Declining radius of responsibility

There is this super schlocky book out now, called The Secret. Something about how we can create our own realities.

Yeah, yeah.

The problem I have with these books (which come out every few years under a new title) is that they are nothing that our mothers and grandmothers didn't tell us.

The Secret can be distilled into the six words my mother used to tell us four kids: "Fake it until you make it."

In other words, if you wanted to be happy, then smile. You know what? People will be smiling back at you. They will be friendlier to you. And you will fall into conversation easier. And guess what? You'll be happier.

If you want to be president of the United States, start acting like you want that. You can get something without acting like you want it.

Big secret? I don't think so. Good advice that needs to be repeated to every generation? Absolutely. Except, in my grandparents generation, it was expected to be part of the parental duties; not something for which you tried to get a book contract.

Nevertheless ... life is odd. Call it The Secret or call it plain ole faking it.

Joel and I decided to re-commit ourselves to writing with this blog project.

Because of that, I decided to read novels again, which I had neglected for a year or two. I read a book called "Sin" by Josephine Hart. She wrote "Damage" which was filmed with Jemery Irons.

Because of that, I found the framework for a story that has been lurking in my mind for some 20 years now.

Because of the blog, I connected with a blogger through Joel. Her name is Jennifer and writes a wonderfully witty, self-deprecating and literary journal-type blog called Quidite.

Because I read her blog, she reconnected me with a particular Raymond Carver story that is relevant to one of my short stories.

And now, a few odd, random things happened for which Horace Walpole coined the term serendipity:

My daughter spends the weekend with me and wants to go to the public library. We do. She wants to spend time in the young adult section. I spied a "For Sale" rack by the entrance and tell her that I will be down there. And there, low and behold, amid the 70s remains and paperback mystery surplus books, is a hardcover collection of Carver short stories. It's three dollars. (No, I shit you not. Three dollars. Even the librarian who gave me change for my five, was surprised at my find -- doubled checked the penciled price and reluctantly released the valued volume.)

Ok, ok, that particular story was not in the collection. But, as my mother used to say: Don't confuse me with facts. The upshot is that I WILL find the relevant Carver short story. I DO have the structure for a long overdue novel. And I AM writing more these days than I have in a few years.

So we get home, my twelve-year-old daughter and I, and she asks me if I have ever had the experience of knowing beforehand what is going to happen in my life. As in Deja-Vu, I ask? Well, no, not that. THAT she has frequently, she says. (Which is a whole other intriguing matter.) But knowing much more in advance. Like seeing things.

Hmm, now I am wondering about my entry from a couple of days ago. I don't want to burden her with a vision I had of myself when I was a teenager of being a loner and now worrying if it might become a self-fulfilled prophecy. Too much information for a twelve-year-old.

Is my experience of this writing blog and reconnecting with fictional inspiration the same thing that she means. Am I a poster child for The Secret? I recognize the serendipity of it all, but no, I don't think that is what she means.

What, exactly, does she mean by that question?

My daughter is an uncommonly evolved person for her age. (Has been at every age.) Precocious, some say. She is adept at evasion and though I probed (without wielding a two by four) she sticks with simply the statement that she was asking ME if *I* had that experience. She was not talking about herself, she says.

Hmm, let's see, I think to myself. I knew I wanted a newspaper when I left college, and ten years later, I had one. I knew I wanted to grow my father's manufacturing business when I took it over and, within a few years, I was entering international joint operating agreements. Does any of that count?

Fake it until you make it?

The Secret?

Create your own reality?

Serendipity?

Or am I just a lucky Sunday child who has a bit a brains, the fortune of being born white in an absurdly rich country, with enough means to make my dreams come true?

Any way I look at it, I have precious few excuses for not being responsible for my own happiness.

PS: How did I finally answer? I said that I know that I have had those kind of experiences but I couldn't remember specific examples. And that is God's honest truth. I also told her that sometimes the world works in ways we cannot fully explain or understand. It is best just to accept it. And trust it.

