Childish Desire
When I was a child, I visited my uncle and aunt during the summer holidays. The three of us, my younger sister, cousin and I spent our days building forts with bedsheets, playing miniature cricket with a ping-pong ball, watching cartoons on the black-white TV or eating juicy mangoes. I lived in Mumbai, but pretty far from the sea. My uncle’s home, on the other hand, was close to the beach and all the attractions. We would wait for my uncle and aunt to return from work and once they were energized on a cuppa hot, cardamom tea and samosas, we would create a ruckus until one of them agreed to take us to the beach. No matter how tired they were or the day they had had, they would be willing to take us there. We would pick up our beach toys and walk to Dadar Chowpatty. My uncle would spread a hand towel on the sand and settle down with another cup of tea and some roasted corn. The three of us children would run to the water, jumping and splashing around, getting entangled in the sea moss and other debris which would be inevitably floating around. We would watch the sunset and exchange notes on the colors we saw that day. We would then walk back to where my uncle sat and begin building sandcastles, still in wet clothes, the gentle summer breeze drying them faster than any machine. Of course, most of the time we would just throw sand at each other and try to bury one of us in there. The wet, heavy sand with the smell of the sea entrenched in every particle felt like a security blanket. There was a Ferris wheel with lights on it nearby but we didn’t care about it or any of the other jazzy attractions. Sometimes bubbles would drift out of nowhere. We never did find the source.
When it was time to go, we would make a quick stop at the local street food vendor and gobble up some Pani Pooris, puffs filled with chickpeas and soaked in a sweet and spicy sauce. We would then walk back home, brimming with joy, the taste of Pani Poori lingering on our tongues, not a worry in the world.
I have never felt more unfettered, untethered than I felt during those endless summer days. I wish I could experience that freedom, that joy of being carefree again.
That’s my desire, to be as free as a child. And if paradise exists, this would be my paradise.
Book Publishing - A Few Things I’ve Learned
In the fall of 1985 I sat down at an ancient typewriter and called myself a writer. I wrote short stories, one after another, and nine years later published my first one. Eventually I collected the best of them, and this became my 2011 title, All The Roads That Lead From Home. My seventh book, a novel entitled Maggie’s Ruse, was just released by Unsolicited Press. Between those two books a lot of things happened, and I went up a steep and often difficult learning curve.
Here are some of things I learned.
It’s difficult to get a book into the world. The huge effort of writing it aside, a book needs good editing. Finding mistakes is hard, and it takes many sets of eyes. It also needs a stellar cover design and a pleasing interior layout. The people who make this happen are crucial. No book comes into being without them.
Books move slowly. The time between the acceptance email or letter, if one is old school, and holding the galley or ARC (Advanced Reading Copy) in one’s hand can be months, a year, or even longer, depending on the other books your publisher already in the queue. You have to be patient with the both the submission process, and waiting for next steps. You may find that not seeing your manuscript for a while means you react to it differently. Did you really mean to say that, and in that way? Yes, you did. Trust your work.
A story collection has an arc, just as a novel does, but isn’t as complex as a novel from a writing/creation standpoint. Other authors may disagree, and that’s their right. My book publishing journey began with two short story collections, and then, after a lot of dithering and hand-wringing, a novel. Writing a novel became necessary when I realized I wanted more room to roam, to really dig into someone’s heart and soul, and take the long view of things. It’s said that in a short story, a character is revealed, and that in a novel, a character develops. I’ve found this to be true, and directly related to how much space I’m able to give someone on the page.
Getting people interested in your book is a lot harder than you think. Marketing is its own world, and it’s not easy. You can spend a lot of money on advertising and placement and still sell only a few copies. A good, well-connected publicist really helps get the word out. It take a while to learn where to invest your promotion dollar, and you need to be savvy about what’s a good investment and what isn’t. For what it’s worth, I think Instagram is great platform for promoting books. People talking about your book, next to a beautiful photograph of it, can be awfully persuasive for people looking for their next read.
