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Art

Reflections On the 4th of July: A Personal Statement

I am not given to setting out pronouncements like this very often, but in light of the last several years I thought it might be worthwhile to do so on the occasion of the 236th anniversary of our declared independence.

I don’t think in terms of demonstrating my love of country. My affection for my home is simply a given, a background hum, a constant, foundational reality that is reflexively true. This is the house in which I grew up. I know its walls, its ceiling, its floors, the steps to the attic, the verge, and every shadow that moves with the sun through all the windows. I live here; its existence contours my thinking, is the starting place of my feelings.

The house itself is an old friend, a reliable companion, a welcoming space, both mental and physical, that I can no more dislike or reject than I can stop breathing.

But some of the furniture…that’s different.

 

I am an American.

I don’t have to prove that to anyone. I carry it with me, inside, my cells are suffused with it. I do not have to wear a flag on my lapel, hang one in front of my house, or publicly pledge an oath to it for the convenience of those who question my political sentiments. Anyone who says I should or ought or have to does not understand the nature of what they request or the substance of my refusal to accommodate them. They do not understand that public affirmations like that become a fetish and serve only to divide, to make people pass a test they should—because we are free—never have to take.

I am an American.

I am not afraid of ideas. My country was born out the embrace of ideas, new ideas, ideas that challenged the right of kings to suppress ideas. Ideas are the bricks that built these halls. I claim as my birthright the freedom to think anything, entertain any notion, weigh the value of any concept or proposition, and to take refuge in the knowledge that wisdom comes from learning and the freedom to learn is among the most hallowed and sacred privileges we have inherited as a country. The greatest enemy of our republic is the fear of ideas, of education, and by extension of truth and fact. Those who see no harm in removing books from libraries or diluting fact with wishful thinking and teaching our children to accept things entirely on faith and never question will weaken the foundations, damage the walls, and corrupt every other freedom they themselves boast about and then fail to defend.

I am an American.

I do not need to demonize others to make myself feel safe or superior or even right. I do not need to pretend that I am innately “better” than anyone else to prove my own worth. America was founded on the idea that all of us are equal in potential value. I do not need to oppress, undercut, strike, or otherwise impede others so that I can claim the dubious and ultimately meaningless label of Number One.

I am an American.

Sometimes I wear my sentiment on my sleeve, display my emotions at inappropriate times. I often side with unpopular causes, cheer those who aren’t going to win, get unreasonably angry over unfairness. I believe in justice and I don’t have any trouble with the idea of making an extra effort for people who can’t afford it for themselves. Other times I am stoic, even cynical. I accommodate a world-weariness far beyond the scope of my heritage. I do not believe in providence. Things will not just “work out in the long run” and the bad are not always punished and the good too often are crushed. I know the world doesn’t care and has no interest in level playing fields or evening up odds or anything other than its own ravenous acquisitiveness. It’s an uphill battle against impossible odds, but it’s the only one worth fighting, and I have an unreasonable belief that as an American I have a responsibility to help fight it.

I am an American.

I take a childish pride in many of the attributes and details of my heritage. We build things, we invent things, we have moved mountains, changed the course of rivers, gone to the moon, created great art, changed the face of the earth, broken tyrants on the wheel, and made the world yield. At the same time I am embarrassed at many of the other details of my heritage. We have hurt people unnecessarily, killed and raped, we have damaged forests, poisoned rivers, waged war when there were other avenues. I like the idea that I can work my way out of poverty here, but I hate the idea that we idolize the rich when they put barriers in the path of those like me just because they can. It’s not the money, it’s the work that counts, but sometimes we forget that and those with less must school those with more. That we have done that and can do that is also part of my heritage and I am glad of it.

I am an American.

I am not bound by ritual. Tradition is valuable, history must never be forgotten, but as a starting point not a straitjacket. Those who wish to constrain me according to the incantations, ceremonies, and empty routines of disproven ideologies, debunked beliefs, and discredited authority are not my compatriots, nor do they understand the liberty which comes from an open mind amply armed with knowledge and fueled by a spirit of optimism and a fearless willingness to look into the new and make what is worthy in progress your own.

