March 8. The Fridays are zooming by, as are the weeks, of course, but Fridays seem to measure the passage of the weeks better than any other day, signaling the end of another work week in which not all that much was accomplished.
I am distancing myself from the firm. With the passage of each day closer to leaving, my sense of what is important at work diminishes (though I am speaking more of firm things than matters requested by clients). I want to keep up with work, but there are so many details of our trip to attend to. I spent a whole day last week making reservations at places across the country, and I have spent a day putting together our visa application and a day looking at schools (I'm sure that was more than one day). There are countless hours plotting out the US trip, and studying areas in England, trying to understand where to live, etc.
Spoke with the British consulate this week, the Scottish woman said the application looked good, but then proceeded to add required details; mainly they are details, but a major requirement is proving we will send our children to independent schools.
I have now prepared what I think is a fairly realistic budget for a month of traveling across the country:
Gasoline: 4,554 miles (3,954 trip and 25 per day) at 11 mpg, $1.50 pg: $621
Lodging: Confirmed by hotels: $2,885
Meals: $100 per day, $2,400
Orlando: $200 per day, $800
New York: $100 per day, $400
Total: $7,106
So far I haven't seen any encouraging signs that independent schools will be at all affordable. This really seems to be the biggest obstacle: £1500 per child per year seems at the low end (i.e., cheap schools) and that, at $1.85 is $8,325 a year for the three children! But I refuse to think this cannot be done and keep plodding away. In addition to groceries, utilities, travel, clothes, medical, etc., the overall basic necessity budget is:
USA Trip: $7,105
Airplane Tickets: $6,140
School: $10,000
Rent (10 months at £775): $14,338
Rent commission: $1,435
Car: $18,000
TOTAL: $57,108
I have thought that the only way to do this would be through a loan, somehow tied to my anticipated share of our fees in the PR case, and, of course, this is how it's shaping up. Although I spend some hard time worrying, I assume everything will work out. In fact everything has always worked out.
I am beginning to worry more about the sense of isolation I feel compelled to follow. I need to break away from where I am, to change my life and to follow some new path; yet by nature I am an isolationist: I write letters instead of call, I look inside rather than outside. This results in a lot of journal writing and even the authorship of an autobiography, yet I have failed to follow through with exposing my work to the outside world. Most times I simply say, no time, and it literally is true, for I am not very efficient. I want to "make it" in the "real world," though I am not enough driven by business motives to pursue the "making" of "it." I have always needed a protector, my family, my law firm, through which I can fit into the world. Perhaps it will be different next year. It will have to be different if I want to succeed; but I find it hard to imagine. Pushing myself upon the world (instead of easing myself back into the law firm) is just the thing I am getting out of doing in the year ahead.
I want to get out of the rat race, but I have not yet renounced the rewards of the rat race. I still long to make it within that world, both for my own satisfaction and the comfort of my family. (I still long to be able to snub my nose at the world, while it heaps its rewards upon me. Writing a best seller seems a way to do such a thing, but all of this makes me a liar in my pursuit of a good relationship with my Maker.) It is hard to juggle all these things and hard, very hard, to focus on the next world, when the demands of this world are so awesome. Perhaps it just makes me feel better to write this. I do know that, for a long time, I have trusted in God, and I have not been disappointed. Perhaps the answer is simply the need to trust in God even more so than before!
March 11. Cold and windy. Rain expected.
Some thoughts on writing after our interesting discussion, at Barbara M's last night, of Tom Wolfe's Tangerine Kolored, etc.
Coming of age novels are the logical result of the novelist creating a world, to the exclusion of all others (i.e., a world totally preoccupied with self). Novels which concern the world outside take a far greater talent, for the writer must be able to create a fictional self in a fictional world which corresponds to the real world, yet does not overwhelm the character the way the real world overwhelms all of us. The plot occurs as the fictional characters interact with the fictional world (thus the need that the world not overwhelm the character, but present surmountable problems, except perhaps tragedy?). Interaction of the characters with the world results or should result in an emotion which the author has sought, e.g., satisfaction that the character has won out or perhaps perplexity (who has won?). In the last analysis, the fictional world must correspond to the real world to such a faithful or representative degree that the novel has a message for us in the real world (e.g., you can't fight it, you can win if you just keep trying, etc.).
