Jason's profileJason's SpacePhotosBlogListsMore  |  Tools Help |
|
Jason's SpaceJanuary 18 A Million Little PiecesMy Christmas present from Ben was this wonderful little book by James Frey called A Million Little Pieces. It's been far and away one of the best-selling books of 2005 and looks to be starting 2006 off quite well. It's a memoir about Frey's six weeks in the Hazelden rehab clinic in Minnesota for drug and alcohol abuse. It's an incredibly well-written book, though certainly not because the prose is particularly beautiful. Frey writes in a very terse and spartan style; using lots of short, repetitive phrases and doing away with pretty much any punctiation other than periods. It makes the dialog scenes particularly hard to follow because it's incredibly confusing to figure out which character is actually talking (or what is speech verses writing) without those useful little double-quotation marks.
What it does do, and in my opinion it does it wonderfully, is provide a gritty description of what it's like to recover from addiction. While I don't believe you can ever truly feel what that experience is like without actually going through it, I think Frey does a fantastic job of helping you to understand. When your reading the book, you really feel as if you are peering into the mind of a recovering addict; if not feeling what he is feeling, at least seeing and thinking what he is seeing.
About a day or two after I finished the book I was walking by the TV at work and I saw a piece on the book up on the Abrahms report. I should probably preface the rest of this by saying that I despise Dan Abrahms. He comes across as a pompous ass who seems primarily concerned with arguing and stirring up controversy rather than taking an honest and thoughtful look at what he's reporting on. The impetus for the report was an article by The Smoking Gun on the accuracy of some of the events in the book.
The main jist of the article is that Frey is presenting this book as a non-fictional memoir of his time at Hazelden and The Smokin Gun article refutes certain aspects of the story; mostly Frey's supposed criminal record but also parts of his childhood. TSG and Abrahms are, of course, rightously outraged that anyone would write a book, call it a memoir, and then exaggerate aspects of the story for dramatic effect. The TSG article is actually one of the most poorly written investigative reporting articles I've ever read and it's obvious that the author took it very personally that aspects of Frey's story may not be true. You can literally see them reveling in every inconsistency they find, like a child who catches a sibling in some minor infraction and rushes full speed to inform his parents of the wrong-doing. Now, that's not to say that I don't think that the article is accurate (it probably is), it's just the presentation of the information is very unprofessional.
Be that as it may, I fail to see what the big deal is. Did people actually read this book and take every word in it as gospel? Even though it's in the nonfiction section and labelled as memoir, I never for one second believed everything in the book was absolutely 100% fact. If nothing else, I pretty much expected every name in the book to be made up (TSG is quick to point out that there's no disclaimer in the front of the book warning that portions were modified to protect the identity of the individuals involved... come on guys, I think it goes without saying). But more than that, as you read through it the story just strikes you as somewhat unbelievable. It's always a bit too much, a bit over the top. Is it possible that everything happened exactly as described? Sure. Is it likely? In my opinion... no.
That being said, I think people are missing the whole point of the story. It's not really a story about events, it's a story about emotions, thoughts, feelings. It's a journey through Frey's mind as he went through rehab. TSG loves to point out in the article that Frey continual refers to himself as an Alchoholic, a Drug Addict and a Criminal and then goes on to try and prove that Frey might not have been much of a criminal at all. First of all, even the stories he tells in the book don't make him out to be very impressive as a Criminal. More importantly though, I think his criminal record is completely irrelavent. I believe that Frey thought of himself as a criminal, believed he was one, no matter how minor his crimes may have been.
Sometimes I wondered if I had read the same book as the people at TSG. That would describe these profound moments in the book, things that the entire plot hinged on, things that dramatically shifted the events of the story, and then eagerly go on to show that these events were greatly exaggerated for dramatic effect. In the book I read, those events were merely there to move the plot forward; to provide some "entertainment" or distraction from the rest of the story. In a way, they were like comic relief (though most of them are certainly not comical). An entire story of James' self-loathing and sickness while detoxing would certainly not have been a very interesting one.
