Just Trust Me

Leave a comment

When I google something I try to ignore the AI suggestions.  I was reminded why the other day.  I was searching for a scholar at an eastern European university.  I couldn’t find him at first since he shares the name of a locally famous musician.  I added the university to the search and AI merged the two.  It claimed that the scholar I was seeking was also a famous musician.  This despite the difference in their ages and the fact that they looked nothing alike.  Al decided that since the musician had studied music at that university he must also have been a professor of religion there.  A human being might also be tempted to make such a leap, but would likely want to get some confirmation first.  Al has only text and pirated books to learn by.  No wonder he’s confused.

I was talking to a scholar (not a musician) the other day.  He said to me, “Google has gotten much worse since they added AI.”  I agree.  Since the tech giants control all our devices, however, we can’t stop it.  Every time a system upgrade takes place, more and more AI is put into it.  There is no opt-out clause.  No wonder Meta believes it owns all world literature.  Those who don’t believe in souls see nothing but gain in letting algorithms make all the decisions for them.  As long as they have suckers (writers) willing to produce what they see as training material for their Large Language Models.  And yet, Al can’t admit that he’s wrong.  No, a musician and a religion professor are not the same person.  People often share names.  There are far more prominent “Steve Wigginses” than me.  Am I a combination of all of us?

Technology is unavoidable but the question unanswered is whether it is good.  Governments can regulate but with hopelessly corrupt governments, well, say hi to Al.  He will give you wrong information and pretend that it’s correct.  He’ll promise to make your life better, until he decides differently.  And he’ll decide not on the basis of reason, because human beings haven’t figured that out yet (try taking a class in advanced logic and see if I’m wrong).  Tech giants with more money than brains are making decisions that affect all of us.  It’s like driving down a highway when heavy rain makes seeing anything clearly impossible.  I’d never heard of this musician before.  I like to think he might be Romani.  And that he’s a fiddler.  And we all know what happens when emperors start to see their cities burning.

Al thinks this is food

Hugo’s Invention

Leave a comment

After watching Hugo, and wishing that the story were history, I found a copy of Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret.  Martin Scorsese’s adaptation is fairly close to the book but there are, of course, additions and omissions.  One key character is left out and some subtleties to the book didn’t find their way obviously into the movie, or at least not until having read the book.  The story of Georges Méliès’ life in the book is largely accurate.  Hugo, however, and Isabelle, are fictional.  As is the automaton around which the story is based.  The lovable train station vendors in the movie are quite a bit less lovable in the book.  And the station inspector isn’t shown until late in the story and he doesn’t have the leg brace that lends a kind of steampunishish vibe to the film.

Apart from being a tale of redemption—in real life Méliès’ rediscovery didn’t lead to an end of his poverty—the story is an exploration in psychology.  Méliès lost his dream job due to competition after the First World War.  The book makes clear that the clicking of heels drives him to rage because his films were reputedly melted down to make shoe heels.  The story in the book goes so far as to say that ghosts follow those who clack their heels loudly.  The ghosts, of course, are those of Méliès’ lost success as a filmmaker.  One of the reasons this story appeals to me is that I too lost a job that gave my life a sense of purpose.  My writing largely does that now, even if it doesn’t sell.  I can relate to a man who is ready to retire but can’t, daily reminded that he once had a satisfying job but now has to sit behind a desk all day.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a book for younger readers.  About half of the book’s 500-plus pages are illustrations.  The images include stills from Méliès’ surviving films, but mostly drawings by Selznick.  The focus on the young people makes this a children’s book, but the truths it tells of adults with lost dreams are especially appropriate for those who’ve learned that life isn’t always kind to dreamers.  The book, like the movie, inspires me to seek out the surviving films of Georges Méliès and think of what can indeed happen to those who dare to dream, even when the world has already discarded them as irrelevant.

Storytelling

Leave a comment

Those who know me personally say that I’m a good storyteller.  My own head houses, however, my harshest critic.  Since I tend to work alone this creates an inherent conflict.  This is most evident in my fiction.  I finished a draft of my eighth novel earlier this year, but it still needs work.  (No, really it does—not just harsh critic speaking.)  Part of the problem is obviously time.  My morning writing period is frequently held hostage by my moods.  Some of my past novels are, I think, publishable.  I’ve tried repeatedly with one of them, getting as far as having a signed contract, but things collapsed after that.  It sits brooding on my hard drive.  Another—I think it may be number four or five—seems publishable but it requires reworking with magic pixie dust.  Sometimes my supply of it runs low.  (Moods again.)