One of the pieces I have always very much enjoyed is The Waste Land, both because the world (memory and desire, the modern world of aimlessness and perplexity and pleasure and, yes, angst) and the self Eliot creates, and the relationship of that self to this world are right on. The self of the 20th century does not know where the hell it fits in. There is too much going on, not only in sensory perception (easy side of things) but in society (war, other cultures, other languages). Where do we fit in? Don't we find ourselves aimlessly drifting about, not sure of where we fit in, yet plagued by the plain fact that we do, indeed must, fit in. We are part of something that we do not understand, perhaps cannot ever understand, a world which at times seems to be entirely of our own making and control as we recreate and reorder reality within so that it makes sense: what are we to make of such control, yet such helplessness?
Perhaps these ideas will help me recreate my world. What emotion do I want my reader to have?
March 12. I feel guilty about coming to work these last several weeks, I do not seem to be getting anything done. K. would call me inefficient, I plead guilty on all accounts to that offense. The days go by very fast. Yesterday it seemed I spent half a day writing a letter to the proprietor of British Homes - London Flats in order to hire her and her company to find us a home in England
The question which occurs most is: "Are you taking the whole family?" Then, "What are you going to do?" Now, "Where are you going to stay?"
Being inefficient is not all that bad, for it leaves me with a lot of time to study and work with words (my downfall!). I see a greater problem that affects my life: what if I am inefficient in the overall plan of my life? I mean, what if, on my death bed, I am still planning my life and what to do with it?
Wonderfully, I think, being inefficient in life works well in the long run, for being inefficient is also a way of enjoying each moment. When my heart attack or cancer or stroke or AIDS or accident comes, it will not, of course, matter whether I was able to produce things effectively and efficiently in this life, but whether I enjoyed the life that was given to me; whether I increased joy in the world (dare I not hide my light under a bushel basket, I hope!) and so forth. Being inefficient helps.
March 13. This morning when I stopped at 7-11 on my way to work for my usual cup of coffee and orange juice, I heard a fellow say, "stuck in Las Vegas Las Vegas
It is true that there are two cities here, the one that everybody knows and the one in which we who live here reside, but the two worlds cannot really be separated; because of the relative size of the gaming industry to the community at large, we cannot ignore the famous Las Vegas. The hotel/casino work force is a large part of the population. Even those who do not work in the industry see the ads, cannot avoid the physical presence of the Strip, where we go to see a show, eat or gamble.
Our close connection with the Strip is what makes Las Vegas Hollywood Disneyland . Hollywood entertainment is more private than gambling: the laughter, the tears and other emotions are personal experiences in a darkened theater, not necessarily interactive activities, such as sitting across the blackjack table from a dealer, bumping elbows with a fellow slot player or standing back from someone rolling the dice. Awards ceremonies are an attempt to make Hollywood more concrete by actually permitting us to see the gods and goddesses, but the party is closed to all but the elect. Las Vegas is just the opposite. It is open to all; and when the stars come here, they must come in person and perform before a live audience, one that is small in comparison to the movies' mass audiences.
There is no way Las Vegas Las Vegas Los Angeles San Bernardino MGM , 1973), and the Mirage (1989) and Excalibur (1990), the resorts have made a statement, like the "Hollywood" sign in the hills or the Matterhorn at Disneyland, but, unlike Southern California, here there is nothing to compete with that statement. The Strip, smack dab in the middle of town, is a constant reminder that, unlike the occasional glimpse of a sign in the hills, no matter how hard those of us who live here might wish to forget it, the resorts are what Las Vegas
And that, I suppose, is why one should simply pass through this town: the entertainment is not temporary or local or portable or lost in the crowd, it is the customer who occupies that role in Las Vegas
March 15. Thomas now speaks in sentences of three words: "Woof broke dat." "Papa woouk home?" "Woof outside?"
