Notes on Cities and Fashion

Actually, no. Not really.

This post is about birthdays, books, movies, and music.

Wim Wenders, one of my favorite directors (see The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, Der Himmel Uber Berlin, Paris Texas), made a cinematic travel diary in the late-80's called Notebook on Cities and Clothes. I liked the title. In order to be true to my title today, a couple of thoughts:

1) Chicago is truly an amazing city;

2) Men's fashion is dead (unless you can somehow get excited about 1950's-inspired hipster suits).

On with the important things...

I celebrated my 39th birthday last week. It seems that, finally, I am maturing into my age in that the way I believe others see me (and the way in which I perceive myself) is as someone older and wiser than a self-conscious thirteen year old. I do believe age may ultimately serve me well.

Julie and the kids blessed me with the gift of books for my birthday: Iron War (Matt Fitzgerald), The Man Who Was Thursday (G.K. Chesterton), The Complete Father Brown (Chesterton), and I Want My MTV (Marks & Tannebaum). I am also nursing two books loaned to me by a friend: The Mission of God and Old Testament Ethics by Christopher Wright. My reading for the early winter is set.

I finished Iron War last night. It describes the epic battle, the" deathly weariness", of Dave Scott and Mark Allen's 1989 Ironman World Championship duel. It is riveting. These dudes were certainly gifted athletes and incredibly hard workers, but what set them apart was their willingness and ability to suffer. How I admire them! Interestingly, it is Fitzgerald's chapter on the science of suffering that I found to be most compelling. I nearly wept upon reading this:

"Despite all the evidence to the contrary, pleasure is not the magnetic north of all human behavior. People are more complex than that...it can be better to feel anything--even pain--than to feel nothing. Sometimes pleasure and pain are derived from the same source. There is no pleasure in doing triathlon, but it metes out a kind of suffering that is satisfying in the context of our soporific modern existence with its all infernal conveniences. Driving your muscles, heart, and lungs against the gravitational press of extreme fatigue does indeed make you feel as alive--as fully present in reality--as any experience life has to offer. It's an acquired taste but, once acquired, addictive." (62)

Fitzgerald has so much more articulately expressed my own conflicted thoughts in regard to why triathlon is so compelling. Somehow, the very reality of extreme suffering is the very thing that makes triathlon worthwhile. Intense training is not to diminish the suffering, but to increase both speed and suffering. This is not masochism; it is joy in suffering. (These are two different things.)

One other line struck me rather profoundly in the book (which, if not clear already, is a book I highly recommend). It appears at the end, almost as a summary:

"Our earthly lives are doomed. Our lives are, in the long run--the billion-year perspective--utterly meaningless" (286). Wow. I'm pretty sure this is nihilism defined. Fitzgerald finds our struggle to achieve within this meaningless to be "heartbreakingly beautiful." How I wish he (and both Dave Scott & Mark Allen) would see that there is more.

A quick note about music--I haven't heard much to be excited about in the last year. However, one band currently has my attention: Sin Bang Fous. Give them a listen (particularly "Advent in Ives Garden") on Spotify.

Finally, speaking of suffering, Julie and I watched the much-acclaimed Lars Von Trier film Melancholia last night. It is an art-house film (in fact nearly a caricature of the traditional art-house film). It is about the planet Melancholia colliding with planet Earth. Sort of. It is also about mental illness, feminism, marriage, and (naturally) death. I'm not sure if Von Trier (a director whose films I've really enjoyed (Zentopa, Dancer in the Dark, Breaking the Waves, The Element of Crime, Medea) has over-reached in his intellectual self-consciousness or is simply poking fun of intellectuals. In any case, I dare you to watch.