How the Past Possesses the Present in "Signs and Symbols"

The object of this posting is to discuss how the past possesses the present in one of the short stories we read (I chose Nabokov's "Signs and Symbols"). However, being as my understanding of time isn't a linear one, I don't view the past and present as separate entities able to "posses" one another in the first place. Rather, I view it as some tendril extending from the conglomerate mess that is time to wrap around an individual and immerse them within it; the past doesn't, in this depiction of time, posses the present, but rather it possesses the person who is entirely separate from time itself. Take the image below for example; the octopus represents time and the person represents, well, a person. We have no "set place" in time, just as the person has no set place in relation to the octopus; he is simply experiencing whatever of the octopus is touching him at the moment.
 

Along with this idea of time, I would ask you to keep one more thing in mind: an Oscar Wilde quote, "Life is an imitation of art" which boils down to, "If it is genuine myth, we live it all." In his piece, Vladimir Nabokov describes a scene in which the old woman is looking through old family photos. She comes to one of her son before he was institutionalized and says, "The boy, aged six - that was when he drew wonderful birds with human hands and feet." At first glance, this seems like a quirky detail included to show the imagination (or perhaps the mental flaws) of the boy. It seems to just be one of those random details that authors include to have originality and therefore validity in their stories, right? That is certainly what I thought. That is, until only a few days ago when, by chance, I was watching a less-than-scholarly video on Youtube with my roommates titled "Have You Ever Been High as Fuck." In this video the man sings about his experience with getting high and says, "You close your eyes and you're on a chicken farm. The only problem is that the chickens have human arms...Have you ever been high as fuck?" You may ask yourself - did Nabokov and the writer of this song, Jon Lajoie, collaborate on the image of birds with human appendages? Was Nabokov high as fuck while writing his piece? I'd say no. Rather, they were touching the same tendril of time - accessing the same "ah-ha" moment in coming up with something "original" for their works.

Another aspect of Nabokov's piece that struck me was that there were three calls at the end. While this is linked to the unstated ending of the story (the son killing himself and the third call being from the institution to say that he succeeded), it also mirrors a scene from the New Testament of the bible wherein Peter denies Jesus three times before the rooster crows. Not only do the numbers overlap, but also the idea of a call/crow. And even as I am writing this I see that it is a rooster crowing, and it is a rooster in the image above this chunk of text. Oh how the "coincidences" continue to pile up...

I feel as though I could go through every single word in this story and find some sort of tie to another instance - another shared moment of time - in which the element is repeated. At the most basic of levels, all of these combinations of letters have before been made. Every word he uses has been used before. Maybe even every sentence. Once our language has been around long enough, we will surely recognize sentences as the basic unit not just the word. And maybe we'll even eventually recognize entire stories as the basic unit. Or have we done so already?

The Color Blue

In class today I learned how to read Nabokov in such a way that results in one becoming incurably deranged.

To address the topic of "can you ever read too far into something," Dr. Sexson read us part of an essay written in regards to the seemingly infinite number of signs and symbols within Nabokov's piece "Signs and Symbols." After about 2 pages of rigorous analysis, the writer had finished his direct address of the first sentence, "For the fourth time in as many years, they were confronted with the problem of what birthday present to take to a young man who was incurably deranged in his mind." The analysis reminded me of one of those math problems:
     *If Sally has 5 shirts, 2 pairs of pants, 1 skirt, and 6 pairs of shoes, how many different outfits can she make?*
It reminded me of this sort of math problem because the critic would analyze one word, then combine it with the following word and analyze them as a set and so on. This process lead to the discovery of a plethora of connections, allusions, and proposed hypotheses on the critic's behalf. ie - the word present.. birthday present.. is it presently his birthday? Are they presently presenting him with a present? What does the word "present" mean in this sentence?!

You can see how this story, or more accurately the analysis thereof, could drive a man mad.

