Morris Shulman: The Writing Lesson (1935-43)

Better Acknowledge The Contradictions

Poised up here in my West-facing office window overlooking The Center Of The Universe, I must confess that I often feel far removed from everything. I use my office for creating more than for revisiting. I struggle to recreate even fond memories here. My responsibility extends no further than forward, inexorably moving beyond the experienced and past the known. Decades of experiences have not left me knowing even myself, much less anyone or anything else. I continue searching, increasingly wondering if my purpose ever was to finally find anything. I seek without the explicit expectation that I will find anything, even me, waiting at the end of my effort. I continue creating my purpose, adapting to emerging circumstances. This world, this life, and even this iAlogue Series were not as initially proposed. I proposed to find a motive rather than to frame an achievable objective. Should I achieve what I intended, I will have failed in the final performance. The reward for diligently seeking might finally be the need for even more diligent seeking. My purpose might never have been to conclude but to better acknowledge the contradictions. Thank you for following along.

Writing Summary
I began my writing week by Disappearing. This story proved most popular this period! “I'd return like the proverbial hero, fresh from my daunting journey to find the locks changed and my family relocated to parts unknown. I would be home, but home would have moved on without me …”

Claude Monet: Road toward the Farm Saint-Siméon, Honfleur (1867)

" … my world ultimately most skilled at Disappearing on me."
—
I recounted how The Muse and I might be from here but do not yet feel very much ‘of’ here in Acculturating. “I feel every bit an anthropologist here, maybe not precisely from Mars, but definitely 'of' someplace else.”

Albert Sterner:Three natures (1932)

“Nature is the realm of the unspeakable.
It has no voice of its own, and nothing to say.
We experience the unspeakability of nature
as its utter indifference to human culture.”

— James P. Carse
—
I characterized my writing and internal dialogue style in Lyricist. “A decent lyric usually emerges from an awful one. A catchy phrase gets improved by sloppy repetition.”

Hatta Kōyō 八田高容: Scholar’s Studio:
Rakushisha no aki [Autumn at the Rakushisha] (1925)

" … overlooking the center of the universe from the edge of the familiar abyss."
—
I experienced a midweek flashback to when I was a trainer charged with providing Training I refused to provide. “The suggestion that I might be Training others dredges up all the humiliation I first encountered in classrooms. I mostly do not want to know. I don't feel as though I can afford to.”

Totoya Hokkei: Trained Monkey Performing with Jingle and Gohei (1824)

" … many had been successfully entrained …"
—
I created my favorite story this week by writing about Grumps. my grandchildren’s ironic but earnest grandfather. “If he's occasionally grumpy, please understand that he's happy. His grumpiness was always a paper tiger, constructed out of leftover grocery bags, and never intended to scare off any inquiring grandchild.”

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes:
Old man on a swing (1825/27)

" … You'll get grumpy, too."
—
In Vaxxer, I ended my writing week in the shadow of Louis Pasteur, my arms sore, and I was still fully responsible. “We're primarily trustworthy, but certainly no more than mostly. We tend not to be pure anything; we cut our truths with sincere fiction.”

Timothy Cole: Louis Pasteur (1925)

"We are not nothing, but we're never entirely anything, either."
—
This writing week found me all over the place, weaving in and out of traffic as if I hadn’t quite found my vector. This always happens when I lose my compass. That first week in February always nudges me off my spot now, it being the anniversary of my darling daughter’s death. I do not revisit the shock and surprise, for nobody can revisit such things, but a wholesale reconsidering ensues, and I find myself faltering. If my vision seemed strong the week before, it faded. If my resolve seemed steadfast, it wobbled. I suspect that balance naturally requires such out-of-balance conditions, and what better homage to anybody’s absent presence than for me to at least temporarily lose my balance? It always starts with some Disappearing act. I notice something important missing. I experience alienation; I no longer feel entirely at home, and I begin Acculturating without really expecting to become acculturated. I wax lyrical; I write poems and curious stories that seem to need some music to accompany them. Training won’t help. My ironic, grumpy grandpa voice often swoops in to make sense of this space. I acknowledge that I’m not entirely anything. I have been trying to determine what and who I am now that my darling daughter’s no longer living. She reliably haunts me, though I seem to be the ghost. Thank you for following along!

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #iAlogue , #PureSchmaltz