Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

My lovely and well-read niece Shelby, when asked which book she had read would she most like for me to read, immediately suggested Kate DiCamillo’s MiraculousJourney of Edward Tulane. I was primed, therefore, to very much enjoy the book. I was not really prepared for falling so hard for it. The following are some of the more powerful moments for me – you would, of course, have your own:

“Edward knew what it was like to say over and over again the names of those you had left behind. He knew what it was like to miss someone. And so he listened. And in his listening, his heart opened wide and then wider still.”

“You are down there alone,” the stars seemed to say to him. “And we are up here, in our constellations, together.”

“I have been loved,” Edward told the stars.

“So?” said the stars. “What difference does that make when you are all alone now?”

Edward could think of no answer to that question.

At one point, Edward is badly damaged. His friend, a boy, brings him to a doll maker to be repaired. When told that he had to choose whether to keep Edward as he was or give him to the doll maker to be repaired but lose him forever in the process, the boy makes a Huckleberry Finn-type decision. The doll maker tells Edward: “Your friend chose option two. He gave you up so that you could be healed. Extraordinary, really.”

“I have already been loved,” said Edward. “I have been loved by a girl named Abilene. I have been loved by a fisherman and his wife and a hobo and his dog. I have been loved by a boy who played the harmonica and by a girl who died.”

“Don’t talk to me about love,” he said. “I have known love.”

“You disappoint me,” she said. “You disappoint me greatly. If you have no intention of loving or being loved, the whole journey is pointless.”

What I Mean by “Beautiful Woman”

Sundance Kid: Well, I think I'll get saddled up and go looking for a woman.

Butch Cassidy: Good hunting.

Sundance Kid: Shouldn't take more than a couple of days. I'm not picky. As long as she's smart, pretty, and sweet, and gentle, and tender, and refined, and lovely, and carefree...

After spending a weekend with my sister (and others) trying to decipher what it takes for a woman to grab my attention (or hers – she’s tougher), today I posted this status on Facebook: “Unexpected tight hugs from a beautiful woman = day made before lunch!” The hugs were fantastic, and the woman is certainly beautiful, so the statement was natural and true. But after posting I was confronted with a simple question: what does it mean to say “beautiful woman”?

I think the Sundance Kid’s statement above is a good list for defining what makes a woman beautiful. She should be pretty: physical attraction is a necessity for all of us when looking for a partner. However, I know from personal experience that such attraction will only hold my attention for seven minutes before I’m ready to move on. “Beautiful” does not mean “pretty” – it is much broader an idea. Notice that Sundance places “smart” before “pretty” in his list. Certainly she must be smart, but not simply intelligent. Her intelligence should be defined by wit – witty banter is the most attractive element.

I also agree with “sweet, and gentle, and tender.” These attributes suggest a certain femininity that is often knocked as weakness, but such women are rarely weak. I’m reminded here of the Dalai Lama’s argument that compassion is the highest strength. Such attributes come from a kind of self confidence which allows for vulnerability, and vulnerability is the key to finding any kind of real connection with another person.

As for “refined, and lovely, and carefree...”: again Sundance is challenging common assumptions. “Lovely” is one of the highest compliments I can pay to a person. It involves the way I feel around someone. If you are lovely it is because you add genuine pleasure to my life just by being who you are. Refined and carefree are often presented as opposites. Eleanor Dashwood is refined; Marianne Dashwood is carefree (for most of the novel). However, as Jane Austen shows us, it is when the two attributes (sense and sensibility) are combined in each of these women that they find happiness – and two very lucky men.

Sundance makes a good list. I find that one thing is missing for me, though: I need a woman to be interesting in order to find her beautiful. What I mean by “interesting” is that she needs to “bring something to the table.” She needs to have knowledge, thoughts, and opinions that pique my interest. I don’t have to share the same knowledge or thoughts or opinions. She may be into sports or shoes or 1950s big bands. If she’s excited about these things, she will be interesting. I will be intrigued (which means “hooked”). She will have things to say beyond the wit necessary to catch my attention. And although I always want the wit to be present, without something interesting, her smarts and her physical attractiveness will fail to keep me interested.

