Further Dispatches from the Cold Abyss

I developed a couple of projects this week.  I should have posted one this past Friday but I fell of the edge of a soft cliff into a frozen grey blah, delirious, digital, staring with a wide dry mouth. It was a soft landing with limited shards to brush from my long coat.     When it breathes deeply. mental lungs taking in swiftly ascending walls and filtered air of softly falling frost. she was distressed about crystalline windows behind drawn shades. when I was interested in the sun’s humor. I have motioned for a new alliance. now everything is different. I can smell spiced tea. and who knows if I’ll ever walk down that same hallway again. grey way. folded memory. was there ever even a fall to begin with. In specific terms, the springy landing feels more like a tumble.                               -Leeland of the North  4-21-14

This piece is a work in progress inspired by the smoke-and-mirrors effect Ed Roberson is able to create in City Eclogue. I’m hoping to develop this piece into a longer unit, possibly with several parts working together to paint a fragmented picture. This is part of what I was getting at in class a couple of weeks ago- I’m looking to write (emote, explore) my experience as an addict in long-term recovery, both the journey down and back up, without belaboring it with overly obvious and ponderous writing.

In that regard, I may have to muddy the images and ideas in this piece even more, or I may leave it closer the the way it is now and surround it with a couple of others that blend in some necessary distraction, twisting a device or two, anything to hint at the complexity of what I’m trying to describe with form as well as content.

Happy Hour

With a ceremoniously long pull, an attitude adjusted

justified by long days, placed in part- near harm

to dispell the very problem with itself.

Vanquish misery half of a rebound, priced for

fast living.

Always another new brand game of taste.

Retail chased from reward to rewind

lovely, lively, timely, prideful denial mostly

*was* a high time

ride wretched rocks rightfully off.

sleep end, day to night, on pillow alights a dreamless sign.

Colored label compliments a subtle gleam of bottle neck

so label comes with tasteful expect excepting the

ulcerative regret to follow with constant enthusiasm,

a celebratory need.
Tea time.

Another finding. years later. Same face different eyes.

A starker, pressing thorny vine, the slight regard of winter’s bride.

The aging frost of wellness left behind, no taste set unfamiliar

to the tight-fisted memory, mind.

A man might make a daylight sneeze, as new found

freedom settles, startling the hopeless relieved.

With in mind the length of lies, the skein of

clasping, invisible ties broken

not lost, nor left behind, only a form of being

settled nightly ‘cross an unbound rest

while you were steeping, a breath at last.

A mindful ray of a river’s past to meander

to remain, to stay alive for interminable

amounts of silver, softer lines.

This second piece came from a free-write exercises I did based on a prompt to write about something really boring and flesh it out with characters, plot, setting, etc. I was very pleased with the initial draft, because I felt that I achieved a sense of reality rooted in the dialogue, and I was able to come up with an ending that created an unresolved, yet oddly satisfying thud. Lastly, I’m excited to have a piece with a title that I love. It’s easy for me to write titles last minute, losing the opportunity to add significance to the whole idea, and I’m glad to have dodged that literary bullet for once.

