Things are happening. Slowly. At this point, the plan is to see the cool parts and ignore the annoying parts. I have an urge to cuss, richly and with feeling. But.
Making something cool out of the uncool is an impulse I get to indulge in weird ways. Â With all that vagueness, something emblematic.
There are times I wonder why I do what I do. I mean, the thought occurs that there are simpler things in life. How did I ever convince myself that I could be a writer?
I cannot retrace the steps, not at this point. Somewhere back in the restructured haze of youth I had this idea that it would be cool to tell stories and get paid for it. I can do that, I can make things up, I do it all the time, all I have to do is write it down and send it in.
Well, I will not retrace the learning that showed me how wrong I was about my abilities. Death by a thousand rejection slips.
I’ll admit, I was baffled. I don’t know about others, but for a time I honestly could not see a difference between what I read in the magazines and what I was putting down on paper. You just tell what happens next. What does logic have to do with it? Life doesn’t follow rules like that, why should fiction? And this is science fiction, so rules should apply even less. I mean, what does it mean, it doesn’t make sense?
Because I did not know any of the rules, not even the rules of submission, I received no feedback in those early attempts, and drifted away into something else. Something I thought would be simpler. As much as I appreciate complexity as such, I was not good at creating it or dealing with it. How I managed to reach adulthood with any capabilities at all is one of those mysteries never to be fully—or even partially—answered. It was never that I thought the rules didn’t apply to me, it was that I never recognized the rules.
And still I managed.
It’s remarkable that I’m even alive.
But there were guardrails. My parents, other adults in my life, the rough outlines of general rules, a certain unexamined caution in my approach to daily life. And limited opportunities to get in over my head. In many ways, I had a sheltered upbringing.
That and I read. (One of my favorite films is Three Days of the Condor and one of my favorite scenes is the one where all these CIA operatives are discussing Robert Redford and how dangerous can he be. He has no field experience, why are we worried. “He reads,” Cliff Robertson tells them. Clearly most of them don’t get it. I loved that. He reads.
I read. A lot.
Not as much as I once did, but I retain more now, so it balances out. While I can’t point to a specific example (other than in a debate or argument) where having read something made a difference in a given situation, the cumulative effect has been like a form of experience.
I grew up at a time in a place soaked in the kind of received nonsense that requires outgrowing. At one time or another I have believed a great many false narratives, especially about the relative value of different people, different kinds of people, and like most of the people around I would let proof of my beliefs dribble from my mouth from time to time. Some of my contemporaries, no doubt, never grew out of that. For whatever reason, I was fortunate in a disposition that made it impossible for me to categorize anyone I personally knew according to prevailing stereotypes, and by extension whatever group they supposedly represented. Little by little, over time, I left a great many prejudices behind. Can I take any kind of credit for that? I’m not sure. The simplistic veneer of easy discrimination always gives way to the complexness underneath, and I have always preferred to embrace the complex—even when I didn’t understand it. And what I eventually understood is that prejudices, especially towards people, are products of simplistic thinking. The defense of such thinking, when pursued far enough, results in complicated structures that ultimately will not even support themselves. That genuine understanding results in simpler structures that allow us to see clearly.
Because I have learned (eventually) that complex is not the same thing as complicated and that often, perhaps usually, complexity manifests in simple forms. When we examine the properties of a nautilus shell, we see something quite simple in presentation. We can take it in at a glance and appreciate what it is fairly easily. It is a simple thing. But the layers of complexity is contains and offers up with investigation amaze us and lead to a trove of questions which, pursued diligently, offer up a glimpse into the underpinnings of the universe. A simple tune, easy on the ears and elegantly comprehensible in its performance, yields up myriad mathematical, harmonic, and even cultural aspects, an onion in its layers, beautiful complexity that manifests in simple melody and harmony. As noted by Samuel R. Delany, a simple declarative sentence—The door dilated—unpacks in ways that suggest an entire civilization beyond the threshold, all the assumptions necessary to result in the logic of that sentence and what it tells us.
