World Leader Pretend

The greatest fear of any writer? Being unable to write, of course. And though some have posed that Hemingway’s suicide was because of a loss of faculty, it’s Hemingway himself who wrote late in his life that the process is always there in the conscious mind, that”all you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”

So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written…it was good and severe discipline.

I’ve been thinking a lot, obviously, about the act and process of writing. I’ve been thinking about writing, I must admit, because I haven’t been doing very much of it for months now. I’ve been wondering if I can still write, and if I can, if what I write will be any good. I’ve been wondering if I still have a modicum of talent, if I’m still a writer at all.

Other needs have conspired, so to speak, to silence me. The fact that these needs are costly and destructive have done little to deter them. The fact that they have stalled a book-in-progress shames me, however, and hopefully will be one of the reasons (reasons, plural…it will require much help to get going again) that I will be able to once again call myself a writer. I’m facing a series of walls. But “it’s high time I raze the walls that I’ve constructed…”

*R.E.M., “World Leader Pretend”
1988 Nightgarden Music

meditations from A Moveable Feast

Perhaps it’s common, perhaps it’s not, but I dream a lot of my ex-wife, despite the fact that we shared a volatile relationship which erupted quite frequently into violence both physical and emotional. After all, I’ve now known her for thirty-one years, decades that make it difficult–if not impossible–to banish her entirely from my life.

When I dream, it’s never of the bad times (of which, unfortunately, there were plenty). I dream of the youthful part of us that wanted to build a life together, and how we became parents at a very young age.I dream of houses we built together, of watching them grow over the few months of construction. Most of all, I dream of a house of two small children, their laughter, their joy at learning new things, and above all, their innocence. I dream, I must say, of the father that I used to be.

Although I know it must be true, sometimes I refuse to believe that I am no longer that person, no longer a father who could be counted on, for example to play baseball or basketball right after work. Sometimes I refuse to believe that my two sons have grown and no longer need that kind of father; figuring out the kind of father they do want and need is one of the most important challenges of my life as I know it today.

Perhaps it is only nostalgia, an inability to move on from that part of my life in which I was needed like no other. It’s not, as I know, that simple. But this, as Hemingway wrote, is how it was “in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.” Sometimes I lay awake at night and find myself wishing: if only we were that poor and that young again.

“the last thing that you said as you were leaving…”

The morning I left Pennsylvania, I drove south without looking back. There was no final, bittersweet, last visit to the pub. There was no final walk through the town. There was no final look at the Penn State campus, with people just beginning to realize their dreams. There were no goodbyes; there was no one to say goodbye to. I left the same way I arrived: with a car full of books and clothes, and a mind full of hopes, ideas, ambitions, and dreams. I left with little; I left with the things I came with. I left with the things which can never be taken away.

So now I’m going back again
I got to get to her somehow
All the people we used to know
they’re an illusion to me now
some are mathematicians
some are carpenters wive’s
don’t know how it all got started
I don’t know what they’re doing with their lives
but me I’m still on the road
heading for another joint
we always did feel the same
we just saw it from a different point of view
tangled up in blue*

If you’re busy enough and manage to distract yourself enough, you can convince yourself that you’re not homesick and that you don’t miss the people that you love. At least, not that badly. There’s always a holiday coming up, some time off from work, a long weekend to look forward to. There’s always something to hold onto. But someday, no matter how strong you are, those dates on the calendar are no longer enough. You need to see them more often: the people that you love. And when it comes to children, you cannot help but wonder: do they still love you? I thought about that as I was leaving…and I realized that I just didn’t know.

I can’t remember the last thing you said as you were leaving
and the days go by so fast**

Through Maryland and West Virginia I wondered. As I finally entered Kentucky, I still wondered. I didn’t know if my sons would welcome me back to Lexington, or if they would view my return as another retreat and failure. But this time, I had a story to tell and a book to write, and it wasn’t going to be written in Pennsylvania. I was coming home with a purpose, and that, I hoped, they would understand. If I was to become the writer I always wanted to be, first I had to come home.

Hemingway, in A Moveable Feast, wrote that distance is essential in writing of closely held emotions and experiences: “…in one place you could write about it better than in another. That was called transplanting yourself…and it could be as necessary with people as with other sorts of growing things.”

