The World is not Beautiful; Therefore It Is.

It is always comforting for people on grand adventures to hear stories from other adventurers. Stories are from people like Dr. Livingstone, T.E. Lawrence, and Sir Richard Francis Burton are always wonderful, because they are professionals among adventurers. Indiana Jones is supposed to come out of retirement later this summer. He is probably out of Nazis to fight so I will be very curious to see what he has been up to.

Lately though, I think my favorite stories come from an adventurer named Kino. They are collected in a nice little box called, appropriately, Kino’s Journey. Kino is not a professional, though she is very good at adventuring. Like your friendly neighborhood Catboy (me), Kino is short, friendly, cheerful, and often not entirely sure where she is going (professional adventurers know where they are going, even if they are not sure how to get there exactly). She does have a map, which is helpful, and the ever-important distinctive hat. Most importantly, though, she (and her companion, a talking motorcycle named Hermes) understands that is the getting-there and not the “there” at the end that is important about adventuring.

Kino’s world is a place full of wonder, slightly super-technological and slightly magical at the same time. Most notably it is missing airplanes and CD players and things like this, even though there are holograms, clever Victorian-looking robots, and very big computers with mysterious panels of blinky lights. It is almost like a fairy tale that way, a little bit out of step with the normal flow of time. Also it is like a fairy tale because it is a compellingly moral sort of world; Kino spends an awful lot of time having to consider the necessity of her guns and the strange justice (or injustice) of the countries she wanders through (most of the time they are really closer to large walled towns).

Even though some of the countries are not very nice (some of them are just plain dangerous), Kino believes that “the world is not beautiful; therefore it is.” What she means by this is that even the unpleasant and dangerous parts of the world make the world a more beautiful place in which to live, because they make people appreciate how wonderful the rest really is.

This is a thought of which I approve very much, partly because it is a little bit like my “flakes, raisins, and almonds” theory. I do recommend that you enjoy Kino’s story for yourself.

Ash in Their Feather Dusters

I try to read two or three books a week, though I admit that life sometimes gets in the way and I can only read one. The past two months have been rough, though, and I haven’t had time to do as much pleasure-reading as I would like.

Now that my exam is over, though, I’ve been catching up on my pleasure-reading.

I came across this passage in David Neiwart’s In God’s Country. It’s a book about the patriot/militia movement, interesting mostly in the politics of marginalization and probably relevant to Senator Obama’s recent comments about guns, religion, and xenophobia.

The villagers, he said, knew about the camp, and watched daily as thousands of prisoners would arrive by rail car, herded like cattle into the camps. And they knew that none ever left, even though the camp never could have held the vast numbers of prisoners who were brought in. They also knew that the smokestack of the camp’s crematorium belched a near-steady stream of smoke and ash. Yet the villagers chose to remain ignorant about what went on inside the camp. No one inquired, because no one wanted to know.

“But every day,” he said, “these people, in their neat Germanic way, would get out their feather dusters and go outside. And, never thinking about what it meant, they would sweep off the layer of ash that would settle on their windowsills overnight. Then they would return to their neat, clean lives and pretend not to notice what was happening next door.

“When the camps were liberated and their contents were revealed, they all expressed surprise and horror at what had gone on inside,” he said. “But they all had ash in their feather dusters.”

We’ve all heard this story, of course, one way or the other, but this particular telling of it seems uniquely chilling. There’s something compellingly, disappointingly human about that final detail.

A Five-Gallon Kindness

When I take long road trips, I bring a gas can with me.

Gas is expensive in big cities, but it’s even more expensive out in the middle of nowhere. A reasonably efficient car can take you a very long way on three or five gallons of gas, and it’s nice not to be held hostage to gas stations on the side of the road. So part of this habit is just good economics.

From time to time you find stranded drivers, out of gas on unfamiliar roads. I’ve coasted from station to station, raiding the dregs left in the hoses, and pulled into an all-night gas stations with the needle scraping bottom, so I know how it can feel. It’s a very uncomfortable, helpless kind of feeling. With a gas can, I can pull over and offer a little assistance. Even if I’m low myself, splitting the can will usually take someone to safety (unless he drives an H2 - then it’s his own fault). I never take money for the fuel, just a promise to buy a gas can and make the roads just a little bit safer, just a little bit friendlier.

Pay it forward.

Letters from a Young Writer: The Aftermath

Back to Part 3

I’m still not sure what I expected to hear when she wrote back. Whatever it was I’m pretty sure this wasn’t it:

to anser the last part im not happy with what i make anyway because when ever i finish i think i need to add more and make it better and then even when i do finish it isint my vision of perfect and somewhere along the rode after adding it to be how i want it to be i finally just say fuck it this is how it will be so to answer that question of if thats what i really want to tell u the truth its not that big of a change

I’m not sure why I decided to give her the benefit of one more doubt. Maybe I’m stubborn that way; maybe I have a hard time admitting that sometimes people are lost beyond help. Sometimes people know their shortcomings but can’t summon up the drive to begin correcting them, but I believe in bootstraps, and sometimes you have to try, one more time.

Letters from a Young Writer, Part 3

Back to Part 2

im willing to lern im only thirteen but i want to be a great author more than anything

I spent a lot of time wondering if I should write back. My day job cuts into my writing time enough as is, and I’m not really sure I believe that she wants to improve. Particularly in fan communities, many writers will praise each other and enjoy being praised, even if their work simply doesn’t measure up. Writing is less an end and more a means for growing closer. They write for community, because humans are storytellers by nature, because they enjoy sitting around the virtual campfire.

Basically it’s a circle-jerk of the ego.

It’s too bad that I’ve never really been friendly enough for that sort of thing.