If it Ain’t Broke, or Even if it Is

Well now. I saw a spider web get brushed aside near a doorway at a place where my girl and I stayed a while back. I ran into it once or twice myself before I learned to duck it, but some of the fellas, they came over and had a few and wound up runnin’right into it face first. End up swearing and complaining…it was good for a laugh. Yeah well. I’d say it was about a perfect example of something that’s a lot funnier when it doesn’t happen to you. Anyway, sometimes the next day or the day after I’d sit out on the porch smoking and notice that spider back up there rebuilding again. I figured he must’ve caught so many flies there that it was worth all the extra work. You gotta understand that this web never lasted more than a few days without getting torn all to shreds one way or another. If Stacey saw it, she went at it with a broom. But mostly it was just the door opening and closing, the wind, and tall drunk guys fucking it up. Can’t forget about them.
Well after a while I noticed one day that it wasn’t there any more- the web anyway. I got curious so I set down my beer and walked over and stood up on my tippy toes and looked into the corner there where the storm door meets the house and all I could see was a little dark tunnel made of web where the spider used to sleep. Shit, I thought maybe he was still in there, taking a vacation. Maybe he caught such a big fly that he was ahead of the game and didn’t need to work for a while. Or maybe he met his match with a mantis or clever bird. But I don’t think that’s what happened. I think something else happened.
What? Well that I do not know. I never ran into another web near that door and I don’t recall ever seeing a spider of the same type anywhere on that side of porch- fat, with a round black body and short legs. He didn’t look too mean to me, just determined, at least for the few months he was around anyway. But yeah, I don’t think he died. Don’t think he moved to another part of my house either. I think maybe he did something else. Maybe he had another solution, something that you or I wouldn’t understand unless we were there in his shoes. Hell, maybe he changed his ways.

Capstone Proposal I

I’m going to borrow ideas from a couple of the Capstone presentations I saw this past fall. The two main ideas I’m running with are making the presentation multimedia in one way or another, and pursuing additional goals that will assist in creating opportunity and excitement for me as a writer/artist as I approach graduation.

I suppose I’d like to make one or two caveats: first, my music career is not something I take lightly, so the inclusion of music to the project and list of goals is not a cop out or an easy move to make. These are necessary next steps in an ongoing labor of love began in 1988 and I am gathering new momentum as convergence between my career as a musician and the creative writing program meld together.

Secondly, I wanted to avoid the topic of addiction recovery in this project, but apparently it chose me. When I write poetry there is nothing else that speaks even half as loudly, and the same is true of music. This is not intended to be an apology for either of these points, rather an admission to self that it is what it is.

Set stance, see objective, establish lens, check tone, break rules and move forward.

I have the following goals set for the remainder of 2014:

A) Create a multimedia presentation that illuminates some of my genesis from hopeless addict to oddly content survivor. Special emphasis on the role communicating through writing has played since I first began on facebook recovery boards, thru development
in Liberal Arts at Schoolcraft with further steps taken in Creative Writing at Eastern Michigan. A communique of the physical and  metaphysical  with concrete language and hacksaw metaphor combined…perhaps authored as a dispatch or spoken from an alias or other perspective. Perhaps not.

Presentation should include: song, experimental poetry, and essay/manifesto. I will complete this presentation by the end of the semester as if I was presenting in the spring rather than next winter. From the conclusion of the semester until my actual presentation at the end of the fall ’14 semester, I will re-work and add to the presentation as I see fit, subtly, radically or anywhere in between.

B) Continuing development of writing and art career, including:

1) Setting eventual date for, and planning content for my first solo recording session (to take place shortly after end of this semester.) Discussion is already underway with the studio regarding this.

2) Continuing effort to populate my Youtube channel,  writing websites, and comedy site with new material as able. (Prioritize the first two and treat the comedy site more like a hobby.)

3) Launch site (initially on facebook) for appreciation and review of folk, country-americana, roots, and singer-songwriter music. Write mission statement/manifesto prior to launch and possibly incorporate into first review. Continue to gather audio material and study the groups I’m going write about in first several releases.

**be sure to allow for personal style and creativity in authorial tone of this work!! Don’t allow pressure of conformity to bend the work.

**also, don’t over-think this and make it too hard. Remember that I already do this by default, and all I’m really doing is creating a platform to host my favorite music.

4) Mail/email poetry and/or prose submissions to at least 3 publications. This is an important step because it involves making tough choices about which pieces to send AND facing the fear of rejection. VITAL, NECESSARY, OVERDUE.

5) Conduct all of the above in a cheerful and dedicated manner, looking to have fun when possible while maintaining a steady arc of progress between now and the end of 2014.

Again, importantly, some of the above tasks may not see maturity until after the end of this semester. The ones I am holding myself to between now and the end of April are the multimedia presentationand the (minimum) trio of submissions.