Learning to see the two in collaboration can give us a more satisfying experience of life itself.
As a youth, I was dazzled and delighted by the complexities. Sometimes I mistook complications for complexities. Detail can fascinate, even when it might not add up to anything coherent. A consequence of age and continual observation is that I learned to see the whole where before I might only have seen the components. The art of recognizing and assembling complex ideas and details to create a comprehensible something is the art of recognizing that elegance, truth, and understanding should not confuse. We strive for clarity, which usually presents as simplicity.
But like the misidentification of complexity with complication, we have to learn to tell the difference between simplicity and the simplistic.
Thank you for your attention while I did some sorting.
We attended an out-of-town convention last week, the first we have done together in many years, the first I’ve done since 2015. I made a policy not to go on the road when I have nothing to promote. The exception to that is the chance to see friends who will be at a con or who live nearby and the dates just happen to coincide. In this case, two of our favorite people live in Pittsburgh and seeing them was the deciding factor in choosing to attend Confluence.
Confluence is a small local convention that has in the past been surprising in what it offered, namely the chance to sit down with writers I respect and admire. I’ve had breakfast with Gene Wolfe, longish conversations with Michael Swanwick, met William Tenn (Phil Klass). The panels are of interest and usually the interaction with fans has been on a high level. I like the people who run it. They do a good job.
But it’s quite a drive from St. Louis to Pittsburgh, and while it has become a familiar one, we are older and more susceptible to road-burn. The weather was pleasant enough going up and it remained moderate while we were there, but it was hot coming back and we return to a scorching week. It’s Friday and I’m still recovering.
One off-site event was fascinating. Friday morning, before the con got started, a small group of us drove into the city to tour a church with some amazing murals. St. Nicholas in Millvale. Go to site, take a look. A Serbian artist named Max Vanka painted murals over most of the interior and they are amazing. Done in stages, from World War I on, they are more than just religious paintings, and they are radiant. There is an organization trying to save them (watercolor over bare wall, the leaching is bad) and I commend you as an art lover to help if you are so moved.
You might wonder, knowing me, why I would marvel and support something like this. Religion aside, which I could not care less for, these are works of art. This is the product of people of skill and imagination. The passion is evident.
After that, we returned to the hotel (out by the airport) and spent a few days being fans. I reconnected with some folks I haven’t seen in some time. And we spent time with our friends, Tim and Bernadette, who are amazing. We needed a longer stay, but alas.
Confluence, as I mentioned, is good convention. They take science fiction seriously and are good to their guests. But I will tell you that I’m now of a disposition that I’m less inclined to just pop into a town, especially that far away, for just the con. Next time we will take more time, do other things, relax. The in-between time from the road is the vital part, even though we generally like traveling. I want to take things more leisurely in future.
Next up, SF-wise, is Archon. Perhaps I’ll see you there.
Meantime, it’s good to be home….and not moving.
I recently had to find a new gym. The facility I had been going to for, oh, hell, 25 years I suppose, closed because they lost their lease. They evidently had no plans to find a new location in South St. Louis (they have one still in St. Charles). I had made friends over the years. For a time there was what might be viewed as a Geezers Club, three or four of us Of An Age and hanging on, but they all passed away, one after another. One may yet be alive. For the last several months there, going in at my usual time, I usually had the space mostly to myself. Four or five others would be there, spread out.
And then, closing down.
I took a few weeks off to shop around for a new place. Interestingly enough, there was one not a block away. This one is clearly a higher end club. Clean, spacious, newer equipment. They even have a big dance studio space. It’s more expensive than what I had been paying, but that didn’t surprise me. A few others I checked out were considerably pricier, so I finally bit the bullet and signed up.
It’s taking some time to acclimate. See, every gym is a bit different, especially with the kind of equipment they offer. No matter what, some things are just not going to be a smooth one-for-one transition. What you thought you were doing may not be what you can do here, at least not yet. Again, fine. I’ve changed gyms before, even though it’s been a while.
