On Doing Art in Terrible Times

I am fortunate to have in my life artists of many kinds - writers, musicians, actors, poets, painters. These people, the successful and the struggling, the purists and the experimental, all bring to my life, and to the world around them, an energy and inspiration unequaled by any other influence. Not to mention that I love them - love them not with an ain’t-my-friends-grand kind of affection, but a kind of collective you-are-part-of-my-heart kind of love. 

I don’t see them all regularly, some only when we’re involved in creative projects together, others when the spirit moves one or the other of us to call and say “I need to see you.” But they are always there. More than any other professional or personal community I belong to or have ever, they are always there in my thoughts and in that deep sense of who I am in the world, and they are the kind of people, more than any other professional or practical community, who have literally been there when I was in need.

I love them, and, lately, when I do see them, they’re hurting, doubting, struggling. 

The conversations we have invariably goes more or less like this: 

Me: What are you working on lately?

Them: (shrug) I haven’t been able to do much work. 

Me: (knowing the answer) Why? 

Them: With the world the way it is, it feels (insert: futile, senseless, a luxury, self-indulgent) 

Me: I think there has never been a more important time in our lifetimes to do art. 

Them: Why? 

Me: Precisely because of the state of the world. 

Them: But my art isn’t political. 

Me: That doesn’t matter. 

Them: But…..why? 

Me: Because art makes us more human than any other element of life, and we need that now more than ever. 

Them: (shrugging) I want to believe that. 

Me: Me, too. 

I have had this conversation in the last many months with poets, writers, actors, musicians, close friends and even more casual acquaintances. Each time I walk away feeling inadequate to the task of shoring up them and their belief in the work they do, because, truth be told, I have been, more days than not, having the same struggle myself. 

All of this has led me to read multiple pieces written on the essential nature of art to a democracy, and, actually, to any culture or political philosophy. Art (literature, theater, visual arts) has been shown in multiple studies to increase awareness both in the creators and the observers, to heighten cognitive process, to increase energy, to sharpen analytic ability, and to decrease depression. 

All of that is wonderful, and as a college teacher I have seen evidence of this in the attitude and skill of art students who took my math classes, my critical thinking classes, my classes in logic and argumentation. So these studies don't surprise me, but I think art is much more, and much more important. 

I have been writing as long as I could put pen to paper - immersing myself in a sea of words, in love with the rhythm and clarity of verbal expression, the freedom words bring to create truth woven in words, and to, in fact, create authentic people, places, and passages of life. Two periods of my life as a

writer have been wildly productive: the couple of years of my creative writing graduate program, and the years from around 2010 until November of 2016, when the rise of insanity in our world beat its unwelcome way into my consciousness, as it did for so many others. Suddenly, when I’d sit down to write, I’d find myself staring at the page, thinking of the images and stories and characters swirling in my head, and have them feel futile, senseless, a self-indulgent luxury. What got me out of it?

I’ll let you know when that happens. 

In the meantime, I get up each day and face the page, and continue writing, because I do believe, somewhere in my battered-writer’s soul, that it is an essential act of resistance against darkness. It is a deep refusal to let go of what is best in the human spirit. Someone once said that those who control the storytelling of a culture control the culture, and we have seen lately the impact that stories pushed on the public consciousness, however false and fabricated, have on our world. People respond to stories in myriad ways - out of fear, out of hope, out of a deep connection to a truth being told. For me, continuing to write is an act to appeal to the last two - to get people to deeply connect to truth and by doing so to increase their hope. Stories told in any way - through paintings, poetry, music, or on the stage, can and should do the same. 