That’s all for now!

Fear

I combined real life circumstance with some of the ideas inspired by the philosophical approach and methods of John Cage (as described by Joan Retallack) to create a piece of prose about fear. I’ve been living with two large spoonfuls of it daily for the past couple of years and it’s starting to take on a life of its own.

My family continues to struggle with serious illness, death, and long term effects of both within our ranks. I’d rather not wade into the details just now, but I’m starting to realize that in some instances there is nothing left for me to do except try to write and emote what I am feeling/seeing/hearing as best as I can. My understanding is limited by the paralysis of fear, which narrows my scope to wondering when the next piece of bad news is coming. I began this semester with a nasty flu that left me suspicious of anyone who coughs or sniffles, and that has morphed itself into insomnia fueled by academic stress and genuine worry for several of my family members.

I started a piece about physical pain a couple of weeks ago when I was still healing from the flu. I’m thinking that as depressing as the subject matter may be, I might want to put some advanced thought into finishing that piece as well as further editing this one. The rationale is as follows: if I’m going to deal with trouble, I’d rather not face it blindly. I have learned in the past that guilt is likely to follow, and that’s the last thing I need as I finish my last two semesters at EMU- to lug around a guilty conscience on top of all of the trouble and anxiety that is running amok in my life right now.

I just had a long conversation with my housemate and friend Melissa (currently recovering from the flu) about empathy. We discussed how acute/chronic illness and physical distress heightens one’s awareness to the plight of others. I’m hoping that I can take this dark chapter in my life and sift through it to find some positive ways of sharing or helping people. In the past, I have managed to wrangle all kinds of creative work out of personal misery, but I’d like to take it a step further, if possible. Make something new, something uplifting.

Back to Cage. This is the first piece I’ve ever composed that focused on the shape of the lines, and there is a visual emphasis on the white space, projecting a subtle menace. If I’m going to wade through unpleasant emotions, I’m going to try to alter the geometry of my perception from time to time. I already know that perspective is a powerful tool, but I want to heighten my senses physically, emotionally, mentally and artistically. If I have to play the role of survivor, I’ll do it wearing survivor’s armor, looking for light where I can find it, manufacturing it when there is none. Basically, I’ll do anything other than succumb to the nasty malaise that kept me home from school three days last week. I’ll fight back.

Fear

Fear chews.

Fearing a glass full, empty, neither, both.

The results  fear the question, fear the crossroads.

A slow start, facing any crowd, in a dry mouth moment of guesswork.

Taking a cue from Darwin, a mother pitches her son on safety measures via the internet, in public.

Gastrointestinal fireworks in a crowded room, glued to the back of the plastic seat, a quick series of silent gasps.

Absent for three class sessions, fear judges, grades, downgrades and engineers a long slide.

Tucked just between the bed and the bathroom, a careful webmd.com physician surfs late.

Bravery and prudence both prone then to duck, but anything goes now.

Aftershock liability, circling dusty, tired, predator/prey.

Gone are the days we chose which fences to regard.

Lacking credibility, fear steals mine.

Fear inadequate.

Fear

About Time

While reading and digesting Joan Retallack and Leslie Scalapino, I discovered an essay by Gerald Burns titled “The Poetical Wager” that helped shed some light on the concepts and ideology Retallack developed. Right in the into , the second half of this line grabbed me:

 “And so her first recourse is to a pun: poethics, which means something like leaving things to chance but nevertheless taking responsibility for what happens.”

The notion of wild creativity combined with artistic and personal responsibility appeals to me for more than one reason. Mostly, I‘m looking for anchors as I venture further away from conventional writing styles, reasons to keep sifting through the words to find meaning among chaos. There is an urge sometimes, to let the words ring out on the page for the sound and shape of them alone. I love sentences and paragraphs, short and blunt, long and convoluted, all varieties. I have noticed it’s easy to fall on the ambiguous side of the fence when experimenting, committing to nothing in particular, and I’m of the notion that if I’m going to stop making sense it should be for a reason, not just becuase the words looked pretty. To approach the matter from a meditative perspective, there is a difference between floating and thrashing about.

