Doug Bruns

Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

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Like a language disappearing

In Philosophy, The Examined Life, Writing on February 22, 2012 at 7:13 am

I keep a journal. Recently I’ve been using a large Moleskine with thick unlined pages made for sketching and drawing. Ink does not bleed through these pages. Sometimes I sketch in it, but mostly I jot down ideas, quotes and notions. I like the heavy paper. It feels substantial. I mistakenly sometimes think that my ideas are substantial too just by putting them down on such fine paper.

As I sit here at my writing desk I look across my little room and see about two dozen journals on the shelf, in all manner of shape and size, going back many years. Tucked away behind the shelf in storage boxes are yellow pads–the journals of my youth–dozens of them. Back then, thirty years ago and more, I wrote with a pencil and now the oldest pages are hardly discernible. I get a sense of comfort looking at those lost words, marks fading like a language disappearing. I wonder why, after all the words and years of record keeping their disappearance gives me satisfaction? That is obviously at odds with the nature of making a record.

I recently read a short biography of René Descartes. It’s in the book I’m currently reading, Examined Lives by James Miller. Descartes kept a journal at his side at all times. He gave it the name Olympia. He sought a quiet life and often lived like a fugitive, going from place to place, in an effort to escape his fame and pursue his thought-filled solitude. After moving to the Netherlands he wrote in his journal: “I have been able to lead a life as solitary and withdrawn as if I were in the most remote desert.”

I used to be obsessed with leaving evidence of my existence. That was part of what was behind the journals. That obsession, thankfully, no longer haunts me. To the contrary, I am hard at pursuing a course of singular autonomy which seems a lighter and looser obsession. Certainly it does not haunt me. The autonomy I seek feels the antithesis of my previous obsession, a sort of independence of history. But maybe that is just a hopeful imagination at work.

Here is a verse from a poem by Barton Sutter that captures the nuance of what I’m trying to convey. The poem is called TheThousand-foot Ore Boat.

To live until we die–

The job seems just impossible.

The great weight of the past

Pushing us forward, the long future

Thrust out before us, so little room to either side!

The autonomy I suggest is freedom from the weight of the past while avoiding the rush to the future. There is little about modern life that affords this notion of freedom. Perhaps that is the hook of my attention, being a simplistic contrarian. Regardless, one of the (few) benefits of maturation is coming to accept the inconsistencies of (my) life.

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Just as a note: the words “singular autonomy,” used above, were pulled from my current notebook. The one with the thick pages. As a rebellious exercise against Cartesian methodology I choose not to give it a name.

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The thoughts in my pointy little head.

In Books, Life, The Examined Life, The infinity of ideas, Writing on February 19, 2012 at 10:14 am

So, maybe it wasn’t retirement but a sabbatical? Or, how about this, The first breakup never lasts? Regardless, since shutting this journal down (journal–not the right word, but close) two months ago, I’ve been thinking a good bit about what I was doing here and why I was doing it.  It was on this morning’s walk–the sun coming up, patches of snow here and there, Lucy running about fancy free and then my first robin of  (dare I say it?) spring–it was on this morning’s walk that I realized how much I miss the venue. What did I miss?

First, while writing this blog (God, I hate that word, blog, it is ugly, overused and common.) I paid more attention–more attention to life, to nature, to the books I was reading and the thoughts that were coursing through my pointy little head.

Secondly, and obviously, the discipline of the writing kept me on a course, albeit a meandering course, of discovery. It was an outlet, a place to exercise a notion or two about whatever was going on at the moment. Without that discipline I’m more inclined to glide along like the dumb-ass mother nature made of me. (Who cannot resist the temptation for self-improvement?)

Too, I quit the writing here because I wanted to save up the writing energy for other projects. That still concerns me, there being only so much time and energy in a day. The net effect, however, seems that the other writing comes and goes regardless of what I do here–or don’t do.

Lastly, I missed the little community of this place. We were a nice group, good-looking enough, demographically all over the board, a hearty group with brio and a penchant for interesting conversation. That community, whether real or virtual, served up a sense of place and I miss that.

So, here goes, gonna give it another go.

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One of the things I’ve learned during this hiatus is the value of an understood purpose. That is, as it pertains to this journal, having a surer path, a sense of definition. What’s it about? And for you, dear reader, whiling away a fraction of your finite mortality here, why visit this place?

The answer lies in a question, my personal BIG question, the one I’ve been asking myself since my eighth birthday (I’ll share that story in a future posting): How should I live my life?

The lesser question is: what are the themes and vehicles with which to tackle the big question? (Remember Socrates’s observation that the unexamined life is not worth living? Well, how does one do that? How do you examine a life such as to make it more worthy?)

It boils down to a small handful of themes and that’s the stuff I want to spend time on here:

  • Reading and writing
  • Nature and the out-of-doors
  • Groundbreakers: Thinkers, troublemakers & adventurers

(Thank you, Susan. Your comments this past week made all this jell. (If you’ve ever wondered: Is it jell or gell, check here.))

