Category Archives: On Writing

About a week ago Chris O’Byrne, publisher, emailed me to say he would be “honored” to publish the manuscript he had in hand, “This Mobius Strip of Ifs,” an anthology/compilation of essays written over three decades. “Honored” stood out for me as that is not exactly publisher lingo. When I shared my surprise with him in a follow up note, he told me that my writing was “impressive.” So before any contract is signed I have been nourished as to my capacity as a writer. I had spent maybe a year going over the selection of the essays, proofing them, rearranging them, for sequence, I have learned, is essential in laying out a book of short stories or essays, among other writerly things.

I had planned to self-publish the book but submitted the manuscript after reading about his press in an email sent out to writers by Harvey Stanbrough, poet. I had no expectations whatsoever; indeed, after this try I would go out and get it published by myself. Serendipitously, not looking for a publisher and having one suggested to me led to all this personal excitement.

It has been two weeks since last O’Byrne wrote me, saying that after a conference he was at ended he would forward contracts to me. I have not received them only throwing doubt into the pot and I have decided to give him until the end of the month before I respond. He moves, as we all do, in his own time. Since this is the first time I have been accepted for publication, delays create all kinds of mischief in mind, given that there is a whole slew of questions I need ask as to editing, publication date, cover  and format. However, I’ve had two books percolating and on track for the last year. I just sent off for editing, “Working Through the Holocaust,” my final say on the Holocaust through short stories, of which eight have been published (!) in 2010. David Herrle, editor of Subtletea.com,. and a poet in his own right, will take on the editorial task as he is sympatico with my style and themes. It has been a creative year or so, the first for me in that I was working on two different kinds of books. If my health holds out, I may see four books published in a decade — The i Tetralogy, Down to a Sunless Sea, This Mobius Strip of Ifs, and Working Through the Holocaust. Two books of short stories, one major novel and a book of essays.

While this was going on I discovered medically that plaque had built up in my carotid artery to the degree I am at risk and there is an issue with my heart, all brought about by my inability to lose weight and my high blood sugar countas a pre-diabetic. It isn’t that I haven’t tried to maintain my health, but the dice have been tossed and I am losing out. Not only are we abstractly terminal, but I have been given notice that I, personally, Mathias B. Freese, am terminal, like Luther’s theses nailed to the church’s wooden door. Don’t ask how I am doing? I don’t know. Are you depressed? I don’t know. What floats through my consciousness is the time given to me, although I am doing everything medically — pills, tests and more tests, losing weight at Weight Watchers, working out three times weekly at a local gym with a trainer — in order to lose the weight. I am told that meds will ease or attentuate the situation, but that losing weight may very well alleviate or reverse it all. The task is mine alone. What status is there to know you now have a cardiologist on your team?

I am surprised I’m not in a corner fetally mewling. I suppose after Rochelle’s death and Caryn’s suicide some part of me doesn’t give a shit and some part of me wants to see the next day — you know, just futzing about. I am not scared, but alarmed; I kid the doctor and others about my imminent demise, but that is solely defensive, like raising your hands before your face when dad wants to wallop you one. I am trying to fight back but the news this week has me somewhat addled, befuddled and saddened by a life not without some honor but nevertheless one that has been unsuccessful, whatever that means. Well, it means the standards I have held for myself have shifted over the years and are more stringent yet more compassionate. I am less than what I could have been, so saith the stalk of wheat as the scythe cuts it down. I wish I had been a better father. I was good husband. My son and daughter know me not. I cannot access their true selves.  It is a kind of parental failure, I believe, on my part. I grieve more about that than I do about my diagnosis which is not too good.

I don’t think I am scared, but somewhat morose; I don’t perseverate over the whys and why nots, but feel this is all part of the plan that began with my birth. Jane is stalwart, optimistic and she fills up my glass which is always half empty; no, she is not Mary Poppins but gives me a fair optimism to combat my general darkness. I have told her, quite melodramatically, but seriously, if it all goes south, to make sure the next two books are published. Whether they will be read or not, who cares. They represent me, come from the loins of my mind and that is essential to whom I am. They are patrimony whether children or not read them. They are the product of a hard birth.

So, Red Willow Digital Press, act more quickly. I would like to see my first published book before I croak.

