Sowing Seeds and Shooting Hoops

My name is Michael and I’m a native of Los Altos CA. I decided to start a blog to share my thoughts on 3 things that I love: Spiritual writings (for the most part reflections on the Bible and other spiritually minded authors), literature (whatever I might be reading at the moment be it a poem, a novel or whatever), and last but certainly not least basketball (die hard Mavericks fan). The first two part are the "sowing seeds" part because I hope that I might be able to inspire people and "plant a seed" in their hearts and minds, while the final part is where the "shooting hoops" comes in. I hope you enjoy reading this!!

[sowingseedsandshootinghoops]

Some Thoughts on Potty Training

Note on the text: I used Oh Crap! Potty Training by Jamie Clowacki as published in 2024 by Gallery Books.

I didn’t think this was the greatest book on the subject, but I did like what it had to say about the importance of a parent’s mentality when doing potty training.

The most important thing a parent can do when teaching their child how to use the potty is be calm, clear, and consistent in the messaging that they are giving to the child in question. So it’s important for the parent to setup themselves and their house in whatever way they need so that they can feel calm and centered as they move onto this important next step in their child’s life. After all the child is going to look to their parent to determine how they should react to everything and so if you’re frazzled they will be too. Also it’s worth remembering that your child has been in diapers since the moment that they were born. It’s all they know. So it’s makes sense that they’re going to be uncomfortable and at least somewhat resistant to the idea of ditching the diapers. Which is why the more calm and consistent you are as a parent, the easier it will be for them to realize that they are safe and that they can also do things that are really hard for them.

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Being One With Nature

Note on the text: I used Lonesome Dove as written by Larry McMurtry and published by Simon and Schuster in 2025.

What a great book! This book is epic in just about every way. It’s beautiful book about the lives of a group of ranchers and cowboys as they emigrate from Texas to Montana in the 1870s, and the odyssey that they go on is as epic as any in the history of literature. One of the things I loved most about this book though the world that “nature”, both in the bigger cosmic sense and in the smaller more intimate sense of human nature, plays in this story. These are people that are intimately aware of how powerful Nature is and each have a unique relationship with it.

There’s a beautiful scene in the beginning of the book that really sets the stage on how pivotal the role of Nature is to this group of men, including Captain Woodrow Call who “still liked to go out at night, sniff the breeze and let the country talk. The country talked quiet. One human voice could drown it out” (26). I love that image of letting Nature talk to you, of conversing with it. I love the sense of majesty and power that that sentence contains and how it combines it with the sense that Call doesn’t need to be scared of Nature because it’s his home. He’s part of Nature and so of course he can talk to it.

You see something similar later with Newt and Deet when they and the herd are caught up in a thunderstorm. Newt is amazed when he sees that the “cattle seemed to have caught the lightening-little blue balls of it rolled around their horns”, and it’s while he stands there transfixed by what he’s seeing that Deet reminds him to not get too close to the cattle while they “got lightening on their horns” or else he could get hurt (265-266). You feel their sense of awe and you see it clash up against their sense of “know how”, that they’ve been through this miraculous event before and know how to get through it. That for as miraculous and all power as Nature is in a cosmic sense, it is still very knowable and you can learn how to live within the its limits if you just pay attention.

That’s what their cook, Po Campo, says when someone asks him why he walks so slowly: “if I walk too fast I might miss something” (371). He is a character who is incredibly observant of the world around him and he reaps the benefit of it many times over throughout the course of the book when he’s able to cook delicious meals solely because he paid attention to what was growing around them. They didn’t have to eat the garbage they did before he got there, they just didn’t know how to really look at what was around them and how to take advantage of the wonderful gifts that Nature was trying to offer them.

Death is also very much a part of these people’s world but instead of seeing death as something taboo that must be avoided at all costs, they see it as something that is a part of the natural order of life, and it’s something that they use as motivation to live as fulfilling a life as they can. A good example of this is when Gus gives the eulogy at Sean O’Brien’s funeral:

This was a good and brave boy, for we all saw that he conquered his fear of riding. He had a fine tenor voice and we’ll all miss that. But he wasn’t used to this part of the world. There’s accidents in life and he met with a bad one. We may all do the same if we are not careful (286).

Death is not something to be toyed with or taken lightly, but I love how Gus despite also highlights that Sean had a great voice and that he had the courage to not let fear dictate how he was going to live his life. They know better than most just how short life is and how important it is to not waste a moment of it. Gus says that to July when he’s trying to convince July not to be consumed by his hatred of the Comanche outlaw Blue Duck who killed all the other members of his party:

Son this is a sad thing. . . . Loss of life always is. But the life [that] is lost is lost for good. Don’t you go attempting vengeance. You’ve got more urgent business. If I ever run into Blue Duck I’ll kill him. If I don’t someone else will. He’s big and mean, but sooner or later he’ll run into someone bigger and meaner. Or a snake will bite him, or a horse will fall on him, or he’ll get hung, or one of his own renegades will shoot him in the back. Or he’ll just get old and die. . . . Don’t be trying to give back pain for pain. . . . You can’t get even measures in a business like this. You best go and find your wife (464).

Living, and living well. is the “more urgent” business that Gus is saying July has to attend to. Nature itself will take care of the rest.

This book is also beautiful in the way it talks about Nature in the smaller, more intimate sense, and how important it is that we also try to live within the bounds of our “human” nature. Woodrow is a solitary person, great in many ways, and great at knowing what his place in the world is. He is a great worker who respects Nature in that bigger, cosmic, sense and knows his place within that system. He is a kind person who doesn’t take anything for granted and is doing his best to lead the fullest life that he can. His Achilles heel though is that he never quite understands his need for human companionship nor does he understand how to give that part of himself to someone else. He has his friends like Gus whom he gets along with well enough, but he struggles to really understand why people would want him in their lives and can’t get himself to admit that he needs other people for reasons that aren’t always utilitarian in nature. His relationship, or lack thereof, with a prostitute named Maggie, therefore represents one of the great tragedies of this magnificent story.

He can’t even admit that he fell in love with her but only that “something drew him back” to her (361). There’s a scene where he talks about how shy he is around her to the point where he can’t even say her name, and yet when she tells him that she would like him to say her name he’s confused as to why she should care more about him than any other guy. And that rather than try to give himself the space to see whether a relationship with Maggie was possible, he just arbitrarily decides that he’s not good enough to marry her and stops seeing her. And even now, almost 20 years later, for reasons he still can’t understand, and therefore is doomed to repeat over and over again, he says that the memory of Maggie and how he ended things with her is the “bitterest memory of his life” (360). It’s a really sad story of a man who could never quite fill the void in himself because he couldn’t figure out how live in tune with his own human nature to the degree that he had learned to live with the version of Nature that lived around him. It’s a tragic element, a fatal flaw, in a character and a story that is just so epic in so many ways. I really loved this book!

[sowingseedsandshootinghoops]

Anointed by God

Note on the text: I used Richard Francis Burton’s translation of Luis De Camoes’ The Lusiads as published in 2018 by Livraria Lello.

There is some beautiful poetry in what is considered to be Portugal’s definitive national epic, written by the poet that is considered to be their equivalent of Shakespeare. I love the way in which De Camoes retells the epic story of Vasco de Gama’s legendary voyage to India. One of the things I really enjoyed from a thematic perspective is how he constantly underscores just how weak the Christians were compared to their Muslim, here referred to as Moors, adversaries in a way that highlights how the only way they could have succeed is because God wanted them to. He says as much in the opening of the poem when he says that the powerful Moors were fated to be defeated by “our frail Christianity. . . the fated marvel of our century,/to govern world’s of men by God so given” (I. 6).

