Echoes in a Hollow Space

I am an American, which is a complex thing. I know how some of us act in the world, and sometimes that makes me cringe in shame. I want to tell the world, “We’re not all like that.” But that’s a complex thing, too, because sometimes, in some moments, there is something in the American psyche which makes many of us go from 1 to 60 on the boorish scale in less than a second. Where does that American rage and boorishness come from? It’s entitlement, of course. I think it’s mostly a white middle to upper class thing. But sometimes even that’s a complex thing, an exercise in finger-pointing that no one, it seems, is completely immune to.

Some of us try hard not to be like that. I’m fortunate that I came from the lower classes, didn’t grow up thinking the world and everything in it was mine by right. Doesn’t mean I don’t snap sometimes and go into boorish mode. I’m human. And I’m American. And I’m white. But I’m always deeply ashamed and apologetic afterwards, so I try really hard not to go there—so I can live more comfortably with myself if nothing else.

I’ve been thinking about my last trip to England, in 2004. I’d been aware for some time how badly some of us acted overseas. So much so that if anyone asked if I was American, I would sometimes lie and say I was Canadian. It’s possible some rare Canadians act boorishly overseas, but I think it’s got to be much, much rarer than with Americans.

On that 2004 trip, there were three of us middle-aged ladies traveling together, and inevitably, inevitably whenever we overheard someone whining or complaining or acting childish in general, that person had an American accent. We decided we would go out of our way to be the polar opposite in every dealing we had with locals. This was about a year after the bombing of Baghdad and Bush’s invasion of Iraq, so Americans were even more unpopular at the time. Most people were decent to us, especially when we poured on the charm offensive, or when we voiced our own deep opposition to what Bush had done, but some were barely polite.

As I pondered all this, it occurred to me that Donald Trump is the Ugly American Made Flesh. He is the ultimate of loud-mouthed, ill-informed, corrupt entitlement boors. He is all American sins made manifest, a tulpa created from the worst instincts of the worst aspects of the American psyche, a thought-form embodying the American shadow. We made this tulpa—even those of us who would rather pretend to be Canadian. We allowed him to be elected, even those of us who voted for someone else. The 2016 election was the very embodiment of American arrogance and rage. How could we expect to have better candidates when we were all pulling so hard against each other? When we were all sunk so deep in our own arrogance that screamed, “My way or no way at all”?

Donald Trump isn’t just the worst president in American history, he is a reckoning for the American psyche, a lesson I believe we have failed to learn. Oh yes, he may (or may not) be on the ropes now, and good people are working hard to block him and bring him down, but have we truly learned anything from the last terrible years? I can’t say that I see it. Greed and arrogance and entitlement and “my way or no way” still abound. Americans have never been particularly good at self-knowledge, deep examination of our own souls, or acknowledging and working with the shadow. We’re still in denial. I fear we have learned nothing.

The ugly American lives on.

I used to do a lot more pondering than I do now.  Not the fretting, worrisome kind of things that too easily occupy the waking human mind, but the big questions.  The who-what-where-when and why of existence.  Pondering is important to who I am as a person.  It was something that made me feel connected to a deeper strata of the universe, so I made sure I had time to just think about things.  Some relatives may have called this “laziness,” but I called it “creative dreaming.”

Anymore—what with work and taking on a greater responsibility for helping my elderly mother—it seems as if there are always things to do, places I have to be, tasks, tasks, tasks that interfere with those golden ponder hours.  I have to carve out special chunks of time to get any pondering in, kind of like those chunks of time for writing.  Often the two are in conflict and I have to forgo one to do the other.  And when I do get a moment to sit and think about things, it’s jangled, broken up, a vibration dance inside myself that has trouble being still, constantly interjected with thoughts of things that need doing and guilt for not doing them.

