Austin Wimberly's Blog

The CW channel aired an episode of The Andy Griffith Show last night that I had not seen before.  It was an odd experience because, before that moment, I was certain I had seen them all, and here on the TV, clear as black and white, was proof that, despite my certainty about my knowledge, I was wrong.  There was a clear difference between my assumed knowledge and my actual knowledge.  I could actually measure the magnitude of that distance–30 minutes (around 20 if I didn’t count the commercials).

After watching the missing episode, I could see why stations hadn’t re-aired that particular show.  It really wasn’t that good.  There was no Opie or Aunt Bea, and Don Knotts hadn’t quite grown into his role as Barney, so it was an early episode, before the salad days of Andy.  But, despite the show’s deficiencies, I hung in.  This was new knowledge after all, and this might be the only Andy Griffith episode I hadn’t seen, and THEN I would have seen them all.

But after the show, I was plagued with doubts, so I went to my source for truth, the internet, and found that, as of that moment, I had, in fact, seen every single Andy Griffith Show episode ever aired.  And I was happy to have achieved that milestone.  It was a certain defining moment because, whatever else happens to me in life, I’ll always be secure in the knowledge that I have watched every Andy Griffith Show episode ever made.  A lot of people can’t say that.

After I turned off the TV and was buttoning up the house for the night, I smiled at how secure I had been in my knowledge that I had seen all of the episodes, how smug I was in my ignorance, and it occurred to me that I was equally secure in my knowledge of other things.  But after tonight, how certain could I really be in other knowledge I assumed I possessed?  Not very.

According to tradition, Socrates said that the beginning of wisdom is to know that you know nothing, and it’s from this idea that we get the imperative “Know what you don’t know.”  Know that you are ignorant.  Before you even begin, know that, no matter how much you learn, you will still be ignorant, less ignorant than you were before, but ignorant nonetheless.  Nobody has all knowledge even if the human mind has the potential to learn anything.

Perhaps the best approach is to admit our ignorance, to have humility, and to listen to each other.  No matter how certain we are that we have seen every Andy Griffith Show episode, there may be someone who has seen one that we haven’t and can fill in the gaps in our knowledge.  I will say this: If you are watching Andy Griffith episodes and the one about Barney’s replacement from the state office in North Carolina comes on, just change the channel.  It’s disappointing.  Flip over to AMC and see if they’re re-running a Godfather movie.  I have seen all of those.  I’m certain of it.

Think about it:  How many times have you wondered if anyone out there was really listening to you, really wanting to know what you had to say?  Well, friend, wonder no more.  There is an entire government agency that is hanging on your every word.  And it’s the national security kind.  This isn’t your local DMV office.  These are highly trained people who are recording your every search, cataloging your every phone call.  And you thought you weren’t that interesting!

I tell you, it’s good to know that the government is behind this.  I’m a Gen-Xer.  The book on my generation is that we are politically apathetic.  I’ve often argued that there is good reason for our lack of caring about politics.  Consider that, for my entire voting life, it has seemed to me that the government wasn’t listening to what I had to say, that I didn’t have their ear, that my elected representatives were not really all that interested in what I thought about the issues.  Boy was I ever wrong!  It gives me warm, tingly feelings inside to know that I live in a country where my government is so interested in my opinion that they’ve developed a very expensive, highly technical, secret apparatus just to know my thoughts on any number of wide-ranging subjects.  I challenge anyone to find a government anywhere (excluding communist East Germany and the former Soviet Union) that has been this interested in its citizens’ opinions.  You know what?  On second thought, I take back the exclusion.  We’re America, dammit, so we are naturally the best at everything–including domestic surveillance.

Now that I’ve learned that someone is always listening, I feel less alone.  Just the other night, I couldn’t get to sleep, and I remembered that someone at the CIA was up, too, so I went right to Google and typed, “Whatcha doin?  I can’t sleep.  I had a bad dream that the terrorists had won.  They haven’t have they?”  My CIA person didn’t respond.  Maybe the CIA isn’t authorized to answer questions.

But I’m confident that the terrorists haven’t won.  If they had, I would be losing my freedoms.  That’s what they told is back in the naughts, anyway.

