The Joy is in the Journey

White Trail is paved, the Red are Dirt paths.

I love maps.  I've said this before, numerous times, in fact.  I know three blogs ago I went on a rant against the uses of GPS, since it is much more exciting to get lost, to find your way home again.  And every time I come home from being cast adrift in this world, I get the map (which nowadays comes from Google's amazing map program) and I see where I've been. Then I know no matter when I arrive back at that place, I'll know where I am.  The GPS shows you only where you are going.  A map can also show you where you have been.  And more importantly, where you can go.  It puts the conditional tense into your life.  What path you can go down, and where will it ultimately take you.  For that, no GPS system will show you. 




Robert Frost probably best shows this in "The Road Not Taken," which if taken literally, is about someone walking a trail, and seeing it split in two, decides to take a path, to see where it leads.  Frost concludes that, while he must take one path, he will probably never take the other.  For either time or condition will never allow him to come back to that same spot, with those same leaves covering the ground. Or, if he would return, that he would not be the same traveller, having lived a life from the one fork to another.  I accept this, but I also know that I will return to that fork, and I'll take both paths, because a traveller looks down both paths, and takes one, and does not care where the other one leads.  I absolutely do care.  


It's almost like a case of OCD. Orson Scott Card wrote a character in The Children of the Mind who had a deep case of Obsessive Compulsive. She felt compelled to trace the wood grains in the floor of her room.  The trails in the map above look almost like the lines in a wooden grain, where roads follow rivers, where straight lines of electricity cross miles  of land, where brown trails of dirt split off like water droplets flowing down the side of the windshield.  There's an inescapable desire to follow that water drop all the way to the end, to see a path curving past your sight and want to know exactly where it goes.  I want to know.  And in the case of the trails I've been walking on recently (map above,) it means little how far the trail goes.... I want to see where it leads.  

Some people think walking is an method of exercise, as if going to the gym and walking around a track is going to somehow be a means to an end.  And I guess it is, if you're willing to sacrifice time for fitness.  Because walking around a circular track never takes you anywhere but where you already were.  You should never end up where you first began, as you as a person are not the same as when you first started the circle.  So go someplace different, walk a different path.  And when the path ends, continue it, step foot into the unknown and fell the branches in your way.  Take it to the lush openings of paradise that certainly exist, but never are seen because there is no paved walkway to it.  I should never walk a trail without a machete, never to turn back because a briar is in the way.  The explorers of the Amazon could not just stop because a plant blocked their path.  For the ends were fabulous riches, treasure at the end of their rainbow.  And even if they never found it, they must still keep going, as it was the journey that was just as important as the destination.  If the end is the same as the beginning, or if you are the same as in the beginning, then what is the point of starting out at all?  


It's the same about life, going from a literal trail to one of metaphor.  If you go to church, and you come out of the doors of that church at noon, and you have not changed, if nothing in your mind is different, then what was the point of walking down that path?  I would rather take my Bible, sit upon a rock in the middle of the South River and read from there, knowing that what is said would be something to think about, going to and from that rock.  And then my trip to the cafeteria will have been worth the effort.


So when I say I'm "going out for a walk," I have no intention of getting exercise.  That is but a fortunate side effect of my real intention.  I do what makes me happy, and that, at this point in my life, is to see where the trail goes (either literally or metaphorically).  I say that the Epicurean philosophy is the best one, as it measures happiness upon any choice.  Do I pick the ice cream sundae or the cheesecake? If knowing that ice cream will give me a sinus infection and make me ill for two weeks, I'll go with the cheesecake, for that is the path that provides happiness.  If being a teetotaler or going out and drinking every night are the decisions, and I realize that drinking will probably end up in some form of accident or grossness, or at the least, a headache.... I'll stick with my Mr. Pibb, thank you very much.   Because, as Candice from Phineas and Ferb has said, after a dream about going to the land of Oz and travelling to Bustopolis, the "Joy is in the Journey."  On a similar note, James Taylor wrote,  "The Secret of Life is enjoying the passage of time."  To me, that means walking down the trails of the gorgeous rural areas of Rockdale County instead of walking around some stupid track in a gym with a bunch of sweaty people.  And if I don't burn off 2,000 calories, well, that wasn't really my goal to begin with.  If at the end of that walk, if I happen to fall down dead, like the runner from Marathon to the gates of Athens, then I will have been happier walking down the paths of my own choosing.    

