With Regrets

Sicilian actress awaiting for her cue in a classical Greek tragedy. Photograph by William Albert Allard

A writer should have a diverse source of reading material because information, new perspectives and ideas can come from the strangest of places (I find second hand gossip from my mother the most fun as they’re also the most convoluted).  Though, as a rule, one shouldn’t take too much stock in what one reads, especially in tabloids that caters too much to celebrities.

A couple of weeks ago, I came across an article that was about another article in which an actress proclaimed that the words “regret” and “should” are no longer part of her vocabulary.  She further explained that she neither like nor agreed with those words.  Moreover, she regrets nothing because the moments in her life which “could be considered mistakes” were the moments that she learned from the most.  A reader’s comment suggested that she was on to something as “should” and “ought” statements are “bad” as they make one feel guilty (guess he didn’t get my memo).

Sadly, the actress isn’t onto something original as living a life of no regrets as an affirmation of the self isn’t a new concept; and others have stated in much more compelling terms.  Nietzsche asked:

“What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneliness, and say, ‘This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!’ Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer, ‘Never have I heard anything more divine’?”

It’s a curious question indeed…how does one want to view one’s life? 

Do Over

It isn’t Monday but it’s the beginning of a new month; and I suppose this is a good of time as any to jump start the writing phase.  Yes, I’ve said that before so you shouldn’t be surprised, right?

So, now venturing forward I wanted to share a few things I came across this morning on the interwebs.

First are a few of the winners of the 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which honors “the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.”

The overall winner was:

“For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss–a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.”

Though, I swear it must have been a really competitive year given some of the category winners below.

Winner:  Children’s Literature

“Please Mr. Fox, don’t take your magic back to the forest, it is needed here in Twigsville!” pleaded little Isabel, but Mr. Fox was unconcerned as he smugly loped back into the woods without answering a word knowing well that his magic was only going to be used to make sure his forest would be annexed into the neighboring community of Leaftown where the property values were much higher.

Winner: Detective

She walked into my office wearing a body that would make a man write bad checks, but in this paperless age you would first have to obtain her ABA Routing Transit Number and Account Number and then disable your own Overdraft Protection in order to do so.

Winner: Romance

“Trent, I love you,” Fiona murmered, and her nostrils flared at the faint trace of her lover’s masculine scent, sending her heart racing and her mind dreaming of the life they would live together, alternating sumptuous world cruises with long, romantic interludes in the mansion on his private island, alone together except for the maids, the cook, the butler, and Dirk and Rafael, the hard-bodied pool boys.

As bad as those examples are, I have to admire the writer’s ability to start, finish and get published…and of course there are naysayer out there, but I think it’s tough to put your work out there and it’s good to have a sense of humor and be able to laugh at yourself – or you can take the more common route many famous writers do: have your estate burn all of your previous works upon your death 

My other find this morning is a really cool video by the New Zealand Book Council on the power of reading.  Love it!

On Being Productive

Once again I’ve decided to emerge from under my rock, and the world’s gone NUTS!  Reading the headlines this week is pretty depressing – it’s sometimes difficult to come to terms that this is “reality.”

It’s a good thing I’ve got several creative projects to keep me away from the world for a while.  Though, sometimes I do have to be careful about what I wish for these days.  I’ve been tackling some fiction pieces, essay pieces as well as developing a comic strip.  Yes, these are all very different types of writing styles.

I like variety, but having a full-time job and these extra writing endeavors certainly provides challenges in maintaining proper style and consistent voice.  I often wonder if this multi-tasking is a vice or a virtue when it comes to producing quality writing.   For example, the comic strip script writing always has me doing storyboards and coming up with visual aspects of the story, which then I carry over to my fiction piece and then I spend too many hours illustrating ideas instead of writing them.  Yes, it’s probably me not having a sense of focus – that’s what my thesis chair keeps telling me anyway.

I don’t know.  However, in this day and age, very few of us can afford to take on our creative writing endeavors fulltime – but I know a few brave souls have done it.  On the other hand, there are plenty of people who have balanced a full-time job and be published authors.  I suppose it just depends on one’s discipline and drive.  You’re essentially your own boss, but I have to say that finding time to write is hard for me. But I’m not about to go out and buy a book on it (okay, so I’ve tried it a few times, never worked).  It’s not surprising that much of the published authors of yore have been from the social elites given the amount of leisure time you need to concentrate.

