And it has to be stopped

Sarah woke up yesterday with a bad case of food poisoning, so she’s spent the last 24 hours rushing between bed and the bathroom. It seems like she’s recovering, but slowly. I can sympathize with her predicament because, quite frankly, I get food poisoning more than anybody I know.

Sarah has always been fast and loose with expiration dates. I, on the other hand, stop drinking the milk the day before it expires. Fat lot of good it does me. I still wind up on the bathroom floor once or twice a year, despite an abundance of caution.

We’ve started a new form of bell work in my English classes. Bell work, for those who haven’t been in a public school in the last decade, is an attempt to achieve what’s called bell-to-bell teaching, which is a fancy way of saying “use every available minute of instruction time or administrators will get upset.” So, students are supposed to come into the classroom and start working as soon as the bell rings, without waiting for the teacher to tell them what to do.

It’s fine in theory, but it’s kind of impractical. There are a lot of students who aren’t motivated to do any work, much less show up promptly at 7:40 AM and work of their own accord. It’s an exceptionally rare class in which I have to remind nobody to stop talking, put their phones away, and do the bell work.

Anywho, we were doing journal prompts as bell work, but this semester we’re switching to 15 minutes of sustained silent reading. And, boy, you would not believe the pushback I’m getting. (Or maybe you would, if you’re a rational adult who realizes most 16 year-olds don’t yearn for the Great American Novel.) I have to spend a lot of time explaining to them that there certainly is a book out there that they will enjoy and that it’s just a matter of finding it. From my end, it doesn’t matter to me what they’re reading for bell work, as long as they’re reading something. I’ve hoisted Akira on them, One-Punch Man, The Shining, and The Wizard of Oz. Still, and I still hear a lot of, “I don’t want to read a book!” and the like.

It’s disheartening at best.

As much as it is a fight to get students reading, the up side is that I’ve had a chance to use the 15 minutes for reading, too. It’s fantastic. “I’m being a good role model!” I say to myself, pulling out my Kindle to squeeze in a few pages at the start of each block. Really, though, it’s just me being selfish.

I finished up Ten Years in the Tub, which was quite enjoyable, but I’m discovering that I remember very little of it. All of the articles are just about the same length, and each one of the 10 years’ worth of book talks discusses 3-5 books. By the end, they all start blending together in a just-walked-into-a-bookshop mishmash.

I maintain that it’s a book that you should read like poetry: One or two at a time whenever you feel the need.

I’ve moved onto Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, which, I’ve discovered, is a much more enjoyable read than it is a listen. The first few chapters have had a lot of … not exactly stream-of-consciousness, but moments that are close to it. It’s a lot easier to notice the style of the writing when you can see it. The audio version doesn’t provide you the same context clues.

Still, I’m not sure how much I will enjoy this book. In terms of literary fiction, this is 100% not the sort of book I would normally choose. I am a minimalist at heart, and there are moments in which I recoil at Rushdie’s wordy splendor.

Resoundingly not bonbons

Yesterday, I, a full-grown man, made 32 chicken nuggies for dinner, and that’s it. No vegetables, no fruits, and barely any grains. Just processed chicken warmed up on a baking sheet.

I fell far short of my reading goal yesterday, too, getting through only four chapters of Ten Years in the Tub and one chapter of Midnight’s Children.

Mondays are by far the worst day of the week for me, and not just because I’m grumpy and/or emulating a lasagna-loving cartoon character. Mondays are just my longest day, when I’m at school for between 10 and 11 hours. Yesterday was also the first day of Spring semester, which means new seating charts, new lesson plans, and a handful of new students. I was physically sore when I got home, having easily met my 10,000 steps in the course of a normal day’s teaching.

“Is it my shoes? Is that the problem?”

By the time I got home and took care of a few other matters (contacting my university to register for online classes), I was ready to crawl into bed without supper, so I suppose I should be glad I managed to cook anything at all.

I don’t know how to make Mondays more manageable. I hear one of you shouting from the gallery, “Eat healthier and exercise!” but I’m pretending not to hear it. There’s also a proud mid-westerner deep in me saying, “Tough it out, sissy! Everybody works long hours,” but I’m also pretending not to hear that.

Because I’m a man and men refuse help.

Midnight’s Children is a reading like a stark counterpoint to Ten Years in the Tub. I believe I equated Nick Hornby’s articles to little bonbons of humor that I was stuffing my face with in my last post. Salman Rushdie’s book, by that metaphor, is a pretentious Michelin-star meal served by an unsmiling chef and a waiter who has a special single-tined fork that he wants you to use for the second course. “It’s a salmon reduction with carbonated orange foam served on a single sheet of Gandhi’s autobiography. To eat it, scratch out any conjunctions you see on the paper with your unifork, snort the orange foam, then give the salmon reduction a sensual kiss.”

