writing101.net | msmcguire.com

Sneaking in a little more summer reading with an existential classic–Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. It’s been on my to-read list for years and on my shelf for almost as long. I thought I’d move it to the top of the list.

Is my life anything more than a distraction–an endless array of meaningless preoccupations to keep my mind off the reality of nothingness? Beckett might think so. I completed Waiting for Godot about a week back and have been meditating over its message ever since. Is it a dark message he sends? I suppose it’s how you look at it. It does, however, force the careful reader to reconsider how he or she spends time.

Vladimir and his dear friend Estragon throughout the play are looking for diversions to sustain

  Beckett in a Paris Cafethemselves–to take their minds off the waiting and to fend off the terrible possibility of thought itself. Beckett depicts life through his characters as just that–a waiting game, but what we are waiting for never comes (and likely does not even exist). To realize the fact of this nothingness can result in two possible outcomes: 1) a complete liberation whereby we understand that we are free to choose and, thereby, responsible for our own lives, or 2) a complete undoing of all that we’ve put stock in (blind faith)–an unraveling of the idea that something bigger than ourselves exists, something to wait for, something to give our lives meaning. This latter outcome is what drives us in search of a “good bit of rope” with which to hang ourselves; however, it is the not knowing of whether Godot will come to save us or not that keeps us in a constant state of waiting, diversion, distraction–a dynamic balance between thought and decision. It is sheer ambivalence that keeps most of us moving through each day without much of the dreaded thought–day in and day out. Of course we find things to pass the time or, as Estragon says, “We always find something…to give us the impression we exist” (77).

Too much awareness is a crippling disease.

Thought is a scary thing. It can be a real burden–quite the contrary to the bliss of ignorance. In Dostoevsky’s novella Notes from the Underground, the protagonist says, “I am firmly persuaded that a great deal of consciousness, every sort of consciousness, in fact, is a disease.” More concisely interpreted in Gary Walcow’s film version of the novella, our underground man says, “Too much awareness is a crippling disease.” And so it is. But one might equally argue that a lack of thought–a lack of awareness–paralyzes us in this eternal waiting game or, if you prefer, sends us into perpetual, yet meaningless, movement (see Sisyphus) searching for meaning where none can be found. What do we do in the meantime?

Estragon: In the meantime let us try and converse calmly, since we are incapable of being silent.
Vladimir: You’re right, we’re inexhaustible.
Estragon: It’s so we won’t think.
[...]
Estragon: They talk about their lives.
Vladimir: To have lived is not enough for them.
[...]
Vladimir: When you seek you hear.
Estragon: You do.
Vladimir: That prevents you from finding.
Estragon: It does.
Vladimir: That prevents you from thinking. [...] What is terrible is to have thought. (Beckett 68–71)
[...]
Vladimir: We wait. We are bored. (He throws up his hand.) No, don’t protest, we are bored to death, there’s no denying it. Good. A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. Come, let’s get to work. (He advances towards the heap, stops in his stride.) In an instant all will vanish and we’ll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness! (Beckett 92)

Beckett’s play left me thinking hard about how I spend my time. In fact, this concern has been a preoccupation of mine for the better part of my life. I don’t believe in wasting time. I also don’t believe in the false hope of urgency–as if anything really matters that much. Am I fundamentally an existentialist? Oh, I don’t know. I can probably answer that as easily as I can answer the question of whether I’m a vegetarian. (I don’t eat red, pink, or white meat except for fish and enjoy my eggs over easy.) “Once you label me, you negate me,” writes Kierkegaard. Do I think Beckett and his contemporaries promote a philosophy of despair? No, I really don’t. I believe Beckett sends a message of hope–a wakeup call that we all better start living our lives responsibly, deliberately, awake and alert, and make something of them, lest we fall prey to that bit of rope or squander all our time waiting by the roadside for someone or something that will never come.

–
On a related note, let me point you to one of my favorite essays of late by Penn Jillette. It is truly a life affirming essay about belief. Give it a listen/read: “There is No God”.

Tags:   books · existentialism · philosophyNo Comments.

This past Monday we went with the CAHFT (Chicago Area Homeschool Field Trips) to Lincoln Marsh for a wetland exploration adventure. Counting us there were six homeschooling families ready to hike the trails, face the mosquitoes, and explore wetland life. The 45-minute exploration was led by Jessica, a facilitator for the marsh.