Okay, that’s all for now. Stay tuned. And thanks for reading!


Christopher Hitchens

In Death, Writers, Writing on December 16, 2011 at 8:40 am

From: More Intelligent Life.com (The Economist)

Reprinted without permission:
TWITTER ON CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

~ Posted by Tim de LIsle, December 16th 2011

By their tweets shall ye know them. The death of Christopher Hitchens, the polemicist and boulevardier, came not as a shock, but still as a blow to many, and thousands of them were moved to comment on Twitter. Some just said they were sad, a fine sentiment but a fairly pointless one to broadcast to the world, because it’s not about you—it’s a lot sadder for family and close friends—and there’s not much point grabbing people by the lapels if you don’t have anything to say. Happily, many tweeters pushed themselves harder. Here’s a snapshot of some of the different approaches; tallies of followers have been trimmed to the nearest round number.

Salman Rushdie (150,000 followers) struck a note seldom heard on Twitter—the epic.

Goodbye, my beloved friend. A great voice falls silent. A great heart stops. Christopher Hitchens, April 13, 1949-December 15, 2011.

That line was widely quoted, and given prominence by the BBC. Among those who saw it there was the biographer and Intelligent Life contributing editor Julie Kavanagh, a friend of Hitchens, who said it was “the only time I’ve been moved to tears by a tweet”.

Richard Dawkins (283,000 followers), who has an interview with Hitchens in his role as guest editor of this week’s New Statesman, went for epic with added polemic:

Christopher Hitchens, finest orator of our time, fellow horseman, valiant fighter against all tyrants including God.

Tony Parsons (20,000 followers), the columnist and novelist, told a story:

Memory of Christopher Hitchens. 20 years ago—a live TV debate. Never saw anyone drunker in a green room. Never saw anyone sharper on air.

Matthew Sweet (2,000 followers), the BBC Radio 3 presenter and Intelligent Life regular, had a crisp vignette:

My #Hitch moment: singing a song about Tom Paine with him to the tune of God Save the Queen. He had a deep whisky & cigarettes bass.

At a moment like this, you see the importance of tone. Richard Bacon (1.37m followers), the BBC DJ, found the acceptable face of the “I’m sad” school of thought:

Oh bugger. Christopher Hitchens has died.

He was echoed by the young rock band Wild Beasts (13,000 followers), who were matey but sharp:

Christopher Hitchens, you old contrarian, RIP, in anywhere but heaven.

Violet Towers (400 followers), a probation officer who writes under a pseudonym, quoted Hitchens himself, elegantly:

“The four most overrated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex and picnics.”—Christopher Hitchens

The devout faced a dilemma: to chide or not to chide. One of them published a vindictive line about Hitchens and hell which is too dismal to quote in full. Another, the journalist Cristina Odone (700 followers), struck a happier note, as well as finding room for a gerund:

RIP #ChrisHitchens For 40 years being a journalist meant trying to be like the #Hitch. He’d laugh at my praying for him, but I will

Sterling Sunley, a book-lover from Vancouver (0 followers—quite a feat), gently upbraided some of the duller tweeters around him:

The person I would most like to hear about the legacy of Christopher Hitchens is Hitch himself; he would suffer no false sentiments.

Stephen Fry (3.5m followers), the actor, writer and British national treasure, marked the gravity of the occasion by restricting himself to only two adjectives, and going big on verbs instead:

Goodbye, Christopher Hitchens. You were envied, feared, adored, reviled and loved. Never ignored. Never bested. A great and marvellous man

There was plenty of warmth, but not much wit. Almighty God (27,000 followers)— one of several characters of that name on Twitter—did His best to fill the breach:

In honor of Christopher Hitchens I will admit it just this once: I Am Not Great.

while the writer Lisa Appignanesi (800 followers) found humour in the obituary on the Guardian site:

Laughing while reading an obit is an event only #Hitch makes possible

Someone said Hitchens had a God-given talent for writing—that might have really irritated him. And so might the fact that the tributes were joined by Piers Morgan, a journalist of a very different stripe. But in the best of these tweets, you could see what Hitchens himself stood for: vision, spark, the power of the word.

Tim de Lisle is editor of Intelligent Life

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The Year in Reading – 2011

In Books, Literature, Writers, Writing on December 3, 2011 at 3:03 pm

Two years ago I wrote a piece for The Millions called Literature is a Manner of Completing Ourselves–A Reader’s Year. The title is a quote from Susan Sontag. (If you’re a reader you should bookmark The Millions. It’s perhaps the best of the general lit blogs out there.) I came to write that essay because I had for the first time taken note of the books I’d read that year. It–the reading list–was nothing more than a simple spreadsheet, a record, the transcript of a twelve month journey turning pages. (Yes, all the reading was analogue, real paper pages.)

