09 August 2007
Dorset
When I left the tropics after working for almost nine years in hot countries, I went to England and experienced a great shock. It seemed to me to be one of the strangest places I had ever been (and I had lived in Uganda and traveled the Congo and in upper Burma). This was Dorset. I was just about to write, "Hardy does not prepare you for Dorset." But of course he does. His work is very truthful to that county. I found the place dark and deeply rural, extremely beautiful, and often inexplicable. People did not seem so much to live there as to be holed up there. There was an uncertainty and a tribal mistrust of outsiders. And "outsider" did not necessarily mean an American. It might be someone from Yeovil or Salisbury. Everything I had expected to find in Africa I found on the edge of Marshwood Vale. I was fascinated, but also a little frightened. These are the emotions that produce fiction.
02 August 2007
Look Thy Last on all things Lovely
After a time we moved from Dorset to London, but I never lost the feeling that I was a castaway. As a foreigner, I was determined not to die in Britain and be buried in a gloomy churchyard under a blackish dripping yew tree. One day I would sail away. I never guessed that I would leave alone, feeling as portable and insignificant as when I arrived. I landed in Britain on November 4, 1971 and left on January 19, 1990. The years that these dates enclosed were among the happiest as well as teh saddest I have ever known: joy bordering on rapture, misery at the very edge of despair.
01 August 2007
Target.
I developed internal ways of stimulating my memory. It is possible for a writer to think creatively only if he or she manages to inhabit a mood in which imagination can operate. My need for external stimuli inspired in me a desire to travel – and travel, which is nearly always seen as an attempt to escape from the ego, is for me the opposite: nothing induces concentration or stimulates memory like an alien landscape or a foreign culture. It is simply not possible (as romantics think) to lose yourself in an exotic place. More likely you will experience intense nostalgia, a harking back to an earlier stage of your life. This does not happen to the exclusion of the exotic present, however in fact, what makes the whole experience thrilling is the juxtaposition of present and past – Medford dreamed in Mandalay.
I aspire, where material possessions are concerned, to the Buddhist condition of non-attachment. That is my ideal. I am not so acquisitive that I am possessed by these objects, though I do feel dependent on them at times. I think one must practice ridding onself of them, but that requires concentration and great mental poise – I was to learn how to give them away; it must be my confident decision. I don’t want them torn out of my hands. Obviously, the happiest person is that Buddhist who truly sees that such objects are illusion, and who owns nothing – all these possessions are in his or her memory.
In the most common situation, the threat comes from more than one person – rarely is it one-on-one. The group of people in the car or speedboat, the phalanx of jet skiers, are nearly always male. Their response appears to be a reflex of violent envy directed against an isolated and vulnerable person – the skimpily clothes jogger, the madly balancing paddler, the panting cyclist. It is like an objection to the assertive freedom and health implicit in these pastimes, and it might be bound up with the suspicion – in a minority of cases a well-founded suspicion—that someone who exercises this way so publicly is showing off.
Hold on to what you know I suppose. It is clearly not ok to keep moving about so much is it? It is so not the norm, but maybe, I’m just making my own way through a world of weirdness and wonder. Just sailing along, sometimes alone, and sometimes joined by others.
I aspire, where material possessions are concerned, to the Buddhist condition of non-attachment. That is my ideal. I am not so acquisitive that I am possessed by these objects, though I do feel dependent on them at times. I think one must practice ridding onself of them, but that requires concentration and great mental poise – I was to learn how to give them away; it must be my confident decision. I don’t want them torn out of my hands. Obviously, the happiest person is that Buddhist who truly sees that such objects are illusion, and who owns nothing – all these possessions are in his or her memory.
