The Dork of Cork Meets Kafka's Metamorphosis

There's been an entity out there writing lesson plans for my reading and thematic development again.  I started watching movies like crazy in the last few weeks and two of them were Love Guru and The Station Agent.  They both feature small people.  The book I finally finished has a small person in it too.  A dwarf.  One resplendent with a blatant, lustful crush for his pediatric doctor; a pink, dirty Disneyland sweatshirt he wears everyday; and flaking skin, that severe sort of eczema which comes off in peels.  

Around fifteen years ago, my college advisor handed me Chet Raymo's Dork of Cork.  The dwarf in this story creates a language of beauty in his passionate dialogue about astronomy.  It is inspiring in the way that the main character can speak beauty despite the consensus on his ugly appearance.  He weaves tones of loving beauty about the stars.  This all comes out of him despite the fact that no love comes to him.

Dwarfs.  What's the fascination in marvelling at their deformity?  There's all those shows on them as well.  And Mike Myers has entirely too much fun abusing the "Mini-me" in his Austin Powers movies.

Well, step back people.  The dwarf in the book The Convalescent doesn't sputter about stars to distract himself from his painful existence.  He's quite frank about his feelings.  It's hard imagining such a small person so caustically sarcastic or perverse.  Or worse, would you imagine it? 

The author Jessica Anthony did.  The way she did it, makes me wonder why.  Did she decide that these marginalized people deserve to be portrayed as human? 

What's more interesting is the historiographical commentary that she weaves throughout from the dwarf voice of Rovar Pfliegman.  He's describing his lineage.  Her bibliography at the back is quite extensive.  She links the dwarf line to the Hungarians in some fascinating way.  What's she trying to say with this?  That these deformed, freaks of nature deserve to have their ancestry played out for everyone to hear about?  She's trying to assert that their tale is a part of the grand human story-telling?  While "normal-sized" humans have been dumbstruck and morbidly intrigued by the physical lot of dwarfs, there's an important link missing in our attention to them? 

They have a history of their own.  Of course, and they've been such little people all this time.  Maybe it was just figured that their history was so small a microscope wouldn't be able to magnify it.

Is she trying to get the rest of us to ask why they should take up any more than the smaller space they've been allotted in the grander scheme of things?  Oops.  Really, that's all handing it out in the same satirical tone she wrote the book in.  A better formulated question would be: why haven't we heard their human history?  Have we really been preoccupied all this time with their appearance?  How shallow us "normal-sized" people can be!!!

Of course, I had to fall in love with this book because... well, there's books in it!  This dwarf who sells meat out of the side of a little bus has a library of his own.  One of his handful of books tells the story of his people.  It sounds satirical hearing how these books came to him, how he cherishes them, and how they play a role in his life.  Except the satirical finger feels like it's pointed to humans of larger stature, and how they've regarded certain stories as large.

What's an even bigger satirical statement is how the author takes a stab at a classic and offers up a transformation which reminds me of a picture in a mirror where the image is distorted, magnified larger than it really is.  "Normal-sized"  humans have a tendency to do that, magnify their own image: this book seems to whisper to me.  The sound of the whisper, though, is so small.  I'm not quite sure that my big brain has managed to grasp the message very well.

A Mystery..... Solved!

When I wasn't reading this week...  I painted letters for my daughter's bedroom, hung curtains, and much, much, more!

My little book reading confessional, this is.  Yoda speak, I know.  Divulgences, I sow. 

My little spiel this week is about creative madness, and moreover, the fact that I didn't finish reading a book.  I'm only on page twenty-five of the one I chose.  My love for this book was reciprocated, however, when I came across the following quote:

"We owe most of our great inventions and most of the achievements of genius to idleness--either enforced or voluntary." - Agatha Christie

The creative madness I've been dealing with over this last week came to a head, and the head finally had to drink in some kind of catharsis, or it was quite literally going to blow.  I've got so many, many, many balls in the air juggling right now, and they all feel so incomplete, malnourished, premature, etc., etc., etc.  I've gotten to know this feeling over the years, even if it is quite...disquieting.  I've learned how to comfort it, nurture it, sit with it, play companion to it until it relaxes and allows creativity to flourish into the being I'm yearning for.  This book, The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women: A Portable Mentor, is reminding me to take the time to do so.  Even though I haven't finished the book, I've gone back to it several times to become awash again in one blissful realization in the opening pages.  This realization is that the tension I'm experiencing while working on many of my projects can be called "creative tension."  Additionally, if I can just learn to sit at home in the roller-coaster feeling of it...  the castles I'm constructing at home will be brought to manifestation.  My hands will find their way in the creative act.  Inspiration will settle upon my brow.  The muses will sing to me.

