One foot in this strange world, one foot in another even stranger world.

Isn't that a mysterious, unsettling place to live?

Although it's possible to find a wild serenity
in the most insecure of circumstances.

For example, I've been reading Kafka again lately,
which can be a dangerous thing to do
because it causes me to see things in a way
that doesn't help me fit in at all.

Have you read "Bartleby the Scrivener,"
a story by Melville? It's about a man who
suddenly "prefers" to not do anything. Why
is such a small quiet story so compelling, so
haunting?

Or "The Hunger Artist," a story by
Kafka, about a man who dies unnoticed
next to a caged & prowling panther that
captivates the crowd.

Those are not happy stories, but they awaken
something in me that knows this world is
incurably strange. Knowing that others
(others as finely tuned as Kafka & Melville)
see a similarly odd world is itself is a kind of
happiness, oddly.

The way most people view this world and our place in it is
not quite right, not quite true. Something's
missing. Many people leave something out,
or won't or can't take that one step back and one step
to the side
which changes everything, brings everything
into vivid focus, but more mysterious than ever.

I went through a lot of relationships
until I stumbled miraculously into the one I'm in now.
I could say all those other relationships
crashed and burned, or fizzled, but
I believe that nothing in love is wasted.
Graduated from the University of Broken Hearts
& Bungled Opportunities. I wouldn't have been ready
for this if I hadn't been squeezed through the eyes of the needles
of the others first, painful and maddening and shameful
as they felt when they went bad,
when I did my large part to make them go bad.

That's what I gather, that in the midst of the alien
world a natural
process is gliding & grinding away--in relationships,
work, writing, learning to
love, simplifying, dying--sometimes with the horrible things
that happen in nature, and behind the scenes
the supernatural story rolling along
whether I know it or like it or believe it or not.

Not a good written word is wasted either.
This is how foolish I am--
I believe, for example, that the plays I've written
that haven't been performed
will be performed in Heaven,
and I'll cast every part just the way I
want for once.

Oh, reason is a wonderful thing,
like an ocean liner,
but when you get to the shore, it can make locomotion
very clumsy if you try to take the ocean liner with you
as you navigate the new medium, land.

After a certain point, there more reasonable
means of mindfulness than reason, more
perceptive, flexible, trustworthy, lighter
to take with me in that little rucksack as the road
on the shore begins rolling inland.

So, all I am saying is, tonight I met a man
who has been in 20 mental hospitals.
He was very hard to talk to
because he was all over the lot. I couldn't
get my bearings, because if things had gone just a
degree different here or there I could have easily been him.
When he twice started to talk about shame the tears
just rolled down
his face both times and he started to walk away
but I wouldn't let him,
because that was all I could do.
I asked him if he could pray, and he said
he was too ashamed. He was ashamed because he
had done many awful things
that were bad for himself and others, and the
thought of facing God in prayer shone a light on his shame
and he couldn't
stand it.

I remember reading in a gnostic gospel (Thomas?) something
about how when I feel that I'm farthest
from God, that that is when I'm
most near God of all.
How when I feel that God could not possibly want
anything to do with me because I am
a loser & a liar & a fraud & mean & a failure
& I feel I've wasted my talent, my love
& my life & there is not
a selfless cell or thought in my body, and I could not
possibly pray or have hope
because of my shame--it's then that I'm primed for God
& all I have to do is let my soul lead me for one moment & I'm
there & I know we're all in the same boat, headed
for shore.

The Only Expert There Is

From the Essay "Soul Food"
by William Stafford
in "Crossing Unmarked Snow:
Further Views on the Writer's Vocation"
(University of Michigan Press)

"We writers try to help each other, sometimes.
But there is a catch in this generosity:
if you begin to rely only on what others say
about your work, you may become like a compass
that listens to the hunches of the pilot.
You may be good company, but you are useless
as a compass--a writer, I mean.