But then again, EM Forster had plenty of time and resources but didn’t produce as much later in his life as he did when he was in his 20s.  According to this article from the Telegraph, sex apparently got in the way of his literary productivity.  Well, now we know where the angels like to tread.

Always on the Side of the Egg

My friend, C, sent this along to me.  Thought I’d share – since I can’t write anything as cool as him.   And yes, I always try to have visuals with my post…that’s how I roll.

Haruki Murakami’s acceptance speech in Israel to accept the Jerusalem Literary Prize (2009)
“Always on the side of the egg”

Good evening. I have come to Jerusalem today as a novelist, which is to say as a professional spinner of lies.

Of course, novelists are not the only ones who tell lies. Politicians do it, too, as we all know. Diplomats and generals tell their own kinds of lies on occasion, as do used car salesmen, butchers and builders. The lies of novelists differ from others, however, in that no one criticizes the novelist as immoral for telling lies. Indeed, the bigger and better his lies and the more ingeniously he creates them, the more he is likely to be praised by the public and the critics. Why should that be?

My answer would be this: namely, that by telling skillful lies–which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true–the novelist can bring a truth out to a new place and shine a new light on it. In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth-lies within us, within ourselves. This is an important qualification for making up good lies.

Today, however, I have no intention of lying. I will try to be as honest as I can. There are only a few days in the year when I do not engage in telling lies, and today happens to be one of them.

So let me tell you the truth. In Japan a fair number of people advised me not to come here to accept the Jerusalem Prize. Some even warned me they would instigate a boycott of my books if I came. The reason for this, of course, was the fierce fighting that was raging in Gaza. The U.N. reported that more than a thousand people had lost their lives in the blockaded city of Gaza, many of them unarmed citizens–children and old people.

Any number of times after receiving notice of the award, I asked myself whether traveling to Israel at a time like this and accepting a literary prize was the proper thing to do, whether this would create the impression that I supported one side in the conflict, that I endorsed the policies of a nation that chose to unleash its overwhelming military power. Neither, of course, do I wish to see my books subjected to a boycott.

Finally, however, after careful consideration, I made up my mind to come here. One reason for my decision was that all too many people advised me not to do it. Perhaps, like many other novelists, I tend to do the exact opposite of what I am told. If people are telling me– and especially if they are warning me– “Don’t go there,” “Don’t do that,” I tend to want to “go there” and “do that”. It’s in my nature, you might say, as a novelist. Novelists are a special breed. They cannot genuinely trust anything they have not seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands.

And that is why I am here. I chose to come here rather than stay away. I chose to see for myself rather than not to see. I chose to speak to you rather than to say nothing.

Please do allow me to deliver a message, one very personal message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:

“Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.”

Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will do it. But if there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?

What is the meaning of this metaphor? In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them. This is one meaning of the metaphor. But this is not all. It carries a deeper meaning. Think of it this way. Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: it is “The System.” The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others–coldly, efficiently, systematically.

I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on the System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I truly believe it is the novelist’s job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories–stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.

My father passed away last year at the age of ninety. He was a retired teacher and a part-time Buddhist priest. When he was in graduate school in Kyoto, he was drafted into the army and sent to fight in China. As a child born after the war, I used to see him every morning before breakfast offering up long, deeply-felt prayers at the small Buddhist altar in our house. One time I asked him why he did this, and he told me he was praying for the people who had died in the battlefield. He was praying for all the people who died, he said, both ally and enemy alike. Staring at his back as he knelt at the altar, I seemed to feel the shadow of death hovering around him.

My father died, and with him he took his memories, memories that I can never know. But the presence of death that lurked about him remains in my own memory. It is one of the few things I carry on from him, and one of the most important.

I have only one thing I hope to convey to you today. We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, and we are all fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong–and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others’ souls and from our believing in the warmth we gain by joining souls together.

Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow the System to exploit us. We must not allow the System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: we made the System.

That is all I have to say to you.

I am grateful to have been awarded the Jerusalem Prize. I am grateful that my books are being read by people in many parts of the world. And I would like to express my gratitude to the readers in Israel. You are the biggest reason why I am here. And I hope we are sharing something, something very meaningful. And I am glad to have had the opportunity to speak to you here today.