In the most common situation, the threat comes from more than one person – rarely is it one-on-one. The group of people in the car or speedboat, the phalanx of jet skiers, are nearly always male. Their response appears to be a reflex of violent envy directed against an isolated and vulnerable person – the skimpily clothes jogger, the madly balancing paddler, the panting cyclist. It is like an objection to the assertive freedom and health implicit in these pastimes, and it might be bound up with the suspicion – in a minority of cases a well-founded suspicion—that someone who exercises this way so publicly is showing off.
Hold on to what you know I suppose. It is clearly not ok to keep moving about so much is it? It is so not the norm, but maybe, I’m just making my own way through a world of weirdness and wonder. Just sailing along, sometimes alone, and sometimes joined by others.
31 July 2007
Fresh air Fiend {friend}.
[Portions of this are from the Paul Theroux book entitled “Fresh Air Fiend”. Many of his writing seem to resonate with me personally, on a level that I can’t quite understand fully yet. Anyway, what he says in parts of this book especially seem to help me think about my journeys around the world and also coming back to the U.S. where, frankly, I’ve felt a little alien.]
For long periods of my life, living in places where I did not belong, I have been a perfect stranger. I asked myself whether my sense of otherness was the human condition. It certainly was my condition. As with most people, my outer life did not in the least resemble my inner life, but exotic places and circumstance intensified this difference. Sometimes my being a stranger was like the evocation of a dream state, at other times like a form of madness, and now and then it was just inconvenient. I might have gone home, except that a return home would have made me feel like a failure. I was not only far away, I was also out of touch. It sounds as though I am describing a metaphysical problem to which there was no solution – but no, all of this was a form of salvation….when I mentioned this notion of being a stranger to my friend Oliver Sacks, he said, “In the Kabala the first act in the creation of the universe is exile.” That makes sense to me.
The English writer V.S. Pritchett spoke about this condition of otherness in his autobiography, how it was not until he began to travel far from his home in south London that he began to understand himself and his literary vocation. He said that he found distant places so congenial that he became an outsider at home. Travel had transformed him into a stranger. He wrote, “I became a foreigner. For myself, that is what a writer is – a man living on the other side of a frontier.”
For various reasons, it is now not so easy to be a foreigner (I am using the word in a general sense). Yet it was very easy for me less than forty years ago, when I was an impressionable teenager and amateur emigrant. Then, a person could simply disappear by traveling; even a trip to Europe involved a sort of obscurity. A trip to Africa or South America could be a vanishing into silence and darkness.
“Connected” is the triumphant cry these days. Connection has made people arrogant, impatient, hasty and presumptuous. I am old enough to have witnessed the rise of the telephone, the apotheosis of TV and the videocassette, the cellular phone, the pager, the fax machine, and e-mail. I don’t doubt that instant communication has been good for business, even for the publishing business, but it has done nothing for literature, and might even have harmed it. In many ways connection has been disastrous. We have confused information (of which there is too much) with ideas (of which there are too few). I found out much more about the world and myself be being unconnected.
And what does connection really mean? What can the archivist – relishing detail, boasting of the information age – possibly do about all those private phone calls, e-mails, and electronic messages. Lost! A president is impeached, and in spite of all the phone calls and all the investigations, almost the only evidence that exists of his assignations are a few cheap gifts, a signed photograph, and obscure stains. So much for the age of information. My detractors may say, “You can print e-mails,” but who commits that yackety-yak to paper?
One of the paradoxes of otherness is that in travel, each conceives the other to be a foreigner. But even the most distant and exotic place has its parallel in ordinary life. Every day we meet new people and are insulted or misunderstood; we are thrown upon our own resources. In the coming and going of daily life we rehearse a modified version of the dramatic event known as first contact. In a wish to experience otherness to its limit, to explores all its nuances, I became a traveler. I was as full of preconceived notions as Columbus or Crusoe – you can’t help it, but you can alter such thoughts. Non-travelers often warn the traveler of dangers, and the traveler dismisses such fears, but the presumption of hospitality is just as odd as the presumption of danger. You have to find out for yourself. Take the leap. Go as far as you can. Try staying out of touch. Become a stranger in a strange land. Acquire humility. Learn the language. Listen to what people are saying.
