Random Notebook #10

 Wait patiently for this week to end up ruining and uprooting my world and turning everything into a misery beyond understanding.  But I will pray things work out this week with prayer and meditation.  Of course I will try my best to keep my writing to a maximum even if it’s just to keep the hand moving—and the reading, too, for God knows where life or death will take me, and whether or not there will be a desk and a library there.  In all of this there’s a mystery.  The mystery of the books I have not read yet—the mystery of all those empty notebooks clamoring to be filled with the ink of my mind and soul.  How deserted will they feel by the end of this week, by next month, by next year?  But God knows that despite my manly slips into sin, I try to turn the other cheek, to be meek and humble, to recognize at the moment the path to follow that is based in the faith that, deep inside, like Ann Frank said, people are good.  Could say the word forgiveness and mean it.  I know I have the power to stay away from this horrific darkness that blurs my way.  So, here I am about to finish another notebook.  I think I have finally learned what it means to be a writer, to embody that Kafka quote.  It took me years to unlearn the laziness and lack of discipline but once one finds one’s self on the other side of that border, one is surely never to go back to where one once was.  Writing is not dissimilar to meditation; one examines how one’s brain empties through the nib of the pen striking the page, as one would empty one’s mind and spirit through the act of breathing.  And like in meditation, there are a great number of hindrances that can take one’s mind somewhere else—God keeps us in the here and now, in eternal life.

Random Notebook #9: Transitionals, part 002

I’ve had the strange sensation that despite the fact that I have thrown away a magnificent amount of time, the fact remains that I have also done a great deal of work; all of this, despite the fact that there are other things that beg for my attention.  I’ve been lucky, more than lucky, to understand the same rigmarole of the days that go in and out of my life.  I know that the feeling that my end is near is just that, a feeling.  There are times, however, when I see all of it quite clear in my mind, and I can’t get over the fact that life is good aside from all this.  I don’t know what mechanisms are at work in my mind when I ultimately believe it may all end soon, but factors that led me to where I am today I understand all too clearly.  And if all of this leads me to lose myself by creating these fictions, these stories, these plots that go nowhere, then at least I am keeping alive by means of those words of my imagination.  Like, for example, how did I predict these events on that plot I came up with in 1995-1996 but never followed through?  I wish I had had more insight, more vision to pursue that plot when I originally struck the vein.  No crying over spilt milk, really.  What I will do now is continue to think about those men on that isolated post and their questioning (not challenging) of their leadership.  What good would a post like that do?  So far from the rear, clearly out of artillery range, impossible, even at times, to call in air support?  What good, really, is the sitting around, going out on patrol, taking the casualties they did?  What good are the replacements straight out of boot camp?  One hundred years from now, when all of us are gone, who would remember this post, these hills, and these fighting holes we dug?  Fifty years from now, when whatever we leave behind rusts to deformity, and all that is left are the faint scars we carved upon the earth itself, who would really care about what we did here?  What consolation is it to the men that died, to their families?  Certainly, this is a mission, and the mission is more important than any of our opinions, or worse, our own feelings and lives.  I would like to believe that there are things more important than the mission, but the idealism that goes behind believing what our superiors say to us leads me to believe that all of that is obligatory rhetoric, a form of appeasement.  I believe it infinitely more believable and productive to listen to the rest of the men when they speak genuinely, that meaning when their words are the meaning they all hold close to their hearts.  Ironically, it is these young “boots” opinions that one must listen to the most.  Coming back from patrol, whether or not we had made contact with the enemy, the look on the faces of these young “boots” makes it clear to us, men who have been out here for the better part of a year, that this post is madness, that the patrols are simply nothing short of suicide runs, and that the only reason why are here is because this relentless enemy doesn’t fear us, but rather seems to find meaning in simply toying with us.  Imagine if the enemy, in their clear capacity to overrun this post, wiped us out of the map completely?  They couldn’t possibly do that, could they?  In reality, they could.  Conceptually, for the enemy to overrun and take over this stupid hill would be to simply invalidate the meaning of their so-called jihad.  One comes to a very awkward realization—the Taliban needs us here more than our own high command does.  But these are things one writes down and speaks not of.  This was something we all secretly agreed upon, and woe be unto the man who broke this silence.  “Keep it bottled up, Jack… no real need to talk about it.”  Deep inside the absurdity of the mission became a joke we all enjoyed, perhaps sadistically (especially when we take wounded and they die in route to the rear).  I know I wasn’t far off the mark when we captured a man walking barefoot and half naked on ____ valley one fine afternoon in the month of October (description here).  ×  And this was only 30 minutes.  I wanted to write for a longer time but the lack of focus was terrible. 

