Scraps

The 11 Commandments Henry Miller on Writing

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:30:00 +0100

The 11 Commandments

Henry Miller on Writing

There are times in life when you know exactly what is it you want. I’m not talking about dreams, or...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 23:07:00 +0100

There are times in life when you know exactly what is it you want. I’m not talking about dreams, or life-altering decisions here. I’m talking about moments, mere hours.

It’s Friday. And what I want tonight is a long, leisurely meal in a small trattoria thick with bursts of laughter and the scent of rosemary. I’m trying to focus on the menu, trying to put my meal together course by course, so that I can move on to the wine list. There will be sangiovese tonight. Vin santo with dessert. And who knows, maybe grappa too. My appetite is good. I was out trekking through the Tuscan mountains all afternoon, taking deep breaths and sweating off this morning’s breakfast. Now I’m all cleaned up, amongst friends again.

Actually, I’m underground in Stockholm, writing this on my iPhone, which seems like a degrading way to articulate these current desires. They deserve to be scratched onto real paper, by hand, letter by letter, forming phrases like RISOTTO AI FUNGHI PORCINI, or CROSTATA DI MARMELLATA. The page ought to be stained in red blotches, where the “blood of Jove” has trickled down my chin.

Yet, here I am, clucking these words out on a florescent screen. The boy sitting behind me is frantically kicking the seat, which doesn’t help when the iPhone keypad is half the size of my fingers. Nearly every word is misspelled.

I’m reminded of the essay that Wendell Berry once published in Harper’s Magazine, titled Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer, and his follow-up essay, Feminism, The Body, And The Machine. People kept telling him that a computer would aid his work by helping him writer faster, easier, and more. Mr. Berry actually took a moment to ask himself: Do I want to write faster, easier, and more? No, he decided. “My standards are not speed, ease, and quantity. I have already left behind too much evidence that, writing with a pencil, I have written too fast, too easily, and too much. I would like to be a better writer, and for that I need help from other humans, not a machine.”

God, I love Wendell Berry, and I can assure him that technology does not always quicken one’s task. What a laborious process this was, trying to construct a few sentences on my iPhone, especially with that kid behind me, pounding his feet into my back, and his mom standing above me yelling, “Sluta! Kom hit nu!”

I turned around to get a good look at the rascal, and what a surprise to find a head full of silky black hair. No way that fair-skinned woman with flaxen curls could have birthed him. Obviously he was adopted. And I guess there ought to be a special allowance for adopted kids, right? They probably come from a rough place. Maybe they were abandoned, or abused, and imagine how displaced they must feel now.

He didn’t seem damaged in the least. With eyes closed, he’ thrown his head back and swayed it to the rhythm of his legs, swinging passionately now, as if guided by an upbeat song that only he could hear. And judging by the enormous smile on his face, it was a glorious piece of music.

I wanted to take his picture so that I could pull it up whenever I was having a bad day. My iPhone was in hand, after all. But wasn’t that like turning him into a Hallmark card? And plus, my iPhone is a piece of crap. 3G. They don’t even make software updates for the 3G anymore. By the time I could’ve gotten the camera open, that little guy would’ve been putting his pajamas on and picking out a bedtime story.

So I’m with Wendell Berry. Technology is useless when it comes to real life. I’m with him on many things, actually. Particularly on topics of agriculture, community, education, good work, care of the earth, economic health, technological heroism, and the corruption of wealth.

Just this morning, I was reading about Bill Gates’ new partnership with Monsanto to “end world poverty.” I read it about it from many perspectives - North America’s, Africa’s, India’s - and the more I read, the more despair I felt. Sometimes I can feel so hopeless about the world we’re living in.

But what is the use of despair, especially when I’m riding the train with a little Asian boy who is filled with music and unbridled joy? Or when there are things in this world like oak-aged wine and gnocci slathered in truffle oil? When there are days, like today, when I know exactly what it is I want - even if I can’t have it, because having it is not the point. The point is knowing. Hearing the echoes deep inside. And giving them a voice, a human language, or at least trying to. These things take practice, I think.

So take heart and carry on with the scraps. Whether they’re carved beautifully onto paper or stuck in a mechanical device with red squiggly lines under most of the words; whether they’re constructed of memory, or desire, or the here and now, just continue.

Charlie Kaufman: Screenwriters Lecture

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 21:55:00 +0100

Charlie Kaufman: Screenwriters Lecture:

“Say who you are, really say it in your life and in your work. Tell someone out there who is lost, someone not yet born, someone who won’t be born for 500 years. Your writing will be a record of your time. It can’t help but be that. But more importantly, if you’re honest about who you are, you’ll help that person be less lonely in their world because that person will recognize him or herself in you and that will give them hope. It’s done so for me and I have to keep rediscovering it, and its profound importance in my life. Give that to the world, rather than selling something to the world. Don’t allow yourself to be tricked into thinking that the way things are is the way the world must work and that in the end selling is what everyone must do. Try not to.”