Then later towards the middle of the story, he reminds everyone that one of the things that art can do is continue to inspire people in the future and how he hopes that reading of De Gama’s journey will inspire other people to do great things even if the chips appear to be stacked against those people: “Yet, ne’er let human bosom cease to thrill/with hope to dare and do some mighty deed,/since [] by these or, haply, other ways,/he ne’er shall forfeit prizes, value, praise” (V. 100). In other words, don’t be afraid to try to do great things. Because if God wills it you will succeed despite the odds and your reward, whatever form that reward takes, will be great.

[sowingseedsandshootinghoops]

There’s Always a Bigger Fish

Note on the text: I used Clarence Brown’s translation of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We as published in 1993 by Penguin Books

Our gods are here below, with us, in the Bureau, in the shop, in the toilet. The gods have become like us-ergo, we’ve become like gods. And we are heading to you, my unknown planetary reader, we’re coming to you to make your life divinely rational and precise like ours” (68).

It is for you to place the beneficial yolk of reason around the necks of the unknown beings who inhabit other planets- still living, it may be in the primitive state known as freedom. If they will not understand that we are bringing them a mathematically infallible happiness, we shall soon be obliged to force them to be happy (3).

Many people consider We to be the originator, the very cornerstone, of dystopian fiction. Orwell himself said that reading We was what inspired him to write his magnus opus, the ultimate piece of dystopian fiction 1984. The problem at the center of We’s universe is pride. Although it initially sets itself up as a parable of the fight between freedom and happiness it ends up being an eloquent attack on the arrogance of the human race. The truth is that humans don’t know themselves as well as they think they do. That for everytime we think we have figured it out, that we now know how to build the perfect society, history teaches us time and time again that we don’t.

Freedom and criminality are just as indissolubly linked as […] well the movement of aero and its velocity. When the velocity of an aero is reduced to zero, it is not in motion; when a man’s freedom is reduced to zero, he commits no crimes. It’s clear that the only means to rid man of crime is to rid him of freedom (36).

This book is set in the 26th century under a totalitarian regime, called the OneState, where any sort of individuality has been stomped out. Nobody even has a name. At most they have an identifying number, like our protagonist D-503. Every part of life has rigorously routinized. People can have sex for example but only on certain days, at certain times, and with people who have authorized to have sex with them. All emotions, and most forms of choice have been eradicated with the idea that with choice comes pain an suffering. That most people, given the option, will choose wrong and that therefore they must be forced to make the right choice which will result in their happiness as individuals and as a collective.

And yet, despite their best efforts, a form of “primitive” man still even within the seemingly perfect citizens of this seemingly perfect state. There are two places in novel where the imperfect and perfect parts of human nature clash so beautifully. The first of which comes when D-503 describes his hands as “long shaggy paws. I don’t like them. They’re a holdover from the savage era” (23). The second comes when he finds out that I-330, a woman who he has been sleeping with, intends to sleep with someone else:

there were two me’s. One me was the old one, D-503, number D-503 and the other […] the other used to just stick his hairy paws out of his shell but now all of him came out, the shell burst open and the pieces were about to fly in all directions. . . . ‘I won’t stand for it! I don’t want anyone but me to […] I’ll kill anyone who […] Because I lo[…] I […] (56-57).

So it’s obvious that even in this highly regimented, highly “evolved” society that something of primal man still exists.

The problem is that every generation seems to think that they are at the absolute top of the food chain. That they have the ability to make society better than it has ever been and that no one will be able to make improvements on them. The problem is that that’s not true. That nature is constantly evolving, building on itself. That our knowledge of the world and ourselves is constantly growing, and with that growth our old ways of thinking are constantly dying and being replaced by newer ways of thinking. That the “number of revolutions is infinite” (167). That there is, on this planet at least, to achieve a level of perfection that is stable enough for us to last for all eternity. There will always be something that we didn’t know, some new knowledge of ourselves or the world that we acquire which will supplant the old. Even Galileo for as smart as he was didn’t know what he didn’t know, and would astounded at how far our knowledge of the universe has grown since his time. And that, in essence, is the problem with all totalitarian like regimes, whether they’re states or churches or families. They all act like they’re the ones who finally cracked the code on human behavior, on how to live a perfect life, and that’s why they crumble so relatively quickly. They’re too strict to allow for the kind of growth and evolution that life requires.

This book is really clever in the way that it resolves everything. Because even at the end when the OneState succeeds, it still fails. The state builds a machine, called the INTEGRAL, which surgically removes the part of the brain where imagination comes from and forces everyone to undergo the operation. Because if no one can imagine a better future, they’re more liable to accept their present circumstances, which would indeed make this “the final revolution”.

Yet at the very end of the book D-503 meets a mathematician who claims to have solved the problem of infinity and that if he can just “calculate the numerical coefficient. You see everything is simple. Everything in calculable” (219). You can see in that moment that despite the OneState’s best intentions, the spirit of revolution lives on.

The State further loses on its original promise: the promise of happiness and peace. They were told that by being forced to “live the right way” they would all be happy. Instead they seem further away from happiness at the end of the book than they did at the beginning. At the beginning at least there were aspects of his life tha D-503 legitimately enjoyed whether they were hobbies that he enjoyed doing or people he enjoyed being with. But the end, when he has been robbed of his ability to imagine a better future for himself, what he’s left with isn’t contentment and a peaceful state of mind, but rather a really cold neutrality. He no longer cares about what happens to him or anyone else. Which in some sense is the opposite of happiness. So even when the OneState wins, it doesn’t. What a sly and ingenious ending.

[sowingseedsandshootinghoops]

Escaping Your Past

Note on the text: I used Beloved by Toni Morrison as published in 2004 by Vintage International

“No more running- from nothing. I will never run another thing on this earth (18). That quote, given near the beginning of the book, winded up being much more telling than I expected it to be. Because at its heart this is a book about not running away from your past. About finding ways to truly move forward in your life.

Sethe, the protagonist of the novel, is an ex slave living in Ohio in 1873. She had been through a lot in her life, even prior to the start of the novel, and it is immediately obvious that she is living with a lot of regret and shame for what she did in her past life. All that comes into focus when she runs into her old friend, Paul D, another ex slave, and decides to start a relationship with him. She is so convinced that she is unworthy of love, that what she did was so unforgivable that she

despised herself for having been so trusting, so quick to surrender at the stove when Paul D kissed her back. She should have known that he would behave like everyone else in town once he knew (204).

Paul for his part is no fool. He doesn’t know yet exactly why Sethe hates herself so much, but as an ex slave himself he knows something about how hard that life was and about the impossible choices that they both had to make in order to survive. Yet even he recognizes that he and Sethe both need to move on and create lives for themselves. That they can “make a life” with each other if Sethe would just learn how to make space for him in her life (155). That leads to a beautiful scene where we see Sethe finally start to allow herself to hope for a better future. In that scene Paul D has just taken her and her daughter, Denver, to the county fair and although she can’t even allow herself to hold his hand in public she turns around at one point and notices that although “they were not holding hands [] their shadows were. Sethe looked to her left and [saw that] all three of them were gliding over the dust, holding hands. Maybe he was right. A life” (56).

The antidote to being stuck in the past, in a state of regret, is self love. It’s to love yourself enough to realize that you deserve to be happy, that you deserve to live a happy and fulfilling life, regardless of what you’ve done, and what other people say about you. That is what Sethe learns from her mother, Baby Suggs, when Baby tells her that Sethe needs to learn how to love herself, how to love “her flesh”, and to

love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don’t love your eyes; they’d just as soon pick them out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And o my [child] they do not love your hands. They only use, tie, bind, chop off , and leave empty. Love your hands. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, stroke them on your face. Cause they don’t love that either. You’ve got to love it, you! And no, they ain’t in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it, they do not hear. What you put into your mouth to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you levins instead. No they don’t love your mouth. You got to love it. This is the flesh I’m talking about. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance, backs that need support, shoulders that need arms, strong arms I’m telling you. And so o my [child] out yonder, do you hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck, put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they’d just as soon slip for hogs, you’ve got to love them [too]. The dark liver- love it, love it and the [beating] heart, love that too. More than eyes and feet. More than your life giving womb and your life giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For that is the prize (103-104).

