{"id":656,"date":"2010-06-18T08:21:36","date_gmt":"2010-06-18T13:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/?p=656"},"modified":"2010-06-19T09:32:53","modified_gmt":"2010-06-19T14:32:53","slug":"everything-is-illuminated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/2010\/06\/everything-is-illuminated\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything is Illuminated"},"content":{"rendered":"

15 June 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today we attended the child birth class again. At one point, one of the instructors held up a graph. It had the typical X and Y axes, and it had a linearly rising line. She said the name of the graph, which I promptly forgot, but explained that it’s a plotting of how most in the medical community like to see labor progress; essentially, 1 centimeter of dialation per hour. She explained that if a laboring woman is not progressing this fast, they might send her back home (at best) or start in with the interventions (at worst) because, you know, something’s not normal.<\/p>\n

As much as I like graphs <\/a>, I was pleased when the instructor said that, while the graph’s creators had good intentions, it’s pretty much worthless. She went on to explain how laboring, instead of following a linear development, is more like traveling a labyrinth. Sometimes, you think you’re getting close, but you’re not. Sometimes, you’re surprised at the progress you’re making.\u00a0 Jennifer said that this made sense, because she went from 3 to 10 centimeters in 2 and a half hours, and the hospital staff treated her as if something was going wrong.\u00a0 Instead, though, Jennifer was just taking her own unique route to the goal.<\/p>\n

I can’t really say I didn’t know this before, but it was nice to have it so clearly spelled out, especially by someone in the know. It kind of reminds me of when I read chapter 4 of Film and Art<\/a><\/em>, or chapter one of A People’s History of the United States<\/em><\/a>. Yes, I know those are odd examples, but those are two of my favorite books, and, in both cases, I found myself nodding along with the words, thinking “yes, I intuitively knew this to be true, thanks so much for laying it out so plainly.”<\/p>\n

16 June 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today we recieved, via US mail, the title for our car. I opened it up, stared at it half-mindedly for about a second, then carried it into our bedroom to put in our file cabinet. As I stared at it, though, I saw my name. My whole name.<\/p>\n

Of course, I’ve seen my whole name before. In fact, for a time, I quite liked it. I used it a lot. Especially since I share a first and last name with my Dad, I emphasized my middle name to distinguish myself from him.<\/p>\n

But that’s the thing: no part of my name is uniquely mine. My first name is from my Dad, my middle name is from my maternal grandfather, and my last name is from my Dad’s Dad (and so on ad infinitum).\u00a0 For many years – decades even – this didn’t bother me too much. Yeah, I got my Dad’s mail often; and people frequently remarked that it didn’t seem “right” that I – the young kid – went by the authoritative sounding “James,” whilst my older father went with the playful sounding “Jim.” But all in all, I liked being named after my Dad.<\/p>\n

And I still do. I mean, he’s a great guy. I have loads of great memories of doing fun things with him. He sat in my room for hours playing Solarquest<\/a> with me. Even as an adult, he’s been a good friend – he helped Jennifer and me with vaious problems with our homes and cars, even letting me borrow his car for 5 months once so I could get to college and back. I always admired him for his positive attitude and his ability to be assertive without being a jerk (I can’t seem to strike that balance). The only time anyone has a lgitimate gripe against him, it isn’t a big deal. I mean, yeah, my mom was right: if my Dad went off to run a quick errand, it inexplicably took him two hours, primarily because he bumped into a friend and they ended up chatting for 20 minutes, and then he got distracted by a cool new store adjacent to the one he was supposed to go to. But, come on, that’s hardly a major character flaw. Even as a Witness, my Dad has this nagging feeling that he should be shunning me (’cause his religion tells him to), but he lets his conscience trump those lame rules.<\/p>\n

But then there’s my grandfather. For years I ingnored the tales of the abuse he handed out to my mom and her siblings. I rationalized by saying: “Oh well, he’s a changed man, now.” and “I think he feels bad for the way he raised his kids.” And, you know, he probably does. As the other side of family seemed a little to fond of pointing out: all his kids are messed up because of their father.<\/p>\n

For some odd reason, when I was born, my mom decided to honor the man who had been such a strict, ridiculous, and abusive father. She took his first name as my middle name. And, for a long time, I liked that middle name. After all, my grandfather was nice to me. When I’d hear tales of his former self, I figured we all made mistakes, but that god had forgiven him, and so should I.<\/p>\n

Last summer, my grandma was in the hospital, having suffered a heartattack. I called to check on her, and\u00a0she and I \u00a0had a pleasant conversation. I told her I would come visit her soon, and she said that was fine. That afternoon, I made plans with my mom to go visit\u00a0grandma\u00a0that evening. But my mom called back about an hour later, telling me that my grandfather, when asked if it’d be alright if I come visit, replied: “Absolutely not.” He didn’t want me in his house, see, ’cause I’m not a member of his religion.<\/p>\n

This was like\u00a0 a lightbulb in my brain: Of course he wouldn’t want anyone\u00a0in his company that doesn’t subscribe to the Watchtower Society! Because that means I don’t follow the same corporation that has given him an excuse for his power over the years.\u00a0I’m not gonna get into that right now, but, needless to say, I pretty much dumped my middle name after that. Jennifer and I spent one evening looking through possible alternative middle names, and I even printed off the government forms for changing my name.\u00a0 Turns out, it’s a big hassle, and it’s expensive.<\/p>\n

Will I change my\u00a0middle name one day? I hope to. I see no reason to carry on the name of a child abuser who shuns his grandchildren.\u00a0Besides, there are other people who are also named after him, and they can carry on his name if they think he’s so awesome.<\/p>\n

One thing’s for sure: no child of mine will ever have the first or middle name Daniel.<\/p>\n

17 June 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

I stopped at the library the other day, and, like a sucker, I went over to the shelf of books-for-sale. I thumbed through them real quick, and spotted Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated<\/a><\/em>. More importantly, it was on audio cassette. This is good, because I love listening to books in the car, but I only have a cassetter player, and there’s a serious derth of books on cassette these days, unless I want to learn Hmong or learn how to be an empowered manager. So I paid the 50 cents and bought the book-on-tape.<\/p>\n

A few years back, I read Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close<\/a><\/em>, which is probably one of the ten best novels I’ve ever read. So I have high hopes for this new book I’ve acquired. I began listening to it the very next morning, and at first I liked it. But yesterday, it shifted scenes to a time, about 200 years earlier, when an overturned wagon in a river causes a big uproar in a little Polish community. I couldn’t follow it at all. All the characters (and there’s about 20 introduced in the span of 10 minutes) have similar, difficult-to-understand Hebrew names, and the narrative is laced with Jewish terms I don’t understand.<\/p>\n

As an aside: I hate when authors do that. See, I speak English, and so I read English books. If an author suddenly lapses into French, Spanish, Latin, or Hebrew, I don’t know what’s going on. Is it to make the author seem intelligent? Of is it to make me pull out a translation dictionary and get me to laboriously decipher the text? Who knows? Who cares?<\/p>\n

Anyway, today I tried listening to it some more, but I had the windows rolled down (my car lacks air conditioning) and so it was too loud to hear the tape.<\/p>\n

I’ll try again tomorrow. My plan is to rewind the tape to the start of this scene, and try to pay more attention this time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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