Matching Tracksuits

book of questions

Answer 165

Thursday 10 March 2005

Tall, slim, metallic – my filing cabinet was one of my prized possessions in the States. I had a drawer for my current semester: materials, handouts, tests, syllabi. I had a draw for all the previous semesters. I had a drawer for financial documents: receipts, bills, bank information. And of course I had a miscellaneous drawer. I could go straight to anything.

Now I dream of having a filing cabinet to organize myself. I think since I’ve been I Poland, I’ve seen a couple, but they don’t seem to be popular. At school, I keep all my papers and documents in a little cubby-hole – literally. At home, I have tons of little binders and folders that I keep tax info in, visa documents, etc. But no filing cabinet.

I used to think of myself as highly organized, but sloth and lack of storage space (not to mention a lack of filing cabinets – I like filing cabinets) has led me to a state of semi-chaos. I don’t lose my keys often, but I often temporarily misplace materials from school, simply because I don’t have a place to store it all neatly and systematically. Which drives me bananas.

Pens are a story in themselves. I have a very nice Cross Townsend black lacquer fountain pen that I bought, by some fluke of mis-pricing or something, for only sixty buck. I’ve had it for ten years now, and never once have I thought I’d lost it. I have a beautiful stainless steel Parker Sonnet fountain pen that Kinga bought for me for Christmas, which, because of its weight (that Cross is heavy) goes with me to school every day. Never lost it. I have another Parker filled with red ink for grading papers – never misplaced it. All told, I have four fountain pens, and I’ve never lost one. Ballpoint pens, though, are a different story. Three. I’ve lost three. Most recently, I lost one that Kinga gave me last Christmas. Yes, it is only March, but the horrid thing is, I lost it before the end of January! How?! I’ve no clue.

Answer 200

Thursday 3 March 2005

In conversations, do you tend to listen or talk more?

“There’s a reason the good Lord gave us two ears and only one mouth,” the saying goes. You learn more from listening than from talking, but that’s not the reason I often find myself sitting silent in groups, listening and not participating. Kinga says I should make more of an effort, but the problem is, I’ve found that many times people are talking about something I know nothing about, or (worse) care nothing about. And so I sit and let them do the work of keeping the conversation going.

One-on-one is a different story, though, and Kinga will tell you I can talk up a storm when I’m inspired (read: irritated).

Question 165 Are you well organized? How often do you have to look for your keys?

Group conversation, though, just baffles me. When I first returned to Poland, I thought it was a language issue, that I just wasn’t following everything. I went back to the States the summer of 2002 and one evening, found myself at a bar with a few friends and their friends and other friends of friends–mostly strangers, in other words. My attention drifted from one conversation to another, and I realized that it wasn’t the language in Poland that was messing me up. I’m just not good at “small talk.” I listened intently to what pairs and trios were talking about, and even then I’d have been hard pressed to nail down a sort of thesis statement for the conversation. I simply had no idea what the hell they were talking about.

Small talk is an oxymoron.

I’m not saying that all conversation needs to be about something “deep” (whatever that might mean), but it does need a grounding for me. What that means in practical terms is that I’m very quiet when I’m with a group of people I don’t know. Once I know that someone shares the same interest as I, I begin opening up a bit.

When I do begin talking, I guess I like talking about something meaningful. I once had a very long conversation with a friend of a friend of Kinga’s about forgiveness, what it means, and whether we can truly forgive another person. It was a Highlanders’ party, and Polish Highlanders are like me, squared: very distant and silent (cautious, even) until they get to know you. In that sense, the two of us had a bit of an impetus to our conversation.

Answer 35

Thursday 24 February 2005

Would you give up half of what you own now for a pill that would permanently change you so that one hour of sleep each day would fully refresh you?

The older I get, the more inclined I am to answer this question in the affirmative. Sleep is only truly pleasant when you’re not forced to put a premature end to it with an obnoxious screech from the alarm clock. Otherwise, I’m fairly neutral about sleep (especially since I almost never remember my dreams) and am positively annoyed by it when I can’t shake the initial grogginess of waking up — those days you’re sure you would pay to be able to stay in bed.

Question 200
In conversations, do you tend to listen or talk more? (Additional questions: What are you looking for when you converse with people? What kinds of things do you normally discuss? Are there other things that would be more interesting to you?

I’m not sure that I feel I don’t have enough time; it’s simply that I think it would always be a good thing to have more time. Right now, I have a great deal more free time than Kinga because of the nature of my teaching job (not to mention all the damn breaks we get) and fairly hefty project Kinga’s been working on. No kids, either.