Doing art is a deeply political act, regardless of the story being told. It can open eyes or put blinders on them. It can turn people toward the dark or toward the light. It can show both beautiful and terrible truths, or it can create false hells for us to burn in. At its best, it can show people immersed in a dark world how to see the world illuminated

What Happens at the (Expletive Deleted) Intersection

  I’m a word-nerd, and a science geek. I also am a fan of comedy. Add all that together, and I was doomed to be a fan of science fiction that’s comedic (the ‘word-nerd’ part will be back in a minute). I loved Galaxy Quest, and, more recently, Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel. I loved the comic moments in Star Trek and always thought Star Wars could’ve done better in that area. So I quickly became a fan, a few years back, of a quirky science fiction TV show called Eureka. What was great about that show was not the science, but the humor. The basic premise was this: a US Marshall gets stranded after his car breaks down in a small Oregon town, which turns out to be a community hiding a top-secret facility where the best scientists in the world are allowed to do their work, as long as they also work for the DOD.  Because of this Marshall's skill at solving two mysteries while he's there, the managers of the community convince the government to "promote" him out of his US Marshall's job and into being their town Sheriff. So, a man of average intelligence (as we find out in one episode - of 111) is in charge of enforcing the law in a community filled with the highest IQs in the world.

That leaves a lot of room for humor, which they pull off in every episode, to the delight of fans.  A Particular schtick that the writers regularly use on this show is that when the IQ types are discussing the failure of some experiment and the problem created, and letting out a string of quantum-enveloped thingamajig terminology, someone, seeing the blank look on the sheriff’s face, will say, for instance, “an ice ray of death.” And he will say, “why don’t you just say​ ‘ice ray of death’?” It comes off much better with the skilled actors in the show (Colin Ferguson, who plays Sheriff Carter, is a master of these moments, and much more). 

This particular schtick is relevant to us, today, in our normal lives in an important way, and the problem created has come more and more to my attention lately. In an effort to make language more specific, we have not only sacrificed clarity, but damaged our collective cognitive function. Those were big words I just used, meaning (with - I hope - at least some clarity) we try to have a specific word for everything, and in the process have become less and less able to communicate with any expectation of shared meaning or understanding. 

There are several examples of this, the most recent of which (and the one which got me thinking) is the word “intersectional.” This word started with a really good idea. (see article link at the end). In a 2016 TED talk, (just two years ago) a woman examined a case where a court had declined to find on a case of combined racial and sexual discrimination, saying (unfortunately, correctly) that they were not allowed by the existing law to consider them as combined influences. The speaker asked the audience

to imagine this situation as an intersection of roads where two lines of traffic come together. It was a great idea, the colliding lines of racism and sexism, like vehicles colliding at an intersection, creating damage exponentially greater than any one vehicle alone. It was a really good idea, because it allowed those without direct experience to imagine (inadequately to the actual experience) what happens when layers of prejudice are piled on a single person. It was a useful idea for persuading the legal system about the necessity to examine multiple prejudices combined. A useful idea - and soon co-opted.

A while back, I ran into a friend at a local store, who introduced me to another friend of hers, visiting from out of town. On hearing (from my friend) about just some of the elements of my life, this visitor gushed to me “your life is so intersectional!” 

I was taken aback - this woman’s connotations of the term were positive, it was a compliment to her. I thought perhaps I’d misunderstood the term, as I understood it the way Crenshaw (the TED talk presenter) had voiced it. So, I looked up a bunch of references to intersectionality, examinations of the term, explanations and critiques. (Amazing how many there have been in just two years), and here’s the conclusion I came to: the exact conclusion in the piece I’ve linked at the end of this post. That is, people taking on this word have tried to expand its meaning and have in the process actually muddied meaning to the point of it becoming a hard impenetrable clay. It means different things to different people, the end result being no one hearing it can be sure what the speaker means when they say it. 

This brings to mind a particular conference I had with a professor as an undergraduate. It should be no surprise to anyone who’s read …. oh, pretty much anything I’ve written… that I’m a wee bit of a science geek. I was in an undergraduate class in Microbiology with a professor who became one of my mentors and friends (and, later, when I was teaching, a colleague). We had as assigned reading a portion of a classic microbiology text that dealt with Koch’s Postulates, and which was written in entirely incomprehensible blather. I went to the professor’s office to try to get clarity. Like any good teacher (and he was very good) he wanted me to find the answer for myself, and sent me off with a couple of resources I could begin with to get to understanding. I read them, and five or six others I found myself, and went back to his office a couple of days later with a definition I’d written out in a couple of sentences of what the Postulates meant. He beamed and nodded. I looked at him, down at the copious notes in my lap, and at the text sitting between us on the table. My professor, Dr. Parson, waited. 

