What I Learned from Bertrand Russell and Doctor Who

I ran across this quote from Bertrand Russell's The Conquest of Happiness the other day:

Fundamental happiness depends more than anything else upon what may be called a friendly interest in people and things.

I think that this is fundamentally true. However, I must be honest: my evidence for this comes from a) my personal experience and b) Doctor Who. Yes, I know what you're thinking: Now she's taking life lessons from that silly show?! Well, yes. (And famous 20th-century philosophers! Don't forget about them!)

But, really, one of my favorite things about the Doctor is how excited he gets about things, even when he really doesn't have much reason to be enthusiastic. By most standards, he should be unhappy: he's a 900-year-old time traveler with no family, no home planet, no one to understand his crazy alien ways, a distinctly junky spaceship, a bunch of cranky alien enemies who would really enjoy killing him, and a really rocky love-life with his human lady friends. Oh, and he only owns one outfit, and it happens to be a pinstriped suit, which seems really inconvenient for adventuring. Not to mention the fact that he sometimes has to depend on 3-D specs to save the day. For realz.

But he's really, really, really fascinated by the universe and things and life and people, and so he manages to keep happy on a daily basis. Example: About to be killed by a clockwork android? Beautiful! He thinks it's a lovely bit of machinery and he'd like to meet whoever made it! Has to depend on a half-genius, half-birdbrained human scientist to bring him back through a worm hole and save the world? Great! Randy the Scientist is his new best friend when he's in south London! Meets Satan right on top of an inescapable black hole? Fantastic! It just means that he didn't know as much about the universe as he thought he did!

Pretty much every life-or-death situation turns into a kind of romp of appreciation for the Doctor, and it's contagious. Yes, he's a fictional character, but that sort of indefatigable enthusiasm for life, that giddy interest in our diverse and myriad world, seems like a great recipe for never really getting bored or growing old.

So for the last few months, one of my goals has been to get really excited over something, anything, everyday. It doesn't take much: some article about a crazy new scientific discovery, a mind-blowing Wikipedia article, a good trip to the gym, hearing to a fantastic song I've never heard before, listening to someone tell a crazy story about his/her life, whatever. The topic doesn't much matter. The point is to love something, anything, for the sake of loving, to appreciate something purely for the sake of appreciating anything.

Making a daily practice of loving some bit of the world: this seems like one of the easiest, more rewarding paths to happiness I can imagine. And I I'm glad to hear that Mr. Russell thinks so, too.

Baking a Bitter Cake

In the winter of 2008, I tore a recipe for a Whiskey-Soaked Dark Chocolate Bundt Cake out of the New York Times's dining section. I was so excited to make it. It contained quite literally all of the best things in the world: lots of butter, very dark chocolate, espresso, and whiskey--lots and lots of whiskey! It sounded delicious and exotic and very rich.

But I'd never made a liqueur-soaked cake before. I was a little afraid, so I tucked the scrap of newspaper away in my recipe box and forgot about it until a week ago when I was looking for something special to make for a family holiday party. I unfolded the crumpled newsprint and thought Aha! It fit the bill exactly: it would look beautiful, taste delicious, and feel distinctly holiday-ish--by which I mean sophisticated and special and a little expensive. Simply put, it would be perfect for a Sunday afternoon Christmas party with relatives.

So I set to work. At its core, it's a fairly straightforward butter cake recipe: it starts with creaming butter and sugar, then come the eggs and vanilla, and then you add the dry ingredients at the end. The only quirk is that the recipe ends similarly to Nigella Lawson's classic Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake recipe (which involves beating in alternating parts liquid and dry ingredients to the batter right before it goes in the oven).

The batter turned out beautifully: fluffy and rich and very, very alcoholic. I licked the spoon as I cleaned up and got a little bit tipsy. I mean, the cake itself has a whole cup of whiskey in it, even before it's baked and sprinkled with whiskey again!

Boozy, boozy batter.

The batter tasted a little, well, intense to me, but I figured that most of the whiskey flavor would bake out. So I went with it. I threw the batter in my Great Aunt Shirley's burnt orange bundt pan . . .

and baked it up. It came out perfect-looking, moist, and very very fragrant. My entire apartment smelled like rich chocolate with a touch of whiskey and espresso mixed in, as if Starbucks started serving cocktails alongside their mochas and lattes.