[Too many times I find myself re-reading these words, as well as a nice little book called “The Art of Travel” and too many times I find myself seeking out other people that have a passion for being away, like I do. It is difficult to find these kinds of people, but when I do, it is as if my entire life has been leading up to that exact moment where I can share the most mundane story about some place in the world, and it seems to be exactly the thing the other person needed to hear – our stories interconnect and it is with that connection we begin to build our next adventure, our next trek and find the next person in line.]
For long periods of my life, living in places where I did not belong, I have been a perfect stranger. I asked myself whether my sense of otherness was the human condition. It certainly was my condition. As with most people, my outer life did not in the least resemble my inner life, but exotic places and circumstance intensified this difference. Sometimes my being a stranger was like the evocation of a dream state, at other times like a form of madness, and now and then it was just inconvenient. I might have gone home, except that a return home would have made me feel like a failure. I was not only far away, I was also out of touch. It sounds as though I am describing a metaphysical problem to which there was no solution – but no, all of this was a form of salvation….when I mentioned this notion of being a stranger to my friend Oliver Sacks, he said, “In the Kabala the first act in the creation of the universe is exile.” That makes sense to me.
The English writer V.S. Pritchett spoke about this condition of otherness in his autobiography, how it was not until he began to travel far from his home in south London that he began to understand himself and his literary vocation. He said that he found distant places so congenial that he became an outsider at home. Travel had transformed him into a stranger. He wrote, “I became a foreigner. For myself, that is what a writer is – a man living on the other side of a frontier.”
For various reasons, it is now not so easy to be a foreigner (I am using the word in a general sense). Yet it was very easy for me less than forty years ago, when I was an impressionable teenager and amateur emigrant. Then, a person could simply disappear by traveling; even a trip to Europe involved a sort of obscurity. A trip to Africa or South America could be a vanishing into silence and darkness.
“Connected” is the triumphant cry these days. Connection has made people arrogant, impatient, hasty and presumptuous. I am old enough to have witnessed the rise of the telephone, the apotheosis of TV and the videocassette, the cellular phone, the pager, the fax machine, and e-mail. I don’t doubt that instant communication has been good for business, even for the publishing business, but it has done nothing for literature, and might even have harmed it. In many ways connection has been disastrous. We have confused information (of which there is too much) with ideas (of which there are too few). I found out much more about the world and myself be being unconnected.
And what does connection really mean? What can the archivist – relishing detail, boasting of the information age – possibly do about all those private phone calls, e-mails, and electronic messages. Lost! A president is impeached, and in spite of all the phone calls and all the investigations, almost the only evidence that exists of his assignations are a few cheap gifts, a signed photograph, and obscure stains. So much for the age of information. My detractors may say, “You can print e-mails,” but who commits that yackety-yak to paper?
One of the paradoxes of otherness is that in travel, each conceives the other to be a foreigner. But even the most distant and exotic place has its parallel in ordinary life. Every day we meet new people and are insulted or misunderstood; we are thrown upon our own resources. In the coming and going of daily life we rehearse a modified version of the dramatic event known as first contact. In a wish to experience otherness to its limit, to explores all its nuances, I became a traveler. I was as full of preconceived notions as Columbus or Crusoe – you can’t help it, but you can alter such thoughts. Non-travelers often warn the traveler of dangers, and the traveler dismisses such fears, but the presumption of hospitality is just as odd as the presumption of danger. You have to find out for yourself. Take the leap. Go as far as you can. Try staying out of touch. Become a stranger in a strange land. Acquire humility. Learn the language. Listen to what people are saying.