I sometimes wonder if I read too much nonfiction.  I’m a curious sort of chap, interested in the world around me.  When that world seems to be falling apart, however, fiction is my friend.  I’ve been reading a lot of novels and I’m often struck by the beauty of the prose.  Head critic says, “why can’t you do that?”  Then I recall the writing advice that I picked up from Stephen King’s nonfiction, On Writing.  Adjectives may be bad for your health.  Just tell the story.  With style.  My current novel (eight) tells an interesting story, I think.  If I’m honest I’ll say that I started working on this before any of the other completed novels (except number one, and that was a throwaway).  It was an idea that just wouldn’t go away.  I knew the beginning and the ending, and part of the middle.  I even found a potential publisher, but it has grown too long for them.

About three chapters from the end I realized that I hadn’t tied things up as well as I’d initially thought.  What I need is time away from work to think about it.  Thinking time is rare, even in the time I manage to wrestle from the 9-2-5.  There’s always more to be done, trying to stay healthy and out of the weather.  And really, maybe I should be reading even more fiction.  But what about the “real world” out there, which requires nonfiction to face it boldly and with informed decisions?  It’s dramatic, isn’t it?  Like a protagonist (hardly a hero) on the edge of a cliff.  How does the story end?  Perhaps an actual storyteller might know.

Nanowrimo Night

3 Comments

Nanowrimo, National Novel Writing Month—November—has been run by an organization that is now shutting down.  Financial troubles and, of course, AI (which seems to be involved in many poor choices these days), have led to the decision, according to Publisher’s Weekly.  Apparently several new authors were found by publishers, basing their work on Nanowrimo projects.  I participated one year and had no trouble finishing something, but it was not really publishable.  Still, it’s sad to see this inspiration for other writers calling it quits.  I’m not into politics but when the Nanowrimo executives didn’t take a solid stand against AI “written” novels, purists were rightfully offended.  Writing is the expression of the human experience.  0s and 1s are not humans, no matter how much tech moguls may think they are.  Materialism has spawned some wicked children.

Can AI wordsmith?  Certainly.  Can it think?  No.  And what we need in this world is more thinking, not less.  Is there maybe a hidden reason tech giants have cozied up to the current White House where thinking is undervalued?  Sorry, politics.  We have known for many generations that human brains serve a biological purpose.  We keep claiming animals (most of which have brains) can’t think, but we suppose electrical surges across transistors can?  I watch the birds outside my window, competing, chittering, chasing each other off.  They’re conscious and they can learn.  They have the biological basis to do so.  Being enfleshed entitles them.  Too bad they can’t write it down.

Now I’m the first to admit that consciousness may well exist outside biology.  To tap into it, however, requires the consciousness “plug-in”—aka, a brain.  Would AI “read” novels for the pleasure of it?  Would it understand falling in love, or the fear of a monster prowling the night?  Or the thrill of solving a mystery?  These emotional aspects, which neurologists note are a crucial part of thinking, can’t be replicated without life.  Actually living.  Believe me, I mourn when machines I care for die.  I seriously doubt the feeling is reciprocated.  Materialism has been the reigning paradigm for quite a few decades now, while consciousness remains a quandary.  I’ve read novels that struggle with deep issues of being human.  I fear that we could be fooled with an AI novel where the “writer” is merely borrowing how humans communicate to pretend how it feels.  And I feel a little sad, knowing that Nanowrimo is hanging up the “closed” sign.  But humans, being what they are, will still likely try to complete novels in the month of November.

A Father’s Day

Leave a comment

Some thoughts I hope I’m allowed to share on Father’s Day: I recently saw a review of The Wicker Man that pointed out (rightly) that my treatment of gender was outdated.  Similarly, the (few) readers of Nightmares with the Bible make a not dissimilar observation about my use of Poe’s formulation of women in danger.  I am very much aware that gender studies (which wasn’t even a potential major when I was in college) have done much needed work in clarifying just how complex a phenomenon it is.  I have posted several times on this blog about precisely that.  Still, we all write from a position.  My training is not in horror studies, and it’s not in gender studies.  My writing, despite the price, is intended for non-academic readers, but I too may be between categories here.  I’m trying to escape the academy that has already exiled me, but the framing of my questions is too academic.  I get that.

