A Friday Night Return

AP Photo / Bloomsburg Press Enterprise, Jimmy May

Years ago, there were Friday night football games, the marching band, cheerleaders, the smoke from hamburgers grilling out back of the snack bar, and that was the end to another busy week in the fall of the year.  Now, I hear echoes through the trees of the marching band and the roar of the crowd at my old high school just a few blocks away from my apartment.  High school football and smoke in the air:  nothing changes but everything.

“Notes on books, culture, and the life of the mind,” reads my blog tagline.  Well, I’ve been overwhelmed by all the life lessons lately, frantically scribbling away in journals and notebooks but not for publication.  What is this life?  What will happen next?  I could only ask my notebooks.  I wanted answers, and until I found them, I did not feel I had the courage to speak.  I had forgotten the prime directive of my own teaching philosophy:  the questions are more important than the answers.  The answers will always exist, but if one does not ask the right questions, the answers will never be found.

The last few years have been a crisis of faith for everyone.  Most of us were left to ponder:  where are we going?  Is the spirit of America dead?  What if we discover that the spirit has always been dead, that “all men are created equal” are just pretty words?  Maybe there is no equality and no justice, no liberty and no allowance for freedom.  Or, that we are slaves to our fears, our prejudices, our narcissism.  To the immigrant yearning for a better life we offer only the whip or the gun.  We sow the seeds of violence and celebrate the bloody harvest.  We are unwilling to reach out a hand to those in despair.  That is what we have become, a nation armed to the teeth against the Other.  A people too selfish and narcissistic to see we are all dreamers; we are all here in search of a better life.

We should be striving for a more perfect union.  Perfection may be unattainable, but like most sentences, in that one, the verb is the heart of the matter:  striving.  To paraphrase King, we may not get there in our lifetimes.  We may never get there, but we continue striving.  Always.

“I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain,” goes the lament.  Depression is the black dog that follows us home and threatens never to leave.  Anxiety wakes us in the middle of the night and disturbs our vague and restless dreams.  “I grow old…I grow old.”  We do and we are.  We are old before our time.  “Would it have been worth it after all, would it have been worthwhile, after the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, after the novels; after the tea cups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—and this, and so much more?”

America is a colder place:  700,000 of us are gone from this autumnal world.  Where do we go from here?  The only answer, the best answer I have, is onward, while the ghosts flow in and around each of us and fall behind.  We try to carry some essence of them with us but it is like trying to transport the ocean to the desert with only our cupped hands.  It is too much to carry.  It is a futile enterprise on the way down to our own dusty deaths.

Yet, there is hope.  There is life and there is what remains.  We are more resilient than we know.

At the dawn of the new year, my grand-niece was born.  Charlotte Ileana, named for that patron saint of English literature, Charlotte Bronte.  I have watched Charlie discover her world.  In her face, I see my niece, her husband, his family, and my lost father-in-law.  She has not dared to eat a peach, as Eliot writes in his poem, but she did try mango the other night with hilarious results.  Mango and the world are her frontiers in these early days of her life.

So it is time to pick up that thread that connects us.  The thread always seems ready to snap.  Our humanity is always in danger of fading away.  But this is life and this is us, and we are striving to bring about that most American of dreams:  a more perfect union.  That is the only struggle that matters now.

This is a time for wonder:  “Do I dare disturb the universe?”  We have no choice because we are alive and among the living.

As for the blog, look for more notes on books, culture, and the life of the mind.  If I find a few answers in the smoke and fire of daily life, I’ll post those too.  “Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky…”  Onward!

 

The World-Weary Eyes

 

Here is another tragic heroine of modern poetry, our Sappho, Anne Sexton.  She died October 4, 1974, a suicide.

I think of the great Peter Gabriel song, “Mercy Street,” based on her poem.  It is a dreamscape of horror and melancholy.

Of what do we dream today?  What follows across the blue-black night sky?  Owls and peacocks, and multi-lateral corruption of the soul.  The night whispers the future, a story, one more to tell.

* * * * *

This is the only thing that matters, this pen scratching across the page.  Others have written about this across the years, the fear, the danger, the loneliness.  Here, there is nothing new.  It’s just the banality of evil.  Why are we surprised that the world is corrupt and dark?  The world mirrors the human soul.  We are the things we build.

We dream of the goodness of human beings, but is that who we are?  We are a selfish animal.  How do we rise from this muck?  How do we climb out of the fetid hole?  It will take a man and woman to bear witness.  It will take bonding in action to create a better world.  Then this good virus has to spread; we must become infected with the divine spirit of Earth and sky, tree and bird.  We must feel the surge of the Earth.  Breathe.

There is a life mysticism, the coincidental confluence of divine light and air.  Look back into the persistence of memory.  There is the human story waiting for us to pick up words like autumn leaves.  Tell us, the world says; tell us again.