Thank you very much.

The Intangible and Unsayable

Writing has been difficult today, though not from a lack of effort.  Well, it may be from a lack of concentration.  The April showers have been relentless, rolling in thunder and lashing the winds all day long.  Perfect mediation and writing weather, but it keeps the dogs inside.

Bored and sad, they peer at me from beneath my writing desk, casting mournful stares until I give in and chase them around the house.  I spent most of the day entertaining them with tug toys, doggie treats and long petting sessions.  They never seem to tire of the attention and play, but I only have so much energy.  A certain economist likes to remind me that I was the one who wanted two dogs whenever I start to wonder how we managed to have two of them.  So, in the end, my doggie distractions are of my own doing.

Though I like to blame the dogs (they’re pretty useful for that) today’s writing task is a daunting one for me.  And I approach it with great trepidation as I must write on the matters of love, loss and grief all in one long chapter.  Yes, I know they’re universal themes and every writer has dealt with them in one form or another…which is precisely the problem.  Loss and grief tend to be easier to write as pain is easier to communicate.  Love on the other hand, though others may think it’s easy, is an intangible force; it has layers and varies in degrees.  Is it sexual, is it spiritual, is it platonic, what exactly is it and is it something that can be expressed?

Of course it can be expressed – but whether or not the writer/poet is successful is an entirely different matter.  So, I am waiting for the right words to come.  Patience is all I have.  This is not something I can rush nor should I lest I find myself back on the writer’s block.  In the meantime, I’d like to share one of my most beloved poems about love.

They say that it’s through the body that souls meet, and it’s in these intimate private spaces, intangible and mysterious, that lovers inhabit that each finds what they seek in the other – be it serenity, wholeness, clarity…only they know.  I’ve included images from my favorite artist: Rodin’s The Eternal Idol as well as his Danaide (above) as examples of love, lust and anguish all realized.

Counterparts
In my body you search the mountain
for the sun buried in its forest.
In your body I search for the boat
adrift in the middle of the night.
-    Octavio Paz

Mental Arithmetic

Dateline: MONDAY, April 19 -  The outlook is uncertain today as the morning began with a case of mental malfunction.

I’ve had little sleep, am plagued by allergies and it’s another day of going through the motions of my daily routine.

1. Coffee, oatmeal – check.
2. Scanned depressing headlines, glossed over gossip sites – check.
3. Reviewed and approved documents in the system’s queue – check.
4. Answered emails and scheduled appointment requests (mostly for tomorrow since one Monday appointment is more than enough for me) – check.

Even in this heavy mind fog and on autopilot I ask myself – what’s my motivation, why am I here?

I don’t think I’ll be able to answer that anytime soon, at least not until the caffeine settles.  Though I have a feeling this is going to be a two cup coffee morning…should have ordered the double shot.  I knew it.

Luckily, life is a bit more forgiving about my motivational ambivalence or should that read “ambivalence about my motivations?”  Augh, stupid Monday mind traps!  I’ll edit it out later if need be.

I’m moving on now lest I lose this train of thought.

So, after doing some minor edits and breaking the third section of my fan fiction into smaller chapters for easier reading, I’m now working on the conflict exposition.  I’ve already alluded to it throughout the story, and I think most readers understand the basic why but writing the reason “why and how it came to be” is a delicate matter.

It’s done in a flashback so I’m essentially writing a story within a story. I’m happy with the start so far – but the thing I worry about most is the weight of the literary allusions in this chapter.  Yes, I know.  It’s a “fan fiction” what’s with the high brow “literary allusion” crap?  It’s my writing, and regardless of form, genre and whatnots, I’m not inclined to put out any ol’ willy-nilly.  Well, exclusive of my blog posts.  Though this is not to say that I have a lower standard for my blog postings; it’s just that you either have an imperfect rant of a posting or no postings at all given how slow I write.

Okay, so back to the topic.  Literary allusions, fiction’s riddled with them and some are done well and others not so well.  They’re powerful because they can enrich the text’s meaning, but you always have to be careful with them.  Like any piece of art, its power lies in its contextual meaning (time, place, cultural conventions, etc.) which will shift and change, but you always need to be aware of its origins – always being able to deconstruct it.

