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Tuesday About "the craftsman’s code" I know today is pivotal; I know I shouldn’t think about how today is pivotal. I understand how, if I lose today, I end-up losing the whole week because of all that crowds the calendar for the next few days. I feel the pressure. Tons of trivial matters crowd my mind; I know I shouldn’t pay attention to any of them: who cares that Moose needs puppy-pads when he comes back inside? Not even Moose himself really cares; he’ll piss in the usual spots whether or not there’s a pad there for him. Keats understood. Although probably only Keats himself really understood what he was talking about, he nevertheless was right: the best writing depends of "negative capability"—the ability to make nothing of yourself so that you may become the story’s instrument. I repeat this doctrine often enough that I probably can convince other people I believe it; I do believe it, too. It’s just the process that eludes everybody. How, on a rainy Tuesday morning just a couple of days before Epiphany, does a guy just let go of all the things required to sustain life, so that he can become the finely tuned instrument a compelling story will pluck, strum, make scream and wail? After idling myself with cleaning-up the office from Kelly’s art-binge, I realize—static-electric epiphany, not the big lightning strike epiphany that takes-down the whole power grid, but the little insight that sparks some new initiative—there is a principle at stake here. Duh. Like there wasn’t always some principle at stake. Yes, today is pivotal, but I was too hard on and too oblivious to my own self during the early days of The Halcyon: I was doing my best work, because I matched my natural rhythms to my work, and I produced as body and time empowered—I don’t like that word, because it gets beten to death by political activists who have no idea about power beyond money and political juice; but that’s what was happening during my first Halcyon days. The correspondence of work and personal rhythm empowered some of my greatest accomplishments ever, and when I focused purely on the work, I felt not only my father’s spirit encouraging me but also my own authenticity—I felt I knew and liked myself in the work. If I stayed up until the sun rose, and then slept until afternoon waxed over the hills, fine, because the work stood as testimony to the wisdom of my choice and action. So, why relent and acquiesce in the standard "business" day when neither I nor my business complies with the standard? Who’s keeping score or surveilling my moves with that kind of attention? If my days start at noon, who’s to say I am irresponsible? My world seems more like a cable network with twenty-four hours of "storyhole." The work is my guage and barometer: is the work getting done, and am I doing the work well in the way it deserves—in the way it commands? Remember basic psycho-analysis: we measure or infer your health, your "functionality" by your capacities for work and love, the world’s two meaningful enterprises. I’m a lot better at both when I run on my natural clock, and I have a lot more oomph behind my "meaning it" when I’m not submitting to clock-driven insurgents—even including those who insist simply "be here…now!" I’ll be here when I get here, and I’ll probably stay for a long time; I pretty much guarantee that it’ll be "quality time," too. Wednesday morning More about the code, but really more about keeping it real Has anybody beside me noticed that I am making myself absolutely insane with the pressure I’m putting on myself? Has anybody noticed that I’m obsessing with a whole bunch of things that hardly matter at all? Has anybody else noticed that I struggle to control a whole bunch of little things because the big things seem so far beyond my control? The tiny things with which I obsess have little or nothing to do with my real capacity for love and work; why do I bother? Why should I bother. I exhast myself with trivia, and the writing languishes, the farmwork goes to hell, and my heart atrophies. What a waste! I more-than-suspect it’s all a complicated, sophisticated technique for distracting myself from my loneliness and "imprisonment"—a technique probably almost as old as I am. Alphabets and baseball hats and recipes really don’t have very much to do with my development of "Pearls"; whether or not I over-season the gravy is not going to determine whether or not The New Yorker will think my story has the right appeal and sophistication for their well-educated, upscale readers. The Cal hat and the Cubs hat do not determine the "literary" values of my prose; even if I could convince myself that a hat really influences my self-esteem, self-respect, and sense of competence and capacity, I still couldn’t really stretch it to include my verb choices and turns of phrase. I should know better. I do know better. I am better, but no one would notice the "better" from my choices and behavior. Pah-fuckin’-thetic. Meanwhile, the loneliness festers as I continue serving what seems like a