I’ve been writing for a bit over a year now on the same kind of theme, or at least considering the same kind of question: what is a good life. And because – for me at least – an integral part of that question is: what is an ethical life.
I suppose I can split my life in two – my personal life, which is extraordinary insular, where I can be relatively hedonistic in my pursuits; and my livelihood, which is teaching and laden with ethical responsibilities.
There are days when I fantasize about not having to teach. Not to get away from the work exactly, but to spread myself out thinly over the days. To breathe easily. While the pandemic has been difficult in so many ways, it has also given me the opportunity to slow down. Listen. Can I listen to the birds with the same sustained interest that I listen to a student presentation? This is a kind of work, too. What do I earn from this?
My childhood was a cramped succession of dramas, of noise and movement. A montage of cigarettes and speed, cocaine and black eyes. Drama became a kind of addiction that I struggled with through my 20s. I walked that jagged edge of violence where you never know which side someone will fall on: wounded or… disappeared. And as soon as I write this down I think: no, I’m not being fair to everyone. And still, I censor myself. After censoring myself in the first place. I make excuses for other people.
Maybe no one should ever tell the whole truth? At least not for the sake of entertainment or to makes one’s self interesting like a spectacle at Coney Island. Though people do buy tickets.
When I was in high school I went to the county fair alone and bought a ticket to see one of the “freaks”, assuming it would be a mirror trick of some sort. A kind of theatrical presentation. It wasn’t. The “freak” was a person. I turned around immediately and threw up outside the tent.
No. That would make a good story. I didn’t throw up. I just wanted to. I felt a sense of shame that was too familiar. But weirdly, I felt a shared sense of shame. With the person in the tent. I couldn’t explain it then, and I can’t explain it now except to say I understand why the whales that are kept in tiny pools and mistreated at theme parks will give kisses to their trainers on cue.
I don’t want to choose revenge or forgiveness. I want a middle path here, too. It seems even my personal life isn’t really free of ethical concerns.
And my writing never will be.
So for now, I write about mundane things like lapwings and chaffinches. The vibrating silence of the Hardanger plateau where the snow still lies in July. How cold has a smell where the North Sea is untouched by the Gulf Stream, and the harbour in Stavanger can smell like watermelon.
There’s this to gain: being in the world and not in the past. For now.
Drama is a mode
of poetry – and distinct
from the lyric, so
how do we conflate the two
in the narratives we tell?
Maybe this is why we create from our imaginations. We can’t tell the whole truth because we don’t really know what that is. From whose perspective is the whole truth? So we tell or make something that feels like the truth, or close to the truth, as we can guess it or know it…from observed perspectives, some of which are speculative.
I had friends whose teens and 20s were full of that edgy drama, that seemed to me so lively and interesting–yet when I came close to the drama myself, I was uncomfortable and sad and didn’t feel inclined to [write, paint, dance, etc]. I was cowardly. I backed away from it. But I watched and speculated. You seem to have done both: been in the drama, backed away and observed it, and now you’re asking what you remember, really. And: how. How do you recall the circumstances, the feelings? Is shame ever “valuable”?
Drama can be magnificent. As you know. There’s much to be mined, as writing instructors would say. But you don’t want to destroy the environment in the process.
Keep on.
Thank you – these are good things to ponder. Esp. the value of shame. I love it when you comment!
More wise words. This unfolding reminds me, in terms of tone and rhythm, of Basho’s ‘The Narrow Road To The Far North’.
High praise. Thank you!