But this I did not expect. I’m doing better, at least in the way my body is responding.
The new facility is a two-story affair. Free weights are downstairs, machines upstairs. I go directly downstairs first. I’ve already established a routine (which will change in time; the best thing to do is change things up every two or three months, otherwise your body gets too used to what you’re doing and the benefits diminish) and I work through about 12 to 14 separate motions. Then I go upstairs to do my legs and a few other shaping exercises on the machines. At the end, I’ve done 20 to 22 motions, which is considerably more than I’d been doing.
I’m not sure where I’m getting the energy, but I think just the fact that I have to break it all into two distinct periods is psychologically beneficial. By the time I walk up the stairs to do part two, somewhere in my brain there’s a reset and it’s like I’m starting over.
And it’s beginning to produce results.
Now, it may seem curious to some that at my age this is even a thing. I will be 69 this year. In certain respects, I’m as if not stronger than I have ever been. It may be that one day I’ll run into a wall and crash, but for now I intend to hang on to whatever physical ability I have for as long as I can.
Serendipitously, I recently saw a new three-part documentary about—Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Now, I have never been even close to a fanatic about body building. I’m vain enough to try to keep a fit body, but the kind of devotion, nay, obsession that body builders give to their sport is just not in my repertoire. I admire them, yes. Have I ever wanted to look like Mr. Universe? Not really. But that doesn’t mean one can’t find inspiration in them.
Schwarzenegger is a cultural icon. The body building, the films, two terms as governor of California…there’s a lot going on there. I was unaware of most of the details. It’s quite an informative documentary. Plus, he has a new series on Netflix, an action comedy called FUBAR, and I have to say, it’s fun. Not great art, but it does what it intends to do rather well. In the first episode there is an action sequence which includes him running after a fire engine, dropping down a manhole, killing some bad guys, etc. The usual kind of thing. His handler remarks that he’s the fastest 55-year-old he’s ever known. It is a plausible assessment.
But Schwarzenegger is 75.
There are brief scenes of him still working out. He says of himself “Right now I’m just trying to hold on.”
It’s not so much the exercise, but everything else he’s doing at the same time, that I find inspirational. what I would like to be able to do is operate at 80 to 95% capacity until one day I just stop. (Not 100% because I believe that running like that is an invitation to burn-out, to injury, to some kind of loss that can’t be recovered from. I have personal reasons to hold back that last 5 to 15 percent, not least of which is I feel I’ll last longer and manage better results.) It helps to see someone apparently achieving that.
On those other fronts, I’m working on a new novel and preparing for some other publisher things which I will talk about later. I’m seeing more of my mom than before, because dad is gone and I don’t want her to feel in any way neglected, or pass up a chance to just soak up more of her. My daily schedule is a bit of a mess, so I’m trying to find a way to fit everything in that I want to do.
Other stuff. One other thing I took from the Schwarzenegger documentary is his “philosophy” of life, if you can call it that, and why not? A philosophy like that doesn’t have to be complex, and this is not. “Keep busy and be useful.” Be useful. Apparently his father taught him that, Whatever you do, be useful. That resonated.
You never know where you might find reasons to do more.
I’ve been keeping busy. I hope I’ve been useful.
Because I really don’t want to write anything heavy or long, accept a couple of new photographs. I’m fine, I just need to recoup.
Thank you.
He did not care for his name, either his given one—Henry—or the nickname he ended up being known by, Hank. At his last job, he became known as Hank the Crank. It was an affectionate sobriquet. He managed a department full of engineers and took care of them. One of the first things he did when he took over was get them all raises which had been long overdue.
He flourished in that job. At the end of decades of struggling, moving from one place of employment to another, seeing opportunities die, usually in the mismanagement of others, he came to a place where all his unique and quirky skills and proclivities came together. For the years he managed that department, he was, as they say, in his glory. It was good to see him so enthused, all his faculties engaged. He would have worked at that till he died given the chance, but once again forces beyond his control took it away.