So, when we meet, say at a conference or workshop,
we look each other in the eye with an estimate
hovering between us. We know that our kind of
activity has some complexities not evident to others,
and we wonder if those complexities will be recognized
in any interchanges about our craft.

We know that our work is insufficiently judged
if much time is given over to assessing the topics
of our work. We know that a critic who discusses
whether we talk enough about Nicaragua or not,
or human rights or not, or the general topic of enlightenment
or not, is missing the mark.

We know that there is something supremely important
in the creating of a story or poem that all too often
will escape the attention of an outsider trying to assess it.

We must have an inner guide that allows us to rove forward
throughout the most immediate impulses that come our way.

For us, our whole lives are our research; and caught up
by our best subjects we become not just an expert,
but the only expert there is.

We have to be the sole authority for what comes toward us,
where we are, with our unique angle of seeing.

If the most significant writing comes from this inner guidance,
who will help you find it? Would it be someone who interposes
the considerations of the marketplace
while the delicate time of discovery is going on?

Would it be the person who puts primary emphasis
on your imitation of forms and strategies?

Let me plead, not for ignoring advice
from wherever it comes, but for allowing in your own life
the freedom to pay attention to your feelings
while finding your way through language.

Besides that audience out there in the world,
there is some kind of ideal audience
that you have accumulated within your individual
consciousness--within your conscience!--
and abiding guidance is your compass,
one that constitutes what you have to contribute
to discourse with others.

Moving back and forth from the inner to the outer world
(it feels good)
might be the way to your best writing.

Into the unknown you must plunge, carrying your compass.
It points at something more distant than any local guidance.

You must make "mistakes"; that is, you must explore
what has not been mapped out for you.
Those mistakes come from somewhere; they are
disguised reports from a country so real
that no one has found it.
When you study that country, shivers
run down your back--what a wilderness out there!
What splendid stories flicker among those shadows!
You could wander forever.

Odd words keep occurring to you, pauses, side glances--
mysterious signals. What hidden prejudice
brought that next word into your mind?
If you hastily retreat to an expected progression,
what shadowy terrain might you be neglecting?

What revelations might you miss by any "expert" weaving
of another well-crafted story or poem?

Like Don Quixote on his unorthodox steed
you must loosen the reins and go blundering into adventures
that await any traveler in this multilevel world
that we too often make familiar by our careful threading
of its marked routes between accustomed places.

And like Don Quixote you must expect some disasters.
You must write your bad poems and stories;
for to write carefully as you rove forward is to
guarantee that you will not find the unknown,
the risky, the surprising.

Art is an activity in which the actual feel of doing it
must be your guide; hence the need for confidence, courage,
independence. And hence the need for guardedness
about learning too well the craft of doing it.

By following after money, publication, and recognition,
you might risk what happened to the John Cheever character
who in like manner "damaged, you might say,
the ear's innermost chamber where we hear the heavy noise
of the dragon's tail moving over the dead leaves."

A Friend Axed Me If I Researched the Science Part of Mixed Animal.

I said that I researched diligently
to make sure nothing in the novel was scientifically
accurate or provable. As a matter of fact, this unruly book
attempts to defy the laws of imagination.
The Amazon description does what it can, but it can't.
I could have gone mad proofing it, for it's beyond proofing.
Both science-wise & language-wise, it's proof-proof,
for all errors in it may appear more intentional
than they are. In other words, no, I wouldn't know a clone from a splice,
but my characters refused to be limited by my ignorance.

Riled Up & Dylan's Nihilism.

After being mistookenedly accused (along with Bob
Dylan) of something by somebody, neither of which
I remember, but this was our defense, not that we
needed it:

Riled up to me doesn't mean passionate.
To me riled up means fussin' & fightin'
Trying to win converts to a point of view.
The way I feel, it usually does more damage than
good.