“So it’s really just about something the organism produces itself rather than a microbe that can be cultured or produced in a lab?” He nodded again. I looked down again, up again: “Why don’t they just say that?” 

He laughed loud and long, and we got into a long discussion of specialized terminology, how linguistics look at them, how scientists look at them, and what they do to create a sense of mysticism that blurs or actually hides the fundamental meaning from most people. 

My point is that complex ideas do not and SHOULD NOT attempt to have simple or single words to express them - they should require a complex mix of words and phrases, descriptors and qualifiers to bring them into full understanding. Science needs all the words it can get. Racism needs all the words it can get. Philosophy needs all the words it can get. Diplomacy needs all the words it can get. Sexism needs all the words it can get. We should not -- I am begging the world and readers and academics (particularly) not to-- reduce ideas. We should instead take time and effort and force of will to weave clear, fundamental words into a sharp understanding of their wonderful complexity.

Speak truth to me all you want, but don’t think it’s truth when you try to make complex concepts simple. Struggle with words and ideas, talk and talk and talk until you have clarity, no matter how many words it takes, and don’t -- DO NOT -- try to cover beautifully complicated concepts by using a single popular, vague, or trendy word. When you do that, what happens at that intersection is that two lanes don’t just collide, a bomb is also dropped on top of them. No, my life is NOT intersectional - it is (as is any one person’s life) too complex and rich to be reduced to a single word. 

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ENDNOTE:  I completely agree that intersectional resistance is essential. I'm just not sure - no, I'm fully convinced - that not everyone means the same thing when they say that.

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Article referenced in post:

Intersectional - what?

Where All This Has Left Me

NOTE:  for 518 days, I have tried to keep politics out of this blog.  That ends NOW.
I wanted to write about writing, but sometimes the world mandates what you must write.

________________________________________________________________________________

“It was all probably part of his plan,” she said.

We were on a social media thread, this unknown-to-me female and I,
arguing over the separation of children from their parents at the border.

“He needed to get things moving to solve the problem, to enforce the rule of law.  It was all probably
part of his plan.”

I could barely breathe as I typed my response.  “And you’re ok with him traumatizing children
as part of his plan?  As a political maneuver?”

After which she called me negative, angry, and hateful.  “You didn’t answer my question,” I typed,
“You’re ok with him traumatizing children as part of his plan?  If so, I’m honestly sorry for you.”

She never answered that question, but others have.  On a separate thread, someone posted the
much-circulated picture of an approximately four year old child crying in a cage, with the
question:  “Are you Trump supporters ok with this?” Many answered proudly that yes, they were,
and other comments far too vile to repeat here.

They were proud.

In my youth, not long after McCarthyism had died, not long after blacklists and internment camps
and the HUAAC, my mother used to say, as dramatically as she could manage, “God save me from
good Christian people.” I didn’t then really know what she meant, but I get it now. For years I have
railed (with friends and in public) against the stereotyping of all things Republican/conservative/right
as “bad” and all things left/liberal/Democrat as “good.”  It is still worth noting that such sweeping
generalizations are never true and always divisive, but I have no time for that argument any more.
I am neither Democrat nor Republican - I have been an Independant my whole voting life, and I
approached the 2016 election as one, and have approached every issue since the same way. The
Republican party once deserved the moniker “Grand Old Party,” and the Democrats the label “the
party of the people.” Neither is true any longer, and hasn’t been for some time.  I have been guilty
more than once of enjoying an “outside” position more than I should, proud of weighing each issue
and each candidate on merits, and not party affiliations or recommendations by unions or interest
groups. I have enjoyed the pride of feeling right in a logical approach based on evidence, on careful
research, on factual basis. But let me say this right now: I am neither a moderate nor a centrist. I
take sides.

