Apologies

Well over a decade ago I had a friend out of the blue come up to me and apologize.

"We blew it." He started out. "It was the moment we could have changed things for the better. People were organized and energized, and we blew it. I apologize to you for that. I apologize that you have inherited this horrible economic and political system, and world that is systematically being destroyed."

"No problem." I said uncomfortably and sort of surprised.

It was a few years after George W. Bush was appointed by the Supreme Court to be President of The United States. My friend came of age in the sixties, at the height of one of this countries most revolutionary moments. He watched Martin Luther King march on our nation's capital with 50,000 people, Malcolm X shot dead on a stage, Gaylord Nelson, the father of Earth Day, elected as our State's Governor then move on to the United States Senate, Federal clean air and water standards enacted, etc.

At the time I thought he was being tough on himself. Why should he shoulder his generation's shortcomings? I thought. Then, over a decade later while reading to my teenage son this morning, I unexpectedly read this paragraph to him:

"I want to apologize, just as people in the generation before mine should have apologized to me, for the wreckage of a world we're leaving you. The people of my generation are passing on to you the social patterns and structures, the ways of being and thinking, the physical artifacts themselves that are killing the planet. We're blowing it, badly, and you'll suffer for it. I'm so very sorry." (Derrick Jensen apologizing to an auditorium full of students at an all boys boarding school, Pg. 50, Walking on Water)

Shortly afterwards it all came together for me, and I apologized to my son. In a couple years he will be entering an economic and poltical system that is far worse than it was when I entered it in 1992. And a world with far less diversity.



　

　

　

Reading, Writing, And Revolution With My Son

I'm once again grateful this morning for the opportunity to sit down at the kitchen table with my teenage son and read to each other Derrick Jensen's "Walking on Water: Reading, Writing and Revolution." Given that he's working on writing a novel and generally likes to write I couldn't think of a better book to read at the moment. I would recommend this book be required reading for all 16 year olds. It would also be a part of my adult bookstore and my class on revolution that ...I fantasize about nearly everyday. Hey, a guy could be having much worse fantasies. Anyway, it was a pleasure to read these lines to him:

"Someone asked me once at a talk why I so stress the positive with my students yet am such an unstinting critic of those who run our culture and who are killing the planet. I answered immediately, 'Power. If I've got power or authority over someone, it's my responsibility to use that only to help them. It's my job to accept and praise them into becoming who they are. But if I see someone misusing power to harm someone else, it's just as much my responsibility to stop them, using whatever means necessary.'"--Derrick Jensen, Pg. 17

A lot of people over the years have criticized Derrick Jensen for advocating violence in his writing. After all he has made the claim that we have to take down civilization if we want a planet for our children to live on. But I consider him to be an "everything on the table" type of guy. He advocates talking openly and honestly about the dire situation we are in (political, economic, ecological, spiritual, psychological) and all of the strategies we can use to improve the situation. I have no problem with that. And if the difficult subjects of sabotage and violence and such come up I have no problem with that either. You don't get anywhere, I think, burying your head in the sand. The things that you're burying your head about come back and bite you, like violence and war. We are born with violence and war in our souls. That's part of our inheritance as human beings when we come into this world. It's archetypal and given to us in the womb. It's part of the cosmos.

That's the truth as I see it right now. I'm glad my son and I can talk openly and honestly about it.

More Than a Truck

The most important thing I got from my neighbor yesterday was not my 1995 Chevy pic-up but were a couple of stories from his wife. She told us (Annie drove me there) that her son would have been 45 years on that day. He's buried in the cemetary across the road from their house. I heard he died close to 25 years ago playing chicken on a motorcycle with my grandpa's cousin. Neither of them refused to stray from their direct path with each other and neither of them made it. I've heard it said they were going well over 80 miles an hour when they made contact. She also told me that she's been taking in foster kids for close to 40 years now but she's had enough. "One of the latest", she said, "was an emergency case. The kid showed up with nothing but the clothes on his back, and they were all full of holes." She then went onto say, "He got in the car and moments later he was eating food scraps off from the floorboards of the car." And at the end of the conversation she even threw in some politics. She didn't think it was right that Governor Walker thinks he can just take away BadgerCare (Wisconsin's state run healthcare system for poor people.) and food stamps. "There are people out there that need that," she said. "Yes, I realize it's not just up to the govenor, but it seems like he is sure playing a big part."

And that's my brief reflection on some of yesterday's activities before I head outside to do some work on our pole barn.

The Weapon of Honesty

I wrote this in my journal this morning:

After reading my local newspaper it seems like some of us are expecting John Wayne to ride into town and protect us from insane criminals with guns. Except this time we're all going to be like Big John. The logic seems to be that if I'm packing a pistol crazy criminals won't harm me or my children.