Some of this, I realize, could be from media over-stimulation, but it’s also part of not being a kid anymore and the distractions inherent in moving into a different phase of life.  I feel guilty even mentioning it, really, partly from those old voices whispering “laziness,” and partly because there are far worse problems.  My elderly parent is not an invalid.  She’s still up and doing for which I am extremely grateful.  I do still have chunks of time to myself, even if jangled.  I should be grateful for what I have.

But “shoulds” are not golden; they buy very little besides guilt.  Certainly, shoulds do not build empires.  And the razor’s edge of all this, the thing that cuts the most, is that writers require pondering time.  I know for a fact that the less time I have for pondering and dreaming waking dreams, the more my writing suffers.  If I am struggling as a writer, it is partially due to that.  So pondering is not just a luxury.

I long sometimes for the serenity of an afternoon reading a profound book, one that makes my mind spark fire and sends the pondering engines into overdrive.  I  long for evenings in front of the fireplace, no one talking except the flames, mesmerized by their flicker and not-quite-understandable whispers, journeying through mental byways to that place where all flames originate, where fire has lips and tongues that speak plainly about The Secrets—if only you could recall them when your reverie is done.

Reverie.  What a beautiful word.

I’d love to ponder this some more, but I have to go.  My timer just went off and that laundry won’t do itself.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

The other day Peter Serafinowicz (serafinowicz) tweeted, "All this time I thought I'd been lying to myself, but I was just kidding myself."

I've been pondering it ever since, one way or another. It's become something of a mantra in recent days—or at least, the litmus paper that I slap onto each gooey life illusion of mine to see what colors come up. Results still pending, so I won't be going into all that, but I've been thinking about that remark in another context, my other obsession du jour: family history. Family history is sometimes fraught with illusion and projected realities. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems, even historic puzzles. You must take many things on faith alone, and often the things you find out change everything you thought you knew.

( Read More )

I've posted behind the cut the first two scenes of my short story, "Closes Within a Dream." At least, it was supposed to be a short story: a novelette or a novella. It's argued with me ever since I wrote the first draft. It says it's part of a novel. It's been saying that for several drafts. I think the languid style and crazy quilt of information is more suited towards a novel than a short story, so the first 18 rounds go to the novel—and maybe the decision.

I suck at short stories. I never want to start them where they should be started or end them where they should be ended. I want to include scads of character information. I want to stretch out, go long. Lounge around the side of the pool and slowly bake in the sun, rubbing application after application of sunscreen on my greedy skin, rather than jump in and do my required laps. I recognize there's something willful in this. I am not by nature a short storyist.

I've written several of these stories, centering around this made up place called Dos Lunas and the same set of characters. I'm not sure any of them work entirely as stories (well, maybe one), and I think "Closes" may actually be one of the weakest. They really may be a novel trying to happen, but they are taking their own sweet time in letting me know what the larger conflict is. It comes out of the mist now and again to blow raspberries at me before flitting back into hiding, so I know it's there. I catch a glimpse of it's hind end sometimes when it doesn't know I'm looking. A shapely hind end, to be sure, but I'd really like to get a glimpse of its face.

So why am I posting this? I don't know, except it's part of a larger reassessment of things I'm doing. Of writing and of life, and whatever else you've got. I'm doing a hell of a lot of pondering, but so far the pond of my mind has not let anything crawl onto shore. At least as concerns my Dos Lunas cycle. Something in the primordial ooze part of my brain urges me to put this here, so I have. The rest in still stuck in the deep muck until the big boss opens up and lets this worker drone know what's going on.

( Closes Within a Dream )

mevennen posted a fascinating link to this article on homophily.

It's something worth mulling over, the tendency of like to seek like, to want our opinions and biases reinforced rather than challenged. It's certainly easy to sometimes con yourself into believing what "the smart people" say over what your instincts are telling you—something I have been pondering a great deal lately.

I may even blog about it one day if I can ever sort it out in my own head. Perhaps I should challenge myself by having coffee with a troll. Nothing like the opposite of what you believe to help you clarify what it is you do believe.