I was in love with reading at first. I started reading at the age of four and practically did not stop for 14 years. Every extra second I found was dedicated to reading. Writing came later. I had only written in my diaries for the first 24 years of my life, but then blogs became popular and I started writing for a bigger audience. Every moment I spent writing was a moment of Zen. I do not exaggerate if I say that I left the earthly world and came back to it when the words were finally out of my head. That passion was so powerful that when it mellowed, it needed multiple replacements. First I flirted with carpentry but I did not have the time, patience, or a dedicated place for it. Working out had become a part of my life for a few years, reading made a comeback, my interest in cinema and then popular TV shows lingered, and cooking continued to have a place, but it was only when photography came along that I found my moments of Zen again. These thoughts came to me last night as I left the Lincoln Memorial walking on Ohio Drive towards my car. I checked the Vietnam Veterans Memorial looking in search of the right light, looked at the tourists for a portrait subject, and finally decided to take photos of the monument in low light. I took tens of photos in the process and in the end, there were only two that I liked. I rejected nineteen of every twenty photos I had taken, but I was happy in the end. Photography is nothing other than writing with light This is how I write now.
Book Review: The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
As an exclusive non-fiction reader trying to ease his way back to fiction, I am picking the fiction books in our home library one by one. There are those that are hard to read, and then there are those whose prose feels like a beautiful dance to the eyes. The Nest was of the latter kind. Cynthia D’aprix Sweeney utilizes a wide vocabulary range to describe every scene, character, and side story beautifully, and the storyline pulls you in and engages you to the core. The main storyline is that of a dysfunctional family with four siblings all having significant financial problems. They come from a wealthy family with a substantial trust fund that is supposed to be available when the youngest sibling turns 40. And right before the long-expected 40th birthday, an accident limits the access to the trust fund. The siblings are now forced to work together to resuscitate the money, and in parallel, learn to live with the realities of a potential life without the promised fortune. The book contains multiple parallel stories – a messy and nasty divorce, an entrepreneur wasting his entire fortune, teenage girls discovering their sexuality, strict moms realizing how they have to cool down, a firefighter dealing with his loss, and Ms. Sweeney ties all the stories together through the trust fund.
One big surprise for me was realizing that the author does not have a Wikipedia page. Her social media presence includes Twitter with 3,000 and Instagram with 5,000 followers. This is typically not the case for New York Times best-seller writers. The reason is unknown to me and apparently, I missed my chance of asking Ms. Sweeney personally when she was in Washington, DC for the book tour of her second book: Good Company. For now, I’ll plan to read her new novel and enjoy her beautiful writing style.
Paper Planes
It was in the fifth grade when the paper plane craze started. Everyday during recess, we pulled a page out of our notepads and made a paper plane, each of us hoping to send it further than our classmates’. Every evening, we went home and worked on our designs. That was when I first heard the word “aerodynamics” and checked out books about it from the local library. The planes would fly down from the third floor into the yard. They would descend quickly and would then stabilize and float the last 10 feet on air before falling on some kid’s head. They would look up, but we were the fifth graders. We were untouchable. It was all fine.
And then one day, my cousin taught me the secret sauce to making the perfect paper plane. He was two years younger but some kid in his class had perfected the art and science of aeronautics. Six years later when he died in a car crash, that was the first thought in my head, that I will always remember the day he taught me how to fold the paper for a plane. He will always be the Wilbur to my Orville.
The new planes went far, a little too far. One day the Principal showed up in the middle of the Science class. I have met thousands of people in my days on earth, none has been as dour as this guy. The extreme redness of his face exacerbated the sense of glumness he constantly radiated – The double chin made it worse. I always thought he was in his early 60s, the guess of an 11-year-old, mind you. When I ran into him at my hometown’s Saturday market in 2013, he still looked exactly the same: tall, glum, double-chinned, and red. That confirmed my guess from back in ‘88 that he likely slept upside down in a corner of his yard.
