Deep Work by Cal Newport

I read Deep Work in an afternoon on audio which is how I am justifying reading a book that isn't on my bookshelves…again.

This came up on my radar because in homeschool mom circles there is a big push for getting it all done. I mean we all admit we cannot get it all done, but we are constantly trying to come up with a new way, a new method of organizing ourselves and our work for it to be wrangled. A friend of mine read Sertillange’s The Intellectual Life and she wanted to throw it across the room.  He says, “you can do this in as little as two hours a day.”We really do not have two hours a day; we don't have five minutes.  I am writing this while grading cheese to make macaroni  for a passel of five children in the next room we need to have reading lessons, memory work and play dates and laundry done.  So all of this gets done well outside of respectable.

To the book

Newport recognizes that our current society bribes you into stealing your own attention and  thatto get anywhere with intellectual work we actually have to step away from modern values.  He  explains his own early days as an academic trying to publish while also having a family and working. He needed to organize this time and structure his life.

Newport references Carl Jung’s step away from all of his practice duties and to build his own tiny castle so that he could formulate himself and the ideas  needed to combat Freud. The mental work needed to happen, and  it had to happen in an expeditious and financially efficient way. The financially efficient way was to actually build a castle out in the middle of nowhere that he could just shut himself up in.

So in someways I agree with the wide wide world that Newport's book does not work for moms.  I am not gonna be able to go off for a free weekend or fly to Zimbabwe and back and get deep work done or retreat into a deep hidden hobble that no one else gets to touch. However I think that the idea of organization and expediting tasks to do can work and that we can take those things that must be done in houses to work out the broad strokes.

Then we can execute on those plans and tasks during the day and free up time for intellectual work as we are raising our children so that we can be mentally involved with the things we are bringing to them and the conversations that need to happen.

This is actually an inversion of his idea that the important work has to be done off onto the side and with the less effective tasks taking the rest of the time.  I think that for moms we need to separate these out so the detailed concentration oriented work is done outside of our highly intense effective days.

For intellectual work we may need to build the muscles like John Milton and retain the things we want to learn inside us, digest them to the point of reproduction, and then keep that in our heads until we can dump it out on paper. Moving a chunk at a time.

But Newport reminds me it is not time that we lack but the discipline to use it. And that a little leaven raises the whole bunch.

Poems For Dragonslayers: Mock On, Mock On, Voltaire, Rousseau by William Blake

For much of history the best stories were poems. Poetry displayed skill, clarity of mind, and insight. Some even used it to show the distinction between classes and worlds. There are entire books of it in the Bible, largely ignored for its poetic value because we are reading in translation.

And so we have castigated it as a trite and angsty form, leaving it to die alongside our own shriveled hearts.

So we need to start at the beginning.

These are poems to train children to love poetry.

Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau;

Mock on, mock on, Tis all in vain.

You throw the sand against the wind,

And the wind blows it back again.

And every sand becomes a Gem

Reflected in the beams divine;

Blown back, they blind the mocking Eye,

But still in Israel's paths they shine.

The Atoms of Democritus

And Newton's Particles of light

Are sands upon the Red sea shore,

Where Israel's tents do shine so bright.

I don't particularly love the work of Songs of Innocence and Experience. Sentimentalism should be spewed out - both the kind that makes little boys lisp lamblike and the kind that reflects on mangled angel curls blacked by soot.

But Blake has a knack for catching an image and justaposing it. He just does not always juxtapose towards reality, but sentiment.

Today's piece is one I had never heard until browsing through Harmon's 500. The imagery is Byronic and putting it next to our scientific achievements accents modern failure.

This is how I know we can get along just fine even though we disagree on sentiment - he understands Rousseau is the worst.

Every dragonslayer should know in their bones Rousseau is personally responsible for the majority of bad ideas in the 21st century.

Hear his name and spit.