I think what you see in the book mostly "real" events as perceived by a self-loathing, recovering addict. I believe that he saw himself as an outsider when he was young; that he really felt like he didn't have any friends and wasn't accepted. I believe he saw himself as a criminal; a terrible person for the drugs he did and for those he gave to others. I believe he loathed himself for the violence he saw within himself, whether or not that was actually enacted on anybody. I also believe that events in the book were altered to fit with these perceptions. His feelings became his reality. If he blamed himself for someone's death then events in the story were altered slightly to place the blame on him. If he saw violence within himself, events were changed to reflect that violence outwardly. If he saw himself as a criminal, then events were changed so that he became one.
But enough rambling. I simply don't agree that there's anything to be upset about. I don't think events in the book are completely made up. I think it's more like they are being viewed through a filter and that filter is being created by a very troubled mind. I think it's a fascinating book. I'm not sure if I would say that it "opened my eyes" or that I really "learned" anything per-se, but I do think I know more from having read it. October 22 EspañaWell, it's almost been a month now since I went to Spain so it's about time I wrote up a post about it. I think I'm just going to list a bunch of random observations (well, not so random since they'll be organized by city) instead of trying to write one big long entry. Executive summary? It was a really fun trip. I had a great time.
Madrid
- I think the taxi drivers had a great deal of influence on how they built this airport. I think we must have walked a good two miles to get from our plane to the metro station.
- We got to the metro station to buy our tickets only to find that all of the automatic tellers were down. Damn! Time for our first attempt at interaction in Spanish. As I'm standing in line going over exactly what I need to ask in my head so I can be ready the security guard walks over to the gate and opens it up, mumbels a bunch of words of which "Gratis" is the only one I caught, and then stands aside as the crowd rushes through the gate. My best guess is that they decided that the line was too long so they'd just let everybody on for free instead of dealing with it. I thought it was a pretty cool introduction to the country. I really don't see that happening in the US.
- My god the metro stations felt different. I think it was the lighting. The stations were just so well lit. Absolutely nothing like DCs metro. It was also amazingly clean. This seemed particularly odd because I spent the first 40 minutes in the country trying to find a garbage can to throw away some trash. Do they have little gnomes they crawl out of the cracks and clean up your litter? The cars themselves are also weird. Very open. All of the sets are on the outside and face the center. A lot of the cars are also like those stretch buses where there's no real separator between the cars, just one really long train. It makes everything looks so big
- Why do you have to pull a little lever to get the metro doors to open? Why don't they just all open on the stop?
- People seem much less aware of those around them. I couldn't tell you how many people walked into me as I was walking around. Just plain walked into me because they weren't paying any attention to anything around them.
- 6 years of Spanish is not enough. We had no clue what we were doing. It actually made the eating and shopping quite the daunting task. We're all impressed with ourselves that we've got a decent grasp of the language and sit down for lunch and realize we don't even know how to ask for the menu. Even more fun, we didn't know how to ask for the bill either. It also appears that you pretty much have to do this because they'll just let you sit at the table for hours. I think "La cuenta" was the most important word I learned on the trip.
- Madrid is pretty uninspiring. I didn't care for it very much. It just struck me as an old city. It didn't seem to have much character. We basically spent a day and half there and I was pretty done with it.
- We thought we'd be efficient and take the overnight train to Barcelona. Travel and lodging in one deal and no time "wasted" on travelling. Ha! The trip was pretty miserable. I pretty much had a 6.5x2.5x2.5 foot space to sleep in and that's it. There was nowhere else to go. If you didn't want to lie down, tough luck. With all the rattling and stops it wasn't very easy to sleep either. Sigh, oh well... live and learn.
Barcelona
- Now here's a city with character. I could probably have spent a whole week in the city. The Gothic Quarter is just awesome. A warren of tiny little streets and tons of shops hidden in little nooks and crannies. I can't really describe what was different about Barcelona compared to Madrid but it was a ton more fun.
- I'm used to seeing street vendors selling newspaper and flowers, but birds? What's up with that?
- City traffic seems very "organic" here. People just veer left and right, seemlingly at random, and yet no one seems to get hit. We walked by this one intersection which was basically like and X where you had two lanes of traffic going in the same direction and some people wanted to switch across different sides of the divider. They just went for it and somehow everything seemed to work out.
