THE WRITING LIFE

By David Eide

The writing life gives legs to the impossible.

"It moved through thick and thin, light and dark. Many projects, many failures, many bitterness's, many joys, many of everything but goods and money."

I had to pass through several overwhelming experiences:

Nature: That is, what precedes us and continues on forever with the perception of form and beauty on an undiscovered planet in a galaxy we have not yet discovered, on the principle: Nature is abundant and grabs hold wherever it can.

Science: Cosmology; space, mass, velocity, chemical composition, etc etc. The little markers we love to pronounce: Quark, meson, String. The path to a certain glut of elegant facts.

Culture: Cities or the complexity of things built out of the cussedness of human nature in love with its own powers. Sumer, then all the functions, systems, inventions, through time. The determination of walls, streets, crowds, and social structure.

Family: Identity through the growth of personality

Freedom and its resistance.

Separation and its Longing.

"Wonderful densities we travel through!"

* * * * * * * *

The old wise woman said, "he didn't become an expert at anything but his vision was comprehensive."

Projects, relations, communities, jobs; difficult modern mundane and fasincating life.

I never believed I was superior to anyone but I didn't allow the stink of human nature take down my potentials.

The writing life, then, was akin to a path, sometimes of discovery, certainly contemplation.....

* * * * * * * *

"The well-springs of your own productive self. That is the center. That is where it is done. That is where happiness and joy are born." That's what she told me as I contemplated the Bridge way off in the distance but right beside me as well.

"And most of the morality and virtue books don't get it for the most part. You have to go to the original types who have struck the fount. They are the trust-worthy ones."

I relented to her advice even though I didn't want to.

It was around the time I was trying to write novels. I never got to that "fount" as she called it. So I moved away from novels and tried other areas; poetry, thought, political discourse, contemplation's, etc.

Very simple. I said, "talent, go where thou wisheth," and it went into the areas it did. I treated my writing as though it were a restless son who you let loose into the world knowing he will get creamed but be the better for it.

* * * * * * * *

The quandary for the writer is judging what is and what is not productive....a few lines of Rilke appear more productive to my sense of things than a 500-page novel of nothingness. The market may disagree, certainly.

But it is a personal thing is it not?

* * * * * * * *

A young writer learns the following like a dart through the eye on some dank battlefield:

Era's can be destroyed by Nothingness. In a culture divided between exploiters and victims there is little truth; there is little building or constructive principles.

A writer thanks God for the hearty laughter of men!

To fight the easy sort of Nothingness leisurely parading itself, a writer needs to focus on his or her:

• Writing life
• Publishing career
• Pursuit of knowledge
• Personal life

Sometimes separate, sometimes meshed and blended.

In an Era of Nothingness the writer learns patience and develops the belief that his work is his own, for whatever end he feels necessary for it.

* * * * * * * *

The Speed of Light

The stated limit is duration=1 second= 186,000 miles in the space we create, if not occupy. It is the description of one limit and therefore, celebrated by poetry. It is a kind of facement of God.

Duration, as a reality, is all we know. That is poetry.

However, to be human and healthy we need to slow everything down. That is prose. We need to understand. That is prose.

* * * * * * * *

The Pursuit of Truth

The writer enters that haunted state of demoralization when he discovers the difference between the "pursuit of truth" and the "will to power."

The pursuit of truth comes in through beauty.

Events emerged from the post-Vietnam era, its pessimism's and degradations. The old liberals showed me history and the perspective to see one's own time as it will not see itself. They taught that if you hit your head against steel thighs your head, eventually, will fall off and nothing will have changed but one more headless writer. But just when the learning was good came the old-Bolshevik-takes-over-and-rubs-out-the-idealistic- Menshevik syndrome. It was an interesting show but left the writer amazed by the destructive power of politics at a time when he needed models. A more cutting-edge thing going on at the time were the rise of cults, harvesting armies of the old drug culture or idealistic waifs who wanted no part of the dank, discredited American society.

It's hard to communicate how deep that wound went.

My Virtual Space emerged out of a simple question, "how do you build a political state on a nation filled with rotten people; ignorant, addicted, gross, lousy, putrid people?"

That was a recipe for disaster I thought to myself, not prepared for the arduous task of self-examination it required from me.