Random Notebook #7: Heaven or Hell, You Decide

Not much to write today, other than I ran some errands and got a copy of “Camus at Combat.”  It wasn’t so much an impulse buying, since I considered for nearly an hour.  What is beginning to appeal to me at the present seems to be the sort of “Journals of…” or “The Collected Letters of…”  The reason behind this is, of course, the way I am ruminating on this journal, as if I had the interesting life of these accomplished people.  All I have done, really, is lose things—that’s what I am good at.  A cover of a magazine also got my attention this week, and I ended up (again, not on impulse) buying this magazine right off the rack.  The cover story is “First Love, First Loss: How Early Experience Shapes You.”  When I think of this, I think of that first couple of times, interestingly enough, how many of those experiences over so many years have been with people whose name began with the letter M.  Perhaps it is a coincidence, or the manifest of some undercurrent in my mind.  With this I mean something deploy embedded in my mind.  But I haven’t read the magazine article and I am already speculating on idiotic premises.  Crazy things happen for a reason—I remember how, while helping my sister clean a Catholic church back home, I sort of fell in love with the face of the Virgin Mary in one of the statues in the backroom where my sister took her lunch.  Why was this wonderful and beautiful statue in the backroom, I will never know.  Years later, while reading “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” by James Joyce, I would return to those moments when I stood mesmerized by the statue’s beautiful face.  Of course I am no Stephen Dedalus, and my fixation was not as terrible as his, but it is a wonder every time we discover that experiences we consider our very own (especially when they are this distorted), end up being as universal as birth and dead and taxes.  And then we don’t feel so special.  Then, the only thing we can do is to feel the sadness at our lack of originality, but soon we feel kinship with the so many others that are still with us, or came before us.  I know this is overly complex; I could simply say that every time this has happened it has simply been a coincidence.  Of course, one also begins to think of human existence in general—that is to say, when we read about the Romans and how they lived so many thousands of years ago, and how they all died, one begins to doubt.  Where do all of those souls go?  How many are in heaven and how many are in hell?  But those dichotomies do not answer even the most fundamental of all questions—could it actually be that the end is the end, and not one thing or the other?  For if we, by faith, stipulate the direction our souls take then who is to say that perhaps a person has decided not to stick to the dichotomy of the one or the other?  For example, a man who lives a life of extreme sexual lust might want to direct his soul in a way where he ends up living eternity in a personal harem with endless women of infinite variety, per secula seculorum.  Another example is the person who wants more than anything to encounter his family in the afterlife.  Couldn’t he or she determine in some way, out of sheer desire?  I suppose that that specific desire (of reuniting with family members for eternity) might not be of much interest today.  I say that humorously, of course, and I could keep an interminable line of examples, each as unique as that who desires it, but perhaps I have already proven my point at least partially.  And I mean partially because who really knows where we go?

Nobel Prize for Literature - 2016 - Another Miscarriage of Judgment

I have nothing against Bob Dylan. His music has changed the world in ways that politicians and other "influencers" can only dream of. What I do have an issue with is the fact that the Nobel committee keeps compounding their incompetence and overlooking authors of incredible caliber. It seems as if they were doing this on purpose, as if their main goal was to draw from pool of candidates based on the candidates' political weight. I have said here before that the Nobel Prize for Literature has turned into nothing more than a colossal joke, a geo-political, feel-good exercise that ends up not fulfilling its duty, but rather presenting the public with a thin-veiled facade of politically-correct shams... year after year. Bob Dylan is a genius. His music changed an entire generation into seeing what was possible, a world with more progressive and accepting ideas. His songs challenged the orthodoxy and the establishment when it was dangerous to do so. Little by little, people listened and acted... today's world is the result of not only Dylan's music but hundreds and thousands who stood up and really changed the world (a phrase that is thrown around today without reserve). I could list writers whom I believe are more deserving, but I am getting tired of doing this every year. Eventually, when writers like Philip Roth (among many others) pass away, we will collectively regret this geo-political, feel-good sham. Hopefully, the Nobel Prize committee will see the light, but I highly doubt it.

James Salter & The Case for Literature

This is the essay from "Writers on Writing" that prompted my diatribe about the end of literature: James Salter's "Once Upon a Time, Literature. Now What?" Here's a nice passage:

We know that what is called popular culture has over-whelmed high culture with consequences not yet fully realized. Pop culture's patrons, youth and a large number of those who were formerly young, have rewarded it with immense riches, advancing it further.... Are we witnessing a mere collapse of taste or the actual genesis of a new myth worthy of replacing the outdated Trojan War or of standing beside it? As with the glorious stock boom, age-old standards of value are henceforth cast aside.