On My Own

Taken from a rock in the South River. North Side.

I'm very proud of myself.  I finished walking the entire section of the South Rockdale Community Park River Trail.  The northern end of the trail is even more beautiful than the southern half.  Think of a path covered with trees, sun shining through in spots, and the sound of a river flowing past, little rapids, the plop of frogs jumping into the stream.  Not to mention turtles... big ones.  Like the southern part, the Power Lines come into view and stretch to the horizon where a distribution center sends the power off to be used.  What an amazing world we live in, and it's all right here, in our own county.

I was walking under the power lines, actually veering off on a path that goes to the South River, and all I could imagine was the scene in Clifford D. Simak's Ring Around the Sun where Jay Vickers sees the power plants and industry units in the parallel Earth he was walking in.  He walked for days without seeing a person, surviving on his own abilities.  I tried to imagine walking down this path, and being the only person for miles, or even further, and this whole place was for me to enjoy.  I'm selfish, I admit that.  A part of me wants to delete all these blogs posts about the River Trails and not let anyone else know that there are wonders just down the street.  A part of me wants to be Will Smith (you know, but without the undead things around), or Thoreau sitting in his log cabin beside Walden Pond. Because there is the joy of being free from societal constraints, from bills paid and job schedules and aesthetic norms.  There is the freedom from the constant drone of people's conversation, of television banter, of political animosity.  There is the squirrel that jumps out into the pathway and looks at you, and sees just another animal, and hops along, trying to find a seed to munch on.

Below the Power Lines on the North side, a trail to the South River.

What if we did what Jean Craighead George did in so many of her works (may she rest in peace), and send a teenager out into the wilderness to fend for themselves, without the GPS systems and cell phones and ipods and everything that keeps him or her connected to this world.  And what if, instead of a week, some kind of ritual into adulthood, we only send him out for a couple of hours, onto these paths, and not let anyone else travel them.  They would be totally alone.  It would be Glorious.  At least for me it would be, although I don't know if today's teenagers could take it.  It would be akin, to them, as child abuse.  It makes me think that maybe with all the wires and data streams connected to their bodies, if they aren't actually less advanced than their ancestors, a mere three or four generations ago.  I long for those days when no data transmissions flew through the sky above me at the speed of light.  When the only way to communicate was through the mouth, to the listening ear.  And if there were no people around, then you listened to yourself, and understood.  How is it that the great works of literature, the marvels of human thought, most of them were created before the 20th century?  Those that are post-invention of the telephone, television, etc... talk about how communication between people has broken down.  T.S. Eliot talks of the people on the bridge in "The Waste Land," or the confused J. Alfred Prufrock, and for all the breakthroughs in communication, we spend less time knowing our neighbors and more time knowing our machines.  Could we name the people living next door to us?  I can't.  But let us relive a quest from World Of Warcraft or name our Sims characters, and we can do that readily.

Wooden bridge on the South Side. Amazing construction!

The greatest danger we face in today's world is never being alone.  It becomes a scary silence, as when someone turns off the lights in a school classroom filled with kids.  They immediately start yelling, because they must identify that there are other people in the room.  If not, they are left with only themselves, hearing or seeing nothing.  And then they must come face to face with their own being.  That is something, I fear, that few people want to deal with.  They have to be constantly fed stimuli. Data from computers, TV broadcasts, the flicker of screens with strangers faces, even far into the night, when they are asleep.  This is normal, they say. Those that want to be alone are crazy.  Why would they want to walk, outside, alone, with nothing but their own thoughts to keep them company?  It is unfathomable that, just a century ago, most people were like that for a majority of the day.  As they slept, only the cicadas and the frogs gave nightly reports.  The thoughts were of the day, or of the past, memories to bring sweet joy upon recollection. Now we can't even do that.  The present is consistently upon us, demanding that we assimilate data and respond, for the future is "coming up!" as the news reports say. 

View from a small trail on the North Side.