The Principal started his speech by a sharp criticism of our lack of understanding for the situation the country was in. He explained that our sons die every day so that we can get subsidized notepads. This money could be used to buy a shampoo for a soldier but instead, it was used to turn trees into papers. Papers we so carelessly turned into paper planes and threw out of the third-floor balcony. He continued by praising himself. When he was our age, and after my 2013 glimpse of him I highly doubt that he was ever 11, everybody called him a visionary. So much so that it had become his nickname. Our Principal was one day Fareed the Visionary. We were told that the fifth-grade exam is quite important. We could miss our chance to go to middle school if we continue throwing paper planes. That was our last day at Boeing, well until many years later.
Years passed. I moved to the United States, Texas to Minnesota. I married my beautiful wife and we decided to ride out the recession in 2009 in the great state of Iowa. I worked as a consultant counting corn and she raised money from the local community to fight cancer. One night, she told me about this high school basketball game in the City of Ottumwa. She had to go there for fundraising and there was a 90-minute drive late at night. I could accompany her on the drive and we had two coveted free tickets, so while Ottumwa was not exactly the Mecca of Basketball, why not?
They gave us all a piece of white paper, 11 x 8.5 to be exact. We will be told what to do with them during the halftime. Stephanie got busy working, and I started watching my first all-American basketball game from the highest row. The kids came in. Ottumwa high school on one side and Fairfield high school on the other. They all chest bumped and started playing a game of basketball with the ferocity of teenage boys trying to impress a girl somewhere.
There comes the halftime. “Please take out the papers you were given at the entrance. Please write your names on the papers and make a paper plane. On the count of three, you will throw your paper planes towards the center of the court. The one closest to the center will win a special prize.” Even 21 years later, there did not exist a fold in that paper plane I could not remember. On the count of three, hundreds of paper planes flew in Ottumwa high school’s basketball stadium, and then there was one finding its way, slowly and surely, towards the center of the court. The announcer did not even have to move, the plane lightly hit his pants and fell right by his feet. “And the name here is AALLEE FARNOUD.” I stood up and walked towards the announcer. As I climbed down the stairs, a farmer sporting a long white beard turned his head towards me from the first row: “You really threw it from way back there, man?” I simply smiled.
The announcer asked me whether I wanted to say a word. I thanked my elementary school classmates who had helped me perfect the design. The stadium burst in laughter. Standing there in the center of that small stadium, I remembered “our sons who had died”, “the subsidy that could become a shampoo for a soldier”, and Fareed the Visionary. The announcer passed me the special prize. It was a basket with personal hygiene items. A transparent bottle of light brown shampoo looked at me directly in the eye. I said “Thank you Ottumwa!”, and passed the microphone back. The way back up the stairs was a little blurry.
Where the Crawdads Sing – Book Review
Years before I was born, there was some sort of a “marsh people” in my town. There was a little island where the poorest of the poor had moved to. They would fish for themselves, live and mingle amongst themselves, and were completely disconnected from the town people. A bridge was installed in the 60s with the purpose of addressing the disconnect, and addressed it did. Some quick Google search before this post showed me advertisements saying whether I would like to stay in “the paradise”. Regardless, when I was in elementary school some thirty something years ago, it was still the expectation that the “island people” are horrible students who are just here to drop before sixth grade. I remember my grandmother, herself illiterate, making a comment once that she will not attend a wedding since “people from the other side of the water” may be attending.
I was able to connect with the book from that point of view, and thought about all the “marsh people” I knew who had studied animal behavior extremely well with a minimal amount of education. I thoroughly enjoyed the prose, the storyline and all it’s details, and the twist at the end. Dr. Owens puts her PhD in animal behavior to work. Detailed descriptions of various animals, from seagulls to fireflies are rampant throughout the story, and the storytelling is masterful. Whether it is about discrimination against Kya, loneliness of a seven year old in the marsh, or the kindness or Jumpin’ and others toward her, the author has done a phenomenal job. I take photos of Great Blue Heron often, and her attention to the Great Blue Heron’s tiara feather truly awed me as the focal point of a love story.