I think Salter is right on target here when he writes about the supplanting of the one for the other. There was a clip on television once of a young man (obviously a great fan) just coming out of a theater after watching the latest Star Wars installment. He was screaming at the top of his lungs that George Lucas was a god and that Star Wars was the greatest story ever told. I was deeply disturbed. No doubt the young man was a fanatic, but some thing else seems to be out of sync here. Has anyone ever heard of the genealogy of myth? I think it was Joseph Campbell who first coined the idea that all great stories are geologically based on previous ones; especially those stories based on the struggle of good versus evil. Star Wars inarguably has its roots in many previous stories, the legend of King Arthur being the most obvious one (Excalibur i.e. light saber, etc.). So I think that this is what this generation is losing. They take everything at face-value and bother little with what came before. Perhaps I am sounding like an old-bite, but when I was a teenager things had substance; all things seemed to evolved from the root of art, poetry, music, literature, history, philosophy. In fact, there wasn't a good story in secondary school that we didn't compare to our Greek Mythology class. We are, above all, losing this type of critical thinking and drawing connections between things. And the Luddite in me keeps wanting to come out... "it's the technology, stupid!"

The Case for Literature

I feel bad that I haven't posted anything in the last few days. I am flooded with work, and I suspect I will be for another week or so. What I have been reading lately concerns most of all writing, but some of the essays have gone into great detail about the state of literature today. I guess I am also concerned about the future of literature because I am a teacher, but the primary reason also deals with the way things are today. From various sources I have come to realize that literature is in trouble; that entertainment is not what it used to be. I don't want to paint an apocalyptic future for literature but it is a fact that people are reading less today than they did, say, fifty years ago. Perhaps it has to deal with television, but maybe that is the same thing people said with the advent of films. The contradiction, it seems, is the proliferation of mega-bookstores all over the United States. I wonder how Borders and Barnes & Noble stay in business when so few people are actually reading. It isn't a surprise, however, that the DVD/Music section of Barnes & Noble is larger than the literary fiction section is. It doesn't make me mad, it rather makes me feel depressed at the loss of such a beautiful art.

Ever wonder where the never-ending stream of technology will lead? Is anyone paying attention to the fact that culture is rapidly evolving due to the flood of tech-toys? Doesn't it seem like these companies are coming out with a new cellphone weekly? It does. The more we accessorize the less we are prone to leisure activities and leisure time (the very thing tech companies swear we'll have if we use their product). I don't know... I don't know what the answer is. It is really all very confusing. Every little thing seems to demand so much time, so much effort that by the time we get around to a book we are extremely exhausted and unable to concentrate. And children today for the most part do not seem to care, or are totally unaware of where we are heading. As a teacher this hurts me, but as long as I have one caring soul in my class I will make some endeavour. The current situation is this: this generation of teens are not into reading and society and big business are not doing anything to alleviate that; all they care is for their bottom line. Will literature die with our generation? I am sure others have questioned that, but they never did so under the threat we are facing.

Nostalgia...

This is a debate that has been brewing in my classes for a long time. What is nostalgia? How can we describe the feeling of longing-yet-happy-bittersweet emotions? Manguel's book defines the term for us once and for all. It is fascinating how one comes across information like this by just opening a book. Here's the most concrete definition of nostalgia I have read up-to-date:

"The word 'nostalgia' was invented on June 22, 1688, by Johannes Hofer, an Alsatian medical student, by combining the word nostos (return) with the word algos (pain) in his medical thesis, "Dissertatio medica de nostalgia," to describe the sickness of Swiss soldiers kept far away from their mountains."

What do we feel nostalgia for? A loved one. A place or time. A country. That I believe is particularly the one that applies to me. Even though I was born here there are times when I feel I live in exile. The search for home is never ending. A passage fron Ovid's "Tristia," .... a country created by layers and layers of memory, embroidered, corrected, reshaped.... the places we live in become transformed through our prejudices, whims, limited experience, through the fact that we walk one route and not another." And as in yesterday's post, when I took refuge in literature, perhaps I can find a country in it as well. Manguel includes some of the finest quotes about literature I have ever read. From Josef Skvorecky: "To me literature is forever blowing a horn, singing about youth when youth is irretrievably gone, singing about your homeland when in the schizophrenia of the times you find yourself in a land that lies over the ocean, a land--no matter how hospitable and friendly--where your heart is not, because you landed on those shores too late." Literature can do that, and this book is making me more and more aware of the possibilities.