“If only someone had gone before and lived or suffered or died — made [the world] so that it could be understood! It was too stark, not redeemed, not made real with the reality that was the warm blood of life. He felt that there was something missing, some road which, if he had once found it, would have led him to a sure and quiet knowledge.”
— Richard Wright in Native Son.
“Many a man thinks he is making something when he's only changing things around. But God let Moses make.”
— Zora Neale Hurston in Mules and Men.
Well I am ten days late and I don't have much of an excuse. I am somewhat behind in my novel writing, which has been sporadic, so I tend to put all my other writing off until I put time in on the novel. In this case I am just choosing to get this update done instead of doing something else. For me, that is really the only way anything gets done. I do not have a normal work day. I have a full time home gig that doesn't really allow days off, or any breaks at all. To say more would be to wallow in a bit too much bitterness, I think. Really I am thankful to be able to do this. The typing of this is something like talk therapy. You should only be worried if you stop hearing from me.
Generation after generation,
Vice and virtue breed with one another,
Until hate is easy, and love is maudlin.
And hearts, like flies over muck, do hover.
O that one could sever this sullied past
From we whose hearts are stained and sunk by it.
That which we are told to put first, comes last,
In the order of crude survivalists.
Love is preached and praised, but rarely practiced.
Art is punished unless profitable.
More valued are the words, about them, lisped.
So we cannot bear to leave the bubble.
In your own reflection find your own way
To marry past and present with today.
“For evil is in the world: it may be in the world to stay. No creed and no dogma are proof against it, and indeed no person is; it is always the naked person, alone, who, over and over and over again, must wrest his salvation from these black jaws. Perhaps young Martin was finding a new and more somber meaning in the command: “Overcome evil with good.” The command does not suggest that to overcome evil is to eradicate it.”
– James Baldwin. Essay on Martin Luther King Jr. February 1961.[^1]
I think perhaps the privileged of us, whether racially or financially or geographically, are now staring this truth in the face. Evil is in the world, and we are foundering in it. There are traditions in which we might find the resources to overcome it, but for many the truly American tradition of severing oneself from tradition, has severed us from hope. We might look back and see that things are not so bad as they once were, and that we can fight to make them better. We do not have to look far. Black history month is a good start. I suppose the above quote from my man James Baldwin might seem harsh or pessimistic, but I see a pragmatic hope. For what else can we do with evil, but overcome it with good? It will take (as Baldwin was fond of saying) every ounce of our stamina, but it can be overcome. And I dare say it will be. Go read some Baldwin, some Martin Luther King Jr. Some Hurston. Listen to some Sam Cooke and Don Shirley. Try some new things and suggest things to your friends and make art to help the world feel more human. Call your congressman and senators. Protest. Donate to the people on the frontlines. Go read the words of the Apostle who wrote the words that Baldwin quotes.
Reading and Writing with Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey
In Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, after a rich general maltreats the heroine by sending her away from the abbey without ceremony or explanation — the titular abbey at which she had just spent a delightful few weeks with his daughter and son (with whom she was in love) — Jane Austen gives a somewhat brief summary of why the general reversed his behavior towards her and acted so strangely (he found out she wasn't rich and that her connections were not as illustrious as he had assumed). Austen then follows that summary with this paragraph:
“I leave it to my reader's sagacity to determine how much of all this it was possible for Henry [the heroine's lover] to communicate at this time to Catherine, how much of it he could have learnt from his father, in what points his own conjectures might assist him, and what portion must remain to be told in a letter from James [the heroine's brother]. I have divided for their case what they must divide for mine. Catherine, at any rate, heard enough to feel that in suspecting General Tilney of either murdering or shutting up his wife, she had scarcely sinned against his character, or magnified his cruelty.”
(Austen, 215)
This is not an easy paragraph. I had to pause and think it over for some minutes, especially the line, “I have divided for their case what they must divide for mine.” The more I thought about it, however, the more I was delighted and immersed by the way Austen breaks the fourth wall and invites the reader into the act of imagination. It is immersive because she invites the reader to use the same sort of imagination that a writer uses when imagining a story. “I have divided for their case what they must divide for mine,” she says. Meaning that we must imagine for ourselves the various conversations and snippets of letters that would allow Catherine to piece together everything that Austen has just related about the General's behavior and character.
