How profound your response, Ernest. And is it not so true that we write from our limits and from our excesses too; from the position we occupy at the moment, or even the position of our larger rumination, perhaps the position of a lifetime which is still singular and therefore somewhat contained and ongoing. I, too, did not think about children [family] at the moment of my response and you are wise to make that connection.
Meanwhile, I admire the grounding you have in literature and what it means to you. I know it is hard to stay in love with something when you need to eat from another source, so I’ll hope from my end that the roads align for you in this life of letters. I have a strong feeling it will - as faith persists.
A poet's musings. Poets at heart. Your anecdotes of Tiresias reminded of a funny ballad I saw when I first read Laurence Durrell's Balthazar (part of his Alexandria Quartet). It goes something like this:
Old Tiresias
No one half so easy as
Half so free and easy as
Old Tiresias
I think it is a half-jesting, almost meaningless coping of the Tiresias legend. Yet I never forgot. Thanks for writing this.
Interesting meditation on life, work, meaning which I have incidentally been thinking about to have no point per se, at least in that grand scale, that rubric where assent comes from who? God-yes, but maybe not in the registers we think. Our ways are not his ways and his thoughts are higher than ours. Which is not to say I have an aversion for work (I am somewhat of a mindless overworker myself). but to maybe suggest that the point of work is part worship, part distraction. Maybe there is something about our relationship to work that is part ego, part self. That desperate impulse to inscribe ourselves on the world. A world which is everyday fading. Then of course, part capital system, the super structure of things demanding demanding demanding.
There’s a part of me that always thinks of doing as a way of being. Work as a moral act. When I am not working I am in sin. The harder I work, the more I am approved by God. By man. By myself? This theory, I think is partly born of childhood trauma. These days I am trying to iterate for myself a new ideology about work, one that centers on moments before the doing and moments after the doing. Not the usual cliche about rest (though quite important) but something else. Something that tells me I am valued in spite of what I bring to the table, what I produce. If I have no skill, bo ability, if my life gets no assent or recognition from the corridors of this world. It will still have been good. So maybe in a sense work without the rubrics of assessment. Work that is born from pleasure, maybe even revelation. Certainly I want, above all, a sense about work without any attachment to what it makes my life mean.
Thank you for writing this, Ernest. You make the lights come on.
Tochi. Thank you for writing this. It did show me some of the limitations of a “freestyle” essay, as well as limitations that I cannot help been hindered by because of where I am standing in time. For instance, when you talk about wanting meaning that is extricated from work—I see what you mean. To have children (which I hope to have) and to love my wife—those will be more central to the meaning of my life than what I do as a literary person. But of course I could not see that in that moment because children do not figure in my mind as significantly as art does at this point in time. So, yes. That limitation.
I also like the idea of work as ”part devotion” and ”part play.” I think I love to work, especially because the “work” I am talking about is not something I do to just get money at the end of the day, but something that gives a certain charge to my own life. Literature is the work I do. And it is wonderful to be able to do literature as work, to do this thing that gives “meaning” to individual aspects of life and that is still work. Writing poetry is even a lot of play and devotion, a devotion to play perhaps, or a devout attitude towards a religious kind of play. I find that idea useful.
But, as you say. There is the need to make money (that has begun to feature in my mind very seriously lately). When I was much younger, I would not do anything but write stories and poems. That was all I wanted to do. These days, I do other writing-related jobs that are not necessarily creative, because I need the money. So, yes, the capitalistic (?) side of it. One of my fears even now is the fear that I will have to do a work that is so distant from what I love to do in order to earn money. Christian Wiman said it better: “All through my twenties I had two terrors: that I was going to have to get some sort of regular job, and that I would never write great poetry.” You know, that just says it how I can't really get it said.
Thank you again. Thank you for reading this and for sharing your thoughts—always. I trust you have been well.
How profound your response, Ernest. And is it not so true that we write from our limits and from our excesses too; from the position we occupy at the moment, or even the position of our larger rumination, perhaps the position of a lifetime which is still singular and therefore somewhat contained and ongoing. I, too, did not think about children [family] at the moment of my response and you are wise to make that connection.