I separated the political and literary this way. The political was the self-evident machinery of due process, debate, policy-making, etc. Anything that made its way into the political machinery no longer had interest, ipso facto, to the literary imagination.

I think of protests against the Vietnam war or equity/justice issues for example. These became self-evident political issues that were significant to the citizen but not the literary imagination. The one issue where this was most tested was the environmental since it implied the core of literary imagination, that is, nature. But that too became a political issue decided in the political system.

The literary imagination extracts from these issues what it can.

• Battle, for instance and the persistence of war through time
• The wildness of nature and its necessity
• The liberation of the female for her full development
• The depiction of a perfect society or a perfect citizen

.....these things unattainable to anything but the appreciative imagination are what the writer focuses on.

The undiscovered problems.

* * * * * * * *

There is society and then there is the individual. The society is either wealthy or poor. It is Republican or Democrat. It is swarming in gadgets or not.

The individual is usually all of these things at different times. And the writer is the quintessential individual in that he demands all his focus is on what the society despises. Or, is not adventuresome enough yet to take on, such as new ideas or new perceptions.

The writer rationalizes the need for wealth without too much trouble. "It is better to be in a society swimming in wealth than in one deep in poverty." One creates leverage after leverage that even the writer can stand on. Poverty is one surly ride down the mineshaft.

And to secure this wealthy state one must live in a stable republic. And that depends, not only in the ability to create weath but in the continual attention on the needs of the middle-class. The writer sees all of this in a very positive light.

But then, the individual is not the society. He meets many who think they are! The individual writer can do those things the economy and the politics can not, that is, roam freely through all the different pluralities, all the states of wealth and poverty, all the classes, all the activities and functions and come out the other end more a writer than a nutcase. Sometimes things are on the balance beam but regardless.

For a few decades I had what one could describe as a "disaster" when it came to publishing. I didn't have the foggiest notion of what I was doing. I started and abandoned projects as fast as I could, deluding myself that I was being productive.

CLUE: When the beginning is off-center, don't go in a staight line.

Sometimes I entertained the idea that I would die young and all my papers would be found and printed. Decades later a professor would do a paper on me and the contents of my folders. Other times I said, it's just a matter of time....something will happen......have patience.

* * * * * * * *

Discouragement is the deadliest acid for the writer. If even a few spoonfuls gets on the tongue a writer is apt to lose confidence in himself. When that process begins there is the ten-years-of-sliding- downward syndrome until an ugly rock or vicious animal tells you to pay attention.

Even the most precious project crawls to the margin.

I think, in the modern world, it's smart to live 3 or 4 distinctive lives. This is possible and necessary to do in order to sustain levels of interest and energy.

Between the ages of 25 and 35 I was very concerned about the global situation, the future, nuclear dilemma, ecological problem, resource depletion and the rest of it. I didn't separate out my moral concerns and literary concerns.

And I thought a free, liberal democratic person should, in fact, take on those larger questions. You can't solve them but, at least, you get to know the world on a scale hitherto unknown. But, only youth and its energies can take on all of those things. Eventually, the energy runs downward and there is the need to transform.

* * * * * * * *

It is crucial to know when one life is complete and done with.

* * * * * * * *

Between 35-45 was, as well, a complete life in a way. It was centered in family, self, and the cohesive properties of life. The conservation of energy, perhaps. The conservation of liberal, democratic values since those were being threatened every moment.

One life comes to an end and another is being born; based primarily, in strict self-interest. What is my self-interest as a writer? What is my self-interest as a economic being? What is my self-interest as a citizen? What do I need to do in order to fulfill these roles and obligations? What sort of intentionality is necessary? What sort of plans? What sort of demands do I have to put on myself and others?

That describes the sort of life I am going into.

* * * * * * * *

Early on I had the intuition that the modern world was creating a society of very passive/aggressive types who sat back and let themselves get zapped by the horridness of other people's intentions. This is something that belongs to hordes not to liberal, democratic citizens.

Culture, to be valuable, must first be hidden. It must be discovered on its own terms. That process produces authentic individuality; spoon-fed culture produces a distracted, addicted, dumbed-down population.