And I can’t think of a single person in the current administration who I would count on my side,
or want to be on theirs. I am wholly, completely, and to my bones, opposed to them. They are, in
unmitigated terms, my enemy.

I wanted to keep this blog about writing, but sometimes the world mandates what you must write.  

Reaching Beyond Your Grasp... and Dancing with Words

One of the most remarkable musical performances I’ve ever seen I witnessed at Eluwa Special School in Ongwediva, Namibia.  Eluwa is a school for deaf and blind students located near the northern border of Namibia and Angola, and I had gone there for a summer (their winter, our summer) to teach computer skills to a couple of classes of the students, to help the blind students learn to use software that would allow them to use computers, and to teach instructional use of computers to the teaching staff.  Eluwa is a remarkable place, and even more remarkable are the students and staff.  Students come from all parts of Namibia, and also from Angola, Botswana, and Zimbabwe.  When I was there, out of the 300+ students, about 80 were blind, the rest deaf, and a very few both blind and deaf.

My porch-conversation group

Every teacher who works there (several of whom were there as students when they were young) is required to lead an extracurricular activity with the students. When staff found out that I had an interest in the arts, there was some early competition for me to participate in theater, dance, and visual arts activities - I was, early on, invited to observe all these groups while I settled on the one I’d “volunteer” with.  Unofficially, I sat outside the visiting teacher’s housing every afternoon with a group of teen and pre-teen deaf girls, while they showed me their writings (in beautifully-illustrated diaries) and talked about their goals, and I talked to them about stories, poetry, and the female writers I admired.  These “conversations” were slow and required considerable patience, as the girls worked with me to learn, understand, and become proficient in Namibian Sign Language (distinctly different from ASL, though the signs for letters are the same). This probably benefited me more than it did them.

Because of the small size of the school, students often participated in multiple extra-curricular activities, so when I walked into the dance class, I wasn’t surprised to see many of “my” girls - my NSL-writing-porch-conversation group - in the dance group.  The teacher/leader of the group, a woman named Deena with whom I got to be great friends - explained to me that the reason there were huge amplifiers setting well out from the wall, the CD player on a stand behind them, was that the music would be played loud enough to vibrate the floor, so that the girls could feel the music through their feet as they rehearsed.  They would dance barefoot.  She offered me earplugs, which I declined.
When the music started to play, I didn’t recognize it, but I recognized the type - a solid rock beat, skillful drums and guitars, and a beautiful male voice tenor singing in a language I did not know, but I did recognize the passion and vocal range (which was impressive). The music pounded through the room, and before I had a chance to think, the girls were in formation, going through what was obviously a carefully-choreographed routine, never missing a beat as they responded to the music they could not hear, while their teacher beamed.  At the end, I broke into applause, and they blushed.  Later I was told they had twice won the National Dance Award for girls in their age range.  They did two more routines before I had to leave, and I left awestruck.

Watching these girls, seeing in their eyes not just intense concentration, but absolute joy in the music they were feeling rather than hearing, I was overcome with the resilience of the human spirit, and the absolute power of music.

When I am writing to music and the words are not coming, I think of them, and close my eyes, seeing their slender bodies,  at one moment sitting with me on that far-away porch, laughing or crying over their shared writings, and the next moment swirling and stomping, swaying and strutting to music with which they shared resonance if not audibility. Every one of them knew that there were aspects to music they would never know, but that did not matter to them - they lived the music in movement, they shared it in physical elation and embodied music in every gesture and motion.

What impressed me so much was not just the beauty of their performance - which was a thing of heart-stopping beauty - but their courage.   These young women, rejected by their mainstream society, written off by everyone but the people at this school, knowing that those who watched them were aware of something they could never share (what the music sounded like), set all of that aside - all that judgement, all that skepticism, all that rejection - and just opened themselves. They found a way for something that was supposed to be out of their reach to instead be within their grasp, and they embraced it fully  - they lived it.

I could go into a litany of all the ways I witnessed the courage of these young women, but it was all there in their dance. When I struggle with a character or a plot or even just a sense that 'something’s

wrong' when working on a story, what I need to remember to do is see those girls in my memory, see their exhilaration as they swirl and sweep around a floor, the light in their eyes, the perfection of their movements, and their delighted laughter when a routine is finished.