We take nothing for granted because evil is nothing if not resilient.  We are living through a reckoning of American life; we are poised on the precipice.  Do we fall into the abyss or experience a renaissance?

There is so much to read, so much to experience, so many stories to tell. 

* * * * *

Anton Chekhov stares out from a photograph taken of him by his brother, slightly colorized.  Arresting.  Mesmerizing.  Note the world-weary eyes.  He is such an astute observer of human life, human foibles, human misery.  I cannot stop looking at those eyes.  All the Russian 19^th century novelists and playwrights offer stories that cut to the bone.

What is it about the 19^th century?  The world became aware of Man’s inhumanity, his propensity for violence, his bloody intentions, his avarice, and deceit.  It is as if the sin of Eden finally came to its ultimate, evil fruition, and was followed by the descent into bloody desecration in the great wars of mammoth machines and bombs and waves of bloodshed in the 20^th century.  Welcome to hell on Earth.

As a traveler, I would like to make it a regular stop on the time-line railroad to see that 19^th century world.  The morale of America must have been at the same level, or lower, than it is now.  The world must have been in just as much jeopardy.  The human animal must have been just as much of a threat.  Man has always been a threat.  In the 19^th century, he was redeemed, at least in part, by Emerson, Thoreau, the great poets and seers of an age.  We need such an age again.

History should be taught that way:  put on the virtual reality goggles and walk the streets of America; see Yosemite Valley as the Indigenous People did, before white men and industry tried to ransom it off into development hell.  Walk the Civil War battlefields then and now.  Compare.  Never again.

So much history takes place in a single area.  What if we could see it all at once, like some high-tech diorama.  Questions:  why is America such a violent place, and where does this violence originate?  William Blake would argue human violence and cruelty originate not in nature, but in the human brain.

The 19^th century feels like a watershed moment, a confluence of everything:  philosophy, reason, religion, nature, human endeavor, art, literature, and culture.  We cannot discount evil; human treachery is always with us.

Chekhov’s eyes tell us he knew this; he saw it.  That is what makes him so compelling to read.  He bore witness to an age, and his stories live.

Anne Sexton:  “In my dream, / drilling into the marrow / of my entire bone, / my real dream, / I’m walking up and down Beacon Hill / searching for a street sign— / namely MERCY STREET. / Not there.”

 

How To Write A Personal Statement

 

It is never too early to think about writing a personal statement.  You may be asked to submit such an essay for graduate school, an internship, or to be part of a research lab or project.

Students often face writer’s block when crafting these essays.  “My story is not interesting,” they say, or “nothing has ever happened to me?”  Often students compare their situation to others and find their own essay lacks excitement and life-changing epiphanies.  Do not fall into this trap!

There is an old writing cliché:  a story is only as good as the person telling it.  You may think you do not have a story, but you do.  And events that seem mundane will take on importance when you tell that story.  Most of life is composed of little moments, not big, earth-shattering thunderstorms, and these little moments often carry the weight and heft of a life-changing experience.  It is, truly, all in the telling.

Begin by thinking of the events in your life and how you came to be where you are.  When we look back on the past, we often see how, even in the most confusing times, there is a pattern.  If you had not met this person, you would never have had that experience.  If you had never taken that class, you would not have discovered this about yourself.  Look for those transcendent moments.  Again, to be significant, the moment does not have to be “the day I had brain surgery,” or “the time I traveled through Europe.”  If you have had moments like that, certainly use them, but just as easily, you may have had a favorite moment when you last gathered with your family or the time when you had an encounter with someone who made you see the world differently.

Next, begin writing.  No outlines or pre-planning; just write and let your mind go.  No judgment, no saying, “This is horrible.”  Just write.  This may take several sessions over a few days.  You might write thousands of words before you find the story you wish to tell.  Literally, throw words onto the page and see what sticks.  Once you have material written, begin highlighting blocks you might want to elaborate on and develop into something more full and complete.  Remember, the audience for this writing is a scholarship or admissions committee; they want something more from you in the personal statement than what they will know from your grade point averages and letter grades.  Who are you?  If there are times in your history where you did not do as well as you’d hoped, or when you faced a setback, a personal statement is the place to explain what happened and, more importantly, what you learned from the experience.  Committees are not interested only in the good things that have happened to you.  They want to know how you faced adversity, how you struggled with change, how you made mistakes but learned from them.

It is important while you are doing this prewriting to research the program to which you are applying.  Know the research being done in the department and the professors who are coordinating the work.  Your statement should incorporate your research.  Ask yourself what is my goal in applying to this program?  Then work that into your statement as well.  Committees like students with strong goals and objectives.  Go to the library and read the latest research in that particular area so you have knowledge to back up your goals.

