involution
The Counterfeiters by Andre Gide
"The diary of a novelist who is writing a novel [to be called The Counterfeiters] about a novelist who is keeping a diary about the novel he is writing." - Harry Levin
The Counterfeiters by Andre Gide
"The diary of a novelist who is writing a novel [to be called The Counterfeiters] about a novelist who is keeping a diary about the novel he is writing." - Harry Levin
One.
5 school days.
But who’s counting?
I’m too tired for strong opinions. How about just some simple declarative sentences and maybe a rhetorical question?
#31 Greif makes you feel perpetually weary.
#32 Most of the time there’s just nothing to say.
#33 I wish there were a restaurant that served roadhouse food (steak, burgers, ribs) in a non-roadhouse (i.e. quiet) environment.
#34 Slam dunk contests are much less impressive these days because of the dunks Lebron James is able to pull off in games. I mean, why watch a dunk contest when you can watch this guy dunk in a game?
#35 I wonder if all teachers wonder as much as I do if anybody is learning anything.
#36 If I were president I would un-holiday president’s day.
#37 For some reason, writing what appears below in the previous post (“The Walk You Remember”) was easy.
#38 Most of life is aftermath.
#39 The lights in my office hum loudly.
Kip Prenkert’s Funeral
Wakarusa Missionary Church
12 February 2009
Robby Prenkert
The Walk You Remember
He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8
My dad had a distinctive walk. I suspect that some of you noticed this.
His heels scarcely touched the ground when he strolled from the garden to the back door, down a wooded trail in Ludington, from his car in the parking lot to his spot in the bleachers (omnipresent book in one hand) to watch me play some game.
At times it looked to me as if he were treading delicately on the earth, trying to avoid leaving any imprint in the soil, tip-toeing gently but purposefully to his destination.
His tip-toe walk became more pronounced at times. In the driveway shooting hoops, after he'd made twenty or so in a row, realizing he was "on," he would get an extra spring.
Once when I was very young, we were in the midst of witnessing some dramatic comeback in one of his church league fastpitch softball games at the prairie campgrounds. He was cheering a big hit that drove in a couple runs, extending the rally. He walked past me as I sat, taking it all in on the bench.
On the bench, an awestruck boy who only ever wanted to be like his hero. On the bench but allowed to be a part of the team, witnessing his father nearly levitate, heels five inches off the ground, his face aglow with a joy that can only be known by grown men at play.
My dad had a distinctive walk, and I have a theory about it.
I can see my dad, left hand on left knee, gloved right hand on right knee, waiting and watching from his spot in Right field. He had the uncanny ability to know exactly where a flyball hit his direction was going land a split moment before the batter made contact. They call that getting a jump on the ball.
I can still see him pivot and run, dark hair blown off his forehead, eyes glued to that ball—running. Running on his tip toes. Gliding, it seemed, on the top of the grass.
Many years later I played outfield, too—and I realized something that my dad showed me rather than told me, for that was more his style. I learned that if you run on your toes and not your heels, you land, with each stride, much more delicately. Land on your heels and your head jars and the ball you're chasing starts to bounce, making it considerably more difficult to catch. But run on your toes and you'll see the ball fly smoothly toward its home in the deep pocket of your glove as you make that final graceful reach over your shoulder to grab the inning ending out.
When he was a boy, he spent hours just tossing a ball up in the air and chasing after it to make a catch. He and his closest friend, Mike, spent countless hours hitting the ball to one another, chasing down flies. At an early age he learned to run on the balls of his feet, and that must have carried over into his walk, and all the days of his life my dad tread lightly on God's earth and this kept his eyes clearly focused.
My dad had a distinctive walk, but I don't know if you ever thought about why.
At sixty five, he still had that spring in his step. I suspect he kept it after knee surgery, back surgery, prostate surgery, heart surgery, multiple kidney stones, and who knows what other aches and pains that inevitably come with age—I suspect he kept it not simply because he had learned how to chase down a ball the way they teach major league outfielders to do it, but because he loved being alive.
He kept that soft bouncing walk because he knew my mom and one way his passionate and voluntary love for her was involuntarily, habitually evidenced was by a spring in each step. You walk with a woman like her for more than forty years and you, too, would retain the spring.
My dad had a distinctive walk, and I want for you to know and remember this.
My dad was an outrageously joyful person, even if he did not express it the same way others might have. But you could see it if you watched his walk. With each step his head bobbed heavenward. Because he enjoyed life, the abundant life offered those who know the ONE who is the WAY, the TRUTH, and the LIFE.
When I was a boy all I wanted to do was to shoot a basketball like my dad. I wanted to hit a ball the way he did; I wanted to chase after and catch a ball and do it with his grace and style. I still do.