“Sincerely, Max Weber,” was just published on line at www.servinghousejournal.com. It is the eighth short story I’ve had accepted in about eight months. Just yesterday Ascent Aspirations informed me that “Freud in Auschwitz” wil appear in its July issue. These stories are in my work in progress. “Working Through the Holocaust.” The acceptances might help me get a publisher when it is done. In any case I am elated by the good fortune of it all. While I was walking about an indoor track about half an hour ago, I began to think about this blog and what I would write. It is in shape before me and I will begin with why I write. Since I began blogging about three years ago, I recall in my introduction I told you, the reader, that this blog is for me and that if you found it of interest, so be it. I still take that position.

I write to define myself. I write to know. And I write for my children to remember, a great fortune indeed.

Given my childhood, those latency years, I internalized the world, incorporated it without having the tools to make sense of it, to metabolize what was occurring or had occurred. I had all the grain in the world and I had no grist mill. I wish there had been grist for the mill. Defining who I was did not really occur until I awoke in my early thirties. I was asleep in life. Some of us never wake up and go to our graves uninformed about who we are. Look about you, they are everywhere, they are family and friends, the world at large. My first major story, “Herbie,” which finally appeared in a collection, Down to a Sunless Sea in 2008 was originally published in 1974 and was listed as a distinctive short story in The Best American Short Stories of 1975, edited by Martha Foley who had edited some works of Hemingway and others. It was quite an honor; years later I paid testament to her in an essay, “To Miss Foley, With Gratitude,” which won first prize as personal essay/memoir by the Society of Southwestern Authors in 2005.

And so my writing “career” began. I began in my vigorous thirties, knowing nothing about the craft, spending years becoming an auto-didact with all the defects of that posture and was finally rewarded in my sixties with the publication of a novel and a book of short stories. I am a turtle, the one behind the turtle in the fable. I was a bright, perhaps intelligent child who was reared in the soup of benign neglect, never drawn out, rarely engaged, turning inward like a withered leaf, believing I was cold or undemonstrative because I had the inability to express what I felt or knew. I was inhibited, shy, inexpressed. I was not felt as a child. And so serendipitously writing allowed me to begin a lifelong dialogue with all the selves I had within and by doing that I slowly discovered how to define myself in words, images, metaphors and finally I began to bud, then blossom. Writing drew me out of the husk. I defined myself through self-definition. Much of a lesson in that for me and the lesson still goes on like a raving madman running nude across a hill.

To define one self is to know one self. I have learned about me as I wrote over the decades. I was shaped by my writing, and writing shaped me. I learned that “knowledge is death,” that awareness, real, deconditioned awareness, shatters all systems, causes, beliefs, religions; that to know brings a stoical perspective, an awareness of the fragility of life, the sorrow relationships bring us and yet we must relate; it shoves death,like a grapefruit, into our face. I no longer search for meaning in things; I think that is a mistake, also a kind of conditioned thought. Rather, I prefer to be aware, if at all. For over thirty years I have read the master who felt that to have disciples is an abomination.

Krishnamurti has provoked me to know myself like any great ancient Greek. In our presently consitituted society we market ourselves, consequently we can never know ourselves, for we are merchandise, wampum to exchange. Insight cowers and hides in this nation. No phony American will accept that knowledge is death; rather, knowledge is power, something to be used, or inflicted upon man and nature. An aware human being does not need to be empowered! Awareness is the capacity to see that has nothing to do with grasping ends and possessions. And so I write for it brings me a sense and sensibility that allows knowing.

Finally, I write to be remembered, for that is a sweet delicacy I may or may not attain. What is left to all of us except the thought, the possibility that after we are gone those who cared and loved us while here will cherish our impact. A cemetery cannot do that. A cemetery is for the living, a reminder. What is best is to have our kin and kith to recall us to mind, for in that remembrance of things past affection and love are expressed.

For me it comes down to a fantasy. I imagine about 300 to 500 people in an auditorium, filled with friends, new acquaintances, strangers, concerned men and women who have come to have me speak about my books. I not there to sell books or sell them anything. I am there to be in colloquy. The pleasure, for me, would to be in relationship with these folks, to share my life’s work, to hear pro and con, to be stretched by new ideas that my ideas have provoked. I write not for the buck, never have, never will. I write to give — so unAmerican. The cosmic and eternal joke is on me — all this will be forgotten; ha! in the interim I have played my own game,irrelevant for all time and to those who come after. Perhaps life is a monstrous distraction, like playing golf, retirement, greed, or comb overs on Trump’s head.