 Then let me be alone, and I will walk the paths of Rockdale County.  But I will not be alone.  I will have the understanding of Thoreau, picking blackberries on the hillsides of Concord.  I will listen to the 4/4 beat of my walking stick, and keep time with my steps.  And if I find a path that takes me off the trail, into the woods, to some secluded spot on the South River, then I will enjoy being off the trail.  I will find my way back; I am certain of that.

Power Lines

Sometimes, I think we take for granted what mankind is truly capable of doing. What we've accomplished in barely a century of manufacturing, creating a world that was only imagined by H.G. Wells in the late 1800's. An example: When we first moved to Georgia in 1987, my dad drove us up to the intersection of I-85 and I-285, to what is called "Spaghetti Junction." What a magnificent work of architecture! Bridges spanning miles, stretching up to the sky, carrying the working force of Atlanta to and fro. Now, having been here for many years, it conjures images of traffic jams, accidents, natural disaster movies. But just look at the tons of concrete, steel beams, supporting slabs of rock and metal, all fused together by fire and sweat, by the men who worked long days, as if to make the Great Pyramids, just so we can drive our cars across them. It's hard to be humble at a sight such as this. The window-cleaners that span this countries' tallest skyscrapers should feel this pride in what this two-legged animal has done with their own hands. And the purpose for these monuments? Just to get from point A to point B. To work. To play. To earn money and support the family. We create wonders of the world just to go about our daily lives, as if this were perfectly normal. And that's because it is. We have the ability to make things that our ancestors would call miraculous, a work of God, just so we can listen to the radio on our cell phones, or drive our cars (which are a marvel in themselves) to work and back. It becomes normal that we've been in space for 50 years now, as if space were simply down the street, the local grocery store.

Power Lines at South Rockdale Community Park

To understand what I'm talking about, I propose a short walk. The city of Conyers is but a short drive from Atlanta, and we have created long paved paths for people to walk on. Go to The Path Foundation to get maps to the paths in Rockdale County. Specifically, the South River Trail that goes from East Fairview Rd to Daniels Bridge Rd. I went there a couple of weeks ago to take a walk, having cabin fever for most of the day. I trudged up the first few 100 yards, being straight uphill, through the forest, watching the squirrels gather food, oblivious to me, and I was quite out of breath when I got to the clearing. Stretching from horizon to horizon, far above my head, were cables attached to giant metal frames, carrying electricity from the power plants to the city of Conyers, operating the blenders in the coffee shops, the cash registers of the grocery stores, the lights in the houses of the people. Giant power lines, each humming with power, with the musical vibrations of power. It was amazing to see, to walk under. It looked like the parting of the forest so that this giant God could stick forks in the ground and tie them together. And yet it was not God, but us, that did this.

Some people would call it sacrilegious to think this way, but I think otherwise. We create our structures in emulation of God. We become, in some small sense, the Creator, and in doing so, hopefully, we can learn of God's love for us through our love of our own creations. Would a potter, having made an object, pulled it from the fires of the kiln, not love it as much as a child born of the womb? Or an author, who when he finished the last line of the book, closes the binding and sends it off into the world, much like a graduating senior? So did God create us, and loved us, and sent us out into the world with free will to do what would please Him. In that, we are learning to become like God by creating as He did. I did a series of blogs about the idea of creation and emulation, etc, starting at this post, and the 7 following it. Anyhoo...

So back to the walking trails. The best trails in Conyers, in my opinion, are the ones at the South Rockdale Community Park, which is where the power lines cross right next to the South River. Some beautiful bridges and shoreline scenery. I'm gonna go there more often, just to see the wonders of Rockdale County. The great part about it is that very few people know about the trails, so it's quite peaceful. If nothing else, I'll go to hear the Bb Concert hum of the power lines, and see them as they stretch onward towards forever.

