To Wish Impossible Things

Recent events have got me thinking about history.

Not that I need much prompting to think about history.  As long as I've been a student, I've been a student of history.  Maybe longer than that.  I've always been curious about what came before.  I can remember loving photo albums as a child, periodically asking my parents to get them out so I could look at them and see pictures of what happened before I was born or what happened before I could remember.  My parents would often sit with me and explain and elaborate on the photographs, so that eventually I felt like I knew people, pets, and places that were now long gone.  Knowing what came before helped tell me who I was and gave me a model for what direction my future might take.

It's important, however, to not let history define you.  The past holds happy memories, but it also holds unhappy memories.  Even a casual pass over history will show you this.  Centuries of violence in Ireland.  Decades of unending conflict in the Middle East.  Two world wars.  Human history is littered with bitter conflicts, wars, massacres, injustices, you name it.  And when a people or even a person clings to the legacy of these past events -- such as ethnically- or religiously-motivated violence, the past becomes the present and the future in a vicious cycle that may never end.

But it can end.  If you look a little closer at history, you can find the bright spots where the chains of a dark history are broken and things are started anew.  My own country, the United States, was the product of the first colonial rebellion in the world.  America was born from settlers who left the Old World to come to the New one.  Many of them sought a break from the history of England and Europe; whether motivated by religion, politics, or their own personal motivation, many came to America for a new start.  And the results were startling -- a nation that would surpass its mother nation in size, resources, population, and eventually power and influence.  There are other, non-American, examples of course.  Germany and Japan both reinvented themselves in the wake of World War II, both choosing to leave behind a violent past of war and colonialism to become two of the world's strongest post-war economic powerhouses. 

On a personal level, I think we all need to keep this balance in mind.  Our past helps define us, and it can be a useful tool to help us deal with new situations.  But we all have to remind ourselves from time to time that the past is, after all, the past.  We always have the power to break with the past and start anew.  And when we do, sometimes the results -- as with the United States -- can be startling.

Yesterday, my shopping cart was hijacked.

It took me a day, but I think I've overcome my shock enough to share the experience with the world.  After all, only by ackowledging the trauma and talking about it can I move toward putting this ugly incident behind me.

I was at the grocery store and had just spent the last hour doing my grocery shopping.  My cart was pretty well full of said groceries.  I was almost done, but double-checked my list one last time, only to realize that I'd forgotten string cheese (an item of vital importance).  So rather than push the fully loaded cart back four isles, I left the cart parked in an out-of-the-way spot and went to go get the string cheese.

When I got back, my cart was gone.  In its place was another cart, which only had a few items in it.  "I must've forgotten where I parked it," I thought to myself.  I checked the area, to no avail.  I started to despair.  Someone had hijacked my cart!  How they could mistake my cart -- fully loaded, with a gallon of milk in the top portion -- with theirs -- only three or four items in it -- was beyond me.  I quickly checked the nearby isles, searching for the culprit.  No luck.  I started to panic.  Now I would have to start over, and reselect all of my groceries, all thanks to some idiot who wasn't paying one whit of attention to which cart they had grabbed.  Dinner would now be delayed by an hour (I was making pot roast, which had a two-hour cooking time).  I decided to take one last look around before giving up and accepting my fate.  Low and behold, my cart had been returned.  I breathed a deep sigh of relief and went directly to the checkout, lest someone else try to lay their hands on my precious groceries.

I thought my ordeal was over and even allowed myself a few chuckles at the absurdity of the whole episode.  I paid for my stuff and drove home, only to discover -- to my horror -- that I had inadvertantly bought a tub of sour cream.  Sour cream that I had no use for!  The hijacker had evidently left it in my cart in their haste to return it to where they found it.  Now, instead of being able to move on with my life, I'm stuck staring at this stowaway sour cream every time I open my refridgerator.  It's troubling.

So there's my story.  I share it in the hopes that my telling it will help prevent such a thing from happening to you.  And so maybe you'd get a few laughs.  Here's to hoping.

Well, I finished my first book of the year: Waterloo by Jeremy Black.  It was an easy read, for a couple reasons.  Firstly, I already know a lot about the Battle of Waterloo, so it was no trouble following the narrative of the battle.  Black also writes in a way that's very easy to read.  Black is helped by the fact that Waterloo is written for a general audience, which means no foot/endnotes.  But despite its "lightness," it was a great read and I learned a lot.  Black covers the battle well, but what I got most out of the book was not what happened, but what the battle meant.

A brief aside, in case you're not familiar with the battle: in June 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte had recently escaped from his exile after being defeated by a coalition made up of almost every European nation that wasn't named France.  The new French government sent their army to arrest him, but instead they joined Napoleon's march on Paris; the government was forced to flee.  Napoleon was once again the ruler of France.  Napoleon's enemies scambled to re-assemble their armies to face him; Napoleon rushed to attack and defeat them before they could unite against him.  Napoleon's armies met those of the coalition in Belgium, and in a series of battles that culminated in the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon was finally and utterly defeated. 

What that defeat meant was a return to the fractured map of Europe that was dominated by a few big states (France, Russia, Austria, and newly-powerful Prussia), but made up of many tiny ones that could be dominated by the big ones.  It also meant Britain was left with no serious contender to dominate the developing global trade; this led to an era of British dominance and prosperity that didn't end until after World War Two.  Pretty big stuff.  I highly recommend the book.

Next on my list is Andy Catlett: Early Travels by Wendall Berry, which I started today.  I'm already in love.  I've always thought that truly great writers' gift is what they can convey using very little in the way of words.  For instance: in Andy Catlett, Berry has made me fall in love with a character in about three sentences.  Through the simple description of a few actions and one observation made by the man's son, Berry has masterffully shown me who the character is.  I'm still amazed at the feat.  I can't wait to read more.

This has also made me think about writing fiction again.  In my zeal to get started, I almost decided to crank out something and put it on here, but I think that would be a bit premature.  Drafts are usually ugly, and I'm not sure I want to show that to anyone who wanders by my tiny corner of the 'net.  So I'll start drafting on my own, and post here when I have something that I consider acceptable.  Until then, wish me luck.