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Psychoanalyzing My Younger Self

5/27/2019

“Ghosts of the person you used to be are so proud of who you are, they live on inside you applauding you for living on despite your scars.” ― Nikita Gill

I saw this quote on my Twitter feed just the other day, and at that moment, it gave only momentary pause. My more or less immediate response, as I retweeted it, was, “Well, I hope so, although I’m not quite sure what 18-year-old me would think of present-day me.” But that rather glib comment got me thinking: what would the me who’d just graduated from high school think of the me several decades later? (Several decades more than I’d like to admit.) Or the me who’d just graduated with my first bachelor’s degree? Or even the me who’d just graduated with my Bachelor of Education and was now ready to take the teaching world by storm?

Truth be told, I’m completely certain 18-year-old me --- who’d just greeted one of life’s great rites of passage --- high school graduation (and at the ceremony, gave what many characterized as an electrifying valedictory speech, he said modestly) --- wouldn’t know what the hell to make of the grey haired, slightly used teacher sitting at his laptop who’s currently preparing to greet yet another major rite of passage when he retires from a long (and mostly satisfying) career at the end of June.

That bafflement is okay with me, to be quite honest. I still have the journals that 18-year-old wrote his daily thoughts in, then and for several years previously and afterwards, and when I scan through them, which I do out of morbid curiosity from time to time… well, frankly, I don’t know what the hell to make of him, either. (Note to self: make sure to burn the damned things well before departing this mortal plane, sparing myself any possible posthumous embarrassment… and to hell with posterity.) I also have a memory or six still hanging around from that time period, although I’m cheerfully prepared to admit the Rose-Coloured-Glasses Effect is almost certainly in full play on them. But I do know he was a very intense young man, struggled with issues of shyness and self-confidence and social awkwardness (like almost every teenager ever, in varying degrees, I suppose), and really didn’t know what he wanted to do with life. I see and recall he was keenly aware he was single, and really wanted to rectify that empty part of his life. But I doubt --- hell, I know for a fact, even after all this time --- he would ever have envisioned a career teaching hormonal adolescents for nearly three and a half decades. Nope. He was bound for fame and fortune, he was. Or at least he thought so, if he really bothered to think too much about the future at all. After all, there was all the time in the world for that future to unfold, wasn’t there? But I think he would recognize the turmoil that always seems to be the companion of change, because he was going through a lot of it himself.

So… would he be proud of me? For living on despite my scars? Well, I think he would, by and large, although he couldn’t understand much of it --- after all, he had waaay less life experience than me. And he’d probably be pretty horrified by some of the things lying in wait, coiled like adders in the undergrowth at curbside of life’s roadway, to cause those scars along the way. But he’d be glad to know he made it through them more or less intact. He’d also probably be baffled --- perhaps a little aghast --- by some of the choices he’d make along the way, too. That’s inevitable, because it’s all very well to confidently assert you’d do this or that in any given situation, but it’s another thing entirely when that situation materializes and there you are, caught flat-footed and taken completely by surprise, while life stands there tapping its foot impatiently and demanding a decision right now concerning how you’re going to handle this little slice of reality. And oh, yes, that decision could well come with life-changing consequences. Just so you know. (Carl Sandburg once said “I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.” Amen, brother.)

I think he’d be enormously glad to know he’d find a life partner to muddle through things with, and glad to know he’d have a family. He’d also be proud I eventually did get a novel written, because he loved to write, too, and he’d approve wholeheartedly of my intention to focus much more on writing, once those self-same hormonal adolescents are no longer snapping at my heels all day, sapping my creative energy away, bless their lovable leech-like natures.

I’ve read quotes by various writers all saying something to the effect that you should never look back. Well, with all due respect to those armchair philosophers, that’s a damned silly thing to say. You look behind you all the time when you’re driving a car, mostly to make sure nothing unpleasant is sneaking up on you, and driving your life isn’t much different, as far as I’m concerned. You look back to see where you’ve been; you look back because, to understand where you are and where you’re headed, you need to see where you’re coming from --- those origin points often explain quite a lot. And yes, to a certain extent, you look back to make sure nothing unpleasant is sneaking up on you, too.

So a little navel-gazing, a little reflection, a little look back --- like in today’s epistle --- is not a bad thing at all now and then. If it’s thoughtful and rational, it can sure go a long way towards quieting that babel of doubts and fears circulating in our collective consciousness.

And that’s a good thing.

So it’s probably not the last time you’ll see it here.

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I'm Dune With That

5/20/2019

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Someone asked recently, “Are you ever going to talk about Dune?” and I smiled sheepishly, replying yes, I would, but was just waiting for the Muse to drop by and give me the okay. ‘Cause, as I’ve pointed out before --- and as every writer ever born knows full well --- if the Muse ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

Let me back up a little. A couple of posts back, I started to write about Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction novel, Dune. And, continuing in the same aforementioned sheepish vein, I must confess I got a little sidetracked… in the same way the Pacific contains a little water. Doesn’t usually happen, he said solemnly, nodding sagely, listening all the while to the guffaws of his students who are all too familiar with the old man’s tangential thinking.