Getting Lost

Every ten years or so, my family scrounged up the resources, traveled the short distance to Tattersalls Books next to the Bruno's store in Conyers and bought the latest edition of the Atlanta Metro Map book. About $100, 300 pages of maps, roads twisting from page to page, zip codes, rivers, the imagination running wild as to what was actually on those streets. What landmarks made the road builders make Atlanta's streets as they did, curved and hilly, with no seeming reason as to their existence? And we could travel down the myriad of Flat Shoals Roads or Peachtrees until we no longer knew where we were, or mistaken Ronald Reagan Blvd. for Ronald Reagan Parkway (which I have done) and wound up at a dead end late at night, with only the lights of the billboards to show us home. That's why the Map book was so necessary. It was our guide, our lifejacket in the middle of paths that went absolutely everywhere. But, of course, this was before the days of readily available internet connections, before Technopoly took over even these corners of our lives.

Last week I went with the Friends of the Nancy Guinn Library (Conyers, Georgia) to the FOGL conference in Cumming. It was my first trip in a car with a GPS system. It also strengthened my resolve never to purchase one of those for my car. It infuriated me, the logical ability it had to get the van (and it's driver) from one place to another. Because I, for one, want to get lost.

When I was little, I would be in the car with my mother, and we'd be going to the store, or to some doctor appointment. I'd look out and see roads going parallel, across, and away from me. I saw the houses, the businesses, all foreign to me, new, unexplored. "Mom, where do those roads go?" I asked, constantly. Take SW 15th street, for instance, away from our neighborhood, it became a dirt road and went into a forest next to a creek. And while my parents told me it didn't go over the river, it never kept me from dreaming exactly where it went. I don't think I ever went down the road myself, and maybe that's for the best. The unknown is so much more Romantic than what is traveled.

Detmer Highway, Yukon Territory, Canada

But there is nothing that is unknown now, not with the Internet within easy reach of our fingers at every moment. Google Maps has taken satellite images of almost every corner of our globe. I've talked about walking down a highway in the Yukon Territory in Canada, with the mountains in the foreground and the grass ranging forever to my side. I've traveled the streets of London, wondering who lived in those houses, what their lives were like. And so there's still the sense of the unknown, even when sitting at the repository of everything known. The GPS system, however, totally removes all Romantic notions of traveling down strange roads. Your path becomes a straight line, purple, with a British accented guy informing you of the way, as if God was speaking directly to you. There is no other path but Garmin, or Tom Tom. There is no getting in the car and cruising down the interstate, with the feeling of never wanting to get off of it, of traveling forever into the distance, to the ends of the Earth. Now it is point A to point B, and then, "You've Arrived!" What a feeling, to worship a piece of technology because we've gotten to our destination without using our brains. Perhaps that's what people want to do now, in all aspects of life. And now, I want to digress.

 ***

Technology has substituted for us every simple thing we do in life, except breathing, I guess. Need to balance your checkbook or make change at the cash register? Why, we have calculators and tills that do that. It's no longer necessary to do any menial task like addition and subtraction, especially not in our heads. I remember going to a Virginia McDonald's near the Virginia state line some years ago. They had just installed monitors at the check out lines, and so the workers there had gotten into the habit of not remembering anything about our orders. So it was look at the monitor, get one sandwich, look at the monitor, get the fries, look at the monitor, get the drink. Each order took 10 minutes at least. They let technology take over for their memories. And this happens all the time. The number of people who can repeat their cell phone number, or ones for their churches or businesses, are dwindling, because they easily have them stored on their cell phones. There is no longer a need to remember phone numbers. And it's not just actual electronic devices. We have devices to take care of any thing that might be the least bit taxing. I once saw, while cleaning my mom's office, a letter folder. That's right, a machine that folds a piece of paper exactly into thirds. And then there's the shirt folder (now, honestly, I can't fold shirts to save my life, so I don't try.). There's an electronic pepper shaker, so that we don't have to actually grind and shake the pepper ourselves.