I’m looking to unpack baggage from the back of my mind, and I think I would be better served by learning to float.

Much of what I read about Retallack’s style in this essay seems to embrace boundless, borderline maddening writing as a form or breaking “frame lock”. I guess the thing that’s relevant to me is not how to break free, it’s how to do so in a manner that means something to me, even if in abstract. Being random is second nature to me, and I’m looking to find not only ways to better articulate my madness, but reasons for doing so in a written context.

In the Burns essay, he explores the basis of John Cage’s work, a subject of our Retallack reading. This line spoke loudly to me

“The complex point is that freedom is also a dimension of responsibility-in the end, it is as much an ethical as political concept. You don’t walk away from your experiments; or your experiences; you try to understand and justify them practically by how you go on to think and live.” 

This is a frame of mind I have just adopted. My work will not get brushed aside just because I got a grade on an assignment and am allowed to move forward. I am asking all of the pieces I am writing in this class and outside of school for their cooperation in possibly becoming part of a larger framework. I don’t want to write to put completions on things, I want to write to keep starting new things.

To further complicate my existential thought-line, reading Leslie Scalapino prompted me to research the idea of simulacra and simulacrum, which led me to the different layers of reality in symbol usage and belief/suspension of reality. I’ll have to further explore this in writing and philosophy, but the initial spark caused me to author the following piece:

Times I Was In 

I’m almost gone on my way. Relationships don’t have physical texture that bears out metaphoric accuracy; she was never a sweater, he was never a rock.

I’m one album from ecstasy. That may be true. But it’s easier to say I’m one away than remember newly washed hair in the sense of touch. Color of a case file. A box full of soft things tossed around with worn edges and folded notes.

I can pick a font that only leaves a letter at a time, grab onto my sexuality with a historic shove and put myself in bed with you is a simple thing. dreaming.

There are no here(s) that aren’t available. Legibility is an issue, but when wasn’t it. If I can break free of the question marks I can leave the green lines behind. we.

Death isn’t dark to me, anymore than this sentence is. Any resemblance to the other side of a coin is a coin metaphor, neither simile nor smile.

As if when I mention death I was doing a thing, some specific thing. Changing ring tones. Nope. I was just about to, though. Text.

There is a struggle of time syntax in song lyrics; add that to this list of cages. In a mode, you’ve set yourself free only from the previous. A one note escape plan to cell block G minor.

Making out with chaos. Buttered popcorn. I didn’t have to stand in line for this, and this wasn’t forced to wait for me. best movie ever/only documentary I’ll star in today. both of us on time, for once.

This was going be the part where I took a shot at a mirror; but I’m careful to step around it. The cliff has a lovely view in September, but I was never going to be a fall kinda guy. She loves it when he brings pumpkins though.

What is happening now isn’t the same as what is going on. By the time I’m twisted out, I’m walking into the next thing. That’s how you get to be a single; it’s called finding time.

Fine lines are texture on a thin wing, catching current freely. I know about your version of blue, and you got my measure of meanness in the old, orange parking ticket I just set aside. To be arbitrary is to finish tied with last.

When she asks you out, remember that you’re a runner facing in. A long distance lie, speed is a fast drug.

I’m asking loud questions before the movie is over and no one seems to mind.

Source:

The Poethical Wager. By Joan Retallack
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. xii + 279 pp

Play

I took some time this afternoon to record a video of a song I just wrote.  I have been writing lyrics and vocal melodies since 1990, but guitar/singer music is a newer addition in the last several years. Over a 20+ year career my style as a lyricist has evolved significantly, but I realized sometime last semester that the Creative Writing Program at EMU is having a dramatic, accelerating effect on my songwriting, with an influence that extends well past merely teaching me how become a better poet. I’ll explain with a few examples.