Funny enough, there's a section in one of my research textbooks which sings a similar melody to the tune of this book on creativity.  The author there takes a sidebar moment to urge the undertaking of many different creative endeavors at once, so that focusing on one doesn't become too overwhelming, stale, draining, etc.  What may seem idle, or called idle in the mentioned quote from Highly Creative Women, is an illusion.  In this modern world obsessed with instant gratification, fast-serving technology, and capitalistic venturing forth, it's easy enough for me to feel frustrated that I'm not seeing the fruitful outcome of my endeavors.  It makes me feel as if I'm not working.  And that's just wrong.

Highly Creative Women sets me right again.  I'm so relieved that I've had it as my companion this week.  The author/researcher for this book took her compilation of forty-five interviews with successful, creative women and turned it into manna this week for me.  It will serve as such for many, many months to come.  There are two featured women I'm especially grateful to hear from within these pages: Sarah Ban Breathnach and Clarissa Pinkola Estés. 

Sarah Ban Breathnach is the author which brought that beautiful pink book of daily inspiration to women, encouraging the embrace of: gratitude, simplicity, order, harmony, beauty, and joy.  She did this in her book Simple Abundance.  I still read my copy my mother bought me years ago.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés is another one of those authors every woman should read up on and my copy of her Women Who Run With the Wolves is enshrined on my sacred shelf of books.  She brings a singing voice to the soul of female, conducting such a meaningful melody for each pace a woman takes in the journey of her life.

I've got some great companions with me in this book right now in my time of creative tension.  The voices are comforting.  And although I haven't finished reading it, all my creative efforts are applauded.  Regardless of the fact that the outcomes of my creative endeavors haven't arrived yet, the voices in this book speak to me their knowing of my efforts.  Loved, I am.  Blessed, I am.  Finish this book, I will.  More enriched upon completion of it, I will be.

When I wasn't reading...  in between cooking up all the batches of projects in the works, I found another creative project...  This is the "before" picture of the little bistro I'm going to find inspiration to come to the point where there's an "after" picture.

An Exquisitely Rare Reading Experience... (article, adverb, adjective, adjective, noun = probable disapproval from characters of the book)

This is one of those unmatched reading experiences that don't come along real often.  First of all, the author was given to me in recommendation from a person whom I'd carry an unpublished manuscript around for, even if it had been rejected a hundred times, simply because it came from her.  Secondly, I shared it with a person whom I'd grown close to, shared some of my main interests with, and we enjoyed a conversation over it.  What was even better in that instance was that it had been on her reading shelf as well for a special reason (a soul she loved had loved it), and she just hadn't gotten to it yet.  Oh joy, a colloquium of beloved souls occurred over a beloved book, and I was blessedly a part of it!

Except that was the first book by the author Carlos Ruiz Zafon.  That happened a few months ago.  I gobbled up every word in that book and cursed myself for consuming it so ravenously when I got to the end.  The name of that book was The Shadow of the Wind.  Today I finished his second book, The Angel's Game. 

The colluquy that takes place among the characters in Zafon's books are of the kind I'd dream of calling into my life.  I'm talking about characters who love books, literature, and writing in a way that makes me salivate to meet them in real life.  They weave literary references into witty conversation and I'm envious I'm not in the same room.  The sarcasm and intellectual banter occurring between the characters is so precise, I imagine they can hear my laughter (and the rest of the reading audience) right after their epochal tête-à-tête.

Not only that, the author has created them in a landscape which mirrors their literature loving souls.  There is the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, and I probably shouldn't even talk about it. 

However, I am going to share a secret from this book.  It's sacred knowledge.  It shouldn't be handled lightly.  In fact, I'm a little worried that I'm sharing it.  I'm going to be bold and do it though, because I think sacred knowledge like this...should be shared: "Every book, every volume you see, has a soul.  The soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it.  Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens (Angel's Game, 519)."