With each writing project I start, I create (at some point) a writing playlist - different for each story.   Lately, as I write, I’ve had a variety of music and music styles playing, and nothing has yet settled.  I often play Mozart, but also have found myself listening to The Eagles, Eric Clapton, Aretha Franklin, several different jazz albums, and things as diverse as Ray Charles and Jean-Luc Ponty.  Harry Chapin and Harry  Nilsson.  While no “playlist” is emerging for this particular story, the image of those beautiful young women dancing sweeps through the background of my thoughts, and I settle into whatever is playing, feeling and embracing it, and the words keep coming.  There may be something in the story I cannot yet hear or see, but I can cease to worry about what’s out of my reach and find what is in my grasp within the story, and dance with the words.

This is something I wish for all of you.  Listen to the music - reach….and write.

Digging and the Archaeology of Writing

It was one of those slick popular magazines, thrown down on a table in the dentist’s waiting room.  I was twelve,  as frightened of the dentist as any twelve-year-old, and looking for things to distract me - and there it was, a picture of a young woman, brush in hand, gently sweeping away, grain by grain, the dust and dirt of centuries from the remnants of an ancient stone wall. I don’t remember anything else about that dentist visit (ok, that’s a lie - I also remember swatting away the dentist’s hand when he first poked the needle inside my mouth, and then getting the lecture of my life from him) - but that picture, the words around it, the thought of remnants of ancient times being buried under our very feet - all that stuck with me.  I wanted more.

Typical of my young self (and, well, my old self now) I spent months researching, reading everything the sparse school library and the only-slightly-less-sparse city library could give me on archeology.  I dug through my parent’s set of The Book of Knowledge for everything even remotely archeological, read encyclopedia articles, ordered books on interlibrary loan, which sometimes arrived, sometimes never did.  And, as is the way with all things for twelve-year-olds, I eventually moved on to other fascinations.

Sort of.  The thoughts of those neatly-arranged grids at dig sites, the shovels, the brushes, the tables laden with shards and bones and - gasp - intact pottery of ancient times, stayed in my mind, leading me to pick  up any article on dig sites, to subscribe to reading lists, listservs, and blogs for years to learn more, read more, understand more. Until, finally, I put in an application to volunteer at a dig site - and was accepted.  For several years, I went to dig after dig, sifting through dirt, hauling buckets of dirt, sleeping with dirt in my hair. I discovered a number of things about myself in the process:   I’m tougher than I thought I was, I have more patience than I thought I did, and, most surprising, I really like to dig.

At most of the digs I’ve worked, (note well:  worked, not attended) the volunteers, grad students, junior archeologists and any other odd crew are divided into “pit teams” - each section of the area to be excavated is marked off in a grid, and each team (three people each) gets one section to excavate - one person in the pit, digging and brushing, one hauling the excavated dirt to the screens, and one person sifting the dirt through the screens to discover any artifacts so small they may have gotten lost in the dirt.  I hated screening (some loved it), and was fine with my turns hauling dirt to

and fro, but was near ecstatic about my turns digging in the pit. I’d argue that my turn was not over.  I’d grump when on any given day I didn’t get as many dig turns as someone else.  I’d pretend not to hear them when they were calling me to get the holy hell out of there.  I wanted to dig - I wanted, grain by grain, to remove the dirt and rock until I found that shard of arrowhead, or section of  pot, or, once, an entire intact firepit from more than 3,000 years ago.

It was the bit by bit of it, the inch by inch, the level by level anticipation of discovery.

That is the same with writing.  It is easy for any of us with moderate skill with words to throw out shovelfuls in an essay to meet a deadline, or to just dump a bucket on an issue or a simmering idea.  Like the archeologist who knows the layout of ancient villages and hence knows where to dig, we know the structure of essay, the arc of story, and we can toss it out, without screening, when need be.

Don’t let need be.