Is it well written? Absolutely. But, resoundingly, it is not a bonbon.

I’m pretty sure the main character in Midnight’s Children is supposed to represent all of India. And WTF? Who is so full of themselves that they think they can capture one of the most populated countries in the world with a single character in a single book?

Salman Rushdie, that’s who!

Anyways. I’m going to need to read up on India’s history if I want to interact with the novel on a meaningful level, which is always a good sign. One should be forced to do some research to read a novel. I mean, it sure would suck if a book contained everything you needed to enjoy it between its covers!

This is overly harsh. Maybe I really am a Garfield.

I’m going to crawl under a blanket and ponder this.

Nick Hornby likes sports too much

I’m about half-way through Ten Years in the Tub, and I’m realizing that it’s a lot like a collection of poetry or the dictionary — you really shouldn’t read the whole thing all at once.

Each chapter is a monthly article from The Believer (which is still a magazine and Nick Hornby is still a contributor), and the articles span from 2003 to 2013, so reading several of them at once is a lot like fast-forwarding through the reading habits of a British novelist, unapologetic football fanatic, and guy who’s trying to quit smoking.

The problem is the articles are good. Too good. I feel guilting reading a whole year’s worth of articles in one sitting, like I’m like a rich boy stuffing little, expensive bonbons of humor into my mouth. Sarah has to come into the office and nanny slap them out of my pudgy hands. “Your mother will be just horrified if you spoil your dinner again!”

I mean. It’s not that I need to worry about my waistline in whatever metaphor I’m concocting here — my blood sugar won’t actually spike if I read the whole book in one go — but the articles are written in a style that is best consumed month-by-month: Short and sweet and each discussing four or five books that I might conceivably want to read. That’s how you avoid the literary spare tire.

Here’s another way of putting it: Even if your pastor writes absolutely fantastic sermons, you wouldn’t want to listen to 12 of them in a row. You’ve got to space that shit out.

I did get a really good idea while reading Ten Years in the Tub, though. Well, Nick Hornby had a good idea and I am brazenly stealing it:

Make a book list of books that have years in the title. Like, one book that has “2024,” one that has “2023,” etc. The books can be about anything, fictional or non-fictional; every genre is fair game. Then, what you do is start in the present and work your way backwards until the year you were born.

Bam! It’s a reading list as arbitrary as the one I’m currently tackling. Plus, us old folks, who are way better at reading than you goddamned youngsters with your TikToks and vape pens and functioning friend groups, will have longer reading lists, while someone who is, say, 3, will have a pretty easy time of it. (Little Suzy will just love Gravity’s Rainbow! Get her started now.)

I’ve begun compiling my list already, starting with the year of my birth. (What year is that, you wonder? I’ll never tell!)

#1: *Split Season: 1981: Fernandomania, the Bronx Zoo, and the Strike that Saved Baseball*

Apparently there was a baseball strike in 1981. Who knew? The Dodgers were probably upset that I had just been born and wasn’t yet old enough to understand the rules of the sport, so they refused to play. “We should wait,” their manager informed the league in writing. “Wait until the Toad is old enough to come and watch.”

Only after realizing that I was both in rural Nebraska (statistically the farthest from away from any professional sport franchise one can be in the lower 48) and in an incubator did they finally relent and agree to take the field. And, even then, grudgingly. “Make sure someone is taping this,” they said.

And they did.

I’m going to keep with it, though. I’m going truck right on through Ten Years in the Tub, and by the end of it I’m going to be carrying more articles than a coffee table at a dentist’s office.

I will, however, be starting another book as well. This one was selected from THE LIST completely at random and ahead of schedule (simply because I like having an audiobook to listen to while I’m bumbling around, and Ten Years isn’t an audiobook):

It’s Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, an author that I know a bit about but haven’t read. As I recall, Rushdie wrote a book called The Satanic Verses that upset a lot of religious fundamentalists who threatened his life, the lives of his publishers, and the lives of anyone who gave the book a favorable review on Goodreads (anything above 3 stars). Things got so bad that Rushdie went into hiding, where he got so good at Nintendo they made a little video about it. (Not joking.)

He seems like a literary try-hard. That’s harsh, but just look at that picture of him on that cover — it’s like the photographer was snapping his fingers going, “Salman! Over here, Salman! Look at the camera!” but Salman Rushdie was distracted by a rogue moral allegory that went scampering by.

I haven’t read The Satanic Verses, but I’m pretty sure I have a copy floating around. I think I bought it used because I liked the title and it was cheap.

