to justice and given opportunity to correct their ways, even the evil magician turns out not to be so evil after all. Every character and his every action is manifestation of the same pre-existent awareness around which the story forms. It is, in its fantasy, self-sufficient and entirely nonsensical, shifting effortlessly between disparate persons, places, and times. It is truly delightful, and I think Lewis knew MacDonald would be proud.

                I lied to you just now, however, and for good reason: nothing of what I am about to write is actually true of the story – not, at least, in the same way Edmund is real, or Aslan. So perhaps I am lying about lying – but I have to lie to not lie. Watch.

Because, you might point out, there is one distinct enemy, one great fear and one great shadow, felt most harshly by Lord Rhoop: the island where dreams come true. There, dreams are not simply daydreams but everything that enters the human conscience, every imagined and unimaginably awful considered thing. Here is where darkness engulfs as much as light, where summer days are turned in a moment to ferocious storms, where even the brief notion of evil brings that evil into immediate existence. Here is the dreamer’s hell: not only can he not falter, but he cannot even consider the possibility that he might, or else it will become untrue. [A similar post could be written for The Phantom Tollbooth . . . . but one thing at a time, I suppose.] It is the manifestation of the avoided unknown. Once the crew of the Dawn Treader have rowed themselves into the shadow, they quickly discover they cannot row out.

                But such a place is absolutely necessary, and in the very act of proposing this dark, dark island, the story negates its power, reminds us that the imagined evil was nothing more than imagined to begin with. In fact, the simple act of leaving the darkness behind destroys that darkness forever (and, appropriately, therefore grants Rhoop’s only living wish). Proposed seriously, the land of nightmares has unparalleled ability to imprison and contain; proposed lightly, escape is no less certain; once inside, such blackness appears unavoidable, having been proposed at all. And it is crucial to notice the Treader’s means of escape: not by Reepicheep’s virtue or Caspian’s princeliness, not by the efforts of the crew to row stroke after stroke, not by Rhoop’s (demented) logic do they escape – only by the small calling voice of Lucy Pevensie, who begins to feel better for only having made the attempt. She does not wish, fight, or think her way out of the island where dreams come true: she hopes her way out, and the rest of the crew as well. She faiths her way out, if you will. Absurdly, in the absolute darkness, she presumes light.

                And, as I was hoping to say above, this moment of eventual triumph in the story also bespeaks a moment of eventual triumph about the story: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader could always have been a nightmare, but even as that nightmare presents itself – a dark island, an “evil” magician, a never-ending sea – it is overcome by the absolute and unwavering insistence that it must be, has always been, and will become a dream. The thought of darkness is not darkness: Reepicheep must enter Aslan’s country, the Monopods must become Dufflepuds, and Eustace must become a dragon (or has always started as one) but, more importantly, he absolutely must become a boy. So there is always an enemy for stories that have them, but a darkness rightly perceived is simply a waypoint – truly no darkness at all.

If you want to find the island where dreams come true, you cannot simply read the chapter about nightmares. You have to read the whole book.

So I apologize for lying up there. It had to be done so that it could be undone and proven no lie at all. But it was important to me. I’ve been having terrible dreams, and it’s me who has been having them, and how can I help but interpret them since they are oh so very very mine. So I have to acknowledge the dreams that are nightmares and find out where they touch the light and know that such a touch exists. Because – in case you missed it – being Lord Rhoop would be frightening and terrible, but at least he’s a part of the right story. The greater nightmare would be never having discussed him at all.

Really, it all comes down to the wisdom of the Dufflepuds, whom I love:

“Water. Powerful wet stuff, ain’t it?”

Doing Stuff

Doing Stuff

For Travis, for L-slice, and for the Kid

I have been repeating myself of late, the same aphorism, and I have possibly repeated it to everyone I know, and always in response to excuses. Because, unlike many of my so-called friends and acquaintances, I am always in favor of doing stuff – especially when the alternative is something as dreary and predictable as not doing stuff. And my objection is inherently ambiguous: there are few verbs less specific than “to do” and fewer nouns less specific than “stuff.” Yet, when it comes to doing anything – and when I say anything, I mean anything – most people I have met would rather not. For some reason, the miasm of predictability appeals irresistibly to Americans between the ages of eight and eighty, a dimming but undiminished contentedness with the foreseen and foreknown.

(A friend of mine, Phoenix-born and Phoenix-dwelling, has never seen the ocean, though it is only a relatively enjoyable eight hour drive away. And this, this alone, is shocking to me. I remain, weeks after he first revealed this to me, continually astonished. More troubling, however, is his complete lack of concern with the situation. He is, amazingly, content to remain in the desert, measuring out his life in coffee spoons of sun and sand.)

