other writers, part 2.

That last post was too long, but I have to mention this other writer.

A.J. Jacobs.

His name has been running around my university for a while, as the majority of my office has read his most current book as part of a book group. I first heard of him in my favorite magazine, Relevant, though the readers of Esquire have been enjoying his prose for decade or so.

His writing style is so engaging and accessible yet not dumb by any means. He sprinkles his text with allusions to pop culture and Jewish holy books alike. Jacobs also is able to characterize himself and others in a way that makes you feel like you're reading a well-developed novel. He is self-deprecating, but not to the extent that you dislike him as a guide through his adventures.

And adventures he has. Jacobs apparently has a flair for experimenting. This is evident in his latest book, The Year of Living Biblically, in which he does his best to follow all of the Bible's commands for one year. For a year, Jacobs wears white homogeneous cloth, lets his beard and hair grow long, carries a staff, and ties Hebrew Scriptures to his wrist and his forehead. A Jew by heritage and not by belief, he uses this time to search out the meaning of faith and what makes the Jewish and ultimately the Christian faith so compelling.

Some of his anecdotes are laugh-out-loud funny, as in the stoning episode (involving pebbles and an adulturer) and the uncleanliness of women episode (involving Jacobs's menstrating wife angrily sitting in every chair of their home). But when I wasn't laughing, I was learning. I was learning from Jacobs, a proclaimed agnostic, the ins and outs of the faith I claim for my own. I questioned along with him, but I never felt like he was judging or condemning what I believe through his questions. Not just that, he gave a real picture of what his life looked like at that time, with his wife going through fertility treatments and his realtionship with his son. At the end of the book, there was no amazing conversion. Jacobs cut his hair and went back to life. That's what the book was about: living.

Jacobs's first book, which I just finished this week, is another experiment titled The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. This time, Jacobs reads through the entire 32 volume 2002 edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica (EB). Though not quite as engaging for me, as Living Biblically had a personal signficance, it was still a fun read as Jacobs attempted to regain the intelligence he felt he had in his youth. Along the way, he meets Alex Trebec, joins Mensa, and competes on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.

One of the things that draws me to Jacobs's writing style is his intentional use of segments and format. I'm convinced that this generation of readers reacts more positively to segments in general, since we are bombarded with short pieces of information (i.e. Twitter), and Jacobs uses that to his advantage. In Know-It-All, he uses actual headings of articles in the EB. The following anecdote may have little to do with the title, but it breaks the narrative up into smaller pieces. And there is a flow of narrative, thematic pieces that tie the entire book together. Jacobs's life does revolve around the EB for a year, but other things are at work, much like real life. Readers learn about his intelligent father whom Jacobs has always tried to outsmart, his longsuffering and witty wife trying to have a baby, his supercilious brother-in-law who parades his pretentious knowledge for all to see. All of these storylines have some sort of conclusion by the end of the book, while being interspersed with random facts about Thomas Jefferson and mammals.

Jacobs has some other online Esquire articles that are similar in tone and style; his piece about helping his son's nanny create an online dating profile is humorous and thoughtful, as is his article about a weekend spent with Kato Kaelin.

I'd like to write like Jacobs, but I'd more like to write like myself. I feel like Jacobs is writing in his own voice, albeit one that is edited and stylized. I want to be funny and honest while writing about PNG, not take myself too seriously but write in a way that is true and good and myself.

Okay, I think I've spent enough time writing about others writing. I should really get writing myself. Soon, I keep telling myself, soon.

other writers, part 1.

I haven't just been sitting like a bum all summer, eating Tim Tams and not writing about Papua New Guinea. I have been reading, quite a bit actually. Mostly light things: Harry Potter, Bridget Jones's Diary, a complete history of Sesame Street. But when I'm not reading candy, I'm reading travel essays, as per my Richters.

It's daunting, to be sure. One of the books titled The Best American Travel Writing (a big claim, no?) is a hodgepodge of different essays from all over the world: Africa, China, Bankok; even my dear friend Papua New Guinea plays a surprise appearance. I'm not sure what I should be learning from reading these essays. They're all so very different. Their common denominator is that they're well-written and well-researched. Each has those two vital components of story and facts, being informative about a culture while hiding it within plot. Some are better are hiding than others; the first essay, about chocolate, I find too dry, too journalistic, and too long, less creative nonfiction than just pure nonfiction. On the other extreme, you have David Sedaris's essay about traveling through the air with a sobbing seatmate; little research there, but a whole lot of personal experience. Most fall somewhere in between.

There's also the Thomas Swick essay disparaging other types of writers and elevating travel writers. He makes some good points, but I bristle a bit at his stereotypes, especially concerning memoirists. According to him, I'm probably a memoirist who has "appropriated place as nothing more than a scenic backdrop to the more important story of [myself]." But I haven't written anything yet; how would he know?

I wasn't expecting PNG to show up in the book. I opened the book randomly, as I tend to do, and read a sentence: "Two others chew betel nut, their mouths a bright, frothy red." Papua New Guinea! Of course, James Campbell's essay was about hiking across the island, following the trail of some WWII American troops. Most PNG essays concern some sort of wilderness expedition. No thanks, I say. Though it may be an interesting frame for my lack-of-hiking-through-PNG-wilderness essay...