I have a piece there about meeting my kids for the first time.  So, if you’re out and about and pass a bookstore or a newsstand, stop by and see if they have a copy.  Tell them Austin sent you.

My truck was burglarized a few weeks ago.  The thieves tried to break open the lock on the driver’s side, and when that didn’t work, they broke the rear-passenger window.  It was enough damage to max out my deductible, and for all of that, they took exactly…nothing.  That’s right.  Not.  One.  Thing.

I’m not sure what to make of this.  On the one hand, I suppose I’m grateful that I got to keep all of my belongings-despite the damage to my vehicle.  On the other hand, I’m a little offended.  I mean, these people went through all of that trouble to basically tell me that I have nothing worth stealing, not my St. Matthew’s Passion CD or my Live from Massey Hall CD, not my spiffy fedora, not even the truck itself.  I mean, that’s just hurtful.

They could have at least taken the spare change in the cup holder.  It is, after all, money.  I guess these particular burglars only dealt in big bills.  Maybe they’re the yuppies of low-level crime.

Snobbery notwithstanding, the would-be thieves were courteous in a sense.  I mean, they could have busted the windshield or the bigger windows on the front sides of the truck (I have a crew-cab, so the back windows are smaller).  Or they could have keyed the car or slashed the tires or committed all sorts of lowbrow acts.  They left the truck driveable, and after the dealer got finished with it, it was in better shape than before the incident.  So, all-in-all, the perpetrators were very nice about the way they conducted their business.

It’s interesting, though, that after all of the effort to break my door handle and window, they came away with nothing.  I actually lost more than if I had left the door unlocked (which is the strategy I plan on going with from here on out).  The big winner in all of this was actually the dealer.  They made out like bandits.

I’ve heard this said countless times.  An NFL player has a great game, and the sideline reporter comments on his excellent play.  “I’m a professional,” the athlete says, and the reporter accepts the explanation without another thought.  Sometimes it’s meant to compliment someone’s work ethic.  “She’s so dilligent and produces such quality work.  She’s a professional.”  At other times it connotes expertise.  “We should let the professionals handle this.”

The word has almost become a substitute for “talented”, especially when pitted against the word “amateur.”  A professional is talented enough to make money from what she does.  An amateur does not make money off of what he does because, presumably, he’s not talented enough.  At face value, it’s logical.  By what other means do we have to measure talent other than the opinions of other people, and how do we express approval in our culture?  By giving our purchasing power to the talented creator who has made such an enjoyable product.

But if you look at the word, “professional,” all it means is “someone who is paid for their labor.”  It also connotes “well behaved.”  “He didn’t get bent out of shape about not getting a raise this year.  He’s a professional.”  I suppose, if we really wanted to get cynical, we could say that “professional” is a euphemism for “trained.”  My dog sits when I tell it to.  She’s a professional.

And what about that connection with talent?  History is littered with artists, composers, and writers who never made a living off of their prodigious abilities.  Among them were Van Gogh, Charles Ives, and Emily Dickenson.  And what about those professional trades people–those computer programmers and doctors and journalists?  Might it be that some professionals are not really talented at their stated job but are skilled at selling people on the idea that they are good at what they do?  Might they be so talented at lying about their talents that they convince others to part with money?  I suspect that our economic system rewards dishonesty much more often than we’d like to admit.

Now I’m not suggesting that we are a culture of charlatans.  We may be, but that’s not my point.  My point is that, perhaps, we should stop using the word “professional” when we really mean “talented.”  I realize this opens up a quandry because, well, how do we measure “talent” if we can’t use something quantifiable like sales?  I don’t know.  Perhaps not everything in life can be measured.  Perhaps there are some truly transcendental things that must remain ineffable and hidden.

But even if talent can ultimately be measured, I prefer that the units we measure in be something other than dollars.  Perhaps we could create a new unit called the Beethoven.  ”That Justin Bieber may only have 2 Beethovens of actual talent, but he’s a professional.”

There is a regular Wednesday night gathering of runners who meet at the Trak Shak, a Birmingham-area store that serves the running community.  The Wednesday evening runners run either a 3 or 5 mile course and then meet back at the Trak Shak for beers.  Valerie McLean, who owns the Trak Shak, is also the organizer of the annual Mercedes Marathon–one of the most prestigious races in the region and a qualifier for the Boston Marathon, so it was fitting that she announced that this evening’s run would be held as a show of solidarity with Boston. Runners from across the area came out to show their support by wearing their favorite race shirts and whatever Boston apparel they had.