I have below pasted the reading list for 2012. It is interesting to compare the years. This year I read twenty-seven books, not counting the current book which I will finish before year’s end. In comparison to last year, 27 is less by a full 16%. And last year included one thousand page beast, Infinite Jest. No thousand pagers this year.  The really interesting comparison is to 2009, the list I wrote about in The Millions. This year by comparison is less 2009 by 27%. That is to say that in three years my reading pace has dropped by 25%. (Too, that year included two books over a thousand pages, Bolaño’s 2666 and Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen.) A quick calculation brings me to the conclusion that at this pace in about five years I will have stopped reading altogether.

Speaking of reading lists. Are you aware of Art Garfunkle’s? He’s a serious reader who has been keeping tally of books read since the 1960s. Here’s a link. To really drive it home, he goes another step to list his favorite books. Browsing through his list is almost as good as studying the library of a dinner host. (Which beats looking into their medicine cabinet any day.)

Here’s my list of books read in 2011. (I’ve linked the books I reviewed.)

  • Jan 7    Bound to Last, 30 Writers on their Most Cherished Book — Sean Manning, Ed.
  • Jan 8   The Maine Woods — H.D. Thoreau
  • Jan 24   A Widow’s Tale — Joyce Carol Oats
  • Feb 19   Portrait of a Marriage — Sándor Márai
  • Feb 28   The Foremost Good Fortune — Susan Conley
  • Mar 5    Moby Dick — Herman Melville (This was a third reading.)
  • Mar 21   The Sweet Relief of Missing Children — Sarah Braunstein
  • Mar 28   Tinkers — Paul Harding
  •  Apr 5    Seeds — Richard Horan
  • Apr 25   Fire Season — Phillip Connors
  • Apr 30   The Pale King — David Foster Wallace
  • May 7    The Mind’s Eye, Writings on Photography and Photographers — H. Cartier-Bresson
  • May 15   The Ongoing Moment — Geoff Dyer
  • May 30  The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore — Benjamin Hale
  • Jun 15    Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself — David Lipsky
  • Jun 21    The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas  — Gertrude Stein
  • Jul 10     The Tao of Travel — Paul Theroux
  • Aug 3     Feathers — Thor Hanson
  • Aug 15   The Surf Guru — Doug Dorst
  • Aug 20  The Story of Charlotte’s Web — Michael Sims
  • Oct 1      Disaster was my God — Bruce Duffy
  • Oct 20   The Great Leader — Jim Harrison
  • Nov 3     Blue Nights — Joan Didion
  • Nov 9     Beautiful & Pointless — David Orr
  • Nov 19   Swimming to Antarctica — Lynne Cox
  • Nov 29  The Triggering Town — Richard Hugo

Two last notes, should lists be your thing. Here are two that I’ve studied for years. The first is the reading list of St. Johns College in Annapolis, MD. St. Johns is better known as the Great Books School. The entire college education at St. Johns is based on the readings of original texts. Here is the undergrad reading list. It’s heavy duty. A little lighter and less intimidating is the Modern Library list of 100 best: Nonfiction & Fiction. One could do worse than read a few of these.

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The well gone dry!

In Creativity, Philosophy, Thinkers, Writing on February 7, 2011 at 6:00 pm

Since “retiring” my little blog-workshop two months ago, it appears that my creative life has gone down the drink, has indeed retired too. I’m not sure what is going on, but in an effort to focus my energies–stopping the blog, stopping the essays, curtailing the reviews, concentrating on my “book project”–I’ve lost them–my energies–altogether. To quote William James:

Sow an action and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.

I can’t speak to destiny, but by uprooting my habit(s) I’ve killed off what precious little fruit they bore. I have sown nothing. Garnered nothing in return.

I believe that the pattern of our life, the very structure of day to day living, affords us a(nother) way of infusing existence with meaning and purpose. Meaning is that which works, said the pragmatists.*  I disrupted the pattern, killed off the habit. Nothing working–meaning, kaput. I upset the applecart and am hereby announcing my effort to right it. “God keep me from ever completing anything,” wrote Melville in Moby Dick. Goodness, but I know how he feels.

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* Was Sisyphus happy, Camus wondered, because he knew the secret to happiness to be meaningful work?

“I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe.”

In Books, Dogs, Writers, Writing on December 28, 2010 at 8:21 pm

“…Oregon, and not toward Europe.” That is Henry David Thoreau in his famous “Walking” essay. He is, of course, speaking metaphorically and thinking like an American in America. It is my mantra for the new year. I am with a single exception, going to regulate my reading to American writers only. The single exception? Montaigne. I told a friend at dinner last night, “Some people read the Bible every day. I read Montaigne.” So, 2011 will bring me more Thoreau, Emerson, Mencken and so on and so on. And one Frenchman.

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I am retiring my blog indefinitely. I am retiring indefinitely. I am retiring. I am. I….

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My energies go into my book effort, working title: Notes of an Autodidact, a memoir of ideas.

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It has been two weeks since Maggie died. I am lost still…