There are parts of the story that are hard to believe but could happen. Kya learning how to read and write is a prime example of such storyline. There are, however, other parts of the story that are truly impossible to happen, and that is my main criticism of the story. Kya did not go to school for one day in her life and did not ever meet other human beings to the extent that her menstruation completely surprised her. However, she appears to have a perfect understanding of social constructs of dating and marriage, and innately understand that it is wrong to have casual sex, even though she has learned all of these concepts directly from nature. There is a part in the book when Kya asks Chase Andrews whether she is now “his girlfriend” due to the intimate nature of the relationship, which made me close the book and say “Oh come on, Delia!” with a sigh.
All in all, the book is a phenomenal read if you can get past the parts that makes it a sci-fi story. I would still give the book a five out of five for it’s character development and solid storyline. Alas, if anything could be simply perfect in the world of literature. I hope the movie does the beautiful story of the book justice. It is being released on July 15, 2022.
Book Review: Educated by Dr. Tara Westover
Tara Westover writes her autobiography is Educated, and like all memories, they are fluid, fuzzy at times, and dependent on others’ accounts of the events. One thing is for sure though: Dr. Westover did not have a good childhood. She did not go to school to experience different upbringings, was constantly oppressed in a male-dominated culture, and endured physical and psychological wounds. The family took the idea of “fixing a boo-boo by kissing it” to such an extreme that it sometimes hurt to read the text. In two separate accidents, the family had brain damage and leg injury but still stayed away In one incident, Tara describes seeing his brother’s brain after an accident, and their father still tells her to bring him home to be cured by the mom’s oils.
Tara’s days are spent working at the local grocery store, helping her father at the junkyard, and at times, dance and theater classes. Public education is not allowed so she gathers what she can from Buck’s Peak, the scattered books that they have at the house, and her brother’s music collection, which finally becomes her bridge to the outside world. Tara finds her way to Brigham Young University, gets to know life outside of Buck’s Peak, and finally goes to Cambridge. Life changes from that point on. The new Tara tries to fight the demons of the past, her older brother’s abuse, her father’s tight patriarchal grip, and her mom’s conformance to the traditional roles defined for her. She does not win. Some of her siblings support her, some stay within their comfort zone. In the end, Tara Westover received a doctorate from Cambridge but with the exception of a couple of her siblings, she was completely alienated from her family. And that is where Dr. Westover leaves us – Parents who are now very rich due to the essential oil business, two of her siblings who have doctorate degrees, and four who still make a living the old-fashioned way, and there is Tara, alone, with her newly formed fame.
The book tells an amazing story and Tara’s prose, clearly carved and shaped by the best scholars but still simple like a kid growing up in a junkyard, mesmerizes the reader. She tells the story of a kid pulling herself out of a life she did not like, an American dream of sorts. However, while she certainly explains the roles of others, they are not in a prominent role. Another title for the book with less emphasis on the actress in a leading role would have been “Educator”. Multiple people went out of their way to make sure this awkward girl, with no money, no family support, and no education background goes where her talents and passion drive her. The bishop at the church who found the grant money for her to live a normal life at BYU, Dr. Kerry who sent her to Cambridge against all odds (the least of them was not having a passport), and Dr. Steinberg who Tara later wrote in his obituary that she “[…] owes more to Jonathan Steinberg – for [her] academic, literary, and emotional life – than to any other person”. These were people who did not have to hold Tara’s hand and guide her through hardship, but they did. They could have been bishops, academic advisors, and professors, but they became coaches. They, as the great Michaelangelo says, saw the angel in the marble and carved it until they set her free. These people in our educational system are worth their weight in gold. They are the ones who make a difference, and for their service, we shall all be grateful – Dr. Westover being one of the main ones.
Sun Tzu’s Art of Project Management
Neil deGrasse Tyson has mastered the art of explaining complicated topics to a non-technical crowd. For that reason, I follow him and his speeches. He once explained String Theory on the RadioLab podcast by describing the movement of his fingers. I could not see him on a radio show but still followed the motions perfectly and have ever since recommended watching his videos to anyone who cannot talk to a crowd without an advanced understanding of Calculus. Then one day I read Dr. Tyson’s opinion of Sun Tzu’s Art of War. He recommends the book so that others can see how “the act of killing fellow humans can be raised to an art”, and I so disagree with this characterization of the book. The book may have one day been used for murdering fellow humans. I say “may have” as there are numerous legends surrounding Sun Tzu (For instance, that his strategies would defeat an army of a million with 100 men). However, I see the book as an art of life when everyday life included much more violence, than a war strategy book. Had Sun Tzu been a contemporary man, every single one of his sentences would have become a viral tweet. He has strategies that one could use in combat, but one could also see the book more broadly and apply it to face difficulties.