“This is from E. E. Cummings: ‘To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.’ The world needs you. It doesn’t need at you at a party having read a book about how to appear smart at parties. These books exist. And they’re tempting. But resist falling into that trap. The world needs you at the party, starting real conversations, saying, I don’t know. Being kind.”

“It isn’t easy but it’s essential. It’s not easy because there’s a lot in the way. In many cases a major obstacle is your deeply-seated belief that you are not interesting. And since convincing yourself that you are interesting is probably not going to happen, just take it off the table. Think, ‘Perhaps I’m not interesting but I am the only thing I have to offer, and I want to offer something. And by offering myself in a true way I am doing a great service to the world, because it is rare and it will help.’”

—Charlie Kaufman, in his Screenwriters Lecture. I can highly recommend it.

This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a...

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:22:00 +0100

This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor… Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. —Rumi

I recently spent a month in France and Italy. At the beginning of the trip, I was a nervous wreck. There was so much energy in me, I couldn’t stay still, and the more I tried to keep it under control, the more I felt like I was going to explode. It was a terrible feeling.

Eventually, I did calm down. Got steady on my feet and rubbed my eyes until I could see things more clearly. Beautiful, wonderful things. I can smell the cheeses now, I can taste the sangioveses, the syrrahs, I can hear people arguing in the streets and then burst out in laughter ten minutes later.

Italy is a special place. There, you can say the things you need to say. You are treated like an adult who can make their own decisions, however good or bad they may be. You aren’t publicly shamed for stepping over invisible lines. People don’t shake their heads when you pronounce words incorrectly. They smile delightfully and use every muscle in their bodies to communicate a response. And if you walk up to an Italian with tears in your eyes, they won’t harden their face like a concrete wall. In fact, the opposite happened.

A woman stopped to ask me for directions. She was wearing an orange scarf, that’s what I remember. And I remember how the lines of her face melted with compassion when she looked into my eyes. Which made the tears fall down my cheeks. Before I could respond to her question, she was raising her hand to touch my jawbone, as if to remind me that I was whole, that I was alive. She didn’t ask for an explanation, she didn’t offer a solution, or a single word. Just the merciful touch of fellow human being who knows what its like to feel pain.

The truth is, I wasn’t in pain. My tears were joyful ones, but she didn’t know that. And what difference does it make? They’re both part of the human experience. “You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness,” as J.S. Foer put so well.

I stayed with several Italian families who live off their small plots of land, sustained by anything the land can yield - wines, breads, cheeses, raw honey, fruit preserves, roasted chickens, herbal pestos, chestnut pancakes, berry crostatas. They wasted nothing and had no extras. They wore the same outfits every day. They didn’t have cell phones, computers, or gadgets of any sort. Pen and paper were sufficient for tallying our bill. An old boom box could play CDs just fine. They sang in their kitchens and yelled at each other through the windows without caring who heard. It wasn’t disgraceful to laugh, or to be upset. I found myself relaxing, completely, for the first time in I don’t know how long. Like wads of paper, they opened up my shriveled soul. They served gorgeous dishes with such humility. Asked each morning if I’d gotten cold during the night. Moved my wet clothes around the lawn so that they stayed in the sun.

I’m not trying to over-romanticize anything. We were honest travelers. We paid for the heat we used, the towels, every meal, the coffee and even the water. When given the option to purchase a bottle of their homemade wines, sadly, I had to decline. But when it was time to leave and our suitcases were in the car, the farmers told us to please wait. Running up from the cellar, he carried a bottle of wine and thrust it into my arms as if I’d do him a great favor by accepting it. I’d seen the cellar earlier, it wasn’t very big, just enough for their family. But still, they all gave, however they could. Even when there is very little, I learned, there is always something to give.

In Montepulciano, I met a third-generation coppersmith who insisted on making me a gift, as he does for all those who are visiting shop for the first time. A copper medallion, engraved with the date, my initials and the Mazzetti seal. Signore Mazzetti had just shown me a fish platter that could end up in a museum some day. He showed me water pitchers, perfect honeycomb patterns, portraits of his grandfather, from whom his artisanal gift derives. Some of his pieces are not for sale, though they’d make him a fortune. Some are priced higher than market value, others are priced much lower. Why? I asked.

Because our labor cannot be measured by market trends or even price tags, but by the amount of pleasure we derived from doing it, by how much we invested ourselves. Only you can say what its worth, he said. Signore Mazzetti takes pride in his work and shares himself freely, piece by piece, medallion by medallion. Partly because he doesn’t want to be forgotten, but at least he understands his value in this world, and to me, that is a mark of nobility.

There isn’t a stack of copper medallions sitting on his shelf, waiting for new visitors. The gift I took home was made right before my eyes. I watched and waited as Sig. Mazzetti hammered and forged, stopping to tell to a few stories (in Italian. Thank goodness I was with an Italian who could translate). Why would I be in a hurry? Everyone in Italy seemed to ask me this question. What’s the use of rushing your life away? If this is your chance to live, shouldn’t you take it as slow as possible?

