I was inspired by a recent essay on Rebecca Hill’s blog, entitled “Here is where I am”. I’ll give you the link later. What struck me specially was her saying so many personal things that applied to my own case—the situation she describes, the questions she asks. I recently asked myself those questions too, and found answers to them, enough to look at Rebb’s words and say “Here is where I was”. She’s given me permission to refer to her post, so I’ll start by quoting those parts which reflect my own case.
. . . as a writer, I am in a sort of limbo as to how exactly to label what I write. . . .
What do I write? I am a journal writer, but I realize that in addition to being a journal writer, because I like to process my surroundings and interactions with people, places, and things—I tend to write reflective pieces. I like the freedom of free writing, and when I allow myself, I like the stream of consciousness aspects that sneak into my writing. I write a lot about my . . . own life and observations, so in that regard I write memoir. I also enjoy writing personal essays, but I don’t know how many of my blogs can be called essays. . . .
I’ve written vignettes, but what do I do with them if I envision including them as part of a collection? What if I want to create a book that is part memoir, part reflection, part essay . . .
How do I include all of these pieces of me into one whole?
I do best when I write about the truth—about what I see and maybe sometimes I can tell it slant—I’m not sure yet. . . . What I gravitate towards is holding life up with the tips of my fingers and examining it—life’s beauties and the nooks and crannies in between—and also how I process life. Is this enough? If any of it touches just one person in some way, that’s enough.
I don’t think I could imagine myself not blogging. I’d like to imagine myself blogging into eternity.
Her thoughts were triggered by joining a writers’ group. That’s where we differ, I thought. A few weeks ago I went round to our new Arts Centre and chatted with its chief. He asked me if I’d like to start a writers’ group. How little he knows me, I thought. Lone wolves don’t even join groups, let alone run them. And as for starting one. . . ! But still I thought about it afterwards, played with the idea of being part of a local community of creative minds. How would I present myself, and what I’ve done to date? I toyed with starting a new blog, and actually launched it, but I could only fill it with extracts from this blog over the last six years relating to the neighbourhood; trying to show how it looks through my eyes, trying to attract artists and writers to this place I called “Somewhere near Green Street”. It felt a little like van Gogh inviting Gauguin and other artists to join him at the Yellow House in Arles. I realized soon enough that I cannot be part of a “scene”, cannot have alliances and loyalties. They make me false to myself. As Rebb says, “I like the freedom of free writing!”
And then today I saw a sign in the local library that someone is starting a Writers’ Group there. So I sent in my name, and received an emailed response:
The first meeting will largely be getting to know each other, and seeing what everyone wants out of the group. Although, if you have any work you want to bring for people to get a sense of your style, you’re more than welcome to.
What would I bring? Not this post! Since we are meeting in a library, how about Gilgamesh: book for our time? No. Perhaps Reading?
This, though, would not answer the question which Rebb asked herself: “how exactly to label what I write?” So here’s my own answer: “Letters to the Universe”. It’s no good saying I am a blogger. That’s as uninformative as saying “What do I write? Paperbacks.” A letter to the Universe is a kind of message in a bottle, entrusted to the oceans of space and time. It’s the very symbol of literature. But what Rebb and I mean is something more intimate and personal. For the personal is the universal. We are all pieces of the same rock, and language helps join the pieces back again into a whole, but only if I am me and you are you. We must preserve our individual shapes, and speak only of what we know, each our own truth, with the inner eye’s aid.
“Very well,” says someone in the writer’s group, as I inwardly rehearse that first meeting. “I hear what you’re saying—I think—but I still don’t understand. Is this some new genre? If you could point to a role model, that would help.”
All right, here are a few:
1. Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592). He wrote not for fame or fortune but to please himself, and in so doing invented the essay form in literature.
2. Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), here described by his translator, Richard Zenith:
Nothing had ever obliged him to do anything. He had spent his childhood alone. He never joined any group. He never pursued a course of study. He never belonged to a crowd. The circumstances of his life were marked by that strange but rather common phenomenon – perhaps, in fact, it’s true for all lives—of being tailored to the image and likeness of his instincts, which tended towards inertia and withdrawal.