One personal example relates to when I was struggling with project management. I was learning all the different aspects of Environmental Consulting. I had the technical know-how, I had learned how to build a relationship, how and when to update the client, and many others, but when I was told to combine them all to manage projects, I was miserable. I was rebuked multiple times, mostly for the lack of attention to detail, and started thinking about changing my job. This all went on until one miserable night, I turned in my bed and picked up Sun Tzu’s Art of War. I did not have to go very far until I read the passage that after a few months of rumination changed my professional life:
The art of war, then, is governed by five constant factors, to be taken into account in one’s deliberations, when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the field.
These are: (1) The Moral Law; (2) Heaven; (3) Earth; (4) The Commander; (5) Method and discipline.
The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger.
Heaven signifies night and day, cold and heat, times and seasons.
Earth comprises distances, great and small; danger and security; open ground and narrow passes; the chances of life and death.
The Commander stands for the virtues of wisdom, sincerely, benevolence, courage and strictness.By method and discipline are to be understood the marshaling of the army in its proper subdivisions, the graduations of rank among the officers, the maintenance of roads by which supplies may reach the army, and the control of military expenditure.These five heads should be familiar to every general: he who knows them will be victorious; he who knows them not will fail.
For every project after reading these passages, I thought about the five factors. Knowing where you are, what you are dealing with, which environment you are in, and what ranks of people are involved helped tremendously, and I was not fighting a war. I have more control over these factors today, some 12 years later, but they still apply in almost any situation. Sun Tzu did not write only about a bloody encounter, he wrote to bring together the principles of leadership. He lived over 2,000 years ago and so he was a military starategist more than a philosopher. – Those were the realities of his time. However, reading and applying his methods at face value would be a significant mistake. His sentences are worth a second read. This time, not as a military strategy, but as a philosophy to tackle the hardships of life.
The Meaning of Life, Copenhagen Version
For as long as humans existed, so did the argument over the definition of “art”. What constitutes art, what do you consider art, and why Picasso’s attempt at the destruction of all things holy is considered an art, while my three-year-old’s doodling is just that: doodling. I am no authority on the matter. Neither do I claim to be. I am just one guy trying to decipher the deeper meaning of everyday things to enjoy life a little more than yesterday. And that is where the statue of Gefion comes into play. The goddess of agriculture, abundance, and fertility, who one day realized that there is just too much ice-cold water in Denmark to allow people to farm. What they needed for a good life, for agriculture, abundance, and fertility was land and good land for that matter. Gefion had to act. She found some ox, tied one end of some strong ropes to them and the other end to some piece of land underwater, and pushed them to pull. Gefion took the island of the water for those in need of land to have some, and that is why she is now praised and being placed in front of thousands of tourists. One can look at Gefion as a piece of art, one can see Gefion as one of the statues that sit in every city – a dime a dozen, or one can see Gefion as the symbol of Copenhagen, as the creator. Those who lived on this land thousands of years ago thanked Gefion for what she did. Now with the grace of manmade nitrogen that allows higher crop rates, some of the farmland is free, you have the luxury of standing on a piece of concrete where those people plowed and farmed for millennia, and Gefion connects you to history – To those behind you. Be thankful, have a moment of Zen, and let the history flow through you. Connect to everyone.
