I have a lot of beliefs. And I live my life by none of them. They’re my little beliefs. They make me feel good about who I am. They’re my little believies. But if they get in the way of the thing I want – if I want to jack off or something – then I do that.

– Louis C.K.

 

5.31.13, 11:11 AM

Morning Der,

It’s 8:55 as I type this. I’ve been up for an hour or so. I will start rereading my work around 11:00. I will start writing by noon. But the real writing – the type when time blurs due to concentration – won’t begin until around 1:00.

The writing when time blurs is a curious thing. It feels as though the day disappeared before I had a chance to live it. But I am dog-tired in the good way and pleased with myself.

I haven’t had a full day of writing since Monday. The reason is simple. I went to Baltimore for a few days because my great aunt died.

Everything is fine. She was 95. It was sad only in the way the normal passing of generations is sad. It is a happy sadness. She lived long and died peacefully surrounded by people who loved her.

The previous sentence is banal. But what else to say?

I actually enjoyed going home. What is happening to me? My family notices the change. In their own way, they have started to support my writing.

Before they basically ignored it. Now they want to talk about it. But they don’t push when I’m reluctant to describe my current project.

Most importantly, they don’t seem to worry as much as they used to about the chronic money issues that are symptomatic of my chosen profession. They know I don’t need much.

I suppose my attitude-change toward my family has created an attitude-change in them toward me. Obviously! But who would have thought? Oh man, there are so many interesting lessons to be learned here.

Yesterday after the funeral, my sister asked a phenomenal question about David Foster Wallace. She has read some of his essays and short stories, and she recently listened to the recording of “This Is Water.”

She said, “DFW was so good at describing the complex beauty of mundane reality. He also saw the need to mentally conquer the banality, the selfishness, and the boredom. He saw the need to take a leap of faith, so to speak, and choose to live everyday life like it is sacred.

“Actually, it’s ‘the extraordinariness of banal experience,’ to quote DFW, that is truly sacred. This is opposed to finding merely the shiny surface of the glamorous life interesting, like only finding Brangelina or the royal baby sacred.

“If DFW thought and saw these things, as his writing would have us believe, then why did he kill himself? How do we reconcile ourselves as fans of his fiction with his suicide? Doesn’t it nullify his message? Doesn’t his suicide prove his way of life was somehow wrong? Isn’t it one of the most depressing things in the world?”

My response went something like, “Exactly! That’s the great paradox of his work.” I went on to explain how I thought there were two ways to address the issue.

1) We could say that he was mentally ill, as some people get cancer. The sickness is senseless and random and nothing could have prevented it. Although his suicide is tragic, we shouldn’t conflate his mental illness and his work.

I despise this answer. I told her as much.

Or 2) We must go back and reread. We must scrutinize. We must become scholars. He devoted a lot of time, energy, and words to suicidal characters and to characters suffering from clinical depression. What we will find may not be simple or always uplifting. But it is important.

I think what we will find goes something like this. Knowing what we have to do is not the same as doing it. Knowing that we need to take the leap of faith is not the same as taking it.

In DFW’s words, “None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about…simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over, ‘This is water. This is water.’ ”

Maybe DFW didn’t feel like reminding himself anymore. Or maybe he forgot. Either way, I think everyone can agree that it’s killer advice.

Too soon? Ha! There are no teams!

-st

 

 

The photo is of a mural by Jackie Chang, which is part of her Signs of Life series.