A voice across 25 years

A voice, fluent, steady and sure is flooding images from the opening passages of the novel October Light into our brains with images of an old Vermonter, James Page, taking a shotgun and blowing a hole into the family television.

For me, there are several experiences I’m having at once; simultaneously; as if I am keenly aware that I am inhabiting (incarnating?) the Many Worlds theory. One experience is the vivid imagery of the story. I am there in that living room with that old curmudgeon James Page.

Another experience is watching Joel Gardner kneeling by a table lamp, reading this story. He is reading to a group of about twenty or so people gathered here at the home of David and Barbara Stanton to commemorate the author John Gardner who died 25 years ago.

I know that Joel’s synapses fire at a more rapid pace than most people’s, but listening to his story, I am truly surprised at how quickly his eyes can scan the words, and how fluidly his tongue can deliver them.

But finally, I am having a third experience. This one is odd because it involves distortions of what we commonly accept as reality. In this experience, it is not Joel reading October Light, but it is Joel’s father, John, the author. It is John’s voice, that quick, just a nuanced vibrato above a monotone stream of language. Its speed enhances the imagery, making the story vivid, urging you to anticipate the next moment, the next action, the next unfolding of the dream.

All of these experiences at once: James with his shotgun, Joel reading the text, John, channeled through his son.

Later, I will find out that one of the reasons that Joel was so intimately familiar with these opening passages of his father’s work is because once, in an attempt to understand that weight of each word, the directional power of each punctuation and the rhythm of John’s craft, he typed every word of the first seven pages of October Light.

That revelation doesn’t lesson the impact of the reading’s magic. In fact, it makes me appreciate it more. The words written by the father, later digested by the son, and last night, read in such a way that it brought all three to life: the story, the son, the father.

It was a truly wonderful evening with readings of John’s work by a number of people, each reading singular, but voices rising as a chorus.

And though I struggle with the romanization of drinking at such events, I will admit that – in the moment – I too fell into the enjoyment of intoxication mixed with astute conversations. Copious wine and gin lubricated the discussion on what comprises fiction with enduring relevance and how we are each Grendel, pleading with the dragon for the secret to life.

Celebration of the work, or of the process?

Anticipating a social event is always difficult for me. I enjoy them and yet dread them at the same time. I have to force myself to go, but once I am there, I usually enjoy them. I have the good fortune of having learned "party habits" from my mother.

"Look people in the eye when you shake their hands, and say their names. Nothing is sweeter to a person's ears as the sound of their own name."

"Turn to the person next to you and ask, 'And what are your interests?' People love to hear themselves talk."

Her cynacism bore out as true.

I will be going to a social gathering this weekend with my friend. It is a cememorative event at which I will no nobody besides my friend. The event commemorates an artist; a writer, specifically. The invitation says that drinking will be an essential component to the comemorative event since the artist was a drinker. I have a hard time with that.

Are we celebrating the work, or the process? Because the work was good. The process, though so often romanticized, resulted in a lot of collateral damage.

The Word is dead. Long live the Word

All promises are innocent.

That is to say they are both sincere and yet naive.

The promise prompting this blog is that it will be daily.

But worse than being a promise, this one is a parallel promise. A parallel promise is one in which we say, "If you do that, I will do this." In this case, the prompting parallel promise is that my friend and I will post daily blogs.

If there ever was a mission that is vacuous, it is this one. A mission to post a blog daily is hardly a mission.

And yet, writers throughout history have made exactly that promise to themselves, along with colleagues, and to others. And for many writers, the process of discovering the intent of your words is through the process of creating them.

And so, hopefully, it will be with us.

Both of us have written passionately by hand, by manual typewriter, and by computer. We have talked about how each medium has had it own effect on the content. With this effort, we are willing to finally acknowledge that the day of the pen-written letter, and the machine-typed letter are dead, yet the word still lives; in a new medium.

That word is most certainly bold and alive, but does it have the depth of the one written by ink or metal on ribbon? This venture will be an exploration of that.

Let us once again ask: What has God wrought?