I also write from the perspective of a man. There’s no denying that I write as a straight, white male.  This is how I experience the world.  And how I experience horror.  Returning to Nightmares, I think my point might’ve been better expressed as noting that writers, directors, producers, and others in the film industry understand that viewers of their particular films may be more moved by a female possession than a male.  Or, in Wicker, that publicly expressed concerns about rape and sexual violence are more commonly expressed by women.  Statements can always be qualified, but that happens at the expense of readability.  There’s no such thing as a free lunch after all.

Academics can’t be blamed for doing what they do.  They critique, poke, and probe.  My books since Holy Horror have been intended as conversation starters.  But they’re conversation starters from the perspective of a man who watches horror and tries to understand why he reacts to it the way he does.  There is an incipient ageism, I fear, that sometimes discounts how people raised to use “man” when referring to mixed or indeterminate genders—taught so earnestly by women who were our teachers—sometimes take our earliest learning for granted.  Those early lessons are often the most difficult to displace.  I try.  Really I do.  I’ve had over six decades looking at the world through a straight man’s eyes.  I welcome comment/conversation from all.  Of course, my intended readership has never been reached, and they, perhaps would have fewer concerns about my view.  Romance (hardly a feminist-friendly genre), after all, is one of the best selling fiction categories, even today.  And many of the writers—generally women—express the gender-expected point of view. That’s a genre, however, outside my (very limited) male gaze.

Parson’s Poe

Leave a comment

Some things just don’t mix: oil and water, cats and dogs, intelligence and Republican policy.  That’s the way of nature.  I don’t have a lot of time to listen to music—unlike some authors, I can’t write with music playing.  I end up paying attention to the music rather than what I’m trying to do.  So the other day when I had the opportunity, I went through our CDs to see what I hadn’t heard for a while.  I’d completely forgotten about the concept album Tales of Mystery and Imagination Edgar Allan Poe by The Alan Parsons Project.  Now, I’m not the biggest fan of Alan Parsons, but some of their songs are among my absolute favorites.  One of them can almost invariably make me tear up and my throat clench.  And I think Ammonia Avenue is one of the great albums of all time.

You’d think their mix of alternative rock would be favorable to Poe.  Poe is extremely personal to me.  I’ve read probing biographies and put them down thinking how much my perspective is similar to that of Poe.  I mention him in my books because he’s my writing companion.  APP just doesn’t get it.  Neither did Lou Reed.  Like Black Francis, I like Lou Reed.  But I like Poe more.  Not even Poe (sorry Anne Decatur Danielewski) comes close.   I have heard rock adaptations of Poe that I do like, so why didn’t Alan Parson, Lou Reed, or Poe (Danielewski) do it for me?  It’s difficult to say.  Music is very personal to me.  It stays in my head for a very long time, so I have to be careful what I let in there.  I don’t write much about music on this blog because I just don’t know you well enough.

I got the Alan Parson’s album long after it was published.  I can’t remember how I found out about it, but I had great hopes for it.  I guess Poe (the man) has a certain sound profile in my head.  It’s likely because, to me, Poe is more than the author of tales I read when I was young.  He is a symbol, coming to represent more than just another writer who struggled and was likely never understood in his lifetime (if ever).  As those who write and attempt publication know, this is a hostile business.  It’s difficult to get published in the traditional way and then it’s difficult to get your work noticed after it’s published.  These days a “like” and a “share” can go a long way (click “like” if you do), but even so my Poe music will be mine alone.

Dream Machine

Leave a comment

I’ve reached the age where, instead of how well you slept, it’s the nature of my dreams that is more reliable projector of productivity.  You see, after a night of bad dreams I often wake up drained, lacking energy.  Entire days can be cast into this state of lassitude.  The only thing for it is to sleep again and reset.  The next day I can wake up after positive dreams, bursting with ideas and creativity.  New ideas come so fast that I can’t get them down in time.  Dreams. 