You then walk around Copenhagen and admire the beauty of the canal. I have a motherland and a home, and I have experienced different reactions depending on where people come from. Some look at the canal with regret wishing Copenhagen had been their hometown. Some others just respect beauty. Rarely does one see the blood, sweat, and toil of thousands of Swedish prisoners of war who started digging after King Christian V visited Amsterdam and ordered a similar canal. Hardly anyone thinks about the Dano-Swedish wars or about the fact that these two countries fought for thousands of years – practically the entire human history – before a peaceful time started in the 19th century and finally lasted two hundred years. The canal does not represent the peace and harmony that Scandinavians have always embraced. Quite to the contrary, it epitomizes the worst of human nature. It is through connection to those who suffered just as well as those who planned, through seeing good and bad, yin and yang, light and darkness, that deeper meanings arise.
History and mythology are tools for deeper meanings. There, of course, are many more. I have listened to music all my life, but it was just four years ago that a music podcast said “Listen to this song again and this time focus on the drum only. Then listen again and focus on the low sounds, and a third time, aim for high sounds.” Listening to music has never been the same for me after these simple sentences. I shall continue to explore the tools and the deeper meaning. Life is too short.
Destiny is All: On the Last Kingdom
Atlas the titan has always been one of my favorite mythological figures. He sits there, carries the sky with both shoulders, and does not say a word although he clearly does not enjoy the task. He benefits us all with the giant burden that is on his back and does not ask for anything in return. Every time I encounter stories of people who are torn by the will to do the right thing in spite of all the pressure, I remember Atlas. It is a beautiful depiction, after all, a ripped man showing all of his muscles, carrying a heavy weight. There is one point in this story where Atlas decides to relieve himself of the eternal burden and simply rest. That is during the 11th labor of Hercules, where Hercules carries the weight so that Atlas can catch the apples of Hesperides. There, Atlas tells Hercules that he himself willfully agreed to carry this weight and as a result of that will, he has to carry it forever. Hercules eventually tricks Atlas and puts the sky back on his shoulders, but the idea that willful agreement to carry a burden puts it on your shoulder for eternity has always fascinated me. It is a true concept in real life.
Uhtred son of Uhtred is the same way. He was separated from his Saxon family in childhood due to the death of his father in a battle and was raised by the Danes. He grew up believing in Odin and the gods where Christianity was heavily adhered to by Saxons, and remained in that faith his entire life. As all immigrants can attest, there are two ways to address a situation of having lived in two communities: You can be a lost soul belonging to neither, or you can treat people as people, and see all communities as one. Uhtred decides to do the latter. In a war-torn England where Saxons are trying every day to uproot Danes, Uhtred becomes a faithful soldier to Saxon kings while trying to calm the situation. As his entire friends and family are Danes, willfully pledging allegiance to the Saxon king results in a burden he has to carry for the rest of his life. Along the way, the consequences torment him. His Dane brother fights against him, his childhood love swears to kill him, any woman he loves either dies or has to avoid him, and he, very frequently, sees close friends lose their lives in front of his eyes. He suffers the death of his children while raising other people’s children as his own. He has no land of his own that he calls home while longing to get back to Bebbanburg where his father was the lord and he sees it as his land. He is shrewd, a great speaker, and the best warrior the land has seen, but you can constantly hear the sound of his soul ripping as all the consequences of his willful agreement to carry a burden unfold.
While the show is based on true history and uses many real historic figures, the character of Uhtred and the details of the events are entirely fabricated. Nonetheless, the show does an admirable job of reviving a tumultuous time in England’s history. I have not read the Saxon Stories books but Mr. Cornwell is a history major who apparently is a descendant of Uhtred the Bold. He tells an impeccable story while injecting all these characters into real history through which, you see a man who has willfully agreed to carry the sky on his shoulders.
The Power of the Dog
Spoiler alert for those who haven’t seen the movie: I discuss the plot here.
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In his phenomenal interpretation of the Bible, Asimov talks about the story of Cain and Abel in a new light. He sees Abel, the brother who brings the sheep for sacrifice as the symbol of nomads, and Cain, the one with wheat, as the symbol of farming. When Cain kills Abel, he interprets it as the new form of life, which is settling in one place destroying the previous form, which is the nomad life. Sibling rivalries abound in literature and mythology. Remus and Romulus, Brothers Karamazov, Steinbeck’s East of Eden, the list goes on.