Substitute emotional distance for geographic distance, though, and you essentially accomplish the same thing. The key for any writer is maturity, perspective, and command of your material. That I have. So it really doesn’t matter if I write in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, or Katmandu. I remember the old question: who, after all, is a writer? One who writes…of course. We make this alchemy seem too complicated sometimes, I think. Words turn into pages turn into chapters into books. It’s not that difficult, is it?

No. It’s really not. And it’s much easier when you can simply drive across town and spend time with the people that you love.

*Bob Dylan, “Tangled Up in Blue” (from the album Blood On The Tracks)

**Counting Crows, “A Long December” (from the album Recovering the Satellites)

emotions in motion

There is no sense, I have come to learn, in writing from the heart unless you are also willing to write from the edge. Semantically, it might well seem that there’s little difference between the two, but the difference is between merely writing honestly and, as Annie Dillard wrote, the willingness and courage to:

…spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place. Something more will arise for later, something better.

I’ve thought often of those words since I bought Dillard’s The Writing Life on April 26, 1992, at the old and dearly missed Woodland Park Bookstore in Lexington (sort of a pack rat like Hemingway, I save everything). Writers, of course, love reading as much about the act of creation as we do the work itself. Writing, by necessity, is lonely work for loners, and it’s something of a comfort to learn how others face the same challenges. It’s a way to not feel so…alone.

But it is also the writer’s solemn duty to control his or her emotions. Tears after writing are good; tears before writing are the quickest means to the god-awful embarrassment of simply writing for therapy as opposed to creating some new and hopefully strange form of art. Keep the former efforts in your personal journal and burn or delete them when you realize how trite they actually are; as for the others, sow them among the world.

Hemingway, it’s said, rewrote the ending of A Farewell To Arms thirty-two times. And yes, there are the manuscripts to prove it (probably with the greatest collection of his manuscripts in the John F. Kennedy library in Boston). He was searching, as we all are, for the greatest emotional control and impact; and of course, he found it, as Frederic Henry leaves the hospital in a daze, Catherine and their baby never to join him in life.

But after I had got them out and shut the door and turned off the light it wasn’t any good. It was like saying good-by to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain…

“stronger at the broken places”

I know that you have endured a great sadness. We all have, of course, and some of us hold up under the sadness better than others. Sometimes we move beyond the sadness; at other times we wear it like a shroud. Sometimes the sadness is all that we have left.

“The world breaks everyone,” Hemingway wrote, “and afterwards many are stronger at the broken places.” If he had ended there, one would be able to take encouragement and solace–and even strength–from his words. But no, he went further: “But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good, and the very gentle, and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.”

Surprisingly, he wrote this in a letter at age twenty-six to his early literary mentor, Sherwood Anderson. Hemingway, it seems, was fatalistic from a very early age.

He would soon embarrass Anderson, of course, in the savage parody The Torrents Of Spring. The book is largely unreadable, but Hemingway wanted it that way: he and Anderson shared a publisher, whom he wanted to reject the novel so that he could sign with Charles Scribner and Sons. And that’s exactly what happened, although the experience says more about Hemingway’s tendency to “outgrow” and attack his mentors (including Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein) than it does about his literary ambitions.

But, somehow, I digress.

Sadness is a weight, of course, that most people never see. Sometimes we are able to move past it; sometimes it stays with us for an entire lifetime. Sometimes it even…defines us. But that, of course, is something we must try to avoid. It’s a fight, a daily struggle, and at times there is no clear winner. But if you are lucky, very, very, lucky, you just might become stronger at the places which are broken.

the writing life

Writers, it seems, sometimes like to read about the act of writing as much as we enjoy the alchemy itself. The image of a young Hemingway in Paris is part of my consciousness; many, many years ago, A Moveable Feast became my standard of how a writer should work and live.

It was a pleasant cafe, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old waterproof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat above the bench and ordered a cafe au lait. The waiter brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write…

We know now that the mere act of sharpening pencils was part of Hemingway’s process for writing, a means to put himself in the right frame of mind for creating stories from memory and imagination. We each…procrastinate…a little before losing ourselves in the solitary and frequently frustrating act of writing. What writers don’t ordinarily admit, however, is that part of the delay is based on fear: fear that the writing won’t go well, that the feelings and stories we wish to express will evaporate before our eyes, that we lack the talent or vision to express what we secretly feel. Writing is a brave act, much more than what Fitzgerald wrote about “swimming underwater and holding your breath.” It’s an act of faith and hope and dreams, of laying your soul bare before the world. It’s a tightrope act, walking a wire without a net and never knowing if you’ll keep your balance or fall (and fail) in the attempt. It requires more than a little courage, not to mention the unshakable belief that the writer’s vision and belief is truly worth exploring. It’s not self-aggrandizement or justification;  it’s the eternal hope to make the reader feel, to touch someone’s heart and inspire that little glimmer of self-recognition in the stories we tell.