What she learns in that moment is simply that she has to learn how to love herself. Which in turn helps her realize that she is still worthy of living a good and fulfilling life regardless of what she has done in the past and what other people think of her.

Now the character of Beloved herself plays an interesting role here because she is the spirit of Sethe’s dead girl who has come back to haunt her and her family. Or rather, she is the manifestation of Sethe’s guilty conscience. Because Sethe was runaway slave when she gave birth to Beloved and when she thought she was about to get caught by a slave catcher, she opted to kill Beloved rather than risk her being captured and being forced to live the life of a slave. And while Sethe understands her own rationale regarding why she did it, she still harbors a lot of regret about what she did. Which totally makes sense. At one point she even tells Beloved that

when I put that headstone up, I wanted to lay there with you, put your head on my shoulder and keep you warm. And I would have if [my other children] Bulger and Howard and Denver didn’t need me because my mind was homeless then. I couldn’t lay down with you then. Even if I wanted to (241).

You can hear the real, heavy despair in her voice. She didn’t find it easy to do what she did, and she still struggles with the implications of that decision.

Beloved’s presence in this house is interesting because everyone can see her and interact with her, and her and Sethe over time form a interesting, and ultimately dysfunctional, relationship where Sethe tries to be the mother to Beloved now that she couldn’t be when Beloved was alive. And Beloved for her part starts to rely on Sethe in a very unhealthy and parasitic way to the point where Denver starts to notice that the more Sethe tries to take care of Beloved the more emaciated she becomes while Beloved becomes almost engorged. She is literally draining away Sethe’s life force. It’s a wonderful metaphor.

The only thing that stops Beloved in the end is the presence of Paul D. He represents the future while she does the past and it’s only by latching onto to Paul and deciding to build a future with him that she is able to drive Beloved out of her home and find a way to move forward because, as Paul tells Sethe “me and you got more yesterdays then anyone. We need some kind of tomorrow” (321). It’s at that point that she decides to give herself permission to actually start building a future for herself that is fulfilling, beautiful, and fruitful in every way. And it’s that moment that she is finally able to start leaving her past behind an really move forward in her life.

[sowingseedsandshootinghoops]

How to Live a Peaceful Life

Note on the text: this is Robert Dobbin’s translation of Epictetus’ Discourses and Selected Writings as published in 2008 by Penguin Classics

Epictetus, especially as presented here, is really precise and practical in his advice. His general train of thought is people have to let go of the things that are not in their control- and that you can’t control what happens to you, only how you react to it. Or as he says in a slightly tongue and check fashion: “I must die. But must I die bawling?. . . . Is there nothing to keep me from going [away] with a smile, calm, and self composed?” (7).

Although Epictetus is talking to a group of students about the purpose of going to school can be applied to anyone in any circumstance of life. Because school, and life, isn’t just about the learning of facts and figures, but that a student should learn how to “expunge from his life sighs, sorrows, grief, and disappointment” (14). His answer is reflective of the answers found in many other cultures, including Buddhism. That you can’t control what happens to you, only how you respond to it. It’s only by controlling your reaction to the whims of “outrageous fortune” whether it’s good or bad that you can truly be free and live a life that is free of “sighs, sorrows, grief, and disappointment”. Your happiness comes from recognizing that

the gods have released you from accountability for your parents, your siblings, your body, your possessions- for death and life itself. They made you responsible only for what is in your power (37).

The problem in Epictetus’ mind stems from the fact that people value external part of their lives- health, money, reputation- more than they value internal parts of their lives- namely their character. And so long as people value those external things more than they do the internal ones, they will always be in a state of unease because of external things can be taken away with or without one’s consent. People die, people lose money, reputations get damaged etc. But no one, on the other hand, can make you do anything you don’t want to do. Which is why you need to put more stock on your internal reality, your integrity, than you do on your external reality. Or to paraphrase the opening quote, we all have to die but we all get to decide how we respond to that fact. And the more you realize that and are able to let go of those external things, the better off you’ll be.

The purpose of suffering in Epictetus’ mind is, in a sense, to toughen you up and help you realize how much you don’t need those external things as much as you think you do:

the true ma is revealed in difficult times. So when trouble comes, think of yourself as a wrestler who God, like a trainer, has been paired with a tough, young buck. For what purpose? To turn you into [an] Olympic class [athlete] (56).

He gives a further example where he says that Hercules would not be Hercules without his trials. The ultimate purpose of any trial you receive in life is to see just how strong you really are: “You should thank the gods for making you strong enough to survive what you cannot control” (36). People are tougher and more resilient than they think they are and it’s often only by enduring the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” that they can realize how strong they actually are. That they don’t need those external things- money, fame, power- as much as they think they do. So long as they resolve to maintain a sense of resignation towards what they cannot control and instead focus on figuring out how to best respond to those things.

Now Epictetus knows that what he is asking people to do isn’t easy, but he’s convinced that with the right amount of practice anyone can live a peaceful and carefree life:

Every habit and faculty is formed or strengthened by the corresponding act. Walking makes you walk better, running makes you run better. . . . So if you like something, do it regularly, and if you don’t like something, make a habit of doing something different. The same thing goes for moral [habits]. When you get angry you should know that you aren’t guilty of an isolated lapse, you’ve encouraged a trend and thrown fuel on the fire. . . . So you’ve fed your weakness and made it harder to uproot. It’s inevitable that continuous behavior of any kind is going to [either] instill new habits and tendencies [or] steadily confirm old ones. . . .

[But] if [for example] you are seized by greed on some occasion, reason can be invoked to alert you to the danger then the passion will abate and the mind will be restored to its former balance. But if you don’t anything by way of relief, the mind will not return to normal. . . . [and] it will yield to passion more easily the next time. . . .

So if you don’t want to be cantankerous, don’t feed your temper or multiply incidents of anger. Suppress the first impulse to be angry and then begin to count the days on which you don’t get mad. ‘I used to get mad every day, then only every other day, and then every third’. If you resist a whole month, offer God a sacrifice because vice begins to weaken from day one until it is wiped out entirely (121-122).

The more you practice taking your time to think before you respond to any situation, the better you will get at it. Which means that you won’t be at the mercy of the outside forces of your life that you couldn’t control anyways. That is how you live a life of peace and tranquility. You can’t control what others do, but you can control how you respond to what others do. Which is how you live a life of tranquility.

[sowingseedsandshootinghoops]

The Power of Art

Note on the text: I used Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross’ Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us as published in 2025 by Random House.

“Arts and the aesthetic experience will improve your health and wellbeing and enhance your ability to learn and flourish” (3). Involving yourself with any kind of art can be an incredibly rewarding, cathartic, and healing experience as many people know. How many of us have put on a good song after a bad day in order to lift our spirits for example? But what most people don’t know how that process works and why it works. Essentially what happens is that art, any kind of arts, allows us to more intentionally exploit the neural pathways that are already present to us. Which is why engaging in any form of art (cooking, writing, dancing, painting etc) can help anyone achieve their highest potential. You’re essentially curating yourself and providing your “inner garden” with the most fertile soil.

Now in order to get a deeper understanding of why art, again here I’m using the term in the widest sense possible, affects us the way it does, we have to start by understanding how our senses work just generally because our senses are constantly presenting us with experiences that affect and

alter our mental states. Our senses are always cross talking [across neural networks] to create unique expressions and feelings about our world. And because the arts, by their very nature, are strong sensory inputs that engage multiple systems, they are uniquely capable of accessing neural pathways that allow us to process emotions, name and express our feelings, and even work on accessing the unconscious psyche (32).

