inlooking #008: Things and feelings
20220702: pyramids, politics, pastorals
If you’re new around here: Welcome! Things are still running a bit long, but that’s just me.
Tooting my own posthorn
A visit to the library
And the pyramid
Self-care notes
Self-care call
Wild-built
Quickly with the advertisement for myself: There’s still room in my four-week class on Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. Sign up by clicking these words here. If you’ve been following along at home, you know how much I love this book, and how much I think you’ll love it too. The book club runs four Wednesdays, starting July 13, and is priced to please. There’s a small crowd already set to gather, but I’d like to have a larger one, so if you’re at all interested in reading a great work of post-modern fiction in community with a handful of other smart, interested people, please join us.
Publishings
I haven’t thought about doing a Henry Miller book club, but it occurred to me recently, on a visit to the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur that resulted in this piece for Alta Journal. Big Sur really is a singular place, some of the best California coastline (which is, in general, magnificent). And bookstores, of course, are some of my favorite places. So I was very pleased to be able to combine the two for this piece. The Library (pictured above) is a special place, and I highly recommend spending some time there if you are anywhere near.
Speaking of places, the latest piece in the series I’m editing for Alta dropped yesterday. The You Are Here column features writing about the idea of place and stories of places in the American West, and the latest is a piece from Kathy Seligman about San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid. Once the defining feature of the city’s skyline, the not-quite-sky-high skyscraper has since been overshadowed by towers that are even more towering. Kathy writes about an encounter with the place when she was young, about revisiting that experience, and about the way landmarks like these can continue to point the way home, even as the landscape around them changes.
Not a term I often use
I had to do a Difficult Thing the other morning in my capacity as a nonprofit board member. It was a personnel-related Thing, which are often the most difficult of all (but which can also be, at times, the most rewarding). The Thing left me with Feelings (as Things often do, especially Difficult Things), and my afternoon was kind of blown—the emotional hangover from the Thing made it impossible for me to work on my current project (revising a long novel), or do any other kind of work, for that matter.
It took me quite some time sitting in front of my computer to understand that I needed to stop trying to work and figure out something I could do that might qualify as “self-care.” (This is not a term I often use, which is probably why it took me so long to figure that out.) That stymied me for a while, too, until I asked myself, “What’s the thing I really want to do right now, without putting any value judgments on how I’m spending my time?”
And so I did that. I sat down, opened a blank Google Doc, and started making notes for a really long and complicated science fiction novel about [idea redacted so as not to let the air out of it before it even gets off the ground]. I did that for maybe an hour, until I had to go do something else, and let me tell you, it was satisfying. One thing that helped was that I did it with no requirement for what might come out of the exercise. If I never open that document again, never think about that idea, that’s fine. The exercise was not to make notes for a novel I might one day write, it was just to sit and make notes for a novel. This, for me, is kind of like going to the gym (though without the same physical benefits). I get to spend a little time concentrating on what’s right in front of me and just being in the moment, without dealing with any baggage from the past or any hopes and fears for the future. This is a state that’s not often easy for me to achieve, so I’m happy I found an exercise that helps with that, at least for the moment.
Representation
I engaged in a different kind of self-care the other day as well: I picked up the phone and called one of my representatives and urged their voice mail to take action regarding the Supreme Court. My understanding is that calls like this are tallied, and are one of the ways that Congresspeople (if they’re at all conscientious, which is sometimes a stretch) understand what their constituents care about. I care about retaining and improving the system of governance we’ve built in this country (which could stand a lot of improvement, it has become apparent). So, rather than do nothing more than worry and Tweet about it, I picked up the phone. I’m not convinced I’ve changed the world with my call, but I’m going to make a bunch more of them, and I would urge you to do the same. There are many actions we can take, and you’ll have to find the ones that are right for you, but I am looking at it as a kind of self-care, to take these actions, since the alternative is to hide out and tell yourself everything’s going to be fine, which isn’t necessarily the case. So pick up the phone. Here’s how:
Calling Congress Is Easier Than You Think — Here’s How To Do It
How to Have a Productive Phone Call With Your Legislator's Office
A Gentle Psalm
I just read a really pleasant short novel that I recommend: A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Hugo winner Becky Chambers. “Pleasant” is not an adjective I usually attach to novels I recommend, but it’s the right word here (or one of them). It’s set on a colonized moon where society has understood how to live in harmony with nature, and where the machines, once they developed consciousness, took off into the wilderness because they didn’t want to have anything to do with humanity for a while.
One of the things I like about this book is that Chambers doesn’t feel she needs to justify her choices through too much back-story. Things are as they are, and we’re happy to accept them, in part because the novel is one of (mostly) happy acceptance. There’s no desperate conflict that needs to be solved, no tortured soul that needs to be untwisted. It does have a plot, but it’s very much a pastoral, in the original sense: a portrait of a shepherd living a fulfilling life in nature. It’s more than that, of course (and it’s the first in a series called Monk and Robot, so that should give you come clue as to what’s up). But at its core it’s a comfortable tale. Pleasant. Nice. I was happy to read something that didn’t feel it needed to rely on conflict to drive it, for a chance. Would that more of the world felt the same.
Til next time,
Wallace