I do not think I walk quite like him, but I have learned a great deal about walking rightly by watching his "walk." All of us could learn something from the joyfully contented way he walked humbly with his God.
We are sad today and we mourn our loss. But we are also comforted, knowing that now dad runs on those toes without ever growing weary, and walks without ever growing faint.
I know one thing. My dad, like his LORD, would like nothing better than for each of us to "walk on" faithfully, humbly, joyfully, until we, too, are called home.
More strong opinions:
#28 Super Bowl halftime is too long.
#29 But if the halftime has to be so long, thank God it’s Bruce Springsteen (or U2, or Tom Petty) and not Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake.
#30 I’d rather watch a regular season baseball game any day than the Super Bowl.
(p.s. I think I mentioned something like #30 earlier, but who cares?)
Strong Opinion #27:
This is one of the worst constructed sentences I’ve ever read (from A Secular Age by Charels Taylor).
“Thus among some peoples, agents fall into trance-like conditions which are understood as possession; among others (sometimes the same ones), powerful portentous dreams occur to certain people, among others, shamans feel themselves to have been transported to a higher world, with others again, surprising cures are effected in certain conditions; and so on."
The rest of the paragragh doesn’t improve things.
One strong opinion about a basketball rule that need to be changed:
#26 You should not be able to call timeout while the ball is in play. Timeouts should only be allowed after a made basket or on a dead ball.
A borrowed opinion:
#26 “Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.” (F. Scott Fitzerald)
Right on, F. Scott!
Some meta-opinions:
22. I don't have enough strong opinions to write thirty-nine interesting theses.
23. In my opinion, being opinionated is not a good thing.
24. Having a strong opinion about opinions qualifies one to be entertained, and not just angered, by the Opinion page of the daily newspaper.
25. Having an opinion about strong opinions about opinions approaches absurdism.
A strong opinion in the form of a strong recommendation:
21. Do yourself a favor (on this frigid winter day) and re-read these five short stories:
1. "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver.
2. "The Nose" by Nikolai Gogol. http://h42day.100megsfree5.com/texts/russia/gogol/nose.html
3. "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" by Flannery O'Connor.
4. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" by Joyce Carol Oates. http://jco.usfca.edu/works/wgoing/text.html
5. "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=the+handsomest+drowned+man+int+he+world+full+text
More opinions:
18. The worst part of winter is the static electricity.
19. The best part of winter is a crackling fire in the fireplace.
20. The Color Purple is a much better film than novel.
A very strong opinion:
17. Every student at Bethel should consider a second major in Humanities.
Another S.O.:
16. I agree with James; “peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.”
A few more strong opinions:
Elaboration (7):
Thesis: A professor should not distribute a hard copy of the syllabus the first day of class.
I’m tempted to “punt” here and list thirty-nine much more profitable uses of time on the first day of a class, but I’ll spare you.
So let me say this instead. This thesis was a cheap way to provoke responses and comments. It worked. I especially like Kelly’s comment; her request for elaboration assumes a story. And I think, in general, our strong opinions are formed much more by our stories than by the endless pontification and qualification of so-called “logical” argumentation. I also think that this is as it should be.
But back to my initial claim about this thesis being a cheap way to provoke comments. Is this tactic cheap? Maybe Brent is right. Maybe this is simply one tactic the teacher (or the blogger) has at her disposal as a means of provoking thought and interaction. Or perhaps it only makes one appear moronic.
Is it a cheap trick? Is it a cheap trick when I make the claim, as I frequently have in classes, that “any time two characters in a story or a film share a meal, it’s ‘communion?’” Or when I say, “To read a story is to re-write it for yourself.” Or how about, “If they go somewhere, it’s a quest narrative.”
This tactic—using a statement of “normative absoluteness”—can be pretty effective (if not used too often, and especially if spoken in a tone that hints at comedic self-mockery) as a discussion stimulator.
Of course I don’t think all teachers or professors everywhere should never distribute hard copies of the syllabus the first day of class. In fact, selfishly speaking, I kind of hope most of them will continue the practice. I’m inclined to think their practice makes the kinds of things some of us do instead refreshingly novel for students grown over-accustomed to (at worst) being scolded in syllabus-ese the first day of class.
See also: http://www.aacu.org/liberaleducation/le-fa07/le_fa07_myview.cfm
p.s. I haven’t yet put into practice the collaborative construction of the syllabus by the community of learners, but I’m both convicted and tempted by this guy’s ideas.
Strong Opinions #8-10:
8. If you want comments and requests for elaboration on your blog series called “thirty-nine theses,” make your claims as pompously pithy as possible.