If you are anything like the kind of person that I am, you might be tempted to think that after being inducted into such a world, after coming to the ecstatic realization that such a place exists, that it is some kind of paradise.  Membership in such a society?  Being part of such an erudition would surely bring one to the end of all searches.  Utopia is here.  Ha!

The beloved characters of this book do not have it easy.  The theatric scale of sorrow, loss, upheaval, betrayal, etc., etc., etc., is played out in gargantuan proportion.  No soul is spared.  There is much weeping to be done. 

Upon the completion of this book today, a quote I recently came across, through another booklover, played itself over and over in my head.  Maybe it is the lesson of this book, of all books, and that main one that readers are able to remember about life upon completion of them:  "Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense.  Never yield to force.  Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." - Winston Churchill

I was so honored to see this occur within the lives of those incredible characters, despite so much plight.  I'm so glad that my soul could touch the soul of this book.  And yeah, I loved even most, the coming together of souls over an exquisite read.

Waxing Nostalgic....Scratch That....I want some Indecorous, Lecherous, Humorously Coarse Letterwork

Last summer I was deeply inspired by a piece of work that helped me get through rough times.  As I settle myself, despite feelings of disorientation about rooting down in unfamiliar surroundings, I found comfort in recalling its message.

I'm going to ante up.  Last week was so beautiful with the hiking, the Hesse, and the Oooooommmmming - especially with all the tumultuous upheaval of moving, I had planned to do a repeat this week.  My brain needed it.  Moving and settling (and everything else thrown into the mix) are Big Business!  Just because I was "Oomming" last week doesn't mean I am Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, or Anthony Robbins!  I wanted to talk about a book that would have a calming effect on me.  I wanted to talk about a book that had possibly been a life-saver and could do its magic again, simply by talking about it. 

Cosmic providence again stepped in.  This time it was in the shape of a blessedly BADD connection I've formed over the last year.  She urged me to write about the book that I was already talking about this week.  So I'm not cheating here, even though I wanted to talk about a vastly different, magical book.  I'm going to talk about the book that I really read this week.  And I feel so clean now doing it, even if I got some dirty laughs.

Besides, I needed it.  The base humor worked a charm.  The faucet for laughter here at the end of these kinds of sentences wasn't as dried up as my hot water tap.  Here I stand having immense fun at the opportunity to type s-l-o-w-ly words like: lascivious, licentious, lewd, and salacious.  The remarkable thing about it is... I feel honest!  At least I am telling it like it is.  Here is the book I really found comfort in reading this week (what I won't go into detail about is the 500 page book I am in the middle of and wow...).

I got some cheap laughter out of reading the little tidbits of this book.  I'm laughing even more now while I confess to succumbing to pleasure in these pages which may be described as lascivious, licentious, lewd, and salacious in demeanor (even if demeanor shouldn't keep company with those kinds of words).  The punchline is... it's really quite a clever little book.  I'm speaking of Anguished English by Richard Lederer.  For some bawdy reason I've carried it with me through the states of.. moving.  I think I bought it when I was a teacher and thought it would be a witty tool in expressing to students the value of personal editing.  I promise I utilized the more innocent tidbits from it.  This week I've been in my bedroom cackling over it. 

All that talk about it, and I simply must share some of it.  The basis of the book is mockery, mockery of phrases, headlines, statements, quotes that made it to print - but didn't carry the intended meaning.  Lesson of the book is: be careful what you udder.

From the chapter "Two-Headed Headlines:"  

• CHILD'S STOOL GREAT FOR USE IN GARDEN
• IDAHO GROUP ORGANIZES TO HELP SERVICE WIDOWS
• IS THERE A RING OF DEBRIS AROUND URANUS?

Believe me I could go on the rest of the night sharing this stuff.  But I am laughing very loudly now, and I don't want to wake my son.

The point is, if there must be one, is that I found comfort in a book this week.  Finally, even though these little tidbits of letterprint are hilarious, they were really printed without that intended purpose.  I'll try to keep this last lesson in mind as I go back to a little bit more of the reading. 

Divine intervention thankfully has presented itself again and I am now pondering an exchange of the words cosmic providence for comic providence.