I plated it on my beautiful new milk glass cake platter (thanks, Mom!), splattered it with a few hearty tablespoons of whiskey, topped it with powdered sugar, and mourned the fact that I couldn't try it until the party. (Let's be honest: taste testing is the entire point of making cookies and cupcakes. Even if you make them to share, you get to try them right away--I need that instant gratification!)

The completed cake.

But I was terribly disappointed once dessert time arrived the next day. The cake was bitter, unbelievably so. The espresso powder, unsweetened chocolate, and whiskey all worked together to give it bite and nothing but. I couldn't taste the sugar or the butter or anything but char. The cake wasn't burnt at all, but it tasted like a chocolate-covered espresso bean that had spent some time in a fireplace!

I think that public opinion on the cake was split: half the party thought it was fantastic, and the other half smiled very politely and left a big chunk on their plates. As I watched my relatives nibbling away at the cake, I thought about how I'd do it better next time. Melissa Clark, the recipe author, had written that her grandmother had been the originator of the recipe. Clark had taken the recipe, drastically upped the alcohol content, and switched to unsweetened chocolate to add "sophistication" to the dessert while reducing its sweetness.

I decided right then and there that old fashioned was definitely the way to go with this one. Next time, I'm doing it Grandma Clark style: I'll be using semi-sweet chocolate, halving the espresso powder, and replacing half the whiskey with water. And, if it still turns out bitter, I think that a nice glaze (I'm thinking whiskey, cream, vanilla, and powdered sugar) will do a trick.

I may have been bitterly disappointed by this recipe, but I wasn't beaten. Hear this, Whiskey-Soaked Dark Chocolate Bundt Cake: we shall meet again!

The intrepid baker, ready for round two.

Lonesome Literature

When the title of a book has the word "lonely" in it, remind me to pay attention in the future.

I finished Carson McCuller's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter a few weeks ago. I bought it at The Dusty Bookshelf because I liked the cover and because I was in the mood to read a serious novel and because I wanted to read something set in the South. It's winter, goshdarnit, and I want to dream of hazy humidity and mossy trees and thick brambles of green.

I don't regret reading the book--in fact, I thought it was one of the best novels I've ever read--but this really wasn't the best time of year to read it. It's a book whose topic is loneliness. The novel follows John Singer, a deaf mute living in a small Southern town in the late 1930s. His best friend, another deaf mute, has been sent to a mental institution many miles away and, for the first time in his ten years of adulthood, no one can "hear" him speak.

As he copes with this loss, Singer moves into a new boarding house and begins to be visited by strangers who feel compelled to talk to him: Dr. Copeland, a black doctor who reads Marx and Spinoza and is desperately, painfully committed to helping his people escape oppression; Jake Blount, a half-mad alcoholic anarchist and labor activist; Biff Brannon, a cafe owner and recent widower who wants to understand Singer and the people who follow him; and Mick Kelly, the 14-year-old girl who dreams of moving to the snowy north and becoming a musician and who has Mozart's symphonies playing constantly in her head.

All of these characters, particularly Dr. Copeland, Jake, and Mick, and burning with a passion that no one else in the town is able to access or understand. And all of them, the quiet Biff and Singer included, are hounded by loneliness, the desire to be heard and to be understood. Singer follows his mad friend, aching to use his hands to speak directly to someone who understands him. Dr. Copeland and Jake and Mick chase Singer, feeling paradoxically that the lip reader is the only man on earth who understands them. Biff watches them all out of the new emptiness his wife's death has created, wondering what all this loneliness means in the world.

Despite the characters' passions and yearnings and hungers, it's a novel where very little happens. Usually, I dislike plotless novels, but McCuller's characters are so brilliantly drawn, so lifelike and complex and beautiful and sad, that I was rapidly pulled through the 300+ pages of the novel by pure curiosity. I desperately wanted to see these characters' lives become better because I understood their motives in the same way that I understand my own. McCuller's creates true empathy in this novel, and she does so brilliantly.