The event started with a word from Rev. Jim Truesdell, an associate pastor at South Highlands Presbyterian Church in Birmingham.  He acknowledged those present who had run the Boston Marathon, some of whom were at the race on Monday.  He read the 23rd Psalm and led us in a prayer, and he asked us to run the first mile of our routes in silence as a memorial to those killed and injured in Boston on Monday.  We did.

Running with a group in silence, you hear things that you don’t normally notice.  You hear your own breathing, for example, and the breathing of the people next to you.  You hear your steps more clearly as well as the steps of others.  And paying attention to these often ignored sounds around you, you can’t help but embrace the connection that exists.  You start breathing with the people around you.  You start keeping pace with them if they’re not that much faster than you.  Before you know it, the group is in a very real sense running together as one.

It’s not that tonight is the first time this has ever happened or anything like that.  During every race, amid the chatting and cheers, this melding of many into one always occurs.  Make no mistake about that.  When a runner is struggling on the course, another runner is there to give encouragement, and when a runner achieves a personal best, the others celebrate the accomplishment.  Runners run together.

And we know that this kind of connection isn’t the special domain of runners.  No, running is just another manifestation of the very real truth that those strands that connect us, no matter how thin they seem, are durable and strong.  When one of us hurts, it hurts all of us–even the person that caused the hurting.  When one of us suffers, we all suffer whether we’re aware of it or not.  And when one of us lives out the good inside them, we all benefit from it.

As we ran through the streets of a Birmingham suburb, it might have looked like the normal Wednesday gathering out for their weekly miles, but on this muggy evening as we ran in silence, we ran with grief in our hearts for those who lost life and limb.  We ran with thankfulness for those who laid down their lives to help so many.  We ran with anger and prayed for justice to come to those who did such evil.  We ran with hope that, in some way, there might be healing for those who suffer.  On this evening, we ran with Boston.

The power of this holy night dispels all evil…

I love Holy Week.  It’s a time when Christians are called to remember the very crux of  their faith, so of course the readings during this time of the year are the really important ones.  In fact, these readings are so important that we usually give them grand titles–The Triumphal Entry, The Last Supper, The Agony in the Garden, The Betrayal, The Crucifixion, The Resurrection.  How many works of art, famous and obscure, have explored the themes in these stories?

One of the readings from this week that is resonating with me right now is The Anointing at Bethany.  Like all of the Holy Week stories, this one is well-known: Jesus is a guest of Simon the Leper and has just finished his meal when a woman, identified in the Gospel of John as “Mary”, enters, breaks open an alabaster jar full of oil, and anoints him.  The disciples are upset that such expensive oil is wasted on such a pointless act when it could have been sold and given to the poor.  Jesus says, “Leave her alone.  The poor will be with you always, but you won’t always have me.  She has done well.”

There are a number of ideas that come from this narrative, and most of them are familiar:  The anointing is a foreshadowing of Christ’s burial; the woman who anointed him is Mary Magdalene or the woman caught in adultery and is overcome with joy at having been forgiven; the poor will be with us always.  All worthy ideas to consider, but this year a question arose as I thought about The Anointing: What is the alabaster jar and what is the oil it contains?

It’s interesting when you stop to consider it, and there are many interesting paths that open up.  For example, a jar is usually a womb symbol.  What if the anointing were a kind of giving birth?  A giving of life before Christ’s death?  And alabaster is a material that’s reserved for only the most precious treasures.  This woman brought her alabaster jar filled with expensive oil to Jesus.  How long had she had it?  What had she originally intended to do with it?  Perhaps she envisioned using the oil at the burial of a husband, a lover, a family member, someone that she planned on loving her whole life.  Or maybe she originally intended to use it as a store of value that she could one day sell–an investment, if you will.  Maybe when she bought it, she envisioned the day when she would be able to sell it and retire from her line of work.  Or maybe she just enjoyed nice things.  We don’t know.  The story doesn’t tell us.  What it tells us is that on that particular day, whatever her original intention, the woman found a new reason for her oil, and she broke open the jar and anointed Jesus with its contents.