A Tale of Two Journeys......Ommmmmmmm

Once upon a time, a woman set out on a journey away from all that she had ever known.  It ended up turning into many journeys.  In the last two weeks, there have been two major journeys.  One has included a seventeen-foot U-Haul truck she drove through four states with a cat named Spazz (and was reminded how much hair the feline sheds) and her tweenage daughter.  The other journey included a read through Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha. 

Here's yet another reminder that cosmic forces are at play.  I just happened to pick up this book around the time I was getting ready to do another move.  It had been on my reading shelf for a few months.  I like to think thematically, so perhaps it was subconscious.  Perhaps it was cosmic.  I prefer to think in this instance...that it was cosmic.

One of the first topics about this book that sticks out in my mind is the last manifestation Siddhartha takes in his many journeys: as a ferryman commuting people across a river.  His words on how the river speaks to the two ferrymen as a source for universal knowledge is beloved to me.  What is most beautiful is the description of the word "om" as related to the river.  For some reason I've read a lot about Eastern spirituality in the last two years, but I've never come across a description like Hesse gives in this book. 

Some people treat events, memories, moments like bookmarks in their lives... a point which signals the beginning or end to some new chapter.  Books are often like that for me.  I can often tell you the book I was reading at a particular moment in my life, or recall a time in my life by what I was reading then.  It will forever be an indelible imprint upon my soul that I finished my return journey back to Colorado and this book at the same time.  Even more distinct in my mind will be the precious occurrence of relishing the last pages on my first hike back in this beautifully colorful state.  What the river has been for Siddhartha, the hiking trail has been for me.  There was an intersection between our two souls, and it was cosmic.

What I am most grateful for in Hesse's work is how much Siddhartha embraces his own path.  He embraces his path each step of the way, regardless of convention, of "coulda-shoulda-woulda's," of familial ties, or the comfortable luxury of wealth.  The conversation that we hear him having with himself over this is liberating, empowering.  Overall, it brings a sweet, blissful, resonant harmony to the eardrum of the soul.  Every leg of his journey has brought him closer to his own empowerment, his own awakening.  Comparisons do not stand.

What tickles me is one comment made throughout the book.  It is probably one of the main underlying premises of the piece.  It is the premise that enlightenment cannot be taught and wisdom cannot be imparted through instruction.  On the one hand you can see this premise in action by looking at Siddhartha himself; he found empowerment through living, not by following.  The other hand is, well, this book.  I believe a person could find enlightenment by dancing their eyes within these pages.  A debate could take place here.  But I feel too peaceful now upon reading this book to start one.

If there were any debate in me at all after reading this book, it might be from leftover fuel ignited from reading Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History.  Well, I'll stop.  I take that back.  I'd never want to blame a book for my feelings.  However, there was a point in which the courtesan, Kamala, departs from her life with Siddhartha's son to find the Buddha.  She does not make it.  Here is the one woman seeking enlightenment, and she dies from a particular wound.  I think I will stop fussing here and recall my joy in reading Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love, and return to the water that was half-full in my soul upon reading this book...

Anyhow, another precious nugget in this book is the discussion of love after enlightenment.  Loving others after truly being able to see their natures, even if they are not enlightened themselves, is descriptively measured out with celestial aplomb.  Here is Mother Theresa.  Here is Thich Nhat Hanh.  Here is Gandhi.  Here is Jesus.  Here is Hafiz.  Here is the manifestation of spirit telling humans there is a source within us capable of rendering us harmless to any other, and fills us up so full.

Oh yeah, and enlightenment with a kiss?  Nice.

Lastly, I will end at the preface.  There is a commentary within these pages about how Hesse grew up within a missionary's family and he spent some time in India.  Somewhere also there is a point made that one remarkable thing about his work is that with it he's become a reverse missionary.  He brought to the West, the East.  He was the ferryman.  I love him for this.  I think he heard the river quite well.  I hope I can hear the wind as well as he can hear the water.  Om.

More than a sassy slogan...

Are you one of the symbolic creatures out there who finds meaning in ingraining visuals all over your body in the form of tattoos?  I've seen some incredible tattoos out there.  There have been times when I thought that I would get one.  The trouble is... I always come to the conclusion that I would get tired of that particular image I'd chosen...  and it would still be there.  Instead, I went through a bumper sticker stage.  I was even brave enough to put a few brazen sayings on the back of my car.  The trouble there was... they carried a personal meaning for me which was not conveyed to people as they found their car behind me in traffic.  I was driving and didn't have the attention span to divide myself between getting somewhere and offering an explanation.  Or better yet, I'd abandoned my adopted words and wasn't there to defend them.  I ended up taking a razor blade and erasing them from my brief attempt at vehicular exhibitionism. 