A lot of the ways in which we engage with the world happens at a subconscious level. Something smells weird and then we realize that the food is burning. Or we walk into a room and for reasons we can’t quite explain we feel really uncomfortable. Art gives us a unique opportunity to directly interact with these subconscious experiences and develop a deeper understanding of both ourselves and the environment we live in. It also gives us a unique opportunity to curate the environment in such a way as to help us give ourselves the best opportunity to succeed in life. So for example before going into a meeting that makes us feel really anxious, we might listen to some calming music. Or in order to combat and anxiety and strangeness associated with living in a new space, we might paint the walls a nice color. A color that makes us feel more “at home”.

A more direct example of this comes when the authors talk about the way in which our sense of taste works:

The foods you eat trigger your 10,000 plus taste buds generating electrical signals that go from your mouth to an area of your brain called the gustatory cortex. This part of the brain is also believed to process visceral and emotional experiences, which helps explain why taste is one of the most effective sensations for encoding memory. It’s why nutmeg, clove, and cinnamon taste like the fall and winter holidays for those living in America and Europe, while the herbaceous and citrusy marigold flower tastes like a celebration in India where the edible blossoms are routinely used as part of wedding ceremonies. It explains why Susan makes her grandmother’s chicken and dumpling recipe when she wants to feel comforted and why Ivy’s go to is moist chocolate cake inspired by the homemade rich, gooey pudding her grandmother made growing up (5).

Your brain has already set up a series of neural networks to help you find good, delicious, enriching food, and avoid poisonous and potentially dangerous food. There’s talk even that the reason we can taste “bitterness” is because most bitter plants in the wild are poisonous to us. All the “art of cooking” does is intentionally activate those networks. Which means that we have the ability to now use those networks in ways that make the most sense to us. You can use the art of cooking in such a way that it makes your life better, happier, and more fulfilling. Or to perhaps put it a little more bluntly:

When we’re talking about pleasure preferences we are actualizing our general reward system which is used for very basic things like food and sex. The pleasure that we get from art [operates on the same basic principle] (16).

Again art gives us a unique opportunity to effectively “fertilize” our growth edges by allowing us to more intentionally interact with the neural pathways that our brain has already set up for us. We can decide to more regularly engage with that which will uplift us in one way or another and disengage with that which will destroy us. Because at the end of the day “the arts have the the ability to transform [us] like nothing else” can (246). What a wonderful gift they are if we would only choose to use them.

[sowingseedsandshootinghoops]

Bringing Beauty Out of Chaos

Note on the text: I used Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Times That Made Handel’s Messiah by Charles King and published by Doubleday in 2024

This is an interesting reflection on the series of seemingly random and chaotic events that have to fall into place for any exquisite work of art to get created- in this case George Frederic Handel’s Messiah.

The first chess piece to come onto this board of chaos is Handel himself. Handel was a German born composer who received most of his musical education in the city of Hamburg. Living in Hamburg not only made him a better composer, but it gave him a crash course in the hustle that every struggling musician has to master in order to be successful. Because in 18th century Hamburg

instrumentalists and occasional composers went where required, in churches or private homes, traveling when necessary [to make ends meet]. To get to a performance in another town, a musician might [have to] squeeze [into] a crowded coach next to a pidgeon seller and his birds. If no one was available to pump the bellows on a church organ, he could pull in the pastry maker’s son from down the way. [It was in this environment] that Handel [learned how to live the life of an] itinerant provincial performer (28-29).

Arguably the most important thing he learned from this period in his life was how to think on his feet and adapt to his surroundings- a skill which would serve him for the rest of his life. He learned how to live and work as a musician within whatever chaotic framework the world could throw at him.

When he finally moved to London (he spoke German, Italian, French, and English) it was because he recognized an opportunity for economic advancement and his multilingual background gave him a unique ability to create music that was a blend of European styles. When Italian operas were the craze, he could compose on the level with the best of them, and when English language operas became popular, he was able to quickly and flawlessly step in and write them too. He was proved to be very adept at adapting to whatever came his way musically.

England itself, at that time, was in a state of constant upheaval:

The major institutions of state- the Monarchy, the Parliament, and the Church of England- were riven and unstable. . . . The entire social and political order seemed built on shifting sands (56).

What was acceptable one day was unacceptable the next and the fact that Handel succeeded as well as he did is a testament to both his skill as a musician and his adaptability.

One way in which his adaptability really shows up is in his ability to find funding. He was no fool. He knew how precarious his position was and that his

income as well as his art rested on the favor of people who could easily withdraw it. A generous supporter or advance ticket sales might cover some of the cost of a production, but opening night then dangled on the goodwill of a patron or a public violently sensitive to ticket prices. A change in prices could spark a riot, with theater goers storming the stage and tearing apart [the] sets and chandeliers (59).

This is where his financial genus, the street smarts that he developed on the streets of Hamburg, really came through. Instead of simply relying on donors, he formed a joint stock company of sorts where instead of donors there would a group of investors who would get a return on their investments and in return they would minimize any financial risk they would have as individuals. On the other hand, having a steady source of revenue meant that Handel could keep his prices at a steady level and that he could turn all of his attention towards creating the brilliant music that only he knew how to create. And it’s at this point in the story that The Messiah itself comes in.

At time there was this belief that

the engine of social change was thought to be [the result of] the cultivation of sensitivity, which was understood as the deep appreciation for the moral and emotional weight of things. Sensibility was as tangible as taste or sight. It enabled profound engagement with music and art. It was thought to form the structure of polite society to orient the mind towards the beautiful, perhaps even to underwrite civilization itself. . . . Sensibility was the antecedent of hope: a visceral response to unwarranted suffering that could spur [the] action [required] to alleviate it (127-128).

As a result of this it suddenly became in vogue for members of the nobility to take on social pet projects that were meant to uplift society in one way or another. Now the project that most adheres to this story is that of the Foundling Hospital, a place where orphans and unwanted children would be cared for, which was established by Thomas Coram in 1753.

When The Messiah debuted in Dublin in 1742 it was a resounding success. However when it moved to London in the following year, it didn’t fare quite as well. Londoners thought that the “sacred” themes it touched on weren’t suited for the “secular” style in which those themes were presented. Operas were after all a very popular form of entertainment and introduced therefore a secular feel into what was seen as a serious and spiritual matter. People complained about the The Messiah at the time in the same that people nowadays sometimes complain about praise and worship music that feels too hip for church services. Handel was even forced to cancel several performances because the tickets weren’t selling.

So he pivots and agrees to stage The Messiah at the Foundling’s opening in 1753. He sensed that his opera’s semi religious messaging regarding the importance of loving and taking care of your neighbor, and how we should always look to do good here on Earth so that we could be rewarded in Heaven, would feel extra powerful in a setting like the Foundling’s Hospital where the audience would directly see the orphaned children that this establishment was going to take care of. He saw an opportunity, in other words, to lend his great music to another “social pet project” in the hopes that somehow it would land there for people in a way that it couldn’t land elsewhere, and boy was he right. It is based on that concert, and the 30 or so annual concerts that followed there, that the Messiah finally got the recognition it so justly deserved.

It’s funny to think of all the things that have come into play to make a piece of art work. It not only involves the artists’ and their creative processes, but it has to come around at exactly the right time. The song 1979 probably would not be a hit if the Smashing Pumpkins released it in 1910. It only became that it was because, among other things, it was released at the right time where all the forces of the world could come together to make it the hit that it was. It’s a really interesting thought.

[sowingseedsandshootinghoops]

Tips on Having a Second Child

Note on the text: I used Coping with Two: a Stress Free Guide to Managing a New Baby When You Already Have One by Simone Cave and Dr. Caroline Fertleman as published in 2012 by Hay House

I really liked the practical approach that this book took to handling this question. Having a second kid is hard because although you may know the basics about how to raise a child because of your first child, figuring out how to integrate your newborn into the life you have already established with your older child can be really hard. One of the things that they highlight a lot in this book is how the older child may struggle with feelings of jealous towards his younger sibling, and the worry about being replaced by his younger sibling in the eyes of his parents, and what can be done to mitigate the situation.

