Ulysses

I'm not a very introspective person. All my adult life has been consumed in my work, whether it was teaching or lawyering. But with the advent of conditions beyond our control, I find myself in the uncomfortable process of evaluating the past and regarding the present with an eye on life's influences, which inevitably brings me to Ulysses.

Art is in the eye and mind of the beholder. If you've ever gone to an art gallery, read a book, or listened to a song and thought, "Wow, that speaks to my heart, that explains and defines my life," then you know what I mean. Ulysses is that art for me.

So enamoured was I with Ulysses that when I taught history, economics, and political science, I would at least twice a year slip in some Tennyson. Sometimes more than twice a year. I used to think that I bored the hell out of the students until one day, clearly out of nowhere, a former student of mine told me that she had read and really enjoyed it.

I guess I was a full service teacher, imparting value whenever I could.

Art means different things during different parts of our lives. So it is with Ulysses. For example, take the famous refrain, "Come, my friends, 'T is not too late to seek a newer world." To someone in their twenties it may sound like a rallying cry to upset the established order, to someone of more advanced years it may sound like a call to try one last time to make the world a little better than you found it.

Now I'm at the stage of my life when the last lines of the poem really speak to me. When I wrote my book, I was focused on the information contained therein, and the message I wanted to send. Clearly this wasn't the best book ever written, and it could definitely used a good editor. But after for re-writes over three years, I couldn't bear to spend another year trying to get the book published via traditional means. Thus, the book was self-published.

However, since it came out at the end of June, and some people of read it (thank you), I started to think about my motivation for writing the book. Was it personal in settling scores, was it more an intellectual exercise, or was it the coda of my life? I think I've figured some of it out and would like to share it with you, and perhaps this will explain the writing and content of the book. And as always, I look to Tennyson:

We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven,

Ahhh, our glorious youth when all things were possible. But in my advanced years, I for one am definitely not of that strength. However, some of the values formed during my youth do endure to this day.

I learned in my youth that if you didn't stand for something, there was a hole in your soul. I came of age during a convulsive time in our history. There was a choosing of sides, and conscience had to literally be your guide. Issues of race, war, poverty, gender equality, and the environment forced a choosing. There was a real division between those who resisted the status quo and advocated change and those who resisted change and were just fine with the status quo.