[MD] Shapes

[dan glover]

"There was never any hesitation in the headmaster's mind as to what
quality was. Quality was the manner and spirit that a man of good
breeding exemplified. The masters understood it and the boys did not.
If the boys studied hard and played hard and showed that they were in
earnest about their lives there was a good chance they would some day
become worthy people. But there was no sign in the masters' eyes they
had any confidence this would occur soon. The masters were always so
sure of what was good and what was right. You knew that no matter how
hard you tried you would never measure up to their standards. It was
like Calvinistic Grace. There was a chance for you. That was all. They
were offering you a chance.

"Grace and morals were always external. They were not something you
embodied. They were only something you could aspire to. You did bad
things because you were bad and when you got whacked for doing
something wrong it was to mold bad old you into something better. That
word "mold" was important. The stuff they were trying to mold was
inherently unchangeably bad, but the masters thought that by trying to
shape it like modeling clay, through whacks and detentions and
obloquy, they could mold it into something that gave it the appearance
of goodness even though everyone understood it was still the same old
rotten stuff underneath." (LILA)


Shapes: On the Nature of Who We Are and Why

I think if we really want to know what shapes a person, we have to
consider the whole picture, not just what they read or listen to or
watch on tv. We have to know why as well as what they do. So at times
I like to examine as honestly and brutally as I may the forces that
have conspired to shape what I was, who I am, and that which I'll be.

My Mom and Dad were very gregarious; they weren't intellectual
academics, just hard working blue collar types, and they had many
friends. There were always people at the house laughing and cooking
and eating and staying over for weeks at a time. There were cousins
and aunts and uncles and grandparents everywhere and the whole
neighborhood gathered together on a nearly nightly basis for campfires
and toasted marshmallows and hot chocolate. It was really a very
idyllic way to grow up.

After Mom passed away, things gradually changed. Dad grew more
taciturn, didn't laugh as much, and seemed more and more withdrawn
from us kids. Relatives on my Mom's side stopped coming by and Mom's
friends too, along with her friends kids. About six months after Mom
passed, Dad brought Marie home. They'd secretly married. After she
moved in, there were no more neighborhood gatherings, no more
campfires, no more hot chocolate. When people stopped by the house,
Marie acted coldly towards them and they finally quit visiting. There
were no more cousins, aunts, uncles, or grandparents at the house; no
one stayed over.

Marie had a son named Danny. He was 2 years older than me and already
an accomplished bully. He spent the next few years honing his
considerable skills on me. I disliked him the moment we met and that
dislike has only intensified with the years. He was as hateful a
presence I've ever had the misfortune to have known. If I were a more
enlightened being, I would meditate for his goodwill, but I am not. I
heard through the grapevine that he is ill with diabetes and confined
to a wheelchair and my only thought was: I hope he lives long enough
to suffer a bit and then dies hard.

For some reason still unknown to me, my two younger brothers struck up
a fast friendship with Danny. I suspect they were birds of a feather
but that is probably too simplistic an explanation. Still, I was a
straight A student in school while they all three struggled mightily.
I remember Dad once (on a lark) offered us each a dollar for every A
we got on our report cards. I got 12. I think between my 2 brothers
and Danny, they got a combined 3. Dad didn't make the offer again. I
think it was my reading that gave me an edge. It also isolated me.

I ran away from home when I was 14. They caught me and brought me
back. Marie told me how my Dad would never love me as much now that
I'd done something like this to him. I hadn't realized I'd done
something so horrible as to negate my Dad's love. Still, I ran away
again when I was 15. They caught me and brought me back. Marie refused
to speak to me at all, which was ok with me. When I turned 16, I got
my drivers licence, bought an old car for $25, threw my cheap guitar
in the back seat, and pointed that sucker west. I was gone a long
time. I don't think anyone much cared. When I did finally return,
everyone was gone. They'd sold the house and moved away.

My sister claims to have taught me to read when I was two after she
caught me looking at her textbooks. She is actually my half sister, my
Mom's child from a previous marriage, and 12 years older than me. She
married at 16 and moved away so she wasn't a part of my time growing
up. I just know I don't remember learning to read. I do remember that
growing up there were very few books in the house... maybe a few
unread Reader's Digest condensed books sitting dusty on the shelf. I
remember reading dictionaries and encyclopedias at the age of four.
When I started school I was amazed to discover that the other kids
couldn't read. I excelled at it. But I acted as though I didn't so as
not to stick out.