Annie Dillard, also, wrote eloquently of the process in her book The Writing Life:

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time.

So, hold nothing back, then.  Something else, Dillard writes, will occur to you later. It always does, in one form or another. To be able to write it well, though, requires a form of concentration, talent, and a sense of hope and wonder that most persons do not possess. I make no claims to the talent part. But I have never, ever, given up this thing we refer to as hope.

lectio divina

The first time I saw a hummingbird, I was in church. Not in the sanctuary, actually, but upstairs in the annex at Sunday School. The morning was bright, lovely, and warm, and the hummingbird flitted just outside the open window. I was too young then to think of it as some kind of sign, but something stirred in my heart that I had never felt before. I learned something about beauty, then, and fragility, and the importance of keeping your eyes, mind, and heart open to all possibilities.

Those qualities are important, too, in the lifelong discipline of learning that we all share. I try very hard to keep my heart open whenever I learn by reading, which is why I’m not ashamed to admit that I often hurry to my computer, intent on notating a section of lovely prose or a lesson I’ve just learned. I’m not ashamed to admit that reading makes me feel excited and alive. Sometimes I read aloud just to hear the beauty of the words or to understand what I’ve just experienced; sometimes I laugh, and sometimes I even cry.

There’s a name for this sort of intense, fully immersed reading: lectio divina (spiritual reading). All reading is spiritual to me, because a book–if it’s any good–enters directly into the human heart. And there it remains, if you’re fortunate enough, to form the essence of the person you are continually becoming: the person you are destined to be.

Sometimes friends ask me how many books I’ve actually read. Truly, I’m not really sure: seven thousand? Ten thousand? I do know that at it’s peak, my library contained over 1,500 books. Many, far too many, are now gone in the chaos of the last two years. I probably have only a hundred or so with me now in Pennsylvania, but the good news is that I’m once again acquiring these treasures at a rate commensurate with my usual pace. Which means, of course, that I’m investing again: not only in books, but in my lifelong education. Little wonder, then, that I often refer to myself as an autodidact…self-taught. I’ve read less than some, more than some. But what I’ve read stays with me, affects me, shapes me. I feel every book I’ve ever read, no matter how long ago it was (some, of course, more than others). And these books, as Wendell Berry wrote, converse with each other as much as they converse with me. There’s an alchemy going on here inside my heart, filled with Robert Jordan and Jake Barnes and Brett Ashley and Daisy Buchanan and more characters than I possibly have space to name. They whisper to one another; they whisper to me. Soon others will join them, and the conversation will take on even more dimensions. In the meantime, I will keep reading. In the meantime, I will keep learning. I will never, ever, stop learning…

my heart is borne to melancholia…

On his solo album Mercury Falling, Sting writes that “everyone has to leave the darkness sometime.” For artists and intellectuals, however, the darkness is often where true brilliance and insight reside. Melancholia, it has long been known (and politely termed), is frequently the place from which creativity and originality flows. It doesn’t make it easy to live with, but it does offer some measure of hope and comfort to those of us who live with what modern medicine terms  ”depression.”

There is just something about looking inward–a must for any writer or artist–that makes us particularly prone to melancholia.

my cup is cold, my paper’s old
my heart is sold to melancholia
my clothes are torn, my shoes are worn
my heart is borne to melancholia*

Now this doesn’t mean, of course, that creative and intellectual persons are unable to laugh, feel joy, or any other of the positive emotions which enrich the human experience. But the beauty we see in this world literally takes our breath away–a sparkling, clear blue autumn sky, the stars on a dark winter night, leaves dappled in soft light, the smile on a small child’s face. These things make us smile; they make us happy. But along with that we also live with these constant reminders of the fragility and fleeting nature of God’s world; we live with this knowledge and the resulting melancholia.