• Further Up and Further In

The Iliad, The Odyssey, Paradise Lost, and Dante: A Theory of Compelling Womanhood

We all know Helen of Troy. She was the face that launched a thousand ships. She was the reason the Illiad happened and while Achilles and Hector rule the narrative, Helen is who we think of when we think of Troy. The Illiad centers on the rage of Achilles, but I think his rage is directly related to Helen. Helen compells the action based on the kind of woman she is and the degree to which she is herself. She is the most beautiful woman to ever exist and broke the honor of her marriage vow, creating the culture the men inhabit. Enter Achilles, he is capable of the highest degree of military prowess and has a temper to match. That temper could not be fully plumbed without the culture Helen built by being the woman at the center of the narrative.

The funny thing is that we know the joke about millihelens (a girl with a face that can launch one ship), but how many milihelens are there that have stirred up trouble in the male sphere around them leading to one miliAchiles losing it and leveling everyone (or going into a megasulk).

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Because I'm quickly jotting this down, I'm not going to pull up quotes, but just lay out the broad strokes.

Penelope more directly compells the action of the Oddyssey. Telemachus is trying to save her and his land. He isn't sure where she stands and accuses her of heartlessness. The suitors are after her, Odysseus is sailing for her, asking about her at the very doors of death. But she also is not in the big action set pieces. She is there, but again, she is not part of the movement of the story.

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Eve is obviously central to Paradise Lost, but she still enters the actions a little later with her dreams and thoughts. I actually think it is the Christian influence that gives her more agency, but not because the others don't revere Helen and Penelope, but because Christians ascribe higher capablity creationally to women. Eve is the first woman, ideal in beauty and strength, so her fall is worse than Helen's.

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The final piece - The Divine Comedy- is Mary.

At first I thought it was Beatrice who moves this, but Beatrice couldn't have gone with out the command. Mary, Lucy, and Beatrice interceed for Dante, but for the sake of my argument, I will only look at Mary who defines the degree.

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Each woman is acting in a proverbial role - they are the Lady Wisdom or Lady Folly that creates the world of wisdom stories within the narratives they inhabit.

Beyond this you have a matched set which thrills my heart. Helen and Penelope are cousins. Mary and Eve are the high women in Christianity. One is virtuous; one is fallen and all to a defining degree. This gives you the scope of the narrative and the starter for the ferment.

virtuous pagan | virtuous Christian

(Penelope) | (Mary)

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fallen pagan | fallen Christian

(Helen) | (Eve)

Forgive my poor graph - I lack tech capabilities at the moment.

But now you have a scope for stories according to the kind of woman defining the narrative. Of course this does not mean Andromache and Francesca are not relevent, but that they function in response to the woman of a more developed degree creating the canyon they inhabit.

You have to look at the maw of death caused by Lady Folly. It is going to devour the foolish, the innocent, the just, and the reprobate. Andromache is a good woman under the maw and that is a story that can only be explored to its outer reaches because Helen defined the degree of the narrative.

Francesca is like Helen, but fallenness in world whelmed by grace is limited to a little windy puddle at the opening of Hell. Every story of sin in Dante is the individual twisting themselves to reflect their own desires building a self contained trap. The judgement is the judgement. You can laugh at her because in Mary you get the ocean of rightful loves under Christ. The incredible extension of this is that Purgatorio looks at the untwisting of the soul, the slow righting, and learning to properly reflect grace. It is the common life of man influenced by grace.

Calypso does not get to keep Odysseus and Nausicaa is not given to him. Penelope calls him home where the suitors are laid waste and the girl is saved.

In short, all the small stories are a result of whatever elixer the woman of degree brews up. A witch's brew will be drunk by all and each will have to make something of it. The water of life may kill you because you made your vessel false, but it doesn't change the life poured out which restrains evil and its working power.

I'm picking up the Aeneid and Paradise Lost soon and can't wait to look at the last ladies of epic poetry.

• Further Up and Further In