 It's not just the idea that we are getting lazy, which we are, but that we are substituting technology, even in the simplest form, to do every task that we have done in the past. And for what cost? How much resources does it take to create these things? What plastic, what oil? I'm not environmental by any means, but we have been used to purchasing any device that might make our lives easier, and sacrificing those materials to do it. How long will those things sit in our landfills when, inevitably, we throw them away for something better? Why bother typing a text when we can speak into our phones and keep from typing all together. Soon the art of typing a letter will go the way of handwriting. It will become useless. The main purpose of all this? Capitalism. Producing things that cost money in order to feed our need to save time, money, labor, all the things we usually wind up wasting anyway because of these objects. Debating whether this is a good thing or not, Capitalism, I mean, is a whole other blog.  But again, I digress...
***

Back to getting lost.  I never take the same way home that I took going wherever it is that I am going.  Which makes coming home so much more fun.  My mom and I often go to Southern Gospel concerts here in the Atlanta area.  And it often is that leaving the church or the Gwinnett Arena, the roads we came in on are blocked off.  We have to make a right instead of a left.  If I had a GPS system, it would automatically adjust and take me on a path straight home.  But what most people should know is that, if you look at Atlanta like a spoked wheel, it is impossible to remain totally lost for long.  You're bound to run into an Interstate or GA 400 or something, so driving home becomes an adventure.  Turn the car in the direction of the spokes, and go.  We were at a singing in Gainesville, and, heading west, we drove over Lake Lanier, over a beautiful blue steel bridge, and drove through little towns and hole in the wall restaurants, and we hit 400 and came south.  I wasn't lost.  I was just not in a hurry to get home.  When my family went to New Orleans to see Oklahoma lose to LSU in the Sugar Bowl several years ago, going home I went the wrong way and we ended up crossing Lake Pontchartrain, on a bridge that took you away from land, so far out that you could see nothing but the lake.  It was also a bridge that was destroyed a few years later by Hurricane Katrina.  Getting lost allowed us to see the beauty of nature, the exaltation of mankind's creations, the harmony of both God and Man intertwined in this great country.  So maybe getting from point A to point B isn't enough.  Maybe hearing "You've arrived at your destination," is the worst part of the trip.  As a busting-minded animated girl once said, "The Joy is in the Journey." There is so much to see between the cradle to the grave.  Let's not take the shortest route. 

Tim Tebow and Symbol Drain

 It's astonishing the ways in which Sports and Faith intertwine.  The Biography section in Lifeway, where I work currently, is stocked full of books about the lives of Tony Dungy, Jeremy Lin, Kurt Warner...etc... These are men who have excelled in the highest levels of athletic competition, and yet they are quick to acknowledge Christ as the source of their strength.  They have tons of admirers, and the countless people who they may have helped convert to Christianity are more important than any championship they may have won. One could easily argue there is no greater symbol of the Christian Faith today, than that of former Florida Gator, and former Denver Bronco Quarterback Tim Tebow. In relation to my previous blog, Tebow has garnered the anti-religious group into a well constructed "symbol drain" to trivialize the praying warrior.

This isn't "Atheists against Tebow." If we are to put a religious context in the fate of Tebow Time, Satan works in subtle ways, as well.  The main threat that Tebow has toward those who are fans of football is that he brings forth numbers that make no sense. He is the opposite of every empirically derived statistic that has been formed about football.  How can a quarterback throw for only 2 passes, and somehow still win the game?  And when he wins his first Playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, in a game that lasted 3:16, throwing for an amazing 316 yards (think John on this) it's impossible to think that some supernatural force is at work with his gameplay.  Tebow has done this all his playing career, and it will be interesting to see how he manages in New York (the parallel of sending Jonah to Nineveh.) Most sports fans, John Elway probably included, can't understand the skewing of numbers from what is normal to something totally out of the ordinary. It goes against every bit of sports science they knew. In fact, it goes against the idea that science, numbers, technology, is supposed to be the answer for everything. Tebow is a threat to the status quo so anyone who doesn't understand the work of God behind his play, wants to see him fail.

Again, this wasn't done by some direct assault, but rather   through what Neil Postman called Symbol Drain.  I call it "Symbol Inflation," but it's the same thing. You make the target funny, inconsequential, irrelevant.  And there were many ways of doing this. First, and most important, the idea of "Tebow Time," and the man itself must be clearly made into a symbol. Tebow himself gave them the answer as he prayed after each miraculous touchdown. In a pose that is now called "Tebowing," the kneeling stance became a symbol of everything Tebow stood for. But as it became a phenomenon, mostly through the usage of Youtube (one of the most influential Media ever created for instant manipulation of any Message), everyone started Tebowing. It became a fad, like "Planking," to kneel "as if praying" and record it in a photo or a Youtube video. The crucial part of this action, however, is that the meaning of the act, in reverence to God, was totally wiped away. It became just a motion, bereft of any prayerful attitudes. This culminated with the Jimmy Fallon impression of Ziggy Stardust/Tim Tebow singing a parody of "Major Tom". In the end, he sings, "Everyone out there Tebow," and Fallon, as Ziggy Stardust, "Tebows," and the crowd goes crazy. In this act, Tebow is trivialized, as are the principles by which he lives his life. Christianity goes by the wayside.

