Two Fantastic Essays On Body Image (by men, oddly enough)

Just read a short piece by Augusten Burroughs on his quest to have a six-pack.  Oh wow it's good.

You can read it here, on some dude's blog.  His pictures and commentary are sort of annoying, but it's worth it to read this, serrriously. 

And another thing on exercise-culture, body image stuff, also, surprisingly by a man: Adam Gopnik's essay "The Rules of the Sport" in Paris to the Moon.  I can't find a link for that one, but oh it's good.  It's about living in Paris, trying to get a gym membership, and how the American sort of gym-rat thing is simply beyond the French comprehension.  Those women eat pastries for breakfast, can't fathom exercising on a regular basis, and still are trim and elegant.  Why wasn't I born French, again?

Stuff to Read, if You Wanna

This blew my mind and made me very very afraid of computers: "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

And this, well. It made me feel bad for the lobsters and perhaps awakened my latent vegetarianism: "Consider the Lobster"

This one is just weird weird weird: "A Mind Dismembered: In Search of the Magical Penis Thieves" Apparently, in Africa (and other places), this, um, happens? Magically though, not physically. Anyway, I won't say more.

An Essay Worth Reading

Author: Nancy Mairs

Title: "On Being a Cripple"

A candid, brave, funny, raw account of what it's like to be crippled by MS. Really though, she's speaking to what it's like to be a human housed in a body, to be disappointed by what we can do, to be both grateful to those who are patient with us, and afraid of their motives. It's just well written. Incredibly moving.

I'd link to it, because it's everywhere online, but the links are all complicated in some way. So I leave you to google it. It's worth it.

Long, but Gorgeous Essay

Nature essay. On birds (pelicans) and babies and surfing and being human and stuff.

I love this bit from Emerson that Gessner includes: "First, be a good animal."

Link here: Learning to Surf by David Gessner. In Orion Magazine.

I've Been Duly Chastised

Quotes here come from Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, which I should have read 100 years ago:

"So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its color, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity, which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison." (110)

"Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream." (113)

“When I rummage in my own mind I find no noble sentiments about being companions and equals and influencing the world to higher ends, I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Do not dream of influencing other people, I would say, if I knew how to make it sound exalted. Think of things in themselves.” (Page 115)

And here's the real chastizement, which won't make as much sense out of context. I can provide the remainder, if you're interested:

"How can I further encourage you to go about the business of life? Young women, I would say, and please attend,you are, ... in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of any sort of importance. You have never shaken an empire or led an army into battle. The plays of Shakespeare are not by you, and you have never introduced a barbarous race to the blessings of civilisation. What is your excuse?" (116)

Russian Dogs Ride the Metro!

Apparently, there are a lot of stray dogs in Moscow, like 100 per 10 square miles.

More impressively, they've figured out how to ride the metro. They wait on the platform, get on, then get off a few stops later. Weeeeird.

Link to article: here.

Two Bits from Marilynne Robinson

I read an interview with Marilynne Robinson, author of Housekeeping and Gilead (which I've read) and the new novel Home (which I haven't read--anyone have thoughts on it?). It was in The Paris Review, fall 2008, and I recommend it for admirable insights on science/religion, solitude, writing life, etc. She also cleverly articulated a few things I've been thinking about:

Thing 1. When asked, "What led you to start writing essays?" she answered, "To change my own mind."

Although I didn't realize it, I think this is why I wrote an essay on polygamy, which is still looking for a home, but which I'm rather fond of. Completely changed my mind about the institution of plural marriage. Not so as I'm looking for a sister-wife, but so I have a clear empathy (pity?) for my ancestors who passed through it. Seems a good place to begin: start from a thing you want to have your mind changed about, plow ahead. Writing changes my mind anyway, might as well go in with that goal in mind.

Thing 2. This one, I hope, stands on its own: speaking of Freud who says it's best to have 'no sensation at all,' to remove ourselves from emotion, Robinson argues, "you are depriving yourself if you do not experience what humankind has experienced, including doubt and sorrow. We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass throught his, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of this, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege" (58).

Makes me wonder: Why do we pull in, stay in bed, if this is a univeral experience, the thing that makes us part of humanity? Why, instead, does pain/depression/sorrow feel so isolating? Like we're the only ones on earth with heartache.

Reminds me of something Henry B Eyring said, which I always misquote, so I won't even try. He says if we treat everyone like their hearts are breaking, we'll be right most of the time. Sam loves that. When people say bad stuff about Mormons, he tells them that one of us said that. And if one of us said that, then we can't be as bad as they say.

But we're so forgetful. So disgracefully forgetful of the universality of our own pain, as well as that of others. We're human.