- My god these people love their shoes. I swear every 5th shop was a shoe store. Shane would have been in heaven. (Ok, so most of the stores were actually selling very similar things so it wasn't quite as exciting as it may seem.)
- I was a little disappointed in the clothing selections. We basically spent a day shopping for stuff and it took me almost to the very end of the day to find anything I liked. I did happen to find some cool stuff though so it worked out well in the end.
- Our luck with food was terrible. I think we only had two or three really good meals. The rest was just swimming in oil and grease. Deserts tended to be awesome though.
Ibiza
- The end of September is not the time to be here. Clubs were having their closing parties and were pretty empty (by empty I mean a couple hundred people, but when the club can accomodate in the thousands it *feels* empty). The music was excellent though.
- Speaking of music, it was really fun to walk along the boardwalk and just have all these bars blaring dance music so you could actually sit out on the beach and listen to dance music all day.
- Both Russ and I came down with colds which made this part of the trip not so fun.
- The food in Ibiza is absolutely terrible. Dirt cheap, but terrible. It's basically all really bad bar food (at least all the stuff we found). I was *so* looking forward to real food again.
- We had a great time in the cab ride from the airport to our hotel (this was actually in Madrid on the way home). I told the cab driver the name of the hotel and the street it was on and he had no clue where it was so we basically drove around for a good 20 minutes or so with him rambling to us and Spanish and Russ and I desparately trying to translate and figure out what to say to the guy. We've got no clue where the damn place is. Catamaran 1 is says. What else do you want me to tell you? Apparently it's not Catamaran 1 it's Catamaran 1. That cleared everything up. I felt like a total idiot where the only response I could come up with no matter "Express Barajas: Catamaran Uno" no matter what the guy asked me. For the life of us we couldn't figure out what he was trying to say.
October 12 Bobos In ParadiseThis post is long overdue at this point. I made an attempt at this one a while ago but eventually scrapped it. I am having a hard time describing this book without writing a lengthy essay on it. Let's start with the basics: the title is Bobos In Paradise and the author is David Brooks. That much I can handle; the rest of it is downhill from here. It's a very fascinating book though and I highly recommend it. It's not really that it's ground-breaking or earth-shattering -- I viewed it more as reaffirming -- it's just an interesting perspective on things.
The sub-title of the book is "The New Upper Class and How They Got There." David Brooks is certainly a much better writer than I am, but I'll do my best to give the 30-second summary of the book. His basic premise is that for years now we've had a struggle (of sorts) between the established upper class bourgeoisie and the more free-spirited bohemians (is it fair to also classify them as the intelligensia?). You can see the bourgeoisie on top in the 1950's and then the bohemian backlash of the 60's and 70's. The bourgeoisie resurged in the 80's though (yuppies, neo-conservatives, etc.).
And so we come to the 90's and what do we find? Brooks' argument is that the 90's brought about an era of reconciliation between the two ideals. Maybe reconciliation isn't the right word. The two sides seem to have coopted each other. The bourgeoisie are more bohemian and the bohemians are more bourgeois. Since I've always been more bourgeois than bohemian, that aspect of the book was much less interesting to me. I thoroughly enjoyed the other side of the equation though.
I can't really do it justice in a few paragraphs, but here's a few really quick examples (completely out of context). Stores like Restoration Hardware that sell you missionary-style furniture (meant to be really simple, easy to build, and cheap) at prices no travelling priest would ever have been able to afford. Stores like REI that sell expedition-quality clothing for those bone chilling trips to Whole Foods where you can buy your organic, free-range chicken breasts. Pier 1 Imports (I'm not sure if they're on the west coast or what they're equivalents are) where you can get atrwork to decorate your house styled after "primitive" cultures. The bourgeois have taken the bohemian love for simplicity (honest, truth, etc.) and commoditized it.
One of the observations I loved the most was one that I had been struggling to describe lately. It has a lot to do with how we approach our jobs. There was a point in time where you went into work, did your 9-5, went home and you were done. It was appalling to think of a company making you work 50-60 hours a week. Yet look at how most of us work right now. I've never seen anybody asked to put in more than 40 hours a week, yet we all do it eagerly. Hell, I've seen plenty of mails going our where managers are telling employees not too work too hard and to go home sometimes. One of the things we talked about as commitments for our yearly reviews was "working on work-life balance" and making sure we took all of our vacation time.