I’ve been away from this blog for more than a month.  I wish I could tell you that it’s because I’ve been churning out dozens of pages and couldn’t stop.  But I can’t tell you that, because what I’ve been doing is digging, scraping up dirt by the shovelful, hoping that some small grain of it is that

artifact, that essence of memory and history that sparks the thought, paints the picture that lights up a whole other way of being….magic on paper.  I am still screening, still sifting, still taking the dirt, the grains, the small ideas joyfully removed and going through the excruciating process of sifting.  I’m finding patience for discovery, because like the many archeologists I have now worked with at digs, I know the layout, I know when I’m approaching a “find,” and being in that almost-there state is near as exhilarating as words flowing on the page.

Two Absolute Necessities for That UnPlanned Time

Everyone has had one of those days - you get up with what you think is a full day, and, before you can get out of the house, your whole day gets emptied.  Work calls off everyone for an exterminator, your lunch date cancels, and your kids are going  to a sleep over right after school,  

The whole day is yours.  With Not A Damned Thing on your calendar.

For some, this is a temptation to engage in guilty pleasures - a mid-day glass of wine and a trashy novel, or binging on that embarrassing TV show you absolutely love. For others, The List looms, and by the end of the day, the supplies and makings of every project are stacked everywhere.  You may even work on some of them.  Others will get on the phone and/or social media, connecting and commenting.  Some, unfamiliar with the freedom, will wander from one possibility to the other, never quite sure which to pursue.

For a writer, it can depend on where you are - in your process, with a project, in your confidence. It may not take you a moment to pour a cup of tea (or gather up your cat, or light a smoke) and sit down to your writing table, delighted to dig into the next scene or paragraph.  It may mean some long walks or drives, or whatever you do to help your brain generate, as you try to decide what to work on, or how to change the direction of a piece you’re working on, or to consider just that next perfect line.   Or….

Maybe you stand, knowing the day is a gift, knowing you should be using it to move your work forward, but not knowing how to do that.   Any of these responses can leave the writer unmoored.  You’re a writer, free time should  find you ready to go, pen in hand, ideas flowing, not…. Mired.

I’m about to give you some advice for those unexpected free times.  I’m not claiming I am always able to do this myself, I’m just saying that when I  am able to, it works.  On days like this, do two things:   Let go, and Pay Attention.  Let go of the need to make yourself a writer in this time, let go of the sense that your worth depends on how you handle it, let go of expectations that you must produce to be valid.  Pay attention to … well, everything.  Openly, quietly, without expectation.  What you hope for is surprise.  It may or may not happen.  Don’t worry.  Just let the free day (or the free hour or afternoon) percolate as it will.  If you have the urge to sit down with your writing, do it, don’t resist, but also don’t resist if it seems like a long walk is the way to go.  Those familiar, unsurprising, uneventful days may have a moment or an hour that will come back to you a week or a month or even years later with just the inspiration that you need for that next line.

I’m not saying that, if you have a routine, you should abandon it.   I’m saying the free time is a gift, and while fourteen pages of your novel produced would make you feel great, so might the three-minute conversation with the guy you meet on the walking path, or the graffiti you find scrawled on a sidewalk.  

Waste, Transubstantiation, and the Writer

“Does their culture tell them to keep broken old refrigerators and garbage in their front yards?”

This question came from a co-worker, a man, I knew, though briefly, years ago.  We had both worked at a center for refugees, and had been talking about cultural differences in our clients, and I’d noted that many cultures were different even in our country, for instance, Native Americans.

This man was not evil, nor was he (generally) ignorant.  He was, in fact, over the brief time I came to know him, a man who I came to consider one of the most ethical humans I’d ever known.  He was a former priest, who had renounced his vows when a parishioner came to him and asked about the doctrine of transubstantiation - the turning of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. According to the Church, only the ordained can perform this ritual.  The parishioner questioned Gregg, my former colleague, at length about this, and, after some discussion, asked this question:  “But then, if my faith is strong enough, shouldn’t I be able to turn it into the body and blood as well?”

