Reading with Ally

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  • December & January Reading

    In the last two years, I haven’t read as much as usual because I was studying for my private pilot certificate. Now that goal is accomplished and I can return to my usual volume. I’ve been asked how many hours per day I spend reading. The answer is: “Not that many.” I usually read for 30-45 minutes in the morning and maybe for 10 minutes at night. If I’m on an audiobook kick, I’ll listen to one while I’m jogging (30-40 minutes) or on a long drive (1-2 hours). Usually though, 30-45 minutes a day is all the reading I do. The key is doing that 30-45 minutes every day. And, of course, picking up books that you’re interested in finishing.

    I cranked through a backlog of books in December. Two for the country of India: Samskara: Rite for a Deadman and Coming out as Dalit: A Memoir. My neighbor keeps texting us about energy generation, so I was thinking about nuclear power, so I knocked Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster off the long-time list. And finally, an aviation adventure: North Star over my Shoulder: A Flying Life. Thoughts (not coordinated enough to be reviews) are linked.

    And so begins a new year. In progress already is Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will by Robert Sapolsky. In the mail are The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Deep Water Passage: A Spiritual Journey at Midlife, and The Shadow King: A Novel. I saw the Boys in the Boat movie over Christmas break and it had that sweaty academic aesthetic that makes you want to run a 5k and write something smart after a long walk-about in nature. So I figured I’d keep that energy going. I heard about Deep Water Passage over Instagram. Maddymarq had a particularly insightful post about the beauty of the Midwest and she said this book shaped the direction for her life. The Shadow King will be my book for Ethiopia. I like reading books which are “out of season;” that is, it’s cold and snowy on the Great Plains right now, so it’s time to read about Africa. Finally, I got Magyk by Angie Sage to listen to while I’m running. I first read that series somewhere around 2010-2012 and I’ve never stopped thinking about it. So, it’s time for a revisit.

    There’s always the temptation to order more books, but ordering books isn’t the same as actually reading them. All that ought to be plenty of content for January.

  • The End of Aesthetics

    I think the brief Internet Trend Age of curated aesthetics is ending. It’s pretty disappointing; after all, what is more satisfying than a Pinterest board full of assemblies of objects that give “Ravenclaw” or “Dark Academia”? Not much. I dig a Dark Academia aesthetic day.

    Before I moved to the city on the prairie, I thought a lot about aesthetics. I was living in a time of transition. Based on what future job my partner chose, I could have moved to the Southern Great Plains, the Upper Midwest, or stayed in a college town in Indiana. I sat in my favorite coffee shop and wrote a bunch of garbage which I’ve copied and pasted below.

    Now I’ve seen a couple Tik Toks which rightfully attach aesthetic to Capitalism, saying that we promote and keep this aesthetic thing going by buying shit to live our aesthetic. This idea is especially prevalent with the “eclectic grandpa” and “bookshelf wealth” aesthetics, two aesthetics which boil down to doing a variety of things you’re actually interested in and displaying books you’ve actually read. These Tik Tokers criticizing aesthetics as a tool of capitalism (and other stuff, please, just watch the Tik Toks on your own, this is a blog, not going to find a bunch and summarize them) are right, but damn if it doesn’t make me feel kind of sad.

    Tik Tok 1 | Tik Tok 2

    This article says that it’s “ok to mourn the death of social media,” and I kind of feel the same way about this aesthetic curation situation. I’m glad that people are criticizing the “image-ness” of aesthetics. But there’s a sixteen-year-old inside me that still gets excited when I see a Ravenclaw aesthetic board and I feel a little sad that it feels stale. I feel a little sadder to know that the image feels stale because aesthetics have been over-produced; that is, I’ve consumed so much digital content that I’ve been forgetting to do stuff. So all in all, it’s better that people are criticizing these online aesthetics, and the more we move on and do our own stuff, the deeper and better our personalities and relationships will be.

    Idk though, a couple years ago I visited an AirBnB near Point Pelee, Ontario. It was a small add-on to a small house on the shores of the Lake. The decorations, random books and items, were from all around the world. The house was right across the street from a restaurant that had nice sandwiches and beer and it was located a short distance away from a place that served ice cream. I remember thinking that I wanted to have a house that looked and felt like that. And now I actually do, and – I feel – very happy and content.

    the words from 2019:

    I’ve thought about this idea for at least a year now. These are not original thoughts. Many people have thought them before. Thus, it seemed, not great, to waste time corralling this idea into a narrative, because, it is really just a series of questions.