However, the story only grew richer through this process. Why? We are meant to connect. We love to connect. Humans are relationship-oriented creatures; we marry for life, we travel in packs, we seek out companions, we communicate with one another constantly. It makes sense that we would all want to find connections does it not? So here I go with a quick analogy:
    * I was sitting on my friend's couch eating cinnamon-sprinkled apple slices during a commercial break the new Star Trek movie. All the sudden a Corona commercial comes on. The setting: the beach. The plot: a man trying to bring some cervezas back to his friends. However, as he steps onto the sand, he quickly recoils; the sand is extremely hot. To solve his dilemma he acrobatically jumps from towel to towel of the others on the beach until he reaches his friends. They crack open their nice cold beers. End scene.*
What about this commercial stood out to me? What was its appeal? Some may say the happy image of enjoying a beer on the beach with friends. But no, rather it was the hot sand. I absolutely loved the hot sand because we all encounter it and battle it when at the beach; we can all empathize with that scenario, but it is not the first image (for me, I don't even think of it at all) that comes to mind when we think of the beach. My point here - a point that the marketing world has clearly picked up on - is that people like to connect and empathize and understand others and their situations.

[Watch the Corona Commercial by Clicking Here]

Therefore, the author's intention - what he/she was trying to place in their story as an allusion or reference - does not even matter. We should try to see as many connections as we can in every piece we read. Psychologists have been pushing this on those studying to teach for years now: we learn by making connections, so teach your kids to connect the material you want them to learn to as many things as they can. It not only works to remember material, but to get a better understanding of it. Imagine looking at a landscape for one day. If you sat in the same place all day you could be dropped into the middle of it and not recognize your surroundings at all. But if you explored the scene as thoroughly as you could during that day, you could be dropped anywhere throughout and have a sense of familiarity, if not mastery, of the terrain.

The point of all this? You can't read too far into things. It simply isn't possible. Reading works a lot like sight; what we perceive as the color blue is really an object that has absorbed every color besides blue. To see a piece of writing in the simplest terms - to understand it in such a way that we could explain it in the simplest terms - we must put every connection and sign and symbol we have into it. "And in the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time" - T.S. Eliot

Coffee in the Afternoon

Something has always bothered me as a reader/writer/future-English-teacher, and it is the question of meaning. In an effort to get students to think about the significance of a work ("Why did the author feel the need to write about this? How does it affect you? What makes you connect to it?"), teachers often project the idea that there is some nugget of meaning hidden within the work: that once the students dig deeply enough and sweep away enough dirt, they will see some obvious inherent thing. Maybe a moral or an idea. Who knows.

Something about this notion made me uncomfortable, in a way that reminded me much of an experience I had this summer, so bear with me here while I go on a bit of a tangent. I had always hated banks. Not the idea or purpose, but waiting in line in them. But waiting in line anywhere else has never bothered me, so I knew it couldn't be a lack of patience from which my problems stemmed. However, I had never put much thought into it and had, rather, just thought, "I don't like lines at banks. End of story." That was until one sunny day in July when, while conversing with a co-worker on our break, I heard myself say, "Are you making coffee right now?! It's 3 in the afternoon!" And just like that, it struck me: the idea of drinking coffee in the afternoon somewhat disgusts me, and therefore smelling in the afternoon is off-putting. And my bank always has a self-serve coffee station by where I wait in line- no matter the time of day. So, like that, I could tell I did not like the idea of unearthing a hidden meaning, but today in class I realized just exactly why.

In general, when a person writes about something they are trying to share something (an idea, memory, experience, etc.) that they are deeply involved in (whether they are passionate about it, struck by it, haunted by it or whatever it may be) with others. Now just think for a minute; when was the last time that you excitedly told a story to a friend and buried the "meaning" under all these layers in your story? If you are the average person, your answer is probably "never." When we communicate with others, the tendency is to make the conversation as clear and concise and poignant as possible, which brings me to my main point: there is no hidden meaning. Meaning resides in the collective combination of every single word, punctuation mark, and paragraph break that make up a piece.

This hit me today in class when we discussed Dante's and Thompson's 4 levels of interpretation by diagramming them in the shape of a clock. The result was proximity between level 1 (the literal) and level 4 (the anagogical/mystical). At this point Dr. Sexson gave an anecdote about Robert Frost wherein Frost, after reading one of his poems, was asked what the meaning was. In reply, Frost repeated the poem back to the questioner - saying, "The poem is the meaning!"