My entire life I’ve been subject to nightmares (no, it’s not the movies).  I still wake up scared at least once or twice a week.  More positive dreams have been struggling with these nighttime frights, and when they win, I have a better day.  I know, I know.  I should be in regular therapy.  The problem is time.  I see notes in papers and elsewhere of people younger than me dying.  On a daily basis.  The problem is I’ve got so much that I want to accomplish that I don’t have time to locate, pay for, and drive to see a therapist every week.  (The bad dreams come that frequently, so it stands to reason that weekly appointments should be on the script, right?)

The thing is, there’s no predicting these dreams or their timing.  My wife and I live a life of routine.  I awake early (anywhere from 1 a.m. To 4 a.m. these days) and begin writing and reading.  I jog as soon as it’s light and start work when I get back.  The 9-2-5 insists that you answer emails until 5 p.m., which can make for some very long days, depending.  After that we have dinner while watching some show we missed when it first aired, and then I go to bed.  That’s been the pattern ever since we bought this house nearly seven years ago.  Before that, we didn’t always watch things in the evening, but that doesn’t seem to make a difference in the dreams.

So I get up early and write down my thoughts for this blog, work on the books I happen to be scrawling at the moment (both fiction and non) and anxiously watch for sunrise, that ever shifting foundation.  And then work.  Always work.  But how well I work will depend largely on what was in my subconscious mind before I wake.  I have no idea if this is normal.  Knowing myself, it probably isn’t.  But I’ve reached the age where it at least starts to make sense.

Framing

Leave a comment

Have you ever gone into one of those art museums where the frame of a painting is so lavish that you notice it almost more than the art it contains?  It certainly says something about me (or where I shop), that I prefer simple frames.  Those that ideally pick up and emphasize something in the picture.  I recently critiqued a book on this blog because the framing seemed off.  Not a week afterwards I found myself going down an internet rabbit hole (the topic isn’t important) because someone had framed a speech so that it seemed to be reading things one particular way.  With that framing, I watched the speech and was astonished.  Then I sent it to one of my brothers and he pointed out that it could be understood a different way.  At first I was embarrassed and defensive (to myself), but I went back and listened again and realized he was right.  I’d accepted the framing uncritically.

We are incapable of seeing everything.  From the shape of our eyes to the limits on our distance vision, we can only take in so much.  That’s what frames are for.  We put them around paintings, photographs, posters, windows, and mirrors.  The demarcate the limit of something.  This image goes only so far.  Televisions used to do that, although now they seem to take up a wall instead of a framed corner space.  But even so.  Movie screens too.  They provide important context.  We know, looking at that screen, that something limited to that screen will appear.  We know that what’s caught in the picture frame can’t reach beyond it, physically.  (I am excluding some modern art, of course.)  Framing is important.

I am glad for this recent object lesson.  I was letting myself get worked up over something I may have viewed the wrong way because I had been primed to do so.  It involved one of my deepest wishes, so emotion definitely played a part in it.  Critical thinking involves looking at the frame and thinking about it as well as what’s inside.  Those who excel at creating content make you forget the frame is there.  The artist isn’t painting to fill a frame, the frame contains the art.  We all know this on some level, I suspect.  Nevertheless, when someone presents us anything with the interpretation built in, we need to ask ourselves if that interpretation is inherent in the object or is it simply part of the frame.  And if it’s the frame, no matter how fancy, we need to remove it and look from a different angle.

Night Fears

2 Comments

Have you ever had one of those dreams?  The kind where your subconscious turns on you brutally?  I’ve often said I’m my own worst critic but this one took it to a whole new level.  In real life I’m working on novel number eight.  One through seven haven’t been published (and at least two don’t deserve to be).  I’ve kind of been thinking that this one might see the light of day.  I finished a very rough draft about a couple months ago and I’ve been working on revisions since.  Meanwhile I keep reading novels and seeing how well they flow compared to my story.  That must’ve been on my mind because in my dream I was in a room with five or six publishing moguls.  In the way of dreams it seems that perhaps an agent had arranged this.  I was in the room with them and when they finished, each took their turn telling me how awful it was.  Their critique was brutal.  So bad I couldn’t get back to sleep.  I found tears on my cheek.