I suppose that doesn’t matter much, because Midnight’s Children is a totally different book, and it’s a book that faced no strong religious or political backla . . . wait, the Indian Prime Minister said what about it?

It’s cold and I want to lie down

I’ve always said that Nebraska doesn’t generate its own weather; we get our weather blown in from other directions. We get warm air blown up from the south, rain and snow creep in from the west, and cold air tumbles south from the arctic. All of America’s worst weather happen here, and the only goddamned constant is it’s always windier than you’d like.

Last night, Sarah and I went to meet up with my dad, who was in town overnight to catch a morning flight. (To Hawaii. We are incredibly jealous.) We met downtown at a burger place we’ve always wanted to try (The Omaha Tap House), and Sarah and I decided to drive down a little early to visit the best record store in town (Homers).

After picking up a few records, we walked the four blocks over to the restaurant. Little did we know that the weather had gone from mildly chilly to you’re gonna get FROSTBITE and DIE if you DON’T GO INSIDE. It’s a subtle shift, but Nebraskans know it well.

By the time we got to the burger place, Sarah and I practically stumbled in the door and required several minutes of pressing our hands against our faces to get the blood circulating again. “This isn’t a night for walking around,” Dad said. “How about I give you a ride back to your car when we’re done eating?”

We merrily accepted his offer.

While we’d expected a lot of snow and ice in the evening, this morning it seems that Omaha has been mercifully spared. Other states got hit much worse, with several of them declaring a state of emergency. The POLAR VORTEX strikes again! You better watch out, Virginia. Your goose is coo…er, frozen?

Ten Years in the Tub is going fairly well. It’s a longer book, filled with a decade’s worth of Believer articles about the books Nick Hornby was reading (or simply purchasing) at the time. Hornby writes about books so well that you want to stop reading his and pick up whatever he’s talking about — I grit my teeth and mumble warnings to myself. Things like, “You can’t take a break to re-read all of Salinger,” or, “Why would you want to read Moneyball when you’ve never read a single book about baseball?”

Hearing passionate people talk about the things they’re passionate about is inspiring. Thomas Merton makes you want to join a monastery; Nick Hornby makes you want to read more books.

It’s a strong reminder that no reader ever has enough time to read everything they’d like, but they all have time to bemoan the fact. Professionals just do their complaining in larger venues.

Speaking of which: School starts on Monday, and it is certainly going to impact my reading and blogging time. While I try to set aside a few hours every day, sometimes being around teenagers for eleven hours straight leaves you with so little energy that all you can do is go home and lie down.

Mortar & Pestle & Merton

Yesterday was a long one. We had hours of teacher meetings in the morning, a chili cook-off around noon, and then I spent the biggest part of the day getting plans ready, weeping in the corner, hanging up newly printed classroom signs, and three-hole-punching any paper careless enough to get caught. (Mostly kidding about the weeping bit.)

In the evening, Sarah and I sat in our basement listening to records and chatting. As we discussed (mostly nonsense), I told Sarah about this YouTuber I’d watched recently. “She’s Asian-American and…a chef, maybe? I don’t know. Anyway, what she does is get stoned and then cook Asian food.”

While I’m not a huge fan of glorifying drug use, it’s fun to watch because of the crude nature of the channel. Nothing seems well organized, and there are no steps in the cooking process that are overly complicated. “You get the feeling that you, too, could cook these dishes,” I told Sarah. “Spring rolls seem approachable now. Only I’d need a mortar and pestle to make that sauce.”

“Yeah,” Sarah said. “They’re so useful. You can make guacamole, too.”

“I love guacamole.”

It boggled my mind then that we had, seemingly, just talked ourselves into getting a mortar & pestle. As far as purchases go, that may be the most frivolous, white, middle-class kitchen gadget you could possibly get. Unless you’re a witch or an alchemist, nobody needs a mortar and pestle. But I’m pretty sure we’ll wind up getting one.

One person who would never, ever decide to purchase a mortar and pestle is Thomas Merton, author of The Seven Storey Mountain (#628 on the list). I took a break from Ten Years in the Tub to listen to a reading of Thomas Merton’s “CLASSIC CLASSIC CLASSIC” autobiography.

It’s the story of how a young man grew up in the years between WWI and WWII, traveled around the world, went to school, and eventually became a Trappist Monk in Kentucky.

If you don’t know about Trappist Monks, they’re about as close to what I imagine medieval ascetic monks must have been like. They wear simple robes, shave a strange little crown of hair around their domes, sleep 5 hours a night in rooms with no heating or cooling, pray for hours on end, and take breaks by doing backbreaking labor on their communal farms.