The writer has to make this sort of distinction since the marketplace is dominated by lies and promises rather than self-discovery.

It only matters when we take stock of who is ruling the roost.

* * * * * * * *

A society is never in trouble when the bad arises and resists it and fights it. The society is in deep trouble when the good arises and resists it and fights it. That follows an inevitable process of corruption over several generations and drains whatever remaining morale it contains straight into the void of space.

* * * * * * * *

In the first phase of my career I was concerned with questions of repression. What represses the imagination and intellect? What, in other words, is the enemy to free, liberal democratic culture?

* * * * * * * *

I was one who studied the end of life on planet Earth. It seemed reasonable, in youth, that such a fate awaited the future. "Ah, the end of life, the end of the human prospect...." There was a stubborn egotism that didn't allow for such a view but, then, something large and real made me realize that it was probable and what, then, was the writer's response?

After all, the weapons were not myths. And their delivery systems were not myths. It made it absurd to continue as though nothing had happened or nothing need change. To the poetic consciousness the absurdity appeared fatal and, in fact, I was convinced great and wonderful things had to happen.

That anything less than the fantastic discovery of new form, new imaginative horizons, new aspirations was a sacrifice to the demoralization brought on by the blight of the modern world.

It's quite shocking to take this view into society and see the responses one gets.

But, I was convinced that an utterly new thing had to come into play. The only thing that is not conditioned is the poetic imagination.

Therein is the tale of a thing or two.

Freedom experienced as a splendid future!

* * * * * * * *

One thing that I fought with and that was the status and nature of the novel. I felt that the novel had been stripped various ways by modern technology. That the writer should leave off "telling stories" in this form and focus or extract the very best qualities embedded in novels; insight, vision, and connectedness with a sense of place. Those were the great qualities of the novel.

But those qualities could be developed any number of ways. The novel was reduced down and shuttered in by the growth of so many things outside the dimension of the novel. Better to move to exciting new ways of presenting the essence of those qualities the novel once embedded in so many delightful, dynamic ways.

* * * * * * * *

If the novel is not an expression of our freedom, then what is it?

* * * * * * * *

Influences fly from me like angry ghosts. "You beats and old European novelists, consummate artists as you were; crazed philosophers, confessional poets, shrinks, and monks," I mutter as they all fly skyward after they had their way with me.

I was influenced by all things not permitted in the United States but in small college and university towns.

* * * * * * * *

If they could contemplate in the depths of the 13th century why can't modern types do the same thing? It's a simple and frightening question.

And what people have denied in themselves; that was a painful influence for me.

The greatest influence is the fully human in stride through love, death, nature, hate, power, and beauty. It is a form not obligated to anything but its very best.

* * * * * * * *

An indelible influence keeps the mind open in the face of skepticism, cynicism, hatred, ignorance and crowds of common ailments. Addiction, certainly that.

There is, then, the miserable voyage through the untrustworthy nature of human beings; passage, shock, horror, and then the telling move.

And when we pass through we must turn back and admit what has gotten us through. It is a commingling of the sacred and the profane.

Richness.

Light.

Happy resolutions!

The American writer is never free while he exists in the shadow of old Europe. The old Europeans were transfixed by "society," rather than "freedom." The American wants to be a free dog, the freest of the free. "Society" is for the days when things travelled at 11MPH and the circulating coil for money existed on one level and the rest were cold and bitter.

Not "freedom" perhaps but the "effects of having a free life..."

Mostly we don't struggle with questions about basic freedoms but struggle to maintain the freedom that is here and exploring its implications and new horizons.

It is, then, the obligation of the American writer to establish new vistas, new combinations, new worlds. That is the thing.

It is a goal that seeks for its fact.

* * * * * * * *

Some of the gravest conflicts in human history are reduced in America to a kind of so what-ism. A dash of spiritual wisdom, a slug of knowledge is usually enough to detox the materialism of the American spirit.

* * * * * * * *

The deep impressions made by the possiblity of nuclear war and the adventure into space initiated my experience in the world. Terror and its effects are real even when nothing happens.

And the Moon reflected to Earth the physical reality of space in its infinite yawn; its capacity to devour worlds without sound. Its trillions of light years of absolute hostility to life.