(And actually, if you want to know, the whole Dune thing was prompted by my discovery of an ancient copy of the sequel, Children of Dune, while cleaning out my classroom bookcases in preparation for a Certain Major Event, to be discussed another day. Discovery? you ask, furrowing your brows. Are you one of those types who doesn’t know what’s in your own classroom? Well, not usually. In my defence, I didn’t put the book there, you see; it must have been originally laid down by the previous tenant, who for reasons best known to her evidently declined to take it with her when she left, so I just sort of inherited it, and… never mind. You don’t want to know. I get it.)

What I originally wanted to comment on was the richness of the first novel’s characters. (I felt book two and on got progressively murkier and more convoluted, and I eventually lost interest. So authors, take heed: keep your writing clean, clear, crisp and unconvoluted --- and keep all those Shakespearean asides detailing characters’ innermost thoughts to an absolute minimum.)

To start at the very beginning (a very good place to start!), there was the protagonist, Paul Atreides. Which gives rise to another take-heed/tangent, authors: if you’re going to give characters all sorts of original, unusual names and likewise bestow place locations with same, for the love of readability, sanity and the literacy gods --- not necessarily in that order --- please consider providing a pronunciation guide. Don’t get me wrong: bestowing original, unusual names is a fine and many-splendoured thing, because naming your heroic protagonist Fred is not especially heroic (with due apologies to Freds of the world). But if you want people pronouncing names as you intended them pronounced, provide a guide. I did, at the end of my novel, Gryphon’s Heir. In fact, I had quite a lot of fun with it, turning it into an annotated guide that became a quasi-appendix. I didn’t want readers providing their own well-intentioned but mangled pronunciations to beloved names I was crystal-clear about. And no, it’s got nothing to do with being a control freak. Atreides is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. When I read the book, I pronounced it AH-tree-ides. Then the film came along, and they pronounced it ah-TRAY-ah-dees. Cripes, what’s a young aficionado to do?

(Same thing with Lord of the Rings. I thought it was Izzen-guard, but Jackson had Middle-Earthians say it as Eye-zen-guard. I ask you, what’s canon? Sheesh.)

Anyway, back to Paul Atreides. Nicely structured protagonist. Young, male, destined for great things, yadda, yadda, yadda. The characters around him actually provided much of the richness:
-His parents, Duke Leto and consort, Lady Jessica. Not exactly married, but somehow that doesn’t make Paul illegitimate. Some tension between them because she belongs to a weird religious order called the Bene Gesserit, which is obsessed with controlling marriages in order to produce a perfect genetic line. She was directed by them to produce a daughter in her relationship with Leto, but begat a son instead because she knew he wanted one, which is an interesting sub-plot all on its own, quite apart from a woman being consciously able to choose her child’s gender.
-Thufir Hawat, Paul’s aged mentor. A mentat, sort of a human computer. Interesting concept in a society that’s deliberately chosen to limit the development of AI, because, like Stephan Hawking and Elon Musk, it has apparently realized the existential threat uncontrolled AI poses to our future.
-Duncan Idaho, Sword Master and Gurney Halleck, musician and warrior, two of Leto’s retainers and mentors/quasi-friends to Paul.
-Dr. Yueh, the Atreides physician with Imperial conditioning that’s supposed to make him incapable of betraying Leto. Which, of course, means the antagonist has found a way to make him betray Leto.
-Speaking of antagonists, the Baron Harkonnen, a grotesque villain with a personal grudge against Leto and big plans to bring him down; and his younger nephew, Feyd, who tolerates Uncle’s creepy excesses but appears to have plans of his own. (Older nephew has the charming nickname of Beast Rabban.)
-Piter de Vries, Baron Harkonnen’s mentat, addicted to drugs but effective and efficient in spite of that.
-Stilgar, leader of a rag-tag guerilla group called the Fremen, who exist on a desert world named Arrakis which is where most of the novel’s conflict takes place.
-Dr. Kynes, Imperial Arrakis planetologist; supposedly neutral, but aware the Atreides are walking into a trap when they come there… and against his better judgement, sympathetic to them.

Annnnd a host of others. They were all intricately interwoven with each other, and --- this is my point about them --- so memorable that I generated the list above almost entirely from memory, as it’s been several decades since I actually picked up the book. (The 1984 David Lynch film I found disappointing, by the way, and I haven’t seen the TV miniseries.)

The ultimate benefit is that, with characters so richly painted, as a writer, you almost don’t have to do much in the way of plotting: just put them all together and record their interactions.

There; I’m Dune with it, laddies and lassies. (Sorry. Awful pun.)

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Something Wicked...