Readers land on your pages with their own set of expectations. If you book disappoints them, they’ll say so, and not always nicely. Reading is a skill just the way writing is, and sometimes readers let their preconceived ideas about stories get in the way. A good reader will suspend her personal paradigm and dive in with an open mind. These are the readers you want, not the ones who wish you’d written a different book that they would have liked better.
Writing evolves, and so does book publishing. Nothing stays the same for long, whether at the writer’s desk, or your publisher’s planning session. Despite what one hears about the decline of brick and mortal bookstores, independent book sellers—and publishers—are alive and well. People in this country read a lot, and there’s always healthy demand for new and well-written titles. Meeting that demand, and finding an edge, keeps the whole thing moving forward. That said, I always urge writers to write from the heart, and not into the marketplace. A beautiful story, beautifully told, will always find a home.
The Fallen Man
A man robbed of his kindness bestows cruelty.
A man robbed of his empathy bestows antipathy.
A man robbed of his laughter bestows sadness.
A man robbed of his dreams bestows nightmares.
A man robbed of his confidence bestows insecurity.
A man robbed of his skills bestows unemployment.
A man robbed of his bread bestows hungriness.
A man robbed of his clothing bestows nakedness.
A man robbed of his sight bestows blindness.
A man robbed of his hearing bestows deafness.
A man robbed of his limbs bestows impairment.
A man robbed of his wealth bestows poverty.
A man robbed of his freedom bestows slavery.
A man robbed of his liberation bestows incarceration.
A man robbed of his kingdom bestows homelessness.
A man robbed of his soulmate bestows loneliness.
A man robbed of his ray of light bestows darkness.
A man robbed of his principles bestows emptiness.
A man robbed of his essence of soul bestows alexithymia.
A man who has nothing left to be robbed of bestows detachment.
A man who has no reasons to live for bestows time.
Humanity who no longer has control over a man bestows him with freedom.
Humanity who no longer has control over a man bestows him with power.
Humanity who no longer has control over a man bestows him a title of The Enemy.
Humanity who no longer has control over a man should never FUCK with him.
For I am that Fallen Man!
Image: The Silent Warrior - Best of Mastodon 2018 Award.
Trigger Warning: ‘Who is Jesus?’
“But what about you?” Jesus asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.”
That sound-bite is from the Bible, book of Mark, chapter 8, verse 29. It asks a simple question:
“Who is Jesus?”
Some say he never existed.
That’s one answer.
Some say Jesus was a good guy—great teacher. Someone to be respected, appreciated, acknowledged.
Others (including me) agree with the Apostle Peter: He is Messiah.
I’ll add this: Jesus of Nazareth is the “Son of God”: Born of a virgin. Lived a perfect life. Sacrificed himself (willingly and unselfishly) on a cross. “Lamb of God” who took away the sins of the world. Died. Buried. Rose from the dead. Ascended into Heaven and will return—some day.
Jesus is a divisive figure. Sentiments vary about him, his message, and the religion that grew up around him. Here are some examples:
– The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (circa 1952) referred to the carpenter from Nazareth as “the mythological founder of Christianity.”
– Voltaire, the French writer, historian and philosopher, addressed the religion Jesus spawned this way: “Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.”
– Penn Jillette, of Penn & Teller fame, offered this observation about the book that Christians study to learn more about their savior: “It’s fair to say that the Bible contains equal amounts of fact, history, and pizza.”
– Mahatma Gandhi was more generous toward Jesus and his mission, describing him as, “A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.”
Gandhi also reportedly said: “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
– Napoleon Bonaparte’s opinion about Christ was decisive and direct: “I know men, and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between Him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creation of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded His empire upon love; and at this hour, millions of men would die for Him.”
– C.S. Lewis, the popular British writer, came up with what Christian apologist Josh McDowell dubbed the “trilemma”:
“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
When I first read that quote about 50 years ago, it stopped me in my tracks, grabbed me by the throat, and rattled my soul.
Of course, not everyone agrees with Lewis.