[Too many times I find myself re-reading these words, as well as a nice little book called “The Art of Travel” and too many times I find myself seeking out other people that have a passion for being away, like I do. It is difficult to find these kinds of people, but when I do, it is as if my entire life has been leading up to that exact moment where I can share the most mundane story about some place in the world, and it seems to be exactly the thing the other person needed to hear – our stories interconnect and it is with that connection we begin to build our next adventure, our next trek and find the next person in line.]
15 May 2007
reading.
15 May 2007
You know, there is something new out there happening. Every now and then it comes around – blows in with the wind or rides in on the tide. It’s a change or a movement of some sort that allows us to say something we mean, to do something that we wouldn’t normally do or maybe it just allows us the ability to think without the overpowering effects of the world laying down on us. There is no good reason for why this happens, but it does and it is accepted. I find myself in this world where sometimes, I don’t necessarily feel like I’m living in. There are moments of complete transcendence beyond this plane of life that is here and now to a place that once was perhaps. I think the past has a lot to offer us – I mean there is no way to deny what has happened and there is no way to necessarily change what has happened, but yet, there are dwellings on the past that are the types of dwellings that people are able to use to write, to think to process and proceed in life with some sort of idea of what is happening or what is supposed to happen, even when that “thing” doesn’t happen. We can blame the present and maybe worry about the future, but the past is one thing in life that is certain and unfailing. It pushes us steadily along our way, drifting through the river of despair, love, happiness and whatever else luck seems to throw our way. What do we do with those thoughts that are hidden deep inside our mind from all others? Those ideas and wants that we dare not share with the closest of friend, the most trustworthy of companions? Is that what life is truly made of? Not the actuality of it all, but the hidden aspects of reality? Its possible. The future of our lives are, some might say, shaped by our actions now, which is mostly true, but then there are also those times that are just random, mysterious things that happen without no real reason for them coming to life. Its these times that we realize where our true selves are, where are beings are hiding, running through the underbrush of the forest while the other part of us is casually walking towards them. It’s the underbelly of life that presents us with the most possibilities – with the most problems and deficits – with the greatest chance to adapt and form a thought around it – to move through it while hurting and crying out for it to go back where it came from. Everyone knows but no one dares speaks of it. It is allusive and yet, always near. A warning from within what we have is always subject to change and disappointment. The best we can do is try and achieve a level of knowledge or cleverness that will enable us to recognize when these aspects of our personality are about to surface in full form – giving us the ability to use it to help us grow and learn from it – to force it to the surface and trust it, look at it and ourselves and be critical but also understanding. It is in those most sincere and honest moments where we can truly and fully recognize our true selves in the person that we have become. We can see the person we will become and the person that we will suppress – the person others know and the person others think they know. It will hurt – we will cry – but slowly begin to acknowledge that it was worth the pain – that we will continue on with this life in one form or another and it is up to us to decide for ourselves what that form will be, what form we will take. Difficult, sure, but what part of this isn’t?