Of course, my writing time is early morning.  Work is uncompromising.  So I had to get up and work on what my subconscious had just told me was, in the words of Paul, skubalon.  (Look up the commentaries on Philippians 3.8, if you dare.)  Like any writer, I have my doubts about my own work.  This particular novel I’ve been working on, off and on, for almost three decades.  It’s an idea I can’t let go.  Just a couple months back I was proud of myself for finally finishing a draft of it, and this morning I’m tempted to delete all the files.  Why does one’s subconscious do this to a person?  My very first attempt at a novel, as a teen, was torn up by my own hands.

The other dream that has been recurring, in various forms, is where I’ve been hired back by Nashotah House.  I taught there for a decade and a half, and I wasn’t very happy toward the end, but I did my job well.  In real life I wouldn’t go back, but in my dreams I’m always overjoyed.  I wake up happy and optimistic.  Some version of that dream comes to me at least once a year, I suppose.  Sometimes several times.  Dreams are mysterious.  They’re telling us something, but they’re coy about exactly what.  That’s what made last night’s dream so bad.  There was no ambiguity.  This was pure, unadulterated self doubt in the room with me and it gave me no quarter.  I got up and continued work on the revisions anyway.  Who’s afraid of omens?

Horror Time

Leave a comment

In case anyone’s wondering (ha!), I haven’t lost interest in horror.  I’ve been discussing quite a few dark academia movies lately since that’s where I seem to be, but what’s really lost is time.  I’m no great consumer of social media.  I spend literally five minutes on Facebook daily.  Less than that on Bluesky and Twitter.  I don’t have time.  I love watching movies, but they take time.  I often discuss this with family—I’m not sure where the time goes.  In my case it’s not social media.  Much of it—the lion’s share—is work.  When a three-day weekend starts to feel like just enough time to get everything done before starting it all over again, I think there’s an elephant in the room.  If I can just squeeze past your trunk (pardon me) I would note that I spend as much time as I can writing and reading, but even that drains too quickly.

I read a lot.  And I read about writing.  Those who do it best have time to put into their craft.  If they’re working long hours, have a family, and weeds that love all the rain we get around here, they’re better than I am.  Home ownership (if you can’t afford to hire groundskeepers) is itself a full-time occupation.  As is writing.  And, of course, work.  What’s been suffering lately has been my time for watching horror.  Part of that’s money too.  I’m not sure if anybody else has noticed, but prices haven’t exactly gone down since January, and movies aren’t always free.  I have a long list of horror films I want to see (quite a long list), but tide, time, and money wait for no-one.  I even had a four-day weekend not long ago during which I had no time to watch horror.  Horrific, isn’t it?

I’m at a stage of life where the shortness of it all stares me in the face.  I was a late bloomer and my career never really took off.  It ended up taking time and not rewarding that time at the usual exchange rate.  I’m watching friends and family retire and some finding too much time on their hands.  Hey, brother, can you spare an hour?  I think of my farming ancestors where every minute was filled trying to stay alive in a world where leisure time really is a luxury.  I have no right to complain, but I do wonder where the time goes.  I suppose if I didn’t blog I’d have a little more time for horror, but I just can’t face giving up all this fame.

Unverified

Leave a comment

Dear Google Scholar and ResearchGate,

Thank you for listing me as a scholar on your website.  I am pleased that my academic publications interest you.  I am writing to you today, however, about your verification process.  Neither of your sites will verify me since I do not have an email with a .edu domain.  Now, I fully realize that even adjunct instructors are often given a university or college email address.  This is so students and administrators can reach them.  Speaking as a former adjunct instructor at both Rutgers University and Montclair State University, I can verify that such an email address does not verify your scholarship.  It is a means of communication only.  It does not verify anyone (although it may come in handy if you need to contact someone internally).

For large companies with a great deal of resources, I am surprised at your narrow view of both “scholar” and “verification.”  I earned a doctorate at Edinburgh University before email was widely used.  I taught, full-time, for over a decade at a seminary that did not request any .edu emails until well into my years there.  I taught for a full academic year at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.  Had you requested “verification” earlier (pardon me, you may not have existed then), I would have been able to contact you from nashotah.edu, uwosh.edu, rutgers.edu, or montclair.edu.  Your choice.  However, since you only decided to begin your online resources after I had moved into publishing, where the emails end in a .com domain, you were simply too late.  The thing about technology is that it has to keep up.