Here’s an excerpt from an article at Infidels.org written by Jim Perry:
“The argument which (Josh) McDowell calls the ‘trilemma’ is popular among amateur apologists for Christianity. It was first popularized by C.S. Lewis, and has become even more common since McDowell reworked it. It is logically weak, but it is rhetorically powerful—as its popularity and recurrence attest—and so worth considering in more detail than it might otherwise merit.”
Later in the article Perry writes: “…this argument is flawed. First, it relies for impact on a premise which is both ambiguous and controversial, which is the question of just what ‘Jesus’ claims’ were. Second, it makes unwarranted extrapolations from the general idea of saying something known not to be literally true to the worst sort of malicious lying, and from believing something which is not true to raving lunacy.”
(See more at https://infidels.org/library/modern/jim_perry/trilemma.html.)
Why bring this up at all?
Am I a trouble-maker? Rebel-rouser? Religious fanatic who wants to ram his beliefs down somebody’s throat?
Nope, nope, and nope.
(Let’s face it, if I tried to do that, you’d be offended, resentful—and rightly so.)
I’m just a retired guy living in Florida, taking his last lap in life, and feeling that, at this late date, it’s time I made clear my position on Jesus. Do I think I can persuade everybody? Nope. That’s neither my job nor my intent. I just want to be able, when I step into eternity, feel like I made clear what I believe.
Where did I come up with such a crazy idea?
From the Apostle Paul, writing in Romans, chapter 10, verse 9:
“If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved…” (NASB)
This little write-up is my way of declaring, publicly, that I believe that Jesus is Lord, the Messiah, the son of the living God—and that he rose from the dead.
What about you?
Let’s say that, today, you bumped into Jesus at the beach or the mall or at your place of work. You chat a bit, then he looks you straight in the eye, and asks, “Who do you say I am?”
And your answer is . . .
NEXT TIME: “What is Faith?”
The Short Happy Discussion with Papa
I must have been shitfaced at the time. I had to be, but to tell the truth, I hadn't had much to drink, maybe three, possibly four pint drafts of the local island-brewed craft beer. Hell, that 4.7 crap doesn't usually affect me. It normally takes at least a half dozen to start the slur. The stuff wasn't bad, although not quite hoppy enough for my taste. My preference would have been a double-hop IPA craft beer, but in Key West, you're lucky to have any craft beer that isn't laced with coconut or key lime. Gotta confess, it's kind of a she-she town, or whatever that thing is called where testosterone is at low tide. Of course, I headed for Sloppy Joes, one of the two bars in town claiming to have been Hemingway's hangout where he wrote much of his work. He was the author that started me down this long, lonesome road of rejection. I was in high school and couldn't give a rat's ass about anything my English teacher said unless it contained the word 'girls'. I listened only enough to get the homework assignment and perfunctorily plodded and nodded through Shakespeare and Coleridge. My negativity mitigated somewhat when I hit Hersey's Hiroshima, but after that, the slide back to boring continued. Then Mr. Burns turned the page and got us into the short story, and one in particular, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber blew me away. (It blew Macomber away, too.) It was just a short story, but it was rife with underlying meaning.
My lady and I had decided to spend a week in Key West at a VRBO rental during the offseason. We weren't Parrotheads, but we had heard a lot about the place and decided to go. We quickly discovered it was a pretty dull place, all tourism crap and drinking establishments. Not much interest for Franki (my wife) and me who had traveled the globe, been on safari, and climbed Mount Everest - well, almost climbed Mount Everest. We made it as far as the North base camp, 16,900 feet elevation. Franki couldn't handle the rare atmosphere and had difficulty breathing and had to be evacuated to a hospital in Katmandu, where she recovered without complications.
We were bored as hell after days of doing the tourist thing, visiting the Truman summer white house, getting blasted in surrounding pubs, and boinking each other's brains out while watching porn. I had to take a break from all those things, so I told Franki I was going to grab a couple of beers at Sloppy Joes, the place rumored to have been the watering hole for Ernest Hemingway. She was limping gingerly when I told her, and didn't make a peep that she wanted to go with. I told her not to wait up, but the truth was she would have feigned sleep even if I came home at 8:00. Whatever.