Meanwhile, I admire the grounding you have in literature and what it means to you. I know it is hard to stay in love with something when you need to eat from another source, so I’ll hope from my end that the roads align for you in this life of letters. I have a strong feeling it will - as faith persists.
A poet's musings. Poets at heart. Your anecdotes of Tiresias reminded of a funny ballad I saw when I first read Laurence Durrell's Balthazar (part of his Alexandria Quartet). It goes something like this:
Old Tiresias
No one half so easy as
Half so free and easy as
Old Tiresias
I think it is a half-jesting, almost meaningless coping of the Tiresias legend. Yet I never forgot. Thanks for writing this.
Thank you, man. I have to read that poem. Thank you for sharing it. I love ballads, too. Have you read Wilde’s “The Ballad of Reading Goal”?
I can't even remember if it's a poem. I have now read Wilde's "Ballad", thanks to your recommendation.
Very inspiring read! Good job!!
Thank you so much for reading this, sir. Thank you.
Interesting meditation on life, work, meaning which I have incidentally been thinking about to have no point per se, at least in that grand scale, that rubric where assent comes from who? God-yes, but maybe not in the registers we think. Our ways are not his ways and his thoughts are higher than ours. Which is not to say I have an aversion for work (I am somewhat of a mindless overworker myself). but to maybe suggest that the point of work is part worship, part distraction. Maybe there is something about our relationship to work that is part ego, part self. That desperate impulse to inscribe ourselves on the world. A world which is everyday fading. Then of course, part capital system, the super structure of things demanding demanding demanding.
There’s a part of me that always thinks of doing as a way of being. Work as a moral act. When I am not working I am in sin. The harder I work, the more I am approved by God. By man. By myself? This theory, I think is partly born of childhood trauma. These days I am trying to iterate for myself a new ideology about work, one that centers on moments before the doing and moments after the doing. Not the usual cliche about rest (though quite important) but something else. Something that tells me I am valued in spite of what I bring to the table, what I produce. If I have no skill, bo ability, if my life gets no assent or recognition from the corridors of this world. It will still have been good. So maybe in a sense work without the rubrics of assessment. Work that is born from pleasure, maybe even revelation. Certainly I want, above all, a sense about work without any attachment to what it makes my life mean.
Thank you for writing this, Ernest. You make the lights come on.
Tochi. Thank you for writing this. It did show me some of the limitations of a “freestyle” essay, as well as limitations that I cannot help been hindered by because of where I am standing in time. For instance, when you talk about wanting meaning that is extricated from work—I see what you mean. To have children (which I hope to have) and to love my wife—those will be more central to the meaning of my life than what I do as a literary person. But of course I could not see that in that moment because children do not figure in my mind as significantly as art does at this point in time. So, yes. That limitation.
I also like the idea of work as ”part devotion” and ”part play.” I think I love to work, especially because the “work” I am talking about is not something I do to just get money at the end of the day, but something that gives a certain charge to my own life. Literature is the work I do. And it is wonderful to be able to do literature as work, to do this thing that gives “meaning” to individual aspects of life and that is still work. Writing poetry is even a lot of play and devotion, a devotion to play perhaps, or a devout attitude towards a religious kind of play. I find that idea useful.
But, as you say. There is the need to make money (that has begun to feature in my mind very seriously lately). When I was much younger, I would not do anything but write stories and poems. That was all I wanted to do. These days, I do other writing-related jobs that are not necessarily creative, because I need the money. So, yes, the capitalistic (?) side of it. One of my fears even now is the fear that I will have to do a work that is so distant from what I love to do in order to earn money. Christian Wiman said it better: “All through my twenties I had two terrors: that I was going to have to get some sort of regular job, and that I would never write great poetry.” You know, that just says it how I can't really get it said.
Thank you again. Thank you for reading this and for sharing your thoughts—always. I trust you have been well.