Christmas 2007

I had grander ideas for holiday greenery, but ah well... she'll have to do. Somehow I'm not much for pomp and circumstance this year - not in a bah-humbug way, more in a spare and quiet sort of way.

Happy holidays to you and yours... peace on earth. No joke.

A Tree Grows in the Bronx

Regarding the previous post, I should say that metaphor is metaphor, and life is life. A metaphor is not, strictly speaking, an equation. There are ways in which sitting with a dying friend is very much like and in no way like writing a book. I won't weigh the difficulties of each, it's too much apples and oranges...

J. is on the West Coast for two weeks, sitting with his post-octogenarian father who's just had a heart attack and stroke (recovering slowly, but yes, recovering), and also visiting with an old friend who is in the late stages of liver cancer. Both men are weighing in at less than 130 lbs. J. calls every night, and I sit with him - my friend - as he sits with his father and his friend.

I've stayed in the city, for work reasons and also because of stormy/wintry weather. In lighting out for the country, there are both the challenge of getting there through snow & sleet, and, once there, getting out (have not yet invested in the snow-blower). I am not proud of my damsel-in-distress anxieties, but for now, this is me.

Some news: we have a tree! A lone tree, dormant of course, planted a week ago just outside the building. D. the landlord asked the city for it - part of Mayor Bloomberg's MillionTreesNYC initiative. Go, Mike!

I should say, though, that it took, oh, about a year from the time of the initial request. In an earlier post, I wrote about city time vs. country time, i.e. fast vs. slow, especially when it comes to change. But here in the Bronx, at least, change takes its sweet time. One year for a tree! And literally, it's the only tree on the street. I just made an online request for another one, a few blocks down. This is going to be fun - let's start counting the days until it arrives...

In other good/slow news: there is a stretch of hilly "grass" around the corner, the slope underneath the highway. The "grass" there is 5-feet high, and it's become a thriving garbage dump. The pup and I walk by there every day, twice a day, plug our noses and whince (wait, what am I saying, the pup loves it of course, chicken bones and cat poop galore). For the first time in a year, there is a crew out there today weed-whacking, raking, and cleaning. Huzzah!

The little things, my friends. It's Christmas time, and we who celebrate in the Judeo-Christian tradition await the miraculous arrival of Emmanuel, God with us. This tree - I swear, you have to know this block and this part of the city I suppose to not think I'm a loon - is, feels like, (heck, in child-like wonder I'm claiming it as) something very close to a miracle.

Me in The Lion's Den

A long stretch in the city, and an even longer stretch away from this blog (and draft 3 of my novel as well). I'm not sure what other writers mean - really mean - when they refer to "writer's block," and I'm not sure if that's what I have. I do know that what Annie Dillard said about being master of your work - you are either master or slave - is true. Here is a quote I come back to, over and over:

I do not so much write a book as sit with it, as with a dying friend. During visiting hours, I enter its room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders. I hold its hand and hope it will get better.

This tender process can change in a twinkling. If you skip a visit or two, a work in progress will turn on you.

A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the doors to its room. You enter its room with bravura, holding a chair at the thing and shouting, 'Simba!'

That fear and dread are a regular part of the writing life is something people don't like to talk about so much. A dying friend, indeed. But it's that sympathy, along with a trance-like drive, pushing forth from deeper levels of consciousness and intellect than what you engage in your regular life - your life of society (urban, suburban, rural) and problem-solving and grocery shopping and bill-paying - it's that concoction of positive (and dare I say mystical) forces that completes the brew. It's a ridiculously impossible balance to maintain, let alone deepen and fortify. And when fear and dread win the day, paralysis ensues.

But enough of that. We get up off the mat. Things are not looking good in draft 3, the disorders seem awfully terminal. Fear and dread. But here is Dillard again, on writing as process, on the work of writing as life:

Putting a book together is interesting and exhilarating. It is sufficiently difficult and complex that it engages all of your intelligence. It is life at its most free.

And a good word from Melanie Rae Thon:

The blank page is a mysterious place where we learn through joy to pay attention.

In a recent interview, artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel was asked which he would choose, painting or filmmaking, if he could only do one. He answered (I paraphrase): "Painting. I paint outside most of the time. I paint alone. Painting is pure freedom."

Ultimately, I am in there with the lion by my own doing. The blank page is the artist's privilege - a glorious, terrible gift.

Campaign Trail - Part One

The political report from the city: we went to see Obama speak at The Apollo in Harlem. A packed house of very enthusiastic supporters; and a pretty mixed crowd (meaning black and white; we were among very few Asians). The production side of things was a bit bizarre - but maybe that's because everything about campaigning and PR is bizarre to me.

You could see and feel the complexity of Obama's positioning in "the black community" (which in itself is a complex and slippery grouping). The first half of the program was heavy on "traditional black community" figures, including the Harlem Gospel Choir (a serious mis-step, I think. The holy-rolling pentecostal evangelism - basically 30 mins of church - was not appreciated by the majority of this audience, black or white or miscellaneous). You could feel how this part of the program - entirely too long - was intended to make a kind of "traditional Harlem" community happy; but it was clear that a much more heterogeneous/ecumenical spirit had filled the room, and so it all felt awkward. It wasn't until after 9pm that things started to really warm up...

...which was when surprise guest Cornel West showed up! As always, West was eloquent and convincing. If you were on the fence before hearing him, you were knocked flat by the time he was done. In particular, he spoke to Obama's character and passion and judgment (West is no dummy, he knows the key words for the next 11 months), his place in history, and the bogus "rhetoric of experience" that's getting tossed around in favor of Hillary. I wish the campaign would bring West on the road everywhere: he's brilliant and inspiring, and he's a terrific showman - he knows how to talk to people and entertain them without dumbing down. I think he knew that he needed to be an antidote to the anti-intellectualism of the Harlem Gospel Choir; and he was.

Just when we thought we'd come to the end of the line - the energy was high, this was surely the moment of Obama's arrival - one more surprise guest took the stage: Chris Rock, who was hilarious as always. His line (speaking to black folk in particular) about "If Obama does win and you weren't down with it, won't you be embarrassed? What was I thinking voting for that white lady?" has gotten lots of media play. It was a good move: West got our blood pumping, Chris Rock deflated the tension and got us relaxed.

Obama himself was predictably impressive. Calm, confident, clear (and very tall). He has a way of conveying intense passion and easy-goingness all at once. When he raises his voice to make a point, he does so with control, and a kind of gravity (an anti-Howard Dean). He also allows humor in to the mix. This is no small feat - in fact, it's no feat at all, I sense it's his real character/personality. Overall, he seemed to me both determined and exhausted - and very serious about this campaign.

The climax of his message (for me), was when he spoke about why he's running. "I never expected to be here," he said, which is another way of saying, "This isn't a long-calculated career move for me," which is another way of saying, "Hillary Clinton is running because she's a politician, and this is what's next for her." This is all campaign lingo, over-simplification to some degree, but I think it's going to be a strong message from the Obama campaign. He's running because of the "fierce urgency of now" (MLK), because he wants to serve/lead and sees a pressing need to serve/lead. "The only way we can win is if we stop worrying primarily about losing." Another jab at Hillary's disingenuous political maneuverings - another way of looking at her supposed "experience," i.e. that her primary strength is in campaigning, obfuscating, deal-making, winning; not leading.