life-term for crimes I never committed; my only "crime" was a desire to help, an instinct to rescue. Now, and for the last several years, I have lived in a loveless place, filled with lots of obligations and responsibilities, and completely devoid of love, care, reciprocity, genuine consideration; completely devoid of compassion or affection. Here I am in this place, fully equipped with my heart that was built for tremednous love, compassion, care, and affection; here I am in this place with this whole system that’s built for sensitivity, deep intuition, profound insight, powerful expression—you know, all that stuff that we sum-up in the word "passion." And here I am in this place where nothing and no one values what I really have to offer. Every minute comes encumbered with something challenging to accomplish, something valuable to do; but no minute comes with any measure of love. No wonder I wear myself out: Where’s the re-charge? Where’s the real incentive? On the one hand, I perfectly underdtand that each task comes with its own immanent standards; on the other had, I feel that working up to the work’s standard just simply for the love of the work…well, I don’t know if it’s really possible. The craftsman’s code implies a closed system, leaving no place for the passion; but it’s actually the passion that drives the guy into the work, sustaining him, pushing him for more and better—and, yes, girls, I apologize, because "him" and "his" really does mean both men and women. Even though I absolutely believe that men and women experience these pains and passions in totally different ways, nevertheless I believe the themes and experiences are exactly the same on some funda mental level. With all due respect, gender issues are not today’s concern—everybody is supposed to know that I loathe other men and revere women; my hard-core feminism is supposed to be above suspicion and beyond reproach. If I make it my fault, then I imagine I can cope with it. If I really challenged the suspects to stand-up and take responsibility for all they have not done, they’d just shrug and go right along with their usual vacuuous self-absorbtion. "What? You talkin’ ta me, man? I didn’t do anything? What did I do?" And that’s the point: they didn’t do a goddam thing, but how many people are insightful enough to recognize that doing nothing is only a half-degree away from choosing wrong? If it ain’t afirmative; if it ain’t active and ethical, it ain’t shit. And if it ain’t passionate, loving, and fun, then what the hell good is it? But for these trailer-trahers, the good stuff translates to "way too fuckin’ much work"—not the possibility of joy and satisfaction, but simply "way too fuckin’ much work." Imagining that I am responsible for all of it brings the usual power and magnetism of any neurotic little quirk: rational, objective analysis would reveal—in about a split-second, it would reveal—that I take responsibility for about a gazillion things that have little or nthing to do with me, taking the blame or the fault or the initiative just because the losers and bastards all around me don’t have the right stuff to do it, and if I don’t do it, no one will, and the result will be despicable, shameful, reprehensible, and just plain wrong. It ranges all the way from the jelly spot and pee-puddle on the ktichen floor to the completion of the Shakespeare project and significant progress on my own novel and the Bookbuilders’ stories. These people are absolutely indifferent to failure, degradation, dishonor, and shame; they have neither personal honor nor conscience; they hav neither ambition nor their own initiative, and they will continue to suck mine dry as long as I allow it. Rational, objective analysis is gonna reveal really damn quickly that I collude in my own oppression; it’s a little game we play for the sake of surviving another day—laying the foundation for each day on the same miserable plan and frame as the day that came before. I think they’re gonna catch the contagion of my talent and initiative and honor; instead, I catch the viral nastiness of their indifference. I should know better. I do know better. I am better, but what do I do about it? Pah-fuckin’-thetic. I’m the one who talks all about being blessed with the opportunity of "the great do-over"; it ain’t no lie. BUT I haven’t… Well, I haven’t summoned the courage to read the writing on the wall. I haven’t grown the juevos to take action. I have reverted to my oldest and favorite habit, numbing myself to the pain instead of experiencing it completely and letting it goad me into doing something about it. I haven’t seen that exploitation of all my good qualities proves I really have them. Setting them in service of others just begins to suggest what I could accomplish if I set my good qualities in service of myself and my art. I haven’t risked the change of heart that would trigger the change of mind that together would make the change of life. It’s gotta happen. It’s gotta happen now. Post a comment in response: |
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