It took time for the Mazzetti craft to evolve. Three generations, in fact. It takes time for those Tuscan grapes to age in wood barrels, and for tomatoes to ripen in the sun. It takes time for stories to materialize, and if you’re just rushing through the moments of life, who knows what part of the story you’re missing. It might have taken over 400 years to complete the Duomo in Siena, but there is nothing like it in this world.

And yet, other things occur so quickly that you can’t even grasp them. You just wake up one day and walk out to the stone walls of an Etruscan city. You look out over the valley, silver trees paint the hillsides, little strands of smoke spiral from chimneys, a cathedral stands up straight and tall, and all of a sudden you can’t even say how you got there, or whether this is you or not. It feels like you’re standing on the edge of your own life. You didn’t plan this, couldn’t have planned this - Nobody gets what they want, they get something else. The most important things in life happen by surprise.

You know what I’m talking about. The things that are too big to be coincidences, too deep to see or find words for. Those who get inside of you and stay there, swirling. Maybe for the rest of your life, I can’t say for sure yet. All I know is that life is incredibly generous, it offers us so many chances.

There was a moment when Misty and I were driving through Genoa. On bridges that suspended high into the air, we tunneled through the green Ligurian mountains. It had been raining, but eventually the dark clouds passed and blinding light came spewing from the sky. We were stunned by the beauty around us. “The only thing that could possibly make this any better,” I told Misty, “is if a rainbow suddenly appeared and fell into the valley below.”

Ten minutes later, we both gasped. Right before our eyes, a long rainbow poured out of the sky. Falling and falling, for miles, all the way to the bottom of the valley, and then reaching like an arm back into to the heavens.

That rainbow was a harbinger: it appeared on day 1 of my journey, when anything was possible. Your dreams are not unreasonable, it reminded me. Do not close yourself up, even if seems like a good idea at times. Like the rainbow, open your arms, stretch them as far as they will reach. If you fall, then good. Fall divinely. Trust what is inside. Trust that your labor is ordained. And out of that trust, keep going, for that is the way.

So much had changed when I returned to Stockholm. One month ago, the world had been in flames, and we were doing our best to save it. Collecting red berries for marmalade. Bright orange pumpkins for carving and roasting. Gold leaves to decorate our doorframes. Now what was left? Gray sticks set against a gray sky. There were no leaves either - just their jagged shadows pasted onto the sidewalks. A different sort of beauty, a time for rest, for renewal, when the past fades away into long dark nights, making empty spaces that will freeze over, waiting to be filled with new things.

I was very quiet that first week, mostly because I had four different languages tumbling in my head. It took some time for Swedish to roll forward into my mouth again. Even last week, when I was checking out at the market, the cashier handed me my receipt. Varsigod, she said. I hesitated. It was awkward. She looked at me as I flipped through several words in my head, trying to find the right one. Grazie, I said.

That word still comes in Italian. It was wrong, and the cashier frowned before glancing away, but it just felt like the right word. Grazie. I’m so thankful to Italy, to those I met, every unexpected visitor, you guides from beyond, I still carry you with me. Every day, I am grateful. You touched my jawbone, you brought me back to life.

What I said:“Well, thanks for your time. We’ll be in...

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:05:00 +0100

What I said:
“Well, thanks for your time. We’ll be in touch. And best wishes until then.”

What I wanted to say:
“Let me get this straight… I’m supposed to get up before dawn every morning, put on ugly, uncomfortable clothes, skip breakfast whenever there are early meetings (which happens often, you say), work intensely and tirelessly into the evenings, not because the work is worthwhile or meaningful (quite the contrary, in fact), but to make you famous, to make you a lot of money, to make sure that you get ahead and stay ahead, every day, no excuses - did you really just look at me and say “no excuses?” Yes, you did. All the while, I’m expected to neglect who I am, what’s inside of me, my natural tendencies, abilities, and unique voice, my basic needs and the wishes I have for my own life? Um, I’m sorry, but this is the only life I’ll ever have, and I can’t bear to waste it on your frivolous little exploits. Goodbye.”

I wonder how many people have had these same thoughts. I wonder how many have swallowed them, for lack of choices. I wonder how many could actually hear their own inner voice after ignoring it so many times before. I wonder if this guy’s proposal sounded like a dream for some people. I wonder what’s beneath the words that people say, and don’t say. I wonder about so many things, but I’ll continue my wondering someplace else —

“The secret story is the one we’ll never know, although we’re living it from day to day, thinking we’re alive, thinking we’ve got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn’t matter. But every damn thing matters! Its just that we don’t realize… ―Roberto Bolaño

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” ―C.G. Jung

1028

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 18:43:00 +0100

i have to mourn this
and i have to do it now

dear heart, you knew
it’s always coming

this way of living, in love
with so many things costs

you everything
you have

no other choice but
to say goodbye

again and walk away
do not look back

okay? listen, don’t look
back. you knew this

was coming but it
was worth it at

the time - two o’clock
bell towers shouting

from the hill
where he is planted

between the cobble-
stones, you’ll move like

an afternoon shadow, out
through the city walls

down into the mist-
filled valley where

you came from, ciao
mia bella, the greeting

echoes, a faint goodbye
now let me go, dear

heart, you are bigger
and stronger

than you ever knew
but i am worn out

from all that walking
uphill to stand beside

the grave of St. Margherita
as if she still has

a hand in this game, as if
she ever did

FALL

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 20:43:00 +0200

FALL

light spilled onto the floora scattering of fern leavesthe color of champagnenow its time for...