But he retired with his wife, my mother (though it was a few more years before she left the working world), and they bought a new house and settled into a suburban neighborhood (to my surprise, actually) to enjoy each other. I think they did. For a couple of decades they were able to be with each other in a way they might only have imagined possible.
Then the health problems began. Little by little, this man I had viewed as a kind of superman began to diminish. He had always been a private and often reticent man, so complaining was not part of his repertoire. It must be said that had he complained a bit more, things might have been easier for him. But he had difficulty admitting he needed help and for most of his life he had always been the one to be relied upon by those around him.
Compensation for his willingness to Be There had never been a consideration
My parents’ romance was the stuff of movies. They certainly didn’t see it that way, but when you hear the way it happened you can’t help but be charmed. He was in the army, stationed at Fort Leonard Wood. After basic training, his original unit was set to ship out to Spain, but he was pulled at the last minute because of his teeth. On his first leave, he and a buddy came up to St. Louis. They were at the Hilands, which used to sit on the ground that now supports Forest Park Community College. The Hilands was an amusement park, right on the edge of Forest Park. After a day of enjoying the rides and attractions, they were about to try to find a hotel. At the bus stop, they spotted two girls. They approached looking for directions and ended up riding the bus with them down town.
Dad must have been immediately smitten. Soon enough they were exchanging letters. Mom told me he very quickly wanted to meet her parents. At some point, she became smitten, too.
They decided not to marry until after his service was done. He was cognizant of the possibility of injury and had scruples about burdening her with an invalid, but the fact is he never saw combat. He ended up on Hokkaido across a stretch of water from Korea and never jumped off into the fray. He came home intact and they married on New Years Eve 1953.
I was born in October 1954.
From all I have gathered, dad did everything he could to make a fine and nurturing home. He had come from domestic circumstances that were far from ideal, from an alcoholic and abusive father and an apparently resentful if dutiful mother. He had been a late baby for her, giving birth to him when she was 40. While that is less uncommon today, in 1930 that was not only unusual but entailed more risk. There was a considerable age difference between Henry and his siblings and he ended up the last to leave home, which he had to do under fraught circumstances. It seemed that he was determined to do better for his own family.
And he did.
It has taken me a lifetime to appreciate what he did.
When you grow up in a bubble it never occurs to you to examine the surface of the bubble. As with most people probably, I underappreciated what my parents were like and what they did for me. In the last few years, I’ve been having longer and deeper conversations with my mom and I’ve been learning things about dad I might have suspected but never knew. I always knew, for instance, that he’d had a rough childhood, that his father was bitter and often cruel, but I never knew quite how deep the ambivalence ran with his mother and some of the details about his siblings…
All that to give context to the fact that he did a phenomenal job of breaking a nasty cycle. I was cherished and nurtured and provided with a wonderful example of a mature relationship because it has always been obvious that my parents were crazy about each other and also best friends. They shared a true partnership. In the context of the times, this is a remarkable thing. Dad insisted that mom have her own credit card and have her own car. He fostered her independence.
The biggest source of friction between my dad and me had to do with that. Independence. He wanted above all to be sure I was prepared for it. It seemed he often despaired of that since I seemed not to Get It. He was a Depression Baby, I was raised in a comfortable home and need was kept at bay to give me room to be what my dad had never had much chance of being—a kid. So our apprehension of the world conflicted. Even so, he did not back off from care and sustenance and respect. He suffered silently for the most part and hoped things would come out right.
He served in the army, came home, married my mom, and then landed a job at Remington Rand as an office machine repairman. At the time it was a well-paid job. During that time he and mom converted to Mormonism, which in hindsight was weird. Then came the first major break in what I eventually realized was my dad’s inability to compromise on certain principles. The church abused his fidelity and suggested going around The Rules so he could take on work they wanted him to do. When he called them on it, their response drove him to sever ties. I learned eventually that he was what I came to call a 110 percenter. He committed, he gave more than his all, but there was an implicit understanding that the thing he committed to must be just as committed as he was. He walked away from jobs, a church, a business he loved because it had become compromised and soured for him. If he felt his integrity was at stake, he walked away.