Manuscripts for his projected Book of Disquiet were found in a wooden chest in his Lisbon apartment after his death.
3. Anne Frank (1929-1945). After her death in a Nazi concentration camp her Diary was found in the apartment where she had hidden with her family in Amsterdam during the wartime occupation of Holland.
I wouldn’t have thought of her, but her cousin Buddy Elias gave an interview on the radio last Monday. He had known her when they were both children. When the diaries were discovered and published he never thought they would sell out the 1500 copies in the first edition.
He continues:
Otto [Anne’s father, who survived the war] always said ‘I didn’t know my daughter till I read her diary.’ And it was the same with me . . . the deep thoughts, the humanistic thinking. For me she was a playful, lovely young girl. But these wonderful thoughts—absolutely new. I still get letters from people who tell me ‘Anne Frank’s diary has changed my life.’
So much for role models—they are purely aspirational. But they emphasise my point, that only without compromise and self-censorship, unfettered by allegiances—owing nothing to publishers, agents or even writing groups—can I (repeating some of Rebb’s words above)
write about the truth—about what I see and maybe sometimes I can tell it slant—I’m not sure yet. . . . What I gravitate towards is holding life up with the tips of my fingers and examining it—life’s beauties and the nooks and crannies in between.
—or in my own words, ponder the question “What is this enigma called life?”
Originally I ended with a link to Rebb’s blog post “Here is where I am”. Sadly not even the Web Archive has a copy. There is where she is not. But some of her words at least have been rescued from oblivion.
15 thoughts on “Letter to the Universe”
darev2005
I would be at a loss trying to describe exactly what it is you write here. Introspective expository self discovery? That doesn’t even begin to cover it. You range far and wide in your travels.I think “Letters to the universe” covers it nicely.
Charles Bergeman
I sent the club a wire stating, “PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON’T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT PEOPLE LIKE ME AS A MEMBER”. – Groucho Marx, Telegram to the Friar’s Club of Beverly Hills to which he belonged. Vincent, I have followed your blog for so long, I can’t remember a time when I was not reading it regularly. I know, from our conversations, that we are very different people. However, a great deal of what you write here resonates strongly with my own sensibilities. I don’t see a compelling reason to label or categorize your work. As an artist, I have resisted the demands of commercial markets that would have me develop a recognizable style that is repeatable, and predictable. Much of my work has little in common. If I have a style it has more to do with the subject matter that appeals to me, rather than the way I render it.I have found the same to be true in my approach to philosophical, political, spiritual and social endeavors. I don’t fit a typical mold, and have great difficulty with any affiliation with established groups in any of these areas. I think such labels are for lazy people who want to quickly establish what they are interacting with. This way they can layer their bias on top of it to establish a frame of reference that allows them to assimilate the messages they are receiving. The great thing about your blog is that it is a slow reveal. Those who have enough patience to stick with it, are in for a treat. I suspect that those of us who have been fortunate enough to have been with you for a while are befitting from the accumulation of all the work we have enjoyed over time as much as we are from recent posts.I don’t claim to know you personally, but I do know that I have been enriched by your blog. The people who have gravitated to your blog also bring with them wonderful insights, inspired by your posts, that I thoroughly enjoy. Whatever you call what you have created here, I am better off for having found it.Some measure success by the number of subscribers. I am happy to have found this little haven, and the audience that it has found. Frankly, the content that attracts the largest audiences, seems pale in comparison.
gentleeye
Charles nailed it: “Whatever you call what you have created here, I am better off for having found it.” Couldn’t have put it better!< strong>ZACL
You appear to have created your own imaginative reading group, proffering you with the types of questions that you think they will think to ask you; questions you would like to compose for them to ask you, so that you can give them the well rehearsed answers that you created in writing here. These preparations may set you up for disappointment. On the other hand, they may prepare you for directions you can wander into with new companions.You may be a loner up to a point. However, there’s a sociable instinct creeping up out of your unconscious. Have you considered this facet of your searching? Some writer’s and bloggers are very reflective and philosophical in their writings, you are amongst a substantial band of similar thinkers in that regard who work on their own. On that basis alone, you are not a loner, Vincent.