It seems obvious to me now. I look back on the writing I have done, the pieces I have had published, and the pieces I take the most pride in. What do my favorites have in common? They are concise in expression. The language is exact and the story/poem/essay does exactly what I wanted it to do in as clear of a way as possible. Is this not the goal of every writer? To illustrate something in as potent a way as possible? Why would any writer approach a piece and think, "Hmm.. I should only sort of demonstrate my point and then fill the rest of this area with other random words"?

It seems obvious to me now what alluded me for so long. And now I can only hope to take every word into account - every image given within a piece - so that I can see the whole picture for all that it really is.

The Capture

My entire body is pushed up flat against the wall. My right toe digs hard into a small dent while my left leg is flagged out keeping me balanced. The tips of 3 fingers on my right hand crimp hard into a small line in the rock as I look up and assess the rock face ahead of me. I scan the rock face while mid balance act, seeing nothing, when suddenly I see it: the smallest rock chip up to my left. Without thinking - without even pausing to contemplate how to complete my next move - I feel my thumb and index finger grip the rock chip and my hips shift, ever so slightly, to the left allowing me to pull myself up on that tiny chip of rock.

I complete the wall and look around me - taking in all the beauty - and realize that I am not alone. I feel my mind stretch like elastic as it, as usual, tries to focus on everything at once. I try pulling it back in to feel the power that is a concentrated mind, to feel as I did throughout my climb, but do not succeed. "Alright, lower!" I yell down to my belayer, already thinking ahead to the next climb - the next moment of pure concentration.

I am completely fascinated by that moment, the moment Sven Birkerts describes as "the capture."  We can pay attention with all our might, but it will never even come close to what occurs when our attention is captured.  A similar parallel exists between being distracted and day dreaming.  You see - when we try to pay attention or when we are distracted, we find that our mind is being actively guided or told what to do. However, when our mind is captured or when we are day dreaming, our mind follows or wanders completely unfettered. This freeness of thought is what allows for a higher intensity to be experienced; since none of our energy is being used to focus, it can all be used to absorb the moment.

I yearn for these moments, for in these moments I am completely present, completely aware, completely alive. I want nothing more than to live in an eternity of this moment. However, I don't know how to. Thus far, the only times I experience this utter alignment with myself is when I am out hiking or climbing or immersing myself as deeply as I can in the natural world. When it comes to being in the classroom or at home or at work, I find that my attention is spread everywhere like a flimsy layer of cellophane, which obviously only makes it harder for me to feel on track with - or even aware of - what is going on. And in my tireless pursuit for that moment I choose to neglect the tasks I have at hand (yes, my homework does fall into this category) in favor of putting myself in a position to experience that euphoric moment once more. Because that is what feels right. And, according to Darwinian chains of thought, if it feels that good it must be something good for us. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how I justify spending every spare second hiking around and exploring my surroundings.

I feel that is concept also relates to what Matt brought up in class today about the collective unconscious. Matt posed the idea that mythology is something that naturally flows through us, rather than being something we control. I absolutely align with this idea. Going through school and having teachers tell us to dissect every little thing to find all the hidden allusions always seemed to me like a game; if you search hard enough you can find anything. However, the idea that those elements and patterns are in, well, everything makes sense if we all have it hardwired into our brain. Then, like the patterns we use without thinking to converse with one another, we would be writing according to a pattern that exists because it is the only way we know how to write.
The connection between this subconscious pattern and the ability to focus comes into play when we think about why we are sometimes able to so fully focus. If we can't demand it of ourselves - turn it on with the flip of a switch - then it must be a subconscious trigger that causes it.

At the end of the day, I think of these things. I think of how we are telling the same stories over and over and over again. I think of how we are alive for moments at a time and how the rest of our time is spent at a foggy and muffled distance from what is happening. And I think of how I would so love to become alive in this moment - to be captured by it - and for my mind to revert into itself so that I could see the patterns of story within myself. I'm sure they are there. Everything points to it. I need simply to wake my mind up and observe with such clarity so that I can know.

Factual Story vs Mythological Story: Is One "Truer" than the Other?