I hardly blame you.  My doctoral university was opened in 1583, long before today’s giants were twinkles in the eyes of the likes of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.  Scholars used to write these artifacts, called “books” on paper.  They sent them through a service called “the mail” to publishers.  I know all of that has changed.  The fact is, however, that I have published six scholarly books, and several articles.  I am still writing books.  I am simply wondering if you can answer the question of when I became unverifiable because of my email address?  I have a website that details my educational and professional history.  Academia.edu has not asked me to verify myself and my profile there gets a reasonable number of hits.  My question is when are you going to catch up with the times?  Many, many scholars do not work at .edu-domain institutions.  Of course, nobody knows who we are.  Thank you for your kind attention.

Unverified  

Friendly Fear

Leave a comment

I opened my book Holy Horror with an epigraph taken from Apocalypse Now, a movie I recently watched again.  That quote was from Col. Kurtz: “It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror… Horror has a face… and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared.”  I’ve been thinking quite a lot about how you can make any progress in a discussion with anyone who’s already made up his or her mind (i.e., no matter what you say to them they will not take it seriously.  Think your favorite Trump supporter).  People far smarter than I have noted that the only way to combat this unthinking adherence is to get people to think critically.  That may be correct, but to preserve democracy we need a more assured method in the short term.  That of Col. Kurtz.

Apocalypse Now was based on Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness.  Both contain a vital truth—fear motivates people.  Democrats have been forward-looking in recent decades, but Republicans run on that fear playbook and it’s very difficult to defeat.  That’s because people are afraid.  It’s important to face fears, but to win elections, you need to seed them.  I know whereof I speak when it comes to phobias.  I was so riddled with fear as a young person that at times I could not leave the house.  At other times even the house didn’t feel safe to me.  I had multiple phobias and difficulty talking to other people.  I’ve grown out of many of these fears, but if I’m honest, I know they’re still with me.  I suspect many other people are also afraid.

Strong men (even if personally weak) appeal to the afraid.  They want someone who can protect them.  I tend to think Democrats think many Americans are better adjusted than they actually are.  You want their votes?  Make them afraid.  I’ve been writing books on fear and its many cinematic manifestations for several years now.  I grew up being afraid of everything.  I don’t advocate creating fear, but when a nation decides Hitler would be better than letting young people read, it’s reached a crisis point.  I do wish progressive political leaders would consider my humble observations.  When afraid people herd together and become the mob with torches.  And just such a mob became the mindless followers of Col. Kurtz.  Just saying.

Gothic Novelties

Leave a comment

I’m a sucker for a good gothic novel.  Dilapidated houses on the moors, suggestions of ghosts, the kind of encompassing darkness that enfolds you.  Women facing a man’s world just as Victoria took to the throne.  Hints of the supernatural.  So when offered a review copy of Kate Cherrell’s Begotten, I jumped at the chance.  Gothic it is, that I’ll give you that.  Perhaps I’m getting more discriminating in my tastes, but the classics are hard to beat.  I’m particularly fond of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.  Begotten’s not up to that level, of course, but I found the pacing slow and the narrator difficult to sympathize with. It has the kind of ending that sets me off, as I’ve written about before. (No spoilers here!)   Given that I’ve never succeeded in having a novel published (not for not trying), I am impressed.  

Novel writing is difficult.  Let me qualify that—good novel writing is difficult.  It’s more than simply stringing a story out over two-hundred-plus pages.  There are so many things to keep in mind.  That element you introduced on page 50—was it necessary?  Does it show up again in some significant way?  Secondary or tertiary characters that you introduced; will readers wonder about them after they depart the story?  Have you given them too much emphasis and therefore you need to provide them with a proper send off?  Do the characters sound like they fit in the time-frame you’ve chosen into which to set the story?  The history element is crucial for me.  A book set in the early nineties that has characters using the world-wide-web is suspect.  Or in the case of a gothic story, did Victorians express themselves that way?