I enjoy Dylan's music for the feelings
it gives me, and it doesn't give me a nihilist's
feeling. Like he said about Things Have Changed,
it's a song. Did you see him accept the Grammy
for that song? That wasn't a man who didn't care.
I don't think that's all he's been
saying for years--that he doesn't care.

I feel like I care more about what I care about
than I did earlier on. I care about the same
things mostly, but I don't have to dress it
up as much as I used to to hide & defend the
vulnerability in the caring.

All I "don't care" about is changing other
peoples' minds about things big or small,
at least anywhere near like I used to.
It's a matter of pleasure. I don't enjoy it.
It's not "fun" to me. And usually
it has the opposite effect of how I intended.
It brings me feelings I don't care to have,
feelings they say more & more can downright
kill you, in fact, maybe even those around you.

The passion I have nowadays runs slower
& deeper & easier & truer & maybe
lazier than when I was younger. It's just
nature, plus being sober for many years for
sure.

I don't have that urge to prove things
like I did, that used to run my life, or rather
when I find myself starting to get in that
place, it's a pleasure to remember I don't
have to. The switch from aggression to
perception. It feels fake to argue any more.
I'm not arguing that anybody else ought to
stop arguing, exactly.

I have irrational connections
to people and songs and ideas, and arguing
about them just doesn't make sense to me anymore.
It's like arguing about who I am. I feel those
feelings that people arguing at me gives me,
so at my best I guess I don't want to do that
to somebody else.

But mainly it's selfish, or centered in wanting some
semblance of peace of mind in this world above all.
For sure a part of it is I did so much riling up
& being riled up younger that I don't feel I'm missing much
now to not do it. A lot of other people are riled up
and riling up, I guess I wont be missed if I opt out.
If writing stories is arguing, then it's the only kind
of arguing I'd like to do, but I don't feel it really
is. It's more like just ... writing a story.

But the main thing is, gee, I don't equate getting
riled up and passion, or riled up and connected,
or not getting riled up and detached. Like most
things, it's a matter of perception & perspective.
"We just saw things from a different point of view..."
The hardest thing for me is to remember the other person
has many reasons, powerful and good and right to them,
for feeling what they feel and thinking like they do,
and loving what they love and hating what they
hate. Just like me. Gee, didn't mean to go on so.
Didn't mean to get all riled up.

Imagine telling a baby the best moments of his life

could be sitting in a room by himself all alone typing,
staring out the window into space, making up stories
& people & stringing words, cajoling order from tangled
childhood & modern chaos & the future charging like a
locomotive down the track of the imagination.

Imagine telling a baby that.

Imagine telling a baby the moments when she would use
to the utmost excellence everything she had been given
& found may be tapping a vision into lines of coded symbols
that would if she were lucky set off the deepest longings
of real people whose shadows crossed that window, & even
people not born yet, if she were luckier.

Imagine telling a baby that.

The baby would say, "What's a chaos? What's a word?
What's a longing? What's a future? What's a locomotive?
What's a moment? What's a shadow? What's a imagination?"

"There is one small movement of the story that eludes your control,

one alien thing with no purpose
other than to teach you
that in the darkest corner of the story
dwells a wild force
that is too much
a part of you to see, a blind spot--
just as you do not see your own eyes
as they sweep the woods you walk through for danger."
--Wilbur Daniel Steele.

The Simple Mystery is my theme.
Pointing at the night, smiling, a gentle fool,
as if at the heart of darkness a porch light burned.
The story & voice so down to earth, clear, forthright,
but step back & a mystery intelligence passes through,
a current enters my eyes & goes out my toes.

Shadow of a longing from the basement of the story brushes
me: "What was that!"
I go over and over the story to find it, fix it, pound it
out, until it's time to let it go.
It's nothing but that one bent nail in the ridge beam
that may bring the whole house down around my ears.

