Beware the Ides (and Revisions) of March

March 14 seemed a long way off until today.  Although you were not thinking of it in specific terms, not until it came up in conversation, the middle of March even had a quality about it of lazy comfort, of reading your book a week for review purposes, catching up on the stack of London Times Book Reviews sitting on the table you brought over from Hot Springs Road, reading student papers, perhaps even sneaking in a few hours here and there on the novel.  You'd even had the romantic notion of waiting until the afternoon sun had warmed the bricks in your enclosed patio, inviting Sally out to sprawl on them, and sip through a large cup of coffee with her, enjoying your new surroundings, drinking in the neighborhood sounds.

If the past is a foreign country--iconic first line from L.P. Hartley's novel, The Go-between--the future is a genie in a bottle, struggling to get free of its prison in order to work its mischief, have its own moment, exert its power to excite, offend, disappoint, inspire, educate.  Until about 1 p.m., the most pressing things on your agenda were being here to meet the man from the phone company, then to receive your new number and service, then to return to a remarkable novel-in-the-works from an affable, grandmotherly sort who swears this is her first work.  March 14 was as far from your consciousness as even such matters as dinner plans, Sally's afternoon stroll, and checking the mail to see if the Auto Club had unscrewed its screw-up with your 2011 auto insurance; it was a non-issue.  Had someone mentioned March 14 to you, in as polite a manner as possible, you'd have been dismissive although, having recently forgotten a lunch engagement at a place you much admire in pursuit of peanut butter and plum jam, you might have thumbed through those pristine pages of your day book, just in case.  It is a minor offense in relative terms to forget a meeting; it becomes serious business to forget a meeting at the Via Maestra.

It is also somewhat of a truism that he or she who lives by the sword--etc, a metaphoric way expressing consequences if there ever was one.  To the extent you have been involved these years with publishing, you have indeed lived by the sword.  Even now, as you think of March 14, you cannot help thinking as well of February 11, which is the due date for this week's review, a book winking at you from the self-same table you mentioned in the first paragraph.  The wink is an invitation to read, an invitation you have avoided with the same purposefulness as a waiter,"too occupied" to notice your steady glance of inquiry.

March 14.

This note from your editor after having sent you her notes:  And all of that said, I have a deadline for you - March 14 - when I will need the finished manuscript for copyedit. Can do? (And, of course, if you want to send me one or more portions along the way, I'm up for it!)


March 14.

How You Got to You

You had not been asleep more than fifteen or twenty minutes before you were awakened by the sudden, piercing fear of not having brought with you any of the books of John Sanford, catapulting you erect, and into the new kitchen--it will no doubt remain "new" for some months until you get used to the idea that there is a shelving accommodation of some comfortable size for books--where, by the night light from the gas range, you were able to see at least two of his titles.

John was driving a classic old Jaguar XKE well into his nineties.  He phoned you to what he called coffee to celebrate his latest coup.  "How many writers do you know who've gotten a two-book deal at age ninety-two?"  What John called coffee was a muddy broth whose grounds found their way into your interdental spaces.  His "refreshments" were either Sarah Lee pound cake, or some variation with a chocolate frosting. 

 The physical aspects of coffee with John were, to say the least, memorable; the conversational aspects were inspirational.  On this particular occasion, I said, after the invitation, "But I thought you weren't speaking to me."  To which he replied, "Kid, life's too short to hold on to temper.  I'll admit, there were ten or fifteen minutes where I wasn't speaking to you, but now I'm inviting you for coffee."

Before you got onto a not-speaking relationship with John, before you undertook blogging as a form of organizing and invigorating the writing day, you kept a journal which you attempted to pursue as a distinct journal rather than a Dear Diary, today I thought of a story but was too shy to write it down kind of narrative.  

You'd been doing this long enough, since you were about twenty-one, even earlier if you count detailed day books as anything of worth, that you'd switched from first person to writing about yourself in third person.  Your thought was to make it easier to write about yourself, your thoughts, feelings, questions, and events; the he, you reasoned, was almost invisible; it was the goddamn I sticking out from every paragraph like the salami from Harpo Marx's raincoat that led you to switch from I to he.

John, you noticed, went even further, switching from he to the second person, which explains at least one of your debts to John as, indeed, it explains how and why you address yourself in your blog as you.  "Why do you write the volumes of your autobiography in the second person?"  You asked John this question on the occasion of the Sarah Lee cake having the chocolate icing.

"Because,"  he said, "that's the way it comes out."

"That," you said at the time, "is the damnedest, silliest thing I have ever heard."