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 17:55:00 +0200

light spilled onto the floor
a scattering of fern leaves
the color of champagne
now its time for breakfast

- opening the blinds
from FOUND IN A NOTEPAD

now i will step out soak up the light, howeverbleak it is, i need it. florescentrain trickles down,...

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 17:52:00 +0200

now i will step out
soak up the light, however
bleak it is, i need it. florescent
rain trickles down, a vacuum hums &
voices spurt through an inert box - who are you
footsteps above, moving so quickly
across the drooling pane, hooded heads - is that me
my name being called? turn
then & be
sucked back in

- conference call
from FOUND IN A NOTEPAD

When I sat down to write this morning, the first thing I did was...

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 10:55:00 +0200

When I sat down to write this morning, the first thing I did was think of Salman Rushdie. I have done this every morning for almost four and a half years, and by now, it is an essential part of my daily routine. I pick up my pen, and before I begin to write, I think of my fellow novelist across the ocean. I pray that he will go on living another twenty-four hours. I pray that his protectors will keep him hidden from the people who are out to murder him…. Most of all I pray that a time will come when these prayers are no longer necessary, when Salman Rushdie will be as free to walk the streets of the world as I am.

I pray for this man every single morning, but deep down, I know that I am also praying for myself. His life is in danger because he wrote a book. Writing books is my business as well, and I know that if not for the quirks of history and pure blind luck, I could be in his shoes. If not today, then perhaps tomorrow. We belong to the same club: a secret fraternity of solitaries, shut-ins, and cranks, men and women who spend the better part of our time locked up in little rooms struggling to put words on a page. It is a strange way to live one’s life, and only a person who had no choice in the matter would choose it as a calling. It is too arduous, too underpaid, too full of disappointments to be fit for anyone else. Talents vary, ambitions vary, but any writer worth his salt will tell you the same thing: To write a work of fiction, one must be free to say what one has to say. I have exercised that freedom with every word I have written - and so has Salman Rushdie. This is what makes us brothers, and that is why his predicament is also mine.

The man’s life is in ruins, and yet he has continued to do the thing he was born to do. Shunted from one safehouse to another, cut off from his son, surrounded by security police, he has continued to go to his desk every day and write. Knowing how difficult it is to do this even under the best of circumstances, I can only stand in awe of what he has accomplished. A novel; another novel in the works; a number of extraordinary essays and speeches defending the basic human right to free expression. All that is remarkable enough, but what truly astonishes me is that on top of of this essential work, he has taken the time to review other people’s books - in some cases to write blurbs promoting the books of unknown authors. Is it possible for a man in his position to think of anyone but himself? Yes, apparently it is. But I wonder how many of us could do what he has done with our backs against that same wall.

He is carrying the burden for all of us, and I can no longer think of what I do without thinking of him. HIs plight has focused my concentration, has made me reexamine my beliefs, has taught me never to take the freedom I enjoy for granted. For all that, I owe him an immense debt of gratitude. I support Salman Rushdie in his struggle to win back his life, but the truth is that he has also supported me. I want to thank him for that. Every time I pick up my pen, I want to thank him.

- Paul Auster, “A Prayer For Salman Rushdie,” p 176-178 in The Art of Hunger

Why Young Americans Don't Fight Back

Sat, 13 Aug 2011 12:18:00 +0200

Why Young Americans Don't Fight Back:

Young Americans—even more so than older Americans—appear to have acquiesced to the idea that the corporatocracy can completely screw them and that they are helpless to do anything about it ….

“There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world...

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 10:56:00 +0200

“There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.”

— Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi (1941)

Morning is when I awake and there is dawn in me. *

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 00:15:00 +0200

A pink glow in the bedroom window. I reach for the watch on the bedside table, and pulling it toward my half-blind eyes, know that I should’t care about the time. But the act is already in motion, I see a number. Its just a number, it can’t take into account the day of week, time of year, my situation or my plans for this day. Time is like a supreme god, sitting outside of the human experience, dictating it.

The sheep are quiet this morning. Last night, two teenaged boys found their way to the pasture and wanted to have a little fun. In unison, they made a bleating noise. Several sheep bleated back. The boys giggled, and that’s how I knew they were teenagers. Boyish laughter flecked with masculinity. They made another bleating noise. A moment of silence, and then a sheep responded. This continued on for a while, until the sheep were bored and silent, and the boys tried rousing them with even stranger noises. I didn’t mind at all what they were doing. We used to do the same thing as kids. We did worser things, actually. We would wait until the cows had fallen asleep and then charge through the field and push them over. Cow-tipping, that’s what we called it.

