Month: January 2009

25 Things

I got tagged by my friend Melanie on Facebook with the 25 Things meme. I’m posting it here too because, well, dammit, I like my blog more.

For those who may not know, the meme rules state you should write 25 random things about yourself and then tag 25 people. I won’t tag anyone here. Just the 25 things…

1. The only time my parents let one of us (kids) name a family pet was when I named the canary Thomas. I recently asked my mom why we all lost naming privileges after that, and she told me it was because the bird’s full name was Saint Thomas Episcopal Church. We changed his name to Thomasina when he laid an egg.

2. I write a lot more poetry than anything else and I share very little of it. I’m going to change that this year.

3. My favorite place in the world is the high desert country of northern Arizona and New Mexico. The landscapes, the ruins, the mountains, rock, the cacti all just speak to me.

4. The longest I ever worked for one organization is six years. That was my old school district. I quit to go work for The Man in 2005. I took some tests did some career counseling only to learn that I am best suited to being a writer or a teacher. Go figure. I went back to teaching after 6 months.

5. I listen to the Grateful Dead more than anything else. I even drove from Austin to DC to see them at RFK Stadium because I was certain Jerry was going to die. He died two months later. They closed with “Black Muddy River.” It was beautiful.

6. I can spend hours happily playing feedback and noise on my electric guitar, peeling the paint from the walls and creating howling storms of noise, drone and dissonance. It’s good that I enjoy this so well since I can barely play what the humans refer to as music.

7. I grew up on Winnie-the-Pooh. He was my hero, inspiration and friend. I still have my Pooh-bear, living safely on a shelf in my closet where I see him every day (and where the dogs can’t see him).

8. Chile rellenos, mole enchiladas, Kim Phung’s tofu-lemongrass-vermicelli, waffles, cupcakes, and very hoppy ales could be my basic diet. I wouldn’t live long, but it would be a short happy life.

9. I much prefer the journey. That’s one reason I really don’t like flying. You get cheated out of the journey. Give me long highways in the middle of the desert or twisty roads through the mountains every time.

10. My first concert was Verbal Assault, Fugazi (on their first tour), Operation Ivy and G.O.D. (Guaranteed Overnight Delivery) at The Rocket in Providence, Rhode Island. I think my ears are still ringing.

11. Despite having gone to film school twice and worked on film sets for 4 years, I really don’t like movies that much. They’re okay, but very low on my list of priorities, interests and things to do.

12. I couldn’t care less about celebrities. I don’t even know who they are.

13. My favorite books are Don Quixote, One Hundred Years of Solitude, VALIS, Blue Highways, Lord of the Rings, The Sibley Guide to Birds, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

14. I never yell. Rachel says she’s never heard me yell in 14 years. The only time I can remember yelling (as an adult) is the time I yelled at my students during my first year of teaching. It’s the most unprofessional thing I’ve ever done.

15. I tend to obsess over things including things I enjoy doing. I have to keep that in mind and make an effort not to obsess. The things I obsess over never last. This is why I am very hesitant to set goals related to things I enjoy.

16. I love cycling. I do it more for meditation than exercise, but I love a good 20 miles or so to just clear things out. I’ve done 2 MS 150s and they were both enlightening. Sometimes I like to try to see how many bird species I can ID without stopping. 20 in 20 miles is my record. I don’t do this often. See #15.

17. I woke up in an emergency room in Colorado once. My friends who were there tell me I had been skiing. I suppose I believe them because I don’t know how else I could have gotten there.

18. Many years ago, I was on a train between Chicago and Austin. Watching the industrial wastelands of the Midwest roll by, I wanted to capture it somehow. I couldn’t afford film so I started writing. I never stopped.

19. Our cat, Simon, has decided he is my cat. I’ve never had a cat choose me before. I feel a little bad about this since Rachel is the one who found him.