I’m struggling writing my current novel.  I’ve completed seven others, some of which have hung together better.  A wise man once told me that to write a novel you should write 100,000 words and throw them away.  Or maybe it was 200,000.  Or five.  In any case, I passed that benchmark decades ago.  The novels I think worth publishing are those I’ve gone over a few times, polishing and editing as I go.  Maybe someday they’ll be ready to face the blue pencil, but until then I keep working at them, making them as worthy of a reader’s time as possible.  Not all writers do this kind of intensive revision.  Tales with unreliable narrators are often very hard to pull off convincingly.  But I know what it’s like to have a story living inside you bursting to be spilled on paper.  And if it’s gothic, that can cover a host of sins.

Little Things

Leave a comment

Those on anti-clutter campaigns (whose lives I can’t imagine) claim that we have too much stuff.  That may be true, but when you reach a certain age these realia can serve to remind us where we’ve been.  How we’ve become who we are.  We moved to our house in a whirl.  Neither my wife nor I had enough vacation days to take any time off and we had to move 55+ years of stuff over a weekend.  Lately I’ve been going through some of the boxes of little things you keep.  They were generally mixed in with papers I didn’t have time to file, bits of hardware, and a few things I’m not sure why I kept.  In the archaeology of my life, the layer labeled Nashotah House retains a prominent place.  It took many years before I could look at my little Nashotah House things without being overwhelmed by emotion.  Nearly twenty years on, I hope I’m beginning to get over it.

One of the little things I unearthed was a pepper shaker.  One of my students (now sadly departed) had made a label to express her frustration and humor at trying to learn Hebrew as a mature woman.  I’m probably now the age she was then.  This little artifact has been with me through a great number of momentous changes in my life.  It can still bring a little smile, however.  I see it and I remember Judy giving it to me with a laugh.  I probably shared it with the class.  Even now it has two-decade-old pepper in it.  The declutter experts would say it belongs in the dumpster.  They’re wrong.

Nashotah House was the only job on offer following those intense Edinburgh years.  As all of these things recede further and further into the past, they become more valuable.  No matter how small, these objects played a part in what I remember and rubbed me in a way that influenced my shape.  I don’t know what that final shape will be, but I jealously guard my little things, these boxes of years.  They are points of contact between my life and those of others.  I found many other pieces of myself in these miscellaneous boxes.  I know that someday, all things being equal, this stuff will probably end up in some landfill somewhere, waiting for some future archaeologist wondering what realia we kept back in the years when the world went insane.  And if s/he is really brave, they might even try some of the pepper on their future lunch.

Decide

Leave a comment

Decisions we make when we’re young influence our entire lives.  It’s not that you can’t change course—I’ve seen it happen and it can be a thing of true beauty—but the fact is our young lives become our old lives, if we survive.  I’m now in my sixties.  I reflect a lot about my youth and the fact that I grew up in an uneducated, blue-collar family.  I had no idea what college was, and had not a minister convinced me that I might have the right stuff, I would probably never have gone.  It was foolish in a way.  My family contributed nothing financially—they couldn’t afford to.  I started with optimistic scholarships that eventually became less sanguine and I had to borrow more and more.  Once I’d begun on that path, however, turning back looked to be nothing but disastrous.

Photo by Pablo García Saldaña on Unsplash

The internet allows us glimpses, only glimpses, into the lives of those we knew in our younger years.  Many of my surviving high school friends (and that number decreases every year now) have followed paths to their current situations.  I didn’t know them well, perhaps, but they too seemed set to follow in the courses of their lives.  I really hope they’re happy.  I hate to see anyone sad.  Still, there’s a melancholy captured well by a rabbi, who it is I can’t remember, who once said “You can either be wise or be happy.”  There’s an almost kabbalistic truth nestled in that sentiment, it seems.  Your rudder is small and the ocean is very, very big.  As a penurious boy living in an economically depressed refinery town, I never dreamed I’d have the privilege of living in Edinburgh for three years, with a wonderful wife, no less.  And yet, and yet.

The course of my life is not over yet (I hope).  Every day I make hundreds of decisions but none of them seem as momentous as the ones I made before I had seen much beyond rural western Pennsylvania.  I know this is true of others as well, reacting to the pain and angst of the moment, they turn to whatever gives them comfort.  For me it was books.  And church.  The course of a life.  And in a way that will only make sense of those who knew me in high school (none, or very few of whom ever read this blog), when I do my daily exercises, they always include twenty-two push-ups.  A number that, mystically, corresponds to the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet.  Way stations along a curriculum vita.