I am an American.

I do not need others to tell me who I am and how I should be what they think I should be. I elect my representatives. They work for me. They are employees. If I criticize them, I am not criticizing my country. If I call their judgment into question, I am not undermining America. If I am angry with the job they do, I do not hate my country. They should take their definition from me, not the other way around.

I am an American.

If my so-called leaders send soldiers in my name somewhere to do things of which I do not approve and I voice my disapproval, I am not insulting those soldiers or failing to support them. They did not send themselves to those places or tell themselves to do those things. My country has never asked one of its soldiers to kill innocents, torture people, lay waste to civilians, or otherwise perform illegal, unnecessary, or wrong deeds. Politicians do that and they are employees, they are not My Country. Greedy individuals do that, and they are not My Country. No one has the right to call me unpatriotic because I condemn politicians or businessmen for a war they make that I consider wrong, nor that I am not “supporting out troops” because I want them out of that situation and no longer misused by the narrow, blinkered, and all-too-often secret agendas of functionaries, bureaucrats, and bought stooges.

I am an American.

My success is my own, but it is impossible without the work done by my fellow Americans. I acknowledge that we make this country together or not at all and I have no reservations about crediting those whose labor has made my own possible or condemning those who seek to divide us so they can reap the plenty and pretend they made their success all by themselves.

I am an American.

Which means that by inheritance I am nearly everyone on this planet. I am not afraid of Others, or of The Other, and those who would seek to deny political and social rights to people who for whatever reason do not fit a particular box simply because they’re afraid of them do not speak for me. I reject superstition and embrace reason and as a child I learned that this is what should be the hallmark of an American, that while we never discard the lessons of the past nor do we let the fears and ignorance of the past dictate our future.

I am an American.

I accept the rule of law. This is a founding idea and I live accordingly, even if I dislike or disapprove of a given example. If so, then I embrace my right to try to change the law, but I will not break it thoughtlessly just because it inconveniences me or to simply prove my independence. My independence is likewise, like my Americanness, something I carry with me, inside. The forum of ideas is where we debate the virtues and vices of the framework of our society and I take it as given my right to participate. Cooperation is our strength, not blind commitment to standards poorly explained or half understood. Because we make the law, we determine its shape and limits. The more of us who participate, the better, otherwise we surrender majority rule to minority veto, and law becomes the playground of those who learn how to keep the rest of us out.

I am an American.

Such a thing was invented. It came out of change, it encompasses change, it uses change. Change is the only constant and too-tight a grip on that which is no longer meaningful is the beginning of stagnation and the end of that which makes us who we are. Change is annoying, inconvenient, sometimes maddening, but it is the only constant, so I welcome it and understand that the willingness to meet it and work with it defines us as much as our rivers, our mountains, our cities, our art. A fondness for particular times and places and periods is only natural—humans are nostalgic—but to try to freeze us as a people into one shape for all time is the surest way to destroy us.

I am an American.

I do not need others to be less so I can be more. I do not need others to lose so that I can win. I do not need to sabotage the success of others to guarantee my own. I do not have to take anything away from someone else in order to have more for myself.

America is for me—

My partner, my family, my friends, the books I love, the music I hear, the laughter of my neighbors, the grass and flowers of my garden, the conversations I have, the roads I travel, and the freedom I have to recognize and appreciate and enjoy all these things. I will defend it, I will fight anyone who tries to hurt it, but I will do it my own way, out of my own sentiments, for my own reasons. Others may have their reasons and sentiments, and may beat a different drum. That’s fine. That is their way and we may find common cause in some things. This, too, is America.

“All colors and blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It’s a breed — selected out by accident. And so we’re overbrave and overfearful — we’re kind and cruel as children. We’re overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We’re oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic — and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture.”
John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“There’s the country of America, which you have to defend, but there’s also the idea of America. America is more than just a country, it’s an idea. An idea that’s supposed to be contagious.”
Bono

“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
John F. Kennedy

“When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.”
Adlai Stevenson

Art

Upon Finishing A Novel

Oculus, the sequel to my alternate history Orleans, is finished.  I sent it off last week to my agent.  (Which means that, in fact, I will have to do another pass when she gets through making notes, etc, but for now I am content.)

