Under the Shadow of this Red Rock

The "age demanded" chiefly a mould in plaster,
Made with no loss of time,
A prose kinema, not, not assuredly, alabaster
Or the "sculpture" of rhyme.

- Ezra Pound, H. S. Mauberley

A stranger in a strange land, I have recently spent an ungodly amount of time hanging out at Red Rock Café in Mountain View at the very heart of the Silicon Valley. Starved for company during the day, I have taken to eavesdropping on my fellow imbibers as a way of finding some clue as to useful conversational gambits and possibly to gain an insight into the Californian soul. In this last regard, my research has been pretty fruitless - one searches for the essence of the onion by pulling away layers of skin, but find nothing but more skin. However, I have come to one, distinctly alarming conclusion: I am undoubtedly the sanest person here.

Not surprisingly given the area, the conversations are normally depressingly software-related.  For example, It seems that the man on my right is working on 'an awesome user experience'. He repeats this phrase some four or five times in a conversation with what I presume to be a potential client or backer.  I find myself gnashing my teeth and contemplating my study English brogues while considering giving him an experience he won't forget in a hurry.  The man on my left is selling customer relationship software.  Inanities follow inanities and everything is laced with the latest business clichés.

'Awesome' is the vogue word. A couple seem to be getting on rather well behind me and reach the point where the man tells the woman that his wife doesn't understand him.  She grips his hand sympathetically and tells him that his revelation is "an awesome coincidence" because her husband doesn't understand her either.

When the conversation does deviate from software or relationship management of one kind or another, it almost invariably turns to holidays, but this is just as dispiriting. The folk here are on absurdly high salaries and can afford to travel to the most distant and exotic of climes. However, travel seems to bring them little benefit and one is reminded of William Hazlitt's axiom that "It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse".  A man announced that he had 'done' Europe in five days.  I couldn't quite work out exactly what he had done to Europe or what the experience had done to him as his female companion immediately trumped him by saying that she had spent an equally long sojourn doing Europe herself and found it a "romantic, relationship-based culture" and she had just done India too. It seems that the 'vibe had been like awesome".

Is this lack of articulacy testimony to the ineffable substratum of existence?  If rendered speechless  by the exotic, Californians have an inordinate amount to say on the trivial.  Indeed one sometimes feels that Yamamoto Tsunetomo would feel perfectly at home here:

Among the maxims on Lord Naoshige's wall there was this one: "Matters of great concern should be treated lightly." Master lttei commented, "Matters of small concern should be treated seriously."

On the subject of coffee, matters of small concern are treated with immense seriousness and the descriptions by the urns take on the very purplest of hues.  It seems I am drinking something that should "yield an experience reminiscent of key lime pie".   If I bore of this, I could ravish my senses with a brew which provides a "vibrant blueberry and lemony acidity ahead of an earl grey finish" or in another which introduces " a flavour profile of pink lemonade and marzipan".  I find it hard to resist hurling myself on the floor and moaning with orgasmic ecstasy about the awesome user experience I am receiving.

Hamlet could be bounded in as nutshell yet count himself a king of infinite space.  Here, in America on the edge of the Pacific, I am in a land of mind boggling distances and vast immensities, yet in many ways the place seems infinitesimally small.  In a self-proclaimed land of opportunities, those who have reached the top have nothing to spend their cash on..  Buy a Ferrari and spend a few extra weeks in tawdry, glitzy Vegas or Disneyland or escape to an awesome, relationship based culture?   If one is raised in a milieu that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing there seems little to choose and nowhere to go.

The Silicon Valley Way: The Abnegation of Parental Responsibility

For reasons that are all too easy to fathom, Laura, my wife, is being barraged with demands that she brings up her six year old daughter in the true American fashion. A true and dedicated mother – rather like the one true Scotsman - would buy into the North American system and provide her child with a relentless schedule of paid-for activities. No moment should be left idle and none spent simply enjoying her mother's company and taking part in trivial domestic activities like sewing, reading together, cooking, family theatricals and games or just basking in a rich and loving home environment: instead, every single moment should be occupied with gymnastics, ballet, dancing, science and even karate.

It is certainly true that this farming out of childhood has become the norm amongst the citizens of overpaid and overworked Silicon Valley. It is simply what 'they' do and rather than being grounds for self-reproach that one cannot provide a rich and nurturing home environment, the number of activities one has enrolled one's offspring in is something to be positively flaunted. While here on the coast, we might spend our family time catching crab, swimming in the sea, listening to music and dancing, tending the chickens, acting out the death of Caesar or visiting galleries and theaters, parents in the Bay Area spend theirs dropping off their children at their numerous activities. We strive to be as engaged and 'hands on' as possible; we are not hiring others to do all our parenting for us.

This farming out does not conduce to togetherness or shared interests. Indeed, with the parents merely the financial providers of activities, the children become deeply selfish and are merely concerned with keeping up with their peers rather than in engaging in family life. They may or may not become skilled in one or more activity; but they lose the opportunity to form a genuine connection with their parents just as the latter forgo the joys of engaged parenthood. With the bonds of parenthood weakened, the child misses out on learning the life skills, traditions and interests of the older generation. Maybe this education confirms their citizenship of such a rootless place as the Valley of Sand; it does not, however, do much for their humanity. Nor does it make for individuality.

With time with peers completely replacing that with parents, the child is in a shallow, arid environment and fashion becomes king. For instance, as an educator from Britain now involved in the local public school system, I am struck by the contrast between kids in the richer, activity-providing areas and those from areas whose populations have less affluent and more traditional backgrounds. The latter are not merely less spoiled and vapid, but they are less uniform, more self-reliant, and frankly far more interesting.

This is not an argument for home schooling or for not having some extra curricular activities. Rather, it is that the latter should not take precedence over time with parents. There needs to be adequate time for the passing on of parental values and knowledge. Nor is it a crime for a child to have time on her hands and to be forced to entertain herself.

“When in Rome do as the Greeks” says a modern take on an old maxim and we intend to stick to it. The Greeks may not have had the mere technical superiority of their Roman or later day successors, but they were far more cultured in the sense that true Americans like Henry David Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson appreciated. We will continue to give Alina a more hands on upbringing based on our values and knowledge. At a tender age she is developing a love of learning for its own sake. For example, she knows the classical orders of architecture and avidly seeks them out whenever we are in a large city. She knows a fair number of Greek and Roman myths and not merely asks to hear them retold but understands their underlying value. She is starting to comprehend that the distinction between fact and fiction is very much more complex than her peers or even the majority of prosaic adults might suspect. Just recently she sat through a full performance of Hamlet at the RSC theatre in Stratford. Far from being bored by the difficult language, she was absolutely enthralled. We will not sacrifice her interests to the tyranny of the 'they'.

PS There are two reasons for writing the above. First, it is a belief that Laura and I share that it is a mark of good, responsible parents to pass on their interests and knowledge to the children in their care. Second, I love my wife and deeply resent malicious criticism of her love for her children by those who define parenthood in terms that suit their convenience (“a good mother would do X, ., and Z”). Always a dedicated and extremely hard-working mother, Laura suffers hugely from not seeing her sons for more than three years; she is not going to have her upbringing of her much loved daughter questioned. Not only is this painful for someone easily hurt, but it is an intolerable addition of insult to injury.

How do I fit in? Well, the position of a step-father can be an awkward one, but Alina is a delightful child and it is a labor of love rather than a duty to help raise her.   I am honored by the trust Laura has shown in me and do my utmost to be worthy of it. Why am I taking it upon myself to write this? The simple answer is that I as well as being a loving husband I am the official educator in the house – largely thanks to Laura, I have certificates to prove it!