[MD] Shapes

[gav]

i suspect you are not being totally honest with yourself dan...
it seems to me that you are writing in order to understand yourself better.
but i could be wrong.
thanks
gav

--- On Mon, 3/8/09, dan glover <daneglover at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: dan glover <daneglover at gmail.com>
> Subject: [MD] Shapes
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Received: Monday, 3 August, 2009, 7:45 AM
> "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)
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