And what about that jar?  I’m sure it was beautiful to look at, ornate probably, signifying the treasure contained within but keeping out unwanted attention.  Perhaps she kept it somewhere where she would always see it, always be reminded of what it held inside.

I suppose everyone has an alabaster jar of some sort.  Perhaps we go through life wondering what we’re supposed to do with it, wondering what we’ll ever use the oil for.  Our culture tells us that the best way to use our oil is to trade it for fame and fortune, page clicks and contracts.  Our oil is a use-value that does us no good unless it’s converted into exchange-value.  The romantics among us are perhaps waiting to get caught up in a love story full of passion where they will finally share their oil with a soul-mate–perhaps mingle the oils a little at a time, use it to light candles or as perfume for the bedsheets.  Some might try to use the oil to lubricate the machinery at their jobs or in their everyday routine.  And maybe some keep their oil safely stored in the hopes that they will eventually know what to do with it.  I suppose some folks have decided never to think about the oil at all, but most of us wonder why we don’t have more oil or why it’s not of better quality.  Stil we can’t really judge our oil’s quantity or quality until we know what it’s for.

There’s a wonderful quote from Nietzsche: “We love life not because we are wont to live but because we are wont to love.”  Because we are wont to love.  This is what I think the woman with the alabaster jar perceived.  Her oil was for love, and in the presence of Love itself, she finally understood why she had the jar of oil at all.  In the presence of Love, she broke open the tidy home of her precious perfume and let it flow over Love’s hair and down Love’s beard.  And Love itself told her she had done well.

I’ve had many plans for my oil over the years.  I thought about trying to sell it.  I thought about secreting it away.  There where times when I wanted to throw it out.  But as of this moment, I just want to go to where Love is dining and pour out all my oil for Love’s sake.  If I could do that, as wasteful and futile as it might appear, I think I would finally understand why I ever had the oil in the first place.

This past Sunday morning, in the midst of a crowd of thousands, I crossed the start line and began the final leg of a journey that began nine months and 950 miles ago.  At the end of this run, if I had good fortune, I would be counted among those who have completed a marathon.  But even after running all those miles in training, after months of utter collapses and personal bests, after doing at least 20 miles on 4 different occasions, it was impossible to say if I had 26.2 in me on that particular day.

You must respect the distance and realize that the slightest variable can throw off the whole equation.  If you don’t get enough water, you’ll start to feel nauseous, and one way or another, your body will make you stop.  If you drink too much water, you can lose too much sodium and develop hyponatremia, and if that happens, you start to hallucinate, your muscles give out, you may start convulsing, and you might die.  If you don’t eat your gel pack or other nutritive of choice at regular intervals, you will slam up against the wall at mile 13 or so and never have a chance of finishing.  If you start too fast, you will pay for it in the later miles when your body is in full-on rebellion.  Sometimes the weather can do you in.  Sometimes the slightest bit of self pity can end your day.  There are so many variables.

I started off not thinking much about my pace.  The pack was so thick, I just wanted to get away from them and have a little room, but even after two miles, there was no space to be had.  I checked my pace.  10:30.  Too fast for me.  I slowed down.

The first six or so went fine.  I was comfortable, loose, and I didn’t have to go to the bathroom.  That was another fear of mine–having to go in the middle of the race with no port-o-let handy.  I’m not the only long distance runner who worries about that, either.  In fact, after dehydration, hyponatremia, and hitting the wall, most marathoners’ chief concern is soiling themselves.

At mile seven, I saw my friend Adam for the first time.  He’s run 13 of these things and came out to shepherd me through my first one.  We high-fived, and I left him with my sweatshirt and hat and a promise to see him again around mile 16.

Around mile nine, I caught up with the five-hour pace group, a pack of seven led by a man carrying a sign with a big number five on it.  He was clearly running below his normal pace and kept up a chipper commentary.  ”Alright!  We’re gonna take this hill nice and easy!  Easy on the way up!  Let it go on the way down!  What’s the pace?  Eleven flat.  That’s good!  Keep it up and, in a little bit, I’ll tell you a story.  Let’s go!”