    Experiencing an aesthetic is less exciting than the experience of imagining an aesthetic. Experience is subtle. Experience is uncontrolled. The sounds which create an aesthetic are irregular and we do not choose when they occur. Rain is subject to the rhythms of the wind – the shifting solar pressures of a planet which we do not hold in our hand.

    A friend said simply: “Life is not glamourous. My life as a consultant is not glamorous. Life is not an academic TikTok. It is not a stock office photo.” Marketing packages aesthetic, presents an image, tells others. Marketing simplifies complexity to an authentic aesthetic. Marketable authenticity is an aesthetic which forgets that authenticity is beyond complex. It is messy.

                The grad school English student aesthetic?

                The grad school engineering student aesthetic?

                The flying aesthetic?

                The water engineer aesthetic?

                The dank middle Midwest winter aesthetic?

                The southern Great Plains aesthetic?

                The aesthetic of the Northland?

                I want to feel the aesthetic of the Northland.

                The Ivy League theology professor or the Toni Morrison is a goddess aesthetic?

    How can we differentiate pursuing excellence from pursuing an aesthetic?

    How many aesthetics are acceptable to be combined and packaged into a singular person’s brand?

    How can you authentically brand yourself to get a job without constantly falling into the trap of saying, what aesthetic do I fit into?

    Are aesthetics a new religion?

    Are aesthetics an extension of the postmodern sensate culture of the self?

    When one arrives at phrases about cultures of the self and self-centeredness, it is time to look outward.

    What kind of person should I be, as a Christian, that part of myself which is beyond myself?

    Even then, the summarized sentence, “instead of pursuing an aesthetic, our pursuit should be to come to know God,” has been aestheticized. When I say that phrase, I imagine old men studying books printed with tall 1990s Times New Roman font and the pastor’s wife in the church cinder-block basement, sucking all the fun out of life. In turning from that aesthetic, I imagine awful visits to new churches, the question “how can we serve you,” coffee, Bible journaling.

    I guess what I’m trying to say using the aesthetic of a blog post is that my question used to be how does one get out of all the aesthetics and then I realized today when you are out of pursuing an aesthetic and instead you are totally in a moment there is no aesthetic, there is only what is, and you don’t feel what you feel when you look at an acclomeration of aesthetics, instead, you just feel what you are, and how, who, has described that before.

  • Volume

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    I am going to focus on writing coherently instead of creatively. I have several creative ideas and I trust they will emerge, but in writing my weaknesses are 1) actually doing the writing and 2) artfully structuring an essay to get to a point. Everyone has these problems. I have a lot of good points. But they are difficult to get across.

    I used to not have this problem. Essays were formulaic, like math problems, analogies, thesis, supporting points, crank it out. Short stories were fun, creative, imagine a scene a setting, and make something happen. It was okay to use big ideas. When I got to college, I failed to grow into a more complex writer. I wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t put enough time into writing and I was always distracted with so many other things. Looking back, I probably didn’t need to be involved with as many activities as I was, but at the time you are living, you can only see the present and not the future, so you don’t really know what will matter.

    I also struggled with putting my thoughts into words. Engineering, especially engineering emails, places/place a high value on expressing points with few words, and so I got used to writing very concisely. Usually this is fine, but in grad school, you need to write 20-page papers (which I sucked at), and if you ever want to write a book, you need to be able to crank out 80,000-words. You need to be able to put a lot of words in a box and go back later and build things out of them. You have to have the patience to give yourself volume to work with.

    In engineering school and in working as an engineer, I’ve lost that patience with myself. I want it done now, on time and under budget. I want to know the steps for the project and I want to do them. I want my timesheet filled out. I want – efficiency. Those desires make me a good engineer. But they don’t make me a good writer. They make me intolerant of volume.

    Data is cheap. Words are small. I am not going to be afraid of the volume of words I am capable of producing. There is space for my words in the world, just like there is space for everyone else’s words in the world. And here, on this corner of the internet, you can read them, or you don’t have to. I am not going to make excuses for creating volume.