Joes was only a short walk, and it was a warm night, but that goes unsaid. Every night in the Keys is warm - and muggy. When I got to the place, the air conditioning inside felt good. It wasn't cold because a cold room is not conducive to drinking cold draft beer. Smart move on the owners' part. But the temp was adequate. To a bar aficionado, it was a pretty neat place: a large rounded bar with hard stools of varying wood colors, a colorful marquee of drinks over the liquor island announcing the various libations available, mostly "island" specialties and classic mixed drinks like Martinis and Sidecars. You were on your own for craft beer selection. You had to walk up to the area where the taps were and read the spigot labels or ask the barkeep. Everything was wood - the bar, the stools, the floor. No laminates that I could see. A good sign to me. Pictures of Hemingway adorned all the walls, one a mug shot on a LIFE magazine cover blown up to four times size, shots of the man fishing, drinking, laughing, meeting with various dignitaries. An enormous stuffed fish was mounted on a wall way up high. I'm no fisherman, but I'd say it was a swordfish. The second bar was just off to the side and was also rounded, but a lot smaller. There were two guys sitting at opposing corners carrying on what appeared to be a disagreement about something.
Offseason, Tuesday evening, not many people in the place which I thought was unusual given its notoriety, maybe eight or ten customers at the large bar, and two at the smaller one. I walked to the area of the taps and studied them, and seeing no brands of craft beer I recognized, ordered a Funky Buddha Hop Gun IPA. The name was a little crazy, but IPA sold it for me. No way was I going to order one of the others; Mermaid Kisses, Strawberry Wheat Ale, and Key Lime Coconut Ale. What the hell is wrong with people who drink that crap?
I sat at the large bar, away from the regulars who were enjoying drinks and conversation. Occasionally, someone would come in and sit near me, order a beer and leave. Some of them would make small talk with me. Apparently they were tourists, or at least non-regulars. After my third beer, and ensconced in the Hemingway zone, a strange thing happened. I thought at first the lights had been dimmed, but then I noticed it was as bright as ever, but the colors were fading. I mean the colors of everything, the marquee, in particular, caught my eye. The words printed in reds and blues turned gray all of a sudden. What the hell is going on? I rubbed my eyes. Nope, didn't help, all black and white with levels of gray. The massive flat screen TV overhead disappeared, and in its place was a monster CRT 21-inch black and white TV. I was about to rush out of there and look for an eye doctor, when I glanced over at one of the tables. As if Scotty had beamed him aboard, a flashing, shimmering figure of a man started to appear, and then the full man could be seen. Lord, help me. This was just too weird. He was sitting at one of the small tables and poring through a black floppy leather notebook and furiously writing. It looked like...it couldn't be...but it was. The Grand Master of Short Stories himself - Ernest Hemingway. In black and white no less. WTF. He's dead, isn't he? I rubbed my eyes again, and when the image was still there, I chugged my beer. I sat and watched, dumbfounded, staring at the ghostly image. He kept writing and on several occasions glanced up from his work to see me staring at him. He said nothing at first, but it finally got to him, and he laid his pencil down, put his hands folded up in front of his mouth, lowered them again and held his arms outstretched. "What? Is something wrong?" He spoke in a friendly manner, not at all unkind. Thinking his question was rhetorical, I just sat there like a dummy without answering. He kept staring. "Well. Is something wrong? Is there a problem?"
All the hubbub in the noisy bar ceased, and I felt everyone staring at me now. I had to say something. "No, nothing wrong. You just remind me of someone."
A sardonic smile appeared on his handsome white-bearded face. "I remind you of someone, eh? Who would that someone be?" Before I could answer, he filled in the blank to his question. "I know. You think I look like Ernest Hemingway. Is that it? I get that all the time."
