The Zen of Boredom

                “The Pale King” David Foster Wallace’s last book came out right in time for tax day. I’ve never read any of his work before but I have started my ritual stalking of the author’s life details, focus, writing style, etc. Usually when I decide whether or not to read an author’s work, I do some preliminary research on whether or not I can relate to the work at hand. Thomas Pynchon went through this phase before I got “Gravity’s Rainbow” and James Joyce went through this before I got “Finnegans Wake” (though in hindsight probably should have started with “Ulysses”). For “The Pale King” I feel the subject matter may appeal to me.

                According to the little I’ve gleaned from reading about it, it focuses on the idea of boredom as a form of Zen. Characters have to figure out exactly how to handle the often tedious nature of their work. I first put my hands on this book in perhaps the best place for tedium, the Port Authority, a place completely devoted to transit and devoid of any meaningful kind of entertainment, interest, or much of a purpose besides housing countless bus lines going to places of dubious interest. New Paltz, I love you but you’re really quite small in the grand scheme of things. 

                I’ve been thinking about that one central idea, the ability to find enlightenment in the most boring places imaginable. Over five years have passed since I began my training under the best dull had to offer. Working in an office sort of prepares you for near-useless, archaic knowledge that may or may not be transferable anywhere else. But while some of that knowledge may not have value, it does teach you the importance of killing time and learning how to appreciate others. How do you manage your time to make sure you accomplish whatever has been set in front of you while still creating a small amount of time for human interaction. Any office job virtually guarantees you’ll learn this skill or go hopelessly insane. 

                Balance is the best word I’d have for this, but it is somewhat incomplete. Sometimes you need to do both work and focus on people at the same time. Zen might be the phrase for this, where you focus on your work peripherally while you are emotionally attached to what is going on around you. Concentration is needed for this skill and you do need a certain amount of knowledge in order to pull this off, but the rewards are amazing. Essentially you are able to do two things at once. While computer screens whiz by as you have the hot-keys memorized, you’re able to avoid being deadened by the sheer tedious nature of the data, of the information. You are aware it is there and what you need to do to interact with it, but you shouldn’t try engaging with it on a heavier level. 

Focusing too intensely on work can often lead to feelings of sourness, of questioning other people’s contributions. This is what I would call the ‘sour’ phase of work, one you really ought to avoid. Questioning what others do or how valuable they are isn’t something that you, as a mere peon (I doubt I have many managers reading this) should be doing in the first place. You’ll begin to put a value on everything everyone does, giving a monetary rather than a more human response. Eventually you may become more emotionally distant from your coworkers and you’ll notice a certain tension growing between you and them. Sure, there will always be egregious examples of the ‘useless’ coworker and that will happen. But try to limit the amount of these negative thoughts. Instead, try to focus on similarities or what you enjoy about the person, that way if criticism ever comes up you can offer ‘constructive’ criticism rather than something bitter.

Waiting forms another large chunk of time we have to spend. New York is a prime example. The city never sleeps since there are so many things to wait for, from buses, trains, lines, tickets, money, food and etc. That’s why I thrive in a city environment. I never understood why people say “in a New York minute”. Nothing I consider worth doing takes a minute or less. Connections mess up. You forget what line to take. Food preparation takes a long time. If anything, I feel by having a giant metropolis you have to accept the idea things will move slowly and ‘all representatives are currently assisting others. The next available representative will be on the line to assist you shortly.’ 

That’s why I can be a sloth in the city. I know how to wait. I know how to be bored. I know I may not always make everything, every train or meeting at a precise time that I want. Automatically I build this into everything I do. Occasionally I’m even given little electronic boards which tell me when the next train is coming, but I can’t really do anything to make things move faster. My expectation remains I may or may not get lucky or my own intuition may improve. Keeping this in mind I have a few different scenarios play out in my head as I’m on my way somewhere, each serving as a back for any given situation.  