He taught himself machining and worked for many years as a journeyman machinist. This led to better money than he had been making and things got easier. During this period, he became a Freemason. One is never not a mason, so while his ardor cooled, that tie was never broken.
We did not quite Get each other. He tried. He tried harder than I knew. When I found something new, he was interested. The closest we came to sharing a passion was photography. He simply did not have time to get into it the way I did, but he always supplied me, and it led to a career. When I made my first few forays into writing fiction, he took an interest, but we both realized quickly that he would not be a useful critic, but he was clearly proud of me when I published my first stories and then novels. He would brag about me to strangers.
For all that he was a gregarious man, he was intensely private. As the world changed around him, many of our conversations took on a tone of bewilderment, sometimes anger, but he always tried to understand. Always. That willingness to try set him apart from so many people I have known. That he succeeded as often as he did amazed me. I can only hope I returned the courtesy.
He lost he eyesight and his hearing. Arthritis took his ability to get around and he began falling. Finally, one night, mom called me to come help. She could not get him up. We spent a few days until finally she called 911 and they took him to the hospital. From there, he went to a care facility. We were very lucky in the quality of the place. They cared, they gave a damn, and he became, as so often happened with him, popular with the staff, even though he could not communicate very well.
He was there two-and-a-half years and for most of that time he was stable. Last week he stopped eating. We saw him one day and he was clearly struggling, but there wasn’t anything specifically wrong with him. This past Friday he passed. The staff gave his body a surprising send-off.
I am a child of the whole self-analysis era. I learned the hard way, though, that leaving things unsaid is both unnecessary and harmful, so dad and I had had our “final” conversations. We had no unfinished business. That in itself does not secure one from pain. But it is not, for the moment, the raging pain of someone who failed at important exchanges. Dad and I were good with each other. No regrets.
But I am sad. Not that he’s no longer in an absurdly unpleasant situation—he had been vital and active most of his life, to see him unable to walk down a hall was difficult—but that he is gone from everything but memory. He mattered to people who came to know him. He was a Presence.
I love him. He was a great dad. And a good man.
A new look.
I know, important things happened, yesterday, today (someone got fired) but here is mine. New website.
Today is the release date for my new novel, Granger’s Crossing, and I feel like being symbolic. There are things I’ve wanted my website to do for a long time and never got around to actually figuring it out. Well, I didn’t this time, either. I must give a tip of the hat to Danielle, who has done this, and will from time to time help me tweak it to make it even more…what I want it to be.
With this book, I’m stepping outside my usual comfort zone. Historical fiction. Oh, I intend to continue doing science fiction, I love it too much, and the last couple of years have seen a renewed presence of my short fiction. But I’m excited about the possibilities going forward.
In time there will be better access to my photography as well. And maybe some other things will pop up. There’s sorting to do.
But in the meantime, please—treat yourself to my new novel. I’m already working on the next one.
Welcome to the new digs.
So I had to replace my old phone. I am still a bit ambivalent about cell phones and I remain nonplussed at the gismos and gadgets (otherwise known as apps) available and the possibilities, but I now can’t really get along well without one, so…
I bit the bullet and bought a high end. One of the things I was always disappointed with my old one was the camera. I’m a photographer. I have standards. I suppose I could have learned to work with it eventually, but it never inspired me.
This one, though…
I went for a walk the other day and did a few images and played with them. I’d like to share. I’m more than slightly pleased with these.
Did I mention I have a new book? It launches in April, the 25th to be exact, and I’d like to tell you something about.
Granger’s Crossing is a departure for me. At least, at first glance. After decades of writing and publishing science fiction, I took a shot at historical fiction. In fact, this novel came directly out of another project, which was science fiction.
Quite some time ago I had an idea for an alternate history. I poked around for a good departure point and settled on the Louisiana Purchase. What if, I asked, it had never happened? What if Napoleon had never sold it to the United States? What if the continent had remained divided between France and the United States at the Mississippi?
