Pax Plena

  • The Fall

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    Today was the first day of fall here in Tucson. I’m not sure what the calendar actually marks as the first day of fall but it was the first day where a distinct northerly breeze came rolling off the Catalina Mountains with a hint of crispness to it. 

    I’m sure everyone has their favorite season. But as a Scorpio I have always been partial to the turning of leaves and weather just cold enough to require a sweater.

    It’s interesting to think that my son will be here in a few weeks and the he too will be a son of the fall. I wonder if he will enjoy tossing around the football during these months, and whether he will prefer a light jacket over the hot sun of summer.

    I wonder about a lot of things as his due date approaches. Mostly, I question how in the world I can share with him everything I want for him in a single lifetime.

    Does the wisdom of the ages come in a Reader’s Digest version?

    Funny how these timeless questions seem to flow with the cold air of a new season.

    – Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

  • Book Review Coming Soon

    Once again, I am indebted to my friends at HarperCollins for forwarding an interesting novel my way. I hope to have a review posted within the next week or so. 

    Madeline Miller is a debut author and recent winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction (an award celebrating “excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing from throughout the world”). Not a bad go for a first time novelist.

    To students of Greek Mythology (Anyone? Anyone?), Miller’s yarn will be a familiar one. The book, titled The Song of Achilles, is a retelling of the Iliad, which places a special emphasis on the relationship between Patroclus and his Achilles.

    Some may recall that Patroclus was the exiled son of Menoetius. During his exile, Patroclus was raised by Chiron, King of the Centaurs – a king of savages according to Greek Mythology.  By contrast, Achilles was the “golden son” of King Peleus, his mother the Sea Goddess Thetis. The specific element Miller explores is how a relatively awkward “nobody” can strike up such a beautiful friendship with the “best of all the Greeks.”

    In her own words, Miller writes:

    I was fascinated by this man [Patroclus] whose loss had so devastated the great Achilles. I wanted to understand their connection, and why such an “ordinary” man matter so much.

    Seeing as yours truly is perhaps the epitome of ordinary – the Joe Sixpack of Joe Sixpacks – I too am quite curious to see what conclusions Miller draws. As always, more to come.  

    For those interested, The Song of Achilles is available in hardback on Amazon here. It will be released to the public in paperback form by Ecco/HarperCollins on August 28, 2012. 

  • Reconsidering Paris’s Judgment

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    I never knew much about Gore Vidal, spare his notable row at the 1968 Democratic National Convention with William F. Buckley, Jr., where Buckley threatened to “sock [Vidal] in the goddamn face.”

    Here’s a moment of silence for the death of live TV. 

    Naturally, when I heard that Mr. Vidal had himself gone the way of live television a few days ago, I was a bit ashamed that I had not read any of his works, although Buckley dismissed them forthrightly as “perverted, Hollywood-minded prose.” Even so, I decided to rectify the situation by making my way down to the local book seller where I found Mr. Vidal’s “The Judgment of Paris” above. 

    Now, the premise of the book is intriguing in its own right. Vidal sought to add a personal take on the eponymous Greek myth – as opposed to, say, the eponymous website extolling the virtues of plus-sized models. At risk of boring you with too many details, the myth finds Paris judging a celestial beauty pageant between Hera (Queen of the Gods), Athena (Goddess of Wisdom), and Aphrodite (Goddess of Love/Pleasure). Each goddess employs her wiles upon young Paris, making the contest quite fierce indeed. The ultimate winner is Aphrodite who gifts Paris (a mere mortal Trojan) the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta. The rest, as they say, is mythology. Helen of Sparta assumes the much more well-known name, Helen of Troy. Thus, begins the Trojan War. Homer writes The Iliad and The Odyssey, and Western Civilization is born. Of course, Western Civilization is subsequently destroyed by the Cohn Brothers’ retelling of The Odyssey in O Brother, Where Art Thou? but that’s a different matter. Call me the man of constant sorrow.

    Anyway, in Vidal’s novel, young Philip Warren is similarly positioned to choose between three women, each of whom in some way mirrors the virtues of the Greek goddesses above. The task proves to be quite the embarrassment of riches for so young a man. First, he is seduced by Regina the arm candy of a major politician who offers him a career in politics and the promise of power. His next encounter is with Sophia a burgeoning academic who catches Warren’s eye but never his lust, as wisdom herself has suffered at the hand of many a man throughout the ages. Finally, Warren meets Anna, yet another married woman, with whom he begins a smoldering affair. 