* * * * * * * *

The sweet path of writing includes an orientation to the past, present, and future!

* * * * * * * *

At times the world was so absurd it was rather liberating. At first, it was demoralizng. But then it was apparent that it literally didn't matter what others thought.

And this introduced me to the dangers of nihilism as well as to the pleasures of engagement; freedom with responsibility or freedom because we are morally responsible and want the good.

* * * * * * * *

An American writer; the animal that carries the seeds of something vast, protected yet open; regional but experienced in a few regions. Knowing the ocean and mountains. Experience. Mountain man of new paths if the people don't hang him for it; they certainly won't patronize him or permit him to live on his writings alone.

He who takes all up into himself and, at the end of it, wobbles but stands firm. He knows the machinery of politics and business but avoids the gears as much as possible. He is eaten up by time piece by piece and records the apex and nadir of the experience. He really is not after enemies. He likes fellowship and friendship, cordial relations between people. Sanity. He knows the bitterness of living without things. He knows the sublime freedom of living without things. He is humiliated at every turn but seems to land on his feet ok.

* * * * * * * *

And after being ground down into the soft, fine dust of it all what American writers does he still remember? Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Whitman, Melville, Twain, London, Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald. The youngest of these fine talents died about 40 years ago. Nothing in 40 years? What in 40 years?

As far as America it could be any number of things. Pop culture rose into prominence. Amplified music. Television. Glossy magazines in a fragmented marketplace. Non-fiction over fiction. Open verse in poetry with some retreat back into structure. Declinism of a sort. Melodic meaninglessness but touching on the beautiful without embodying the beautiful.Transient and forgotten in half a generation. Freeing of African-Americans and women; a good fulfillment of the democratic idea. The immense struggle over the role of America in global politics; world history. Computers. Space. WMD. Consciousness of the effect of human activity on the environment. Travel. Money. Freedom of a kind. Sex. Intoxication.

The quickening; convenience, privilege, humans and their machines like pets now or an appendage grafted onto them by the powers that be. Religion either so harsh it contradicts the center of itself or so airy-fairy it's rather nonsensical. Lost in cities, found in wandering crowds milling around the stadium. Roars above and from below.

* * * * * * * *

In writing it is always the human element; nothing more, nothing less. The machines and institutions can take care of themselves. And, if the human element declines it's superfluous anyway. The human beings relation then to what is supreme and what exists as the central facts. Stories. Mind in support of the commonweal of humanity. The mouth of nature. The terrible fears. Persona of the time. The fragments that make up the whole. A night sky lit up with little dreams. The moon as a traversal point. The aim is at the origin of things. Pity the poor souls who find it. Pity the ones who stop or give up. Man. Woman. That. Throw in Children. Yank from them their best and give it back to them as long as they pay you for it.

Immersion in the now; the dark paltriness with huge eternities on either side of it. So. Observation. Alertness. Laughter. Good cheer.

* * * * * * * *

Let us make an outline that is as inhuman as the thing we see. But, the outline is not the thing. The thing is all inside.

* * * * * * * *

The writer is not a camera. The writer is a human observer. He observes without commenting. No! Now he must comment, things have gotten too far. Ah, now he will simply permit the built-up energies running through him exit in interesting ways.

Truth is more complex than any particular cause.

He emerges from a modern romanticism to see himself and his culture in a sober light; one that has darkness, one that has delight. One that has beauty, one that has evil. One where the massification is deadly, yet one can escape the massification. The marks of it are everywhere and he observes. He is a silent camera. He carefully lifts and places, rushes off a caption and turns the page.

* * * * * * * *

If there is something real in the term, "democratic soul" or a "liberal, democratic spirit" a writer is obliged to flesh it out.

No matter what position the pyramid happens to be in, the writer uses every opportunity to contradict it.

A lot of creative energy is driven through technical objects or organizations. The one out for the literary type is mindfulness. He waits patiently for the unintended consequence of mindfulness.

* * * * * * * *

Reading is a defense against the palling claws of the nightmare days. The cynical, nihilistic, dumb and dumber all have their secret but transparent codes. Let them go. Be utterly aware of them because they will try and pull you from the fount as soon as they see you get near it.