The Cloud of Unknowing & Ollie Ollie Oxen Free

One of my favorite books is The Cloud of Unknowing,
by an unknown mystic from the 14th century.
It's a gentle & charming work meant to
"guide the reader in the path of contemplation."
It's sort of a manual addressed to a student
from a teacher on the ways of spiritual awakening.
Though it's aimed at a Christian audience, and deals
specifically with meditation on God, it always relaxes
& inspires me in my writing. It somehow frees up
my novelist soul to see life, myself & art in strangely
liberating & refreshing ways.

What the author suggests to the student about seeking
God through contemplation fits right in with seeking
truth through fiction:

"For the love of God, then, be careful & do not imprudently
strain yourself in this work. Rely more on joyful enthusiasm
than on sheer brute force. For the more joyfully you work,
the more humble & spiritual your contemplation becomes,
whereas when you morbidly drive yourself, the fruits will
be gross & unnatural....

"I speak half playfully now, but try to temper the loud, crude
sighing of your spirit & pretend to hide your heart's
longing from the Lord. Perhaps you will scorn this as childish
& frivolous, but believe me, anyone who has the light to understand
what I mean & the grace to follow it will experience, indeed, the
delight of the Lord's playfulness....

"Do not be put off if I seem to speak childishly & foolishly
& as if I lacked sound judgment. I do so purposely, for I
believe that the Lord has inspired me over the last few days
to think & feel as I do & to tell some of my other good friends
what I tell you now.

"One reason I have for advising you to hide your heart's desire
from God is because when you hide it I think he actually sees it
more clearly....

"For now you realize that to hide something purposely
is to cast it deep into your spirit."

This is why the unconscious, dreams, the forgotten crossroads
of childhood, coincidence, shreds of overheard conversations
are treasure troves of inspiration for writing for me.
What is most important & fruitful is what's hidden and quiet,
not what's on the surface jumping up & down & howling for attention.

For example, for me, choosing a subject for a novel is really
being chosen by the subject. This seems to be an obstacle for a lot
of writers--finding something important & deep & big enough to write
a novel about that is going to keep them invigorated over the long haul
of the book.

Rather than hunting down the subject like Elmer Fudd
chasing a scared rabbit with his shotgun, crashing
through the bushes & squawking like a foghorn, hide
from the subject, quietly, playfully, and let it
come to you in its time, calling "Ollie Ollie Oxen Free."

Wild Blue Acquaintance

I'd lived where I live now for a while & one day
there was a bluejay on the fence looking at me.
I got some peanuts & went out on the balcony & gave
one to this bird. He flew away to bury it somewhere
& returned for another. Each peanut he got closer on the
banister, until on the third one he hopped over & actually
grabbed the peanut right out of my fingers.

I waited & he didnt come back so I went in
& started working at the puter again.
Our place has big open windows in the
bedrooms & I was sitting there in the living room
& here comes the bluejay flying right
straight in through one open bedroom window and
right into the living room and lands on my
monitor.

I looked at him & he looked at me.

The peanuts were right there by me.
I carefully reached over & held one out to him
& he grabbed it & flew out the other bedroom
window. A minute later he was back for another.

I knew the people who had lived there before
& asked them if they had
trained a bluejay to do what he did, but no,
they were as astonished as me. There was another
jay, the mate, that hung around but wouldnt
come near me, much less in the house....

In the morning when I'd first go out there I'd look
around & he'd spot me from a mile away & come
flying over from a tree or a line in those big
rolling dips jays fly in. I used to get chills cuz
theyre like wild, and as trusting as he got of me for
the sake of the peanuts, his eyes just blazed
black with craziness all the time ready to go off. He
used to take peanuts out of my mouth but I always
kept my glasses on cuz i feared he would
peck my eyeballs.

Later I found it was likely a girl, cuz girls are
the forward ones among jays.