You know, there is something new out there happening. Every now and then it comes around – blows in with the wind or rides in on the tide. It’s a change or a movement of some sort that allows us to say something we mean, to do something that we wouldn’t normally do or maybe it just allows us the ability to think without the overpowering effects of the world laying down on us. There is no good reason for why this happens, but it does and it is accepted. I find myself in this world where sometimes, I don’t necessarily feel like I’m living in. There are moments of complete transcendence beyond this plane of life that is here and now to a place that once was perhaps. I think the past has a lot to offer us – I mean there is no way to deny what has happened and there is no way to necessarily change what has happened, but yet, there are dwellings on the past that are the types of dwellings that people are able to use to write, to think to process and proceed in life with some sort of idea of what is happening or what is supposed to happen, even when that “thing” doesn’t happen. We can blame the present and maybe worry about the future, but the past is one thing in life that is certain and unfailing. It pushes us steadily along our way, drifting through the river of despair, love, happiness and whatever else luck seems to throw our way. What do we do with those thoughts that are hidden deep inside our mind from all others? Those ideas and wants that we dare not share with the closest of friend, the most trustworthy of companions? Is that what life is truly made of? Not the actuality of it all, but the hidden aspects of reality? Its possible. The future of our lives are, some might say, shaped by our actions now, which is mostly true, but then there are also those times that are just random, mysterious things that happen without no real reason for them coming to life. Its these times that we realize where our true selves are, where are beings are hiding, running through the underbrush of the forest while the other part of us is casually walking towards them. It’s the underbelly of life that presents us with the most possibilities – with the most problems and deficits – with the greatest chance to adapt and form a thought around it – to move through it while hurting and crying out for it to go back where it came from. Everyone knows but no one dares speaks of it. It is allusive and yet, always near. A warning from within what we have is always subject to change and disappointment. The best we can do is try and achieve a level of knowledge or cleverness that will enable us to recognize when these aspects of our personality are about to surface in full form – giving us the ability to use it to help us grow and learn from it – to force it to the surface and trust it, look at it and ourselves and be critical but also understanding. It is in those most sincere and honest moments where we can truly and fully recognize our true selves in the person that we have become. We can see the person we will become and the person that we will suppress – the person others know and the person others think they know. It will hurt – we will cry – but slowly begin to acknowledge that it was worth the pain – that we will continue on with this life in one form or another and it is up to us to decide for ourselves what that form will be, what form we will take. Difficult, sure, but what part of this isn’t?
15 April 2007
short.
I often pray, though I’m not really sure Anyone’s listening; and
I phrase it carefully, just in case He’s literary.
Mignon McLaughlin
I phrase it carefully, just in case He’s literary.
Mignon McLaughlin
10 March 2007
movement.
I'm not even for sure how to begin such a thought, except to say that it made me angry, and sad at the same time. I watched this film called Bobby tonight, about the assissination of Bobby Kennedy in 1968 in Los Angeles, as he was about to run for president. The movie made its way into my soul, in some way that a movie hasn't in a long time. Maybe its the ways in which the political and social problems of the time reflect our own current issues at home and abroad -- or maybe it was trying to understand why someone would kill such a person. A man who attempted to bring the country together as some form of community -- to act true, whole, and just in the face of an American society that was tired, depressed and angry. He makes me understand the power of words, the power of people to work for change, to imagine that things can be better than what they are. He, this man from the past, restores my faith in America, and in some manner, makes me understand that I am, at least sometimes, ok with my nationality, my heritage. Sitting in a theatre with my friend M, from the U.S. and the rest Australians, we couldn't help but wonder what sort of feeling they left with -- not being able to fully understand the position we are in as Americans abroad, looking back home with often feelings of disdane and disgust, but also looking back home thinking that we can actually make a difference -- that we can change our society.
I don't know if we can, but I have to say that I am angry that we, as the "youth" of America and the world did not stand up for what we felt was and is wrong more. That we didn't fall behind mass protests, that we didn't unite ourselves despite our differences to show the government that we don't approve of things, that we don't understand why all this destruction and death is happening, and that unless they give us better reasons, truthful answers, then we will continue to oppose. It is not only our lives that are being affected, but those of people around the world. It is so easy to just think of ourselves, but as RFK reminded me tonight, that is where the trouble comes. That is what our problem is. We are transfixed on personal gain, goals, and wealth and our focus has turned from our neighbour to our bank account, our myspace page, our email and our t.v. shows. Our lives are running out of control with options. We've lost sight of the bigger picture, the overall scheme of things -- and our problems form within around fueling our problems throughout.