The seed of a great American myth: "Make it new but know all that has gone before." And the two sides must be joined together. If it is only one thing or the other then it results in lies and fanaticism.

The shadows of even those we think we know can throw us into a deep shadow ourselves.

The writer tries to protect two distincitve areas: language and imagination. He can't say everything there is to say about them; he knows when they are strong and when they are weak. Anything that overpowers the individual weakens the ability of both language and/or imagination to tell the truth, to be courageous, to have vision, to root-down into the supple Earth.

We don't have tyranny, yet, here in the West.

Writing is an act of individuality. It is a mark of a particular individual. Most people are exposed early on to a mass culture that teaches very powerful techniques and so on. It reinforces some popular wisdom. And it does so at the moment the educational system is at its weakest. It's much more likely a culture of this type will produce a huge, grey slagheap and frightened children who are commanded by smart guys then that you will produce a culture of individual people who love the culture, it's history, yet maintain a very critical view of power. And who continually grow and develop and support their sensibility as free liberal democratic citizens.

* * * * * * * *

Power, itself, is an enemy of language and imagination.

* * * * * * * *

The writer has to be courageous enough to build outside the walls of power.

* * * * * * * *

Even though I read philosophy from time to time I consider myself fully, a "man of letters," a character who was much despised in the era I grew up in; a product of leisure and privilege. Americans are not good with leisure or privilege and no one can convince them that sitting on ones rear writing or reading is a productive use of time so, perhaps, the "man of letters," is a kind of civilized outcast; knowing the core and center but banished to wander along the steel, titanium edges of the thing he is part of. And, after all, it is but a case of one man or one woman with an imagination, intellect, experience, knowledge putting a world together with language; the language he or she possesses in relation to a world he or she does not make but there as solid as the stadium filled with crazed fans.

And what one looks at is telling. What dives deep into the spirit is telling. All the person of letters can do is present his language in as many forms as possible, try to focus on what he or she does the best, let go of vanity, serve the art, serve the language.

* * * * * * * *

I operated, as a good poet will, with three or four myths intact. I searched for the mythologies and knew the light and dark of each. One came about because of the Internet; that is, the myth of the colony, cut away from the Empire but connected to it and struggling with that connection. The Empire has superior things, perhaps, and luxuriates in a power it will lose sooner than later. The colony takes the best virtues of the Empire and then tries to create the new future. And that dovetailed into the myth that the framers set from the beginning. "Make it new," but know the past 3-4,000 years of human achievement, degradation, genius, wonderment and comedy. Know it as well as you know your own name. A beautiful profound myth. And then the modern one that I discovered in the 70's. On one side the weapons that can destroy whole cities in a flash of light. And on the other the breaking of the seal of space and the universe becoming a tactile entity that leads the mind to infinity; a real experience and one that expands the present and gives hope for a future always threatened by the insanity of human beings.

* * * * * * * *

I ignored ideology, even politics from time to time and the long odd parade that makes up any given time. I connected with what filled me with delight, wisdom, and knowledge. I ignored everything else.

* * * * * * * *

I can't force the writing of poetry. It used to be that one time a year I would get into a poetic rutting season and have a go at it. I felt it was a mystical sort of activity, expressing the spirit in a free and meaningful way. It was a private art, didn't need a huge public. Prose narrative, the novel, is a public art and needs a lot of eyeballs to flourish.

That is one of its problems, certainly.

The commentary stuff came about as a way to re-orientate myself back to the present. In my teens and early-mid 20's I was fully and happily imbued with the present and rode in it in fine style. Then it became repugnant to me. As a good American I rushed way ahead to the future and speculated about a number of things. When that dried up I went to the past and absorbed that monster. The past at least had real people in it and events that had, in fact, happened. That lasted into my mid-30's I think. Then I left the past and tried to orientate myself to a new present. So, almost all of my commentary work is an orientation. You orientate through knowledge and experience in relation to "what is going on."

* * * * * * * *

There are significant tribes in America; one of them is the critical tribe that exists in media and the university. Then there is the creative, building tribe that includes makers of poems, music, as well as bridges and computers. And then there is the mainstream tribe who carry, collectively, the burden of society, develop its market values and drive the political values.

I always alternate between loyalty and disgust for those tribes that demand my allegiance or attention.