Fortunately, Tebow has refused to do very many talk shows, probably because he knows that any interview will further trivialize his message. But that doesn't stop the Paparazzi from taking pictures of Tebow whenever they can.  In New York, he was spotted having a manicure, and so they took a picture and spread it far and wide, comparing the new Jets QB to the arrogance of Joe Namath, but without the star playing power.  It will continue to happen, and Tebow will be ridiculed and trivialized all throughout the media. Let us hope that his Message is stronger than their Medium. Since it is God's Message, it has to be.

Jesus Selling Wine: Symbol Drain.

So I just finished the last book I purchased from Borders as they were slipping into oblivion. Ironically, it was Neil Postman's Technopoly, the last book that he wrote before dying in 2003. Postman shows how technology, and the ways in which we communicate with it, are quickly extinguishing the printed word, and all of the cultural revolutions that came with that invention. It was fitting that I bought this at the last moment, to rescue it from the store's closing, and to see, as usual, so many things that have come true from 2003 to the present. Would that prophets could live to see their statements fulfilled. Roddenberry would be astounded with the communicator style cell-phones that can easily talk to you with a pleasant female voice. Rand would see the steady encroachment of Statism upon the free market. I wish that Postman could have lived to the present day,

to see the ideas he put forth in his books come to pass. I've tried, in past blogs, to bring his ideas forward to the present day, and see how the Internet, Twitter, Facebook, etc... effect how we communicate, and more importantly, what we communicate. If you wish, my blog series on Neil Postman's work is at this link here. It is seven posts long. Postman often quotes the saying, "The Medium is the Message." Thus, the information relayed by the written word is much different than those of photographs.

Let's take advertisements for wine, for instance (for reasons that will be clear later).  The ad to the left is totally text based.  It tells us that W.A. Jackson has in stock a full-bodied Port, which is recommended for Invalids.  It also has fine "Mellow Whiskies," and received a Gold Medal at the Calcutta Exhibition in 1884 for the "superior excellency of their Ales."  That they have a Liqueur named "Mountain Dew," is interesting.  But the communication is without pictures.  We use reason to ascertain that this merchant is quite an expert on potent potables, and whenever we are in Darlington, UK, we can go to 36 High Row and get Potent Potables (actually, we can't, as the building is still there, but it is now Yorkshire Bank).

Now, let's fast forward to the 20th century, and this ad, which is located on a bottle of wine itself.  It reads "Bottled Romance." There is no reason to suspect that when we buy this "American Grape Wine," that we will be somehow transported to this place which looks nothing like Sandusky, Ohio.  A picture, which has taken the place of a thousand words, relies on emotional response, instant gratification, and instant understanding of the message the advertiser is trying to portray.  This wine is perfect for those candlelight dinners, or reclining in the living room before retiring for a little foreplay.  Looking at the two ads, which one is more effective?

Neil Postman looks at advertising in the modern capitalist society as a mechanism to promote a technological lifestyle.  It rejects reason, preferring instead the instant response given to a 30 second spot on television, or a photo of a scantily clad bikini girl next to a Harley-Davidson motorbike.  Technology worships science, or more precisely, the manipulation of science to presume that whatever numbers are finalized by something that claims to be scientific is exactly the truth.  Technopoly, as Postman calls it, worships numbers, exact figures, whether they are true or not.  It relies on Empirical data, which means that God is no longer relevant to the belief system, as He cannot be proven mathematically. The logic of the theories stated by Apologetic Christians mean nothing, as we cannot sense God with our eyes, cannot calculate Him with our calculators.  The reason I say this is because Christianity cannot be simply sideswiped by another religion, rejected as unneeded.  It is clear from the actions of Communist countries that outlawing religion simply does nothing.  Instead, ideas that do not support a religion of numbers, of technology, must be withered away as unimportant, as trivial.  And there is no better way than to use the services of advertisements to widdle away the meanings of some of our most precious images.  Neil Postman calls this "Symbol Drain."