How about instead of all of us going out and buying guns, and going through the trouble to use them, we try a different weapon: Honesty. Having the willingness to look at the person sitting closest to you at the moment, whether that be man, woman, or child and simply say: You're not crazy, but the culture is crazy. In other words, our way of life is driving us mad.

Writing and Giving Birth

I've been writing more often lately. For the past week or so I sit down on a wooden chair pulled up to a T.V tray as the morning fire is burning. I set the timer for ten minutes and write whatever comes to mind. I keep my hand moving the whole time. I try to get this done before everyone gets out of bed. But there are mornings when the baby and Annie get up before I get started. And during those occasions I'll do my thing and she'll sit there quietly in the recliner, watch the fire, and hold the baby. Quite often, as I'm writing, I wonder if she thinks I'm nuts. But than it occured to me this morning that it could be somewhat similar to what it was like when I watched her give birth. In both occasions the universe is gifting you and you're trying to birth it. Perhaps writing a novel could be at the same level as giving birth. I don't know. I do know that both are hard work.

Eight Years Later

I mentioned yesterday that I was reading Derrick Jensen's "Walking on Water" for writing inspiration. This morning I turned to the title page and found that it read: "To Curt, It's time to work miracles, it's time to walk on water. Derrick Jensen, 2/19/04 Occupied Tunes"

What surprised me is that next month it will be 8 years since he signed and sent me that book. It sure doesn't feel like it's been eight years. And it's sort of funny because I can remember how much I anticipated for this book to show up in my mailbox. It was worth every penny I paid for it, that's probably why I find myself opening it up 8 years later.

Stuck With Me

Found myself reading some books about writing for inspiration this morning. These lines stuck with me throughout the day: "As is true for most people I know, I've always loved learning. As is also true for most people I know, I always hated school. Why is that? [Derrick Jensen, Pg.3, Walking on Water]

They speak to my experience of schooling.

Off to Work

Off to carry mail for the postal service today. This morning, while watching the fire in the masonry stove, I got the chance to read more of Micheal Perry's "Handbook for Freelance Wriging. I'm glad he put this line in there: "First, you must read for yourself. I'm not an academically prepared writer; I have a bachelor's degree in nursing, for Pete's sake. I consider myself a dilettante. I keep waiting to get caught; for someone to say, hey wait a minute, this guy's FAKING it! Not only am I not well-versed in the academics of literature, I can barely hum the chorus.When I'm in literary company, I feel the impostor. I have the greatest respect for those with an understanding of the mechanics and theory of writing, regardless of the genre. I can't diagram a sentence. I can't define the terms split infinitive or comma splice. But I can string together generally acceptable prose. Why? I have to believe it's a result of reading." [Pg.13]

I use to think to become a writer you had to know the mechanics of writing before you could become one.

Grunting

I'm interested in writing and writers. It all started with Daniel Quinn's Ishmael. Before reading Ishmael I could have cared less about writing and writers. I read one book before the age of 25, and that was Night, by Elie Wiesel.

The past year or so I've been following Micheal Perry. He's a writer from Wisconsin. Lives about 2 hours to the south of me in a little town called New Auburn. He's been writing for about 20 years now and has a few books published.

Every writer has a process. Micheal says his process is a lot like grunting. He just puts it all down and then organizes and edits and organizes and edits until it looks good.

I like that idea and that's what I've been doing lately. Not nearly enough of it though. It's probably a combination of thinking I don't have anything important to say, lack of grammatical and technical writing skills, and putting myself out there.

I enjoy it when I do it though.

Writing

I would like to think and write with more clarity. I've had the burning desire to do this for quite some time now, it's just that I never actually sit down and take the time to do it. I've got a lot going on: bills to pay, mouths to feed, cars to maintain, and so on. But it still feels like I need to do it. So I'm going to gradually start putting more effort into writing.

Besides the obligations that I listed above that stand in my way of spending more time writing, there is always the peristant thoughts that readers will dislike my writing or that I'm wasting their time. Awhile back I ran across a line in Zinsser's On Writing Well that speaks to this:

"You are writing for yourself, don't try and visualize the mass audience."

I'm going to take Zinsser's advice. I'm going to treat this as a process of self discovery and see where it takes me.

Power and Writing

Writing was one of the original mysteries of civilization, and it reduced the complexities of experience to the written word. Moreover, writing provides the ruling classes with an ideological instrument of incalculable power. The word of God becomes an invincible law, mediated by priests; therefore, respond the Iroquois, confronting the European: "Scripture was written by the Devil." With the advent of writing, symbols became explicit; they lost a certain richness. Man's word was no longer an endless exploration of reality, but a sign that could be used against him.... For writing splits consciousness in two ways--it becomes more authoratative than talking, thus degrading the meaning of speech and eroding oral tradition; and it makes it possible to use words for the political manipulation and control of others. Written signs supplant memory; an official, fixed, and permanent version of events can be made. If it is written, in early civilizations, it is bound to be true. In Search of the Primitive, Pg. 4