I had the back door open last night, trying to stave off a sweat. There was wind, but it crawled and wheezed through the summer sky. A thousands crickets, or cicadas, I’m not sure which, were screaming in the grass. No matter where I am in this world, they always remind me of home.

I am staying in a new place this week, though something about it feels incredibly familiar. It is a family home. It raised two children who now have their own lives in different countries. The parents are still here, one is retired and likes to bike, the other is still teaching at the university and writing novels. Their house isn’t tidy, its not fresh. It is filled with stuff and covered in stains. It is well-lived in.

Just beyond the sheep pasture is a large lake called Brunnsviken. I’ve walked around it twice now. The first time, I wasn’t sure if it was even possible, and after walking 12 km, I considered turning around. What if the lake funnels into the sea and I am stuck on the wrong side of home?

But curiosity kept me going. Already, I’d seen several beaches, where clothes hung on currant trees and women laid topless across the sand, their breasts heavy with heat. I’d scraped along the the face of a rock. Gathered wild blueberries until my hands were stained red. Discovered the estate of Crown Princess Victoria. And an elaborate Chinese temple. I’d followed a tree-lined path that gradually became pure forest. Just a thick underbrush of ferns. And trees that grew taller and taller until they were towering over me. I felt like an ant. Never in my life have I been in the presence of such giant trees. I’ve always wanted to walk through the Redwood Forest, and one day I will, but I wonder if it’ll feel like this.

“Beware of ticks,” the house owner warned me just a few days earlier. Her grave voice rang in my ears: “You do know about the ticks, don’t you?” Of course I do. Swedes talk about them a lot, and admittedly, the idea of a tick burrowing itself into my skin almost turned me around. But with the trees stretching into the clouds, long sun rays falling through them and scattering like gold dust across the fern undergrowth, the forest noises, and tiny white butterflies flickering around - it was all too beautiful, I had to keep going.

Eventually I made it around Brunnsviken. All the sadness and stress I’d left the house with had disappeared into the 16 km behind me. I was tired and dirty, but somehow, restored. I came inside, turned on a Rat Pack album that I’d seen earlier, and went straight to the shower.

There’s no hair dryer in this house, I discovered afterward. No straightening iron. No products. So I did something that I have never done before: I twisted my wet hair into one long braid, just like my mother did when I was young. My hair was too unruly to be left alone. Wild hairs, stubborn, restless, too curious for her own good - this is how she described me to her friends.

But that was decades ago, and things have changed. Now when people ask about me, she tells them where I am and what I’m doing. Usually, they cannot even fathom it. Where I am is a long way from south Alabama. Then, without any of her old vexation, my mother simply tells them, “You know she’s always been my free spirit.”

I’m not sure what she means by that, to be honest. What exactly am I free from? Not home, not work. Not chores, practicalities, and responsibilities. Not family or friends, colleagues or clients. Not loss. Not pain. Not fear. I have many fears. Many more questions. I have demons. I have dreams. I have high expectations. Wrong assumptions. Limited resources. Limited perspective. My hair is still unruly, and I can only see it as a burden. What does it mean to have a free spirt?

Lately, my spirit has felt lost. Yearning for home, yet utterly incapable of saying where home might be. After this week, however, alone, in this family house, in a little town outside of Stockholm that reminds me of the place where I grew up, a deep reverence and childlike curiosity for life has awakened in me. Its something I’ve always had and may never outgrow.

Home is right here, I’m beginning to realize. It is a place inside of me.

* “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For,” by Henry David Thoreau

Sehnsucht

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 23:44:00 +0200

Sehnsucht:

jennilee:

Sehnsucht is a German noun translated as “longing,” “yearning” and “craving,” or in a wider sense a type of “intensely missing.” However, Sehnsucht is diffucult to translate adequately and describes a deep emotional state. The stage director and author Georg Tabori called Sehnsucht one of those quasi-mystical terms in German for which there is no satisfactory corresponding term in another language. Sehnsucht is a compound word, originating from an ardent longing or yearning (das Sehnen) and addiction (die Sucht).

It is sometimes felt as a longing for a far off country, but not a particular earthly land which we can identify. Furthermore there is something in the experience which suggests this far off country is very familiar and indicative of what we might otherwise call “home.” In this sense it is a type of nostalgia, in the original sense of that word. At other times it may seem as a longing for a someone or even a something. But the majority of people who experience it are not conscious of what or who the longed for object may be. Indeed, the longing is of such profundity and intensity that the subject may immediately be only aware of the emotion itself and not cognizant that there is a something longed for. Yet though one may not be able to identify just what it is, the experience is one of such significance that ordinary reality may pale in comparison, as in Walt Whitman’s closing lines to “Song of the Universal”:

Is it a dream?
Nay but the lack of it the dream,
And failing it life’s lore and wealth a dream
And all the world a dream.