I felt relieved I wasn't the first one to see the likeness. "Why did you come to Sloppy Joes?" he asked. "There are a lot of other bars around."
"I heard it was the place Hemingway frequented and I wanted to have a looksee." He laughed heartily.
"But why, son. Are you, were you a fan?"
"Yeah, I was," I said, almost sounding indignant.
"What did you like about his writing, I mean, what was your favorite, The Old Man and The Sea, For Whom The Bell Tolls? Something else?
"I liked his short stories best."
"Which ones?"
"Well, I've read them all, but the one that stands out, for me, at least, is The Short Happy Life of Vincent Macomber."
"You mean Francis Macomber."
"What? Oh, yeah, Francis Macomber."
"Well, come on over and set a spell. Tell the barkeep to make me another one of these," and he held up a large rocks glass with a greenish tinted liquid and a couple of ice cubes. "Get whatever you're drinking and tell him to put it on my tab."
I didn't know who this Hemingway-lookalike was, but I thought it'll be nice to have a conversation about Hemingway with a local. So I ordered the drinks and carried them over to the man sitting at the table who was smiling as if he knew a secret that I didn't. I sat and pushed his drink in front of him. "What're you drinking? Is that Absinthe?" Apparently, everything I said was funny to this guy, and he laughed again.
"No. Absinthe, the real stuff, was made illegal long, long ago. They claimed it was an aphrodisiac. It wasn't the alcohol content they objected to, but it was a dangerous drug that caused hallucinations. You can get stuff today they call Absinthe, but it's not the real stuff. This is a Gin Gimlet I'm drinking. Gordon's Gin and Rose's Lime Juice."
"You sound like you've had Absinthe before. The real stuff, I mean."
"Oh yeah. A long time ago. I spent quite a bit of time in Paris hanging out with friends during the '20s. We drank a lot of it. And, it was brutal. I would wake up naked three days later, not knowing where the hell I was."
"Paris? You lived there?"
"Well...sort of. I spent a lot of time in hotels over a four year period. And I crashed with friends when I had to."
"What were you doing in Paris? Work or play?"
"I was lucky enough to earn a living in Paris, but yes,...it was work and play."
"What did you do?"
"I wrote articles for newspaper and magazines."
I knew then I was talking to the real thing. I didn't know how or why, but I knew this guy was no imposter. To check my newfound enlightenment, I stood and introduced myself. He didn't stand, but he shook my hand and said, "Nice to meet you, Jack. I'm Ernest." I fucking-A-well knew it -- Papa Hemingway himself.
"So, tell me," he said. "What did you like about my story?" I knew Hemingway realized I knew who he was now, and was comfortable with it, so he stopped using second person pronouns and reverted to the first person.
"Hell, Ernest. You've had quite a life," was what I started with.
He lowered his head, looking forlorn. "My life is all a public record, even those parts I would rather have kept to myself. The bastards that wrote it got a lot of it wrong."
"What are some of the things they got wrong?"
"My death, for one. That was their biggest mistake. They wrote I was depressed because of a lot of unfounded reasons. My war wounds which hurt, my worries about money, the FBI surveillance on me - that bastard Hoover - yadda, yadda, yadda. Of course, all those things contributed to my undoing, but there were more important factors."
"Like what?"
"They failed to mention that all of my closest friends had died, and that did depress me. But other things caused my downfall. The Absinthe I consumed is one reason no one has mentioned. You asked me about it. It destroyed my ability to maintain mental equilibrium for very long. After falling prey to the Green Fairy, as it was called, along with booze, plus my absolute hatred of complacency, I was no longer the same. My writing came in spurts after my time in Paris in the '20s. Days of lucidity followed days of depression. When I was at the Mayo Clinic in the early '60s, they treated me with drugs and electroshock therapy, maybe twenty times. If frazzled my brain. That was the beginning of the end. When we returned to our home in Ketchum, Idaho, I had had it. I knew it was time to go. For my family's sake, I didn't want to end it that way, but I knew it was the only way. I was in so much pain, with so much depression, and I was such a burden on my wife and family, I ended it like a man; with my old trusty shotgun, leaving no chance of resuscitation." He sat silently for a couple of minutes after telling me this, his hands folded together, and his elbows resting on his knees. He looked down at the floor, reminiscing perhaps of the event itself.
