election 2008, andrew, and a curious device, part ii

CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS POST (wherein andrew describes his encounter with the paradox finding device)

later, as we sat in the kitchen alcove of beth’s house sipping hot chocolate, the man pointed to a series of digits on a print-out. “now, see this? everywhere you see a string of numbers like this—three-eight-eight, oh-two-seven—that represents a potential metaphysical inconsistency.”

i considered 388 027. the number had no obvious significance, no sign of a pattern or mathematical errancy, nothing for the likes of an english major.

the man danced a practiced finger from row to row as he scanned the digits. he grunted occasionally, belched loudly when his finger stopped below a series of seven 9s, but otherwise seemed entirely absorbed in this gypsy math.

then, from behind the curtains i heard the now familiar hum of the paradox finding device. strange that i hadn’t noticed it before, i thought. then the curtain moved—i hadn’t seen the device move before, just the noise and lights. the curtains jiggled again. perhaps i’d found the paradox motherload.

april’s cat stepped out from behind the curtain, eyed me curiously, and turned back into the long fabric.

“hi, josie,” i said. “what do you have back there?”

i could now make out her figure behind the curtain, nipping at what must be the paradox finding device.

“josie, leave that alone.”

leaving the man to his cryptic pages of digits, i walked into the kitchen. the counters were mostly bare. a spicy curry-like substance stewed quietly on the stove. next to the wine rack i spotted the bright blue spray bottle.

“josie!” i called, “you better leave that thing alone.” grabbing the half-full bottle, i returned to the alcove. the cat had batted the strange device into the middle of the room. she pawed at it in what seemed regular intervals.

“are you planning to spray that cat?” asked the man. he was staring at me now.

“maybe,” i lied.

“of course—well, don’t bother. come; sit, sit. there’s interesting stuff here, but i think that all we have time for are these twenty or so pages.” he was pointing to a stack of pages he’d labeled “election 2008.”

“this is amazing stuff. you score a seventeen!”

“is that good?”

“well, it’s a true paradox, that’s for certain.”

“oh, OK.”

“see, look here. these numbers suggest that on both a global and a micro level you hold views that are paradoxical.”

“what do you mean?”

“for starters, you genuinely believe that barack obama is the moral choice for president, and the immoral choice for president, and that there is no moral choice for president. and you believe that mccain is in many ways the best that the republican party has to offer, but don’t expect to give him your vote—”

“i follow you, but you’ve got to give me some credit for consistently thinking that sarah palin is a loon.”

the cat had abandoned the paradox device and was purposefully walking about the room.

“meow,” she said.

“hmm. perhaps. nonetheless, you believe that capitalism, democracy, and the protestant work ethic are keys to the continued success of the united states, that distributism and quasi-socialism are keys to the ensuring equality of man, and that these systems are all myths, half-truths to make us feel that we can build sustainable society.”

“right, i see where you’re going with this. i’m stuck with these non-negotiables—we must have the freedom to earn our own keep, control our destinies, and live our lives without the interference of a malignant bureaucracy, yet the very system that allows such american dreams seems set up to propagate inequality, poverty, and poor health care. the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. and although many churches and social programs successfully address these needs, others create generational patterns of welfare.”

“oooh, boy,” he cried, looking down at the print-out, “and we haven’t even mentioned the abortion issue.”

i couldn't resist the bait. “i buy the arguments of websites like proobamaprolife.com, which describe how obama’s emphasis on decreasing the number of unwanted pregnancies through education, birth control, and condoms will have a greater impact on the number of aborted babies than any policy of mccain’s. and i hate how the republican party has co-opted this issue as the one way to keep evangelicals in their electoral camp. but i’m going to have trouble voting for a candidate that supports increased access to abortion.”

“you don’t even need me!” he flipped to another page. “what about your so called objectivism?”

“what do you mean? i’m a model of objectivity. after all, i’m an ISTP.”

“then how is it that you are so swayed by the call for change, by smooth talking, amazing speeches, and funny jokes? why do you esteem the underdogs and challengers over the seemingly capable incumbents? and why do you allow personal grudges—i.e., the lack of response to your supersonics pleas—to impact your vote? and for that matter, why do you so prize objectivity? ”

i stared at the man, dumbfounded. i looked at the pacing cat, at the hanging drapes, at the curious buzzing device on the floor. “i don't know. what’s the answer?” i asked.

he ran a hand through his hair, shuffled the papers into a yellow attaché case, and stooped down to pick up the device. the cat meowed once, twice, and a third time. with tired eyes he looked at me and then back at the cat.

“she says that you are the answer.”

election 2008, andrew, and a curious device

“the device is used to spot paradoxes,” explained the man as he slapped it against his thigh. “if there is a paradox, these lights here, here, and here will blink swampy moss green, night-shade eggplant purple, and laundry blue.”

“and—those are colors?” i asked.

“yes, the colors of paradox.”

he pushed his chair back and walked toward me. the device dangled in his hand like a strangled bunch of metallic carrots. it whirred and hummed against his side.