David Foster Wallace brought me to think about this expectation we create. I’m not sure whether or not his deliberate goal was to make us think about how we use time or how we interact with others, but I’m glad he decided to focus on such a massive part of our lives. A part of our lives edited out of books, writing and so forth rather than celebrated in its own right. So much writing edits out the gritty little details leaving us with a glossy sheen which is why his posthumous novel excites me. Does a broken escalator force people to move faster since they have the idea it should be moving faster, or do people enjoy running up stairs to see if they can beat that languid machine? I see this all the time, of the little kid outrunning his parents by taking the stairs. Then he stands up on top, thinks, and waits for them to realize the folly of their ways. He’s not even thinking about the extra time he’ll be up there, waiting for them. For the child, he has focus and understands the importance of waiting, of boredom. 

Boredom can be a relieving factor. It can drive people crazy. For literally the least interesting thing in the world, it is a surprisingly divisive issue. Maybe I should get “The Pale King”. What do you think?

The Bucket List: People I’d like in my Facebook Profile Picture

               Bucket lists offer a peek into your soul. All that wishes, hopes, dreams are revealed in what appears to be an innocuous list of things. Usually people create it as a way of exploring their most suppressed sexual fantasies, but that’s not all there is.

                Facebook offers one the opportunity to look cool in front of their peers. Some seem to have misconstrued this to mean “Let me hook this up to my twitter and annoy my friends.” Others discovered that by posting and commenting on every political story that comes into their RSS feed. Yes, we get it. Aren’t you ever so opinionated? You get music nerds who post up youtube clips that make you shudder out of embarrassment. No one else shares your love of disco, sorry. Last but not least, there are the dreaded tech fans who get aroused at every new techie product they probably can’t afford or shouldn’t buy.

                The main way of looking cool on facebook: profile pictures. Without even having to read any of the lame quotes (oh, you quoted Nietzsche on your profile, poor tortured soul. Maybe you should read more than two sentences of the guy’s stuff, hmm?) You know how cool that person will be. I never have profile pictures with other people; they are always me, alone. Honestly, I’m not bothered by this, but I wonder how people would react if I had someone else, someone vaguely internet or nerd-famous standing with me. Below are some of the people who might give my humble profile a slight boost. They are categorized by my likelihood of actually meeting them. Let’s begin.

Fairly likely to meet them:

1.       The Hipster Grifter – She’s great. I’ve covered her before, and she goes all over New York City. A few of my friends have met her, greatly improving their respectability.

2.       IMBOYCRAZY.COM (Alexi Wasser) – She’s great. However, she lives in California, so my chances of seeing her in Brooklyn are slim. Plus, she does guerrilla-style interviewing with boys asking them about girls. I’m not sure how comfortable I’d be getting filmed and explaining my thoughts on love, since I have complicated thoughts on that.

3.       Tao Lin – I don’t live terribly far from him. As cool as it would be to meet him, most of my friends in real life have no idea who he is, despite my slight nudges that perhaps they ought to read his books. 

Unlikely to meet them:

4.       David Duchovny – Apparently he hangs out in Brooklyn a lot. Most of my friends would know who he is. When I’m fifty, if I look this good and am this well-read, my life will have been a success. 

5.       Thomas Pynchon – He lives in New York. Despite popular belief, he’s not a recluse, he just dislikes journalists. People can and do meet him, it isn’t particularly tricky. But you need the timing right and the correct vibe. Failure to have either one of these things results in a failure to meet him. What having him in my profile picture would be to simultaneously have a secret and a real scoop, though if he were there, he’d probably just look like some old intellectual dude?

6.       Kim Jong-Il – Yeah, I know this is a weird one. Hear me out. I’d try to get a visa to see the film festival there. Since he personally approves each visitor (they don’t have too many) I might have a fairly decent shot of going. I could claim to be an unpopular blogger who writes for a super-elite group of hipsters.  Oddly, my light poking of his stature could help me. When he saw “Team America” he wasn’t bothered by the obvious mocking of him throughout the movie. Instead, he was annoyed that his puppet didn’t get its own sex scene. So we’re dealing with an extremely strange individual here. Plus, as most of my friends are political junkies, they’d know who he was. Bonus would be to my weird cred, which is calculated by random trips and experiences. I’m ahead in this field. 

7.       Mayo Thompson – I adore him. This is the guy who was cool decades before you knew what he was doing was cool. Every music project of his is excellent, tastefully appointed and artsy as fuck. You can’t come close to this guy’s meticulous timing. A few of my friends would know who he was, since I have a lot of music nerd friends who are confused by him. Even the hippies were afraid of him and he did acid with the secretary of transportation. Oddly, our transportation infrastructure was much better back then, so I have an idea of how to improve it which wouldn’t cost much money at all. 