Thankfully, this  ability to appreciate the beauty all around us is also sufficient inspiration to share what we see, feel, and experience with others. Sometimes it’s simply sharing…but in those rare moments we all long for, it becomes art.

So this weekend I will pack up my computer and head out to the bookstore or the coffee shop–my version of Hemingway sitting in a Paris cafe with his Moleskine journals and a freshly sharpened pencil. I will think, feel, and write…and I will gladly live with this thing called melancholia.

Pete Townshend, “Melancholia,” copyright Towser Tunes

“raining in baltimore”

Then there was the late afternoon after work when I leaned out my third floor apartment window and watched Renee Zellwegger (who truly is beautiful up close) film scenes from her upcoming movie, My One And Only: otherwise, Baltimore scared the freakin’ shit out of me.

It wasn’t supposed to be that way; having spent considerable time in New York (where I felt very safe, even as a visitor), I assumed that the nation’s 18th largest metro area would have its own considerable charm and bustle (after all, they do call Baltimore, perhaps sarcastically, “Charm City”). I imagined crowded sidewalks day and night, well-dressed and beautiful people, the coolest clubs and best restaurants, and more cultural opportunities than I could possibly fit into my schedule. Instead, I found mentally ill and homeless folks talking to ghosts on West Baltimore Street, clouds of stinking steam on Fayette Street, and a city that turned into a ghost town once the commuters lit out for the ‘burbs at five o’clock sharp. Don’t get me wrong: there are a lot of things to like about Baltimore (architecture, some good people making a life in the city proper, a sense of tolerance, some great restaurants and pubs).  But the fact remains that you can live in a good neighborhood and walk a single block away and find yourself in a war zone, dodging heroin and crack dealers who ask, unsolicited, “You ready?” (ready somehow being slang for crack cocaine).

Yeah, I did a little wandering (and biking) around–even late at night. I thought I would get to know Baltimore, both good and bad, and write about it as writers have always written about the city in which they live (see Hemingway, A Moveable Feast). I had waited a long time to live in a city, and I intended to make the most of my time. After all, Scott Fitzgerald once lived there. He didn’t write about being scared of Baltimore.

I was lucky. I had a great (and rather expensive) apartment only four blocks or so from Camden Yards (I could see the ballpark if I leaned out my west-facing windows and looked south). I could walk or bike the eight blocks or so to work on Calvert Street. The Inner Harbor was only a few moments away. Federal Hill, across the harbor, was an easy bike ride away and worth it for the view of the city. It should have been, by all rights, wonderful.

But for starters, I was lonely. Very lonely. And aside from the opportunists and wrong sort of people (who, you know, the ones who wanted to sell me something…and I wasn‘t buying), there didn’t seem to be anyone to talk with.  Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever been more lonely in my life. I was so very naïve: I imagined that I would first fall in love with the city, and then meet someone and really fall in love. The problem was that there didn’t seem to be anyone to fall in love with–and if so, they lived in the ‘burbs and I lived in the city without a car (having totaled my leased Eclipse convertible falling asleep at the wheel in Lexington a few months before I moved).

So, the great Baltimore experiment ended too soon, and ended badly. I became seriously ill, and with my last bit of strength booked a flight to Lex, hauled myself and a single suitcase to the train, and somehow made it to the airport. Even now, I’m not really sure how I managed to change planes in Charlotte, but I’ll always remember the final descent into Lexington, the tears upon seeing the familiar horse farms and knowing that my boys were now only a few miles away. I knew that I had a lot of work to do…but I also knew, for a while at least, that I was coming home.

Then there was the late afternoon after work when I leaned out my third floor apartment window and watched Renee Zellwegger (who truly is beautiful up close) film scenes from her upcoming movie, My One And Only: otherwise, Baltimore scared the freakin’ shit out of me.