20. Two of my teeth are perfectly reversed. First molar and incisor on the left side. I bite my lip a lot because of the this. Whenever I see a new dental tech, they always comment and one even took a picture once. I doubt this mutation will get me a spot with the X-Men, but my application hasn’t been denied yet.

21. I typically have to see something to believe it. This makes religion complicated. Doubting Thomas was always my favorite saint.

22. I’ve read The Bible, Tao te Ching, Bhagavad Gita and a bunch of others. There is wisdom to be found in all of them.

23. I pretty much hated vegetables until shortly after marrying Rachel. Now, I eat a mostly vegetarian diet. I really don’t like eating meat that much anymore, and when I do, I refuse to throw any of it away.

24. I knocked my front teeth out as a young kid and so had no front teeth for many years. This made corn on the cob a drag and so I hated corn until I was a married adult. See #24.

25. I love spicy foods. I can even eat raw habaneros. It’s not that it isn’t painful; it’s that I like the pain.

Bonus:

26. I am liberal because of my upbringing. I grew up in the socialist utopia that is overseas military bases; I grew up in churches that focused on the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount rather than the nonsense in Leviticus about homosexuals, witches and shellfish; and I was in Boy Scouts most of my life which taught me to respect and want to preserve the natural world and keep it wild.

27. The smartest thing I ever did was ask Rachel to marry me.

So. That’s that. I’m not tagging anyone in the blogsphere, but feel free to play along if you like.

Along a Neighborhood Trail on a Foggy Day

January 27, 2009 • James Brush • 2 Comments

Fog silences everything on the way down to the pond. The trees hold still, making way for the muted quacks from the ducks farther down.

I watch a flock of Blue Jays descend on a tree, screeching at something. I don’t see any owls or hawks, and eventually they leave, their work finished.

Above the trail, I notice a Great Blue Heron, solitary and watchful. My eyes drift from him to the shapes of the ducks drifting through the fog. One tree over, a Red-bellied Woodpecker squawks at the heron. I’ve never seen a Red-bellied Woodpecker in the neighborhood so I study him through the binoculars, his red nape leaping out of the surrounding gray.

I make a note in my bird book and watch him watch the heron, until, having had enough, the heron jumps off the tree and slowly flies up the creek back toward the bridge.

The trail disappears in both directions, and I walk back toward home, stopping along the way to admire the texture of some broken trunks. What happened to shear off these branches and leave the gaps in the trees? Was it sudden like lightning or just the slow erosion of time?

I can hear birds chirping in the reeds, but they’re not to be seen. The fog diffuses the sound and their voices could be coming from anywhere.

A gentle fog and
brief graying of the familiar
renders the world new

Project FeederWatch Week 11

January 26, 2009 • James Brush • 2 Comments

I’d like to say I just did a half-assed count this week because I wanted to see how many birds I’d see if I didn’t really try, which might help me determine which of my backyard birds are more casual and which require more looking, but that wouldn’t be true. I just did a half-assed count. Still, I was surprised that I saw so many species. I didn’t see very many individuals, though.

The only unusual bird was the Ladder-backed Woodpecker who made his second appearance in my counts. They’re not really that unusual around here; I just don’t see them in the yard very often.

The week 11 count for Project FeederWatch:

Orange-crowned Warbler (1)
House Sparrow (2)
American Goldfinch (1)
Carolina Wren (1)
Black-crested Titmouse (1)
Chipping Sparrow (8)
Ruby-crowned Kinglet (1)
Bewick’s Wren (1)
Carolina Chickadee (1)
Northern Mockingbird (1)
Blue Jay (2)
Ladder-backed Woodpecker (1)
White-winged Dove (5)
Squirrels (lots)

Be sure to check out I and the Bird #92 at The Marvelous in Nature.

Friday Hound Blogging: Leggy Dog

January 23, 2009 • James Brush • Leave a comment

A grey is mostly made of legs.