8.       James Murphy – Many of these people are older than me, at least the unlikely to meet people. I need to meet people older than myself, to convince myself that it is possible to be cool at a certain age, rather than falling into some mid-life crisis buying a red convertible problem. He’s a cool guy and knows way too much about music. Somehow, that seemingly useless information served him well. 

9.       You, dear reader – Sadly, I will never meet any of my readers. This worries me, as great deals of you are cool, hip, relevant people. You spread intelligence, humorous musings, and joy throughout the land. Most of you I imagine are around my age, which would help me get out of being the ‘baby’ of my workplace.

Any of these people could be perfect for that perfect profile picture. I hope someday they’ll grace me with their presence and make me a better, happier person. Who out of these people would you want a picture with? Did I leave out anyone who you think deserves greater attention?

Book Review: Mason & Dixon **Warning Spoilers!**

Thomas Pynchon rightly earned the reputation of being one of America’s most bizarre authors. Among his other accomplishments includes avoiding photographs, interviews, book signings, indeed all those things that authors tend to subject themselves to. Reading his books, you don’t feel like the guy is a recluse, you get the feeling that he doesn’t care at all about those aspects. By focusing exclusively on research and insanely intricate plots, he allows his talents to flourish with virtually no outside interference.

                Mason & Dixon took me longer to read than any of his other books. Various deadlines kept on creeping me, asking me to meet them. I did, and the book suffered as a result. Also, since his prose tends to be extremely dense, it gives you a lot to ponder. Easily a page of his work might be an entire short story or novella for a less weird author. But Pynchon doesn’t work at being normal, he excels at being different, at being smart, at being able to graduate high school early and just dive deep into another universe it would seem.

                Uncharacteristically, he pays close attention to the character’s feelings and emotions. Mason and Dixon are better fleshed out than any other character he’d ever sketched before, whether it is Slothrop  or the Whole Sick Crew. You really feel for Mason’s melancholy, his inability to connect with his children. And you feel for Dixon and his sympathy for those downtrodden souls he constantly encounters. Paranoia and goofiness still loom large over the narrative (those are his calling cards) but they don’t overtake it. Rather, they form a nice background for these two very real individuals.

                I’m familiar with most of his work, but this has the feel of one of his greats, up there with both my adored V. and, of course, Gravity’s Rainbow. Reading his work always has this calming effect over me. When I first read his work, I started almost tearing up. Just the fact that you can write like this and it’s fully acceptable is so gratifying. Usually when I read something I have to keep in mind “Oh, it has to adhere to this rule or that rule, blah” With his work, I feel like it is purely free of almost any another concern, he writes it exactly how he wants and people try to get it. If they get it great, but usually people get burned out and fail before they finish. 

                Don’t stop with this book. Gain the strength to read it if you are one of those that always tries and fails to read it. What happens at the very end reflects a lot of the emotions Pynchon felt now that he had become a father. Mason becomes less melancholy and must cheer up his formerly bubbly colleague Dixon. After Dixon dies, Mason connects with his children in a way he worried he never would. The previous journeys mentioned earlier in the novel gain a yellowish, nostalgic hue. Mason passes away and his children take up his steed. It is such a satisfying ending, seeing the multiple perspectives upon perspectives that the story takes on. 

                Unlike most of his books, it feels like he really knew these characters or at least based it off of people he cared about. The characters work as fully fledged human beings, with worries and concerns. Seeing the end, you understand that it is probably the first time Pynchon has wanted us to see how (relatively) normal people go through life. Stencil was a weirdo. Slothrop went slowly insane, despite the help of all those around him. Mason and Dixon lived a strange life, filled to the brim with obscure geography, but lived as good people. As people you know, people you want to care about. Those who claim that Pynchon doesn’t care about his characters, that he’s too emotionally detached to his material, I’d point to this book, ask them to read, and then continue that line of argument. They couldn’t and that’s why you should read it too. Postmodernism does have a heart and this is easily the best of Pynchon's late work.