To be clear: “doing stuff” can mean literally any activity. Literally. Hiking, for example, is a stuff to do, as is attending a theme park, searching for buried treasure, or impulse driving to the beach. Trying out a new restaurant is a stuff you can do; so is wandering around an unexplored grid of streets or trying to hit a distant tree in the park with tiny, tiny rocks. Grocery shopping is doing stuff – especially if you take every opportunity to play grocery store bingo. Going to a coffee shop can be “doing stuff”, even if the trip consists only of sitting around and doing the same stuff you would have done if you had chosen to stay somewhere familiar and not “do stuff.”

Because “doing stuff” is, or should be, the single most successfully undertaken endeavor available to humanity as it exists across time and space. Anyone with a pulse and a soul is capable of the activity. And anyone with a pulse and a soul and a will has probably had the experience of successfully becoming, if only for a short time, a doer of stuff. The requirements to become a stuff-doer are unbelievably, undeniably, incontrovertibly lax. The desire to do stuff is almost commensurate to the activity itself.

Which leaves me in a conundrum of weighty philosophical and anthropological proportions: why (ohwhyohwhy) do so many friends, families, and variously undefined acquaintances choose so very often to avoid the doing of stuff? What appeals to them so strongly about not doing stuff instead?

                Quite frankly, I am starting to take the default response here quite personally. I have begun to wonder if I am locked within some twisted version of the Cartesian dilemma, playing a game in which there is no divine conspirator and society has individually and unanimously determined that I shall have to pursue the art of doing stuff all on my very own. I have begun to wonder if everyone else is out there doing stuff with each other while I sit at home inventing stuff to do while relentlessly and fruitlessly searching for someone to do it with. I have taken to smelling myself every time a friend tells me they are “too busy” to do such a simple stuff as walk to the part. I sprint to a mirror to check whether I have gained some monstrous physical deformity. Do I still have a nose? I check to see if my fly is unzipped. I grab a newspaper, searching for the recent outbreak of catatonic apathy.

                As might be expected, my failure to persuade those I love that they should, in fact, do stuff has increasingly formed in me a kind of apocalypticism. Of course the world is coming to an end. How could it not, when the color is being drained from it breath by repetitive-coma-inducing breath? when the world is caught up in its separate selves, fractured, contained, and dissipating? when the notion of committing to any activity sends thousands into paroxysms of existential uncertainty? My internet history is chock-full of search results for lapsometers, mass hypnotisms, spontaneous electron loss, and giant malevolent immobilized brains. I keep waiting for the kids to jump-rope and bounce identical rubber balls on a schedule. I wait for some to go outside with an object of their choice and do any stuff at all.

                Such failure to do anything, such preference to stare at screens and sit on couches, such inclination to kill time rather than treasure it – at some point in history, such a mindset infected humanity, and the condition has spread, and the symptoms are showing. The students I teach would rather play Temple Run on their touch-screen gadgets than actually run in the park, would rather watch Phineas and Ferb than create and solve their own mysteries, would rather talk to each other on the internet about the stuff they would prefer not to do than find new and improved stuff to do instead. They are eleven years old and made up of boundless potential, and they have watched day in and day out as those past such potential choose to ignore their very existence.

                I am not saying that the Nobel Peace Prize has become a joke because everyone chose to stay home and watch TV the day their opportunity presented itself. Or maybe I am saying that. But more importantly, I am contending that practice becomes perfect, and practice at becoming sedentary makes for a perfectly sedentary human being. I am saying that the de facto response to doing stuff is rejection, and that this status quo is perhaps the single most frightening tendency of our age – if it was not already in ages past.

                So, with the same impassioned impulse that Antione De St. Exupery warned children “watch out for baobabs!”, I have unleashed my phrase upon the world. It is not a tautology, though it appears one at first, because living is a habit and zombies frightening; it is an acknowledgment of the supremacy of habit, and a warning against the tendency that might undermine our world and split it into tiny jots of merely filled space. It is an encouragement and a pronunciation of the human potential, an apocalyptic yawp of desperation sounded from the rooftops of apathy into the void of indecision. It is praise and it is folly, and it is where I will leave you.

Once I tell you the secret, you must use it. Walk outside, memorize a poem, visit a landmark, or fly paper airplanes from the most obtruding object in sight. Use the secret to do more stuff. If you are not sure what stuff to do, follow these simple steps:

1.       Choose an active verb. Almost any will suffice.

2.       Choose a noun. Again, almost any will suffice. Some adverbs too.

3.       Place the verb (“verb”-ing) in front of the noun.

4.       Execute.

Oh, and my irritating aphorism:

The secret to doing more stuff is . . . doing more stuff.

Love,

TCS