They’re all a slog at some point.  The only novels I ever wrote that weren’t were the second Robot Mystery, Chimera, and the one Terminator novel I wrote, Hour of the Wolf (which wasn’t supposed to be the title—that was the working title I slapped on it because I have to have a title before I can write a piece, but given the impossible schedule and the fact that the publisher needed it, like, THEN, they went with the title as is).  Don’t get me wrong, they were both hard work, but they went relatively smoothly from beginning to end.

However, this one was a slog because the first draft was really rather not good.

Anyway, it got better and I sent it off.  Now comes the decompression and the preparation for the next project.  Cleaning the office, becoming reacquainted with the dog, having some kind of food that takes more than two minutes to prepare.

I have written 21 novels, beginning to end.  Ten of them have been published, six of them probably never will see the light of day again.

It’s difficult to describe to people who don’t do this what it’s like.  The total immersion in the world of your fiction, and having now written other things besides science fiction I can tell you that it doesn’t matter.  The world of your novel is A World and you have to live in it while you’re building it.  So far I haven’t found myself confusing the fictional realm with the “real” world, but I have found myself ignoring a great deal of what’s around me.  There have been a couple of times I’ve felt like someone emerging from a shelter after a nuclear war, wondering how much the world has changed while I was underground.

It’s also, for me, an act of faith.  Having the confidence or the optimism that a book will turn out worth while after all the work can be based on experience once you’ve written enough of them, but it’s still a gamble.  You could very well write a piece that is wholly inaccessible to anyone else.  While you’re inside it, making it, it becomes, at least for me, problematic as to whether or not it will appeal to anyone else.  It’s always a pleasant surprise when it turns out others like it.

Next week, I dive into the major rewrite of another, this one a historical—straight history, with a mystery—and the rest of my summer will be devoted to making it as good as it can be.  I do, however, intend to do a few other things this summer besides just tour the precincts of my fictional realms.

I’ll also have a special essay for the Fourth of July.  Something I’ve been working on for a bit.  Just a little heads up.

Ah.  There’s something else needs tending.  See you later.

Art

Miscellany

Just a bunch of assorted items of some minor interest.

First up, I did a new interview!  Jared Anderson runs a blog specializing in author interviews and he asked me to contribute.  Mine is now up, for the pleasure of anyone interested.

Apropos of writerly things, I have finished the second book of my Oxun Trilogy.  The first book, Orleans,  is currently making the rounds via the good offices of my agent, Jen Udden.  Among the various projects I had on hand to work on this past several months, I decided finishing book two might be a good idea.  Oculus is finished.  At least, it will be once Donna completes picking the nits from it.  I hope to hand the manuscript over to Jen some time next week.

This opens the way for volume three, which I intend to call either Orient or Ojo.  Haven’t decided yet.  Ojo is Japanese for rebirth (roughly) and fits with the theme of the book.  This is the one I’m both really looking forward to and dreading, as it will be primarily historical.

Meantime, I am about to dive into the rewrite of my historical mystery, per my other agent’s notes (yeah, two agents, it’s complicated, don’t ask, it works), which will likely take up the rest of the summer.

This afternoon, my friend Russ is coming over with his horn for our last rehearsal before this weekend’s coffeehouse.  We’ve been working on a version of Harlem Nocturne, which we both love and hope to do Saturday.

Prior to his visit, I have to go mow the lawn.  Tedious but necessary.

In between all that, I’ve been working on some new short stories.  As I’ve mentioned from time to time, I’ve been having difficulties with short form for—well, for the last several years.  A few months ago I got very angry with myself and just sat in front of the computer, staring at a story fragment, refusing to do anything else until Fred (Fred was the name Damon Knight gave to the unconscious, which he acknowledged but didn’t like calling the Unconscious)—as I say, until Fred belched up the story solution.  I promptly finished three or four more and I intend to keep hammering at the others.  I must have a couple of dozen half-completed short stories and there is no good reason for them not be completed.  Except for Fred.