9. If Tim Tebow can’t be a quarterback in the NFL, the problem is with the NFL.
10. A book must be an ax for the frozen sea inside us. (Kafka)
Strong Opinion #7:
A professor should not pass out a hard copy of the syllabus the first day of class.
Strong opinions, the first six:
Well, now that I got those thirty-nine memories out there, now what? I had this conversation with Jeanie the other day. Once my series ended, what was I going to write about. I said:
How about “thirty-nine strong opinions”?
I didn’t really like the idea. I don’t think I even have 39 strong opinions. But she liked the idea. Maybe I should call them, as Martin Luther would have, “theses."
Well, whether you want to think of them as opinions or theses, that’s what you’re gonna get. Thirty-nine of them. They’ll be brief–they’ll be theses. And a thesis, my little lovers of composition terminology, is a simple, brief claim–typically a sentence or two.
You’ll have to give me feedback if you want them developed in greater detail or supported with an argument. Here’s one.
thirty-nine theses (example): School Uniforms
Bethel professors should wear uniforms.
Memory #39: She’s Got a Way
39 things I like about my wife:
None of those are memories, precisely, so here's one.
When I was in a kind of shooting slump my senior year in college, getting frustrated over not playing very well for a stretch during the first semester, she asked me something that I've never forgotten.
"Are you looking at the rim?"
This might seem silly and I did laugh when she asked it. But I also thought about it. And I still do. Sometimes, because I have taken umpteen gazillion shots in my life, I just sort of look in the general direction of the basket and rely on muscle memory to help my (and I don't mean to brag here) picture perfect jumpshot to find its mark.
But you really ought to look at the rim. Zone in on the particular. If you aim at nothing, you'll probably hit it.
So I try to remember, when I'm shooting hoops, to look at the rim. Make your own metaphorical connection here, gentle reader. Seriously.
So you can see why I love this person. I didn't write this song, but it might as well have been written from me to her. After all these years, she's still got a way.
Memory #38: Top Five Basketball Memories
5. The summer I was seventeen, playing by myself, in my driveway, every day of that summer for hours on end. I improved more in those three months than at any other time in my life.
4. I don’t mean to brag, but playing with (arguably) the best starting five in Bethel history my sophomore year: Jody Martinez, Dave Troyer, Bob Knebel, and Pat Adkins.
3. I don’t mean to brag, but the night (with that team above) when I didn’t miss a shot–12 for 12 FGs and 5 for 5 FTs for 33 points. When you play with two all-american post players, you get some good looks at the basket.
2. Scoring 46 points against Jimtown my senior year in high school. I don’t mean to brag, but I think I had a stretch where I made nine shots in a row. It was my mom’s birthday, 1988.
1. NCCAA National Champions, 1992. I don’t mean to brag, but we broke the ice with the first basketball national championship, and the 1990s came later to be known as a “decade of dominance.”
Memory #37: Birthdays
When your birthday falls less than two weeks after Christmas, one of two things can happen. One, you can get screwed in the presents department by people who write “Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday” on some card. Or, two, you can have a mom like mine who made sure that your birthday was always a big deal.
When I was a kid, the entire extended family always came to my house on or near my birthday to celebrate me. That was a lot of people. My mom did that. She made sure that I knew I was important and loved. On your thirty-ninth birthday you care a lot less about this sort of thing. But when you,re eight or twelve, this stuff matters. My mom knew.
Memory #35: Yoga, etc.
Today I did an entire 90 minute yoga workout. Is it a workout or a routine? Anyhow, the whole time I was doing it, I was looking at the people in the video that I was trying to follow and thinking things like: “I have got to be doing this wrong”; “Wow, that’s an uncomfortable position”; “Breathe? Are you serious?”, and so on.
And then, incredibly enough, when I was done, I was stunned at just how good I felt. I felt strong. I felt limber. I felt amazingly relaxed.
That’s not much of a memory. Here’s a memory. I can remember a time when people I knew well and thought pretty highly of thought yoga was some sort of instrument of the devil to get us all to become wierded out new age hinduist hippies. I think they might have been some of the same people who encouraged my entire youth group to burn our satanic records in a giant pyre outside the church one Sunday night. When the wind whipped up and it started to storm, it was taken as a clear sign that the devil didn’t want us to burn our records. But lots of people did anyhow.
I didn’t have any records. But that presentation by some vagabond youth minister, with all those backward masked records and creepy album covers, sure got me curious. So curious that I went to the drugstore day after day and thumbed through albums, looking for devilish symbols hidden in the cover art.
I remember my best friend Dave telling me that one of the stupidest things he ever did was to burn all of his Doors albums in one of those cultic record burning/smashing youth group sessions so popular in the late seventies and early eighties.
I wonder if those records, given up in a moment of misguided zeal, have come back to him ten or a hundred fold where he resides now?