Rant

My postmodern mind: one thing that law school has helped me recognize is the fluidity of language as a whole and the complete centricity of symbols, even in seemingly universal contexts. What makes the law so dynamic is its ability to peel back the layers of language and look at the bare bones of human desires, beliefs, actions.... Wittgenstein said in effect that our reality is defined by language. Meaning, my universe is limited by what words and symbols I have to explain it. Our innermost desires and ideas about what is just, or true, or fair is irrelevant unless we have a way of communicating their respective meanings. You look into a dictionary to discover the meaning of truth and you’ll find words. Search those words and you’ll find more words…. You say truth is a feeling; it can’t be defined in words. How do you express that feeling in a functional way? Do you hold someone’s hand to your heart? Do you draw them a picture? Give them metaphors? 2 + 2 = 4: this is true. But truth...is this something more than an equation? What about Truth? Explain “belief” with numbers. Or “love.”

Some things seem inherent to us. We wake one day in our childhood and suddenly have consciousness. We define ourselves: I am a white, middle-class suburbanite subject to my genetic inheritance and environmental associations—the sum of my experience. I judge people based upon my locatedness. I am only truly aware of the universe as it revolves around me.

Back to language. From an artist’s standpoint I depend on the metaphor to communicate feelings and ideas. Take Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro”: “The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.” The metaphor is concise enough. From a modernist perspective, it’s unbreakable. But imagine I’m from rural Africa and I’ve never seen a metro station. To me the petals are black not the bough, the faces are gaunt. Put any sentence through Derrida’s machine of deconstruction and you’ll perceive that the things you say can be interpreted in a thousand ways.

Back to the law. We know “the law” will never be perfect. It’s always changing, which is good and bad. It’s good because we’re constantly attempting to encompass justice (a very nebulous concept). It’s a battle between establishing predictable and concise rules and rules that can be applied to every conflict that may arise in the infinite weirdness and diversity of humanity. And, of course, attempting to apply those rules with the knowledge that the people creating the rules are imperfect, corrupted, or biased (or possibly all three). There's the rub.

The end.

On a lighter note, my beautiful dozing wife has a peaceful smile on her face. She keeps laughing and humming in her sleep and rolling over to where I type. It is possibly—no, it is certainly the most endearing thing I have ever witnessed. Sweet dreams.

The Cutest!

If you're having a hard day... remember that life could always be worse! Listen to this girl's call to 911! :) CUTE!

Ficus Fiasco

Last winter all the ficus trees in the valley froze. Hence, much of my Saturday morning was spent doing tightrope across our cinder block wall and scaling the overgrown ficus tree to prune the dead limbs. Some of the maneuvers required all of my climbing skills: feet spread across two weak limbs, hanging from my fingertips, carrying a saw with the other. . . . Actually, the tricky part was trying to catch the branches as they fell and swing them over onto our side of the wall without losing my center. (It wasn't as easy as I just made it sound).

The rest of the day I spent breaking the branches down into manageable piles. . . . I'll let the photo speak for itself.

After a long week of reading cases, I know that my weekend will offer limitless house projects to keep me sane. Love Saturdays.

Book List

A few people have asked me for recommendations of read-worthy novels. In response, I’ve created this list of life-changing literature. The top 25 are necessary reads: each one has allowed me a step out of my worldview. The remaining novels also have my stamp of approval and are listed in no particular order. Let me know if I’m missing anything worthwhile.

Top 25
1. The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald
2. 1984, Orwell
3. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce
4. The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger
5. The Road, McCarthy
6. Atlas Shrugged, Rand
7. The Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas
8. Great Expectations, Dickens
9. The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien
10. Far from the Madding Crowd, Harding
11. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee
12. Heart of Darkness, Conrad
13. Dandelion Wine, Bradbury
14. All the King’s Men, Warren
15. The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
16. Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut
17. Brave New World, Huxley
18. A Farewell to Arms, Hemmingway
19. Blood Meridian, McCarthy
20. Goodnight Mister Tom, Magorian
21. Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky
22. Ana Karenina, Tolstoy
23. Watership Down, Adams
24. Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck
25. The Things We Carried, O’Brien

An American Tragedy, Dreiser
Dune, Herbert
Animal Farm, Orwell
A Passage to India, Forster
Lord of the Flies, Golding
The Crossing, McCarthy
All the Pretty Horses, McCarthy
The Fountainhead, Rand
Ceremony, Silko
Mamma Day, Naylor
Poisonwood Bible, Kingsolver
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Adams
The Sun Also Rises, Hemmingway
The Old Man and the Sea, Hemmingway
The Sheltering Sky, Bowles
The Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston
A Separate Peace, Knowles
Things Fall Apart, Achebe
The War of the Worlds, Wells
The Bell Jar, Plath
The Giver, Lowry
Les Miserables, Hugo
The Hobbit, Tolkien
All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque
The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne
The Red Badge of Courage, Crane
The Shipping News, Proulx
Pride and Prejudice, Austen
Emma, Austen
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain
Tom Sawyer, Twain
The Stranger, Camus
Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Harding
Robinson Crusoe, Defoe
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dahl
The Alchemist, Coelho
Frankenstein, Shelley
James and the Giant Peach, Dahl
Charlotte’s Web, White
Jane Eyre, Bronte
Candide, Voltaire
The Last of the Mohicans, Cooper
The Martian Chronicles, Bradbury
The English Patient, Ondaatje
Ender’s Game, Card
Go Down, Moses, Faulkner
Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury
The BFG, Dahl
The Time Machine, Wells
My Antonia, Cather
The Call of the Wild, London
Gulliver’s Travels, Swift
Tom Jones, Fielding
Middlemarch, Eliot
Krik Krak, Danticat
Paradise Lost, Milton

Next novel I’m intending to read (probably in 3 years): Ulysses, Joyce

Welcome Home!

Hey friends and family... I think we've officially moved into our house! It's hard to say...there's still so much to do. However, as of now, we have all the bamboo flooring installed (go green!), the baseboards are stapled, the plumbing is functioning, and the tile is looking fabulous.... And Ammon has a lawnmower! Feeling like actual homeowners now.

Jes is currently molding minds at Highland High here in Gilbert. Her most difficult task is making it clear to every high school boy that she is actually 8 years older than them and extremely unavailable. Aside from the occasional fumbling flirtatious freshman boy, her classes are a joy. (I'm a poet and I didn't even realize that I was one).

Ammon is beginning his first year of law school at ASU. It's mostly just parties and women and lots and lots of drinking.... Sometimes though he'll go to class where he learns the ins and outs of contracts, torts, legal writing, etc. All in all, it's an enlightening season. His favorite moments are falling asleep in the law library (the smell of arduous books and the buzz of the fluorescents are his pacifier) and reciting cases to Jes.

Love.