Jessica started by laying out a blue sheet on the ground to represent a make-believe marsh. She then started asking the kids some questions about marsh life and what might live there. As the kids throw out different answers Jessica and the kids added things to the “marsh”–things to represent the plant life, the logs, the cattails, the animals, etc. Once we saw this representation of a marsh, Jessica then asked the kids to pair up and each take turns using a net to scoop up things from the actual marsh. If anything was found the kids were to add it to a small rubbermaid-like container that contain some marsh water so that at the end everyone could get a good look at what all was found. The kids were also instructed that they needed to make sure everything that was scooped out from the marsh was put back into the marsh since small living organisms that we might not necessarily see might be in there and we don’t want to disrupt their environment.

Aidan paired up with Luke, a four-year old boy who we have meet a few times before. While both Aidan and Luke are a little on the reserved side, they each took turns scooping out mucky stuff from the marsh and examining it together. Aidan scooped and he scooped but unfortunately, we didn’t find too many live creatures to add to the group’s “mini-marsh”. It wasn’t until the last scoop that he found two living things–one was a snail and the other was wetland water bug (that couldn’t go in the group’s container since it eats other bugs).

While it was a little disappointing not finding more organisms to examine and study, Aidan said he had fun and wants to go back to explore the trails and see more of the Lincoln Marsh. And I thought it was very timely to go out to a marsh and study different bugs and such since we had just spent the previous day at the Morton Arboretum seeing the Big Bug exhibit (which was way cool to see).

Check out our slide show and our other pictures from the Marsh Exploration (all put together by Mike).

Until next time.

Tags:   animals · learning · nature · photos · science · video2 Comments

What would make our back yard more enjoyable? A deck–yes, that’s what we need a deck. So, last July I set out to build a deck (having never built as much as cigar box before). Late into a summer of landscaping projects, I was feeling pretty cocky. We can pull it off in a couple of weeks–just in time for my son Aidan’s birthday party, I thought to myself. So, I started digging holes–29 four-foot deep holes (to accommodate platform stairs wrapping the entire deck).

It started raining. Someone to hold the other end of the two-man auger was hard to come by–given my time line. So, I rented the gigantic hydraulic one-man auger, hooked it up to the back of my truck and towed it home to dig twenty-nine four-foot-deep holes, each with one or more boulders in them, some so large that they necessitated a late night run to the Home Depot to rent a digging bar. Racing against the rental clock, I managed to dig the auger hard into solid clay. It wouldn’t budge. Two hours of hand digging with a pickax and shovel freed the beast, but I wouldn’t soon be the same. The holes were dug. The once pristine back lawn was now a muddy mess of dirt hills and craters, and we were just beginning.

Into the holes went our forms, leveled and back filled. We bought a cement mixer and two skids of concrete–over 75 bags at 80 lbs each. Dirty, dusty, exhausted, we carried concrete, mixed it, scooped it, smoothed it. The learning curve meant that the first few pours finished kind or rough–certain to prove a challenge later when setting posts.

Aidan’s birthday came and went with no deck.

Eventually, we were ready to begin framing. Working from nothing more than a vision, a rough sketch on a piece of tattered graph paper, and my Black & Decker “The Complete Guide to Building Decks,” we pressed forward. Over a grand of treated lumber was dropped on the driveway, and it would sit there in the elements while we widdled away at it slowly–until the snow forced us to relocate the pile to the garage and the truck to the driveway. Summer was far behind us and the weather turned nasty–too nasty to build. And so the entire project sat for the winter months. I was dejected and wished I’d never started the damn thing.

Spring rolled around, and with renewed effort we continued the framing. Somehow it came together–with very little knowhow and even less skill. It wasn’t perfect–less-than-level in places and bolstered with an inordinate number of shims, but it was strong–strong enough to hold a few deck boards and the people above them anyway.

Another chunk of change in cedar was dropped on the driveway, and we started laying boards. Thoughts that we might actually finish this after all drifted through our minds. Things weren’t lining up as neatly as we’d like, but a few more shims and the strategic use of a high-powered belt sander and no one would be the wiser.

Finally, one summer day, we laid the last board. We were done. We were done. Or were we?

“Hey, honey, do you think a pergola would look nice over there?” To be continued…

The story in pictures:

Tags:   family-fun · home improvement · video1 Comment