Once I was divested of the critical tribes’ hold over me I lost a certain automatic scorn for the mainstream and, in fact, learned a great deal in that tribe. After all, the only way to learn something is to travel through it all the way and peek your head out the other end. Both the market and politics that come out of the mainstream can be eviscerated but it is far better to build according to principles of truth. Much better, much healthier.

* * * * * * * *

Apothegms for the Times:

There is a shadow to individuality; there is light. The light emerges when one is doing their very best at their chosen activities and lives with the results.

If you go through change or transition and people don't help you, drop them. Cut them loose because you always need positive energy when going through a change or transition.

Who would destroy the fruits of the fathers labor deserves the black hole they will sink into. And that goes back a good many generations.

The weak adhere to collective myths that appeal to their prejudices or abysmal desires. Be very aware of this and put a staying hand to it.

* * * * * * * *

I can admit to the problems of dealing with (1) philosophy (2) poetry (3) spiritual

Are they three separate domains or simply impossible to grasp by one consciousness fully since they include and exclude along different pathways? I think what one has to admit is that at different times those three activities are sufficient; they are needed at different periods of time during any persons development.

The personal question is, what emerges out of the interplay with these three dimensions? What, then, is the new horizon?

Philosophy was necessary to deal with the overwhelming nature of the physical world, including political/economy, science, technology, etc. I felt the path to truth came more through the spiritual, with poetry a kind of mid-wife, sometimes bursting into a thing itself. Left to itself human nature repeats again, again, and again with seizures of the irrational thrown in for good measure. However, the spiritual forgave human nature and offered imaginative constructs that would allow for a greater humanity, a greater self.

The reader of philosophy, poetry, and the spiritual learns after awhile that it was the form of expression that was the key, including the form of personality that did the expressing.

History and memory were another large category.

However, a man can enact well in only one thing. He can and should try a lot of things when young. And then he settles on the one thing he does very well or better than the other paths he chooses.

* * * * * * * *

We focus on the self because there is the constituent element; just as the quark is the constituent element in the construction of physical space. Or, whatever it may be at any give time. The string, for instance.

Ride through perilous waters and you'll see a lot of cargo go overboard.

* * * * * * * *

A good deal of writing is simply orientating the self to the ground of its being, to nature, to the mysteries of what moves it, to buildings, houses, and machines, to systems that flow through it, to facts, to lies, to power, to events, to what we believe and what we want.

Why is "democracy" such a fascinating term? Why do I keep coming back to it? It's about "all with the potential for good and abundent life....so he, so she....so that man, so him."

Democracy will end when it's frozen in fear of its own implications. I would rather see democracy evolve and push itself beyond what is here and view today as a beginning rather than an end.

We are still restless for the signal that we should begin something.

We are there!

* * * * * * * *

The greatest myths in America are created by "the open road..."

* * * * * * * *

The writing life was an irrational response to things. It was edged in the belief that structure ensnared and devoured talent. But, freedom without structure turns quickly into addiction and turns on itself after awhile. So, structure comes to have some meaning.

Structure and outline.

The Constitution, to take a random example, is a structure of governance settled by agreement after a lot of ferocious argument. And science is a structure that seeks facts after the deluge of sense. It is the fact-finding structure with its own types of checks and balances, due diligance and so forth. And technology is a kind of physical structure of science that imposes and conveys; helps and destroys and is ignored at the risk of having a skewered view of the world.

So I find that an outline for the modern world; the one I occupy at any rate.

Several things:

When I was a young guy in Berkeley, even in college before that, two things struck me. One was that the "novel" was being written by poets like Joyce, Kerouac and Lawrence. And "novelists" were becoming more like journalists like Hunter Thompson, Mailer, Wolfe, and Capote. That the traditional novel had lost its audience but that journalism still had an audience. Thus, the change in prose during the 70's period of time.

It stood to reason to study and write poetry and get a foundation down that made sense or, at least, worked. And it made it much more reasonable to ignore the mainstream and literary worlds that insisted that the novel was this and journalism was that. It also meant a protracted study of society: Many people. Many circumstances, many jobs, many neighborhoods, many places, many things.