Donna’s sisters will be coming into town next week (one from Florida, one from Iowa) and, I assume, hijinks shall ensue.  In the middle of their visit will be a major party and ongoing we have housecleaning.

I’ve been reading Ray Bradbury, prompted by his death.  I wrote about Ray here.  The other day I finished Something Wicked This Way Comes and, through the eyes of experience, I marveled at the exuberance of his language, something I sort of took in stride the first time I read it back at age 12 or 14.  I’m going to go through I Sing The Body Electric next and then maybe The October Country.  Ray was a unique voice in American letters, a high-wire act and a national treasure.  Unlike many great artists, he did get acknowledged and rewarded.  I think he had an exceptional career, all the more so for having done pretty much what he wanted to do most of the time.  He will not vanish into obscurity, I think.  He was misidentified as a science fiction writer.  What little genuine SF he wrote fell apart on most metrics of good SF, but that’s not what he was trying to do.  He was an American mythographer.  His stories were about the things that informed our national character, down deep inside where we live, and reflected the romance of a national vision that was fractured at best, overambitious always, and essentially naive.  Not that he wrote naively—on the contrary, I think he wrote very perceptively about naivete, and somehow rarely in a judgmental way.

We’re on the threshold of summer.  We inherited a gas grill which I need to figure out how to get working, because this year I want to barbecue, something we haven’t done here in years.

There’s more, but I’m rambling.  So to conclude, let me offer up another photograph and bid you adieu till next time.

 

culture

Honor and Duty

They go where they are sent and do what is necessary, so the rest of us don’t have to.  That’s the idea, anyway.  Sometimes they get sent places they shouldn’t be and told to do things that shouldn’t be done, but that’s not their call.  They have promised to be a shield, to stand between us and the dark places.  It’s our job to know where the dark places are and how much a threat they pose.

It’s our duty to use them wisely so that their honor is our honor.  When it goes well, they return, those that do, and they are admired and we take a collective pride in the job, the sacrifice, the honor which their actions transfer to us.

Sometimes we get it wrong and they come back having broken things and having been broken.

We should never blame them or repudiate them or make them feel they are somehow responsible for our lack of judgment.  When they come back from a bad job, one that was poorly chosen and badly planned, the only thing we need to remember is that any shame is entirely on us.  They get to keep their honor.

I am not a sentimentalist about war.  The world is filled with ugliness and it must be dealt with.  Doing so is not noble work, but those who willing go to do it are themselves noble for the sacrifice.  It’s work no one should have to do.  It is damaging.  It changes people.

I am not a romantic about military service.  It is something that ought not to be needful.

I am a realist.  No one should be made to suffer from someone else’s inability to sustain sentiment or the illusions of romantic mythologizing.

Ugliness and brutality are like cancers and they have to be treated.  Sometimes those who go in to do the surgery get infected with it.  That can’t be helped.  They deserve our support and our help.  They deserve not to be cast aside or forgotten because we are ashamed or embarrassed.  We sent them and if it was to the wrong place for the wrong reason, we should not treat them as if they had the responsibility to say no to us.  They volunteered to do this job, to go where we tell them to go, and do what we tell them to do.

It is therefore our duty to understand before we act, to know the world, to comprehend, to inform ourselves, to take the responsibility seriously and in hand so we do nothing that will compromise their honor in our eyes.

Their honor stands when we get it wrong.  We must remember this and behave accordingly.

It’s Memorial Day.  Remember them.  Remember their sacrifice.  And never, ever blame them for our mistakes.

 

blog

New Tree

So what do you do with a bare patch of backyard?  Why, put a tree on it!

Donna wanted something for the front yard, which is admittedly rather plain and neglected.  We spend most of our time in the back part of the house where the bay windows look out over an increasingly eclectic yard.  (Donna keeps saying we need to simplify, get it more low maintenance, but…)

So we bought a Japanese Maple.