In no time, she was landing on
my head, taking peanuts out of my ears and
shirtpockets, and landing on my hand.
I'd have a peanut in my hand and she'd land there & I'd
palm it & she'd peck my thumbnail to get
me to give it up. I named her Bingo for some reason.
When we got a cat, Bingo visited cautiously a few times,
but never came inside again, & eventually moved on.

"You tell me you have had many dreams lately but have been too busy with your writing to pay attention to them.

You have got it the wrong way round.
Your writing can wait but your dreams cannot
because they come unsolicited from within
and point urgently to the way you must go."
--Jung

I had been working on a difficult scene of the new novel.
It's a scene of much conflict & potential violence
among a number of male characters. I believed there
had to be some kind of violent act to make it true & satisfying.

There was a gun in the scene. I struggled with it and
worked on it, trusting that my method of gradually peeling &
developing & observing details would pay off, but I was stumped.

I didnt see how any of the obvious physical violent
acts, on purpose or by accident, would be true, advance the story,
or reveal more of the soul of the main guy.

I thought somehow that blood should be spilled,
and even considered somehow the ghost could
leave her blood somehow somewhere, but nothing made
sense or clicked.

The main character is in the center of this knot of conflicts.
He has been obsessed with something called The Tears Project.
He feels responsible for starting the conflict at hand
& for resolving it.

I definitely wanted the ghost to play a part in the scene & in
shaping the violence that the scene seemed to demand,
but I didnt want the main character
to be passive if the ghost did intervene.

Then I had a dream where I decided to kill myself.
I had decided that I was going to die anyway
& that I should kill myself and die now
so that I wouldnt have to worry about dying & death anymore.

The method of suicide was to cut myself across the arteries at the tops
of my legs. (Let me tell you, I have NO suicidal impulses these days &
if I ever did, CUTTING would be THE LAST way I would ever do it, just
to assure you.)

So in the dream I cut myself on both legs.
Immediately afterwards I changed my mind.
I thought, Oh oh I better do something about these cuts quick.
Then I noticed I wasnt bleeding AT ALL.

I calmly studied the cuts, kind of opening them, one in particular,
which was like six inches long and a quarter inch deep
but not a drop of blood. Moist, but no blood.

I peeled the cut open and was looking into it when I woke up.

My first thought was Wow I'm glad that was a dream.
Then I thought What the hell was it about,
especially because I was not feeling bad at all about my life.
I considered a couple blatant Freudian possibilities,
though Jung is more my man. There was the castration angle,
six inch cuts, moist flaps.

Yoicks!

I let it stew.
I wondered mostly about how there was no blood.
Then I thought about the nature of the skin when I peeled it open.
I tried to remember exactly what I had SEEN in the dream.
It reminded me of how the eye itself appears right where
you pull the skin under the eye away from the eyeball--
that's how the wound looked in the dream.

I was writing later & recalled the dream and saw
that it had given me the solution to the scene.

The main guy would spontaneously burst into tears, unashamedly,
in the midst of all this harsh male threat of violence,
and that's what would stop the building violent tension,
shock the others out of their robotic march to destruction,
and it would change everything instantly.

His weeping would be more violent than a gun going off.

And that is how the ghost intervened, by somehow getting in him,
tapping into his unexpressed grief for her,
and leading to his passionate weeping
in the midst of this all-male scene of much macho energy
ready to boil over, even though he has little idea
why he is crying, and believes
it is not merely fear or cowardice.
Of course this act of weeping brings mockery from the others,
related to not acting like a man,
so perhaps both Freud & Jung were both right on this one.

More Jung on dreams:

"The dream is a little hidden door
in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul,
opening into that cosmic night which was psyche
long before there was any ego consciousness,
and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego consciousness
extends.... All consciousness separates; but in dreams
we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man
dwelling in the darkness of primordial night.
There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him,
indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood.
It is from these all-uniting depths that the dream arises,
be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral."

Don't tell readers stuff you already told them or that they can figure out on their own...