    Vidal’s resolution of the myth is much less clear than the Greeks’ myth. But the one bit of writing that struck me was the quote from Warren toward the end of the novel as he grapples with the choices he has made over the past year: 

    I find it demoralizing to realize that there is no such thing as future, only a long present…that all acts are essentially meaningless, except of course to one’s self. p.203.

    It may seem strange but I find the obvious nihilism of Vidal’s character to be mildly comforting. To accept life’s transience is really a means by which one may simply live. And perhaps that’s Vidal’s point. Like Paris, we mortals have only this long present, so the best we can do is make a go of things incrementally. Long planning is a farce for there’s no guarantee of a tomorrow let alone tomorrows many years hence. Or as the Greek Goddess Nike might say, “just do it.”

    In all, the story was an interesting spin on an ancient tale that all but solidified Vidal’s stature in my mind as a truly entertaining writer – his political views and literary predilections notwithstanding. 

  • Learning Zen, The Hard Way

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    Apologies readers for a long delay in posting. I’m glad to say that while I may not have built Pax Plena, and though I may have left it in a somewhat derelict state, the site is, indeed, not dead.

    My lack of posts can best be summed up as having an over abundance of time. With Tucson’s sultry monsoon season upon us, I’ve spent a great deal of time enjoying the climate control of our casita, enjoying a glass of bourbon, and reading Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. While such ventures tend to be more rooted in the introspective rather than the productive, according to Pirsig’s Zen principles, the act of doing nothing is as much a virtue as a vice. 

    Pirsig ultimately sums up our state of existence as follows: 

    The past cannot remember the past. The future can’t generate the future. The cutting edge of this instant right here and now is always nothing less than the totality of everything there is. p.289. 

    In other words, this moment is all there is. We can no more plan for our future with any measurable certainty than we can rectify the past through our actions in the future. The best we can do, according to Pirsig, is to appreciate “the totality of everything there is,” and presumably take measures to enjoy it a lot more. This has been my personal challenge this summer. Being one who would much rather be active and about the work of some project, having completed my education and being in between jobs, this summer I have had little alternative than to attempt to purposefully structure my time. For example, in order to pass the evenings, I typically sit on my porch to smoke a cigar. Cigars of the corona variety, take about 30 minutes or so to smoke – assuming one draws-in and exhales, as opposed to merely huffing and puffing. 

    In honesty, the results have been mixed. I find my mind wanders a great deal when I attempt to set aside time for my zen aspirations. I’m sure a better Buddhist would tell me that “I’m doing it wrong.” Still, I find the time is relaxing even if it has not been overly productive in a typical sense. It’s nice to consider all the things going on in our world, to consider the structural challenges to progress that our lot faces, and even to consider the immediate future, to appreciate my wife, our soon-to-be-born son, family, friends, and of course our Pooch.

    I can’t say that this has been an altogether bad summer. I suppose my reticence to enjoy the here and now as Pirsig would have me do is really a reflection of my own soul and personality. Bertrand Russell struck a similar tone in his essay, In Praise of Idleness. My own autobiography might be better titled, Idly Praising, at least so far as this summer is concerned. The notion of idleness is not something I have come to find comfortable, my study of Pirsig notwithstanding.  

    Still, change comes as it invariably must. Fall will be here soon. In the coming weeks, we have a number of major, life events looming on the horizon including deciding my professional next steps, the prospect of relocation from Tucson, and, of course, the joyful arrival or our son in October – to say nothing of the start of Football season, which is one of the ways God shares his love with us. 

    While I have not learned Pirsig’s lessons about living in the now, it would be amiss to say that I’ve learned nothing. I am gradually coming to terms with the unknown. By this point, the unknown is more like an old friend than an apparition. And like the fisherman in my Bonsai above, I’m content to enjoy my shade, and let time work its transition from a future of possibility into the certitude of the past. 

  • New Scholarship: "A Libertarian Framework for Indian Rights"

    This site is long overdue for an update. For now, I’m pleased to share the above post about my work from the Indian Law blog Turtle Talk run by Prof. Matthew Fletcher at Michigan State University Law School.

    Prof. Fletcher’s website posted a link to my SSRN profile and shared the abstract of my dissertation with the Turtle Talk community.

    Many thanks to Turtle Talk! Looking forward to having new conversations with friends and colleagues about the libertarian framework for Indian rights.