“show me again,” i said.

he nodded, gave the awkward device three quick shakes, and dropped it to the floor—not a sign of flashing lights. the device purred but remained inert.

“but first can i touch it?”

nodding, he reached down and grabbed the device by what looked curiously like a stem. he offered it to me.

“don’t worry it won’t bite,” he chuckled.

it didn’t bite, but it kept buzzing. i carefully examined the contraption, testing its weight in my palm, listening for the source of that noise, turning it to explore its edges, grooves, and nubs.

i handed it back to him.

“OK. i suppose i’m ready.”

again, three shakes, and then he tossed me the device. nothing happened. it murmured in my hands just as it had a moment earlier on the floor of beth’s living room and when slapped against the man’s thigh. and then, it suddenly lit up. a carnival of greens, purples, and blues flashed through my fingers.

“a paradox!” shouted the man.

CONTINUED IN THE NEXT POST (wherein the mysterious paradoxes are unraveled)

higher ground (a personal essay by andrew david)

some februaries my parents and i would strap the camper to our truck and head south. we'd drive down I-5, through evergreens, olive orchards, and southern california sprawl, until we made our way to the edge of some lonely desert. we'd consult a map and point definitively into an expansive blank space and say, "there. that's where grandpa and grandma are."

sure enough, somewhere in that sea of sand we'd find their rig, parked like a lone outpost in the wild. after pulling in and trying some of their prickly pear jam, we would usually head across the border and into mexico--we'd pass through tijuana or ensenada and then stay a few days in san quentin or san felipe.

i remember one such trip where we all piled into grandpa's truck and out into yet another desert. we may have packed sandwiches, mexican pastries, and water canteens, but all that i can recall are lemon drops--grandpa and grandma's truck was always well-stocked with lemon drops. after jostling about in the pick-up cab for an hour, we started to traverse a dry lake bed. the sand there was nice and flat and made for quick bump-free sailing. but as we drove, grandpa started to notice wet sand sticking to our tires. we began to slip and slide--the lake wasn't so dry after all. my mom sat white-knuckled beside me, afraid that we might get stuck there, doomed to feast on cacti and century plants.

but grandpa led us on. he kept the wheels turning and instructed us to look for higher ground, for tufts of grass that might signal a way out of this mud pit.

perhaps it was because i was an adventurous, short-sighted kid, but on that day it didn't occur to me to be afraid. i believed that grandpa would find a way out of the mess. that's just the way he was: grandpa had a resourcefulness and a quiet strength about him. it was there in his handshake, his bear hug, in the way he worked the timber and served his church, and it was there that day when he urged us to look for dry land. throughout his entire life he always pointed us up, always exhorting us to head for higher ground.

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author's note
after my grandpa passed away, my grandma asked that we cousins write something to communicate what he meant to us. some of the letters were shared at his memorial and graveside service; they were all very touching. in any case, this was my contribution. i wrote it during the two-hour car ride from oregon city to marcola. but as you can see, i've been thinking about it for awhile.

the visit (a personal essay by andrew david)

Beth’s grandfather talks quietly; his words tremble in the air and then vanish, like hot breath in the winter. There are no other chairs, so we are scattered about the room on a pair of footstools and some empty spaces of carpet.

Grandpa Cole is telling us about a devotional book that he ordered from the downtown bookstore. The book consists of a Bible verse for each day of the year, and Cole has purchased five copies of the book so that the family can read the same daily entries even when they are apart. We are visiting for the afternoon, and he wonders whether we might be willing to give him a ride to the store to pick them up: apparently the books have been waiting there for months.

Cole can’t drive himself. Earlier this summer he accidentally drove his car into Lake Washington. The incident was splashed across the local headlines—MAN RESCUED FROM CAR PLUNGE INTO LAKE—but Cole downplays the event. In his soft way, he thanked the lifeguard that pulled him from his lake-bound tomb and then defended the strange event by complaining of poor signage and confusing roadways.

Since that time, he has lived in three separate retirement homes: two independent living communities and an assisted living community. I occasionally hear bits and pieces of these housing adventures from Beth—the rooms are too small, the people are too bland, something just isn’t right. And when we first arrived, Cole recited a litany of life’s curses. Indeed, we learned a great deal about his canker sore and lack of appetite.

But a wall of sound seems to separate us from Cole. The busy buzz of healthy independent life makes it difficult for us to empathize with this frail quiet man.