Some others in the group pleaded with him to tell his story right then, but he said he was saving it for mile 18, no exceptions.  If we wanted to hear his tale, we had to stick with him until then.  I decided that he was going to tell us the story of Pheidippides, the Athenian courier who, according to Lucretius, ran all the way from the plain of Marathon to Athens in order to announce that the Athenians had conquered the Persians.  ”We are victorious,” he said upon arrival and promptly died.  It is the marathon’s etiological tale, but it’s not a great story for mile 18 if you ask me.

There’s another version of the Pheidippides story that’s told by Herodotus and takes place before the Battle of Marathon.  In this one, the Athenians know that Darius is coming and that they are sorely outnumbered against the Persians, so they send Pheidippides to Sparta to ask for help.  In three days, the courier travels over 100 miles (close to a quadruple-marathon distance) to plead with the Spartans.  They tell him that they’d love to help fight the Persians, but the moon’s not right.  Pheidippides returns to Athens empty-handed.  On the way (either to or from Sparta, I can’t remember which), Pheidippides meets Pan, and the god says, “Hey, Pheidippides, remember when you Athenians used to worship me?  That was great fun, wasn’t it?  We should do that again.”

I think this version is a much better mile 18 story.  There’s no dying, for one, and there’s also the implicit encouragement of “Hey, at least I’m not running four times this distance for an utterly futile cause.  I mean, Pheidippides didn’t even get a T-shirt.”  And there’s the hope of meeting the divine along the way.  Much better story.  No question.

I ran with the five hour group for the next six miles or so, listening to their tales of first marathons and training runs, but at mile 16, they started to slowly pull away.  There was nothing I could do to keep up.  I just couldn’t hold that pace, and I fell back.  My plan had been to stay around the five hour group for 24 miles and then push the pace so that I could finish the race in under five hours.  I watched as that goal became more distant with every step.  Now it was all about beating the balloon lady.

The balloon lady is the official last finisher of the race.  If she beats you, you’re out.  No official time.  It’s like you were never in the race.  When archaeologist robots dig up the detritus of our civilization 1000 years from now, they’ll find no record that any of the balloon lady’s victims ever finished a marathon.  She walks at a 6-hour pace.  Slow enough, yes, but determined like Mike Myers in those Halloween movies.  She might wear a bright orange wig and hold a string of helium-filled mylar balloons, but make no mistake about it.  She is as sinister as death.  Grinning, cheerful, clownish death.

Adam kept his promise and ran a quarter of mile 16 with me.

“I’m not going to finish in under five,” I told him.

“It’s okay,” he said.  ”You’re doing great.”

“Think I can still beat the balloon lady?”

“No problem,” he said.  But I didn’t fully believe him.  There were still 10 miles to go, and I could already feel the wall.  I could sense her creeping behind me.

By mile 20, every step hurt.  By mile 21, my legs felt like they were beginning to cramp.  At mile 22, I was running only in the loosest possible sense and barely able to keep up with the walkers.  At mile 23, a man wearing a kilt and fur hat with horns came up alongside me.  I wondered for a moment if I was hallucinating.  Or perhaps heaven had sent me a Scottish Pan.  I waited for my Pan to invite me to worship him, but he never did.  He never said anything.  He just passed me, ever so slowly, kilt rustling as he ran.

At mile 24, I was in the middle of thinking that I might be running a 30 minute per mile pace when I saw Adam again.

“How you doing?” he said.

“Ok,” I said.  ”Balloon lady?”

“Oh no way,” he said, “You’ve got her beat.  Here.”  Adam handed me the victory cigar I had asked him to keep for me.  I wanted him to give it to me at this point on the course so that I could cross the finish line chomping on a stogie.  I had originally wanted to smoke it during the last mile, but the race rules explicitly said smoking was an offense for which a runner could be disqualified.  After coming all this way, I wasn’t taking any chances.

At mile 25, instead of a water station, there was a beer station.  I had a cup and started counting down the street numbers to 20th.  25th…24th…23rd…22nd…  When I turned up 20th I started counting the blocks to 8th.  1st…2nd…3rd…  Finally, I heard the announcer, and I put the cigar in my mouth and ran as hard as I could.