The first piece of advice is to try and “include [your older kid] whenever possible” in whatever you’re doing with your newborn (45). Let him feed your newborn with you, or let them take baths together for example. Let him be a part of the new process and show him that he is still an integral part of the family. Separating him completely from his younger sibling and saying “ok now you have to stay here while I go and attend to your sibling” may give him the unintentional message that you love his sibling more and that he is somehow going to be “left behind” in a way. Make a point every once in a while to even ask him his opinion about what should be done even if it’s something simple like “your baby sister seems really upset, do you think she’s hungry?” Doing so will make your child feel “valued simply by the very fact that you [are asking] his opinion” (46).

Another thing to do is continue to give your older child a lot of positive attention and praise. Find things to praise him about even if it’s something small like how he put his shoes away or how nice it was that he gave his sister a kiss. Giving praise, and specific praise at that, “not only rewards good behavior but also alters the way in which you speak to your toddler, [which in turn] breaks [the] cycle of you telling him off constantly and him winding you up to get [your] attention” (78).

In other words, by giving him specific praise you are teaching him what are the positive things that he can continue to do to get your attention in a positive way which makes it more likely that he will try to continue to do those things as opposed to doing things that he knows will get your attention in a negative way.

Along the same lines, it’s also important for you to still give your older child some one on one time on a regular basis whether that involves taking him out to breakfast, or taking him to the zoo, or simply playing in the backyard while someone else watches the baby. Doing so will reinforce the idea that he is still precious to you even though he now has another sibling that you have to attend to. This will also lessen of anger or jealousy that he might have towards his sibling because he knows that you still love him as much as you did before even if it just looks a little different now.

And speaking of those feelings, it’s also really important that you allow him to voice any negative feelings that he might have towards his siblings and not make him suppress them. His life changed forever the moment his sibling arrived and so he’s bound to have a lot of feelings and not all of them will be “good”. Welcome to the human race. We all have both negative and positive emotions coursing through us at any given time and both are equally valid. It’s ok that your child gets “mad” and “hates” his younger sibling from time to time, and the truth is that if you don’t “allow your child to express his anger, he’ll have to bottle it up and it will probably reemerge as [a] behavioral problem” (80).

So instead of shutting him down, sympathize with him. Normalize it by saying something like “I know it’s really tough when she cries all the time. Sometimes I struggle with that too”. By showing sympathy and trying to connect with him, you help him understand that he’s not alone in what he feels and it opens up the conversation to a place where maybe you can talk to him about different ways for him to handle his emotions. Doing so will not only help him to calm himself down during those situations, but it will also help to de-intensify the relationship his building with his sibling. Otherwise he may start to blame the sibling for bringing up negative emotions in him which made him feel weird and “got him in trouble” with mom and dad.

One of the last pieces of advice that is interspersed throughout the book is to not downplay the effect that your lived example will have on your kids. Parents can sometimes get caught up in feeling like they need to teach their child “the perfect lesson” about how to handle whatever situation they’re going through when the truth is that children “see better than they hear”. So you continuing to find ways to love other people, including them, you finding ways to calm yourself down when you’re upset, or you apologizing when you’ve done something wrong, will teach them more about how to be a good person than any single “perfect lesson” ever could. They will see the way you live your life and will instinctively try to replicate it. Will they do it perfectly, no, but neither will you. So just relax. Just do what you can to remind them that you love them and are here for them and everything else will work itself out.

I really appreciated the practical advice that these authors offered. Sometimes it’s good to just know that other people have been through this before and to have some idea about the path that they walked to get to where they are. A lot of people have had multiple children before, and have raised them successfully. Which means that you (and I for that matter) can too.

[sowingseedsandshootinghoops]

Hidden in the Light

Note on the text: I used The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith (a pseudonym for JK Rowling) as published in 2014 by Muholland Books.

This was a really great story, a mystery that started off really slowly but wound up being great. Comoran Strike, based off of this book, has the ability to stand up there with the best of the best in this genre. What I really loved about this book is the way in which she slowly built up these characters and then integrated them and their personalities into the storyline as opposed to manufacturing their personalities to fit into a storyline.

When I first started reading the book, I was worried because it seemed like she was doing the latter. There was no subtlety to her writing, to the way in which she was describing her characters. Everything about them in the beginning was about as subtle as a sledgehammer, their characteristics stood out like the brightness of the sun, and it was annoying. I remember saying to myself “how could the writer of one of the greatest fantasy series ever, one with a lot of depth, write something that is so lacking in any kind of nuance or subtlety”? Shame on me for doubting her. Because what she was actually doing was planting seeds about her characters in the mind of her readers that would only amount to anything as the story went on. What initially looked like a painter who was just using bright and flashy colors to draw attention to herself, now having seen the whole canvass I can see more clearly what she was trying to do and I have to admit that it worked beautifully.

Let’s start with Comoran himself. Rowling spends much of the book emphasizing all the ways, both physically and psychologically, Comoran’s amputated leg affects him, such as when she writes about how the “friction between the end of his amputated leg and the prosthesis was becoming more painful with each step towards Kensington Gore”, or when he worries about needing to go back to the doctor and how he may at some point never be able to walk normally again (212). By placing the idea of this physical limitation so clearly in our head at the onset, it makes what happens that much more terrifying and thrilling. When later in the story he trips and further damages his leg while pursuing the suspect, we are genuinely terrified that he might not be able to survive this encounter. We are, without Rowling needing to pound us over the head about it, genuinely worried about his survival.

Rowling is doing a similar thing when she talks about his love life early on, specifically when it comes to his ex Charlotte. It’s very obvious that he was in love with Charlotte and is devastated by their breakup. The night he first met Charlotte and she chose him over the more handsome Ross

was the most glorious moment of Strike’s nineteen years: he had publicly carried off Helen of Troy right [from] under Menelaus’ noise. . . . [It was] only later [that] he realized that what had seemed like chance, or fate, had been entirely engineered by her. . . . That she had, to punish Ross, deliberately entered the wrong room and waited for a man, any man, to approach her; that he, Strike, had been a mere instrument to torture Ross; that she had slept with him in the early hours of the following morning in a spirit of vengefulness and rage that he had [only] mistaken for passion (219).

By the time we meet Comoran it has been fifteen years since that that first night and we find out that she has just left him for the final time to go back and marry Ross, a fact which leaves Comoran utterly gutted. Comoran knows what it is like to lose someone that you loved so completely that life without them seems impossible.

There’s a similar pattern when we look at his backstory as a whole. His mom was a groupie who died under suspicious circumstances only nobody took her death seriously because they all assumed that she was a junkie who simply got what was coming to her:

Strike alone [asked] whether his mom had taken to shooting up; he alone had seen a distinction between her predilection for cannabis and a sudden liking for heroin; he alone had unanswered questions and saw suspicious circumstances. But he [was just a twenty year old student] and nobody listened (377).

He cares a lot about people, especially people in need, which means that he’s not beyond being manipulated by a good sob story. That although he might present a tough exterior, he is actually much more vulnerable than he seems to be. Which again becomes more problematic as the story goes on and it becomes clearer that people might be preying on his sympathies.

Same thing applies to the villain of the story John Bristow. What I love about this character is the way in which Rowling places all the breadcrumbs which lead to him being revealed as the villain because again it all ties back to certain character traits that she establishes in the beginning. It’s clear from the very beginning of the book that no one in his family respects or loves John. There’s a lot of infighting in his family and he knows that he is the least loved of all his siblings, and he uses that to prey on the sympathies of both Comoran and the reader. Both Comoran and the reader feel bad for him and want to defend him, and it’s all so chaotic and ugly at first that there’s no reason to not believe him and side with him against his family and everyone else. It all seems a little mellow dramatic at first but then slowly crescendos into a really intriguing way to explain his motive for murdering his siblings:

Did you start to imagine how wonderful it would be if Lula. . . died? You must have known your sick mother would be a much softer touch, especially once you were her only remaining child. And that in itself must have felt great, didn’t it? The idea of being the only child at long last? And never losing out again to a better looking, more lovable sibling?. . . .