 I have noticed a pattern with this class (and how fitting is that since the point of this class is to observe repetition) and it is that I am consistently having "light bulb" moments when we discuss the interconnectedness of, well, everything. I feel as though I spend most of my time in class thinking, "Ahhhhh, now I see it!" or "Oh that makes a lot more sense now." And while I love the learning process, I have been feeling that I am maybe not knowledgeable enough to be able to assert my view on elements we have been discussing. However, when "factual story vs mythological story" came up in class today I found myself twitching in my seat out of eagerness to discuss the topic.
The debate over fact vs myth is one of my favorites to engage in ever since I read Tim O'Brien's The Things Carried.  In his book, O'Brien recounts his experience in war through story, but a separate dialogue informs the reader that those stories don't always accurately retell the facts. While some readers may find this upsetting, I fell in love with the notion.
Why should we be restricted by facts in sharing our experiences? Some times the best way to explain what happened is to describe it in terms of how it felt or seemed or what it looked like from one's own perspective. After all, what we choose to do and how we choose to live our lives is based on our own perception, so we may as well be sharing that with others since it is, in that way, truer and more relevant.
In John Cheever's "The Swimmer," we see an old man journey across fences and through yards to swim through a series of pools to get home. He insists that he is swimming around the world. Now, Cheever could have described this story from a view point of the man being a crazy alcoholic that just swam around, but by allowing us to peak inside of Ned's (the man swimming) mind, we see that this is his reality and we are given the opportunity to experience it alongside him.
The idea of story truth being truer than facts appears in Sven Birkert's "The Art of Attention" as well.  Birkert writes, "If a thing doesn't necessarily matter in itself it might matter because of what it shows about something else." Take, for example, someone's recollection of a horrible day they had. Let's say they describe all the things that went wrong on that dark and rainy day. Does it really matter if it was, in fact, a bright sunny day? Or is it more important for that person to convey the essence of their experience by describing the day as dark and rainy because that is how it felt to them?
While facts are clearly necessary in life, I do not think they are the key element of a story. It seems to me that it is just as - if not more -  important for someone to convey their experience in as raw and personal of terms as they can than that they make sure they have the date and time correct.
You tell me which picture you can empathize with most.

Persian Rugs and Pirates (A Dream Sequence)

The scene opens with a woman holding the hands of two children: a young girl on her left and an even younger boy on her right. The woman drops the girl's hand - my hand - and turns to the boy, caressing his face with the palm of her hand. I hear nothing but know they are somehow communicating. They walk to a bench and sit.
The bench faces east and they therefore sit staring at the shrubbery around them rather than the lake at their backs, and I take the time to note the absurdity of that before wandering towards the lake myself.
I carefully step into the water, feeling mud squeeze up in between my toes, and begin to walk out. I walk until only my head protrudes from the water, knowing that I am surely being dangerous, then turn to see my mother and the boy on the bench. She has yet to turn from the boy - has yet to notice I am gone - and so I continue walking.
I know I should be floating by now, but my feet stay solid on the floor of the lake; I should be drowning by now, but my lungs breathe easily.
Without knowing how long I have been walking, I suddenly make out a bubble ahead of me. It rests on the floor of the lake like a dome and as I approach I see that it is nearly the size of my 2 story house. I walk through the bubble and, though being fully submerged in the lake had not affected me, notice that I am dry and breathing air again.
The floor in front of me is covered in a huge ornate Persian rug. The body is maroon and the designs are comprised mostly of navy and tan. I am staring at the rug, admiring the detail, when a pair of black boots with silver toes enters the edge of my vision.
I look up slowly - so slowly that my head seems to swim with thoughts of an entire year before I finally meet eyes with the owner of the boots. I recognize curiosity and hostility in his eyes and wonder which will outweigh the other. I glance back to the shore line - seeing through miles of murky water - and see that my mother has yet to turn. I recognize that the man in front of me is a pirate, and as that thought enters my mind two more appear - one on either side of him.
The edges of my vision blur and a series of mumbles are exchanged. I don't register any words but  emerge from the conversation knowing that I could join them if I would like to. "But my mother will worry about me, she will want me back," I think.
But as I give one last look to her on the bench I see that she has the boy, and that is all she needs, so I turn back to the pirates and step across the beautiful rug to join their flanks, never to look to my mother again.