Note: I’m not arguing that everyone should expect these things from everyone else. People are attracted to one another for various reasons which don’t make Sundance’s list. And many people find an attribute such as sweetness or physical attractiveness to surpass my expectations for wit and the ability to be interesting in conversation. There is nothing wrong with placing comfort first and stimulation last when it comes to defining what you find beautiful in another person.

As for me, I’ll keep being happy with unexpected tight hugs from witty, refined, smart, physically attractive women who always leave me wanting much more conversation. That’s what makes a lovely day!

Amanda Palmer on the Power of Asking

http://on.ted.com/Amanda

Being Pro-Valentine's Day in a Confused World

I’ve recently noticed a lot of people posting anti-Valentine’s Day memes on Facebook. I’ve even heard a couple disparaging remarks around campus. It seems that single people are somehow supposed to be depressed or upset because of a day which should only be about positive feelings of love and connection. That makes me sad.

What it comes down to is a basic misunderstanding: whereas Valentine’s Day is meant to be a celebration of love – the erotic/ romantic kind – for all humans, many people have personalized the holiday. I’ve heard some women say that they dislike Valentine’s Day even when they are in relationships. Why, you may ask, but you already know the answer: the pressure to receive love – to get the chocolate and the roses – is tremendous. And what a failure you are, society tells women, if you don’t have some lover gifting you with these. But just as society misses the point of Christmas and turns Thanksgiving into a shopping festival, it misses the point of Valentine’s Day.

This is not a day – or at least not only a day – for you to celebrate your love. The gifts you give to or get from your lover are symbols of the importance of the holiday just as the gifts given at Christmas are symbols of the mythic power of a god giving his only child to the lowliest of humans. Your love, if you are lucky enough to have it on Friday, is a reflection of the Platonic ideal of love. And if you do not have such a love on Friday, you should still celebrate the ideal as the ideal.

Another complaint I’ve heard is that such celebrations of love should happen every day. Let’s be frank: a bit of chocolate and a few flowers are cheap gifts for sell at every convenience store you drive by. Despite Kay Jewelers’ attempt to make the holiday be about something more, these remain the correct gifts for the holiday. But despite the inexpensive gifts, the point of the holiday is to set aside a day to celebrate love in the way that Americans set aside one day a year to give thanks for the bounty of this nation. Should we give thanks every day? Probably so. Should we give chocolate every day? Absolutely!

So what does it mean to celebrate eros, this romantic/ erotic love? Just as Christians (and many others) celebrate agape at Christmas and Easter – giving gifts and talking about love as non-reciprocal sacrifice – humans should celebrate eros. Whereas agape is a one-sided sacrificial love, eros is the love you have for another as a shared experience. Romantic love exists in a tit-for-tat non-zero-sum game: this means that when you love someone who loves you back, you get more than you give and so does s/he. It’s like holding someone on your shoulders because that person will hold you on hers/his.

Eros represents the closest of human connections. As an ideal, it is unsurpassed in defining the best that humans can ever be toward one another. If you want to see what it means, read “The Gift of the Magi” and see how powerful this romantic love can be. Sure, it can send Romeo and Juliet to their deaths, but it also makes Keats’ life worth living – and in both cases it gives us the best that literature has to offer. And your lack of celebration of love only serves to tell the world that you don’t want it.

Don’t get me wrong: I would love to be curled up next to a lover on Friday night. I’d like to spend an hour strewing flowers all over the house, hiding chocolate hearts under pillows and inside coffee cups, lighting rum-scented candles, and setting out the massage oil by the bedside. I feel Keats when he tells Fanny that he is “deep in love” with her – and I love being deep in love. So please don’t tell me that you hate this holiday unless you just hate love and never want romance. And if you ever get the chance to spend it with me, show love and me some respect: do us both a favor and dress up a bit – you’ll find me in a tie, for sure – for dinner. Then smile at my silliness in spreading the flowers all over the house and nibble a few of those hidden chocolates while you tolerate me reading a bit of Keats’ poetry while we’re waiting on the candles to burn a bit lower and the massage oil to warm up.