Here's the kind of critique a writer would pay for,
but it came free from my friend Kerri Sandberg,
with respect to a novel I'm working on:

Hey Richard.... One thing I did notice in the first half was that I found myself feeling a little impatient with Jonah's introspection. I understand that he's a cerebral fellow and most of the time his internal stuff is interesting and feels necessary (like the opening sequence when he thinks of the abortion, his past sins, whether he wept for them enough). But sometimes when he is thinking to himself, I feel as if you the writer are spelling things out for me rather than letting me make the connections for myself.

For example, we know that Jonah has been having a rash of strange dreams -- we've been reading them -- and I would rather be allowed to remember his past dreams on my own, rather than be overtly reminded of them when Jonah sits there thinking about Jung. It's good that you're not providing any interpretations of the dreams, I just wondered if the Jung paragraph was there as a reminder to the reader rather than a necessary and organic part of the story itself.

It's weird, though, because sometimes I really can't decide whether you're spelling things out too much or not.... For example, this part:

Quote:
"For a minute I sat there listening to the silence. It was one of those sobering moments where everything settles into place, simple and clear, where reality shines just as it is, not one watt more nor less. Where your life stops and turns and looks back at you, eye to eye. I saw that all I had going for me were (1) a hodgepodge of notes and quotes on crying with no rational chance of publication, and (2) a ghost tapping in my attic and coming to me in my dreams. I thought that Coral must have seen me and my life in same glum light and would choose to stay up there in Berkeley with her ex and her kid and never come home to me again."

I mean, that's such great writing, but part of me feels I understand all that already. It's something I can discern without having to be told directly. I know Jonah well enough by now to know what's troubling him, his insecurities, his fears, his relationship to the tears project, to Coral, the ghost, etc. Of course there are always new layers (the loss of this father, the abortion) and I like when those revelations appear in Jonah's introspective moments. But as far as his thought process goes, how he reacts to things, what he thinks and feels about them, a lot of that I can assume on my own at this point. He's been so well developed as a character that some of his thoughts feel like a rehash. I'm sure other readers may not feel that way, though, so obviously take this with a big grain of salt.

I love the entire street scene. The exchange with Donald is great and it gets even better when Roberto and his friends walk over. Any time your humor and sense of the absurd have a chance to shine is so wonderful.

It was hard to believe that Jonah's thoughts would be so controlled while he's sobbing, but then that seems to be the whole point. Even in the midst of an emotional meltdown, Jonah doesn't lose himself completely in his tears. He's self-conscious, aware of how he looks, how he sounds, who's watching him, even what the neighbors will think of this episode in years to come. It's like his mind is completely disconnected from his heart. He can't just surrender completely to what he's feeling. That was interesting and irked me at the same time, which may be what you were going for.

Anyway, just thinking aloud. I'm not sure if any of this will be if use to you. The writing is great as usual, a lot happens here, and it makes me anxious for the next installment. Rosa moved the curtain! That was so cool.
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Thanks for all that, Kerri. Yeah, it's a struggle, that too much inner stuff versus the pleasure of the/writing. I'll see more clearly when I'm done and can go through it from the start and see what's too much, repetitious, obvious, irritating, etc.

I'm pretty sure you're right about a lot of it, but I can't see it clearly enough right now as a whole. I admit I get too much of a kick out of having this guy meander through the wringer of his own making.

I think in this particular case I wanted him to be at about at the end of his mental string. But I'm explaining, and you're right, it likely is too much. And you got what I'm trying for in the weeping scene, yes, with him observing all the time even then in the mush of total emotion. I think her telling him to drop the tears project is tied into that, and her whole purpose in returning, or remaining, and yes he has a ways to go. But I know that feeling when I'm reading something good & I'm going, OK we get it already. I'll see, it'll come clear later, but what you're saying only confirms my main concern--that it not bog or irritate the intelligent reader, the ally. So thanks very much, it's just what I need to keep me on track.
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