Bedroom, Wellsprings Retreat House, Boulder City
It is as cold a March night as I can remember, in the low 40's. Through the window the clarity of the night sky makes the night seem bigger than it is elsewhere. (Am I that far away from the fifteen or sixteen year old boy lying on his bed eating red licorice and reading Batman comics?)
Eight or nine months ago I went to sleep in this room thinking of the surgeries, dead people, screaming mothers and babies echoing in the halls of this old hospital building. Perhaps my imagination attached itself to the groan of the air conditioner, droning on and on through the summer night, like the scream of the building, the pent up energy of the structure itself. Now winter remains outside, the walls and the windows protect me even without the heater. The room is silent and the night makes no noise, not so much as a creak from the block building, just the occasional jet airplane, a constant reminder of the intrusion of the 20th century upon our lives.
Maybe I am headed in the opposite direction from the one I have been headed in for thirty years. Perhaps I am on a road back toward a new childhood of old age, where I will meet up with the real me I left behind so long ago. My dreams have always been too great, they have involved more than I require; yet what do I require?
The house suddenly makes the sound of heat: air forced past the windows, windows mildly rattled. It sounds as if the house is a moving car. The feeling is not there, just the sound.
March 16. Bedroom, Wellsprings Retreat House. Saturday morning. We have a lovely sunny room on the east side of the building. Yesterday was cloudy and the lowest high (48) on record. Today there are only a few clouds in the sky. Went for a walk this morning from to , looked out over the lake, walked to 7-11, bought a cup of coffee and the RJ to read about the Runnin' Rebels NCAA first round tournament victory over Montana
I started off with the explanation that I was going to pretend to be a writer for a year. Now I say I am going to write. Of course. Now, the question is, "What are you going to write?" I usually respond that I will write a novel, though after reading Tom Wolfe I better like the idea of being an observer of culture. Still, I am very vague about the whole business. Perhaps I should now get more serious and specific: I want to be able to understand the world and to write about it in a way that will illustrate to my readers its foolishness, its traps and its faults to such a degree that they can see the world as it really is and live accordingly. (This does not mean that I want to change the world, though of course I do.) I also want to point out the beauties of the world and the wonder of its ticks (and tocks).
We had a prayer service this morning with an interesting reading. The psalm was to the effect that we must understand and hate evil. I find this interesting because I often find myself praying for acceptance of the world in which I live, without necessarily an understanding of it. I do not look for evil and I hesitate to judge what might be evil. If evil exists and operates as an independent force, however, it does not make sense to think of someone as evil or doing evil things, but some act as the triumph of evil for the time being. This is an understanding of the world which gives up understanding and relies on belief for an explanation. If, as the catechism says, the steps in relationship to God are to know, then love God, then perhaps the next steps are to know, then hate evil, as one recognizes it for what it is: a denial of humanity and our God-like-ness.
11:30. a.m. The sun has faded from our bedroom and the room has fallen into shadows in which it will lie until tomorrow morning. The day is still bright outside, the sky clear, but I have a feeling of loss as I walk into our bedroom and see that the friendly sunshine has gone. It wouldn't be as bad if the sun had disappeared behind a cloud or the day had clouded up. The problem is that the sun has been lost by the sheer passage of time.
Conference room. The evening is now dark. I am curious about what the memory of Las Vegas Will it be pretty, will it be ugly, what will it say to me? Will I miss the clear skies and open vistas or will I, as I suspect, be so taken with the green and the glory of England Europe that I will forget the desert? I'm sure I will miss the desert from time to time.
March 17. Sunday morning. Conference room.
Last night I was struck by the wisdom spoken by the individuals in the rap session. I could almost swear I was drunk the way I felt, a sort of a soupy, sappy sentimental feeling, yet the truth is that there is a real bottom line wisdom in ordinary people. I read many writers who are well educated and no doubt could be referred to as experts; still, the expressions that come from regular people have a depth and a soundness to them that are impressive. Perhaps it is the fact that the wisdom of the so called experts is often rather fragmentary, presenting only glimpses of the big picture, never the whole thing. In contrast, the average Joe or Joan responds quite rationally to a variety of problems, setting aside the fact that our American slant tends to be a bit too violent, based as it is on a cowboy frame of reference.
No comments:
Post a Comment