Home for my words
Well, what a month. I feel like I am just now getting over the hangover from 2023. I turned 30. All my creative endeavors were a struggle, but I struggled on. Not looking forward to this year because of the election... But I have decided to show my work by my actions rather than my words, as far as that is possible for a writer...
It came out a while ago but you remember before you had a son that you liked The New Order so you get it on a sale because you are a Daddy now and you can't let your money show that video games are a priority even though sometimes it feels like they are the only place you are really important or needed.
Another year has gone. Didn't get much done in December as the latter half of the month was all for family. Did a lot of traveling. Tiring but worth it to share the joy of our kids. I have been reflecting on how, when we meet with family, we are often just as challenged as we are refreshed; and I am sure some families are more often challenged by each other. Living apart (in our case in different states), means that we develop different routines that are not always good for us. What we eat, when we get up, the things we meditate on and distract ourselves with. Visiting family can help us reflect on our strengths and weaknesses, if we take enough time to stop focusing on others' deficiencies...
Wow, November went fast. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Thanksgiving cut into writing time and overall productivity this month — but seeing family was worth it.
“Now what you need is some old coat hangers. Put 'em in your trunk in case you get the midnight special.”1
“I still don't know what you mean.”
“You will, and you'll need those coat hangers to wake you up if it comes.”
I have decided to start doing semi-regular updates for what I am working on and what I am reading and consuming. At most I will publish one once a month.
Content warning: This essay contains discussion of rape.
In Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, after Tess tells her new husband that she is not a virgin and he rejects her, Thomas Hardy describes a scene in which the husband sleepwalks, carrying Tess through a field, over a river, to an abandoned stone coffin outside of a run down Abbey. He lays her in the coffin and falls to the ground asleep. Then Tess sits up in the coffin. This scene is one of Hardy's “moments of vision,” a moment that Virginia Woolf described as a passage in which both author and reader seem “to be suddenly and without their own consent lifted up and swept onwards.” It is perhaps vain to attempt to discern the meaning of this passage. Hardy himself, who stated in the explanatory note of the novel that “novels are impressions, not arguments,” might deplore such an effort — but I am the reader, and as Woolf also wrote about reading him, “it is for the reader, steeped in the impression, to supply the comment.” 1
musings from the future's muse
In 2244 AI generates all artistic entertainment consumed by humanity. Art made by artists does not sell. Movies, holo-novels, real-novels, games, albums, and all imaginable forms of past and future media are simulated and generated by the content delivery mechanism at the rate of a few seconds per media. In the event that a human does make something on their own, it is drowned in the cosmic ocean of content and never seen by anyone but the creator.
“She remembered, all of a sudden as if she had found a treasure, that she had her work. In a flash she saw her picture, and thought, Yes, I shall put the tree further in the middle.” — To the Lighthouse (84)
On page 84 of To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf describes how Lily Briscoe, squeezed by social pressure during dinner at the Ramsey's house, remembers “all of a sudden as if she had found a treasure,” that she can improve her painting by “moving the tree to the middle.” She then picks up a salt shaker and puts it down “so as to remind herself to move the tree.”
These are two rather mundane sentences. They do not evoke strong emotion and they do not have particular significance in the immediate context. But Virginia Woolf weaves them into the text, using the movement of the salt shaker to remind both Briscoe and the reader twenty pages later that to “move the tree to the middle,” does not simply mean improving one's painting; it also means finding purpose and value outside of society's expectations (for Lily it is to marry). Then, when Lily comes back to the Ramsey's many years and pages later, after Mrs. Ramsey's death, the reader and Lily are taken back to that flash of inspiration at dinner with a simple phrase: “Move the tree to the middle, she had said (102).”
For those who have not tried to write compelling prose, this example may seem underwhelming. But as with many masterstrokes, “moving the tree to the middle” can be appreciated by imagining what you might have done instead. Even if you had lit on the idea of moving the tree to symbolize Lily's commitment to her art, would you have been brave and innovative enough to recall it twenty pages later, not with simple exposition that a reader cannot miss, but with a glance “at the salt cellar on the pattern”? This use of the word “salt” enhances the tree idiom. It is a word you can taste. It draws the reader into Lily Briscoe's mind and lived experience. This is immersion. This is how Virginia Woolf rewards the reader for journeying into the human soul with her.
I met them in the margin of a used book, next to difficult paragraphs and subtle thoughts.
A penciled question mark told me all I wanted to know ? about their mind.