When we finally wander downtown in search of the bookstore, we forget the thoughtful generosity that initiated this search and only note that Cole can’t remember its location. And when he confesses feelings of loneliness and ineptitude, we call the nurse to check his mouth. We may try to treat his words with gravity, but they strike us as awkward and strange. It is as if each phrase is as an excuse for lake-driving.

thoughts about life, ven diagrams, and grandpa

i've recently become addicted to staying up late even when i don't want to. i've settled into an ugly routine whereby i have to surf the internet before going to bed. in some sense, this is a disaster--i spend the next day trying not to fall asleep in my office. if i go to bed at 11:30pm, i must first read sports blogs, check the other journal wiki, and creep and crawl all over the world wide web. and then after shutting my laptop and eyes, my mind stays up for another hour, wrestling with itself over this, that, and the best strategies for falling asleep.

tonight the random web surfing consisted mostly of some articles by jerry brewer about a young girl who is battling a cancer known as neuroblastoma. as i tried to sleep, the columns kept reminding me of my grandpa; yes, the same grandpa that you've been hearing from on this blog during the last month.

grandpa has been fighting cancer for more than a year now. my parents tell me that he has taken a rough turn recently; his white blood cells (those cancer fighting fellows inside the body) are fine, but he can't manage to eat or drink anything. at the moment he's tethered to a hospital IV, and we're all hoping that he can get hydrated and find an appetite. his condition is bad enough that my parents have canceled our annual labor day adventure in eastern washington so that they can be close to springfield in case his condition worsens.

in the meantime (i.e., until grandpa gets better or worse), all i can do is pray and stay up late thinking (and then writing).

although the situation may look grim, i have plenty of hope. for one thing, i'm confident that if it's nearing grandpa's time, he will be at home at his next destination. but i also have hope that he will make it through this scare.

like the little girl in brewer's seattle times articles, grandpa has been rather sick before. in fact, more than a year ago i found myself pensively considering his cancer and started to write a blog entry to express my feelings. however, my metaphors got all tangled and grandpa got better, so i abandoned the post.

at the moment the post is mostly a jumbled mess, but i don't know that i'm going to have a chance to work on it anytime soon. so i thought i'd post it in all it's confusing glory. i have inserted red asterisks to indicate random jumps in thought that you aren't expected to follow. red text indicate broken thoughts that probably won't make sense.

5/14/06
[another thought brought to you by the kangaroo and kiwi]

"i hope to see my friend and shake his hand. i hope the pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams; i hope..."

~andy duphrane (the shawshank redemption)

as an editor in the field of psychiatry i support brainy academics who say some pretty boring stuff. they write of affymetrix oligonucleotide microarrays and lymphocyte gene expression, alpha-synuclein immunohistochemistry and PSEN 1 mutations. in the publish-or-perish world of research, they write to stay alive. grant money is to alzheimer's disease,*

i remember edwin a. abbott as the wicked writer of '96. his one-hundred year old shadow cast a dark pallor over my mid-winter break. were locked in on seattle. his shadow first crossed my path during one of those odd weeks that seattle schools designate as vacation. districts pass out like candy. the children love february break, and my family was vacationing in mexico. we strapped a big blue camper to our backs and chugged south to yuma, arizona. there we met my snowbird grandparents. grandma and grandpa green. the sun and sand called my name. i remember grandma and grandma's rig: big burly and brown. my grandparents were explorers. they traveled off-the-beaten path before there was a beaten path. before it was popular. i'm sure there must have been some destination in mind, but the plan is lost somewhere in the dust of time. we squeezed four adults, my teenage self, and some lemon drops into the burly brown chevy beast. today my grandpa could use some of those lemon drops--the chemo has him down to a meager 145--but back then he was a burly barrel of toughness. i thought he was indestructable.* at the time, i imagined abbott, the just as william shakespeare haunted june of '01, mr. abbott weasled his way into vacation plans. my of my mid-winter break. my family and i people are obvolute circles. when our circles slop into one another we form insanely interconnected ven diagrams. take your pick of sociologists--auguste comte, georg simel, pierre bourdieu--whatever their theoretical bent, these dudes all agree that we are connected. . for instance, if you're reading this, you're probably connected to me in some way. the intensity of our connections is constantly in flux. today your circle might be big and bold at the point where it overlaps my circle. but as life passes, that circle will fade.*

sometimes we have a tendency to live this life like jugglers. we keep tossing those circles around, fanning the flame for each of those circles. we don't let them fade. in moderation, this is probably a good thing. otherwise, all the circles will fade and we'd be left on a lonely island, a circle to ourself. conversely, this juggling act is also a failure to recognize the very nature of life. friends and family fade in and out. this is life; that's the way it is.

but sometimes circles suddenly disappear. (flashy quote from poet; talk about grandpa; that's really what i wanted to talk about.)


okay, back to 2007. an explanation of this post:

i was planning to recount a story in which my family and grandpa and grandma piled into their truck and went for a drive through the desert. we nearly got stuck out in a dried-up lake bed. i can't recall what this had to do with any of my metaphors except that my aim was to talk about grandpa.

my life as a science editor is somehow related to the life of edwin a. abbott an author, mathematician, and christian theologian. i'm not sure how we're related except that during the trip that i hoped to describe, i was forced to read abbott's flatland for my pre-calculus or geometry class. flatland is about a society of shapes (including circles), ven diagrams consist of circles, jugglers juggle circles, little tropical islands look like circles, and thus circles were my main conceit.

the end.

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for an updated version of this story, see this post.