“We'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
For Auld Lang Syne.”
“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!”
— Ebenezer Scrooge
Another year has gone, and as I look back I wish I had a Ghost to show me the significant moments. As I learned from Neal Postman in Technopoly, every technology carries an agenda, and our phones, in offering the ability to document every moment, seem to assert that memory is irrelevant; that the human mind is too fallible to be trusted with something as important as what has happened and is happening and will happen. Well, I reject that with every force of my being. For who can tell the self what is happening to it, other than itself? Even (or especially) those of us who believe in an Authority who can supersede the self, must yet work to distinguish between those words the self wishes to hear from the Word and the words the self needs to hear from the Word. Technology ought to be a tool, and nothing more. Those spectres of Ignorance and Want, which have haunted mankind since before Dickens named them in A Christmas Carol, have not been driven away by the information age. So take a cup of kindness (and I mean actual kindness) this year, for old time's sake, and pass it on. God knows we need it.
“A writer who is worried about his career is also fighting for his life.”[^1]
— James Baldwin in “The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy”
Well this is the last update of the year. That went fast. Time moves faster and faster as one ages. That is not a very original observation, is it? When I think about where I was last year I suppose I am most definitely in a better place, mainly because I don't have pneumonia, but I guess I have grown a bit as a writer, and a husband and a father and a friend. I feel that I have been tried much more in my personal life than in my artistic life. When I say personal life I do not mean there has been anything especially dramatic, I mean I have been tried in those secret places of my pride, that only those with good marriages or deep relationships discover in themselves. I have been tried, and found wanting, and broken down, and improved. That is, I suppose, evidence that I am walking with Jesus. I have a lot to be thankful for.
God repay the conscience-less engineers
For the pure sweet hearts with which they gamble
Seek not their greed which monetizes fears
And goads minds like picadores goad bulls.
They don't seem to stop and wonder "Should I,"
Unless the "should" could threaten the bottom line,
Until that line becomes their only why
And they call conscience just a Luddite whine.
Oh, how easy, on them, to pin the blame.
For they would not be "they" without users
So vulnerable to weaponized shame
And words from anonymous accusers.
They could not act so low were we not vain,
Don't let them choose what is true, what is sane.
If you follow the blog you might have noticed that I published this sonnet by itself. I think I will do that with other original poetry so that it is not just scattered across these updates. You might see some other sonnets on here.
God repay the conscienceless engineers
For the pure sweet hearts with which they gamble
Seek not their greed which monetizes fears
And goads minds like picadores goad bulls.
They don't seem to stop and wonder "Should I,"
Unless the "should" could threaten the bottom line,
Until that line becomes their only why
And they call conscience just a Luddite whine.
Oh, how easy, on them, to pin the blame.
For they would not be "they" without users
So vulnerable to weaponized shame
And words from anonymous accusers.
They could not act so low were we not vain,
Don't let them choose what is true, what is sane.
Thank you for reading! I greatly regret that I will most likely never be able to meet you in person and shake your hand, but perhaps we can virtually shake hands via my newsletter, social media, or a cup of coffee sent over the wire. They are poor substitutes, but they can be a real grace in this intractable world.
“Blessed are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commeddled*
That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart.”
*mixed together
— Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 2
“Days feel like the perfect length
Don't need 'em any longer
But for goodness’ sake do the years
Seem way too short for my soul, corazón.”
— Overcompensate by Twenty-One Pilots
The school year came on fast and I am never prepared. But we are dealing as best we can and I have done a little writing so it's fine. I do love fall weather, but every weekend has been busy so it has been hard to enjoy it. Steinbeck wrote in the East of Eden letters that he had no 'even keel,' and I identify with that very much. I don't know if it would make me a better writer to be less up and down emotionally, but it would probably make me a more productive one. Consistency is overrated, maybe.
