Why We’re Wrong Without Writing

 

“In today’s world we come to neglect the habit of writing because so many other media of communication have taken its place,” wrote Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. 

“If the only point to writing were to transmit information, then it would deserve to become obsolete. But the point of writing is to create information, not simply to pass it along. 

“In the past, educated persons used journals and personal correspondence to put their experiences into words, which allowed them to reflect on what happened during the day. The prodigiously detailed letters so many Victorians wrote are an example of how people created patterns of order out of the mainly random events impinging on their consciousness. 

“The kind of material we write in letters and diaries does not exist before it is written down. It is the slow, organically growing process of thought involved in writing that lets ideas emerge in the first place.”

“(W)riting gives the mind a disciplined means of expression. It allows one to record events and experiences so that they can be easily recalled, and relived in the future. It is a way to analyze and understand experiences, a self-communication that brings order to them.” 

All Fall Down

Talking heads peddle

sports bets, beer and penis pills

while it all falls down.

How to Control the Trolls

Right wing trolls always seem to think that you work for them, and are forever demanding that you supply them a variety of carefully researched answers that they will reject out of hand if you were to be so foolish as to bother to answer them. I like to remind them to shove all that up their ass.

Mock them and then block them. Done.

Patricia Highsmith: The Prize Is Privacy

Jim Hampton just gave me this massive volume by one of my favorite authors.

“Privacy,” wrote Patricia Highsmith in September 1957. “An expensive thing in the modern world. How many young writers give themselves a chance? It is considered eccentric to like to be alone. 

“Yet for such a short time, either a stay at a country cottage, or absolute quiet for six hours a day produce more than the trouble costs.

“Take yourself seriously. Set a routine. Once you are alone, relax and behave as you will. 

“Stand still for a moment and relish the novel sensation of knowing that you are utterly alone and will not be disturbed by a ringing telephone, a baby’s cry, an order from a boss, a groan or a whine from a spouse.

“Privacy is expensive. Perhaps it costs somebody else something. Relish it. But don’t feel guilty about having it. Take it as your due.

A Swift Sighting of Sonder

Painting by Michael Rimbaud

Behind the windows

Of that passenger train are

Others vivid, gone.

How to Keep Moving

We've got it rough. 

So did lots of honest people throughout history, in the plagues, in the Inquisition, in the Civil War, in the world wars, when we came damn near close to blowing up human civilization when I was 8 years old. 

We can but fight on, or give up. I'm for fighting on with a smile, and assuming we'll eventually get the breaks. 

As Shakespeare said, the night is long that never finds the day.

Rilke: Growth and Loss

 “You suffer, you say, because the people closest to you are distant: this shows that your world is beginning to grow vast. And if what’s near you is far, then how enormous your whole extent, reaching all the way up to the stars. 

“You should be happy about your growth. You can’t bring anyone along with you anyway. Be good to those who remain behind, be calm and self-assured before them, don’t punish them with your doubts or frighten them with the confidence and joy they cannot understand. 

“Try to have some kind of simple, loyal common ground with them that doesn’t necessarily have to change when you yourself change and change again; love in them life in a different form; be considerate of the elderly who fear the loneliness you are learning to trust.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet