Thursday
14 May. 9:30 a.m. The days are very long. Sunrise on Saturday 16th is 5:07, sunset is
8:48. By 24th sunrise is 4:57, sunset
8:59. 23rd of June is 4:44, earliest is
15 June at 4:43. Latest sunset is 9:22
on June 23 (wow!). 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. is
16 hours, vs December 8, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., 8 hours.
Cathy
and I walked around Hampstead, saw where Leigh Hunt lived, ditto: Constable, D.
H. Lawrence, several Du Mauriers, painters, H.G. Wells, K. Amis. I know there were more. Quite a good walk, with a lot of history.
I've
always thought of myself as a good travel guide, love to show people around,
always giving tours of LA, but always by car.
True the details of any square quarter mile can supply stories beyond
the grand scenes of the panorama, yet the panoramas are wonderful too. I loved the stories of Hampstead, but then
what a view from Parliament Hill!
Sometimes
I think of going to mass like visiting my parents. Should be more.
I
no longer feel self conscious walking about town or being in the house during
hours normally reserved for office work.
I do not know whether I have fundamentally changed or whether I have
simply got used to this. How I will
react when I return is something else. For
about six months after we left Las Vegas I dreamt of work. Now however, I rarely dream of being a
lawyer. I did dream of Gary last
night. I dreamt, I was in an office, perhaps
it was my lawyer's office; if it was, it was not with the same sense of work I
dreamt of before. I don't think I
thought of work as a lawyer, just of being at the place, and I think Brian or
Kevin was there. Anyway I went outside
and greeted Gary and Jodi in their car.
(Wagoneer?) I was running in
front of them, leading the way, to the back door of the office. Gary kept going faster and I was doing all
right running, but it was time to slow down or make a turn and I could not
slow, because of the car behind me, nor could I turn, because I would have to
pivot too quickly and turn on my still tender ankle, which I sprained on
Sunday. The end result was that I had to
keep on running, when I would be able to stop was in Gary's hands. Did I detect a bit of an evil gleam in his
eye? It was hard to tell, it could just
have been the glare of sunlight.
I
don't know whether my dream was about work or about time or about ending my
sabbatical or all three. If it was about
work, it was about work in a more abstract way than before.
Catholic Writers. There was an
article, in last week's Sunday Times,
about Catholic writers, with the subtitle, "Do bad Catholics make good
writers?" Two examples were Graham
Greene and Beryl Bainbridge. Since I
consider myself to be a good Catholic, does that make me a bad writer?
I
want to accomplish something, an end result, with my writing, but the end
results are hard to reach. My problem is
compounded because I have no vision of what it is I should be writing. Too many thoughts, not enough clarity of
vision. (I hear the swifts outside, their sounds a higher note than the rest of
the chirping. I keep waking up to birds
singing at about 4:30 in the morning as the sky begins to lighten.)
Coming
home on the train yesterday, reading about the riots some place in England
Tuesday night. Kids got mad after police
cracked down on motorcycle riders. I
happened to look up as the train passed beneath the motorway bridge near
Stanstead/Newport, and saw all the graffiti. As I saw the ugly graffiti and
thought of the riots and their relationship to my own writing, it seemed to me
that each of us, in our own way, is just looking for a voice that stands out
from the rest, in a world where our numbers often make individuality hard to
achieve. We all dress the same, eat the
same, have the same cars, etc. mostly, so we look for ways to single ourselves
out from the crowd. I suppose my way is
to frequently sit with my journal, writing about myself and the world. Another attempt may be in fashion. Cathy is like this (and perhaps this striving
for individuality may be what we most share in common, besides four children!).
Others
seek to stand out from the crowd by graffiti, pink hair, earrings, making the
television news while causing a scene somewhere, etc. All, in the long run, are trying to stand out
in the crowd. (In England, Scotland,
Wales, this is done among the upper middle classes through achieving a
knighthood.)
Because
of the dissemination of information today, and our searches for singularity, we
often pick up on things that others are doing and adopt them. (Some people think of things and then
publicize them, they are called designers or even writers.) Soon the once singular thing is no longer
singular, but fashionable. A good
example of this is the wearing of earrings by men. What once was a statement of sexual
orientation or lifestyle (I suppose, for I have never figured out exactly what
it meant) is now a fashion and it no longer means what it once did, it is
merely a style, indicating one is up with the times.
There
will be new fashions in the future which will come and go, just as earrings
will one day lose attraction and young men will want to not have earrings in
order to be different.
Graffiti
is similar. Perhaps also the acts of
rioters in LA and England, some incited by anger and a sense of injustice, but
others no doubt moved by the need to be seen making a statement that he or she
has contempt for the system. Graffiti
seems to have different ideas: some want to shock (swear words, sexual
statements), some wish to protest (anti-war, anti-gun, green), others wish to
show off in rudeness or comedy, show how bright he or she is.
The
idea I want to get to is that the Christian believes that he or she achieves
real uniqueness in God. God recognizes
our uniqueness, therefore we have less of a need to try and achieve it on
earth. (I think that may be why I often
write and write, knowing what I write will not go anywhere but here.)
I
myself see uniqueness all around me, in each face, voice; in clouds, leaves,
the voice of a bird; each moment is different, will never be repeated. I will never be the same after each passing
second. Looking at faces in a mob I can
see the differences, even though there is the same anger, same loss of
control. Does one need to be a Christian
to see this? Perhaps, though it's hard
to say. If one is not a Christian, I
wonder if one's view of the world works strongly to limit one's view of
individuality? If I were a socialist,
would I be overwhelmed by my belief that the system weighs people down and
doesn't permit them to live their dreams or be themselves? Would I see the system as overwhelming their
individuality. (Isn't this G. Orwell? I saw
his house and the book store where he once worked.)
James
Joyce goes the opposite way, I think, bringing individuality to the center of
the universe. (Isn't this Ulysses? Though I shouldn't say, not
having read it.) But would Joyce give
this individuality to everyone? Or does
it have to be bestowed on the individual by an appreciation of art/history and
all the ties into one's life?
Could
I write a Christian Ulysses? Is such a thing possible? In Ulysses
the fellow is lost going home, an idea very suited to the Christian who truly
believes that he or she is headed home and often gets lost along the way. I suppose Joyce was more proposing the idea
of the individual as the hero.
I
suppose that if one is a Christian, one has less of a need to search for,
achieve, publicize the singularity we all want.
We realize that it is in God that our individuality is complete and only
there. (The swifts again, like
whistles.) If one expects to achieve
this status through God, and only through God, there is both less need to seek
it now and a realization that seeking that individuality now is something that
can never really succeed and will probably end in the frustration of not
finding true individuality, only the tastes and mores of changing fashion.
The
Christian finds that real individuality lies in the soul, in the inner being,
that part of us that no one but ourselves can really know, the consciousness,
the self that governs all else, our companion (if we can split the self from
that consciousness, which by definition we cannot) at the moment of death, and
our companion for all eternity.
(Eternity
I thought to be a dirty word when I was young, and, in trying to see how big it
was, found myself feeling the barest trace of being.)
If
the soul is the real self, the real individual, then expressing it now can
never really be complete. The two, soul
and world, do not really speak the same language.
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