Sehnsucht took on a particular significance in the work of author C. S. Lewis. Lewis described Sehnsucht as the “inconsolable longing” in the human heart for “we know not what.” In the afterword to the third edition of The Pilgrim’s Regress he provided examples of what sparked this desire in him particularly:

“That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World’s End, the opening lines of ‘Kubla Khan,’ the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves.”

The key ingredient of the experience, as Lewis treats it, is that this longing—never fulfilled—is itself sweeter than the fulfillment of any other human desire. It is so deeply personal that it does not occur to the one feeling it that others would have similar experiences and so is rarely communicated verbally. For most people it is something which cannot be put into words. Indeed the present description of Sehnsucht is itself inadequate and is only suggestive of it. Yet, though difficult to define, Lewis maintained that this is a universal experience.

Another feature of Sehnsucht, as we see in the preceding quote, is that one may have the impression that in childhood we were much closer to a grasp of the object of the Sehnsucht-longing whereas now we have only the remembrance of it, or even merely the shadow of a remembrance. There is regret in that we no longer know what we long for, if we ever did. So, for instance, in “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd we hear:
When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone.
I cannot put my finger on it now.
The child is grown, the dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.

jennilee: see also

“Bangladesh,” he answered. I asked where he was from after he told me that he’s...

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 12:08:00 +0200

“Bangladesh,” he answered. I asked where he was from after he told me that he’s been in Sweden for seven years. “I come from the poorest country in the world!” He was proud to say this, and did so several times. Suddenly I noticed how small the man was. Not underweight, but petite and thin-framed. The only reason I noticed is because, earlier today, I read an interview with Japanese designer, Yohji Yamamoto, and he said that his generation of Japanese people are the smallest because food was scarce after the war. They had nothing to eat, and so they were small. “It still makes me angry!” Yamamoto said.

But the guy from Bangladesh was not angry at all. An enormous smile had unrolled across his face, and above it, his eyes were as round and bright as full moons - that bewildered expression in both eyes. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” he asked. “I come from the poorest country in the whole world. The whole world. And now look!” He gazed down at his small body, then gestured toward the window. I looked back to see two young women sitting at a table, a bottle of wine in the center, emptied, their plates had been cleared, the sidewalk was quiet and concrete. Before I could respond, he was laughing, and although his laughter was cheerful for the most part, a thread of derision ran through the middle and carried it on for many seconds. “Listen,” he said finally. “It would be like you going all the way to the moon!”

hornstull loppis Hornstull locals were encouraged to clean out...

Tue, 31 May 2011 12:20:00 +0200

hornstull loppis

Hornstull locals were encouraged to clean out their closets and sell their unwanted items in the neighborhood flea market. It began just below our building and wrapped all the way down Högalidsgatan, along the Årstaviken. The whole city was invited. Items were stacked on coffee tables, spread out on blankets, thrown into boxes, or simply hung from the trees.

I found a skirt + a blouse + a pair of jeans - all for the price of a coffee!

510 20 degrees, gold-dusted streets, the smell of bbq, japonica everywhere. I came in to find open...

Mon, 30 May 2011 10:41:00 +0200

510
20 degrees, gold-dusted streets, the smell of bbq, japonica everywhere. I came in to find open windows, the white orchid is in full bloom, avocados are ripe, our kitchen smells of lime and chopped cilantro, you know exactly where this is going -–

517
Planned to make a veggie wrap and do an hour of yoga. Instead, I came home, made fruit compote and ate it with a bowl of ice cream. Still haven’t done yoga. Tummy ache. Its been raining off and on. The sky lightened fifteen minutes ago, I went to the window because for some reason I thought there might be a rainbow. There wasn’t. Just several grays, and the clouds were particularly white. Speaking of, I am really into white wines lately. First time in my life.

520
Childhood returns to me in the spring. High in the branches of old trees, the aimless float and fish through rivers, the green of grass, before summer blazed through and turned it all brown. We laid in the green, it whispered things to us, we created life in the clouds until in a nearer distance we heard the ice cream truck and went running to my father’s coin bucket. He kept in his top dresser drawer, we searched it desperately for a quarter. Just one quarter. That’s all we needed. Even though two dimes and a nickel would have worked, we didn’t know it. The ice cream man always said, “That’ll be a quarter,” and by the time we were old enough to understand the value of money, we’d lost the desperation for ice cream.

524
Woke up long before the alarm this morning, no idea what time it was. Time stays on the other side of the bed, and its hard to judge by the sun these days. I stood at the window, watching, nothing breathing, a moment of silence, twenty whole minutes of silence, not even the wind stirred. Everything slept, except for the light. It and it alone moved. Until something blinked in the corner. I think it could have been a squirrel.

525
Back here, people are just talking. They don’t want to hear the music. Not the renowned pianist/violinist who is banging away at his electrical guitar. People came for the french composer, not a slovenly guy who could’ve washed up from south florida. And I’ve already told you where I stand.