Having broached the subject of the elephant in the room, I continued his line of thought. "But Ernest, if you...if you are..?"
"Dead? Say it. It's okay." He looked at me quizzically. "It was you who summoned me here."
"Me?" I was flabbergasted. "What do you mean I summoned you here? I had nothing to do with it."
He laughed. "Jack. I was...I was...someplace else. You were sitting in my hangout, thinking about my works, and my life. And wishing you had answers. It was you who yanked me back." He looked as if I had already known this.
Confused at this disclosure, I was frantic to change the subject and restarted our talk about Vincent - I mean Francis - Macomber. "I think that was your greatest short story ever, Ernest, and I am not alone with that thinking. You ushered in a whole new way of writing, and I think that story was at the zenith of your style."
"Thanks, Jack. I wrote it in the '30s, late in the '30s, I think, maybe 1938 when I was flashing in and out from the Absinthe. I must say when I was in the throes of literary lucidity, good things happened. I had been thinking about that short story for years before I actually wrote it. The Absinthe hallucinations made it possible. Did you understand my underlying thoughts within the story?"
I thought about his question for a while. It had been quite long ago I had read the story and I was trying to recall it. "Was the wife ever charged with murder? That's the first question comes to mind."
"Well, murder it was. You got that right. But no, she was never charged. She was never even arrested for suspicion."
"Jeez, Ernest. It was clearly evident she murdered him, especially given how she castrated the man at every opportunity. And she wasn't charged?"
"That's the point, lad. Look at the whole picture. The woman controlled everything. She was a beautiful woman who became the trophy wife of a wealthy man. She dominated him and treated him like scum. They both had an unknown agreement with each other. She couldn't leave him and lose the money. She was a bitch gold digger. He wouldn't leave her because of her beauty, her appearance to his friends and business associates. So they were stuck with each other as long as he was less than a man in her opinion and she dominated him. When he turned and ran during the lion hunt, it gave her more fuel for the fire, and she openly had sex with Wilson, who was nothing more than a male prostitute. Her husband was a coward. He knew, but there was nothing he could do about it if he wanted to keep her as his wife. But then he started to show signs of bravery, courageous man-type bravery, when he faced the buffalo. She knew then she was losing him, that he would never again kowtow to her, and would leave her to find another woman. She could not live with that, so she quickly decided to get rid of him and keep all the money. So she shot him."
"But I don't understand. If she killed him, and it was apparent it was murder, why was she not charged?
Ernest laughed at this. "Think about it. Throughout the story, Wilson broke the laws. He was shooting from a moving vehicle, totally against the law, and was bagging game that was protected by the laws. He was using ammunition and guns that were not approved for the sport. Francis had warned him early not to let his wife get anything "on" him as she would use it against him. So, in the end, both Wilson and Francis' wife had something on each other, things neither of them could divulge for fear of reprisal. And so, he testified it was merely a hunting accident." Abruptly, he looked at his wristwatch, a Rolex Oyster I noticed. "Uh-oh, gotta go. Nice talking with you, Jack." He looked me square in the eyes and said "I'll see you next time. Call again." And as he spoke those words, his body started to shimmer, and after a couple of seconds, he was gone completely.
I picked up his empty glass and along with mine, returned them to the bar. I looked at the drink menu marquee and noticed it was color-coded again, and turned to the TV, noting it again was a large flat screen, showing a soccer match somewhere in the world. In full living color. And as I walked through the door to the outside world, I heard the bartender say, "Welcome to the club, Jack."