To me, it is more akin to "Symbol Inflation."  Use emotionally stimulating images to such a degree that we forget the meanings behind them, that they become simply another avenue to sell trinkets on the street.  Let's take the ad above.  The image is of a balcony, overlooking some majestic landscape, obviously European.  At this point, one could imagine Juliet standing on the balcony, wondering about the whereabouts of her lover, Romeo.  Simply one of the most important romances ever told (by Shakespeare, no less), and they have conjured up the meaning to sell cheap American wine.  Another example, take cell phone rings (this, as is obvious, is not an advertisement, but is similar in meaning.)  Beethoven and Mozart would be turning over in their graves if they knew that some of the greatest works of music are currently being used as ring tones for today's cell phones.  It symbolizes something important, even if it is nothing but a cell phone call.  Oh, that some of the cell phones I hear, with their rude speakers answering them, would play the 1812 overture and they would explode upon the striking of the Cannons.

I say this to introduce the television commercial as a proponent of "symbol inflation." Imagine if you will, (and this example appears in Postman's Technopoly, so this is his, not mine) a camera coming down upon a beach someplace in the Caribbean Sea.  A "man" is there, in Ancient Israeli clothes, and He is holding a bottle of wine.  As the camera gets close enough, it is obvious that this man is Jesus Christ.  He holds up the bottle, and says, "When I turned water into wine, I was thinking of this delicious California Chardonnay" Now, obviously, this wouldn't happen, as advertisers are very aware of the Religious impact of using Jesus to sell wine.  It would be...unfortunate.   But the message is clear.  It would only take seconds to introduce the idea that Chardonnay would be the wine that Jesus prefers. And if this is something that is done enough, Jesus ceases to be the Son of God, our Lord who saved us from our sins so that we might have everlasting life, but rather a dude who is trying to sell wine.  This has already happened to Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, who is routinely used to sell furniture on President's Day.  And Santa Claus has almost no meaning now, as there are so many all over the place, and the reasoning behind his flight to every child in the world is faulty.  Further concepts must be employed to keep children behaving, and thus, receiving gifts that are simply bribes to keep the kids behaving all year long. 

Another example, one that I find personally very annoying.  One of the greatest symbols of the United States is our National Flag.  The Stars and Stripes hang above virtually every business, and of course given the myriad of rules on the care of those flags, which should be followed with great respect, sometimes the flags are mistreated by weather and neglect.  I've seen flags torn, stuck in the branches of trees, almost to the point of me wanting to boycott those businesses just because they don't take care of the flag.  But the problem that I see that relates to "Symbol Inflation," is the occasions of putting the flag at half-staff.  It is an act that is emotionally powerful, to see the flag in morning of some great leader lost, or in remembrance of September 11th.  Even on a local level, when a police officer dies or a local representative, it works really well, to let the world know that there was someone great lost.  But it must be used sparingly, so that the half-staff flag doesn't become something we look at and then look away without thinking anything of it.  We should not trivialize our nation's symbols.

The idea of symbol inflation doesn't have to be something physical either.  Let's take the word "Fuck," for instance.  Remember when you first heard it, when your parents first said it was a word you should never use?  How powerful that word was, because you could never say it (even if you did or didn't know what it meant.  I didn't, when I first heard it, which was, by the way, when I was at least 10.)  And then you heard it in a movie, perhaps one you shouldn't be watching, or saw the act itself as a woman or guy said the word over and over in ecstasy (Pornography is also a symbol that is way overused, if seen on the Internet.  The act of sex becomes a physical act, like watching a ball game, and not something special that is tied with love, marriage, and the morality of the past.  Those that controlled Huxley's Brave New World would be proud.).  But now, you say the word if you drop your pen and can't quite get it off the floor, or if the light turns red right when you pull up to the intersection.  It becomes easy to say, bereft of meaning or passion.  Which is why, if anyone ever heard me say, "Fuck," would, after regaining consciousness from passing out in shock, would automatically know that something was terribly wrong.