I don't know if Laurel Thatcher Ulrich has any tattoos on her Harvard professorial body, but I'm going to make a healthy assumption and say... I bet she doesn't.  After reading the preface of her book I also realized, that while the phrase of her book title was crafted in a clever way, it also carried a deep meaning and correlation to her life's studies.  The name of this book by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is
Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History.
My hands are waving up and down together in unison forming the worship gesture both at the author, and all that she has accomplished in this book.  Before you even get to page one, there is a thirty-four page preface which gives a scholarly rebuttal.  This rebuttal is one not only to the history of her slogan in use over the last several decades, but also one in asserting the accurate history of what that slogan has meant to encapsulate in the scholarly work of her and her counterparts.  Not only is her rebuttal scholarly, it is witty, clever, and overall cheeky in introduction.  It begs women to ask the question before donning the t-shirt, what is the slogan all about?

I'd love to give an answer.  I'd love to spin it all out as astutely as Ulrich does.  That just would not be fair (and I'm not as equipped in the task as she is).  It would take all the spectacular "aha" and "wow" moments out of the reading experience.  While I would dream of doing what Ulrich has done in the career of being a female historian, to outline what her book here is as an overall exhibition of her life's work (a masterpiece really) seems like sacrilege to me.  I want to invoke the sense of mystery so powerfully to any person who chances upon these words that they set out to get their hands on it immediately. 

Every woman should read this book. 

The one discourse I can't help but make as to the contents are those that Ulrich presents in her research findings and discussion on Virginia Woolf.  While I knew that Woolf had a traumatic past, was a writer impelled to devote her lifeblood to her art, and a woman who battled depression to a bitter end... what I did not know was that the impetus for many of her works was grounded in an unsuccessful library search.  Ulrich says, "Virginia Woolf went to the British Museum to find out why women were poor." (Ulrich, 74)  Swimming in data and finding little to sate her curiosity, she stumbled upon one historian (Professor George Trevelyan), and only finding a very short passage exclusively dealing with the subject of women at all, gave up her search in despondency. (IBID)  Ultimately, this failure to find what was being sought after fueled the result of Virginia Woolf's fiction career. (IBID)  What she could not find in her particular search of history, Woolf created in her own worlds. (IBID)  I bring this up because later in the book Ulrich posits a priceless question, why was Virginia Woolf not able to find what she was looking for? (Ulrich, 104)

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and a handful of other female historians have found an abundance of what Virginia Woolf was looking for in the library that day.  These "re-discoveries" of women in history haven't yet dried on paper in the ink that they have been written with.  It is a glorious feast, the tastiest hybrid of apples in the grandest multi-colored variety you could dare to imagine.  Folks, the best part is that it's all true, and ripe for the picking.  Come, all daughters of Eve, and picnic at this tree until you are quite full with its fruit.

I mourned this latest discovery of Virginia Woolf's lamentation over not finding women in history.  I had the feeling of wanting to get into a time machine and take back all of Ulrich's work for Woolf to delight upon.  Alas, I let the vision of the time machine fade from my imagination.  In its place the realization stood firm, that without Woolf's suffering in this regard, her works of art would evaporate from existence.

I love quotes and phrases like a junkie loves heroin.  I'm going to covetously guard just how deeply clever quotes and phrases play a role in my life, and just leave it at this: if I ran across the Well- Behaved Women Seldom Make History bumper sticker, my hands would reach out for it.  A mental motion picture of me peeling away the paper would be set in motion.  My fingers would tingle for want of smoothing over wrinkles as I adhered the sticker to the back of my car.  Mostly though, there would be the remembrance (of so much history left untold when I was officially learning it in class) I'd acquainted myself with in the reading of this book, and a humble understanding of what the author meant in voicing the slogan.  I wouldn't ever want to forget it.

Gives You Something To Think About...