It wasn’t supposed to be that way; having spent considerable time in New York (where I felt very safe, even as a visitor), I assumed that the nation’s 18th largest metro area would have its own considerable charm and bustle (after all, they do call Baltimore, perhaps sarcastically, “Charm City”). I imagined crowded sidewalks day and night, well-dressed and beautiful people, the coolest clubs and best restaurants, and more cultural opportunities than I could possibly fit into my schedule. Instead, I found mentally ill and homeless folks talking to ghosts on West Baltimore Street, clouds of stinking steam on Fayette Street, and a city that turned into a ghost town once the commuters lit out for the ‘burbs at five o’clock sharp. Don’t get me wrong: there are a lot of things to like about Baltimore (architecture, some good people making a life in the city proper, a sense of tolerance, diversity, some great restaurants and pubs).  But the fact remains that you can live in a good neighborhood and walk a single block away and find yourself in a war zone, dodging heroin and crack dealers who ask, unsolicited, “You ready?” (ready somehow being slang for crack cocaine).

Yeah, I did a little wandering (and biking) around–even late at night. After all, I never sleep. I thought I would get to know Baltimore, both good and bad, and write about it as writers have always written about the city in which they live (see Hemingway, A Moveable Feast). I had waited a long time to live in a city, and I intended to make the most of my time. After all, Scott Fitzgerald once lived there, and not that far from my apartment. He didn’t write about being scared of Baltimore.

This circus is falling down on its knees
The big top is crumbling down
Its raining in Baltimore fifty miles east
Where you should be, no ones around

I was lucky. I had a great (and rather expensive) apartment only four blocks or so from Camden Yards (I could see the ballpark if I leaned out my west-facing windows and looked south). I could walk or bike the eight blocks or so to work on Calvert Street. The Inner Harbor was only a few moments away. Federal Hill, across the harbor, was an easy bike ride away and worth it for the view of the city. It should have been, by all rights, wonderful.

But for starters, I was lonely. Very lonely. And aside from the opportunists and wrong sort of people (who, you know, only wanted to sell me something…and I wasn‘t buying), there didn’t seem to be anyone to talk with.  Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever been more lonely in my life. I was so very naïve: I imagined that I would first fall in love with the city, and then meet someone and really fall in love. The problem was that there didn’t seem to be anyone to fall in love with–and if so, they lived in the ‘burbs and I lived in the city without a car (having totaled my leased Eclipse convertible by falling asleep at the wheel in Lexington a few months before I moved).

There’s things I remember and things I forget
I miss you; I guess that I should
Three thousand five hundred miles away
But what would you change if you could?

So, the great Baltimore experiment ended too soon, and ended badly. I became seriously ill, and with my last bit of strength booked a flight to Lex, hauled myself and a single suitcase to the train, and somehow made it to the airport. Even now, I’m not really sure how I managed to change planes in Charlotte, but I’ll always remember the final descent into Lexington, the tears upon seeing the familiar horse farms and knowing that my boys were now only a few miles away. I knew that I had a lot of work to do…but I also knew, for a little while at least, that I was coming home.

a sort of homecoming

Aaron and I raided the bookstores yesterday morning in Lexington, and had, I think, a nice time (at least I think he had a nice time). He bought some German textbooks and dictionaries at Barnes and Noble (just think, I was the one originally studying German because of my fascination with Rilke) and that evil bookstore across the way at Hamburg; I picked up U2′s new No Line On The Horizon (and yes, Lanois and Eno still have the good mojo as producers) and a first edition of Kenneth Lynn’s Hemingway biography. Supposed to hook up with Adam, too, but it didn’t work out this time. I miss them both in a way that no one who isn’t a parent could ever understand; my eyes still tear up thinking about it.

U2 No Line On The Horizon

I’m hoping for good news from Pennsylvania this week that will mean I’m close to getting my career back on track. I either get the invite to fly up or find myself out of the running; not difficult to figure out which one I prefer. The position would be in State College: I have visions of cool bookstores and cafes, restaurants and shops. College town. I like college towns. 

The U2 album is rather strong, although I don’t believe it has the joy and the surprise of the “back to basics” approach of All That You Can’t Leave Behind. I especially seem to like the title track (which is basically irresistable), “Unknown Caller,” (reminds me of something from side two of War…and yeah, I’m thinking of vinyl) and “Magnificent.”

Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love can heal such a scar

And browsing around just now, I found out that Dylan has a new album coming out in April. The man is amazing in every possible way: historically, melodically, lyrically, musically. What’s that old saying, slightly twisted for the occasion? If we didn’t have Bob Dylan, we’d have to invent him (so God bless Jack Frost–and if you don’t know who Jack Frost is, you got no biz reading this blog). But we do have Dylan, or should I say, he’s the one who has us. And something tells me he likes it just the way it is.