"What is?  The second person?"

"No.  The fact that it comes out that way."

"Listen, kid, if it comes out that way, you've already made the decision.  Something inside of you that you like regards that as--"

"--as?"

"As fucking scripture.  As the Talmud.  As the Miqra.  The Tanakh."

"I didn't think you went for that stuff."

"I don't, but it's where all the stuff comes from that many people believe.  Here, have more Sarah Lee."

Two days later, you were working away on your daily warm-up and before you knew it, you'd written you instead of he.

Getting back to sleep was an easy comfort; you were able to get yourself there recalling that magnificent old copy of the Meriam-Webster's Unabridged Dictionary of the American Language which he'd beaten you to the purchase of from Georgia Young, the head librarian at the Montecito Branch of the library.  And the fact that John Sanford did not use a typewriter, nor in fact did Maggie Roberts, his wife, who wrote the screenplay for the John Wayne version of True Grit.

You were a son of a bitch when you tried to convince John about the virtues of The American Heritage Unabridged Dictionary of the American Language, and since that discussion came at an earlier time, may have resulted in your not talking for a day or two.

Finishing Touches

 The athlete puts forth energy, efforts to challenge muscle strength and suppleness in physical performance.  The musician maintains a constant relationship--a virtual marriage--with one or more instruments, all the while keeping an ear tuned to the characteristics of tonality.  The actor rehearses lines while investigating the nuances of character to be portrayed.  The angler "reads" the stream or creek for signs of which insects may be abroad, thus influencing the choice of bait.  The painter sketches and "reads" for gradients of light.  The photographer is alert for the potential of exciting images and for the shifting nuance of light.

And so the respective Process of each matures.

These observations are recognizable for their simple-minded reduction, yet all the above practitioners do in fact resort to some basic form of maintenance to keep their abilities honed.  What of the writer?  What should the writer do to continue the growth process and fend off the atrophy of complacency?

You read.  You write these vagrant notes to yourself.  You begin projects, often with no hope of finishing them, an approach to writing you have come to regard as important in its way as involuntary breathing is important to life.  There are no guarantees you will finish even when you set out with a reasoned conclusion in mind (or somewhere).  At length, Life will continue without you, but that is no reason for you to give up on the process nor to think of life as being defined by such convenient benchmarks as beginnings, middles, and endings.  Franz Schubert may or may not have intended to finish his work we know as his Unfinished Symphony.  Mozart is believed to have pushed himself to completing his Requiem before death came visiting.  Any number of men and women pushed themselves beyond what we consider endurance to finish a project, but in our conventional wisdom, we are seduced into believing such efforts were for us, those unknown to the creator.  You stand up to call bullshit on that notion; these men and women were riding the high of being engaged in their work; they were not thinking of us, they were in the work, part of it, away from the awareness and effects of whatever it was that brought them down to their death.  As you read with some eagerness the pages of Edward Said's last work, On Late Style, you came to the conclusion that Said had indeed not been able to finish, what we have instead is a presentation of intermediate draft, of more notes than final text.  This awareness produces admiration once again for Said, but also has caused you to think what a remarkable project it would be to "get" more arguments for late style, the products of mature process, down on paper.

As a younger writer who was in a real sense getting on-the-job-training by being paid to write interviews and profiles, you interviewed a thirty-six-year-old ballerina the morning after she'd done the lead in Swan Lake.  You met her at eight in the morning, at a studio, where she'd been at the barre for at least half an hour.  When she spoke to you, she dispelled any notion you might have had about her working through exercises as any sign of devotion to her art.  "This kind of work allowed me to do what I did last night, true enough, but the simple fact is, if I did not do it, I would not be able to walk later this afternoon when it would be time for lunch."  For a few moments, you wanted to marry her, so tangible was the sense that she was in so deep into her craft.  You think of her from time to time, ratifying her inclusion on your list of persons who do for the sake of doing in a way that has nothing to do with numbers of success or flipping off the personification of Failure, rather doing it for whatever endorphins manage to squeak out.

It is splendid to finish something; you are all in favor of finishing things, the consequence being you intend to live beyond any concept you may have of your own late style, and into that world where, as you hang out with peers and the conversation drifts into aches, pains, and slowing down, you with polite resolve remove yourself from the surroundings and begin wondering if there is something and some Siren out there that will lead your energy and thought away from vectors of conclusion, into the warm light of curiosity.