Admittedly, the reading for this week's discussion was done for my master's studies.  I've read him before and was glad to be reminded about how treasured we are to be in a place where learning and our freedom of intellectual pursuit is a right.  Perhaps there's a group of intellectuals out there that harbor the opinion that this right is not exercised enough by the raving, audience, mainstream crowd of people...but that's besides the point, and another discussion altogether.

The topic under discussion is John Dewey's Education & Experience, which was written in 1938, and whose theoretical vision has had such an impact on the education system in the 20th century. 

It's truly amazing to behold a vision of learning, laid out for all eyes to see, which includes: a process of integrating a body of knowledge, emphasis on individual intellectual bent and motivation, mentorship, application of that body of knowledge to an experience which correlates to it, how the social community awareness will provide constraints/motivation for performance, and how the utilization of the scientific method promotes an ethical and sound processing of questions towards outcomes.

In today's high-tech and instant gratification society (of which I'm an active member) its refreshing to look back at the great thinkers that were a part of bringing us to where we are today.  This visionary helped make stands in education towards progression, a term that is still debated, but to universal benefit.  In an arena where there's always a new educational product, book, writing series, and/or technological gadget, it's nice to take any educator or "educatee" back to the basics... so to speak. 

In the classroom as students, we're privileged we are not learning solely from our Fun With Dick And Jane readers anymore.  I'm not talking about a book that was remade into a movie with Jim Carrey and Tea Leoni.  Children today have more hands-on experience in one year now than a child probably had in their entire school career one hundred years ago.  There are crystals to grow, the museum to visit, the fascinating computer programs to learn from in an animated game, plastic coins to count with, and field trips to wilderness camps with activities built to encourage character, ad infinitum.  It's all such great fun.  And as a former public school teacher who used to grace the hallways with her lesson-planning skills on the way to her gradebook, I used to revel at all the possibilities of offering learning opportunities.  So much to choose from!

While I loved so much Dewey's points on experience and systematic organization for experiential learning for students that do not ignore a body of knowledge, what keeps coming back to me when I think about this book are his arguments about intellectual freedom.  Maybe this is because Dewey's words speak to me from a past that did not have all the fringe benefits that schools now offer to its students.  I somehow remind myself about the difference of the worlds he speaks from and I live in.  It's easy to get lost at the carnival in all the fun (although I don't know if my children would view their school experience in this way). 

Dewey's main argument about intellectual freedom is that, "the only freedom that is of enduring importance is freedom of intelligence, that is to say, freedom of observation and of judgment exercised in behalf of purposes that are intrinsically worth while." (Dewey, 61)  Our freedom to choose today sounds like a walk through the Mall of America.  In this country now we are constantly bombarded with the pressure of making choices, and in an infinite variety of.  We utilize the freedom of observation and judgment every minute.  We have the right to make choices independent of what others are telling us, and hopefully we are exercising it today.  There's not enough time in a day to say yes to all the propositions which are posited in our direction.  Are we skilled enough in aligning our skills of observing and judging with what we've named as our purpose?

It's a hard skill to build.  There's plenty of opportunity to practice.  Don't get me wrong.  I could definitely be described as a "Yes woman."  Most of my biggest life lessons came packaged in the form of saying yes, when an observer might have been passionately shaking their head, no, No, NO!!!!  This visionary writer makes such an important point about our intellectual freedom.  Dewey says, "Natural impulses and desires constitute in any case the starting point.  But there is no intellectual growth without some reconstruction, some remaking, of impulses and desires in the form in which they first show themselves."  (Dewey, 64)  The thought of applying a scientific method to any life experience might sound a bit geeky.  I love it when people don't say yes right away about a possible venture, but say instead, "I don't know, let's research it."  And I'm talking about life experiences you wouldn't access the ERIC database for.  I know.  I know.  What a geek!  I come to this level of maturity after riding roller coaster speed on the high dial of impulsivity most of my life.  I am really an adult now.  And these are the kinds of things adults would say out loud where their younger counterparts Might hear.  Since I'm talking about being an adult, I'll quote Dewey once more, "thinking is thus a postponement of immediate action, while it affects internal control of impulse through a union of observation and memory, this union being the heart of reflection.  What has been said explains the meaning of the well-worn phrase 'self-control.'  The ideal aim of education is creation of power of self-control." (Dewey, 64)

Why am I choosing this book as a topic to discuss here?  Well.....I'm exercising my intellectual freedom.