Then they chant in Latin while walking through town square, repeatedly banging their faces with wooden planks. And certainly never cooking anything that requires a mortar & pestle.

Merton is a fine writer, but I find that anybody who tries to write a book about “grace,” they move down a dark and winding path that eventually leads them to right up their own asses. Seriously, nobody can explain what grace is, yet religious authors keep trying.

I mean. This:

“It is not we who choose to awaken ourselves, but God who chooses to awaken us. We cannot attain to Him by our own unaided strength, for without His grace, the will to love Him is absent. He loved us first. And the greatness of His love lies in the fact that He loved us when we were unworthy to be loved.”

I challenge anyone to explain to me, in practical language, what that quote actually means.

Anywho, despite the Mandarin (read: “flowery”) language, The Seven Storey Mountain was the audiobook equivalent of the feeling you get sitting on a garden bench, drinking a cup of Jasmine tea, and wondering if your life would be better if you were a squirrel or small bird. I’m envious of people who have the will to become ascetics, to throw themselves into such routines, mostly because I don’t think I’d ever be strong enough to do it.

But I really like stor(e)ys about people who are. Merton’s story fits the bill, but most of it is unremarkable. I mean, at one point, he begrudgingly takes a job as a college professor. This was before going full-on Monk, and the job seems greatly bemoaned. “Woe is me! Fate has damned me to a life of teaching rich kids about 18th century literature! However will I cope?”

Not exactly “high stakes.”

Still, it’s peaceful and ponderous and I enjoyed it. Now I’ll get back to Ten Years in the Tub, which is thus far serving as a painful reminder of all the books that I’ll never have time to read.

Let’s move to the Yukon and kill

I finished The Call of the Wild yesterday and I’ve been thinking a lot about regression. Essentially, I’m wondering if Jack London considered the transformation of Buck (the “hero” dog of the book) as a victory or a tragedy.

There are certainly tragic elements to Buck’s regression. The whole journey is kicked off by Buck being stolen, mercilessly beaten, worked ’til near-death, and starved. Each of these tortures drives him a little closer to being a “wild animal.” The final tragedy, though, is the murder of his owner, John Thornton, at the hands of the Yeehats (a fictional tribe of Native Americans), who kill Thornton because…that’s what Indians do, I guess.

All of these events are what drive Buck to his destiny, which is to join a pack of wolves and live as his ancestors did and forgo his silly old life as a “pet.”

While all of these events are tragic, Buck’s transformation is presented as a good thing. He’s done it! He’s achieved his destiny! Buck has cut ties with civilization and now lives in the Yukon, leading a pack of timber wolves, having all sorts of puppies, and killing all sorts of bears and moose and the occasional gold digger. The Yeehats still whisper about Buck around their campfires, telling stories of a “Ghost Dog” that’s bigger, faster, and smarter than any other animal in the woods. Probably because one of the last things Buck does is rip the throats out of the tribe of Yeehats that killed his owner.

Hooray for destiny!

I can see the allure of this fantasy, but it is just that: a fantasy. I am strongly inclined to believe that Jack London intends for Buck’s transformation to be seen as noble; he’s going back to his roots, thriving in his ancestral memories, becoming closer to nature.

And you can, too! Or, at least, that’s what Jack London wants readers to think.

There are several scenes in The Call of the Wild in which Buck inexplicably dreams of hunting alongside an ape, which we can only take to represent the ancestral memories of humanity. Or, more specifically, ancestral memories of a time when monkeys and dogs worked together.

I get the metaphor, but that assuredly never happened. Humans that domesticated dogs were Homo sapiens, not some kind of knuckle-dragging half-ape that roosted in trees. The point that London is trying to make, though, is that these ancestral memories exist in humans, too, and we can follow in Buck’s footsteps! And we should!

All we have to do to achieve this destiny is be willing to rip the throats out of all those who wrong us and embrace the childish notion that running around the goddamned Yukon hunting and gathering and freezing half the time is somehow fun.

I think Lord of the Flies captures this idea of regression more accurately: The reason that creatures devolve is because they are stupid and afraid, not because they are noble.

There’s a thin layer of snow covering the ground this morning. It is 6:00 AM, the sky is slate gray, and I’ve decided to read Ten Years in the Tub by Nick Hornby next.

I first came across Nick Hornby about 25 years ago when High Fidelity came out, and he was one of my favorite authors for a while. About a Boy is a terrific book.

Ten Years in the Tub appears to be a collection of short, humorous articles Hornby wrote for a British magazine — articles about the books he was reading at the time.

So, in essence, I’ll be writing a book blog about a book version of an early book blog.

Sigh. Maybe I should spend some time in the goddamned woods.