No matter how much you’ve fawned over your mother and played the devoted son, you’ve never come first with her, have you? She always loved Charlie the most, didn’t she? Everyone did, even Uncle Tony. And the moment Charlie had gone, when you might have expected to be the center of attention at last, what happens? Lula arrives, and everyone starts worrying about Lula, looking after Lula. Your mother hasn’t even got a picture of you by her deathbed. Just Charlie and Lula. Just the two she loved (436).

It’s all there for everyone to see from the very beginning. But they don’t because they’re so invested in the characters and it’s not immediately clear how that investment will, or won’t, pay out. That’s what I loved the most about this book. It’s all there for everyone to see, but because she puts a lot of the breadcrumbs inside the hearts and minds of her characters, and not just in the story, it all unfolds in the most delightful and unique way. I really liked this book.

[sowingseedsandshootinghoops]

The Weird and the Wild

Note on the text: I took this from Susan Bernofsky’s translation of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka and as published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2014

Now this is a really strange and hilarious short story about a man, Gregor, who wakes up one morning only to find out that he has been inexplicably transformed “right there in his bed into some sort of monstrous insect (21). The comedy in Kafka comes from the ways in which his protagonists try to respond rationally to the irrational things that are happening to them. Gregor initial complaint when he realizes that he has turned into an insect isn’t to say “oh my God I’ve been turned into an insect!” but that he can’t sleep on his side like he used to anymore because “no matter how forcefully he thrust onto his side he kept rolling back” and later when his family, specifically his father, knock on his door to ask him why he hasn’t gone to work yet, instead of trying to explain what has happened, he tries to cover things by telling that he’ll be down as soon as possible while “enunciating as clearly as possible and inserting long pauses to remove anything conspicuous from his voice” (22, 27). The thing is though that no one can understand him anymore because he is a bug, and it’s not like this is something he could just hide. It’s not like he just accidentally caught a cold or something.

Now Gregor is a salesman and at the beginning of the book we are lead to believe that he is the breadwinner of his family, which consist of his mother, father, and sister. He talks about the responsibility he has to them and starts to think about the ways in which return to the office- as a bug- to keep working. This becomes relevant later in the story. He hates what he does for a living though and there is a sense in which one could see his transformation as a metaphor for all the ways in which he has already given up his humanity and “sold out” for a paycheck.

His family, and their relationship with each other, is also really funny because at no point do they ever think to ask what happened to Gregor and why is he an insect now. Instead they just opt to keep him in his room, feed him his rotten food, and never talk about it. Sometimes they’ll leave the door slightly ajar so that Gregor can at least listen into their conversation but they never talk to him or do anything to invite him into the conversation. There’s a really funny scene though where Gregor says that sometimes, rather then take advantage of the opportunity to interact with his family, he sometimes “unbeknownst to his family, would remain in the darkest corner of his room” as if they really would have cared whether he was there or not (96).

The final joke about his job though isn’t revealed until the very end of the book, after Gregor has died, when we realize that his family didn’t need his money as much as we had been lead to believe:

Then all three of them left the apartment together, something which they had not done for months and took the electric train all the way to the open countryside at the edge of town. The car in which they all sat was entirely suffused with warm sunlight. Cozily leaning back in their seats they discussed their future prospects and, on closer investigation, it appeared that the prospects were not bad at all for all three of their positions- something which they had not discussed properly before- were quite advantageous and above all offered opportunities for advancement. The greatest immediate improvement in their situation would be easily achieved by moving to a new apartment; they now wished to take a smaller, cheaper, but more convenient, and above all more practical flat then their current one which had been picked out for them by Gregor (117).

It’s a absurd and funny story on a level that, in my opinion, only Kafka can reach. I really enjoyed this one.

[sowingseedsandshootinghoops]

A Little Foreshadowing

Note on the text: The Mystery of the Yellow Room was written by Gaston Leroux and translated (as well as published) by Nik Marcel in 2018.

Admittedly I didn’t really care for this book. However there was one scene in it that I liked because it provided a bit of nice foreshadowing. For although Joseph Rouletabille in the scene is warning people not to jump to conclusions, he also, in retrospect, is challenging the reader and asking the reader to be wary of jumping to conclusions themselves about who is and is not the murderer:

there is something, Monsieur Frederic Larsan, which is much more grave than missing logic; it is the disposition of a mind peculiar to certain police officers which makes them- in good faith- gently bend this logic to the requirements of their conception.

You already have your idea about the murderer, Monsieur Fred, do not deny it and you need your murderer to be wounded not in the hand, without which your idea would have become redundant. And you have searched and you have found something else.

It is a very dangerous system, Monsieur Fred. It is dangerous to start with the idea that one has of the murderer, in order to arrive at the proofs that one needs. It could lead you far [astray]. Watch out for the miscarriage of justice, Monsieur Fred; it is lying in wait for you (48).

When you finish the book you realize that he is saying the same thing to the reader- don’t be so sure that you know who the murderer is! It’s a fun little episode in an otherwise not really interesting book.

[sowingseedsandshootinghoops]

The Importance of Taking Care of Each Other and Building Community

Note on the text: I used Keith Bosley’s translation of Elias Lonnrot’s The Kalevala as published in 2008 by Oxford University Press.

What a really fun, engaging, lively piece of Finnish literature! The fact that it has a lot to teach us about the importance of building community and taking care of each other is a mere bonus. This is a really good book.

The lesson starts off in the very beginning where the unnamed narrator entreats the reader to join him: “Let’s strike hand to hand/ fingers into ginger gaps/ that we might sing some great things/ set some of the best things forth/ for those darling ones to hear/ for those with a mind to know” (1). What he is saying essentially is, let’s join together because together we can do great things.

The theme continues when, after the creation of the world, the protagonist, the wise bard and wizard Vainamoinen, upon recognizing that the birds have no place to rest, decides to leave a birch tree standing in a part of the forrest which he had just cleared so he could build his home. This act of kindness proves to be fortuitous because later in the story he requires the help of a bird to keep him from drowning an eagle tells him:

don’t you worry at all!/ Get on my back/ rise to my wingbone tips!/ I’ll carry you from the sea/ where you have a mind to go./ I still remember that day/ and think of the better time/ when you cleared Kaleva’s trees/ and slashed Osmo-land’s backwoods:/ you left a birch tree growing/ a fine tree standing/ for birds to rest on/ for me to sit on (70).

The same theme continues in an episode where Vainamoinen and his comrades fight Louhi, the goddess of death and disease, for the Sampo, a magical artifact that gives its owner riches, and all kinds of good fortune. During their fight however the Sampo breaks off into the sea and parts of it wash up onto the land. When Vainamoinen saw where those pieces wound up, the text says that he

was delighted/ and uttered a word, spoke thus:/ ‘Out of this a seed will spring/ constant good luck will begin;/ from this, plowing and sowing;/ from this every kind of growth/ out of this the moon to gleam/ the sun of good luck to shine/ on Finland’s great farms/ on Finland’s sweet lands! (570).

What he is saying here is that essentially the great blessings of the Sampo belong now not just to one person, or even a small group of people, but to all of Finland and how good that is.

This same theme then concludes, in a somewhat satirical fashion, at the end of the book where the unnamed narrator apologizes for being a bad poet but says that it’s ok because he has blazed the trail for other, better, poets to follow:

I’ve skied a trail for singers/ skied a trail, snapped a treetop/ lopped off boughs and shown the way:/ this is where the way goes now/ where a new track leads/ for more versatile singers/ more abundant bards/ among the youngsters rising/ among the people rising (666).