Will You Please Get Serious

If you are not careful with the way you conduct yourself in print or in person, you run the risk of coming across as serious, which wouldn't be so difficult to live with were it not for two things:  (1)   for as long as you can recall, individuals about you wondered aloud when you would "get serious," and (2)you are in dead earnest when you are being the opposite of serious, which to you has for some time been humorous.  You could add a third "thing" which is that having fun often connotes to you going on the attack against pomposity, seriousness, the moral high ground, and formality.

Not only that--by which you mean all the above "things"--you do not enjoy discovering pomposity or formality in your appearance, your lectures, and your writing.  Such discovery is the equivalent of being told your zipper is not as up as it ought to be, there is spinach on one of your teeth, or some wag is able to tell you what you had for breakfast from the simple act of looking at your shirt front.  You were responsible for a writer friend granting permanent retirement to a necktie after you observed that so long as he wore that necktie, he would never go hungry, needing nothing more than some hot water into which to dunk the tie for a nourishing soup.

You are not comfortable when you are formal.  Your best thoughts on the reason for this discomfort is the fear you had at one stage in your life, about fourteen to about seventeen, when you thought you were about two ants shy of a picnic.  You can't have been fun to be around at that time, your defense being to bully all and sundry with a vocabulary and repertoire of memorized poetry of such breadth as to stun the recipient into silence.  Pity the teachers who had to put up with the output.  It no longer matters to you that you be seen as formal because formality has, on reflection, got you precious little.  Nor was formality fun, but there you were, convinced that what you considered fun was more an index of how little you knew and how little you cared for things, which, you came to realize, was as though Conventional Wisdom, objectified as being any adult in authority, was whispering in your ear that fun was stupid and uncaring.  You began to assume then assert that you knew different.

Fun is quite specific; it is the enjoyment of being immersed in something and/or someone you care about, music, for instance, or story, or writing, or friends, or a lover, or some stunning example of role model, fun is playing on the floor or in a suitable stretch of unvarnished landscape with a dog; it is going to endless baseball games with your father not so much from any love of the game as from your awareness that this was the way you could communicate with your father that was better than any of the ways of communication you had developed outside the ball park.  You were a terrible, at best mediocre baseball player but that helped add to the communication and so you believed it was time and effort well spent; it repaid you handsomely with time spent with this remarkable man, whom you contrived to become immersed in baseball with and, at other times, speculations about the relative speeds of horses circuiting about an oval track.  Fun is writing with serious intent, yet not being pompous.  Fun is finding the presence of pomposity within yourself, then making fun of it, hopeful such fun will shield you for long periods of real time and writing time from the dangers of pomposity, which are no fun.

When you set out to relate something to someone or write something to see what it is and what it means, you may become so serious in your approach that you will write your way into pomposity.  If you are fortunate, you will begin to enjoy the quest for understanding before you become sidetracked into seriousness.

Opening Velocity on a Quiet Evening in February

Opening velocity is a term you use to describe those fraught, inviting moments when a story you are reading races into life, its beginning luring you inside to continue.  The term is also relevant for describing the moments when the elements of curiosity and mischief collide somewhere in the inner reaches of your sensitivity, alerting you to the imminent birth of a new story or essay of your own.

Either scenario, reading or writing, portends joy and much work; you are launched into discovery, which is always exciting, drawing you to greater awareness of individuals and circumstances in cases where you already have been inoculated with an array of feelings.

The concept of opening velocity works with other aspects of life experiences--if you allow it, if you do not step toward the routine or anticipated experiences with a measure of dread or distaste.  Mere enthusiasm helps, but, as in story, it is not enough; it becomes the equivalent of passivity, exerting influence on your choice of verbs and the way you employ them vis a vis subject and object.  This kind of sloppy choice paves the way for you to be borne along by events rather than approaching them with agenda, an aspect of behavior that may work well enough were you to follow the detachment/non-attachment approach of some Eastern philosophies, but if you chose to live story, to make your life as much your story as you have been able to render some of your concoctions, it is not enough to allow yourself to be wind-tossed, as the old Western song of your youth had it, "Lonely but free I'll be found/Drifting along with the tumbling tumble weeds."

The chemistry of attraction is less a mystery to you than it once was, only because you have allowed yourself to be drawn to persons, places, and things for the most idiosyncratic reasons.  You have a history from which to draw.  That history has inflicted loss, gain, growth, frustration,impatience, glut, and discovery upon you in ways that leave you now, at this moment, believing you've led a happy life, with an opportunity to turn in as your final draft a positive narrative rather than one laden with cynicism or misanthropy.  As much as things could change for the worse, so too could they change for the better.  In his magisterial poem, William Carlos Williams observed:

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.