[saveagrey]

On Seeing New Birds

January 22, 2009 • James Brush • 2 Comments

In the past few days, I’ve identified several new birds for my life list: Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Orange-crowned Warbler, White-crowned Sparrow, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Greater Yellowlegs, and American Kestrel. I’ve also gotten my first look at an Eastern Screech Owl. Pretty good start for the new year, there.

When I ID a new bird, I like to learn a little bit about its behavior. I have two good books for this: The Sibley Guide to Bird Life & Behavior and The Behavior of Texas Birds, both of which I recommend. I never seem to lose interest in these secret little lives going on all around.

The really funny thing about IDing a new bird is that once I’ve figured out the bird and how to see it, I start seeing it even more frequently. Sometimes it appears as though they are everywhere. Where were all these birds the last time I came here? I wonder.

They were there, of course. I just didn’t know to distinguish them, know how to see them. There is an aspect to birding that creates an awareness of any given moment that is easy to lose when thoughts center on other places and times than the here and now.

Seeing a new bird for the first time reminds me of that most important thought: be here now.

When I went down to the pond on New Year’s Day, I saw several Ruby-crowned Kinglets flitting about in the trees. I doubt they just arrived. More likely than not, they’ve been there all along, at least at this time of year. The thing that’s different is that since seeing that one in the backyard, now I notice them instead of my brain just processing small grayish bird and moving on.

The more I learn the more I see.

I suspect most things in life are like that.

The Lost Book Club: The Chronicles of Narnia

January 21, 2009 • James Brush • 2 Comments

I guess it was only a matter of time before The Chronicles of Narnia would get a reference on Lost. In fact I guessed this in my post on A Brief History of Time:

… we’re left with A Brief History of Time, yet another book suggesting that the island may exist outside the normal time stream of the rest of the world. The other books that suggest this are: A Wrinkle in Time, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” The Wizard of Oz, The Third Policeman, and Alice in Wonderland. When The Chronicles of Narnia appears I think the deal will be sealed.

For those who may not know, The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis is a seven-book series about the history of an alternate world called Narnia. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and The Silver Chair form the main cycle in the series and together recount the adventures of a group of children who come to Narnia to save it. They are called to return time and again throughout the series, and it is their faith in the other world and its mysteries that guides and protects them.

The Magician’s Nephew tells of Narnia’s origins, The Horse and His Boy is a story of faith in the face of travail, and The Last Battle takes the reader through Narnia’s end times.

Narnia itself is ruled by a benevolent godlike being named Aslan who takes the form of a lion. Faith in Aslan is what The Chronicles are all about.

The books are steeped in Christian thought and tradition, and some of them are direct allegories: Lion, Witch, Wardrobe is the Gospel, Magician’s Nephew is Genesis, and Last Battle is Revelation. For my money, The Magician’s Nephew is the best one.

How does all this connect with Lost? Only through a name. The books have not appeared, but Season 4 brought scientist Charlotte Staples Lewis (CS Lewis) to the island. I suppose we could consider this a reference to any of Lewis’s work, but Narnia seems like the best candidate.

The world of Narnia is like Lost island in many ways. Not the least of which is the fact that the island exists in a time stream apart from ours. I’m especially interested in the fact that Narnia’s time stream isn’t just out of phase with ours, it runs at different rates at different times. For instance 60 or so years go by in our world between Magician and Lion, Witch, Wardrobe, but untold thousands pass in Narnia. Then between Lion, Witch, Wardrobe and Caspian 2-3 years go by in our world, while thousands pass in Narnia. But between Caspian and Dawn Treader only a few years go by in both worlds.

Using the Narnia model for Lost island, we have a way for the outside world and the island to show no correlation between time streams. This gives the writers a lot of freedom as to how much time has gone by in the two places when the Oceanic 6 finally do return, as I suspect they must.