Even at the end of this beautiful epic poem, after all the adventures, after all the twists and turns, it all comes back to the theme of community. We need to live not only for ourselves but for each other. It’s only by becoming a strong, loving community and finding ways to uplift each other that we will, as a species, reach our highest potential.

[sowingseedsandshootinghoops]

Your Mission in Life: Be Who You Want to Be

Note on the text: this is Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison as published in 2004 by Vintage International

“Beware that when fighting monsters, you do not become a monster yourself. For when you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares into you”

-Frederich Nietzsche

The world can be a cold, unjust, and unforgiving place and if you’re not careful it’ll suck you in and consume you before you even know what’s going on. People can get suckered into the idea that the way to defeat evil is to fight it “by any means necessary”. The problem with that line of thinking is that it often turns the problem of how to defeat into merely a nasty version of a succession plan. Because if you murder a murderer then the number of murderers in the world actually stays the same. The trick is to find a way to defeat evil without succumbing to it. That’s what Toni Morrison explores in this book through the characters of Milkman and his friend Guitar.

Milkman hates his father, Macon, for a number of reasons. His father is an abusive drunk who regularly beats his mother and has even beat Milkman on occasion. It’s clear from early on in the book that Milkman hates him so much while

Macon was clean shaven; Milkman was desperate for a mustache. Macon wore bowties; Milkman wore four in hands. Macon didn’t part his hair; Milkman had a part shaved into his head. Macon hated tobacco; Milkman tried to put a cigarette in his mouth every fifteen minutes. Macon hoarded his money; Milkman gave his away (63).

Milkman hates his dad so much, and it’s clear that he wants to differentiate himself from his dad in any way he can both physically and emotionally.

The moment when he realizes just how much he needs to separate from his dad comes when he decides to step to him in defense of his mom. Because initially he expected her to be really proud of him, and when instead no one says anything, he realizes that it’s because they’re used to that. To them he isn’t their savior, he’s just another angry black man:

Milkman had to blink twice before their faces returned to the vaguely alarmed blandness [that] he was accustomed to. Quickly he left the room, realizing that there was no one to thank him- or abuse him. His actions were his alone. It would change nothing between his parents. It would change nothing inside of them. He had knocked his father down and perhaps there were some new positions on the chessboard, but the game would go on (68).

What he realized in that moment was an important, universal truth that everyone had to realize at some point: that he cannot control what other people do and that the only person he can control is himself. So from that moment on he becomes determined to become the person he wants to be, and not to allow that decision to be dictated by those around him. It is this central choice which puts him in direct conflict with his friend Guitar.

Now Guitar’s foe isn’t his father, but something larger, more abstract, and far more sinister: the system of racism that surrounds them. Guitar, like other black men, has experienced intense racism throughout his life and knows just how dehumanizing it can be: “white people [do] love their dogs. [They can] kill a nigger and comb their hair at the same time. But I’ve seen grown white men cry over their dogs” (52). Imagine growing up in a society where you knew people cared more about their dogs than they did you.

Guitar sees this and decides to black militant group that will just as nonchalantly kill white people as a way to “balance the scales”. So every time they hear about a black person getting killed, him and his group will pick a white person as random and kill him in the manner in which the black person was killed.

When Milkman tells him how insane this plan is and asks him why he doesn’t just after the guilty white man in question instead of killing just some innocent person responds that

it doesn’t matter who did it. Each and every one of them could do it. So you [can] just get any one of them. There are no innocent white people. . . . White people are unnatural. As a race they are unnatural. And it takes a strong will to override the unnatural (155-156).

And when Milkman reminds him that there are some good white people who have protested the unjust killing of black people, while there are many cases of black people also hurting and killing other black people (including Milkman’s own father), all Guitar has to say, about the former, is that there isn’t enough of them to make a difference, and in regards to the latter, he just shrugs his shoulders and says that Macon, and people like him, are just “very strange negro[es]” (223).

Milkman’s attempt to warn Guitar about the path he is about to walk down is also very telling. He warns Guitar that by copying what those sociopathic white people have been doing he runs the risk of becoming sociopathic himself. In other words he is at risk of becoming the very thing he swore to defeat:

what you’re doing is crazy. And something else: it’s a habit. If you do it enough you can do it to anybody, you know what I mean? A torpedo is a torpedo, I don’t care what his reasons [are]. You can off anybody you don’t like.

We don’t off Negroes (160-161).

And in an act of poetic justice it is in fact Guitar who kills Milkman at the end of the book because he thinks that Milkman had stolen something from him when he had not. But the fact that Milkman was innocent didn’t matter at that point because Guitar’s transformation into the thing he hated most was already complete.

[sowingseedsandshootinghoops]

Where Love and Hate Collide

Note on the text: I used Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead as published in 1987 by Tom Dogherty Associates

We may not be angels, but that doesn’t mean that we’re demons. Humans, all humans, have good and bad in them which means that no human is inherently better, or more moral, than another. Even the most evil person in the world has some redeeming qualities. I’m reminded of a story I heard once about Stalin’s granddaughter who said that she had a hard time recognizing her grandfather as the monster that others saw him as because to her he was just the sweet, doting grandfather who always made her feel loved and supported. The truth is not that he was either a monster or a loving grandfather- the truth is that he was both. That is exactly what Ender means when he tells Novinha that

no human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one’s life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts [have] have some generous act[s] that [redeem], at least a little, from their sins (142).

What is true on the macro level about all human beings is also true on the micro level about you and me as individuals. We are more than our worst traits. Often times people struggle with a feeling of shame and embarrassment that causes them to overly highlight their bad qualities while obscuring their good qualities. We have to remember though in those moments that admitting that we aren’t angels does not mean we’re demons. Our good qualities are just as real, just as significant, as our bad ones.

Ela is a character who really struggles with low self esteem. She really struggles to see her own value as a person to the point where at one point in the story she refers to herself and the most ungrateful and cruel child who has ever lived, to which Ender responds:

Yes, you’re ungrateful and a terrible daughter’; he said laughing softly. ‘Through all these years of chaos and neglect you held your mother’s family together with little help from her, and when you followed her in her career, she wouldn’t share the most vital information with you; you’ve earned nothing but love and trust from her and she’s replied by shutting you out of her life at home and at work; and then you finally tell someone that you’re sick of it. You’re just about the worst person I’ve ever known’

She found herself laughing at her own self condemnation (226).

The truth is that when we are open to learning the full story about ourselves or others, it makes it easier for us to empathize and to see things as they really are. One of the things that this open us up to is the possibility of change. Change is possible. One thing that Ela realizes about herself is just how much she has changed as a direct result of the mistakes that she has made. That she “made a mistake, and the mistake has changed her, and now she would not make the mistake again because she had become someone else, someone less afraid, someone more compassionate” (231).

We all have good and evil inside of us. No one is inherently better or worse than anyone, and the more that we are able to embrace the human nature that unites us all the better off we will be.

[sowingseedsandshootinghoops]

Our Only Job is to Love

Note on the text: I used Blessed Concepcion Cabrera de Armida’s To My Priests as published in 1996 by Archangel Crusade of Love.

I want to introduce a spirit of confidence and not fear; I want to make my religion more and more kind and gentle and attractive and to enlarge the feeble spirited, distrustful, and fearful hearts. My Church is love because I AM LOVE (113).

This is a really wonderful book and although it’s directed towards priests there’s a lot here that is applicable to any Catholic who is operating in good faith. What Christ keeps saying again and again throughout the book is that our job as Catholics is to love others, to be an example of Christ’s love to other people.