Part of the argument Brooks' uses to describe this phenomenon (in his words) is that we tend to apply bohemian ideals to our work life. We view work as a means for personal growth and improvement. It's not simply a job; it's an opportunity for us to learn, to grow, to better ourselves. As such, we have no problem devoting a lot of time to our work. What would we do otherwise? Go home and watch a few hours of TV before bed? Where's the intellectual stimulation there? Where's the personal growth?
A couple of problems arise with this though. What happens when you don't feel like your growing anymore in your job? It seems like you have two options: 1) you treat it as simply a job, put in the minimal amount of effort, and seek your growth opportunities elsewhere, or 2) you switch jobs and try to find something new and stimulating. Alternatively, what if it's not so much that you stop growing in your job, but you find more fulfilling growth opportunities elsewhere? How do you continue to motivate yourself at work if your primary motivating factor is being satisfied elsewhere?
There's actually a lot more fascinating stuff in that chapter. I found that he was making a lot of the same types of observations that I have been making but had a different way of describing them. It was interesting to get another perspective on some of these things. If you do read the book, after you read the last chapter on paradise take a look at the post I made a few weeks back on the cabin party and see if you don't see why I spent most of my time reading the book with a slight smirk on my face and shaking my head: yeah David, I see it too. October 09 Where does the time go?I can't believe it's been over a month since my last entry. I've still got a backlog of things that I've wanted to write about but, for some reason, can never seem to find the time to sit down and actually make it happen. I think I've been busy for eight of the past ten weekends either going out of town or hosting parties. Since I generally find weekends the best time to get any writing done, this has made things rather difficult. I certainly don't seem to be able to find the time during the week to write anything.
Unfortunatley, I'm starting to get pretty tired so I don't think I'll be writing much tonight. I just feel like I've been neglecting this space and at least need to put something here. Instead I'll just note a few things that I still want to talk about. Maybe one or two of them will turn into full-fledged entries. More likely more things will keep coming up and I'll never get around to writing them.
-- Bahamas -- I never did post an entry about this trip. At this point I think it's safe to say that this entry won't happen. It was fun and incredibly relaxing. It was also insanely overcrowded with underaged high-school students celbrating their graduation. Something to keep in mind for anyone else thinking of heading down there. -- Alaska -- Another good trip. Got to see my parents again. Alaska is damn gorgeous. Our timing was amazing. The fall colors were in full swing in Denali (and they don't last long). Pictures do not do it justice, the colors were incredible. I'm not sure if I can describe it, but I might try later. -- Book Review -- I read Bobo's In Paradise while I was in Alaska. Very interesting book. I started writing a post about it already but I'm having a very hard time summarizing what the book is about. I might try to make another pass at it. The three-second summary is that it is about what the author views as the new "upper class" in America; a class that he sees somehow combining both borgeois and bohemian ideals. It's a really interesting read and a lot of his analysis is spot on with a lot of observations I've been making over the past few years. He has a slightly different take on things than I do but I think that, fundamentally, we're of very similar opinions. -- Housewarming Party -- Ok. There probably won't be an entry on this one. I don't want to say it was "just another party" because there's an implication there that it was somehow less satisfying which is completely untrue. At the same time, I don't have a whole lot to really note about it. -- Spain -- Alright, this was still pretty recent so I don't feel as bad about not getting an entry out on this yet. Another great trip. I really want to try to write something about this. -- Canadian Thanksgiving -- I'm not ready to write about this one yet. Still need to gather my thoughts. An incredible weekend though. Amazing people; amazing food. Expect an entry on this as well. August 31 A taste of paradiseI first approached the cabin on Keat's Island by land; a rocky dirt trail that was much more suited to hiking boots than to sandals. We were lightly laden with luggage as the majority of our goods were arriving by boat. Our walk to the cabin was more a function of running out of space on the boat than anything else. Keat's Island has no stores on it and some of our party were staying for the entire week. Between luggage, food, and liquor there was not a lot of room left for passengers in our little ski boat.