Other than the timestream issues, The Chronicles of Narnia make a nice reference because, as with Lost, a small group of believers find their faith tested and ultimately they will have to be the ones to return to the magical other place in order to save it. Will there be one who, like Susan in Narnia, refuses to believe in the things she has seen? If so, look for one of the Oceanic 6 to pass on returning, thus sealing his or her fate.

Narnia mainly serves as a potent reminder of the importance of faith in Lost. It can be lost, but the island will take a person back who regains his faith (John Locke blowing up the Hatch but coming to see the error of his ways), and sometimes one’s faith must lead to sacrifice (see Ben sacrificing his life on the island in order to save it when he moves the island at the end of Season 4). The question, then, is will Jack find sufficient faith to lead the Oceanic 6 back?

I suspect we’ll have a clearer picture of the Narnia connections in Season 5, which starts tonight. Something tells me The Chronicles of Narnia may join The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland and Watership Down as a source of recurring references on Lost.

I hope you’ll check out the rest of my Lost Book Club posts.

Ollie

January 20, 2009 • James Brush • 1 Comment

My aunt has a friend whose owl house has a resident. He’s an Eastern Screech Owl whom she calls Ollie.

My aunt arranged for me to come by and have a look at him, and so on Friday, I got to meet my first owl. He sat in his box, seemingly ignoring everything going on around him, but as I watched through my lens, it was clear he was aware of us, whether or not he cared.

I took a bunch of pictures, but this one is my favorite since he actually appears to be looking back at me. Aside from the eyes, those talons poking out from beneath his feathers keep drawing my attention. I wouldn’t want to be a small critter on the business end of those.

Until Friday, the only owl I had ever seen flew like a ghost over our driveway about 15 years ago. Ghostlike mainly because after it was gone, it was hard to believe I’d even seen it. It was nice to get a chance to really see and watch one finally.

He’s got me thinking too. The screech owl house I put up two years ago never drew any owls. I took it down when it drew rats but after seeing Ollie, maybe I’ll try another tree.

The Lost Book Club: Slaughterhouse-Five

January 20, 2009 • James Brush • Leave a comment

Listen. Desmond Hume has come unstuck in time.

The phrase “unstuck in time” is the how Kurt Vonnegut described Billy Pilgrim’s condition in his classic antiwar novel Slaughterhouse-Five.

In Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim a young American GI serving on the German front in World War II, is taken prisoner by the Nazis. He spends most of the war living and working in a slaughterhouse (numbered 5) in Dresden where he becomes a firsthand witness to the Allied bombing in 1945, an event Vonnegut considered to be unnecessary to say the least.

But that’s not the whole story. Slaughterhouse-Five follows Billy’s life through his postwar years and even to the planet Tralfamador where he is taken to live in a zoo and breed with porn star Montana Wildhack. It’s a weird book, but brilliant too.

The events that take place in that slaughterhouse in Dresden are largely autobiographical. The parts of the story involving the Tralfamadorians… not so much.

Slaughterhouse-Five tackles many of the fate vs. free will themes with which Lost wrestles, all the while suggesting a universe is which all things are always happening simultaneously, thus allowing someone’s consciousness to ping-pong about in time, remembering the future and experiencing death, but not necessarily as the last moment of life.

The connection to Lost is made in “The Constant”, one of Lost‘s best episodes, when Farraday explains Desmond’s condition as being “unstuck in time.” Like Billy Pilgrim, Desmond’s body does not travel through time, only his consciousness does with the apparent result that he is able to remember pieces of the future.

I’ve said for some time that Lost is a show about time travel, and in the case of Desmond’s time travel (which is different from what Ben appears to do in the Season 4 finale) Slaughterhouse-Five provides a way of understanding what is happening to Desmond, as well as being a reminder that in the world of Lost, as in that of Billy Pilgrim, you (probably) can’t fight destiny.

More than anything, though, I suspect it is a nod from the writers of Lost to Vonnegut who had mined ground similar to Lost years before.

Poo-tee-weet?