It became clear to me that the prose writer could sever him or herself from the immediate, the now, the reportage of life and become much more contemplative, much more meditative.

So, there was that conflict.

* * * * * * * *

I wrote in The Digital Writer several years ago that a Milton could flourish these days whereas a Dickens or Dostoevsky would have a difficult time. The epic was a product of leisure and focus by a singular talent. The novel was fully market driven. The market has migrated to film, TV, internet etc.

The novel seems rather fallow these days. A Dickens or Dostoevsky could certainly write on the Net and flourish but it would be through insight, through inventive character sketches and columns rather than novels. Just a passing thought.

* * * * * * * *

I had knowledge at the center, a thirst for knowledge but I think now, rather than a center of culture, knowledge is a structure inside the head of a person without which his or her head will implode from all the information streaming from outside of it. Knowledge is a ballast against what is outside of it; in that sense it is real.

* * * * * * * *

The poet sees mytholodgy laying on top of the surface since machines initiate the mythologizing process and dive deep into the consciousness of the people. The two major machines-creating modern-myth are the nuclear device and the space vehicle. A big thing happened when we penetrated space. Space became its own reality at that moment. It became tactile; it became a form that took the mind with it. Up to that point space was a virginous abstraction we projected hopes into. The mind then connected to the odd idea that maybe life existed beyond the Earth; that life was proliferating throughout the immense universe and we weren't equipped yet to find out.

On the other side was the destructive fury of nuclear weapons and their god-like ability to reduce everything down into dust and ash, yet, initiated by human action. This introduced another ancient myth; that is, all life disappearing in great cycles of destruction and rebirth. So, if things got out of hand here and we just did ourselves in, life would pause for a million years, a mere blink of an eye, and then start up again.

A myth but a pleasing one from time to time.

* * * * * * * *

I don't think the "materialistic" society is a terrible thing. A city with riches in it is usually a good and interesting place. And so the people who create the materialism are no doubt good servants of the social creed.

I have no problem as long as I am not disturbed in my pursuits.

I do think there is way too much emphasis on it and it corrupts the young very early on who then have to find the right balance. I've never pit the writing life against the materialistic life. However, the materialistic life, like family, is a density the writing life must move through. In that sense a lot of ragged bits of flesh and bone are hanging on the adventure. So, the writer develops stragetems to get through and do the deed. If "materialism" is an eternal Now and a function of the human animal, which basically it is, so be it.

* * * * * * * *

To sacrifice for the future is extremely dangerous to do in a materialistic culture.

* * * * * * * *

Money was a bug-a-boo. On the one hand I ascribed most bad things to money. But, more importantly, I experienced the world as a speeding, out of control freight train headed for its own doom. That did not encourage my talents. Therefore I had to block out the driving engine to the mad dash to doom; money. From little coins to vast accounts with a multiplier being the thirst human beings have for money, all driving to the apolcypse. To a young heart it sometimes appears to be the case. The older heart laughs but not too much.

But for a young heart to passively insert itself in that sort of machinery was not going to be tolerable. "Aren't I a free guy too?" Therefore, I followed my path as best as I could and denied money the claims it had made in the world. It's a test of sorts.

And as Kafka put it, "if you're in a race with the world, bet on the world."

I wanted to be a writer, not a consumer.

For me a book was a treasure and a good word or bit of wisdom an object of great value. That may have spilled over into places it shouldn't have gone. I know that people wanted to correct that attitude in myself. I held on as best I could.

* * * * * * * *

It's very difficult to be a writer in America. There really is no economic incentive. I think one of two things happens. Either a person finds they have writing talent and it's exciting to exercise that talent and then finds the necessity to write; or, a person finds some necessity and then develops a writing talent to fulfill that necessity. It's not enough simply to have talent; you must find the necessity. That converts the writer from a lonely creature to a social one. Where else would the necessity be but something not working in the world around you? Where else it would be but wounds within the self that others can chase away through money or material goods? So, the problem of writing starts there and it puts the writer at odds with others who have different incentives, more mainstream, natural incentives. And the writer is tested, tested, tested. Up and down, every which way there is a mighty test for the writer in this world. And you either find ways to meet this test or give up or disintegrate by degrees. You meet the test through some common American verities: deferral of gratification, humor at one's bad lot in life, spiritual devotion, continually plunging down into the values you have choosen, satire, criticism, etc etc. There are all kinds of ways to keep the ugly ghosts from invading too deeply or sharply.