The idea of having an additional five to seven hours a day brings all kinds of wonderful thoughts to mind: think of all the books I could read, all exercise I could do, all the time I could spend with friends.

As far as sacrificing half my belongings, the only qualm I would have is that I would be very hesitant to agree if someone else chose which of my things to take in payment. Take all my CDs, (almost) all my books, my clothes, furniture — neutral objects that can be fairly easily replaced. Yes, I know books are hardly “neutral” objects, but I have very little sentimental attachment to them when compared to the glass paintings Kinga and I received for wedding presents or selected old letters from my naïve youth or the cast-iron skillet that my mother gave me which was her mother’s and so on.

My motivation for saying “Yes” also derives from the simple fact that as we age, time seems to move faster. That’s probably because each year represents a smaller percent of our lives. When I was ten, a year was ten percent of my life; when I was twenty, it was five percent of my life; how that I’m over thirty, it’s only a little over three percent. By the time I’m a grandfather, a year will be a mere one and a half percent. That explains why summer seemed endless when I was in grade school, while now the entire school year passes in a flash.

Lastly, considering my non-theistic views, I’m not inclined to believe there’s any sort of life after death, so the more time I get here, the better.

Answer 4: Memory and Happiness

Thursday 17 February 2005

And waste an entire year of my life? How can anything be called “perfect happiness” if we don’t remember it later? “Without memory, our existence would be barren and opaque, like a prison cell into which no light penetrates, like a tomb which rejects the living,” wrote Elie Wiese inl his Nobel Lecture.

Question 35 Would you give up half of what you own now for a pill that would permanently change you so that one hour of sleep each day would fully refresh you? (Additional questions: Do you feel you have enough time? If not, what would give you that feeling? How much has your attitude about time changed as you’ve aged?) Answers due 25 February Class dismissed

I am, admittedly, in love with memory. Obsessed, at one point. Willa Cather wrote in My Antonia, “Some memories are realities and better than anything that can ever happen to one again.” It could have been a summary of my general view on life at that time, many years ago, when I was unsure of the future and only certain that the past had often been wondrous.

I was so worried about forgetting something, and I soon found that in fact I remembered insignificant details about things that my friends perhaps didn’t even notice.

Once I sat in horror as a friend told me that not only could she not remember what we’d talked about in a conversation six months earlier, but she couldn’t even remember having the conversation. It was not a lighthearted talk about who’s going to make it to the World Series – it was a discussion of our entire friendship up to that point. “And she can’t remember it?!” I lay in bed thinking that night, unable to understand how it was possible.

What would be the good of a year’s experiences that would leave no mark upon us? In many ways, we are our memories:

How much of what we are, what we know about ourselves, is really true? We are merely the sum of viewpoints, and human memory is treacherous and inconsistent.
Ilan Stavans, On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language

Learning is memory, especially learning from mistakes. But we don’t just learn from our unhappy memories, and so the notion of a year spent that leaves no memory is absolutely horrifying to me.

It’s a year spent completely drunk. When drunk, we’re often perfectly happy; the next day, we often don’t remember our antics. Take that and multiply it by 365 and you get Question 4’s “one year in perfect happiness.”

But what is meant by “perfect happiness?” I’ve always tried to act as if happiness depending on me, not on other people. “How I choose to react” and similar notions. In other words, for a middle class guy like me, happiness is around every corner. I really lack nothing materially–food, clothing warmth–and so what is there to be unhappy about? That statement reveals quite a bit about my experiences, I realize.

Happiness has also included the thought that, when I look back on a given moment, I’ll still be happy – no regret, in other words.

Second, what is meant by “remember nothing?” Does it mean I would immediately forget every moment as soon as it passed? Or does it mean that I would accumulate a year of memories, then suddenly they would vanish? Either option seems horrible to me.

This question is somewhat shallow, I must admit, because I can’t think that anyone would answer in the affirmative. Even without the extreme view that the present moment doesn’t really exist and instead is something trapped between what was and what will be, the present moment is so brief that it represents an atomically small percent of our lives. Much more of our lives are spent remembering the past or planning the future than living the moment.

Perhaps that’s the trick, having your Book of Questions cake and eating it too: make the most of the moment. It’s easier said than done.

Answer 120

Friday 11 February 2005

Question 120: Would you accept $10,000 to shave your head and continue your normal activities sans hat or wig without explaining the reason for your haircut?

Admittedly, I sort of cheated with this question, because for years I’ve been all but shaving my head. The reason I give is pragmatic: it’s less work.