Gregg had no answer for him.  After considerable thought, and, after failed efforts to get an answer from higher-ups in the Church, Gregg felt that his only option was to renounce his vows until

he could settle this matter of faith.

That, my friends, is ethics.

He was (and, I presume, still is) a good man.

And his question was genuine - he believed that things deemed as ‘garbage’ should not be kept, should be disposed of, and genuinely did not understand what he saw when he crossed a local reservation.

I remember drawing a long breath, and thinking carefully before I responded.  This was not a person I wanted to alienate, this was a person genuinely trying to understand.  “Well, I can’t speak for all Native American cultures, because there are many, but the folks I’ve known believe that you do not dispose of something if it might still have utility, that it is dishonorable to waste.  I’ve seen people make smokers and dehydrators out of old refrigerators, so not only are they not wasting the refrigerator parts, but they are also working to be sure food isn’t wasted.  I also once knew a sculptor - yes, he was Native American - who cut apart the parts of an old refrigerator and bent and shaped them to make a sculpture of birds in flight.  It’s a belief in not wasting things, in honoring the potential utility of everything.”

Gregg initially looked startled, and then thoughtful, and, over the weeks and months that followed before both of us left employment at that center and went to work elsewhere, we had many more productive conversations about cultural differences in which we each frequently had to remind the other that there might be reasons to be more open if and when either of us felt judgmental.  I grew to like and respect him a lot for that, as well as for a wickedly sharp sense of humor.  I was sad, a few years later, when we lost touch.

Just a few years ago, I returned from spending four months in Northern Namibia, teaching at a school for the deaf and blind in a small town called Ongwediva, very near the border with Angola.  The time I spent there was inspirational, as you might imagine, for many reasons:  the dedication of

the local teachers, the courage of the blind and deaf students, the spirit of the local people in the face of scarce resources, poverty, and a harsh environment.  When I returned to the U.S., one of the hardest adjustments for me (and one I still struggle with, to this day) is adjusting to how much sheer waste there is here.  We throw out things, flush them down the drain, toss them in the garbage, without a thought.  That would never happen among the people I lived with there.  Everything is too scarce to dispose of without considering its potential use.  I still shudder when I see furniture, clothing, wood, etc overflowing from dumpsters.

We are wasteful, and that disregard for potential usefulness, potential beauty, infects our lives and our culture to a degree we never even think about.  This in part springs from and in part creates a caste snobbery that demeans those who are more careful about their use of things, who save things, who keep an out-of-fashion piece of furniture because of its remaining utility and care not that it is no longer considered “tasteful.”  I knew a woman once who did not understand my devotion to shopping thrift stores and buying used items. She (literally) shuddered at the notion of wearing clothes someone else had owned, or using dishes someone else had abandoned. “You deserve new things,” she said, “and so do I,” not even thinking about the implied assumption that those who shop at such places out of necessity deserve their lot.  

What does this have to do with writers?  That wastefulness in attitude, in thought, in practice also infects our language. We are wasteful with words and careless (in its exact meaning) about their impact and long term effects.  We use words and throw them away with little thought.  As writers, we pursue what is considered the ‘market of the moment,’ writing for transitory public tastes, without regard to long term impact, or the implied assumptions in what we may write.

My advice for you as writers:   be careful.   Use your words with care, choose your meanings with care, select your purpose with care.   Examine your assumptions, examine your motives, examine your purpose, and be careful.  Be full of care - full of care for your reader, for the profession of writing, for your own spirit.  Like a piece of furniture that has been used well, your thoughts are filled with history, the history of your life - be sure that history in honored in how it is reflected in your words.

The Japanese have a tradition of repairing broken items with gold, not only enhancing their

beauty but their strength, and such items are not only more beautiful than they were originally, but reflect a history of use, a history of care.  In Western culture, we often feel broken, and our cultural tendency is to abandon that broken part of our selves, to “move on.”  Think about your own brokenness when you write, and honor it, weld it together with words that are as strong as gold, and do not waste that part of your life.  Make your words the thrift store for your readers - a place where they can find the utility in their own brokenness, in the strength of your words.