The title to this song- “Play” is inspired by a CTAR 323 Improvisation and Roleplay class I am currently taking. Although my use of the word “play” in the song is metaphoric- describing an inability to adequately communicate sensations as audio that won’t function properly- the class is having a very real influence on my perspective at the moment, and caused me to take the time to sit down and find my creative space today. Professor Zimmer is teaching us how to re-become the best and truest version of ourselves, by forming connections with pieces of inspiration and hope lost along the way in a series of free play exercises. As I explained in class Tuesday night, I’m a recovering alcoholic, so these are important lessons for me.

While composing, I deliberately manipulated the form of this song based on lessons I have learned in CRTW 335, 426, and 422. I chose to write a mini song, clocking the entire performance in at just over one minute. I started experimenting with different length songs last year while taking Rob Halpern’s class. The forms of poetry and prose we read were so radical that I mentally formed a connection with the music of Nick Drake, who was known for (among other things) writing songs that sometimes concluded in well under a minute. There is a certain pressure to conform as a songwriter, not just to rhyme, rhythm and meter, but to the verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus type format that most of us learn at some point via mimicry of other artists. In a positive light, songwriters use this form and others like it because they can be helpful in freeing up the mind to write melody and lyrics. But the dark side is the pressure to fit a 2-3 minute radio song mold, one that fans have come to expect over many years of commercialism and hype.

So I broke free from that style entirely, choosing to write a one-way piece sans repetition, with my lyrics painting a frozen moment on the spatial axis. I used melody and some rhyme because both felt right, but I forced neither. I also made a few choices with the chord progression that are contradictory to pop sensibility.

In writing this song and composing this post I was able to reconnect with our discussion and readings this past Tuesday. If asked last week, I would have told you that I was trying to decide between three options for my Capstone Project- 1) A collection of poetry. 2) A work of fiction or hybrid fiction/non-fiction narrative prose about addiction. 3) A collection of songs influenced by the creative writing program, with specific development based on apprenticeship to writers I have studied.

But the discussion we had in class shifted something in my back of my mind. Prior to that evening I had been mentally making a case for choosing only one of those options, but Beverly Dahlen’s use of free writing to explore consciousness and achieve liberation and truth removed the last stumbling block. As I suggested in class, a story like what I went through as an addict is not a single-faceted tale, and as such, I will not be expressing it with a single-minded approach.

I can’t say what happened to me directly in my spiral down and climb back up. I have tried, and even when I employ the most descriptive powers in my arsenal, much is lost in the telling. There is no simple or singular narrative that can speak for me, and I think that on some level this is why I began playing guitar after I quit drinking. Suddenly comedy and essay writing weren’t enough, and when a part of me cried out for new expression, I answered.

My intent is to come up with a more concrete plan in the next few weeks, but right now I am incredibly excited by the idea of a multimedia presentation, a mix of song, prose, and poetry. I’m convinced it can all be done cohesively in around ten minutes or so live, if planned properly. I love this concept because it doesn’t force me to choose, a notion that wasn’t working anyway, considering all I did last year was come home from class with a head full of ideas to write songs, poems and stories.  Why fight it?

If you’ll pardon my concluding with a barfy cliché , I feel like I am coming home.

-Play-

A drip off an ice dam flows from a brown shingle’s edge, hits the ground and dissipates a sunshine-y death. That old man and his dog are both out of breath. And everyone seems to know something I don’t. And most of the things I should say probably won’t play. So I stand in the doorway, and I count my desires. The moment is captured, the moment expires.

We Bleed

We Bleed

I’ll facebook you my complaints after I adjust the thermostat and microwave a quick snack. I made pork chops yesterday. It was the first time I had cooked in nearly a  year and it felt as if I had almost forgotten the meaning of the exercise.

I’m the hypocrite. That’s the shot people take when I throw them out of my life and sphere of influence like the wrappers of my last gas station meal. They shout in caps in a final email “YEAH PEACE AND LOVE RIGHT? UNTIL SOMEONE DISAGREES WITH YOU, HUH? FUCK OFF.”