To be a good Catholic means to be the best instruments of God’s love that we can be. Again this especially applies to priests, but in my mind this can apply to anyone really. The reason we are all called to love everyone is because God himself loves everyone. Look at what he says here about salvation and the power of his love:

All men- even those who live outside of the Church- have consciences for good and evil; all carry the reflection of the Trinity more or less veiled, all carry in their soul a point of light which illuminates the depth of their souls and free will for choosing good or evil. Those who live [outside of the Church] but are of good faith and who are good will be saved. God is just and measured things with charity. . . .

More are saved then are condemned; if the contrary [were to happen] redemption would be useless for many and give triumph to Satan, my irreconcilable enemy. More are saved and in the balance of judgment day, the Son of God will most fully triumph and Satan will remain conquered. Nobody knows, to no one is it given to penetrate what happens between souls and I in the last moments of their life. . . .

Souls never ought to consider themselves [or others] as destined for Hell. . . . I came to save sinners [and] when it comes to dealing with souls no one is insignificant [to] me [.] All are great and esteemed [by me] because they carry the seal of the Trinity (199-200).

People usually turn away from God, or from religion, not because of some insatiable hatred but because of the people who are professing to be his servants, and this is especially true of priests. They turn away from God because they see us acting in an unloving way towards them and/or others. That instead of finding ways to love them and connect with them, we make them feel judged and rejected. That’s why God says again and again in this book that our only job as Catholics is to love people, even those we think of as unworthy, because a “holy love can break [anything]. It breaks rocks, it tames wolves, it changes hearts” (193).

This is doubly true when it comes to priests because they more directly represent Christ to their the world:

How many souls are driven from [God] because of [a priest’s] bad character? Because of the coldness in their person, and in their words which hurt and undercut confidence [in the love God has for them]. . . . For this reason more than anything priests need mildness, charity, and many other virtues in the exercise of their ministry and in treatment with souls (25-26).

Christ gave us his own life as an example of how to deal with even the most unrepentant, hardened sinners. Didn’t he himself deal lovingly with all sorts of sinners, even to the point of forgiving them for killing him when he was on the cross? All throughout the film we are reminded again and again that our only job is love each other and that to be good Christians means that we need to be good representatives of his love to the world. Our one job is to love. That’s all.

[sowingseedsandshootinghoops]

Finding Connection in this World

Note on the text: I used the memoir Sonny Boy as written by Al Pacino and published in 2024 by Penguin Books.

A good autobiography should leave the reader with a sense of who the author is, and this one really does. For as famous as he is, Al Pacino comes off as a relatively shy, uncomfortable person who always felt like he never quite fit in. That he was too much of an artist for the mainstream and too mainstream for everyone else. Throughout his whole life he has always been searching for a way in which he can authentically connect to the world and the people in it and art provided a medium for him to do just that.

What initially attracted this lonely outsider to the art of acting, like it does for many people, was the fact that he could actually do it. That after years of struggling to fit in, and struggling to find something that he could excel in, he finally found something that filled that void. He talks about how when he was thirteen he did a school play called Home Sweet Homicide and how during the opening night performance he suddenly felt the sense of connection, “that sense of belonging” that he had been searching for his whole life (34). Not just between him and his fellows actors and actresses, but between him and the world. Like he had finally found his place in the world, and that he wasn’t a mistake or some weird alien that had been dropped off on the wrong planet.

Ever since he was a kid, he knew he had a unique kind of energy to him but he didn’t know how to harness that energy in a constructive way. He talks about a moment where, as a five year old, he is reenacting the famous scene from The Lost Weekend where Ray Milland’s character, an alcoholic named Don, is frantically searching for alcohol, and being surprised that the adults appeared to find him uproariously funny and he would think “what are they laughing at? This man is fighting for his life!” (11).

Similarly when he talks about his mom’s first suicide attempt, there’s a sense of him having these deep feelings inside of him that he just had no way of processing:

I wasn’t even aware that my mother was having problems until one day when I was six years old. I was getting ready to go out and play in the streets. [I was] sitting [on] a chair in the kitchen while my mother laced up my little shoes and put a sweater on me to keep me warm. I noticed that she was crying, and I wondered what was the matter, but I didn’t understand how to ask her. She was kissing me all over and right before I left the apartment, she gave me a great big hug. It was a bit unusual, but I was eager to get downstairs, and meet up with the other kids, [so] I [didn’t give it another] thought (12).

Even at that age he was feeling things that, in some sense, he didn’t know how to feel. It was only when he became an actor that he was able to find a way to more effectively process and understand what he was feeling, and in doing so it also helped him learn how to use his innate emotional instincts to better connect with people.:

And then one night, on stage, just like that, it happened. The power of expression was revealed to me, in a way that it never had been before. I wasn’t even searching for it. That’s the beauty of these things. I’m opening my mouth and I’m understanding somehow that I can speak. Words are coming out and they’re the words of Strindberg, but I’m saying them as though they’re mine. The world is mine and my feelings are mine, and they’re going beyond the South Bronx. I [had] left the familiar. I became a part of something larger. I found that there was more to me, a feeling that I belonged to a whole world and not just to one place. I’m thinking to myself, what is this? It feels as though I’m lifting right off the ground. It’s right there and I can reach out and touch it. This is out there and this is now what I know is possible. All of a sudden, in that moment, I was universal (69).

Pacino had spent his whole life, in some sense, trying to feel like he was a part of something bigger than himself and art gave him that gift. I think the reason that he struggled so much in his relationships is that he was bound only to one person, and a contemporary at that, and that’s why was constantly jumping from relationship to relationship and never got married. I also think that the reason he could connect to his kids so easily stems from the fact that they are his legacy- they are the future that is beyond his future.

Art is like that too. It’s not as constrained by time and space as we are, and so a person who is participating in that art can more directly experience the feeling of being a part of something that is larger than he is. Also the fact that filmmaking is an intensely collaborative process means that it can amplify that feeling a hundredfold. Just look at the way he describes how this climactic scene in Dog Day Afternoon happened:

The most powerful moment in the whole film was a spontaneous invention. In one scene, as I’m going out [onto] the street, [director Sidney] Lumet’s assistant director, Burtt Harris whispered in my ear “say ‘Attica’”. I said “what do you mean?” He says “say ‘Attica’, say ‘Attica’”. He was talking about an upstate New York prison that just a few months ago had been the scene of a riot that was brutally put down by the governor, the prison, and the police. So I got out onto the street [and] all of a sudden I say “Remember Attica?” And the people started going fucking crazy. And I thought to myself, that’s what film can be. Go out there, go for it. Something may happen. And that’s what Burtt Harris knew. And of course we went with it and there it is. It’s Attica. Bravo, Burtt Harris! (190).

Look at how happy he is to just feel like he’s a part of something bigger, even if he wasn’t the main lynchpin that made everything work. He has no problem crediting other people for what they do, he just wants to be a part of the process.

At one point Pacino says that writing his autobiography has revealed more about who he is to himself than he had originally anticipated, and that his conclusion is that he is a kind of anarchist who is constantly trying to break his boundaries down so that way he connect more fully and authentically to people around him. Which is, in essence, what he feels acting has given him the ability to do. Even as he enters into his eighties, he is still looking for ways in which he can both share himself with the world and find ways in which the world can continue to affect him. Community and connection are as much on his mind now as it was before.

When he was young he had a friend named Cliffy who accidentally killed a squirrel by throwing a rock at it. Cliffy was so devastated when that happened because he didn’t think the squirrel would die. He thought it would just scamper off. He also tells another story about how he once rescued an injured bird and how he and his loved ones took care of the bird until it could fly away again. People desperately just want to feel connected to each other. Even the most hardened delinquents want the opportunity to feel like they are a part of something bigger than they are. What makes art so beautiful is that it gives people the chance to do just that. The need that Pacino felt as a young kid is a universal need that I’m sure everyone can relate to. It’s why the arts are so important and why I hope more people will have the courage to follow his lead and open their hearts to healing that the arts can offer.