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Checkmate
Everyone maneuvers like it’s chess
If you don’t, you’re a pawn I bet
Like to think I’m a knight, armor’s best
No king or queen to protect
Has made for a more restless me
Heart beat hitting till I shuffle feet
Most build a house with cutdown trees
I make crosses to remind me
Of every bridge I lit, brilliantly
Sincerely sorry for my always
Fucked off attitude, it’s my aptitude
To see clues, bread crumbs of blues
Bending till myself’s consumed
Tending moons, my own dude
Trying to find a way with maps erased
Religion in question, compass hazed
Trace my tattoos, wonder ‘who are you’
Didn’t choose, woke up confused
Middle fingers fixed at wrong crews
Sipping holy water, shooting hoops
Where most dance with the devil too
Made amends with my demons
Wear their shoes, not my reasons
Maybe I should pretend to care
Fake it till I make it there
Become a better man than I dare
No one knows me though they stare
Through windows to my souls a glare
That’s my phoenix fighting hell
Told the devil fuck off, not for sale
Keep it on the level, my sword and scale
Skid the edges like a rail, refuse to fail
I know the secrets they want kept
Chained us down with their debt
Everyone maneuvers like it’s chess
If you don’t, you’re a pawn I bet
Like to think I’m a knight, armor’s best
No king or queen to protect
Has left me checkmating my own set
The Matter of Perspective
I read Canadian news when American news becomes too much handle. It works for me, since often American news still gets coverage in Canada as having a crazy neighbor means you pay them extra attention. One day a news article popped up titled something unmemorable, like "More People Opting Not to Own Cars" or to that effect.
"Oh ho, the dapper Canadians are forgoing cars now, how ecofriendly of them," I think and proceed to browse the article. Only to discover, after several paragraphs, that the number of car sales in Canada has actually increased over the past few years -- a large, headline-killing fact skipped over and only mentioned as an aside.
Why? Because the author of the article recently gave up their own car, and so did their son, and then their friend...and therefore from their perspective "Wow, look at all these people opting not to own cars anymore, this must be a trend!"
If that Canadian article had only been published in, say, a tight urban center with myriad public transit options it might have been received better. As it was, the comment section (which in national Canadian news cannot be anonymous) was not kind.
I've made this same mistake myself when I think back on my personal experiences and then erroneously extrapolate them as great truths of the world. I grew up in a small farming community of 6000ish people - all white - and hence my experiences were limited. I didn't see things like racism because there weren't other races around. Our small town never suffered from rising rents or gentrification. No one in my school planned on going to college as most came from blue-collar families, so free college didn't make much difference to us. My bubble of the world, all in all, was pretty isolated from the issues raged about on the news.
Then my father lost his job - a common occurance in Ohio during the last great recession - and we had to move to California. Then suddenly all these issues made way more sense. My perspective had changed - not the actual status of the world.
Perspective is a dangerous, because it colors everything we do and how we prioritize the world around us. Too often people disregard things which don't directly impact them or their neighbors. Not living in a ghetto? Oh well for crime rates. Not living on the border? Oh well for immigration. Not dealing with police shootings in your community? Oh well for racial profiling. Not living on an island or the coast? Oh well for rising sea levels.
Any facts which fall outside the purview of our own lens of experience will not have as great an impact as facts which we can validate ourselves. This means that in a giant melting pot of different socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, we lose common ground because we have forgotten the age old art of seeing things from a different perspective. What if you had to deal with this problem directly? What if you hadn't been born where you are now? What if you weren't the same sex/gender/race you are now? Would you have the same views? Would you feel the same way?
And honestly this call to arms should fall on us as writers because more than anything, we are the ones who present windows into the multifaceted perspectives across this planet. Ensuring that different perspectives are not only heard but brought to life and empathized with is the core of what good writing should do. Whether you write about your own perspective, or help someone who may not be gifted or confident enough to share their experiences with others, you should always strive to present not just facts but the perspectives behind them.
And if we want to ensure critical reading skills, we should always strive to identify the shortcomings in our own perspective lens - as well as the lens of those authors we read - and try to broaden it as much as possible.