As we descended the final part of the trail I got my first glimpse of my home for the weekend (I really wish I could say week but, alas, I'd already scheduled a good three weeks of vacation this year). The first word that came to mind when I saw the cabin was "cozy". While that word sometimes has negative connotations when describing things like cabins I really mean it in the warmest sense. The cabin lies nestled in the side of the cliff, almost as if it were curled up in the arms of a loved one; holding on not out of a need for strength or protection, but out of the feeling of warmth that closeness provides.
As I turned the corner around the cabin it took a concerted effort not to stumble. I had seen a few pictures from a previous party but pictures do not do it justice. The view from the upper deck is incredible. There is a thin railing surrounding the upper deck (apparently a recent edition) and then the Strait of Georgia starts. Beautiful blue water stretching out before you for miles with a few scattered islands thrusting themselves above the surface. For those Seattle'ites out there, think of the San Juan islands - only grander; more majestic. We had arrived late so the sun was already low in the sky; preparing for its decent behind the nearest island.
While we weren't staring in slightly slack-jawed awe at our surroundings, CJ, Leah, and I were eying each other with some amount of disbelief. How, exactly, did we end up here? I think Leah and I actually had this conversation at some point over the course of the weekend. What strange series of events conspired to bring us to this quiet island off of the coast of Vancouver? I won't go into it now, but suffice it to say there were quite a few chance coincidences along the way.
Any nervousness I had had surrounding the weekend was gone now. The worst part of it was over; CJ, Leah, and Ben had met and seemed to have favorable first impressions of each other. What about the rest of the cabin? David and Marlon I had only met once before. Shane and Paul; twice. Everybody else was new to me. What would CJ and Leah think of them? What would they think of CJ and Leah? I'm always uncomfortable when friend groups meet for the first time and this was certainly no different. The surroundings had pushed all of that to the back of my mind though and I was finally ready to relax and enjoy myself.
That was the beginning of what was possibly the most enjoyable weekend of my life. I really don't think words can do it justice (at least my words cannot). For starters, the weekend was absurdly relaxing. Even my previous relaxing vacations don't even begin to come close. I thought the Bahamas was a relaxing trip (I spent most of the morning sitting in the sun on the beach and most of the evening eating and drinking) but it's not even comparable. There's something to say for having absolutely nothing to do. I distinctly remember sitting on the dock at one point with Leah. I was lying down, sipping some random concoction that someone had brought me; Leah was floating beside the dock in an inner tube, a similar drink in hand. Leah turned and said, "Do you think we should head back up?". I paused for a second, considering. "And do what? Sit on the lounge chairs instead?" was all I could reply. Leah smiled, "Good point." There was nowhere to be or go. No intrusions or distractions. Nothing to do other than soak up the sun and enjoy the company of good people.
And the people were great. I don't think there are enough good things I could say about everyone at the cabin that weekend. I admit, while I was rather antisocial and spent most of my time with Ben, the time I did spend with the rest of the crowd was definitely fun. I actually wish I had taken the time to get to know some of them better. I hope I'll have opportunities to do that in the future. I think part of me enjoyed the rest of the party vicariously through Leah though. I think Leah was the happiest I had seen her since we met over a year ago and that felt really good.
I want to send out a huge thank you to Paul, Shane, Ben, David, and Marlon for organizing the weekend. It truly was one of the most amazing weekends I've had. An extra special thanks goes out to David for having us all over his place, especially considering he spent most of the weekend in bed staving off a terrible fever. Thanks to Shane for being fabulous as always and becoming the best friend that Leah never knew she had. And a big thank you to Ben... for everything.
I think Leah will be posted bits and pieces of random memories from the weekend on her blog from time to time. She's already got one posted from the first night there and I think it does an incredible job of capturing the moment and part of the mindset of the weekend. I look forward to seeing the rest of it. She also copied the pictures from the first weekend off of my camera and posted some of them up on her blog as well so I'm not going to post them here again. Instead I'll just include a couple of the pictures from the second weekend below. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Send a private message
Subscribe to RSS feed
Tell a friend
Add to My MSN
Add to your network
Sign up for alerts
|
|