We both love Japanese Maples.  We bought one shortly after moving into the house and it thrives to this day, but what we wanted was a red one and that first one, after an initial showing of red leaves, turned a lovely green and stayed that way.  So we’d always planned on getting another and trying again.

 

 

Donna found it, of course, and after some negotiation, we brought it home.  You see it here, newly arrived, next to a piece of scultpure I will now have to move.  (We were going to move it anyway, but this has just hastened the day.)

 

Now, I do not enjoy yard work.  It was sort of understood when we bought the house that I wasn’t going to be real big on it, and we agreed to a division of labor.  It’s worked out pretty well.  I do enjoy the results of good lawn care and the kind of aesthetic experimentation Donna likes to get into.  Of course, there’s been overlap, but mostly the yard is her creation.

 

Usually, the hard part involving me is in deciding where to put what.  This time, it was just obvious.

 

 

It’s a beautiful tree.  We “swiped” some concrete edging from next door (long story, it’s all cool) and after an afternoon’s work we have a new member of the forest in our yard.

Now, of course this wasn’t the end of it.  Oh, no.  Donna’s last job resulted in considerable neglect of the actual lawn, half of which had become overrun with weeds.  So in order to make the new tree more at home, we have proceeded to put down new sod—fescue, to be precise.  And that got a little muddier.

 

Obviously, she’s having a good time.

 

 

 

 

I think she does great work.

This brief interlude of domestic engineering was brought to you by my fascination with a woman I’ve been in love with for over three decades and who I can’t say enough good things about.  I don’t get to brag about her very much…at least, it feels that way to me.  So I thought I’d share this.

Now back to our regularly scheduled diatribes.  Later.

culture

Work and Mothers

I don’t have a lot to say about this kerfluffle over the remarks of someone who, as it turns out, is not actually working for Obama regarding Ann Romney never having worked a day in her life.  This kind of hyperbole ought to be treated as it deserves—ignored.

But we live in an age when the least thing can become a huge political Thing, so ignoring idiocy is not an option.

I remember back in the 1990s a brief flap over Robert Reich.  I’m not certain but I believe it was Rush Limbaugh who started it by lampooning the Clinton Administration’s Secretary of Labor for “never having had a real job in his life.”  Meaning that he had gone from graduation into politics with no intervening time served as, at a guess, a fast-food cook or carwasher or checker at a WalMart.  Whatever might qualify as “real” or as a “job” in this formulation.  In any event, it was an absurd criticism that overlooked what had been a long career in law and as a teacher before Clinton appointed him.  It’s intent was to discredit him, of course, which was the intent of the comments aimed at Mrs. Romney by asserting that she has no idea what a working mother has to go through.

A different formulation of the charge might carry more weight, but would garner less attention.  It is true being a mother has little to do with what we regard as “gainful employment” in this country: employees have laws which would prevent the kinds of hours worked (all of them, on call, every day including weekends and holidays) for the level of wages paid (none to speak of) mothers endure.

Hilary Rosen raised a storm over remarks aimed at making Mrs. Romney appear out of touch with working mothers.  A more pointed criticism might be that Mrs. Romney does not have any experience like that of many women who must enter employment in order to support themselves and their families, that a woman who can afford nannies (whether she actually made use of any is beside the point—the fact is she had that option, which most women do not) can’t know what working mothers must go through.

But that’s a nuanced critique and we aren’t used to that, apparently.  Soundbite, twitter tweets, that’s what people are used to, encapsulate your charge in a 144 characters or less, if we have to think about it more than thirty seconds, boredom takes over and the audience is lost.

Unfortunately, the chief victims then are truth and reality.

So the president gets dragged into it for damage control and the issue becomes a campaign issue.

Which might not be such a bad thing.  We could stand to have a renewed conversation about all this, what with so many related issues being on the table, given the last year of legislation aimed at “modifying” women’s services and rights.  Whether they intended it this way or not, the GOP has become saddled with the appearance of waging culture wars against women, the most recent act being Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin’s repeal of that state’s equal pay law.  Romney is the presumptive nominee for head of that party and one of the things he’s going to have to do if figure out where he stands on these matters and then try to convince the country that he and his party are not anti-woman.