For a while, I was in fact shaving my head daily with a razor, which took about fifteen minutes a day, so the “pragmatic” excuse doesn’t hold. I suspect my male pattern baldness plays some subconscious role. The less hair I have, the less visible my growing circle of skin at the crown of my head.

I did have a friend once who, when I suggested he cut his hair similar to mine, reacted with such revulsion that one would think I’d suggested something more drastic and permanent – say, tongue splitting or something. In my youthful naivety, I kept contending that it was a vanity issue, but I see now that it is much more than that.

Our hairstyles speak before we open our mouths.

Along with clothes, they often construct entire personas before the individual even begins speaking. Rather, _we_ do the persona-constructing on the basis of the hair and clothes.

  • Greasy hair brings to mind poverty and a lack of hygiene. Their personality must be somehow defective.
  • A mullet leads to expectations of a Southern accent and a lack of cognitive abilities.
  • A poof – no, a bush – of hair precariously balanced above a girl’s forehead and wings of hair sprouting out above her ears screams, “This girl does not get out often.”
  • Perfectly styled, stylish hair is the mark of someone who spends a lot of time in front of the mirror in the morning.

Fight it though I may, such are the stereotypes and

clichés I unconsciously create, and I suspect it’s not just me.

But it’s not just bad assumptions we make based on hair. That’s why the fashion industry exists – to help people make the assumption about us that we want them to make.

Hair and fashion are non-verbal communication. The question is, do we want it to be intentional or unintentional? After all, that’s the primary difference between being a slob and not.

It’s the communication aspect that gives the dimension of “Let me think about it” to the question. If it didn’t include “without explaining the reason for your haircut,” it’s a simple question: most everyone would agree.

“What? The do? Oh, some idiot agreed to pay me ten grand just to shave my head.”

For those interested in continuing and posting in a week on another question: Question 4:
If you could spend one year in perfect happiness but afterwards would remember nothing of the experience, would you do so? If not, why not? (Further question: Which is more important: actual experiences, or the memories that remain when the experiences are over?) Thoughts posted 18 Feb.

Then we can counter the visual communication of our shinny head with the verbal explanation. The “without explaining” means that our bald heads alone are the explanation.

For the sake of fairness, then, I’ll change the question to make it more applicable to me: “Would I shave the fashionable, boy-band-type verticle stripes into my eyebrows for $10,000 without any sort of explanation?”

The answer: most definitely not.

As a teacher, I unfortunately have to worry to some degree about my image. A slob does not garner respect, and so I wear a tie every day. Similarly, a balding man in his early thirties trying to look fifteen years younger would bring about, I suspect, unwanted effects, to say the least.

On the other hand, I’ll be leaving this school in a matter of months, so in the long run, it’s a moot point.

Book of Questions :: An Invitation to All Visitors

Saturday 5 February 2005

One of the most popular websites — judging by the number of comments — is Michele. It doesn’t take long to figure out why: her blog is not about herself exclusively, but also asks engaging questions, like a good host.

Gregory Stock beat her to it, though. I first discovered his Book of Questions (Amazon) when I was in high school. As one Amazon reviewer’s son said, “This book doesn’t have any answers, but it sure does make you think.”

The Book of Questions is just that: a book of engaging, sometimes provocative questions. From the introduction:

This is not a book of trivia questions, so don’t bother to look here for the name of either Tonto’s horse or the shortstop for the 1923 Yankees. These are questions of a different sort — questions about you. They are about your values, your beliefs, and your life; love, money, sex, integrity, generosity, pride, and death are all here. Some of the questions are indeed “heavy,” and some of them are almost jocular, but they are all mentally stimulating.

Rediscovering it on my bookshelf a few days ago, I realized that this is a blogger’s idea book written before the advent of the Internet, let alone blogging. It includes questions that, when honestly answered, could improve any blog, especially one like MTS that is growing staler by the day.

What I propose, then, is this: simul-blogging (the term, from my perspective, started at Ocean) to answer selected questions from Stock’s book. This would be different than merely commenting, as participants would not be initially influenced by others’ thoughts. Instead, we all write about the same question at roughly the same time, with a given date for publishing it — something along the lines of Marginal and Fallible do, but on larger scale.

Any takers? To begin with, perhaps something on the lighter side, banal even:

Question 120: Would you accept $10,000 to shave your head and continue your normal activities sans hat or wig without explaining the reason for your haircut?

My own answer will be posted on Friday 11 February. If you join in, paste the question at the top of your post, then leave a comment for Monday’s entry with a link to your answer.