Mick Kelly especially comes to life. She made me remember being 14, feeling constantly confused and over-excited and angry and hungry and passionate for art--books in my case, music in Mick's. I get the impression that McCullers (who was only 23 when she wrote the novel) modeled the character after her own childhood and, I presume, her own desire to be a writer.

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is a novel I would recommend to anyone, but not in November or December. It's the kind of heavy reading that's best reserved for the summer months, when there's sunshine and plenty to do and the world feels all fat and lazy and happy and slow. One needs the summer to counteract messages like "deep and soul-wrenching loneliness is intrinsic to human life and is its greatest and most painful motivator." Ack! The winter is just too cold for novels like this.

I thought I learned that lesson a few years ago when I read Ethan Frome and Jude the Obscure, two of the saddest novels ever written in America, in the same week in December. No, thank you! This time, the lesson's going to stick! It's only The Golden Compass and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Tamora Pierce from here until March, people! Loneliness is an excellent topic for excellent novels, but a terrible topic for mid-winter ruminations.

Gifting the Good Life

This weekend, I made my first, last, and only Christmas shopping trip to Wal-Mart, Dillons, and Sports Authority. To be honest, I wasn't really buying any Christmas presents for anyone. I was looking for a yoga mat for myself and a heaping mound of baking supplies. I didn't buy a damn thing for anyone else, and I have to admit, it felt pretty great!

I'm not Scrooging it up or anything, but I just didn't want to this year. I didn't feel like barreling through crowds at the mall or Best Buy or Borders. I didn't feel like agonizing over trying to make the people in my life happy by buying them something they didn't necessarily need or even want for themselves. I didn't want to deplete my bank account for gifts that could very well end up sitting around the house, collecting dust. Shopping just seems like a tiring routine this year, one that benefits corporations without really making the holiday any more enjoyable for me and my family.

So I straight up opted out. I took my dad to a KU basketball game for his Christmas present, which we both thoroughly enjoyed. I'm taking my mom for a short wine tasting road trip in January, which sounds like a blast for both of us. My mom's family does a white elephant-style gift exchange on Christmas Eve, but instead of buying something at, say, Target, I bought my gift from my farmers' market; not only did my gift directly benefit my local economy, but shopping there made for a really fun Saturday morning with a friend! My grandparents on both sides will get a pan of homemade cinnamon rolls, as will my friends (Sorry if I'm spoiling the surprise for anyone!). And that's it! I'm done!

Psychologists have discovered that people are happier when they spend money on experiences rather than things, and I hope this proves true for receiving gifts, too. This year, I'm doing my best to give experiences, not gifts: the experience of a basketball game or trying new things or enjoying a lazy, delicious, properly fattening breakfast on Christmas morning without any effort.

And along the way, I'm working on enjoying the Christmas season more, even as I spend less money and less time doing so.

The Peanuts kids, experiencing the Christmas season.

Happy December

Happy first of December, everybody!

I'm always a little bit excited about December. It's not the holidays I love--I'm not a huge Christmas person--and it's not exactly the weather; I don't usually like the cold, and I hate having to wear gloves to drive my car or type at the office. But I've always liked winter. At the beginning of the season, the cold feels crisp and new and intoxicating. The first snow flakes look cleansing and bright, and roads and cars aren't yet covered in that awful salty, sandy, dirty sludge that seems to epitomize the February doldrums to me. It feels like a new world is beginning each December, and I like that.

Besides, I've been ready for November to be done for awhile now. It was not my best month ever.  :P

In other news, last night, I walked out in the cold and the dark to see a reading downtown. The two authors were local-ish (native Kansans from a town an hour away). One wrote essays and the other poetry, and they were both underwhelming. They did not write excellent or surprising or even terribly engaging literature, but I tried to listen to it with a better attitude than I used to. In the past, I've been a terrible literary hater; I've gotten angry over the success of poems and essays and even people that I don't like or respect. But that's a cheap and miserly way to live, and it certainly wasn't making me any more successful when I ripped on others' work.

These days, I'm trying to remember that all literature, even literature that I *ahem* disagree with, was written by someone who was doing his/her best to write, to survive, and to be happy. All literature is written by someone who is trying to learn his/her own song and sing it, and their bravery, persistence, and stubborn individuality is something to respect, even if the writing itself irks me.