I don't know how to change these things. I don't have an answers or even clear ideas, but I do know that there are people who care and listen and understand -- who want the same changes now that Americans wanted in 1968. That our parents and grandparents are an important part in this fight, not only because they know the effects such actions abroad have on the home front, but because they have the money, the influence and mroeso, the will to help make something happen. These are decisive years my friends, and it is going to set a tone for many to come. We need to rally ourselves, band together as brothers and sister, and respect, understand and fight for something more that capitalist ideals, but those ideals that we hold closest to us as a society. Those basic needs like food, shelter, taking care of our own and learning how to be citizens of the not just the U.S. but the world in general. Our future will depend on us, now. No one is going to make us do it, no one is betting that we will, no one is going to hold our hand and tell us exactly what to do. We have to make this up as we go -- write our own history, find our own truths, and make our country and our world a place where people can afford to live -- where people are proud to live -- and where people are happy to befriend and visit. This place we call home is changing, and we can only hope it is for the better.
I don't know if we can, but I have to say that I am angry that we, as the "youth" of America and the world did not stand up for what we felt was and is wrong more. That we didn't fall behind mass protests, that we didn't unite ourselves despite our differences to show the government that we don't approve of things, that we don't understand why all this destruction and death is happening, and that unless they give us better reasons, truthful answers, then we will continue to oppose. It is not only our lives that are being affected, but those of people around the world. It is so easy to just think of ourselves, but as RFK reminded me tonight, that is where the trouble comes. That is what our problem is. We are transfixed on personal gain, goals, and wealth and our focus has turned from our neighbour to our bank account, our myspace page, our email and our t.v. shows. Our lives are running out of control with options. We've lost sight of the bigger picture, the overall scheme of things -- and our problems form within around fueling our problems throughout.
I don't know how to change these things. I don't have an answers or even clear ideas, but I do know that there are people who care and listen and understand -- who want the same changes now that Americans wanted in 1968. That our parents and grandparents are an important part in this fight, not only because they know the effects such actions abroad have on the home front, but because they have the money, the influence and mroeso, the will to help make something happen. These are decisive years my friends, and it is going to set a tone for many to come. We need to rally ourselves, band together as brothers and sister, and respect, understand and fight for something more that capitalist ideals, but those ideals that we hold closest to us as a society. Those basic needs like food, shelter, taking care of our own and learning how to be citizens of the not just the U.S. but the world in general. Our future will depend on us, now. No one is going to make us do it, no one is betting that we will, no one is going to hold our hand and tell us exactly what to do. We have to make this up as we go -- write our own history, find our own truths, and make our country and our world a place where people can afford to live -- where people are proud to live -- and where people are happy to befriend and visit. This place we call home is changing, and we can only hope it is for the better.
26 February 2007
passion. or something like that.
Every year I sit and watch these awards, and every year, god help me, I still want to be there; be in the know and in the crowd with such classy and distinguished people. Watching everyone tonight I realize how Hollywood is still and will always be the American dream, but is not only just the classic American dream of “go west” but the dreams of people around the world trying just to get to America. I think one of the few things I took away from my first stint in L.A. is that you have to make yourself ok with money, with spending money on movies and al that comes with that. Someone has to provide the entertainment for the masses, and I feel, somehow, that many of the films and actors nominated this year transcend the entertainment/art boundary. That is always the challenge, to make films that are just as beautiful as they are entertaining.
[pause.]
I feel evermore as if my life is just getting started. As if, somehow, I will fin a way to bridge, mesh, include all of my passions of film and people, society and culture. For what are the best films made but ones that are able to reach the soul, the very depths of a being. To help escape the world we live in, but also promote change, ideas and understanding. So many of my thoughts as of late, come from recently seeing Babel, where I was reminded of how easy our lives have become, how over the years we want more convenience, less stress, more freedom, and fail to think about those in the world who struggle each day emotionally, physically, mentally and are constantly overwhelmed with life in general. It’s thoughts and ideas like this that constantly inspire – to push for my life to make a difference of some sort on this world. I suppose it’s what anyone would want in their life, except that it takes something new, different and burning inside a person’s body and mind to achieve the change we hope for. It’s always my hope to become who I am supposed to become & to use what I’ve got. So cliché to follow your dreams, I suppose I’m just going to make them up as I go along.
[end.]
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