And of course, I respond with a final, relieved fuck. You. I can’t afford much, but I can certainly afford to tell bigots to go rot. And that’s what they are mostly, the “friends” I used to fight with- bigots, women haters, self-loathing, closeted, angry people who are afraid, jealous, and looking for the riches they think black people on food stamps stole from them.

Can one explain what Justin Lee referred to as “The Logic of Empire” to a rube who fights people online over football victories? Can one explain anything to a person who fights people over sports? Can one co-exist with a person so ungracious as to fight and brag after victories? Perhaps not.

The question now, in hindsight, is whether or not I actually tried- and if I did try, was it a good, load bearing, informed, and compassionate attempt? Perhaps not.

Sam Roberts scratched my itch when he penned these lyrics:

“We are we are the angry apes,
we don’t want to look at no empty plates.
We are we are the fire brigade,
all we want to do is set the record straight.
We are we are the first degree,
we’re the thief, we’re the judge, we’re the jury.
We are we are the angry apes
shake the fruit from the vine till there’s nothing to take now.”

I have come to the point of dancing a slow, miserable ballet with my capitalism. Mine. I have a version, my rules of how I make what I make to get what I get. I have tried to change and challenge every perspective, want less, need less, be more creative…but buyer’s delight still infects me from time to time, and I need to feed my face. And doesn’t that new shirt feel nice across the shoulders, and if I don’t get a new car will women even sleep with me as I venture into my 40’s?

I want to speak directly, face-to-face with Ayn Rand, Ron Paul, and the rest of the radical right. All I want to know is if they are happy. Ayn, I know you’re dead, but the question remains in real time: are you happy? Is happiness a device that can be owned and controlled? If one shakes off the guilt and misgivings and learns to talk loudly while walking past the homeless, is there happiness to be found in the dark of night? Or do you experience the same panic I do when a bad bout of indigestion brings you to your knees, and find yourself asking GOD, any god for help when YOU become the deer in the headlights?

I want to ask you, Karl Rove, if the pleasure of being the best there ever was at what you do is enough? Did you and Lee Atwater giggle when you played king maker with oil men? Did you tell yourselves that anything money can’t buy isn’t worth it? Did you love what you’ve done with our democracy when you handed it over to Haliburton so Dick Cheney could growl, chew, and snarl as he fucked the corpses of young men and women with an oily lube? Have any of you ever wondered? Was there a time when you smoked that first joint and tried to run shaky hands up the skirt of your “best girl” and thought that nothing in the world mattered more than the stars in the sky and feeling of two heart beats? Have you ever looked at your own children and wondered if you might not have set a nasty plate for them? Perhaps not.

Perhaps the thrill of the money orgy is a loud thrill. Perhaps the only way to go is to keep going. I know parents who are raising mini-monsters without morals or conscience to rise up and take what they want from the world. Maybe you came from the same cast. Maybe I’ve mistaken your soft, white hands, large foreheads, and bookish appearance, and you are really just Spartan warriors dressed in suits and ties. Shit, maybe I missed the metaphor and it truly is a kill or be killed world we live in. Maybe men are no better than beasts.

Perhaps not.

I’m thinking labor creates more than it receives by a ratio so vast that the numbers run off the table across the floor. I’m thinking women have been forced into submission since forever, along with blacks, Latinos, and anyone unfortunate enough not to be on the right end of the gun.

I’m thinking people could do a lot better than we have done, and that my life would still resonate with joy and productivity if you took away all these toys and conveniences. Hell, people used to send messages across the ocean on leaky boats. There was always something to say, something to learn, somewhere to go, a life to live.

I’m thinking Bob Dylan had it about right when he wrote:

“They say that patriotism is the last refuge
To which a scoundrel clings
Steal a little and they throw you in jail
Steal a lot and they make you king
There’s only one step down from here, baby
It’s called the land of permanent bliss
What’s a sweetheart like you doin’ in a dump like this?”

