Tentatively titled, “I Truly Lament, Working Through the Holocaust,” my latest book of short stories is now undergoing my finishing touches. Using the suggestion of David Herrle who edited the manuscript, I am threading quotations from The i Tetralogy throughout, using each one before a story begins; the quotations sometimes apply significantly to the story, sometimes not. In any case I like the idea. However, as I tramped through the novel choosing quotations I began to experience a kind of despair, for I was again in the camps and that “existence.” I have dedicated the book to Jane, gave special thanks to Herrle for his editing,and cited individual stories that were published prior to publication. Additionally, when all this is arranged properly and formatted I will again go over all the stories for a final editing, rewriting, et al. Jane has all the quotations I’ve listed before her and I am leaving the choice to her; they will serve also as a running commentary on the situations in the manuscript. In many ways, to cite Herrle again, the book is a “sibling” to the tetralogy.
It feels good to have two pregnancies going on, one to be delivered in the fall, and one seeking a father. With the hope that Red Willow Press might take on the book, I am encouraged. I spent a year or so working on both books, “This Mobius Strip of Ifs,” and Lament and it was invigorating, moving from non-fiction to fiction. Although I will be tinkering with my latest effort until it is accepted, I am already thinking about what I may do next. The idea of having, the fantasy of having four books on the shelf with my name pleases me no end. If my health holds out, I will continue to pump out from the cellar all the collective unconscious waters I have pooled together since my biological inception. I am thinking about a book of my relationship as a reader with Krishnamurti theses past thirty-six years, what I have learned, what I have not learned about my place in this world of no consequence except for the natural beauty it provides us and that we don’t rarely see. The passage of time, for me, is a kind of soft acid that scours myself, what was done, what was not done and the more than shattering sensibility of what I am not doing at this moment to avail myself of what there is out there. Writing is only one way I can recompense myself, for thought means much too me, the buck means nothing, except to feed my face and to get by.
In fact, as I reflect on what I am writing I associate to the realization that I’m at a passage in life in which I am applying my finishing touches. It has not been a life well led. All my books are a metaphor for my attempt to assuage myself as I head out to the far-ranging galaxies, incipient stellar soot. It is more than my scratch in the sand declaring that I was here, like Kilroy. It does have a smattering of that, so not to deceive myself. I really get clearer in mind the more and more convincingly I write to myself about what cares and concerns and mostly, passions, I have in this existence. It makes nonsense objectively. It makes very much sense to me. I have chosen to state what and who I am as I travel this arc. No one will record me. I record and observe myself. At least a third of my life was occuptied by an empty self until I came alive or better said, aware, in my thirties, so figuratively I was born twice, one a stillborn, the other a lively neonate.
Galloping along in my seventies, it is ironic for me to sense how long it has taken to excell, to create without self-imposed censors, to be free somewhere in my soul, to have been deconditioned by my own hands, to have left a societal slavery so that I can be subversive in my creativity. As I look about me, as I draw in the atmosphere of this demented culture, as rage spewers from politicians I distance myself more and more from this pollution. If I had my druthers, as I look back, I would “educate” each young student to run away, like Huck, to the river, away from the civilizing conditioning of a ruinous society. When men come together, when they form clots and groupings, the soul withers, as I look back. Young people have taken to rooms, to texting, to computering, to an absorption with the cyber world which in itself is isolating and dehumanizing. In fantasy give me a wooden shoe so that I can smash all things high-tech in an Apple store.
Technology has run amuck. See for yourself. Any children playing outside in the neighborhood of late? Most if not all gaming is indoors, alas.
The last finishing touch will be what I do with my life as it nears its close. I haven’t the slightest clue as to how I will intervene with my own life to give it a worth I wish it to have. In fact I haven’t been too successful with this except for my writing, that which I inscribe for myself to see, to visit and revisit, as if a wonderment, a display I have made for my own edification.
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