Emotional Memes and Cliches

I've been paying lots of attention -- especially as I'm back to heavy lifting some feminist writing -- to the kinds of things that pop up on my Facebook feed. Today I've been interested in seeing the multitude of supporting memes geared toward women who are suffering. See the FB page for Somewhere Over the Rainbow for examples. I wonder about this: we know that women do not suffer more than men, but that they are much, MUCH more likely to share their emotional experiences.

Memes work in interesting rhetorical ways, allowing us to post about our feelings without saying so. In some ways they give us the opportunity (as in sharing songs and lyrics) to say what we feel better than we could say it. Yet the memes I most often see casually leave men out (as sufferers). Since I spend my time studying ways women have been casually left out, I'm surprised by this opposite (a little surprised -- okay, not much surprised).

The disturbing thing, as a feminist, about leaving men out of such touchy-feely, supportive memes is that we (feminists) are interested in getting men to express emotion: to fully feel emotion and talk about it. We believe (and this is supported by a good bit of scientific evidence) that actually expressing such feelings brings people closer, makes them more fully-realized (as Maslow would put it).

So, men suffer just as much and in much the same way as women. Memes, created in an environment that post-dates third wave feminism by decades, still fail to portray that suffering (at least in regards heterosexual romantic relationships). Why are we stuck reinforcing the same old cliches of strong men and emotional women? How can we move forward and connect strength and emotion together, creating a sphere where the emotionally honest and vulnerable are considered the strongest among us -- whether female or male?

Doing so will strengthen the position of women and the move toward equality that is the heart of feminism.

This is the problem: FYI (if you’re a teenage girl) | Given Breath

"We hope to raise men with a strong moral compass, and men of integrity don’t linger over pictures of scantily clad high-school girls." -- from the blog FYI (if you’re a teenage girl) | Given Breath

Again, somehow it is the fault of "girls" if "males" are incapable of seeing past a bit of skin to recognize the woman (girl) beneath it. Sadly, it is women like this mother who continue to provide room in our society for men "who can't help themselves" -- the slope from her line of accusatory thinking about teenage girls to an ability to excuse the true inappropriate behavior of males who take advantage of such girls/women is much, much too easy to slide down (as I learned again this weekend).

I was listening to Garth Nix’s Keys to the Kingdom series this week, and I found myself irritated by what I see so commonly in Young Adult literature: boys who know “nothing” about girls.

Now, I’m not picking on Nix here – I understand that his work can be extremely powerful, with Sabriel coming highly recommended. What I’m bothered by is more of a trend in the field. It is a cliché that needs to be defeated. That can only happen with better versions of adolescent gender relations, better versions that more closely relate to the real experiences of the readers.

Today I was reading The Casual Vacancy and I found exactly the kind of moment which works: J. K. Rowling writes, “Andrew wished he knew more about girls; he had never got to know one well enough to fathom how their minds worked” (132). Clearly Andrew, like Nix’s Arthur, is a boy who knows “nothing” about girls. So why isn’t this the same cliché? Simply because Andrew is an anomaly. He knows nothing about girls because he is an abused child from an abusive home where he is not allowed to venture into society – in other words, he knows nothing about girls because he is screwed up.

Rowling, of course, writes wonderfully about adolescents, almost as if she once was one and has perhaps seen a few. She even nails some very male-like thinking when she has Andrew spot a tampon wrapper in a friend’s bathroom – the cliché reaction would be puzzlement and perhaps disgust, while Andrew’s reaction is excitement, “akin to seeing a rare comet” (133). Fact: straight adolescent boys are excited by anything that relates to the sexuality of girls they find attractive. (They also spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about girls in the same exact ways that girls spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about boys – this is something that John Green does so well it’s ridiculous.)

Perhaps it’s unfair to compare Nix’s YA series to Rowling’s adult novel, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why. YA readers are, as John Green says, the most important readers many novelists have – and it’s because they are YA. They are learning how to be “real people” from the books they read, and when those books are filled with sloppy caricatures instead of genuine characters, those readers suffer. There are reasons why Holden Caulfield matters, why understanding Ender Wiggins can make us all better, and why Huckleberry Finn is such and amazing human character. Like Rowlings’ Andrew, these “boys” do not know much about girls, but that’s not a cliché because they have real, legitimate reasons for such lack of knowledge.