Passion is imperative.  What do you find exciting about this program or research?  Make sure to include the experiences you have had that led you to this next step.  You might have discovered this area in a required course, but describe what makes you want to pursue this area in more depth.  Don’t just say, “I want to help people,” or “I want to give back to the world.”  Those are noble sentiments, but it tells the committee nothing but the most common clichés.

This is only the beginning.  Be prepared to write and rewrite.  Take each word, each sentence, and work it to perfection.  Every line must convey meaning and insight into your character and abilities.  That comes with time and revision.  The first draft will never be the only draft if you expect to succeed.  Get input from trusted friends who know you and your passions.  Seek help from your advisors and professors.  The professors might be called upon to write letters of recommendation, so letting them know your career and research plans will help them understand what you want from your future educational pursuits.

Don’t be discouraged.  Good writing takes time and effort.  This may be one of the most important essays you write in your education.  That is no reason to be blocked; it means you must revise and rewrite obsessively to make the statement sing.

So make the commitment today to get started.  No procrastination!  You cannot see the shine until you have started polishing.  Pick up the pen, open the laptop, and begin.

 

"Inadvertent" by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Karl Ove Knausgaard has been a prolific literary phenomenon, especially in the last decade, with his six-part mammoth autobiographical novel, My Struggle, and The Seasons Quartet.  Yale University Press published his 2017 Windham-Campbell lecture under the title, Inadvertent.  In an attempt to answer the common question thrown at most writers, Knausgaard has much to say about why he writes.

How much of our behavior is dictated by the reality of our death?  Knausgaard believes he writes because he will die, which is a realist mission statement for any artist.  One wishes to preserve the sacred, the fleeting moment of truth or beauty or melancholy.  Sometimes, all of the above spurs us to take up a brush or chisel or fountain pen.  Because he has made a life of studying the Norwegian painter, Edvard Munch (1863-1944), Knausgaard believes he understands the painter’s motivation.  He can articulate Munch’s inspiration:  “I paint because I have lost trust in the world.”  What trust is broken for this artist?  The world betrays us because it will go on without us after we die.  We are given only this brief episode in an almost infinite history, and this is a source of human tragedy.  In a way, it is narcissistic because life is more of a relay race than an individual event.  We all play a part, but no one is the lead in this human comedy.  Knausgaard cites the deaths that shattered Munch’s life:  losing his mother when he was five, and his sister when he was thirteen.  So art is a defense against a finite world, and tragedy colors everything in the artist’s world.

Knausgaard sums this up in pure poetry:  “We live in an ocean of time, where events, things, and people are continually succeeding one another, but we cannot live with such boundless complexity, because we disappear in it, and therefore we organize it into categories, sequences, hierarchies.”  We name things; we identify ourselves with our country of birth; we define our existence by our occupations.  “All of us sum up our lives in this way,” he writes, “that is what we call identity.”

Formulating these identities as characters in his writing leads him to success.  “It wasn’t until I started breaking the rules, showing how something was and should be understood, very precisely and with no room for doubt, and describing people in psychological terms, that my writing came alive.”  In doing this, he moves far beyond another writing cliché:  show, don’t tell.  The book contains advice for writers that often cuts across the grain of what is taught in MFA classrooms.  He is also clear about what constitutes a foundation for a writer.  From childhood, he has always been a voracious reader.  He offers two salient observations about his reading-to-writing life.  “[T]he essential thing about books, I think, was that they constituted a place in the world where I could be, where nothing was demanded of me, where on the contrary I got what I wanted…the whole point of them being precisely that I read them alone, and yet it never felt like that, for while you were reading you were always together with someone else.”  He started out wanting to live in an author’s universe and then decided he wanted to create his own separate worlds with stories and characters.

Knausgaard offers some insight into the unique phenomenon of My Struggle, his epic.  He imagined the work as a fictional diary with all the intimacy that the genre conveys.  Writing it was a way to move through self-reflection in a step-by-step, realistic novel.  He is not a fan of heavy outlining and preparation.  The words must come to the writer, he argues, and they cannot be forced.  Often he does not know where he is going in a piece, a scary but necessary feeling.  This is the source of the book’s title.  The words and paragraphs arrive out of a cloud of unknowing; he comes to the finished piece inadvertently, making it fresh and new.  “For me all writing is blind and intuitive,” he writes, “it either works or it doesn’t…”

For him, what has not worked, is creative writing programs.  The one in which he participated shattered whatever confidence he had in his own abilities.  It left him “paralyzed by shame and low self-esteem.”  Instead, he focuses on writing the way he reads:  in a total state of self-absorption.  He realizes that he aspires “to a different ideal:  to one day be able to write something so essential and important that it speaks to all people, since it is true or relevant for everyone, irrespective of gender, class, or culture.”  This is the powerful message of this book and lecture, and a necessary mission for all writers and artists around the world.