Check out my other Lost book posts at The Lost Book Club.

Project FeederWatch Week 10

January 20, 2009 • James Brush • 3 Comments

American Goldfinch in winter non-gold plumage

I didn’t have any new birds show up in my Project FeederWatch count this week, but I did get the highest number of different species and the highest counts so far.

The American Goldfinch and Ruby-crowned Kinglet both brought friends, and I saw a House Finch for the first time in several weeks. The Chipping Sparrows edged out the House Sparrows for greatest number of individuals seen thus far. Other than that, it was the usual suspects doing the usual things.

The count for a crisp and pleasant weekend:

House Sparrow (7)
Black-crested Titmouse (3)
Carolina Wren (2)
Bewick’s Wren (1)
Chipping Sparrow (24)
Ruby-crowned Kinglet (2)
Orange-crowned Warbler (1)
Northern Cardinal (1)
House Finch (1)
American Goldfinch (2)
Carolina Chickadee (2)
Northern Mockingbird (1)
Blue Jay (1)
White-winged Dove (3)
Mourning Dove (1)

I’m hoping the goldfinch will continue and that they turn gold before they migrate since I’ve never seen one in the gold plumage.

The Lost Book Club: On the Road

January 19, 2009 • James Brush • Leave a comment

With only 3 days left until the premeire of Lost Season 5, I guess it’s time to round up the remaining books in The Lost Book Club. Today, we’ll take a look at Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.

On the Road is Kerouac’s most well-known book and probably the most widely read work of the beat movement. It is largely autobiographical and tells the story of a number of road trips that Keroauc made with his friend, and sometimes nemesis, Neal Cassady across the US in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Kerouac narrates as Sal Paradise and invents names for his friends: Cassady becomes Dean Moriarty, Allen Ginsburg becomes Carlo Marx and William S Burroughs appears as Old Bull Lee.

It’s a wonderfully rambling book about seeking a greater something that eludes easy description but that could potentially be found in jazz, sex, marijuana, eastern religion, poetry, beauty, Mexico, the West, and just generally getting lost in the great American landscape. By the end, Sal is no longer certain he believes in the things he sought or that they are even attainable. It’s ultimately a tale of pursuing unattainable dreams, youthful idealism defeated by age and the unceasing encroachments of the “real world.”

I realize as I’m writing this that there are echoes of On The Road throughout Lost. The book itself does not appear, but it is referenced in the alias used by Ben Linus in “The Shape of Things to Come” and shown on his fake passport in “The Economist.” The alias is Dean Moriarty, described in On the Road as “the holy con-man with the shining mind.” If that’s not Ben Linus, I don’t know what is.

Ben’s first alias was Henry Gale (a reference to the wizard in The Wizard of Oz), a name that seemed appropriate for the mastermind behind the mysterious Others. As of Season 4, however, Ben is no longer in charge. He has lost his island and his home. He is a wanderer in an unfriendly world, and much like Kerouac’s anti-hero, Dean Moriarty, he is seemingly forever on the road. It is worth noting here, that by the end of Season 4, it is the character named Jack to whom Ben turns when he needs to return to the island, to go on the road, as it were seeking those elusive things that the island provides. I suspect Season 5 will be something of an on the road season.

It must be mentioned, especially in the context of Ben Linus, that the name Moriarty also suggests a certain character from Sherlock Holmes (via Lostpedia):

Alternatively, “Moriarty” evokes Professor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis and widely considered fiction’s first “supervillain,” creating the archetype of the brilliant criminal mastermind.

Brilliant criminal mastermind? That sounds like Ben Linus. Unless Ben really is the “good guy” as he has claimed since Season 2.

As I think about this, I can’t help but wonder if another Kerouac novel might show up sometime. Wouldn’t The Dharma Bums be a perfect addition to The Lost Book Club. It’s a better book than On the Road as well.

Be sure to check out the rest of my Lost Book Club posts.