When you first read that poem, many years back, you were stunned into the meditative silence poetry can and does evoke, unable to think or feel beyond it because of its evocative pull into its own world and its own evocation of an entire universe.  You were a boy then who spent his time building model airplanes, wondering if you would ever have the gumption to approach girls, not certain at all where to find the doorway to enter the world you'd wanted to enter when you discovered Huckleberry Finn.  Model airplanes have long since disappeared from your red wheel barrow, but these things of opening velocity take you again and again and again into the story you are drawn to discover.

Make a Note of It

It is difficult for you to assess the diversity and ubiquity of notebooks among the belongings you have amassed over the span of years at your most recent venue or of the one you brought with you from the ones previous to that, or indeed of the ones you have lost or parted with along the way.  They range in various sizes, from the nine by twelve originally intended to serve as a sketchbook for the pen or ink or charcoal artist to the small, intricate venture intended for pocket or purse.  This says nothing (yet) about the spiral-bound (top or side) nor the steno pad, nor the reporter's notebook,  Another indeed will suffice for the various incarnations of the Moleskine, or the faux leather with perforated pages, which you took with you for a visit to England, primarily to compose notes for a lecture on The Tower in, appropriately enough, in Salisbury Cathedral, and which contained instead the names of whimsical-sounding cities and villages.

Notebooks are challenges; incentives to note odd locutions or questions such as the one you wrote in a notebook only yesterday when a customer at the Cafe Luna answered the chirp of his cell phone with a hostile-sounding challenge, "Who is this?"  You were reminded of the opening line to Hamlet, which, you're quick to argue, gets at the crux of extentialism with the lovely "Who's there?"  Notebooks are for taking souvenirs of life, for composing laundry lists, to be sure, but also to compile coded shorthand that becomes so profound, it is lost with the loss of the details of dreams experienced moments before awakening.

Skimming through used Moleskines, you find yesterday's non sequitir, something thought of great significance, but now a bleak, lonely reminder of the game the mind plays most on its own selfishness.  Some notes provoke genuine bafflement; they neither define nor describe, leaving inchoate clues in place of tangible directions.

Notebooks demonstrate promise: it used to be said that behind every successful man was a woman, which for all its high-flown rhetoric means men should suffer women when in truth the reverse would be the better approach.  Now it is said that behind every successful man is a note book.  Or two.  Or three.

Notebooks also demonstrate the reproof of the romantic notions that they are there to catch unimpeded the droplets of nature that fall among us or the inspirations.  Nothing is as uninspiring, ultimately depressing as a notebook in which the narrative thread follows only for a day or two, then ends in some cryptic italic of Finish later.  Use examples.

Taking the Trouble

You have been engaged in a long-standing internal argument in which the Conservatives that the position that nothing comes easy.  With that philosophy in mind, they argue, you should apply tough love to anything involving your creative resources.  Be prepared, they warn, to fail.  Your inner Liberals scoff at this dire pronouncement, snickering at the irony of ease with which the Conservatives betray their inherent stinginess.

In your sometimes role as mediator or these proceedings, you stipulate the presence of flux as the contrapuntal theme against which the argument persists.  Thus the steady march of events, difficult and easy, some of them the necessary bureaucracy of the society in which you love, others the random-but-pleasing distractions about you, and yet other events the ones to which you have in some manner contributed.

Your own preferences and tendencies direct you to the exact spot on the shore of the Heraclitus's River, where you enter the flux, the flow, the stream of events about you.  This river of flux is, of course, all about you to some degree, but to a greater degree proceeding with no awareness of you at all.  The degrees by which you attempt to influence this ration--to build what publishers and MBA types (is there a difference these days?) call "platform"--is an index of your personality.

It is difficult, you argue, to contemplate life without flux or to hope to achieve growth and reach, and, yes, happiness without flux lurking somewhere on your front lawn out out the kitchen window.  Absolute calm and certainty are as much a threat to you as they are to dramatic narrative; reach means extending yourself beyond comfort, even if you have set yourself the primary goal of achieving comfort.

You see Trouble as an ally in the drama of living and the reach toward the fine understanding resident in the collision of forces already familiar with one another, yet aware of suspicions lurking like squatters in the storage rooms of these forces.

Without trouble, there is only calm and stasis.  With too much calmness and static inoculations into flux,  the tendency to appreciate trouble emerges like a volunteer flower growing in some impossible crack in the sidewalk.

Without trouble, no person has a friend or a driving force; without trouble the writer relaxes into a stasis from which recovery is too painful to consider.