Yes, I know a certain economist and statistician who will disagree with the general value of art, but he’s disagreeing with me for the sake of disagreeing even though he knows I’m right.  And all I can say is that data without context is just numbers like Magritte’s pipe painting is just a picture of a pipe…but the added Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe) provides the valued context.

I’m veering again, so while it’s great to be able to pull from literature, you’ve got to make sure that you understand the context because it can really mess up your intended meaning.  However, sometimes your own ignorance can lead your writing in wonderful directions.  I used a line from one of Shakespeare’s plays in a play I had written a long time ago and my professor was quite impressed that I chose that particular line to deepen the meaning of my piece.

Brilliant of me right?  Nah, I only liked the way the line sounded and had absolutely no idea what he was talking about; but it got me an “A” and he thought I was smarts, so we’ll go with it.  I was completely mortified when I went back and reread Shakespeare’s play.  The particular line I used completely changed everything I had intended in my play if I had indeed wanted to use its original context.  I had thought about taking it out, but I left it in there because I liked the layer it added and how it deepened the piece for different audience members.

And that is the beauty of writing, its shifting meaning based on time, culture and personal histories…and that’s something I try to be aware when I’m carefully choosing my allusions.

Discovering Magic

If you didn’t know, this month the National Heritage Museum is hosting “Jim Henson’s Fantastic World.”

Our local Art House Theatre is having a “Muppets, Music & Magic: Jim Henson’s Legacy” series honoring his work.  I’ve missed most of the good events, but I thought I’d pay homage to my childhood hero.

A child’s mind is always developing, changing and learning things.  As children we are adept learners and we soak up information like thirsty sponges.  Yet, the irony is that we lose our early memories as we grow older – the cost of our marvelous mental development is being able to recall our special moments of discovery as children.  Some would even say that we lose a sense of our childhood, our innocence and wonderment, to the more serious adult stuff.

Truth be told, there are days when I can’t recall what I had for breakfast (it’s a good thing it’s always the same oatmeal and coffee).  However, I can’t recall a time when Jim Henson wasn’t part of my childhood.  Growing up in the early 80’s, his influence was everywhere.  I still remember the excitement I had when I first saw Sesame Street and how badly I wanted to live there.  I watched it every day, always hoping that this would be the day that everyone else would see Mr. Snuffleupagus and would stop teasing Big Bird.

His Muppets were influential in the development of my young mind.  The Count taught me my numbers, I learned to like radishes because the Fraggles ate them and, best of all, Stantler & Waldorf gave me my best comeback lines!

Even more, his vision, his imagination, his creations – his magic – impacted the way I saw the world.  It provided me with places to go in my own mind, introduced me to other worlds and alternatives to the way things were, knowing and believing that they didn’t have to be that way.  The weird and creepy were wonderful and charming places in Henson’s hands.  I still get all sappy when the Skeksis and the Mystics are reunited in beauty and harmony at the end of the Dark Crystal.  We always watch Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas during the holidays – it’s a testament to the enduring beauty of unconditional love and the grace of simplicity.  As a writer, my love of words and stories was rekindled by the narration and writing of the Storyteller series – John Hurt is the best.   It inspired me to write again.

When people told themselves their past with stories, explained their present with stories, foretold the future with stories, the best place by the fire was kept for… The Storyteller.

Perhaps like other headstrong, imaginative, fantasy and fairy tales loving bookworm, I identified with Sarah and her struggles in Labyrinth.  The world is an unfair place, a maze full of illusions and sometimes betrayal, but in the end, the only power it has over you is what you give it.  It also helps to have good friends beside you on your journey even if they are imaginary.

So, as I grow older, when age and responsibilities have made the playful, carefree world seem so far away, when I feel out of touch; the lessons I learned, the magic I’ve experienced, the dreams that I’ve had, the hopes that inspire me, they’re all nestled in the imaginative corner of my mind and embedded in my forever child-like heart.  They say that nothing lasts forever – but I believe magic does.

“Should you need us,” they say.  I reply: “I always do.”

Thank you Jim Henson.

I believe in taking a positive attitude toward the world, toward people, and toward my work. I think I’m here for a purpose. I think it’s likely that we all are, but I’m only sure about myself.   – Jim Henson