527
Central Station. I hate when the Swedes act like they have no idea what I’m talking about when I say Central Station. Maybe they don’t like the sound of it, as I don’t care much for T-Centralen. Sounds like a Russian spacecraft. Well, at least they know something about comfortable benches. I’ve never seen so many vacant ones. So why did the woman want to sit on this bench? She asked me to scoot over, when three empty benches surrounded me on both sides. Maybe she doesn’t like being alone, I can understand that. I’m only here until the rain stops. Clouds scroll so quickly above these nordic islands, its unbelievable. I was annoyed to be here at first- for having to stop. But now I feel so calm, maybe it was a good thing. To stop. To remember why I love train stations. To draw in the ink and let it breathe on the page, however it may.

There are two ways of looking at a thing.Either you feel that a thing must be perfect before you...

Sat, 28 May 2011 10:25:41 +0200

There are two ways of looking at a thing.

Either you feel that a thing must be perfect before you present it to the public, or you are willing to let it go out even knowing that it is not perfect, because you are striving for something even beyond what you have achieved, but in struggling too hard for perfection you know that you may lose the very glimmer of life, the very spirit of the thing that you also know exists at a particular point in what you have done; and that to interfere with it would be to destroy that very living quality.

I am myself in favor of practising in public. There are, of course, those people who say, ‘But the public is not interested in watching people practice. It wants the finished thing or nothing.’ My answer is that if one does not practice in public in reality, then in nine cases out of ten the world will never see the finished product of one’s work. Some people go on the assumption that if a thing is not a hundred percent perfect it should not be given to the world, but I have seen too many things that were a hundred percent perfect that were spiritually dead, and then things that have been seemingly incomplete that have life and vitality, which I prefer by for to the other so-called perfect thing.

It is one thing to think about a piece of work as a scientific or objective entity that will stand up a hundred years hence, and another to think of a living quality of the person doing the thing and of his development. Is the think felt — does it come out of an inner need - an inner must? Is one ready to die for it?… that is the only test.

- the words of Alfred Stieglitz. Quoted by Dorothy Norman in America and Alfred Stieglitz, pg 136-137, Doubleday, Doran + Company, 1934.

I live on the dirty side of town. Spring is so yellow you choke on it, and winter is nothing but a...

Sun, 15 May 2011 23:51:00 +0200

I live on the dirty side of town. Spring is so yellow you choke on it, and winter is nothing but a brittle latticework of dust. Most women sweep their porches on Saturday mornings, but by nightfall, a light jacket of dirt has already resettled. If your dress is even a little too long on Sunday morning, you have to pick it up as you pass through the porch. Otherwise, the hem is brown or gray before you can even get to church.

No one knows why either. Some say it has to do with all the trees and animals around here, they blame it on mossy shrubs and rooster droppings. Others think its because this neighborhood is so old. A respectable women, who died a couple decades ago now, started telling her friends that 90% of dust is just sloughed-off skin cells. She never said anything about the shedding of humans, but that’s the way rumors work I guess. Now most people believe this area is dirty because there are so many unsettled ghosts, lingering in the grass, riding on the backs of flies and bees, and lolling across the threads of cobwebs that materialize out of thin air inside their houses.

Mr. Hal Baker was sitting on his porch this morning when I walked by with the Saturday paper and a cup of coffee. He returned my wave, but something felt amiss. Usually Mr. Hal will stand up when a woman passes by, because, “Well its just plain respect, son,” he told my brother once, in a tone that seemed to scold him for even needing to ask why.

If its early in the day, Mr. Hal will make sure you had a good night’s rest, and then ask your opinion on whatever was happening in New York (he subscribed to The Times and seemed to think the whole world was encapsulated in that one city). If you met Mr. Hal sometime in the evening, he’d make sure you hadn’t worked too hard that day and would have a decent dinner. To be honest, Mr. Hal has never seemed very real to me. More like a Saint Nicolas who can’t perform miracles, but still wants peace on earth. So when he didn’t inquire about my sleeping patterns or the news up north, I knew something was bothering him.

Turns out, Mrs. Baker had decided to start her Saturday cleaning two hours early, shoving dust all around the kitchen while he was trying to read his paper, spraying Clorox all over the bathroom while he was trying to comb his hair, then yelling about which rooms he could and could not walk through cause she was sweeping now and wouldn’t have him tracking stuff all through the house before she could even get to the mop.

Mr. Hal tried to stay out of her way, to give her the time and space she seemed to need for cleaning, and so he went out on the porch. A brown thrasher was singing in the tree above. He sat in the rocking chair and had just settled into a rhythmic sway when she exploded through the screen door with her straw broom. ”This time,” he told me, “I decided to just stay put,” which meant he would have to endure her fury about something that she would never understand, something that looked like an anxiety about dirt but had nothing at all to do with dirt.

A strong wind blew back and forth through the porch, so that the loose earth Mrs. Baker was trying to sweep away was thrown right back at her, as if bouncing off an imaginary wall. She glanced over at Mr. Hal in a way that she hoped would lift him from the rocking chair and carry him back into the house. But he knew that she was only humiliated, so he stayed and said nothing.