After digging around I found what I considered a reasonable justification for this scenario and then went on to flesh out the novel, which took me in some fascinating directions.
One thing it gave me was more than a passing appreciation of early St. Louis history. After completing the first novel, I thought (quite arrogantly) hey, I could probably write a halfway decent historical novel.
On such unexamined assumptions surprising things are born.
This is NOT the alternate history. This one is the historical, though that doesn’t mean it is any less speculative.
One of the most under-attended periods of American history seems to be the Revolutionary War in the West. The eastern seaboard draws all our attention. That, after all, is where all the myth-making occurred—Philadelphia, Boston, New York, the Chesapeake, Baltimore. The prominent names are all there—Washington, Hamilton, Greene. The West seems less important, but the Mississippi River was important and the proximity of Spanish Territory played into strategic equations more than is taught in the average high school history class.Â
Even in my home I was surprised at how few people knew there had been a major battle.Â
Looking into it led me into a deeper exploration of that whole period of St. Louis history and the shape of a story began to coalesce.Â
I have never understood the general indifference toward history, particularly among people who otherwise love good stories. Pick up a volume of history and give it more than a little attention, and stories are everywhere.Â
In constructing the plot for Granger’s Crossing, I found a cast of characters almost begging for attention. I had no shortage of actual people living in St. Louis at the time to fill out the substance and flavor of the village.Â
At some point in the alchemical process of creating fiction, my hero, Ulysses Granger, took form. Step by step, I found cause for him to be there. I felt comfortable using a murder mystery template, at least to start the action, and once I found The Body, the plot began to take on a life of its own.
Given the circumstances—the Battle of St. Louis, known then as L’Annee du coup, in 1780—I had to establish a reason for my Continental soldier to either stay or return to St. Louis, which led to further research. The issues around the rivers at the time and the various interests involved, American, Spanish, French, British, provided the canvas on which to depict my characters, their motives, the challenges.Â
Somewhat to my surprise, the world of young Ulysses Granger took on the familiar attractions of the worlds I had explored in my science fiction. In that, I find historical fiction mirrored by science fiction. In a way, both are history and both require an attention to detail and an ability to imagine displacements from the present. Halfway into the writing, it felt familiar, at least in the sense of examining places and people wholly unfamiliar to me.
(One of the curious things I found is that of all the things one might expect the “Americans” to have brought to the region, the one thing they did provide was record-keeping. A lot of it, although most of it appears to be a byproduct of, essentially, title searches.)
This is exciting. This is one of the chief pleasures of fiction, the chance to see life through eyes other than our own. This is a culture we can only assume to be familiar, but really it is in many ways quite alien and in that quite exotic.Â
It took a few years to get this “right,” and by right I mean a satisfying narrative experience. Finding the beginning histories of my home town proved a delight and a pleasure. You can look at this place, where cultures met and intermingled in curious ways, and wonder how we came to be. As the population changed due to immigration and the long-distance decisions by powers not present on the ground, I found this period a kind of oasis in time, a singular setting for an evolving identity. Granger himself is very much an outsider, giving him a vantage point from which to see St. Louis as an observer. Though with Martine, the woman who takes center stage in his life, he is more intimately connected.Â
It will be interesting (to me and hopefully others) to see how Granger changes at time goes on. Yes, that means I have more stories about him to tell.
I am delighted that Blank Slate Press is publishing the novel. Their enthusiasm has been infectious. My thanks to them all.
The official release date in April 25th. There will be a bookstore event at Left Bank Books in St. Louis. Call them for details (314-367-6731) and please consider attending.
Nostalgia can be a narcotic. Lately I’ve been going through the accumulated evidence of 50 + years and wondering why I kept it even as each bit triggers memories I’m glad to have. Do I really need this gew-gaw? This piece of paper? This book or album? Part of me can’t bear to part with any of it, but the practical side of me is starting to sort and allocate in anticipation of the time I just have no more room, no more interest, and no further use. I’m already cutting back on acquiring more. I have enough music on my shelves to last another couple of decades, by which time I could start all over. I don’t need any more. I’m trying to figure out how to arrange my days so I can hear more of it. As for books, well, good lord…
But getting rid of it?