Technology has replaced the symbol of knowledge in a very few years.  In 1953, Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451, a warning to the preservation of books.  In it, fire fighters would go about burning books, and thus, the ideas inside them.  And if was easy to believe, in those days, that with Communism still alive and well, and with Big Brother a real possibility, that the censorship of books was a real possibility.  But now, Postman's Technopoly has done to books far worse than what Ray Bradbury could possible imagine.  Books, as a symbol, are now being replaced by the computer as the archetype of knowledge.  The Encyclopedia Britannica has been replaced by Wikipedia. And the reliability of the information, the truth within the symbol, has been greatly reduced.  Reduced, but not recognized by a large portion of the population.  For the print online, the entries on Wikipedia (which can be made by anyone) are taken as absolute truth, without training in school to realize what is truth and what isn't.  It's in a computer, so it must be true. This is the deification of technology as the Medium and the Message.  When the Bible has ceased to be printed, and it appears on everyone's cell phones as a free app, it will signal the end of Christianity as we know it, and the start of worshiping the Computer, or rather, the information it possesses.  And Christ will be on the television, selling the iPad as the latest miracle device.

Book Review: The Starboard Sea by Amber Dermont

Everyone has a story.  Browse through the Memoir section of your local independent bookstore, and you'll find hundreds of them. They'll give you a slant, a spin, an angle of each person's life, the way they would have you see it.  Ask their friends, their business associates, and they'll give you a totally different story.  You could even sit down with the person in question and listen to their life story, and you'll almost have a picture of the entire life, from the high-crashing waves to the calm eddies that hide along the shore.  But always hidden deep within the cores of our being are the pearls of our lives, which we clamp shut, hold fast, and no amount of muscle will let anyone see it.   They are secrets, desires, the very foundations by which we see the rest of the world.  Every once in a while, a person will come along and dive deep down into our souls, and we will let them in.  We will tell them our stories, showing our pearls and the sand from which they came.

The Starboard Sea by Amber Dermont is just such a novel.  It becomes a porthole into the inner lives of the characters, especially the main one, Jason Prosper, who, little by little, tell us all his story.  Each character is fully developed, fleshed out, with words that are worth reading completely, not skimming over as part of "something every author has to do."  The writing is lyrical, soothing, much like the seaside town that Amber Dermont is writing about.  The frequent forays into yachting, racing with the upper class New England town boys that seem to have no problems or cares in the world are done exquisitely, giving the reader an opportunity to experience the thrill of riding on the open ocean without the boring details that, ironically as he tried to do the same, Melville used in Moby Dick.  I think that if Dermont had written a book about the White Whale, I would have read enthralled from Ishmael to Ahab and through the Romantic landscape of the seas.  Most of all, I enjoyed the intimate contact between Jason and Aiden, and with Cal through his memories, and with Chester and the rest.  I do wish that we could have seen more of Jason showing Aiden the Pearls in his life, or the other times he let people into his inner "oyster," for lack of a better word.  But we have to be content with the side glances of these, as we should never see these ourselves, (one of the distinct advantages of writing in the 1st person) since Jason is telling the story himself.

I've read many debut novels recently, as an employee of Borders, and I have always been impressed with the potential in each of these authors to become better, to write truly great literature.  I look forward to reading the follow up to Ford's The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, but I realized, as I finished this novel, that Dermont is closest to achieving those masterpieces.  I look forward to those as well.  I only wish that she had taught the Creative Writing course I took in my small university in Georgia, as I would have learned much.  I thank you, Dr. Dermont, for giving a window into how you write, how the stories are meant to be told, and only hope that more people will witness the sea the way you have written it.

Short Review: If Dermont had written Moby Dick, I would have relished every word.  The foray into the world of New England boarding schools, with all the heartbreak and ecstasy, is done wonderfully. Jason Prosper navigates his way through love, death, and all the swirling eddies in between in this amazing debut novel.  I hope it finds it's way to the top of all the bookstores' "Staff Picks" displays.  I know it would mine.