Other marathoners had tried to describe the feeling of finishing.  One friend put it like this: “You cross the finish line and you just have this amazing sense of triumph.  You just have this feeling of having accomplished something that very few others will ever do.  I can’t really describe it, but it’s intense.  There is nothing like it.”  As I approached the final twenty yards, I readied myself for this spiritual experience.  I raised my hands as the announcer called my name.  I looked down and saw my feet cross the line.  I stopped.  Someone took my picture.  Someone handed me a medal and a bottle of water.  Someone escorted me to the end of the chute.  And then I waited for the feeling to come…I waited…Nothing…  Was I really done?  I didn’t feel finished.  I felt like I still had more miles to run.  Even as I sat drinking beer at the post race party, I didn’t feel done.  No more miles today?  No mid-week run?  No long run to gear up for next week?  Was that really it?

It took another day for the sense of accomplishment to begin to set in, and as I type this, I’m not sure that I have quite gotten my head around the fact that I completed 26.2.  Which stands to reason, I guess.  After all, it took me 8 months to be ready to start.  It will probably take a while to process the finish.

But at this moment, I’m proud of myself, and I appreciate the mental toughness that running this race has forced on me.  I know that there are much greater struggles in life than running a long distance, and that the truly tough are the ones who face the horrors of life every day and keep going.  But I hope that, in some small way, this race has helped prepare me for the struggles that lie ahead.

After all, on the course that we are running, the balloon lady isn’t some cheerful clown.  Nobody is quite sure what she looks like, but we feel her creeping ever closer.  Sometimes she feels nearer than others.  Sometimes we think we get a glimpse.  All we can do is keep going until we can’t anymore.  Hopefully we have a friend to run some of our race with us and keep our fears at bay.  Hopefully we have some teacher who can remind us of others who have run this course before and finished well.  And at the end of our race, hopefully there will be someone to hand us a cigar and celebrate with us just how far we’ve come.

I apologize that this post is going to be light on links, and I’m going to ask the interested reader to do their own Googling.  I don’t want to make excuses, but it has been very busy in real life lately, so this post isn’t as thorough as the ideal post might be.  In any event, this is a topic I’ve been wanting to post about for months, so half-naked as this post may be, it’s going out into the world.

In previous sobornost related posts, I’ve talked about the concept in relation to Dostoevsky’s writing–specifically Brothers Kamarazov.  Now, it’s time to take a look at some places where this concept appears in Tolstoy.  Remember that “sobornost”, as we are defining it, is more than just “cooperation” or “working together.”  We are using the term as Vladimir Solovyev used it which would connote a kind of mystical synthesis between individuality and community.  It’s similar to the many parts/one body idea that one finds in the writings of St. Paul, so it’s not really a new idea–just one that’s largely ignored. For whatever reason, we seem to want to be either individuals or a community, not both.

I’d like to just give two examples from Tolstoy that illustrate this concept.  The first is in the second epilogue to War and Peace where Tolstoy criticizes the “Great Man” theory of history that was popular at his time.  Tolstoy says that we are wrong when we say that Napoleon conquered Europe when, in fact, the French conquest depended upon millions of little decisions made by millions of people that history has forgotten.  Think of the individual infantrymen who, in the fog of battle, chose to shoot this enemy and not that enemy or who chose to flee.  Think of the millions of other decisions that put the historical environment into such a state that a Napoleon could rise to power.  All of those little decisions come together to form one history of which we are all a part, and those little decisions affect us to this day.  Many decisions synthesized in one history.  Sobornost.

As a side note, I think understanding this idea really opens up the character of General Kutuzov in the novel.  Without being familiar with Tolstoy’s view of history, Kutuzov at first appears like a do-nothing.  He doesn’t act.  He just listens to reports and the arguments of his staff and almost observes history happening around him.  But when we think of Tolstoy’s refutation of the Great Man theory, Kutuzov appears wiser than anyone at his headquarters.

Another place where Tolstoy and sobornost intersect is in the mowing scene in Anna Karenina.  Here, Leven goes out to his field and decides to mow with the people who work his land.  Tolstoy describes the different techniques of the more experienced mowers and contrasts Levin’s amateurish attempt.  Still, all the mowers, regardless of experience, form one line and move as one across the field until the field is cut.  It’s a beautiful image.