
Then again, I suppose we are all entitled to our own misreadings and misunderstandings. Better to think for ourselves than not.
I think, by the way, that every intended writer should learn to type. Most of us have a poor handwriting, and thinking on a typewriter is different from thinking on a yellow pad. The sooner you can think on a keyboard, the less room you have for procrastination. And all writers are great procrastinators!But mostly was heartened by this: "I would hope each and every woman who ever thought she wanted to write would at least give it a try."
Out of curiosity I asked, "Which side are you on? Are you on the communist side, or are you on the side of democracy?" He said, "I don't know how to answer you, but let me put it this way. We are the grass, and one of you is a cow and one if you is a horse. What difference does it make which one eats us?" After a while I said, "That's a very good answer." I thanked him and went on my way. But that episode always stayed with me. I never asked another Korean peasant what side he was on.
--Young Kim, "Born to be a Soldier"
I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend. During visiting hours, I enter its room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders. I hold its hand and hope it will get better.She's so right it's scary. But for the clawing I will get soon when I re-enter the cage, it was worth today's break to watch "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work" and "Exit Through the Gift Shop." And, embarrassingly, I got so self-involved that I forgot to say, send good vibes in the direction of the deployed, around the world in a cold, windy patch of desert. I wish they got to celebrate their holy days differently.
This tender relationship can change in a twinkling. If you skip a visit or two, a work in progress will turn on you.
A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room. You enter its room with bravura, holding a chair at the thing and shouting, "Simba!"
About my interests: I don't know if I have any, unless the morbid desire to own a sixteen-millimeter camera and make experimental movies can be so classified. Otherwise, I love to eat and drink--it's my melancholy conviction that I've scarcely ever had enough to eat (this is because it's impossible to eat enough if you're worried about the next meal)--and I love to argue with people who do not disagree with me too profoundly, and I love to laugh. I do not like bohemia, or bohemians, I do not like people whose principal aim is pleasure, and I do not like people who are earnest about anything. I don't like people who like me because I'm a Negro; neither do I like people who find in the same accident grounds for contempt. I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one's own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright. I consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get my work done.
I want to be an honest man an a good writer.
The Incident at Blood Canyon from Shawn Miller. [This has great music but the subtitles are even better!]
Yesterday was very, very stormy. I went out into it to see Barbara for lunch and then Shawn and Lystra for dinner. My umbrella was decimated on the first leg of my walk, and I could barely stuff it into the trash can overflowing with broken umbrellas. I couldn't bring myself to purchase a new one b/c I knew the rain would eventually pass, so after lunch, I walked to the bookstore and dried off there and then looked at lots of books about books. Then I tried to get 'feminine products' out of a fancy department store's vending machine, only to have it eat my money, so I had to ask a gaggle of sales people who had no sales to make and they sent me to the executive office, where the secretary assumed I needed a discount coupon. When I explained, she gave me a tampon from her bag. I don't think SHE should have been responsible (though I was grateful) if the store had broken machines. Just like I don't think that soldiers at war should have to pay for their own tools to build their tents. But that's how working for the man goes.Once a Chinese Ch'an master asked his head monk where he was going. Fa-yen answered, "I'm rambling aimlessly around." The teacher asked why, and Fa-yen said, "I don't know." The teacher smiled. "That's good."That IS good.
MT: There isn't much discussion of the spiritual ideals of these other cultures, either. How is that related to what's going on in the world politically?
JC: In politics and economics, the mode inevitably is conflict. Politics is winning over somebody else; economics is, again, winning over somebody else. I think it's a good thing to have to fight, and to be in the world struggle; that's what life is. But it's in the spiritual realm that there are constants. It's a shame that typically there's been a fight in the spiritual realm also, namely, "Our religion is the true one, and these other people are pagans or infidels or whatnot," which is the political accent. The comparative approach, on the other hand, allows you to recognize the constants; it allows you to recognize that you are in counterplay--in your political and economic life--with one of your own kind, and you can regard the person as a "thou," as you would in a tennis game. You are no longer fighting a monster. But the old political style turns the man on the other side of the net into a monster. In every war we've done that. But to know that the other person is a "thou," a human being with the same sentiments and potentialities as yourself, at least civilizes the game. Then in other relationships there is the possibility of a real sense of accord and commonality.
What's before us now is the problem of our social group. What is it? Our social group is mankind. Formerly, it was this group or that. And in the older traditions, love was reserved for the in-group; aggression and all that was for others. There is no out-group now, so what are we going to do with the aggression? It has to be civilized.
Do you think politics can catch up?
I don't know what politics can do. I think it's fair to say that I'm a little bit discouraged by the people who are involved in the political life of this country. I begin to feel it has been betrayed. Its potentialities have been sold for values that are inscrutable to me.
We don't seem to honor our artists and poets very much in our culture. Are there civilizations that do?
It's worse here in the United States. In France, they name streets after their poets; we have them named after generals.
What does that reflect?
It reflects, I think, a businessman's mentality. That's what's running, and has run, and has made this country. It's a curiously unartistic country in its common character, and yet it has produced some of the greatest artists of the century. But they're not recognized publicly; those that are recognized publicly are the razzle-dazzlers who come across in the popular media.
And you feel that it's important that art and poetry and music be a vital part of any culture.
It is what is vital; the rest isn't.