Or maybe it’s just me.

Beverley Dahlen: a Soft, Steady, Inclusive Rebellion

I found Dahlen’s “Forbidden Knowledge” to be revelatory as a creative work of literary and genre theory combined to create a specific effect- one that celebrates individuality while conceding and casting doubt. She comes out firing multiple times with tongue-in-cheek observation “I have arrogantly appropriated his ideas for my own uses.” (61) but the theme seemed clear to me: when you invent a system of guidelines for how everyone thinks, you are probably going to be error prone, especially due to funny little quirks of human nature like say…individuality or gender. This essay is a refreshingly honest shout down a long hallway, one where the echoes sustain long enough that the meaning can occasionally be deciphered. “I have been defensive about A Reading, wanting to postpone, or defer, conclusions or closure perhaps forever. It is the problem of the interminable. What seems clear to me now, though I have resisted that clarity for a long time, is that the condition of postponement points to a negation, i.e., a repression of death.” (61) This passage reads as the confession of a person who has chosen honesty about doubt over the hubris of certainty some would posit regarding that which cannot be clearly known. I interpret it as another mirrored jab at the lines drawn by Freud, a statement about behavior affecting the very thought patterns that would hope to attach permanence to an explanation of behavior, a paradox if ever there was one.

Not to oversimplify, but there is a sense of if you can’t beat them, make them join you at play in the logic of Dahlen’s work. She drags society (and Freud) back down to her honest level of uncertainty, and in doing so, shifts the playing field back to what is ultimately a more logical paradigm. I haven’t studied the works of Freud enough to make a qualified comment about his life’s work, but I can say from personal experience that he or she who digs too deeply into an entrenched position is likely the same person who will one day dig back out, assuming they live long enough to see time and perspective bend, (as any critical thinker will over the long haul). Dahlen’s feminine perspective has been submerged under Freudian logic, and she responded by placing seeds of doubt that bear the fruit of reality, asking tough questions like “[is it a ‘center’? where is it?]” (68) in response to the philosophical (importantly-not actually scientific) narrative that suggests there is a normal that we can measure ourselves against.

My Step Dad recently persuaded me into listening to a CD copy of C.S. Lewis’ essays “The Four Loves”. I did what I could to treat the engagement with an open mind, but as brilliant as Lewis’ powers of observation are, and as patient of a thinker as he was, it was impossible not to see that time has made a bit of a fool of him. Some of the things he describes as certain are no more than opinion of the day, and many of his takes on women and homosexuality are what we now consider to be bigoted, pig-headed, or at the very least, irrelevant. For instance, I’m sure the gay community would rather carry on without his smarmy “pity”, although ironically, he thought he was being compassionate and open minded, and at the time, maybe he was. But he forgot about time. He made the classic human error of granting his own opinion of sensitive and personal matters some sort of elevated platform- in this case, Christianity.

I realize that I run the risk of making the same mistake as I draw my own conclusions and bestow the agency of rightness on them. But in my defense, that’s the only side of the echo chamber I sing from, the position of judging the judges. As a liberal-minded person who has experienced failure and been made a fool by shifting perspective more than a few times, I only go after those who first marginalize others with their rhetoric. Dahlen’s lesson resurfaces: don’t judge them, bring them back into your world and ask them to make cohesive, coherent sense: let the finger pointers undo themselves. Even in the most uncertain of climates, it’s safe to say we should discuss this further. Maybe there is something we haven’t considered yet. Maybe we aren’t accounting for individuality. Maybe we forgot about time.

Dahlen addresses this notion at the close of the essay “A Reading: beginning, as we always do to begin, in medias res: ‘before that and before that. everything in a line.’ Invoking a metonymy which was already a metaphor, the word itself, any word, a representation, a replacement, a substitution for some thing, any thing, which was not there, naming backwards, following it forward, back and forth from nothing to nothing. […]”