Rebb
“We are all pieces of the same rock, and language helps join the pieces back again into a whole, but only if I am me and you are you. We must preserve our individual shapes, and speak only of what we know, each our own truth, with the inner eye’s aid.” Yes, this is so true, Vincent.And we continue discovering bits of ourselves along the way. After I wrote my blog that you reference here, the labels did not hinder me any longer. It released my thinking and process and if anything, broadened my scope. I also realize I am at peace with what I write and where I write. I am not too much focused on the future outcome for certain projects—if there is one, but from time to time I will continue to explore at different points in my writing days. I write because it is my great love and passion and by joining the writer’s group, it is allowing me yet another peek into process; another peek into other writer’s with goals different and similar than mine—but at the crux, the one link, no matter our ages or differences, is the desire and passion of the written word, communicating, sharing. I too have always been a lone wolf, but I realize it’s not a bad thing and it too suits me. I can mingle with the world in my own way. I am a lone wolf, and at the same time, I am a part of the larger whole on my own terms.I am very glad that I share a piece of the universe with you, Vincent, and to know you through your words. When we are both gone from this earth, I will remember you—as is obvious—all of your readers will.
Vincent
Thanks for these embarrassingly kind words. One thing I meant to append having already published the post was the blessing of feedback, which is so much more palpable to a blogger than to other kinds of writers, at any rate when they are hardly known. It is a great blessing. When I say feedback i include silence, manifested as lack of comments! What I want to say is that it’s important not to fight with the throw of the dice. We are what we are, and it’s best not to label ourselves (or anyone else!) as anything because that generates a mental image that distracts us from the reality. No, it is not bad to be a lone wolf, to be outside the congregation, allergic to the uniform, perhaps from abnormal sensitivity. The universal task is to accommodate oneself with the way one has been blessed.
DaRev2005
Sometimes I read your posts and there is nothing left for me to say.
keiko amano
Vincent, writing is a lonely art. I can’t do it with other people. But to relax, I go to my local writer group meetings. I always learn something there because people are different. I wish you are in my local group.
Bryan M. White
“Lone wolves don’t even join groups, let alone run them.” We have that much in common, at least.
ghetufool
there is no role model, there should not be any. you are unique and your role model was unique too. if you follow him/her, you are making a lousy second hand and spoiling your uniqueness. read about all, live what you instincts tell you.
Vincent
Well, Ghetu, when I say role model, I mean someone who encourages me in my uniqueness. Most of the time, my instincts tell me to do nothing, except for other instincts which merely say, “Do something!”Bryan, we have a great deal more in common, which may explain why we fight like siblings. Keiko, you too? I have never been to such a group. I expect them to be very different. I would be surprised to find similarities, but the main thing is to join something local. Rev, I almost always read your posts, and there is usually nothing for me to say. They are an education, a way to live vicariously, and admire, and set against the distortions of the movies.
darev2005
I don’t write to inspire debate. And some of your posts are so all-inclusive all I can do is say “Well… there it is..” But you do occasionally inspire me to smartassery.
Susan
I’m no writer, nor do I aspire to be anything other than a writer of letters, so when I decided to start a blog of my own it was my long experience of correspondence I drew on. At that time, although I was still painting and drawing, only a few people had seen my artwork since I’d long given up trying for gallery shows. It was such a delight for me when bloggers came by to look at my pictures that I decided to start writing and illustrating the stories about remembered events that became Adventures Ink. Then came Crow and his unique outlook on the world. I’ve certainly slowed down this past year or so but I still find blogging to be a wonderful way of communicating with the world beyond my small circle. Best of all, I love to read thoughtful, well written blog posts and yours are guaranteed to please the contemplative aspect of my disposition. I’m no joiner either but it’s wonderful to discover we share common ground despite distance.
a wayfarer’s notes 