I go through periods of expunging my belongings, making the hard decision that I will probably never read that book (again or even once), that I haven’t listened to that album in 30 years, so why do I still have it. I’m starting to be worried about my photographic archives, which are sizeable and I haven’t made much of a dent in digitizing them (too many other things to do getting in the way, time is finite, and so forth). Recently some opportunities have presented themselves that have taken a little pressure off.
The thing is, I’ve never been able to ignore the practicalities for any length of time and pretend everything will simply go on as it is now. I’ve always known I had to prepare for the time when I won’t be here.
Does that sound depressing? It’s not, I assure you. Better, I think, to know where everything’s going to be and manage to have less of it to deal with than leave a godawful mess behind for somebody else to clean up.
There are two writing projects I have on backburners for which I have a lot of research material to hand. One of them is actually written, but I haven’t found a publisher yet. The other I have to find some time to start. I have very practical reasons therefore for keeping all those books. Believe me, I would like to get them off my shelves, many of them are not the kinds of books I would bother to reread for pleasure.
But I have other sets of books about subjects that I have vague notions about using for future projects, and I’m wondering if I’m ever going to get to them. (As I sit here, I can look up at a row of biographies of American presidents. I had a notion once of reading through them chronologically, but I haven’t read a one of them yet, and I stopped collecting them. It’s not that I don’t know anything about these people, but what I have learned I gleaned from histories of the periods, not specific biographies. Am I ever going to get to them?) Part of my conundrum is that I do not read particularly fast. I have the Oxford Histories of the United States on another shelf, each volume covering a specific period and each one a brick. Reading one can take up to a month of my time. (Fortunately I’m usually able to keep four books going simultaneously, but even so…)
And then of course there’s the music and the movies and tv series…
I have a hunger to absorb as much as I can. I never thought about this for years, because there was always more time, but.
Nostalgia combined with dissatisfaction can be genuinely painful.
There was a time I thought—carelessly—that I could do anything. You can go through life thinking that as long as the things you do do are successful. If you never turn your attention to the rest, you’re never confronted with your actual limitations.
But once you are, you have some choices to make. Howl at the injustice, turn inward, resent the short span of life and the confines of your imagination, or—
Or take inventory, acknowledge reality, and embrace what you can. You might be surprised at just how fortunate you have been to do, be, and experience what you have. And that taking life as it comes without worrying about what won’t come leaves you with an open field for the next wonderful thing.
Clearing one’s inventory can make the coming experiences fresher. That whole Zen notion of letting go (more or less) and letting the past remain the past. There is one central question I’ve found useful to ask and answer, providing we don’t take it as some kind of final judgment.
Have we done what we’ve done as well as we could?
Certainly we’ve all left some things twisting in the wind. All kinds of reasons to walk away or, often, we are prevented from seeing something through to some ideal conclusion. But in the moment, did we do the best we could, honestly, and with care? All those things you wonder if you should keep—none of it has an answer other than to remind us of the question.
I’m not advising complete divestment. I love my books, my music, my home, my things. But certain of them I love more and maybe would appreciate better with less competition around them. Many of us use our possessions as markers, extensions of identity, augments to personality. That’s why getting rid of some things is so hard. But it’s not an accurate way to see things. They do not make us more, we make them important. It behooves us to choose carefully what we invest with that kind of authority.
Anyway, it is not my intention to be maudlin. I’m just ruminating n the midst of the archaeological dig of my life to date, and thought I’d share some observations. I’m going to go work on some fiction now.
Oh, and—yes, I think I’ve done what I’ve done as well as I could. To paraphrase Arthur Miller, I’m going with the idea that the goal is end up with the right regrets, the worthwhile second thoughts. Those would be those that add to the achievements not bury you in pointless nostalgia.
Anyway, be well.