I discovered the library when I was seven maybe eight, about the time
Mom passed. It was housed in an old converted residence not more than
700 square feet in size with books stacked from top to bottom. I spent
many hours there; it got me through some hard times. And they let me
take books home too! L. Frank Baum was my first favorite author. I
liked to read series of novels; I guess I didn't like the stories to
end. I wanted some kind of guarantee that life went on. I read Laura
Ingalls Wilder and the Nancy Drew mystery books and westerns by
L'Amour and I'd dream the stories at night. Then I discovered science
fiction; I read Asimov, Herbert, Bradbury, Heinlein, Clarke, and many
many others. It was my escape from the world... books.

One day, I must have been ten or so, I picked up a little book that
seemed to be hiding in an obscure dusty corner of the library; it was
called The Old Man And The Sea. I was suddenly hooked on anything
Hemingway. I must have read the King James Bible about this time as I
read somewhere that Hemingway based his writing style on it. I'd hide
away in my basement bedroom and read. If someone called me, I didn't
answer, and if they knocked on the door, I ignored them. I'd go out
and get jobs mowing the neighbor's lawns and then spend all the money
on paperbacks at the drug store.

I read Twain, Swift, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Homer, Conrad, Melville, and
Hugo, but Dickens was tough. I read Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, and
Thoreau while I was entering my teens. I think it was about then I
read Hesse for the first time, again, a little novel lurking in the
shadows called Siddhartha... and I had a new favorite author for a
time. I read all Hesse's stuff but I especially liked Narcissus and
Goldmund. I discovered Cayce, the Gita, and the Tao de Ching. I
hoarded books like a crazy lady hoarding cats. I still do...

At the urgings of old Mrs Rickenbacher, the librarian, I took to
reading poetry for a time: Pound, Whitman, Emerson, Poe, Frost,
Dickinson, and the plays and sonnets of Shakespeare. I especially
liked Auden until I found out he was gay. But I still liked him, just
secretly. I found I didn't understand poetry the way I understood
stories... it was more like looking at pictures. I tried reading
Wuthering Heights a half dozen times without success. It still withers
on my bookshelf. But I did manage to get through Joyce, Miller, and I
learned to appreciate the good Catholic sensibilities of Greene though
I didn't like the path to which those sensibilities seemed to lead
down.

During my late teens I read Cervantes, Tolkien, Goethe, Dostoevsky,
Kafka, Machiavelli, Congreve, Shaw... too many others to list. By that
time I had moved to a larger town with a larger library, huge by the
old standard I'd grown up with. The librarians weren't near as helpful
as old Mrs Rickenbacher though. In my twenties I read Pirsig,
Thompson, Fuller, Nietzsche, Suzuki, Watts, Huxley, Herrigal, Sartre,
Bohm, Mann, Wolfe, and Updike. I preferred male authors to female, not
caring much for the likes of Rand and Austen.

I read Dennett, Sheldrake, Velikovsky, Chomsky, Jaynes, Gould, Davies,
Bohr, and Einstein, along with King, Koontz, Hellerman, Crichton, and
Mailer. I liked movies like Pow Wow Highway, Dead Man, and The Last
Temptation of Christ. I disliked movies like The Matrix, Star Wars,
and all the Star Trek shows. I enjoyed playing my own music to
listening to others until one day I traded my guitar away for a dream
I didn't pursue.

Some 10 or 12 years ago I began writing again after a long hiatus.
During those years I've studied the language closely... its
construction, the rules of do and don't, the Dynamic versus the
static. I've read dozens of how-to books when it comes to story
writing. I've developed relationships with other writers to have and
to be a sounding board on what I need to improve. I've written screen
plays, just to see if I can.

I don't write for money. I don't write for fame. Instead, I think I
write to attract beautiful women, and they're all beautiful to me.
That's who I am, today. I've been to college, sure, but only to clean
the carpets in the classrooms and offices. I think sometimes I'd like
to get a degree but the thought passes quickly and I go back to doing
whatever it was I was doing when the thought arose. Still, I do admire
places like Oxford and Cambridge and places of higher learning and
those who are stronger and more determined than I am and who make
those places what they are.

Thanks for reading,

Dan


Tame Cat

It rests me to be among beautiful women
Why should one always lie about such matters?
I repeat:
It rests me to converse with beautiful women
Even though we talk nothing but nonsense,

The purring of the invisible antennae
Is both stimulating and delightful.
(Ezra Pound)