5/6/2019

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So. Umm, here we are. And here’s today’s disclaimer, right off the top (written, ironically, as a post-script after I resignedly realized that yet again, the best-laid plans of mice and men go oft awry, as Robbie Burns saith): I fully intended to pick up exactly where my last post was supposed to go before it took a sudden turn and veered off on a tangent. (Which I so rarely do. Just ask my students. Well… on second thought, don’t, because I have a pretty good hunch what they’d say regarding the Old Man and his tangents. If they even know what the word means. Don’t laugh: some of them think an angle is a heavenly being. Oh, the humanity.)

But…

(Speaking of tangents, ‘but’ is such a wonderfully, dramatically, ominous word, don’t you think? That starkly simple three-letter word, especially when followed by the mutely elegant ellipsis (otherwise known to the ignorant and vulgar as the ‘dot-dot-dot’) which didn’t originally mean an expressive silence, a trailing off implying more to come, but which now does…)

Sorry. What I was going to say before rhapsodizing about a single word was: …but the Muse had other ideas. And I didn’t dare offend her. Because, to paraphrase an old saying, when the Muse ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. When she shows up and you say you’d like to write about such and such today, and she gets that polite but long-suffering look on her face… it means, ‘if you know what’s good for you, you won’t even try, because this is what I’ve got for you instead and you damned well better use it, buster’ --- well, you just go with whatever she says. So that post on Dune’s characters will have to wait for another week. As long as the Muse doesn’t drop by and have a different idea when next I sit down at my trusty Dell Inspiron to (metaphorically) pen another epistle.

(Which leads me on another --- slightly longer --- tangent about the supreme need/value to stay flexible when writing --- regardless of whether we’re talking about blog posts or sonnets or the latest addition to one’s magnum opus work-in-progress. If the topic you decided to write on today just isn’t working out for you, then go with what is. A different episode in the plot. Some character background. Descriptive writing about setting. Whatever. As long as what’s working for you is not staring mindlessly at cat videos on social media for seven hours. I don’t imagine the Muse would be very impressed with that, either, and never mind the moon being a harsh mistress; the moon’s got nothing on the Muse when she’s crossed.)

Anyway. Let me start (!) by saying it’s all Microsoft’s fault, to wit:

Yesterday, Microsoft did some weird update-that-wasn’t-quite-an-update --- in stealth mode. Anybody notice this beside me? (And now the damned Word icon looks different, too!) My first clue was when their cheery little message about changes to privacy policy popped up on my screen while I was doing something totally unrelated to Word specifically, or even Microsoft in general. Which I suppose wasn’t technically stealthy on their part, but… they’d already made their changes and were letting me know after the fact. Which I hate and which, as far as I’m concerned, is stealth mode. They probably send the notice only because they’re required to, and they bank on nearly everyone ignoring it or just shrugging, the way most people simply click the ‘I have read and accept’ box at the conclusion of those lengthy and incomprehensible Terms of Service Agreements on any new piece of software without really having read them. But the difference between me and most of the population was that I actually took time to read this notice. Oh. My. Gosh. They wanted --- no, no, no, intended --- to use my data, my writing --- my very words --- for just about everything except the kitchen sink. Just sign here, please, preferably in blood, I could almost hear them cackling, rather like Macbeth’s witches. Oh, wait! Actually, you don’t even need to sign, because we’ve already made those changes and are rather hoping you’re too lazy to notice! Bwahahaha! In response, I’m reminded of Philip Henslowe’s line from Shakespeare in Love: ‘Oh! Cut out my heart! Throw my liver to the dogs!’ The nerve. Seriously? Not bloody likely, you cheeky, greedy bastards, I thought grimly, and proceeded to the innocently named ‘Manage My Account’ tab --- which I think strikingly resembles another Macbeth reference… you know, the one in which Lady M tells her husband to ‘look like th’ innocent flower, but be th’ serpent under’t’ --- where I unchecked every permission I could locate related to allowing them to pillage my data. Take that! Biff! Kapow!

I guess the underlying message is, in this day and age, if you value privacy, whether digital or analog or both, you’ve got to be aggressive in protecting yours. (I already knew that, but yesterday was a good reminder.) Because, in a society where information is the new gold mine for corporations, they’re not interested in safeguarding your privacy. Quite the contrary, in fact. I used the word ‘pillage’ a minute ago, and I think it’s an apt descriptor of what companies want to do with your information. Microsoft, Apple, Amazon --- all the Buy ‘N Large type companies, in fact (today’s Wall-E reference) --- are, almost literally, barbarian hordes battering your digital gates. And you need to be the forces of civilization determined to fend them off. It’s not just companies, either. An article on my newsfeed today discussed a lawyer whose laptop and phone were seized by border agents after he refused to provide the passwords… when the agents couldn’t express reasonable grounds why they wanted a peek in the first place.

So guard your privacy, peeps. Don’t allow it to slip away through apathy, neglect or convenience.

And by the way… tell Alexa, Siri, and Cortana to mind their own damned business, too.

(‘By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes!’)

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D.R. RANSHAW

Psychoanalyzing My Younger Self

I'm Dune With That

Something Wicked...

D.R. Ranshaw's Blog

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