When I started watching the Power of the Dog, that’s where I thought the movie was going. A sibling rivalry between two brothers, one rancher and one college graduate. I first thought it was going in the Cain and Abel direction: that the story portrays the end of the pioneer style of life and the change in society towards modern life. At some point in the movie, there’s a silhouette of the famous James Earl Fraser End of the Trail statue (though the timing doesn’t match), which added to my suspicion. However, as the movie continues, it becomes apparent that what is dominant is the rancher brother’s strong and complicated personality, and his grip over all who surround him. In an extreme effort to cover his own homosexuality, he harbors toxic masculinity and utilizes all tools of machismo to cover his true self. He goes so far as to not even shower and castrate cattle with his bare hands.
Phil uses the insecurities of others to make them question themselves. When Rose wants to practice piano to make her husband proud, he makes sure that his banjo interferes with Rose’s piano practice. When Peter expresses himself by making paper flowers, he uses them to light his cigarette. When George does absolutely nothing, he is still haunted by the image of “fatso”. Phil creates an atmosphere so toxic that those around him cannot live their normal lives. The air is heavy to breathe the entire time for everyone but Phil, and his demise comes when he loosens his grip for a fraction of a second and allows Peter to play his hand and rid the world of Phil and “delivers his darlings from the power of the dog” as the Bible verse goes.
Jane Campion’s work in portraying Phil’s personality is astonishing. She does say in interviews that the character went back to her again and again until she decided to make the movie. I was surprised that the movie received a 6.9 on IMDB. I was expecting a higher score, potentially closer to mid-7s. Benedict Cumberbatch certainly stretches his acting skills to replace the modern London man with a 1925 Montana rancher, and Jesse Plemons shows what a long way he has come since his Todd Alquist days in Breaking Bad. Kirsten Dunst and Kodi Smith-McPhee are also immersed in their roles. The one problem with the movie, which may explain the lower IMDB score, is the fact that the heavy atmosphere that Phil creates permeates through the screen and impacts the viewer. For some, that atmosphere could ruin a Saturday evening. For all others, it is a great movie.
Book Review: A Gentleman in Moscow
What happens when your life abruptly changes? When one day you’re living a posh life and another minute, you beg the conquerers to skip execution and have another sweet minute of life? This has happened many times throughout the history of the world. Kings came, queens left, and the lives of those having any claim on the throne or even a luxury life because of it turned into ashes. When the Red Revolution heightened, the Romanovs did not leave their palace. Instead, they watched as the cooks, butlers, and guards left one by one. All who were left in the Alexander Palace were the Romanovs who were shaking and shivering every night waiting for someone to come in and kill them all.
The story that “A Gentleman in Moscow” tells is not the story of the Romanovs but another aristocrat stuck in the vice of the revolution. Count Rostov narrowly skips execution after the revolution and is put under house arrest in Metropol hotel right in the heart of the Red Square. He has lived the life of an aristocrat his whole life, speaks multiple languages, knows all the rules of civility, matches the perfect wine with the right food, knows how to be a gentleman and how to converse with princesses and queens while the Russian Empire goes in a direction away from Counts, Dukes, and Monarchs. Count Rostov then sits back and watches as St. Petersburg turns into Leningrad and Russia into the Soviet Union. He witnesses as the meetings held by the royal family turn into large union meetings, and everybody becomes a “comrade” overnight.
This was my first Amor Towels book and it has a very slow pace, but his prose flows like water and carries the reader along. His vast range of vocabulary helps describe the scenes well and brings restaurants, ballrooms, and meetings to life. I read the Kindle version of the book and ended up with 452 highlights, or more than one per page, of words that I did not know the meaning of or wanted to review later. The book has already received glowing reviews from many, particularly due to its brilliant ending, and I highly recommend it. This is not only because of the story, but due to Mr. Towels’ expansive knowledge of Russian history and how the book inspired me, as I am sure it will inspire you, to read about the personality traits of Stalin and Khrushchev, and how these idiosyncracies changed the world. We know little about Russian history and with all that is going on in the world, this fact needs to change. Amor Towels’ book might be the first step in this direction.