* * * * * * * *

I trust the spirit, the created object, the beauty in nature much more than the vanity of human beings and all the clever ways it is disgusied, whether in criticism or politics.

* * * * * * * *

How the writer is to make his living is an old question. I don't like the idea that writers are beggars or homeless heroes wandering the mean streets of the worst cities in the world. No. I don't like the idea of the writer as a scrounge rat living among rats in little apartments ducking in and out of gunshots.

Writing taught me patience and how to climb up and out of terrible states of mind. I knew I was capable of making a living but I did not want to sacrifice whatever talents I had. To me that was a distinctive negative; whereas sacrificing the good in life for those few things I believed in meant a great deal more to me.

* * * * * * * *

When young the thing to fight is hate. Hatred is a virus that is easy to catch. Check hatred in oneself and you will know the secret of how to avoid the pernicious disease when its blown your way. Respect all human beings you have contact with unless they prove they aren't worthy of it. That is one of the simple secrets of life.

Fear is a ghastly distortion, smoothed over time by thoughtfulness.

Let the impression of society pass through, study it, make some conclusion about it, and then focus exclusively on your own efforts.

The romanticism of youth becomes a sentimental dumbness as you get older. Get hard and firm and look at reality as it is.

Take all the generous resource you learn in youth and make it your own, keep lapping it into the current project.

I find myself, now, in a much more resolving sort of mood. The fight consumes everything until we realize it is only the struggle of the individual to reach some kind of fulfillment in this life even if he prepares for the next one. Both the solar power and Sunoasis.com were faces to the real world, faces to the established arena where poetry, philosophy, and beauty, and truth have hardly a chance of surviving. That was a compromise that I worked hard to achieve because I didn't want one to devour the other to be frank about it. And it's still rather tenuous.

The problem in my case was that I always choose the writing life over the material life. Only in the last five years or so has that changed a bit. I worked much harder at sunoasis.com than I did on my writings during that time.

It was difficult not to pick a career path with normal channels and then shoot through it. That was not my fate to do. Nonetheless, it's not an either/or situation. Are we not free to choose?

* * * * * * * *

A formula: Escape the vanity of the time and all its trappings; yet, return to the present fully human, fully prepared.

* * * * * * * *

It's important to distinguish between the "power" of the world outside the writer and the world as the writer conceives it on paper or screen. The power of the world is fairly well known, is rationalized as benefiting the greater good. Law is a great power, politics, economics, the “soverignty of nations.” The Earth itself is a vast power and connects us with the greater power of the universe. We belief the universe is connected and that the unknowable God is that power. Whether it is or not we do know the universe as a physical fact and explore it as a fact. And in doing so we know, now, that it is immensity plus. And since we know that and since we've trundled a bit in its emptiness we feel rather captured down here on Earth; we feel as though there is not enough space for us.

This is a dilemma for our time.

* * * * * * * *

The writer's consciousness is concerned with the macro and the micro; the individual standing on the surface and the vastness above him. What is in between is certainly interesting and is that great world outside the writer whose powers are vast and way beyond the writer or any particular person or institution for that matter. He studies this. He acts in it occasionally. He has experience of it, good, bad, and ugly. It forces things from him that he doesn't want. He is pleased with some of it.

* * * * * * * *

Those who struggle for power between the individual and universe usually try to destroy or, at least, dismiss the two.

The vast majority of people are only concerned with the enacting of self-interest through career, through relationships, through ideas, through the institutions and so forth. Drama is created out of it certainly. Disillusionment is certainly wrought out of it.

* * * * * * * *

Knowledge is important to all of this but knowledge is endless and captured by specialists and plugged back into the institutions to help them function. Why should it be any other way? Knowledge for the writer is equilibrium and he turns his knowledge into a kind of playful discourse on things.

Experience is also important but limiting. When young we seek experience to change the ruts we fall into. We test ourselves. We want to know. Experience is part of the color of life and color of language.

Back to Davideide.com

Click here to send your comments on what you read here.
copyright 2009