Speaking of wilderness expedition, I found another book about PNG during my Powell's search. Titled Beyond Fear, it's about two guys who kayaked all the way down through PNG. I've only read the first chapter, and it is not well-written. I'll try, but it'll be hard to stand 200 pages of overabundant exclamation marks, poor dialogue, and unnecessary repetition. Self-published, too, which should have bene an indicator. It's times like this I hope I'm a better writer, that I'm not cluttering up the bookshelves of this world with meaningless dribble.

reentry, readjustment, review

As a psychology minor, I feel vaguely suspicious of dreams. I feel like they are often misleading and overemphasized. I am suspicious of those who find absolute meaning in their dreams. My overall view is that dreams are simply a result of the brain's synapses firing while sleeping. I feel that feelings are easily carried over from the worries of the day into our subconscious, so dreams are less literal, more figurative. Which may be obvious for those battling dragons or flying while they sleep. A greater stretch but one I am willing to occasionally support is that while we sleep we mentally work out problems and concepts that are flooding our mind. I don't believe every dream is a symbol, but I feel that dreams can potentially lead us to realize things about ourselves, whether it's a true insight or just a different way of looking at things. I also believe God can speak through dreams; I don't doubt He's powerful enough to prod the right synapse.

Still, I enjoy trying to search out meanings in dreams, to solve the puzzle of why something popped up or what it represents. It's more for fun, less life-changing. This is fairly easy for me, as most of my dreams are tied heavily to reality. Like my life.

All this said, I had a dream about a month ago.

Here's some backstory you may need. While in Papua New Guinea, in Lae at Martin Luther Seminary, I got the chance to talk to a wonderful woman named Dakis. Cyndi called her a rock star, and she was: the heart and soul of the place, a staple and an engine. At the end of our conversation, I commented on her black bracelets, of which she had a dozen or so lining her forearm. Goomies, she called them, and she proceeded to give me two. My first gifts from Papua New Guinea, far behind the already bilum-laden members of my team. I haven't taken the bracelets off since; they've been with me all around PNG, Australia, the US, Canada. Two little bands on my wrist.

Back to the dream. I dreamed I was in my room in Newberg, tidying up around my bright orange and green hippie polyester bedspread. Suddenly, without warning, the thicker of my two bracelets fell off my wrist and onto my bed. It hadn't been cut, or torn, or ripped. It just fell off.

That's all I remember of it. It was short and insignficant. But I woke up and thought, maybe this means something. Maybe it represents a loosening of my tongue, an ability to write, a freeing of my spirit so that the words could come and the experiences could be shared.

Then I proceeded to do nothing.

I've been silent for a long while. It's hard to believe I've been back from PNG for two months; it's even harder to believe that I even went to PNG. I have the pictures. I have the bilums, the bracelets. But it seems like a million years ago. I have become so acclimated to the US that PNG seems like a waking dream.

When I came back from PNG, I couldn't write about it. I was overwhelmed, I was exhausted, there was too much to process and too much to understand. I could barely exist, because I didn't know how to exist; I didn't know how to be me, and I didn't know who "me" was, now that I had this piece of PNG within me. I came home, I slept, and I tried to limit peppering my sentences with "This reminds me of the time in PNG when..."

Now, many weeks later, I fear that I've hit the other side. I don't remember. I can't feel it anymore. The flowers are fuzzy shades of orange and red, no longer vibrant in my mind's eye. The memories no longer crowd out everything else; I've succeeded at stuffing them behind what is more impacting to my everyday life.

This summer has been difficult for other reasons. Big life changes are approaching for those I love: a giddy best friend/roommate planning a wedding, a friend moving to Mexico for four months, another friend unreachable through the haze of theatre, another friend in turmoil over the most important relationship she's ever had, another friend just plain gone. And me, I'm trying to find a place. I'm trying to learn to dream again, to risk and perhaps fail. I'm trying to decide where to go next, because real life is edging closer; I can see the seam of her cloak as she hides behind textbooks and workstudy schedules. Emotionally, I'm ridiculously unstable.

Honestly, I haven't processed through what I experienced in Papua New Guinea. Like usual, instead I discount my experience, saying it wasn't valid, it wasn't good enough, it didn't make an impact, and I don't remember. But I need to work through what has happened, because I know that it made a difference to me. I know I'm different somehow; I don't like the difference thus far, but I'm hoping that what I'm living through now is simply the response to the repression of life-altering events. To relive my experience, to give it a voice and a purpose, to give it life and meaning? That is when I will be more whole.

But as always, I am afraid. Going to Papua New Guinea, that was a challenge. That was scary. But I didn't do it alone. What happened to me also happened to us. This new challenge, this writing? This is solo. I am alone, and battling tiredness, old movies, youtube videos, long phone calls, cold office buildings, and fear of the future, all the things pulling me from the words that I need to speak.

I have to speak them, so I'm breaking my silence to hopefully produce something that will give someone an idea of what that beautiful tropical warm glorious place is all about.