Yes, that’s hyperbolic, but not by much.  This is where the culture wars have brought us—one part of society trying to tell the other part what it ought to be doing and apparently prepared to enact legislation to force the issue.  Ms. Rosen’s remarks, ill-aimed as they were, point up a major policy problem facing the GOP and the country as a whole, which is the matter of inequality.

That’s become a catch-all phrase these days, but that doesn’t mean it lacks importance.  The fact is that money and position pertain directly to questions of relevance in matters of representation.  Ann Romney becomes in this a symbol, which is an unfortunate but inevitable by-product of our politics, and it is legitimate to ask if she can speak to women’s concerns among those well below her level of available resource and degree of life experience.

The problem with all politics, left, right, or center, is that in general it’s all too general.  Which is why Ms. Rosen’s remarks, no matter how well-intentioned or even statistically based on economic disparities, fail to hit the mark.  She can’t know Ann Romney’s life experience and how it has equipped her to empathize with other women.  Just as Ann Romney, viewing life through the lens of party politics, may be unable to empathize with women the GOP has been trying very hard to pretend are irrelevant.

Like with Robert Reich’s critics, it all comes down to what you mean by “real” and “work.” And that’s both personal and relative. Isn’t it?

Absurdity

TBR

My To-Be-Read pile.  Not everything is here, but this is a sort of “wanna read” for the coming year.  I plan to follow up in December with a picture of then.  We’ll see.

That’s all for now.

Art

On A Roll

I’ve been having a productive month.  This morning I polished up and submitted the fifth short story in two weeks.  Granted, most of them are rewrites, but a couple of them are such thorough redrafts that they might as well be all new, like the one I finished today.

Normally, I let a story sit for a while before sending it out, but right now I just want material in submission.  It has been a long time since I’ve had this kind of productivity in short fiction and I want to take full advantage of it.  Of course, it would be nice if some (or all) sold, especially to the markets they’ve been sent.

Soon, now, I’ll have two novels to start rewriting, once the notes are finished from the two people going over them.  Then I will set the short fiction aside and bury myself in the lengthier pieces.  There was a time I could finish a novel and write a few short stories with the left-over energy, but since about 2004 I have been in full novel mode almost continuously.  (The last brand new short story I sold was Duty Free for Lee Martindales Ladies of Tradetown anthology.)  During these past years, I either haven’t been able to finish the stories or they’ve come out crooked, sorry beasts requiring much T.L.C. and more time than I’ve been willing to devote.

Plus there have been the almost nonstop worries that are deadly to the creative process.  For whatever reason, those worries seem to have receded for the nonce.  Oh, they’re still there, they haven’t been solved, but they aren’t looming over me with Damocletian malevolence.

For the time being.

The other thing that has been distracting me, of course, is this thing here.  This.  The blog.  It seems my need for short work is satisfied by spinning out the varied and sundry expository forays here.  Granted, I usually pick a topic that I’m interested in, that I have, I think, something to say about, but really, I am no pundit, and if I were really good at this wouldn’t I be doing it for money?

But I do it and since it’s my blog, I say what I please, and that serves a need.  Sometimes I do this in order to codify my own feelings.  There’ve been a few times I’ve written something and found that I’d changed my mind about the subject by the time I finished.  Not often, but it’s happened.

However, I want to say thank you to any and all who come visit me here.  Whether you agree with me or not, even if I piss you off, the one thing I hope I never do is bore you.

I have another non-boring, froth-fomenting post coming up soon, but I wanted some breathing space between the last and the next.

Have a good weekend.  I’m going to do some more fiction now.

Art

Thirty Two

We cleaned part of the garage today.  Put up shelves, threw stuff out, made new room for more stuff.  A chore, sure, but it was a pleasant day.

Oh, and it was our anniversary.  Thirty-two years ago Donna and I went on our first date.  We saw 2001: A Space Odyssey (which she had never seen before) and ate Chinese (which was new to her).  At the end of the evening, she agreed to go out with me again.  Little did she know.  Or me, for that matter.

More about that later.