Her hands tightened around the stick of wood, she swatted at the porch until her back crackled in revolt. But it didn’t help— the wind thickened, as if she was whipping it up like egg whites into meringue. After a while, her arms went limp and she let out a sigh so guttural it sounded more like a grunt. Mr. Hal stood, moved toward the door, but just before entering said, “Don’t you think you’re fighting a hopeless battle?” He didn’t wait for a response, or even look her in her direction, knowing that she wouldn’t want him to. She didn’t.

Moments later, she came back into the house, doing the same thing to her wooden floors that she’d done to the porch, now with the mop instead of a broom, against an oscillating fan instead of the wind. When I walked by their house this morning, Mr. Hal had just come back out to the porch. There was nothing he could say or do for her, but its not like he came into this blindly either. “Her papa gave me fair warning,” he said inside of a long sigh. “He made sure I was there one Saturday morning to see the same cleaning routine seize Mrs. Baker’s mother like a demonic spirit.”

I told him that I was real sorry, that I just couldn’t imagine Mrs. Baker acting that way. She’d always been so warm and charming, doing the most thoughtful things for people. “Oh, she’ll be fine, she’ll be fine,” he assured.

I thought that I should probably get going, I didn’t want to catch Mrs. Baker in a bad moment, and plus, the coffee cup in my hand no longer felt very warm. But before I could excuse myself, Mr. Hal bent forward and looked straight at me. His eyes were all alit and a smile had spread across this face. “After mopping,” he said, “all that’s left to do is shake out the rugs.”

(2008)

Exactly one year ago, we woke up in a friend’s spare bedroom and took some clothes out of our...

Thu, 12 May 2011 09:24:00 +0200

Exactly one year ago, we woke up in a friend’s spare bedroom and took some clothes out of our suitcase. I chose a gray sweater because it had a hood. The skylights were filled with dark clouds, it could rain, its always good to have a hood on rainy days. We went to Octane for a coffee and croissant, then walked across the street to our bank one last time, trying to stay calm, but our cell phones were going berserk, people wanted to know how we felt, but how could we answer that truthfully without unfolding a long list of adjectives. Excited, ready, not ready, surreal, scared, worried, exhausted, expectant.

By the time we got back to Christiane’s house, we realized that our suitcase was too heavy. The problem was not the quantity of things, but the weight of things. We had to go buy a new suitcase, and then we only had 15 minutes to make the swap. 15 minutes to undo five days of meticulous packing. Whittling away at our possessions once again, trying to decide what was valuable, it all seemed valuable at the time, but choices had to be made. Knowing what we know now, we would have done it differently.

I almost left my pillow behind, but Diane would not allow it. She crammed that pillow into a tiny pocket of my carry-on bag, I’ll never understand how she managed to do it, but I’m so glad that she did. Friends were coming by to see us off. They stood around as we hovered over our scrambled lives, trying to squeeze in one more pair of socks. Fredo was crying, he had been crying all day, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t worry me.

His brother was there to take the car, and sprawled across the backseat was the bike he’d built himself and ridden through every inch of Atlanta. There was a long embrace after the keys were passed, and so much weeping. I wonder if our friends were slightly worried too. They were there, offering consolation, wishing us the best of everything, and waving goodbye as we drove off in the backseat of Jessica’s car.

She took us to the airport. I don’t remember much about the ride, except that it was overcast, the interstates were congested, I had no idea what to say, but I was so grateful to be with Jessica. There was a calmness in her car, so much love in her voice, and in her eyes, there was a conviction about something that made me believe that everything was going to be okay.

This morning, we did not awake in the same city we flew to last year. It’s sunny in Stockholm. Fredo left early to get his hair cut. I’m having a cup of coffee. Soon, we will both go to work. Maybe we’ll go out to dinner tonight. We don’t go out nearly as much as we used to. Life is so different now, and we are still building ours back up. First, we had to lose everything. I don’t know precisely when we hit rock bottom, probably about six or seven months ago. We crawled across that bottom for weeks, mystified, until we found the strength to stand. To place one rock on top of another. And then another. And another. We are still going, there are so many rocks still scattered about, each day we must choose which one to grab next.

The joys and pains have been so high and so low, from pure euphoria to utter nightmare, but thankfully the distance between them is long, and we’ve spent most of our year traveling that distance. We have been foreigners, however, not travelers - and trust me, there is a big difference between the two.

Maybe soon I will be able to write about our first year in Scandinavia. Right now its still too close. It wasn’t until today that I could find any words to describe the day we woke up in Christiane’s guest room and flew over the Atlantic Ocean, and then the North Sea, with about 500 strangers.

Our first day in Copenhagen? We slept halfway through it, but the second half was pure bliss. Kids playing in the schoolyard, bicycles whizzing past our window in a steady stream, the air so clean we took it in gulps, we stopped for a coffee and drank it at the sidewalk café table, we stumbled through cobblestone streets, into quaint courtyards, and then into a local grocery store. How much do things cost here? Much more than we imagined.

Its been one year, and what a year it has been.